Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  ‘I didn’t break into Paul’s house,’ she said.

  ‘That’s how it looks to the D.A., with this background.’

  ‘I didn’t have to break in. That was my home. It was my home too.’

  ‘No it wasn’t, Amy. He had moved out of your home. You never lived in Paul’s house.’

  ‘It felt like I had. I’d spent time there. Nights. Spent the night and got up and went to work the next morning. I had clothes there. A toothbrush.’

  This was an aspect of the prosecution’s case they had to attack hard, he realized again. Even if Amy did kill her husband, but didn’t break into his house, that would be a defense to capital murder. It would mean the difference between life without parole and life with, where Amy could get out in twenty or thirty years, which sounded horrible but beat the hell out of never.

  ‘Did you have a key? Did Paul give you one?’

  ‘No. He kept saying he was going to, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. We hadn’t gotten back together that long before …’ She fell silent.

  ‘Amy, let me ask you some things. You started going out with Paul while he was Dad’s research assistant, right, when you were both in medical school?’

  She shook her head. ‘Paul had graduated. And you’ve got it backwards. Paul and I were already dating when he got the job with Dad.’

  ‘Really?’ Edward made a little ‘hmm’ sound.

  ‘Why? Is that important?’

  Maybe. Who knew what was ever important in a case? But it changed the way he remembered their lives. He’d thought Paul had gotten hired on his own merits, because he was a brilliant medical student – he would’ve had to be, to live up to their father’s standards – but instead he’d already had a connection to the family when Dr Hall had hired him. Was that something he’d been grateful for at first, but then had come to resent? Was it one of the problems in their marriage? Did Paul feel like a professional son-in-law, who’d started out his career with a significant leg up, because first he’d gotten into his mentor’s daughter’s pants?

  But he’d asked Amy enough secrets for this one session. And she might not even know the answer to that question. Her husband wouldn’t have discussed with her his (theoretical) resentment of her and her father.

  ‘I loved him, Edward. You know that, don’t you? You saw it between us. Didn’t you?’

  Maybe. He really couldn’t remember.

  His sister was staring at him. Her expression seemed to be asking, You are going to save me from this, aren’t you?

  Jesus. Was he?

  SEVEN

  ‘Any idea why your brother-in-law picked this neighborhood?’ Mike asked, driving through an area of southwest Houston not nearly as upscale as the one Paul had left behind.

  ‘None. Maybe just got lucky on an available rental?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Maybe. This isn’t particularly convenient to the medical center. But he picked it, eight months ago. What was he like? I never laid eyes on the guy.’

  ‘Very earnest guy, Paul. As soon as you started talking to him, you felt like he was really hard-working. He’d work even at a conversation, you know? Leaning in, almost getting spittle in your face from him talking. I don’t know how Amy—’

  No. Bad remark there about to happen.

  ‘Wow, you really liked the guy, huh?’ Mike said, shooting a sidelong glance at him. ‘I hope, when I’m gone, you can think of something better to say about me than that I used to spit on people when I talked to them.’

  ‘No, no, that’s just the first thing I happened to remember. I was mostly off on my own when Paul and Amy were becoming a couple. And then, you know, away at extended summer camp. He seemed like a good guy. Hard-working, smart. I thought he was good enough for Amy and that was my only concern, so after I decided that I didn’t think much about him anymore.’

  He sat musing for a minute, as the houses glided by, imagining what he’d missed. In a way, Paul had taken Edward’s place in the family, slipping into it just as Edward went off on his state-funded vacation.

  ‘This is it.’

  Mike had parked across the street from a wooden frame house with four windows across the front. It was painted a light blue, with white trim around the windows and the eaves.

  ‘Have a key?’ Mike asked.

  ‘No. They wouldn’t release one to Amy, even though she’s his wife, since she’s also the prime suspect. Let’s take a look around anyway.’

