by Jenna Rae
She made a list of individuals to investigate further, starting at the top of the department roster: Walton, the commanders and Vallejo were the obvious possibilities. She thought about retirees too, those who still had strong contacts on the force and the freedom of movement to do what they wanted. She had less to go on with them, but she decided she’d poke around to find out what she could.
She was startled out of her thoughts by her phone.
“You can’t do that,” Tori blurted.
“Do what?”
“Get personal when we’re working.”
She struggled to remember their conversation. She’d been blaming Tori for her own insecurities again, as she recalled. She’d implied Tori’s ambition was the real reason they’d broken up, a thing she’d been indirectly alluding to for months.
Unable to apologize or to defend her sullenness, she pushed the topic aside. “We are not working this case, Tori. You’re just—”
“Donnelly had two extra cell phones.”
“One extra, I get. Two extra is weird.” She thought about this. “There weren’t any in the room other than the one in the tub, according to the report. Yolo County told you about the phones?”
“The girlfriends both had the number for his real phone, which is still not accessible. The stripper had the number for the second, and neither knew about the third. We found phones two and three in his car.”
“The car. There was nothing in the report about the car.” Tori said.
“Because it wasn’t parked at the motel where he died. One of our guys found it twenty minutes ago when he was driving to his mother’s house in West Sacramento.” Tori laughed. “Guess where it was. Never mind. It was parked on the street in front of another no-tell motel down the block from the death site.”
“Anything from the forensics on the car? Or are they even working the car? Can we get hold of it?”
Tori tapped her tongue, and Brenda listened to the sound. She’d get an answer to her questions when Tori was good and ready. First, she’d spit out what she’d called to say. That was how she’d always been. Brenda counted to twenty while she waited.
“We have his call records for the real number from the provider, and there’s nothing particularly interesting. He called the girlfriends, some department buddies, a few workout buddies, Vallejo’s office line once in a while. Sheraton’s a few times. Nothing.”
“So how do you know the second and third phones are his?”
Tori laughed. “I looked up his credit card usage. He bought the phones with cash but used his Visa to add minutes to both.”
“Brilliant. Great work. You were always good at finding those odd little details and figuring out what they meant.”
Tori made a scoffing sound. “Was that you, acknowledging I know what I’m doing?”
“I always thought you were a good investigator, even if I never said it. I should have said it.” She pursed her lips. “You figure the third phone was for the big boss? It could be for a third girlfriend, a dealer, his bookie, whatever. But it’s a good lead.”
“Too bad we can’t access call records for the burners.”
She listened to Tori’s tapping. “Amen to that. Any chance of a warrant?”
“Bren, the car’s already been towed to impound. They didn’t send along any real info on it, but I’ll follow up. Remember Jim from Yolo County? We played a round with him and his wife at the club last year. Penny? Jenny? Wendy, maybe. She had the horrible choke swing, worse than yours, until her second drink. Then she was smooth as silk, remember? They kicked our butts from the eighth hole on. Wendy. Red hair and plaid skirt. In the car going home, you called her Sloe Gin Wendy. Jim and Wendy. I’ll call him. Maybe he’ll help grease the skids for us.”
“Yeah, good.” She cleared her throat. “What about his keys? There were two key rings. Do we have anything on what those keys opened?”
“Not yet. You know that’ll take some time. And it’s not surprising he had two key rings. He was living two lives.”
“There’s a reason for those extra phones. A lot of potential reasons, none of them particularly good.”
Tori laughed again. “I always could count on you to anticipate all the bad possibilities. I guess nothing’s changed. Okay, call me if you get anything.”
“Wait,” she said to the dead line.
Tabling Tori’s comment and its implications, she called Donnelly’s girlfriends, leaving a message for the lingerie saleswoman and catching the exotic dancer.
“Hi, Miss Smith. This is Brenda Borelli.” She pursed her lips and decided to stretch the truth. “I worked with your boyfriend.”
