Grain of Truth

by V. J. Chambers

  “Great. Hope we can help you out soon.”

  Elke got off the phone and forced herself to take a few deep breaths. Maybe it was an honest mistake. She shouldn’t assume the worst yet. She walked up the hall to find Amos.

  Amos’s desk was right next to the door to the CRU office. He was in a small alcove, his desk facing outward. Anyone who came in the door had to stop and talk to him. He was at his desk typing on his computer.

  “Amos?” she said.

  He looked up. “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “You sent in the files to have the DNA tested, right?”

  “Sure did,” he said.

  “You’re positive of that?”

  “Absolutely, why?”

  “Well, the lab never got our request.”

  Amos made a face. He turned back to his computer and scrolled through his email. “Nope, I sent it. Right here. Look.” He pointed at his screen.

  “Of course you did,” she said. “I’m going to go check with the people in evidence storage.” Probably just a mix up, she thought. That’s all. Anyway, a walk would be nice. Fresh air and all that. Of course it was below freezing outside, so the fresh air was going to be cold, but it would still be refreshing.

  She went back to her office to get her coat and gloves and then headed for the elevator.

  She took the elevator to the bottom floor and then exited the building. The police department building was two doors down, less than a block away. She’d been in there once or twice for various reasons. This time, when she went inside, though, she had no idea where she was headed. She stopped at the front desk to ask for directions and was sent to the bottom floor of the place. She descended two flights of stairs, her heels clicking against the tile the whole way down as she clutched the banister for balance. The stairs were pretty steep.

  As she descended, the paint on the wall went from a nice beige to a seafoam green, which was worn off in a few places. There was a tiny hint of a musty, basement smell.

  At the bottom of the steps, she emerged into a hallway that seemed to wind in a serpentine pattern around various storage rooms. Eventually, she found the evidence storage. There was a window, like at a bank or something, and two women were sitting behind it.

  She stepped up close.

  They were both staring at their computers. They didn’t seem to see her. One had a bun on the top of her head. The other was wearing a plaid suit jacket. They were both quite overweight. Between them, on the counter was an open package of Hershey kisses.

  Elke cleared her throat.

  The women ignored her.

  “Excuse me,” said Elke.

  Plaid Jacket looked up. “Yes?”

  “I’m from the CRU,” said Elke. “We want some evidence released to the lab for testing.”

  “Oh,” said Plaid Jacket. “Well, there’s a set of forms you submit to us, and then—”

  “We did that,” said Elke. “I was given the instructions when I started working here. I made sure we followed them.”

  “Oh,” said Plaid Jacket. “Well, then, I’m sure we must be backed up and haven’t had a chance to get to it.”

  “I see,” said Elke.

  Plaid Jacket smiled, but her smile seemed fake somehow. “Anything else?”

  Elke crossed her arms over her chest. “What is it that you’re doing now, exactly?”

  Bun looked up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that if you’re not busy, maybe you could pull the evidence for me. I’ll even take it to the lab myself.”

  Plaid Jacket and Bun exchanged a glance.

  Elke waited.

  Plaid Jacket turned back to her. “You know, if I could be honest with you?”

  “Please,” said Elke, even though she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to like what came out of the woman’s mouth next.

  “I think we’re all a little miffed at your choice of cases to review.”

  “Miffed?” Elke drew back.

  Bun nodded. “It’s pretty obvious that Saanvi Mukherjee and Kevin Greene are guilty. We had our best detectives working on that case. And we think, if you take a little bit of time to consider, maybe you’ll just want to withdraw your request altogether and not bother the lab with DNA testing.”

  “DNA testing that will be worthless, by the way,” said Plaid Jacket, “because there’s nothing wrong with the work our boys did on that case.”

  Elke sucked in a breath. “I want the tests done. I want the samples. I’m not going to reconsider.”

  “It’s only that—”

  “Listen,” Elke interrupted, “I can call DA Andrews if you’d like. I can let him know that you’re impeding my work here. I’m sure he can let your supervisor know that you’re not doing your job.”

  Both Plaid Jacket and Bun got sour looks on their faces.

  Bun stood up. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll go pull your evidence.”

  * * *

  Elke did deliver the samples to the lab herself, along with the proper forms. She didn’t trust the evidence storage personnel to make sure it got there. She was plenty mad by the time she made it back to the office.

  On the one hand, she understood. She knew that she would bristle at the notion that she had prosecuted an innocent person. If this was one of her own cases, she would defend her work long and hard. She wouldn’t back down easily.

  But this was a request for DNA testing. You couldn’t argue with DNA. If she was presented with DNA evidence that someone she had put away was innocent, she would apologize and accept it. She wouldn’t try to stop the testing from happening.

  She was appalled that people didn’t want the truth to get out. That they were so protective of their egos that they would put up obstacles for her to do her job.

  Sure, this wasn’t a job that she thought she wanted, but now that it was hers, she was going to do her best. She set high standards for herself, and this job would be no different.

  But she had a bad feeling about the future. If this was how it all started, if even evidence storage was against them, then they might have worse problems with the police department.