  They did. The house seemed watchful as they approached, crossing the front lawn that was growing lush in the Houston spring. They stood in front of the windows on the right hand side and peered in, cupping their hands around their eyes to break the glare. Inside was a living room, furnished in Living Room Standard, with a couch and two chairs. This was the leather furniture Edward remembered, dark and heavy, which accounted for why Amy’s seemed new. Edward and Mike proceeded on around the house, Mike’s eyes on the ground, Edward’s watchfully forward. Around the side of the house, toward the back, was a gate in a chain link fence. Here, a strip of yellow crime scene tape still hung but someone had torn it across, so it just dangled limply, a foot or so of yellow leftover. There was a lock for the gate, but someone had taken it off, hooked it through one of the diamonds of the fence and failed to replace it. What did it matter now?

  Next to this gate, was a gate into the backyard of the house next door. Edward glanced into it, worried about a witness, but the slice of yard he could see was empty of human habitation.

  So they went in Paul’s gate, saw nothing worth investigating in the small backyard and went up to the back door. It was locked, a simple lock in the doorknob. Edward wished again that he still had his lock picks. Instead he and Mike both looked around. Mike felt all around the woodwork of the door and shook his head. Edward noticed one of those tripod barbecue grills, waist-high on its stand. He didn’t think of Paul as an outdoor chef kind of guy. Edward ran his hand underneath it and sure enough found a small metal box, the magnetic kind where one hides a spare key. The key fit the back door lock.

  ‘Not very concerned with home security, was he?’ Mike said conversationally.

  What Edward was thinking was, Paul had gone to the trouble of having a spare key made, but not one for Amy, in spite of their supposed rapprochement. Amy had said he just hadn’t gotten around to it, but he’d gotten around to making this one.

  Edward left the investigator to search and went across the hall to the master bedroom. Edward stepped inside, feeling suddenly skittish, as if he were intruding. A king-sized bed was neatly made, with a deep maroon comforter and oversized pillows. Beyond it were more windows, with a view of the garage attached to the house next door. This room would be private even with the windows open.

  Closer to hand, Edward studied the floor beside the bed, near his feet. It had been cleaned, leaving it shinier than the area beyond. This was where Paul had fallen. It was his blood that had polished his floor. It had been cleaned well, by a professional, but Edward fancied he could still see the outline of the body there. The empty space made this real for him. Here was where the body of his brother-in-law had lain, his blood spreading across the floor as Amy worked on his chest, trying to restart his heart. Had Paul lived through any of that? Had he felt Amy trying to save his life?

  The room had been restored to order, but something about a crime scene remains a crime scene. He stepped carefully around the spot on the floor and tried to look at the room overall. Edward had never been in this house, but could he deduce anything from it?

  Against the wall, opposite the foot of the bed, was the door into a closet. He could tell because the door was ajar, revealing clothes on hangers. On the top of the nearby dresser, items were lined up in a neat row: skin cream, sunblock, a box of tissues. He opened the three wide drawers of the dresser one at a time, finding nothing more interesting than briefs, T-shirts and socks. One unopened package of underwear sat on top. Paul had been a man starting over, from the bottom up. The whole room had a starting-
over feel. It was simple, with little brought over from his old life.

  There was a mirror inside the closet door, a rack of ties just inside the closet, within reach of it. This was where Paul would have stood to put the finishing touches on his appearance, just before he left the room. Amy said he’d been in this room when she’d rushed in, after hearing the gunshot. But he hadn’t been almost dressed or he would have been right here, looking at himself in the mirror just before going out. Instead he’d been shot over there nearer the door. Had he been rushing toward the intruder with the gun? Or walking slowly toward someone he knew, possibly his wife, holding out his hands in an attempt to calm? The placement of the body should have told him something, but he wasn’t sure what.

  ‘Very neat guy, your brother-in-law. Even after the techs put the kitchen back together, I could tell he had things laid out neatly. Cleaning stuff under the kitchen sink, paper bags folded in a rack inside the pantry door, spices laid out in alphabetical order.’

  ‘Like an operating room,’ Edward answered. ‘Dad used to say that getting things in order to begin was half the job.’

