by Julie Miller
She shrugged. “I can’t say for certain unless I dig into the gym’s schedule, class and personal trainer files, but the opportunity to meet was certainly there.”
“It would be easy enough to go to the gym and ask some general questions to see if anyone ever saw the two of them together,” Trent offered.
The lieutenant nodded. “Make a note to do that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t have any evidence that Hillary Wells and Leland Asher ever met.” Katie pointed to the nephew and then to Leland Asher. “But Max discovered that Matt regularly visits his uncle in prison.”
Olivia nodded. “I’m guessing he’s in the family business, although we haven’t been able to prove that he’s guilty of anything illegal. But he’s down in Jefferson City nearly every week, so you know he must be passing messages to and from his uncle. Leland could have ordered Hillary to kill Richard Bratcher.”
Jim Parker agreed. “It’d make sense for Matt Asher to keep the family business running while Uncle Leland is incarcerated. Where are his parents? Is his father involved in any of Leland’s criminal activities?”
“There’s no father in the picture. I did a little research through Social Services and found what I could on his mother. She’s Leland’s sister—never married. It’s in your folders. Isabel Asher overdosed when Matt was eleven—ten years ago.” Katie pointed to the image of a blonde woman who had probably once been a knockout before the blank, sunken eyes and sallow skin in the photograph marred her beauty. “That’s why she was in the system—she was fighting an ongoing addiction to crack cocaine, was in and out of rehab. There were several calls from teachers about neglect. After Isabel’s death, Matt Asher went to live with his uncle.”
Max tipped his chair back and said what they all suspected. “The dope was probably supplied by her brother’s import business. If not, he’d certainly have the money to buy her whatever she wanted.”
Jim concurred. “Access to her brother’s wealth would make her a prime target. Let me guess, there’s a boyfriend she used to shoot up with. Asher blamed him for his sister’s death and that guy’s in one of your dead files?”
“Well, Francisco Dona did have a couple of arrests in his packet, but he can’t be involved in any of our more recent crimes.” She highlighted the mug shot of a dark-haired lothario with long, stringy hair and a goatee. “He died in a motorcycle accident shortly after Isabel’s death.”
“Are we sure it was an accident?” Trent asked.
Katie drew a line from Francisco Dona to Lloyd Endicott. “Well, even though one rode a motorcycle and the other drove a luxury car, the sabotage to the engines was similar.”
“As if both crimes had been committed by the same person?” Max sat up straight, his gruff voice incredulous. “Wow, kiddo. You’re thorough.”
“It’s a thing I do. I like to poke around. Solve puzzles. It’s just a matter of getting access to the right database.”
Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor threw a note of caution into the mix. “And having the legal clearance to access that database?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Katie’s lips softened with a sheepish smile. “Either I’ve got departmental clearance or it’s public access. I haven’t needed a warrant to put together any of this information, although there are places I could dig deeper if I did have one. I’ve sent out feelers to businesses, doctors, private citizens and so on to update our records. Some are eager to answer questions and help. Others don’t even respond. Of course, I could find out more if...” She twiddled her fingers in the air, indicating her hacking skills. Trent had no doubt that Katie could access almost any information they needed—but the way she’d obtain it wouldn’t stand up in court and no conviction would stick.
The lieutenant smiled. “We’ll work within legal means for now. Continue with your report. This is already good stuff we can follow up on.”
Trent read through the slim report on the dead socialite. “Says here the detectives assigned to the case suspected foul play in Isabel Asher’s death. They thought it might be a hit by a rival organization to send a message to Asher. So you think Francisco Dona made a deal with someone to kill her?”
Katie nodded. “There was no conclusive evidence in her KCPD case file, although that’s an angle the detectives in the organized crime division investigated before it was closed out as an accidental death.”
Olivia thumbed through the information in her folder. “You have been busy. These deaths all happened within a general time frame, six to ten years ago. It makes our Strangers on a Train theory plausible.”
Jim dropped his folder on the table, shaking his head. “But there are six murder victims here. And we’ve only solved two of them. And we haven’t linked either of those conclusively to Leland Asher ordering those murders. You said this guy is getting out this week. If we can’t pin something solid on him, we’ll never get him back in prison.” The blond detective looked from the lieutenant back to Katie. “Is there any place else where all of their killers could have met with Asher? Even randomly?”
“You mean like sitting together at a ball game? I haven’t found anything like that yet, but...” Katie sat back in her chair and drew lines from one picture to another on her computer screen, giving them all a visual of her extensive research. “Leland Asher was diagnosed with lung cancer two months ago. The doctors suspect he’s been suffering longer than that.”
Their team leader nodded. “That probably helped prompt his early release as well—so the state doesn’t have to pay for his medical treatments. What else?”
