Closer Than You Think

by Karen Rose

  ‘We’ve already established that my client was here at the time the woman’s car was tampered with,’ Green said harshly. ‘What are you really after, Detective Vega?’

  ‘The truth. Combs tried to kill Dr Frye four years ago. He set fire to her workplace in order to do so. Those are facts. After his release, he blatantly and persistently stalked Dr Frye. And then someone shot at Frye, killing her boss. Someone tried to break into her apartment, then later tried to burn her out of it. A van tries to run her off the road and a woman shoots at her. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Peter Combs wanted Faith Frye dead. Paula loves Peter. She’d do anything for him.’ Cat shrugged. ‘I’m sure even Paula is seeing where I’m going with this.’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ Paula fumed. ‘And she’s a dirty liar. We did not try to kill her. I was not in that van. Peter was not in that van. He couldn’t have tried to run that bitch off a bridge, therefore I couldn’t have been his passenger. Therefore I cannot be guilty!’

  ‘Why couldn’t he have run Frye off the road?’ Cat demanded. ‘Because you say so? Woman, you’re defending a man who raped little girls. Why would anyone believe you?’

  ‘Because he’s dead, that’s why!’ Paula shouted. She drew breath. Shuddered it out. Began to weep. ‘He’s dead. Okay? Are you happy now? That bitch had him killed. And now she has the nerve to accuse him?’

  Aw, fucking hell. Keeping the frustration from her expression, Cat casually leaned in to the table, blocking Paula’s view of her attorney. ‘How do you know that, Paula?’

  ‘Paula,’ Green said urgently, ‘be—’

  Cat threw up her hand, interrupting him. ‘Mr Green, the best thing you can do for your client here is to let her answer. If Combs is dead, Paula’s off the hook and Faith Frye is exposed as a liar.’ Which Cat didn’t believe for a moment. But if Combs was dead, it meant that nobody had any suspects for a number of homicides in Florida, and possibly in Ohio too. ‘Tell me, Paula. How do you know Peter’s dead?’

  ‘Because I saw him die.’ Paula looked at her with haggard eyes. ‘Okay? I saw him die a month ago.’ She lifted her hands, stared at them. ‘And then I buried him.’

  Aw, motherfucking hell. Cat dropped a notepad on the table. ‘Details, Paula.’

  Green leaned forward to get past Cat’s body, putting his hand over Paula’s as she reached for the pad. ‘Not so fast. What does she get if she tells you?’

  ‘She absolves herself from suspicion of attempted murder,’ Cat snapped. She walked around the table so that she could look Paula in the eye. ‘And she absolves Peter, too. If someone killed him, he’s innocent of these murders. He was framed. But if I can’t prove he’s dead, he’ll be paraded through the press again: “Convicted sex-offender kills niño y mama.” The pictures of that crashed car will be shown on every news show and every Internet site. And every headline will call him a sex offender again and again and again.’ Cat leaned closer with every again, until she was nose to nose with the sobbing Paula. ‘You know how I know this? Because I will make sure of it. And I’m not lying. I will crucify him. You have my word.’

  ‘Stop,’ Paula cried. ‘Just stop it. He never hurt those little girls. He was just trying to make a new life, but Faith Frye wouldn’t leave him alone. She kept making complaints. The cops kept coming to our place. Everyone knew. The neighbors knew. They whispered terrible lies.’

  Wow, Cat thought. Denial must be Paula’s middle name. ‘You said she had him killed. That’s a serious charge. Can you prove it?’

  ‘Yes. I saw the man kill him. He got a call—’

  ‘Paula,’ Green said. ‘For the last time, say no more. I can get the drug charges dropped.’

  ‘Like you got Peter’s sex charges dropped? You let him go to prison for something he didn’t do. You don’t care about him.’

  ‘She doesn’t either,’ Green flung back, pointing at Cat.

  ‘Yeah, but I’ll be damned before I let her run his name through the dirt again.’ Paula turned back to Cat. ‘He got a call a month ago. He promised to meet someone at a bar, later that night. I thought maybe he was having an affair, because he’d been acting strangely. Like going to the bank the day before and withdrawing money. Lots of money. I found the receipt in his wallet. He’d taken out all the money he had left after his divorce, in cash. I thought, what if he is leaving me, running off with someone else? So I followed him and saw him meet a man and get in the car with him. Peter was driving. And then I thought, God, what if he’s gay? What if he’s been lying to me all this time? So I followed the man’s car, up Alligator Alley. I needed to know. It wasn’t till they stopped that I saw the gun.’