  Mike grunted noncommittally and moved past Edward into the closet. He turned on a light and saw suits lined up on the left, shirts and slacks on the right, shoes lined along the floor.

  Mike nodded. ‘Yep. Very neat guy.’

  ‘Do you see any women’s clothes?’ Edward turned toward the closet himself. As he did so he heard a sound behind him, then another sound that was so distinctive that anyone who had ever heard it would recognize it.

  The sound of a handgun being cocked.

  EIGHT

  Edward froze. His instinct was to move, but instinct didn’t tell him which direction. Push Mike deeper into the closet so he’d be safe and hope Mike had come armed? Jump inside the closet himself? Fall down on the floor so the bed blocked him? The urges competed and canceled each other out, so Edward just stood there, as if he hadn’t heard anything at all. He raised his hands to show he wasn’t armed himself, but was afraid to turn. He knew as soon as he did a bullet would hammer into him and in seconds he would be re-creating his brother-in-law’s death scene.

  ‘Turn around slowly,’ an unfamiliar voice said.

  Edward did so, so slowly he was barely moving at all. His body knew that sight of the person holding the gun would be his last. The gunman wouldn’t like Edward’s looks, or wouldn’t like the fact of not recognizing him, or wouldn’t like Edward’s seeing the intruder’s own face. And he would pull the trigger and that would be that.

  But it wasn’t a gunman at all. As Edward turned, he got a glimpse of the woman in the doorway, then turned to her full face. She was a stranger to him. Edward’s gaze moved slowly upward, starting with the gun, which she held as if she knew what she was doing: with both hands, out from her body, the barrel leveled steadily at him. She wore a very light sweater over a tank top that revealed a thin figure with good lines. Her neck was long, strong, unmarred by sagging flesh. She had a straight jawline, full cheeks, a mouth clenched into a tight line and grim dark blue eyes. Her brown hair was disheveled. Through the thin sweater he could see her shoulder bones. She looked stripped down, like a survivor.

  ‘I’m Paul’s brother-in-law,’ Edward said. Because it was obvious this was no burglar or robber. Her glare told him she mistrusted him for being in this house without permission.

  ‘Her brother,’ the woman said. The gun didn’t drop. Her mouth didn’t open into an apologetic smile.

  Edward nodded. ‘Amy’s brother,’ he confirmed. ‘Edward.’

  Her mouth twitched as if she might say something, but then she stopped.

  ‘And I’m an investigator,’ came Mike’s voice from inside the closet. ‘With a gun of my own.’

  The woman lowered hers. She still watched Edward with suspicion and something like disgust.

  ‘I saw somebody coming in,’ she said. ‘Burglarizing the place, I figured. People read about a murder happening, wait a few days for the investigation to be done, then break in to steal what they can. The worst kind of vultures.’

  ‘Is that what people do?’ Edward asked, holding out his hands further to show he hadn’t taken anything.

  ‘Cops told me about it, said I ought to watch out for that.’ She raised her voice. ‘You can come out of there now. With or without your gun. Mine’s down.’

  Mike edged slowly out, saw she was telling the truth and took another step out of the closet.

  ‘How about putting the gun all the way away?’ he suggested mildly. ‘Those things go off sometimes.’

  ‘How about showing me a badge or some ID or something?’

  ‘I’m private. But how about this?’ He handed a framed photograph toward the woman.

  She said what Edward was thinking.

  ‘What the hell?’ She added, ‘What is this, you receiving your license or something? You carry it with you? Framed?’

  ‘Some pictures in the closet on a high shelf,’ Mike said to Edward. ‘I was just looking through them when we got interrupted.’

  Edward watched the woman holding the picture, with no idea what she was seeing.

  ‘The late Paul Shilling’s wedding party,’ Mike explained to the woman. ‘This guy here is in back, behind the bride.’

  ‘Yeah, I see that.’ The woman looked up from the picture to Edward, studied him critically.

  ‘I haven’t aged well. Tough few years.’

