Found Innocent

by Carolyn Arnold

  “So, a neighbor let you up. Which apartment?”

  “Don’t kill them.”

  “Huh.” She cocked her head to the side.

  He looked around the apartment. “Well, I can tell you’re busy, so I won’t keep you.”

  She didn’t say anything but stared at him, through him, actually.

  “Who is this little guy anyhow?” He bent down to pet Hershey again, but Hershey backed up and resumed barking.

  Good dog.

  Sovereign was smiling. “Is it just me, or does he hate men, in general, as his owner does?” He rose to full height, watching her as he did.

  “I don’t hate all men.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Golden, right? The lawyer guy. Blake, that’s his first name. How’s that going?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ah, none of my business, I get it. You like to keep your personal life private these days.”

  “It’s none of your—”

  “Yeah, like I said, private.”

  As he stood in front of her, she imagined many ways she could kill the man and get away with it.

  “All right, I guess it’s right down to business. I’m here because you’re poking your nose around in my case.” He dropped onto the sofa and picked up the television remote.

  She went behind him and took the remote from his hand. “Are you worried I’ll find something you didn’t?”

  “I’m worried you’re wasting your time. I have it covered.”

  “Do you now? Did you know that Thorne’s fiancée showed up at the motel the night he killed himself? Did you think about even hunting down another woman when she said she didn’t stay and have sex with him?”

  “Of course. It’s obvious he was cheating.”

  “And answer this, why would a suicidal man long for company with someone else? They could stop him from going through with it.” She was building up to the crescendo.

  “A hooker, Knight. He’s down, she makes him feel better.”

  “Did you confirm it was a hooker?” They held eye contact. “And why would Thorne long to feel better when he planned on killing himself?”

  Silence passed for what seemed like sixty seconds, igniting the energy fields between them. She was the first to look away and step back.

  “Explain why there wasn’t a needle found. Thorne shot up, what happened to the needle?” She raised her voice.

  “The girl came with it, she left with it. He killed himself after.”

  “Can you go now?”

  “You think I did wrong by this case?”

  Her jaw tightened. Words weren’t needed.

  “You think you can do so much better. At everything. There’s no way in hell I could measure up to that.” He brushed past her and grabbed his coat from the hook. The apartment door slammed behind him.

  It took all the power she had not to hurl the remote across the room.

  -

  Chapter 39

  DESPITE BEING SEETHING ANGRY BY the time her head hit the pillow two hours after Sovereign left, she slept through until her alarm. She wasn’t going to let him get to her. It was time she buried her feelings for him in the past and move on. But sometimes when a wound cuts so deep, it scabs over many times. She had picked at it, allowed it to fester and scar over—a permanent reminder of her betrayal and something she decided to hold against all men.

  Her confidence and determination in the new day carried with her as she dropped Hershey off at Canine Country Retreat Boarding, grabbed a Starbucks, and went into the station.

  It lasted until she noticed Sovereign sitting on the edge of her desk, talking to his partner Lou Stanford.

  She didn’t have to say anything as she approached. Sovereign rose.

  “You must be working part-time these days,” he said.

  She considered dropping in her chair and checking any voice mail that may have been waiting for her, but she kept walking.

  “Maddy…Knight,” Sovereign said.

  She knew both Sovereign and Stanford followed her.

  “Oh, she does hate you.”

  Madison stopped walking when she heard Sovereign’s partner say this. The two men went around and stood to face her.

  She looked straight at Sovereign. “To say I hate you—”

  Sovereign pointed at his partner as if to say, he said it.

  She addressed Stanford. “To hate someone would imply that I cared. I don’t. Good day. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Please, just listen—”

  “What Lou?”

  Lou Stanford had a large build and dirty-blond hair. His dark eyes searched hers. She gave him nothing.

  “Sovereign was thinking that maybe fresh eyes on the case may help.”

  “He didn’t feel that way last night.” Madison noticed the glance between the two men, Lou questioning what had happened. Madison moved between the men, heading to the interrogation room where Bates was being brought.

  “Madison, please. You owe me that much,” Sovereign said.

  She stopped moving and turned around. “I don’t owe you anything. Go do your jobs, and I’ll do mine—”

  “Knight.”

  She heard Sergeant Winston call her and saw him approach, but snuck in a quick look at the clock on the wall.

  8:45 AM.

  “Have a minute?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She read an uneasiness coming from him. “Is Terry all right?”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “He will be?” She braced against the wall and laced her arms. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “He’s called in a personal day. He wants you to know he’s fine otherwise.”

  She swallowed reflexively and nodded. She couldn’t help but think if he was fine, why call in a personal day.

  “You’ll be all right working it solo today? If not, I can assign—”

  “I’ll be fine.” The last thing she needed was someone else hanging over her.