  ‘Peter had a gun?’

  ‘No, the man did. He made Peter get out of the car and kneel down. And then he shot him in the head. And pushed him down a hill. Then he drove away.’

  ‘No body was found along Alligator Alley last month.’

  ‘Because I buried him. I didn’t want the animals to get him.’

  She couldn’t have buried him deep enough. That stretch of I-75 ran through the wild swamp. Even if she was telling the truth, they’d be lucky to find Combs’s pinky bone. ‘He didn’t see you?’

  ‘No. He pulled off the road, into the preserve. I turned off my lights.’

  The Big Cyprus National Preserve covered more than three-quarters of a million acres of swamp, which made finding a body harder than finding a needle in a haystack. ‘Okay. Why didn’t you call the cops?’

  ‘Oh, right. And then Peter’s killer would know I’d seen him and he’d kill me too. I may not have college but I’m not stupid, Detective.’

  ‘Who did you think had killed him?’

  ‘I figured it was one of those crazy vigilantes. He got hate mail all the time. Because he was a sex offender. It never stopped.’

  ‘But why would he have met with a crazy vigilante in the first place?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I followed him.’

  ‘Where did you bury him?’

  ‘I’d have to show you.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ Cat murmured. ‘What about the money?’

  Paula looked startled. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You said he’d taken out a lot of money from the bank. Where is it?’

  ‘You found it, Detective.’ A sly sparkle slid through Paula’s eyes, so quickly that Cat would have missed it had she not been watching her so closely. ‘Under my car seat. Peter must have turned it into something he could sell later. After he was dead, I figured he might have intended to run away. When you found the coke, I figured he’d planned to sell it so that we’d have money to live on.’

  ‘I see.’ Cat had to smile. The woman had spun a very nice web. If Cat believed one part of the story, it would be harder to negate the other part. If she bought the stranger-killing-Combs murder angle, it would be harder to argue that the coke was Paula’s. ‘I underestimated you, Paula. You’re pretty good.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t stupid,’ Paula said mildly.

  ‘Yes, you did. Can you describe this man who killed Peter?’

  ‘He was tall, about Peter’s height. Not bad-looking. Big, the same size as Peter, but he moved funny. Like he was robotic or something. He was bald. His head shone like the surface of the moon.’

  ‘Let me arrange transport. I’d like you to show me where you buried Peter.’

  Cincinnati, Ohio, Wednesday 5 November, 5.00 P.M.

  By the time Deacon got to his neighborhood, the Bureau agents had narrowed the killer’s choice of vantage points from fifty houses down to three. As soon as he heard the street name over his radio, he knew which of the three it would be.

  Dread mounting, he parked his car in front of a three-story Victorian that was all too familiar. SAC Zimmerman was waiting out front to meet him. ‘What made you pick this house of the three?’ Zimmerman called out when Deacon got out of his car.

  ‘Two things. It’s got a bird’s-eye view of my front porch. And I used to live here.
’

  Zimmerman’s eyes widened. ‘You lived here?’

  ‘When I was in high school. Best damn years of my childhood. My stepfather owned this home and we were very happy here. When Bruce and my mother died, he left the house to my sister and brother and me, but we had to sell it. Did you find evidence of forced entry?’

  Zimmerman nodded. ‘Broken glass panel in the back door. I didn’t realize you lived here. That changes everything.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Deacon said grimly. ‘It’s a giant eff-you to the Fed who robbed him of his kill the other night. I imagine he thought this was very funny.’

  ‘It also means that he’s targeted you too. It’s a lot more personal.’

  ‘Let him come,’ Deacon said quietly, meaning every word.

  ‘How did he know you lived here?’

  ‘Not too hard to find. Bruce Novak’s name was on the deed, so it’s in the tax record.’

  ‘Searchable online now,’ Zimmerman said.