“Either Matt Asher or Leland’s girlfriend, Dr. Beverly Eisenbach, have been to see him every week while he’s getting radiation treatments and chemo shots.” Katie drew another line. “Matt and Stephen March both saw Dr. Eisenbach as teens for counseling. Hillary Wells ran Endicott Global after Dr. Lloyd Endicott’s death, and Dr. Endicott belonged to the same country club as Leland.” The grumbles and astonished gasps around the table grew louder as the links of this twisted chain of murder fell into place. “Isabel Asher was Leland’s sister and Matt’s mother, of course. Roberta Hays was the DFS social worker assigned to Matt’s case. And...”
Trent looked up from the notes in his folder when she hesitated. “What is it?”
She circled the image of a haggard-looking man with graying hair. “I found a connection to me in here.”
“What is it, kiddo?” Max asked, voicing the others’ surprise and concern.
“Roberta Hays’s brother is Craig Fairfax.”
Ah, hell. Trent recognized the name from Katie’s past. That was what had truly scared her. He sat forward, extending his long arm to the end of the table. He reached for Katie, his fingertips brushing the edge of the laptop where her hands rested on the keyboard. But she curled her fingers into a fist, refusing his touch. That didn’t stop him from asking the question, “You discovered Fairfax in your research last night?”
Her gaze landed on his, and she nodded before explaining the significance of that name to the others. “He’s the man who kidnapped me when I was seventeen. He tried to take Tyler from me as part of an illegal adoption ring. He and his sister Roberta—who used her position with Family Services to scout out potential candidates like me—are both serving time now.”
No wonder she’d gotten obsessed with her work and lost track of both Tyler and the late hour last night. Trent was already sending a text of his own, verifying that Craig Fairfax was still locked up in a cell in Jefferson City and not running loose on the Williams College campus.
“What’s his connection to cold case?” the lieutenant asked, gently reminding Katie of the focus of the team’s investigation. “Does he fit in with our Strangers on a Train theory? Can we tie him to Asher’s criminal organization?”
Katie nodded. “Mr. Fairfax was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year.�
�� She drew one last line on the computer screen from one sicko to another. “He’s in the same prison infirmary with Leland Asher.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“You need me there to back you up?” Max Krolikowski’s voice was a deep growly pitch over the cell phone Trent slipped beneath the edge of his black knit watch cap as he climbed out of his truck at the Williams College auditorium.
“Nah, brother,” Trent answered, flipping up the collar of his coat against the clear, cold night. He turned his back to the bitter wind blowing from the north and strode across the cleared pavement toward the massive brick building. “This is personal. We’re off the clock.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t be there in a heartbeat. I owe you for helping me keep an eye on Rosie this summer.” Max chuckled. “Besides, I decided I like ya. I’d hate to have to break in a whole new partner.”
Trent laughed, too. “Nobody else would have you, you grumpy old man.”
“Bite me, junior.”
“Love you, too.” Stretching out his long legs, Trent stepped over the snow piled between the sidewalk and curb. He noted that the parking lot was crowded with cars and the pavement and sidewalk had been cleared from one end to another by plows. There’d be no footprints to follow tonight unless the perp he believed had been spying on Katie was dumb enough to trek through the drifts. But if the guy who’d shoved her to the floor was that kind of dumb, Trent intended to be here to have a conversation about keeping his distance from the Rinaldi family. “Hey, did you ever hear back from the gym Matt Asher belongs to?”
“I thought we were off the clock.”
“I’ll stop thinking about these unsolved cases when you do.”
Trent’s booted feet quickly ate up several yards walking around to the front lobby doors of the building while Max grinched around in the background. When his partner came back to the phone, Trent knew he’d been checking the facts in his notebook. “Since the manager didn’t seem to know much when we visited this morning, I stopped by on my way home and chatted up the after-work crowd. Several people recognized Matt Asher and Hillary Wells, but couldn’t remember if they’d ever seen them in a conversation with each other.”
Trent figured with the discrepancy between their ages—Matt barely being twenty-two and the late Dr. Wells being a professional woman in her forties—that any conversation more intimate than a polite greeting between the two of them might stand out enough to make an impression on at least one of the other gym members. When he suggested the idea, Max concurred. “Asked and answered. No one I spoke to could recall either Matt Asher or Hillary Wells being in the same room together, much less sharing that they were looking for a way to have someone killed.”
The sharp wind bit into Trent’s cheek when he turned to the front doors. He hunched his shoulders to stay warm. “So that’s not our connection between the two of them. Still, eliminating the gym doesn’t mean she didn’t have some other connection to Leland Asher.”
“So we keep digging.”
Trent nodded. “I’ll ask Katie if she’s come up with anyplace else that can tie the two of them together.”
“Or tie Dr. Wells directly to Asher.” Trent heard a soft voice in the background, then something that sounded suspiciously like lips smacking against each other. Max’s gruff tone softened. “Rosie says to tell you hi—”
“Hey, Rosie.”
“—and invite you over for dinner sometime before Christmas.”
“I accept. Will you be there, too?”
“Wiseass.” Trent grinned at the reprimand he heard in the background. “Um, the missus says I need to mind my manners. Maybe Friday before we all go see the little man in his play?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Give me a call sometime to let me know if anybody else tries to bother Katie. She’s part of the team, too. I don’t like the idea of anybody messin’ with one of us.”