  When she got back to the office, Frankie and Iain were both there. She poked into Frankie’s office first.

  “Where were you this morning?”

  “Looking into the mother, like you said,” Frankie said.

  “Find anything out?”

  “A little,” said Frankie.

  “Okay, let’s all head to the conference room, and you can fill us in,” said Elke. Then she went back to Iain’s office.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Where were you this morning?”

  “I was interviewing Gutierrez’s roommate,” he said.

  “Interviewing someone? On your own? Was it a disaster?”

  His face twitched. “Where were you?”

  She chuckled. “I’ll tell you all about it in the conference room.”

  The three gathered there, and she had Amos sit in to take notes. She explained to them about the problems with the DNA testing, and how she’d hand delivered the samples to the lab, so they would hopefully be tested as soon as possible. Then she asked the others to fill her in on what they’d found out that morning. When she’d heard from both of them, she got up and went to the board.

  “So,” she said, “we’ve got another suspect, then. This Joshua Oliver.” She wrote his name on the board.

  “Well, if his alibi checks out, it’s a good one,” said Frankie. “He would have been with multiple witnesses all night.”

  “You’ll check into that?” said Elke.

  “Yes,” said Frankie.

  “And we can’t rule out Tempest either,” said Elke. She wrote Tempest’s name on the board as well. “If she was unhappy in her marriage, maybe she plotted to kill her husband.”

  “Maybe,” said Frankie, “but as Dr. Oliver said, it hardly makes sense. Why not just leave him?”

  “Money, maybe?” said Elke. “Can you check on that too
?”

  “Sure,” said Frankie. “But if she had enough money to pay off a contract killer, then she wasn’t hurting for cash.”

  “That could have been her husband’s money,” said Elke. “Maybe if she divorced him, she would have been destitute, but if he died, she would have inherited everything.”

  “Maybe,” said Frankie. “I have to be honest, I don’t think it was her.”

  Elke nodded. “It’s still pretty tenuous, I admit.” She turned back to the board and Rory Gutierrez. “On the other hand, someone doesn’t have an alibi anymore.” She wrote, No alibi under Rory’s name. She turned back to Iain. “Good work finding that out.”

  He spread his hands. “It was really only because I used to watch Timetracks.”

  “Still, that moves us forward there,” she said. She surveyed the board. “I think we’re coming along here. I tried to get another interview with Jeremy Squires, but he’s still in solitary. And that just leaves the white supremacists.” She tapped her marker against the board. “We should probably go and talk to them too.” She pointed at Amos. “Call them and set something up. I don’t want to show up unannounced, I want to make them sweat. Whether or not they did it, I want them to worry we’ve got something on them. Guys like that don’t deserve any better. When you call, Amos, say that new evidence has come to light and that’s why we need to chat with them. That should make them nervous.”

  Frankie smiled a little. “That’s devious. But in a good way.”

  Elke smiled back. She and Frankie were getting along better and better. Things weren’t going badly at all. She stepped back and surveyed the board. “Well, that’s where we are, everyone. We’re doing all right.”

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” said Iain.

  She turned around to face him. “What?”

  “Well, it’s something about the crime scene. When we talked to Saanvi, she said that she found things out in the kitchen, like someone was making a sandwich,” he said.

  “Yeah, I remember that,” said Elke.

  “And she said that the bed had been slept in,” said Iain.

  “Right,” said Elke. “So?”

  “Well, that isn’t where they died,” he said. “So, whoever killed them herded them into the living room. Probably threatened them with the gun, and said that if they didn’t go to the living room, they’d be shot.”

  Elke nodded. “I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought about recreating the crime scene and going through it, but it could be useful, could give us some clues.”

  “Last night I was doing some reading on children who kill their parents,” said Iain. “They almost never do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Move the people, herd them around. It’s not like that. When children kill their parents, they seem to go, find them, and attack.”

  “Really?” said Elke. “Why?”

  “Oh, who knows why?” said Iain. “Murder is senseless.”

  Elke sighed. “I forgot you thought that.”

  “It’s probably guilt,” said Frankie.

  “Hmm?” Elke turned to her.

  “If you’re going to kill your parents, you don’t want to talk to them first. You’re not going to move them through the house and sit them on the sofa and look into their eyes and shoot them,” said Frankie. “You’re going to do it quickly. Don’t kids who kill their parents often do it while they’re sleeping?”

  “Sometimes,” said Iain. “Sometimes, it seems as if something provokes them, and maybe in the middle of an argument, they begin lashing out. They pick up a weapon and use it with deadly force.”

  “A crime of passion,” said Elke.

  “If you want to say that,” said Iain. “It seems that children who kill their parents tend to fall into a few different categories. Some are severely abused, some severely mentally ill, and some severely anti-social. None of those really seem to apply to Saanvi Mukherjee, although she could be dangerously anti-social, what you might call a sociopath. But even if she is a sociopath, even if it’s not a crime of circumstance, but a predetermined one, in most cases, the perpetrator would come upon the parent unawares and use the element of surprise to his or her benefit. Moving the parents through the house, that doesn’t fit.”