  “Where are we with the case so far?” Winston asked.

  She could tell by the way he settled into his standing position, with legs positioned slightly apart, hips jutted forward, arms folded and resting on his paunch, he wasn’t going to accept a few sentences and take the brush-off.

  She filled him in on everything, from the recovery of the gun at Bates’s apartment to their conversation with Vilma, Thorne’s fiancée.

  “So, it’s a tangled mess.”

  “Yeah, pretty much, but I’ll untangle it.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  His tone of voice and his quick return toward his office had her questioning the sincerity of his statement. But that didn’t hurt her. Terry should have called her to let her know everything. They were partners, but they were also close friends—at least she had thought so.

  She entered the room with Bates. He sat there picking at the end of a dreadlock. He looked up when she tossed a photo of Kevin Thorne across the table. She sat down across from him.

  “Is that the guy?”

  Bates looked from her to the picture. He didn’t reach for it. He barely glanced at it.

  Madison’s attention was fixed on Bates. He said nothing for at least forty seconds.

  “The guy who?” He dragged out the word who.

  “The older man.”

  “Didn’t I tell you we never saw him?”

  “We?” Madison looked around the room. “There’s only you and me in here. We who?” She wasn’t going to fill in any blanks, even if she knew to whom he referred.

  His eyes flitted to the table.

  She slammed the palm of a hand on the surface. “We who?”

  “Me and Hennessey.”

  “Not really sure how he got involved with our conversation.”

  Bate
s shifted in his chair.

  “I asked you if he was the older man Lacy had been seeing.”

  “Yeah and I told ya. Didn’t see him.”

  “Actually, what you said was we didn’t see him. How did he become a part of this conversation?”

  “I dunno.”

  She held eye contact. “You do. You know what I think? I think you and Hennessey killed this man.” She tossed a morgue photo of Thorne on the table.

  “No, uh, no! What? Why? We ain’t never seen him.”

  “You’re still holding to that?”

  “It’s the truth.” He glanced at the photo.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why do you keep looking at the picture?” It was fact that when a person knew someone in a picture, their eyes were more drawn to it.

  “You put the picture in front of me.”

  “People don’t normally stare at pictures of people they don’t know or recognize. Why would they?”

  “You’re trying to play with my mind.”

  “I’m trying to get some truth out of you.” She rose and paced the room. “You know what I think happened? You knew about him. You thought he was the man who set Lacy up in the condo.”

  Bates turned to face her.

  She continued. “You followed them to the motel that night. You and Hennessey found her sleeping with him and decided to make it look like a suicide.” She paused for a second and took a few more steps. “But where you went wrong was shooting him up. He never used a day in his life. Why would he start then?”

  “There has to be a first time.”

  “Oh, I suppose.” Madison stopped walking. “But what would make Thorne do it that night?”

  “Maybe Lacy talked him into trying it. She still had a thing for it.”

  Madison smiled. The bait had worked. “You admit you knew Lacy was with this man?”

  “Oh, man.” Bates ran a hand over his mouth and pinched his lips.

  “It really makes me wonder what else you’re not telling me, Bates.” She bent and put her arms on the table near him. “How are we supposed to establish a working relationship here if we don’t have honesty?” She fought another smile from taking over her expression and pushed off the table to full height.

  “The same man, or so you thought anyhow, who set her up with medical care and a condo, who tried to free her from her drug-filled life, decided to try them himself?” She was toying with Bates, trying to get as much as she could from his expressions. With his eyes, he followed every step she took. Even when she was behind him, he turned in his chair. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Your plan to harass me until I know something?”

  She pointed at him. “So, there is something else you’re not telling me.”

  His eyes left hers. “I ain’t saying that.”

  She slipped into the chair opposite him again and clasped her hands on the table. “He was going to be a father.”

  “Lacy was—” He didn’t finish the statement. His brow wrinkled up.

  “You knew they were sleeping together?” Madison had referred to Vilma when she mentioned pregnancy but let him think it was Lacy.

  He studied her eyes, seeming cautious of whether he should answer. “Yeah.”

  “You followed them to the motel?”

  A slow bob of the head.

  Madison’s insides tingled. She could be close to proving Thorne didn’t die from self-inflicted means.

  “And then what did you do?”

  “What do you mean what did I do? Nothing, a’ight. I’m not goin’ back to prison.”

  “You’re already wrong there. We know you helped bury Lacy’s body. Charges are still pending as to whether you were involved in coercing her into pulling the trigger, or whether you actually did it.”

  “I told ya before. It was Hennessey. He just called me to get rid of—”

  Madison made note of the painful inflection in Bates’s voice.

  His eyes misted with tears and his head bowed low.

  “Did Hennessey kill this man?” She tapped a finger on the photograph of Thorne on the morgue slab.