“That’s why I’m here. If nothing else, I’m going to make sure she and Tyler aren’t the last ones here and walking by themselves to their car again.” Trent held open one of the glass front doors for a pair of chattering, bundled-up coeds who must have been leaving an evening meeting or practice in one of the fine arts classrooms. He barely saw their bold smiles and flirty eye contact. He silently bemoaned the idea that their interest in him sparked amusement rather than any fraction of the pull that a few ponytail hairs clinging to his shirt had that morning. “Ladies,” he acknowledged to some silly giggles before they hurried past him and he signed off on his call to Max. “I’ll keep you posted.”
As soon as he stepped into the lobby out of the wind, Trent pulled off his cap and stuffed it into a coat pocket along with his phone. He removed his gloves and unzipped his coat before heading across the worn marble floor to the auditorium’s dark red doors.
He stooped a little to peer through the cloudy glass window near the top of the door and saw a hazy tableau of the Cratchit family lifting their pewter mugs in a toast. He smiled when he spotted the little boy with the old-fashioned crutch tucked beneath his arm. Tyler’s smudged face was easily the most animated of all the children onstage as he said his lines. There was a lot to admire about Katie’s son. Trent didn’t remember having that much confidence at that age, except maybe playing sports—but certainly not speaking in front of an audience. “Way to go, Tyler.”
Trent shifted his gaze to the sloping rows of seats in the shadows between the lobby and the brightly lit stage. There wasn’t much of an audience to be nervous about tonight. There was a skinny, graying man in a turtleneck pacing back and forth between the curved rows of seats. There were some obvious family of the cast scattered around, one running a handheld video camera, another snapping pictures with her phone. And there sat Katie beside a pile of coats in a chair in the middle of it all. Her downturned head made him think she was working on something in her lap instead of watching the rehearsal. Her laptop? Didn’t that woman ever take a break from work? Was there something obsessive about learning the truth about that long-missing girl? Or was Katie reading more about Craig Fairfax, the man who’d tried to steal an infant Tyler from her and murdered her high-school pal Whitney Chiles?
“Come on, Katie Lee.” His low-pitched whisper reverberated against the glass. She carried the weight of too much life experience on those slim shoulders. She didn’t need to take on any more trouble. “Just enjoy the show.”
If Katie was going to put in overtime making sense of the cases the team was working on, then he should do the same. Remembering his main reason for driving out here tonight, Trent detoured up the stairs to the tech booth in the balcony. He pulled out his badge before knocking on the door. The two men inside running lights and sound seemed willing enough to chat.
“Detective Trent Dixon,” he identified himself, learning the men’s names were Chip and Ron. “You guys know anything about a power outage here in the auditorium last night?”
“Yeah, I heard about the blackout,” Chip, a balding man in metal-framed glasses, answered. “And how Katie foiled a break-in. But that’s not on me. I locked up the booth when I left. And the work lights in the auditorium and backstage were still on. I walked out with Doug Price, the director. He turns everything off when he leaves—after the cast and crew are gone.”
Only an innocent woman had been left behind in the dark. “Is there a way to turn off the work lights but turn on the rope lights to see backstage?”
Chip pulled down the lights at the end of the scene, then raised them slightly for the stage crew to come on and change the set for the next scene. Then he nodded. “The rope lights just plug in. Unless there was a power outage and everything in the building was dead, it’d be easy enough to throw a few switches backstage yet leave those on.”
So the details Katie had shared about last night meant the blackout was deliberate. But whether the intent had been to trap her i
nside the theater or to cover up an intruder’s escape, it was impossible to tell. “Did you see any signs of someone tampering with your light board?”
“It was just like I left it.”
Ron, the sound guy with his cap sitting backward on his head, agreed. “The booth was locked up tight when I came in at six to set the microphones for rehearsal tonight. If anybody was in here, he had to have a key.”
“And the director is the only person in the play with a key?” Trent would make a point of introducing himself to Doug Price.
Ron shrugged. “Except for campus security. Or maybe someone in the theater department. But all their productions are done for the semester. That’s why we can be in here now.”
The crew left the stage and both Chip and Ron went back to work. “Lights up.”
Trent thanked them for their cooperation and went back down to the auditorium, sneaking in the back while Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghostly Spirit of Christmas Future walked onstage. After his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, he spotted Katie’s hot-pink sweater and headed down the aisle toward her. When he got closer, he could see that she was looking at a crumpled piece of paper instead of the flat screen of her laptop.
So she wasn’t working. But her head was down and she was rubbing her fingers back and forth against her neck beneath the base of her ponytail, as if a knot of tension had formed there. She was so intent on whatever she was reading that she jumped when he slipped into the seat beside her.
“Sorry.” He nudged his shoulder against hers to apologize for startling her, then nodded toward the paper she was quickly folding up. “What’s that?”
“What are you doing here?” She dropped her voice to a whisper to match his before turning to the coats beside her. “Oh, shoot. I left my bag backstage.” Without missing a beat, she stuffed the paper inside the pocket of her coat.