  “Hmm,” said Elke.

  “She’s also a tad bit too old,” said Iain. “Most children who kill their parents are adolescents. They are somewhat trapped in their parents’ home. But Saanvi had her own car and a generous allowance and seemed to do as she pleased. She was in college. She was a burgeoning adult. It’s all wrong. This crime was almost certainly not Saanvi and Kevin.”

  “I don’t think so either,” said Elke.

  “The original investigation seems so shoddy,” said Frankie. “These two were railroaded.”

  They all nodded in agreement.

  “So what kind of killer would move people through the house?” said Elke.

  “The thieves,” said Iain. “They might have been in masks, and one of them may have kept them in the room while the other raided the place. Maybe they didn’t think they’d have to kill them, but then something happened. Maybe a gun went off accidentally or maybe their identities were compromised. Alan Kelley claims that he never wanted to kill anyone, but that Squires would do it just for sport or something.”

  “But it could be Gutierrez too,” said Elke. “Right? I mean, maybe she ranted and raved at him while he was sitting on that couch. Maybe she had to tell him off before she shot him.”

  “And if so,” said Frankie, “it could also be the white supremacists. They might have also wanted to rant and rave first.”

  “But it doesn’t fit so well with the hit-gone-wrong scenario, does it?” said Iain. “That’s another strike against Tempest as the murderer.”

  “Well, we can’t be sure,” said Elke. “We weren’t there, and we don’t know what happened.”

  “That’s what we have to figure out,” said Frankie.

  “Exactly,” said Elke.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Hi there, Mrs. Lawrence,” said the voice of Ted on the phone. Ted worked at Elke’s favorite Chinese restaurant, and they knew each other by name. She was just getting ready to leave the office, and she knew she didn’t feel like cooking tonight, so she was calling in an order. Truth be told, you couldn’t really call popping frozen meals in the microwave cooking, which was all she did lately, but she didn’t have energy for that either. Sometimes, she didn’t eat at all, actually. She found she didn’t have much of an appetite. She forced herself to eat enough to keep going, though.

  She was losing weight. Which was something she’d normally be a bit pleased about. Can’t be too rich or too thin, right? Not that she was anything approaching rich. She hated to admit it to herself, but dealing with her new financial circumstances was a bit of a shock. She’d gotten too used to indulging in expensive extras, like paying people to clean her house, and now she had to cut down on extra spending. But she still made enough money to live comfortably. She wasn’t destitute.

  And the weight loss? Well, she didn’t find it as exciting as she might have hoped.

  She wasn’t finding much exciting these days, but she surprised herself with how involved she was getting in this case. She cared about the outcome of what they were doing. She was even beginning to feel as though they were doing something important. They were righting a wrong here. There may not be many cases in which the police had screwed up so badly, but this was one of them, and she was glad they’d found it.

  Anyway, even if she wasn’t feeling a hundred percent yet, she was feeling better. She had focus in her life, and she was moving forward. The divorce was going ahead, the house was going to be rented out, and she had a new job.

  So, for some reason, her appetite returned. She had a thought about Chinese, and she felt actually hungry. She was looking forward to something, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually done that.

  It was just a small thing, but i
t was a good sign for Elke. She was grinning as she held the phone to her ear and walked across the parking lot toward her car.

  “Hi, Ted,” she said.

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Things have been a bit off lately, but they’re looking up now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. The usual, then?” He rattled off her typical order, sweet and sour pork, beef lo mein, and two egg rolls.

  Her throat closed up. She made a rattling, guttural sound.

  “Mrs. Lawrence? Are you okay?”

  She hung up the phone and darted across the rest of the parking lot to her car. Once there, she threw open the door and got inside. She clutched the steering wheel, shaking.

  And then she started to sob.

  Of course her usual order contained an order for Felix.

  Of course it did.

  She should have known that it would.

  But she’d somehow forgotten that, and it had been like icy water in her face.

  She really let go, sobbing so hard she thought she might break apart. Her shoulders shook, her nose ran, her face got blotchy. She was a mess.

  As wave after wave of sobs hit her, she knew that the problem was that she didn’t even know who she was anymore.

  She used to be part of a couple. She and Felix were a unit. Her relationship was part of her identity. She was a lawyer, and she was a wife. That was who she was.

  Except… she wasn’t anymore.

  Who was she?

  Elke Lawrence, single woman who orders Chinese food for one.

  She sobbed harder.

  When she finally stopped crying enough to get herself together to drive, she found her appetite had disappeared again.

  * * *

  It was after midnight, and Iain’s phone was ringing.

  He snatched it up and answered it before he could think. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Iain,” came Harley’s voice on the other end. She sounded tentative and scared.

  Shit. He’d picked up the phone because he was conditioned to do it. Working as a police detective, he sometimes got calls at all hours, and they were always emergencies. He’d trained himself to wake up fast and get moving. But that didn’t happen anymore, because now he didn’t work for the department. He worked for the CRU. So, of course it was Harley in the middle of the night. And of course she needed something. He flopped back onto his pillow. “What’s going on?”