  Bates shook his head; his dreadlocks swayed with the motion.

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head again.

  There were only two people left, that Madison was aware of, who could have wanted Thorne’s death to appear self-inflicted—the fiancée or Lacy.

  “Did Lacy?”

  “Where’s my lawyer?”

  Madison cemented eye contact with him and rose from the table. “I don’t know all that happened there, but I will figure it out. You better prepare yourself to deal with that.”

  She left the room, and an officer came in her place, cuffed Bates and escorted him back to his cell. As they passed each other, her phone rang. She answered to Cynthia on the other end.

  “I have the results from the cross-comparison. It was definitely your girl sleeping with Thorne in that motel room.”

  “I figured it must have been. One of the kids just confirmed she was there with him.” She was still amused by how she got that confession.

  “That’s not all I have for you, though. Some results came back on the vic’s—”

  “Lacy’s.”

  There was a deep exhale on the other end. “Her blood work showed she was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? How far along?”

  “Well, my guess is not very, or Richards would have caught it during the autopsy.”

  “Can we extract the fetus and test its DNA?”

  “Already ordered for that.” Cynthia laughed, and it gave way to a brief silence. “How are you doing these days anyway, my friend?”

  Madison’s thoughts whirled from the business to the personal. A montage of photos played through her mind, the break-up of her recent relationship, the surprise appearance by Sovereign last night, and, finally, the thought of Terry not calling her about his personal day.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “I guess I’ll let it go at that, but I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to believe me. You have to accept it.”

  “Do I now?”

  “What are you doing tonight?” Madison asked.

  “Nothing much. What do you have in mind?”

  “Dinner out. A nice, juicy steak, some red wine, and men bashing.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Madison hung up the phone and was still smiling. The source of it coming from two places. First, news that Lacy had been pregnant. When they tracked down the father, she believed it would get them one step closer to the truth. And second, the thought of having a nice evening out felt like a welcome relief to her soul. She hoped the red wine and good company would silence the demons that haunted her.

  -

  Chapter 40

  STILES STEAKHOUSE WAS LOCATED ON the main street. It had a sidewalk patio, which was open and full of patrons on any given summer evening. Tonight, however, the spring air was chilly and damp, possessing the ability to seep its way, through clothing and skin, to the bones. The patio would have another couple months to go before it saw the checkered tablecloths and pitchers of beer.

  Cynthia met up with Madison at her apartment and they took a cab to the restaurant. Cynthia lived on the outskirts of Stiles while Madison lived a little closer to the action—not that there was usually much action in Stiles.

  “Guess we’re going all out tonight.” Cynthia smiled at her as she got out of the cab.

  “Dang right. It’s been a long week.”

  “It’s been a long few if you ask me.”

  Both women shared a laugh and made their way inside. Normally, they’d meet up for drinks at one of their places, preferring the solitude and privacy that came w
ith it. There were times they’d go out on Friday night for two-dollar martinis at a bar called TJ’s, but it had been months since they had done that.

  “Yeah, we deserve this.” Madison placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

  The restaurant hostess was slender with petite wrists and long fingers. They wrapped around the wax pencil she held for marking patrons on the seating chart, which sat beneath a pane of glass.

  “Welcome to Stiles Steakhouse.” She offered a sincere smile, passing a glance at both of them. “A table for two?”

  “Yes, please,” Cynthia said. She turned to Madison. “And tonight’s going to be about fun, okay, not work. Can you promise me that?”

  Madison hesitated. Why make a promise she knew she couldn’t keep?

  “Huh. I should have known.” Cynthia smiled. “I guess if you left the job completely behind I wouldn’t know I was with Maddy.”

  “I suppose I can drop talk about work, but can you go without a cigarette?” Madison laughed.

  A waitress came and spoke to the hostess for a few minutes before directing them to follow her. She sat them in a booth large enough to comfortably sit four and handed them each a menu. “Your server will be with you shortly.”

  The tablecloth was red-and-white checkered and covered by a piece of brown craft paper. A small plastic cup held colored crayons. Madison reached for the red one.

  “Seriously?” Cynthia laughed.

  “You said it was about fun tonight.” Madison took the crayon and scrawled an X.

  “X marks the spot?”

  Madison laughed. “It’s the first thing that came to mind.”

  “You really have to learn to let go sometimes.” Cynthia reached for the green one and drew short lines. She then reached for the brown one and drew a simplistic house made of a square and a triangle top.

  “My name is Paul and I’ll be your server this evening.”

  Both women looked up at the same time. Both of them laughed.

  Paul was in his mid-twenties and had green eyes that seemed to see through to the mind. His blond hair was layered with his bangs slightly longer and curled over his brow. His cologne held woody overtures and made Madison think of Old Spice.