  She made an unamused sound, tossed the photo face down onto the bed, and said, ‘I still don’t think you should be in here. Let’s go out.’

  A couple of minutes later, they were sitting on the small front porch of Paul’s house. It turned out the woman was wearing blue shorts and had nice legs, which Edward hadn’t noticed until they were outside. You’d think a man about to die might latch onto a detail like that.

  ‘I live there,’ she said, indicating the red brick house next door. ‘Valerie Linnett.’

  They introduced themselves all around. Mike seemed to know her already. He hitched his chair around so he could look directly at her.

  ‘You’re the neighbor who heard the gunshot.’

  ‘Yeah. If you’ve got a little experience of firearms, you recognize that sound right away. It ain’t a screen door slamming.’

  ‘So you were the one who called the police?’

  She looked at him levelly, indicating she would only be questioned a little bit and no farther.

  ‘Yeah. I almost came over, like I did just now, but not after hearing a shot. Let the professionals do their job.’

  ‘Smart,’ Mike said.

  Valerie shrugged off the compliment.

  ‘Had you ever seen my sister here?’ Edward said.

  Valerie’s expression softened, apparently remembering Edward was a bereaved family member.

  ‘A couple of times, maybe. I’m not in the habit of spying on my neighbors.’

  Edward shrugged. ‘It’s a neighborhood. You notice your neighbors. Paul had lived here for a few months. You’d met him.’

  ‘Yeah. Just to say hi to, you know, watering the yard, walking to the car. I think once he came over when I’d invited a couple of the other neighbors over for drinks on my patio. I certainly didn’t know him.’

  ‘I’m sure he was busy. You are too, probably. Do you mind if I ask—?’

  ‘I’m a pharmacist,’ she said. ‘Hard work but regular hours. It gets frantic sometimes, but at least I know when I’ll be walking out.’

  Edward nodded. Pharmacists with enough seniority to schedule their own time made good money, which explained how she could afford the brick house.

  ‘So did you and Paul ever talk shop? He was a doctor,’ Edward explained.

  ‘I know he was a doctor,’ she snapped at him. ‘I knew that much.’

  While Edward held up his hands in surrender, Mike took over the conversation. ‘Do you mind telling us your story?’

  Edward thought she was surely going to refuse, with some remark about their not
being cops, when she began. ‘It was a Saturday afternoon, you know, getting toward evening. I’d been doing yard work, so I’d just taken a shower and was thinking about having a drink or what I was going to do for dinner. It was a mild day, early March, and I had the front windows open. Heard a car door and I looked out. Like you say, you notice what goes on at your neighbors’ houses. It’s about watching out for your own, too.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mike said.

  ‘I saw her – your sister – on the front porch, about to knock. She didn’t look threatening, you know, so I just turned away and started making a drink when I heard the gunshot. Almost dropped my glass and hit the floor. But it obviously wasn’t too close by. I ran to the window again and saw she was gone from the front porch. I waited, I had that hesitation I told you about, thinking I should go over, so I waited a couple of minutes to see if anything would happen, but I didn’t hear anything else. So then I called the cops. I didn’t know what had happened, but better safe, you know?’

  Mike nodded. ‘Did you go look out the back? Could you see his backyard?’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe a few minutes later I did, just to see if I could see anything from another angle. And yes, I can see a slice of his yard from my window. But I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t see into the house from any angle of mine. When police came I let them in my house, so they could see all I’d been able to see was his porch.’

  Mike nodded again. ‘Had you seen her before? The woman on the porch?’

  ‘His ex-wife? Yeah, a couple of times.’

  Edward began, ‘They weren’t—’

  ‘Living together,’ Mike interrupted him. ‘They hadn’t been together for a while.’

  ‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘I mean, it was obvious she was a visitor, not living there.’

  ‘Did you ever see anybody else visit him?’

  ‘Look, I wasn’t—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, you weren’t spying on him, I know, we’ve established that. But we’ve also established that people notice things. My neighbor’s having an affair with the pizza delivery boy. Orders pizza two, three times a week, the kid goes inside.’