“Oh, gawd, not another one. Listen, I can’t really stay on the line. My daughter’s sick and I need to get her some cough medicine.”
Brenda looked out at the late afternoon sun and made a face. Time was rushing past her. She’d spent most of the day accomplishing nothing but going over the same ground endlessly. She didn’t want to wait another day or two to meet this woman. “I’ll bring you whatever your daughter needs if you allow me to stop by for a few moments. Just tell me what brand and what kind.”
A little persuasion and a trip to the drugstore later, she was knocking on one of a hundred brown doors in a newish apartment complex halfway between her house and where Donnelly had shot Sheraton. Evening was falling. In this neighborhood that was less a golden time of softening light than the coming of gloom and all its hazards.
Here, where there were no lawns on which to post Briarwood Watchdogs signs, nearly every window sported one of the fluorescent pink flower stickers that proclaimed the humble domicile a haven of safety due to the private security company’s attentions.
The woman who opened the door looked more like the president of the PTA than a stripper. Clad in a pink polo shirt and faded jeans, she held a little girl maybe two or three years old. The kid was glassy-eyed and flushed with fever, nested in a thick pink sleeper and carrying a stuffed elephant. Brenda held out the bag of medicine with what she hoped was a warm smile.
“You brought it. Thank you so much! Come in, give me a sec.” Staci Smith took the bag to the adjacent kitchen, murmuring soothing words at the kid. Brenda looked around. The small living room was furnished with a battered sofa, ancient television, and dozens of toys. She stepped across cardboard bricks and stuffed animals and picture books, almost tripping over the pieces of a large wooden train puzzle.
Listening to Smith sweet-talk the toddler into taking her medicine, Brenda tried to picture Mark Donnelly sitting on the sofa chatting with Smith while the little girl played with her toys. Whatever he spent his money on, it wasn’t furniture. Even the toys, while numerous, weren’t high-value items. So where did the money go?
When Smith came back from putting her daughter to bed, she came to stand next to Brenda, who was examining an array of photos on the wall. The pictures formed a chronicle of the baby’s life. There was a single photo of several young women in what looked like club wear, and she recognized the signage for Bubbly, a strip club only blocks away. There were several shots of the happy couple, and Donnelly looked like a completely different man from the one Brenda had been investigating.
“I can’t believe he’s gone.”
Brenda turned to see Smith wiping her reddened eyes.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Smith.”
“Thanks. Call me Staci. Seriously. Miss Smith sounds like somebody’s old aunt.” The blonde seemed to gather herself. “Listen, can I get you a soda or a beer or something?”
“I’m good, thanks. I would like to talk with you, if that’s all right.”
They settled on opposite ends of the sofa, and Brenda smiled. “You have the best living room décor I’ve ever seen.”
Smith laughed. Suddenly her face fell and she grimaced. Brenda watched emotions play across the younger woman’s delicate features. It had startled her, laughing, and she felt guilty about it, and then she defiantly decided to let the laugh live.
/> It was strange to see such a naked display of feelings on someone Brenda had assumed would be hard and manipulative. Of course, the woman could simply be a more skillful manipulator than most. Donnelly appeared to have been, so maybe they were two of a kind.
Smith picked up a stuffed monkey and flicked at its worn tail. “I guess she’s kinda spoiled. I just want her to have everything. A perfect life, if I can pull one together for her. That’s what me and Mark were working on. A nice house and good schools, dance lessons, college, the whole thing. Does that sound crazy coming from a nobody like me? I must sound like a nut.”
“Sounds like a mom to me.” She shrugged. “Why wouldn’t you want the world for your child?”
“I bet you seen plenty of people that don’t.”
She mirrored her grim expression. “True. But maybe if they weren’t too scared to hope, they could shoot higher.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think if the world has mostly disappointed you, it can be hard to want a lot for your kids, because it’s even more painful to be disappointed for them than for yourself.”