  ‘Yep. Plus I ran track in high school and there were a few articles in the newspaper the year we went to the state finals. And then Dani, Greg and I were listed in Bruce and my mother’s obituary.’ He shrugged. ‘We live life and leave little pieces of information as we go.’

  ‘True enough. When did you sell the house?’

  ‘Right after we inherited it. I’m the oldest and I was only eighteen. I couldn’t afford the mortgage or the taxes. So we sold it to Noel and Kay Lazar. He was an engineer, she was a nurse. She died a few years ago, but he still lives here. He’s retired. If he’s still alive.’

  ‘We cleared every room,’ Zimmerman said. ‘No sign of the home-owner or the shooter. But there is evidence of a struggle. Come in, I’ll show you.’

  Deacon followed Zimmerman into the house he’d called home. Surreal, he thought. Like walking in a dream. The SAC went up the stairs, pausing outside the retired engineer’s study, which appeared to have hosted a barroom brawl – furniture overturned, an open laptop, screen cracked, discarded on the floor, drapes pulled down from their rods. Picture frames had fallen from their hooks and lay broken on the floor.

  ‘I think he surprised the homeowner here,’ Zimmerman said. ‘Lazar put up a helluva fight.’

  ‘He was in surprisingly good shape for his age,’ Deacon murmured. ‘He was seventy, but he jogged five miles a day. I’ve run with him a few times since I bought our place.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zimmerman said quietly. ‘I didn’t realize you were also his friend.’

  Deacon was beginning to understand how Faith felt. He’d brought this evil to his neighborhood and an innocent man had suffered. ‘What about the silver minivan?’

  ‘In the garage. I’ve got a team combing it for anything this guy left behind – a print, a hair, blood. Lazar’s Toyota Camry is gone. BOLO’s been updated. There are a few knives and a cleaver missing from the knife block. Not good.’

  No, it wasn’t good at all. Plus the top floor of the house reeked of bleach. This is bad.

  ‘Sir?’ Agent Taylor stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Oh, Agent Novak. I didn’t know you’d arrived.’ He noticed Deacon’s coat and narrowed his eyes. ‘Did you get that out of evidence?’

  ‘No,’ Deacon said tersely. ‘What do you have, Agent Taylor?’

  ‘Sorry. Come in, please.’ Taylor flicked off the lights and the entire room glowed, annihilating any hope that Lazar had survived. ‘Luminol shows blood on the tile, in the tub and on the floor, and spatter on the ceiling and all the walls. Looks like the victim fought.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Deacon whispered, hating this. Hating everything about it. Hating that Lazar was dead because Deacon had bought a house three streets over.

  No. He stopped himself mid rant. Lazar was dead because a monster was determined that no one would disturb his play. Zimmerman was right. This is personal.

  Zimmerman sighed. ‘I’ll have the teams spread out, search other garages in the neighborhood for the Camry, just in case he’s taken over another home.’

  ‘Go ahead and search, but I think he’s gone. He’s got to know that Faith isn’t here anymore.’ The knowledge that she was at the precinct, surrounded by armed cops, was the only thing keeping Deacon from running to her right now. That, and the respect he owed the man who’d lived here. ‘We found the man he shot in the hotel lying in the tub. No blood like this. He’s hidden this body, and cleaned up. Why?’

  ‘He changed tactics,’ Zimmerman said. ‘He didn’t want Lazar found. I wonder if the old man scratched him.’

  ‘I sure as hell hope so,’ Deacon said darkly. ‘It could also be that he didn’t want them found quickly. Unless someone missed Lazar, nobody would look for the shooter here, but if he’d left the body here in the tub and it started to stink . . .’ He exhaled wearily. ‘Did anyone check the freezer?’

  ‘We looked in the kitchen freezer when we found the cleaver missing,’ Taylor said. ‘There wasn’t a freezer in the garage.’

  Deacon backed away from the bathroom, stomach churning. ‘What about the basement?’

  ‘Shit,’ Zimmerman muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

  Mt Carmel, Ohio, Wednesday 5 November, 5.30 P.M.

  Faith looked up from her computer screen, her attention snagged by a snippet of music she instantly recognized. She stood up and stretched her shoulders, needing a break away.