Smith stared at her for a long minute. The gravity reflected in her light blue eyes belied her youthful good looks. “You have kids?”
She shook her head.
“I never planned on it, but Jess is the best thing in my life. Mark came along and once we got serious, I let him meet her. He wanted to be the father she never had. We talked about giving her a little brother or sister in a few years. He didn’t care, boy or girl. The important thing was to get ourselves all set up to give them a good life. Buy a house in a good neighborhood, save money, all that. We had a plan. It’s all gone now.”
“I’m sorry.” She sighed. “He had an eye toward the future. Sounds like that was something you shared.”
“Mark didn’t kill himself. I don’t care what they say.”
“What makes you think he didn’t?”
“I don’t know.” Smith stood. She moved around the room, tossing toys into a plastic toy chest with surprising accuracy. “Like you said, he had a lot of plans for the future. He made reservations for dinner at Dave’s Bistro on my next night off. I scheduled a babysitter. We just bought plane tickets to go see my sister for Thanksgiving. Mark wanted to get married so he could adopt Jess. He was studying for his lieutenant’s exam. We were talking about looking at houses.”
“So this whole thing was a shock.”
“He wouldn’t do this to me!” Smith waved a hand in the direction of the bedrooms. “He wouldn’t do this to us.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You all think he was this asshole. I know how you guys see us. I’m a lowlife stripper and he’s a crook. Was a crook.”
Abashed, she shook her head.
“Mark loved me. He loved my daughter. We’ve been together for almost her whole life. He was there for her first words, her first steps, the first time she used a spoon by herself. When she has a nightmare, she wants him to pick her up and tell her it’s all right. He’s the best thing that ever happened to us. Now he’s dead and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I can’t begin to say how sorry I am.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, I’m not sure if you know about—”
“The other women? Yeah. I know. Gawd, he didn’t lie to me. I mean, not about that. I never knew about the other stuff he was supposed to be doing. I didn’t like it when he suddenly wanted an open relationship, I can tell you that. But, well, Mark changed. I figured eventually he’d get back to being himself, but there wasn’t time. I thought it might be ’cause of my job. You know, like he wanted me to quit but knew we needed the money, so he kind of wanted revenge. I been through that before. People do weird stuff like that sometimes. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”
“I agree. Sometimes we do ridiculous stuff, and we don’t know until later why we did it. Or we never figure it out.”
Smith looked around the room and straightened a pillow before rejoining Brenda on the couch.
“Gawd, they questioned me a bunch of times. Like I might know something about it all. The money. They showed me all this proof. I think they wanted me to say I knew all about it, but I didn’t know anything. I still can’t think of Mark doing all that.” Smith swiped at her eyes again.
Brenda held steady. Smith was obviously aching to talk to someone.
“We had them over for dinner, Tami and Mason. Nice kids. I didn’t know she was suspicious of Mark. I didn’t see that at all.”
“Mason, that’s her boyfriend?”
“He works for Dan. Small world, huh?”
“Dan? Dan Miller?”
“Yeah. Now, he could be a little shady.”
“Oh?”
“Not, like, a criminal or whatever. He always has to be right, the smartest person in the room. Lies to everybody, says whatever people want to hear, flexes his muscles. He’s my boss, and when he asked me out, I didn’t really feel like I had a choice. He didn’t say that, but that’s what I figured.”
“He’s your boss?”
“Yeah, he owns like half the gentlemen’s clubs in town. He’s a pig, to tell the truth. Don’t tell anybody I said that, okay? I really need this job.”
She wanted to ask more about Miller but didn’t want to burn through all of Smith’s willingness to answer her questions. “Some guys are like that, I guess.”
“Yeah, for sure. And where do I meet guys? At work, where they basically see me as just my body. So it’s not like I’m stupid. I know all the tricks guys can pull. I know all the lies, all the games, I’ve known since fifth grade what men are like. But Mark wasn’t like that. He wasn’t a crook or a liar. He was a good man.”
Smith twisted in her seat to look at Brenda and her eyes widened.
“You think he was murdered too.”
“I don’t know. I just want to understand what happened.” She bit her lip. “You said he changed.”
“About the time he got to be a sergeant. Maybe a year and a half back. He was always such a nice guy, really sweet. Then things changed. It was little stuff at first. He was quiet. Even before he got his promotion, he was weird, like, always really tense. I thought he was nervous about the sergeant’s exam, but it didn’t get better even after he passed. He started saying maybe he didn’t want to settle down. He wanted to see other people. All this stuff about a last hurrah before we walked down the aisle. What could I do? I figured he just needed a little understanding. I’d stand by him, let him sow his wild oats or what have you, and it would be over.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“I don’t know. He was, like, usually the old Mark. Sweet and nice and funny. Then I’d look at his Facebook—he barely even knew what Facebook was before me—and I’d see all these pictures of girls with big boobs and him being all rude and weird, and suddenly he’d be busy all the time. But then when he was with me and Jess, he was still a total sweetheart.”
“Sounds confusing.” She thought about how Tori had changed as she’d ramped up her career ambitions. Brenda had been mystified by the sudden shifts in Tori’s focus and had, like Smith, tried to wait out the mysterious storms in her lover’s personality.
Unlike Staci Smith, though, Brenda had not been willing to accept her partner’s infidelity. Of course, unlike Donnelly, Tori didn’t announce her intention to sleep with someone else. “Did you confront him?”
“I tried to talk to him, but I didn’t want to give him a reason to leave us. I wasn’t sure what to think about it all. Now, I have some ideas. But they sound paranoid.”
“Try me.”
“Gawd. Ohhh!” Smith covered her face with her hands, then dragged them down, pulling her skin momentarily. Brenda blinked at the preview of what Smith would look like in ten years. After several seconds, Smith released her cheeks and nodded.
“I sound like an idiot. But Mark loved us. He started a college-savings plan for Jess. He took me ring shopping, and we looked at houses near
good schools. He said we have to get in the right enrollment boundaries at least ten months before she starts kindergarten. He said we had to look at where she’d go to middle school and high school too, because that’s where it all falls apart for kids, especially girls. He really wanted a good life for her. He woulda done anything for us.” Smith hugged herself. “Mark was a good man. I keep hearing about the stuff they say he did, but he cared about doing the right thing.”
“You—”
“I think he did it because someone made him. Maybe they threatened me and Jess. Maybe they tricked him the first time and they threatened to turn him in, so he had to work for them. But he didn’t just go out there and commit a bunch of crimes on his own.”
“You think someone made him do all this stuff?” She sighed. “I saw the video. He shot Tami Sheraton.”
“I know. I saw it too.” Smith covered her face with her hands. “Someone sent it to me.”
“Why would anyone do that? That must have been awful for you.”
“He didn’t want to train a new cop, did you know that? He’s not experienced enough. I don’t know why they made him when he’d only been a sergeant for a little while. He wouldn’t have killed her, but he had no choice. I’m not saying it was okay. Gawd, he killed her. But he was trapped, I know it. The people that made him do all that stuff are the ones that really killed her. They made him be in that place doing all those things, otherwise he wouldn’t have done any of it.”
“You sound pretty sure. Any thoughts about who could have compelled him to do all this stuff?”
“No idea.” There was a wail from a bedroom and Smith rose with a frown. “Listen, I got a feeling Jess is gonna be up all night. Thanks for the medicine. And thanks for being so nice to me. The other cops mostly think I’m pretty much a hooker.”
“Thanks for talking to me.” She stood. “I’ll let myself out. You take care of yourself and Jess. If it’s okay with you, I’ll check in with you in a few days. If you think of anything, if you need anything, please let me know. And please lock this door behind me as soon as you can.”