  The music grew louder when she reached the kitchen. Sophie was sitting on the floor, her back to a cabinet door, knees pulled to her chest, listening to her husband Vito sing.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sophie?’

  ‘We found Roza’s mother in the dug-out room.’

  Faith considered the room’s size and understood Sophie’s distress. She sat down next to her with a sigh. ‘She slept next to her mother’s grave?’

  Sophie swallowed audibly. ‘She arranged her mother so that she was lying on her side, like she was asleep, her hands tucked under her head. And she put a doll in her mother’s arms. I just . . . I just couldn’t stand looking at that doll for another second.’

  ‘Sad is such a paltry word,’ Faith murmured, ‘for such a devastating feeling.’ She put her arm around Sophie’s shoulders and sat in silence, listening to Sophie’s husband sing. Midway through the song, Sophie laid her head on Faith’s shoulder, her tears quiet ones.

  When the music was over, Sophie wiped her wet cheeks. ‘It was the doll that did it to me. It was Roza’s doll. Her name was written on one of the feet, like Andy’s toys in Toy Story. I had a doll like it when I was a little girl. When you tipped her over, she said “Mama”.’

  ‘My mother had one of those dolls. I got to play with her when I was really little, but I was too rough and tore her arm. I tried to fix it, but I did a horrible job. My mother took the doll, told me I could have it back when I was older. I never saw it again, but I bet it’s upstairs in a closet some—’

  Sophie was giving her an odd look. ‘Was the doll’s name Maggie?’ she asked.

  ‘No, that was my mother’s name. Why?’

  ‘Because that was the name written on the label of the doll’s dress.’

  Faith’s heart eased a tiny fraction. ‘Whoever held Roza and her mother must have found it. At least he was kind enough to give her a doll. That makes me feel a little better about her being retaken. If he gave her a doll, maybe he won’t kill her.’

  Sophie squeezed Faith’s hand. ‘It’s a good hope. We also found a box buried where her sleeping pallet was. Tanaka is bringing it up now. You want to see what’s inside?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Tanaka came up the stairs carrying the box, followed by Kimble and Isenberg. He put the box on the living room floor and everyone stopped what they were doing to see what was inside. ‘It’s heavy,’ Tanaka said. ‘Feels like books.’

  And it was. There were at least twenty books inside the box and many of them had names written inside. ‘They belonged to the victims,’ Isenberg said. ‘Now we have another mode of identification.’

  Tanaka picked o
ne up gingerly and flipped through the pages. ‘Lots of notes in the margins.’ He smiled. ‘Roza’s mother was teaching her to read.’

  Faith found a loose sheet of paper in one of the books, a writing lesson this time. An adult hand had written I LOVE YOU lightly on the page and a childish hand had traced over it.

  ‘At least her mother loved her,’ Faith said wistfully. ‘That’s a gift some kids don’t get.’

  ‘I know,’ Sophie murmured, loud enough for only Faith to hear. ‘I’m going downstairs. We have to uncover the bodies so that identification can begin.’ She gave Faith a quick hug. ‘Thank you for giving me hope for Roza.’

  ‘How’s the list coming?’ Isenberg asked. ‘Any more connections to family events?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Faith said. ‘Has your team of clerks back at the station found anything?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Isenberg said. ‘A number of the names have no birth certificates and a few of them have social security numbers that have been linked to past identity theft.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Faith when the significance dawned. ‘So someone is making up fake applicants and taking the money they’re given.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Isenberg said. ‘“Follow the money” is a well-worn adage for a reason.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Cincinnati, Ohio, Wednesday 5 November, 5.45 P.M.

  Deacon was not only beginning to understand Faith’s feelings of guilt, he was also developing quite an aversion to basements. He had, in fact, found himself counting the steps as he descended into the engineer’s basement. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

  He exhaled when he reached the bottom. Two large chest freezers sat up against the wall.

  ‘What would anyone need with two huge freezers?’ Zimmerman muttered behind him.

  ‘He was a hunter,’ Deacon said. ‘He mentioned that deer season was coming up. He promised me some of his venison stew.’ He forced himself to lift the first lid.

  Several large black trash bags had been dumped inside. Most appeared filled, but the bag on top was smaller. Bowling ball sized. Aw, hell.