“Christina Dunn from Modern Computers, she just came by to visit.”
“I told you that. She wanted to talk about Lacy.” Hargrove looked between Madison and Terry. “Not every man is a cheater.”
Madison felt Terry’s judgmental stare from the back of her head.
“Is it possible Maurice Kendal logged on as you without you knowing about it?”
“I suppose so, but why would he?” His skin went pale. “He set me up for this? I can’t believe he’d do this.”
“He thought you would ruin your marriage, your wife would come after your money and the business.”
“It would be better for me to go to prison?”
“They say even bad publicity is good publicity.”
Hargrove looked like a man who had his beliefs in life shattered. His eyes were misted and unfocused.
“I don’t think he even intended for you to take the fall, but if one of you were going to, it wasn’t going to be him. Kendal may have thought Lacy would ruin everything somehow. We still have to prove this.” Madison felt her voice getting weaker as she approached the truth as to the DNA results. “We have the results back on Lacy’s baby.”
His face birthed a smile, and he balled his hands into fists. “Then you know I never slept with her.”
“It might be really hard to hear what I have to say next.”
His expression turned somber.
“The results showed that your DNA is a familial match to Lacy. You were her father.”
“I what? I was her—” His face fractured into hard edges and tears pooled in his eyes.
“We imagine this is a lot for you to process.”
He looked at her. “I never cheated on my wife.” His plea fell in contrast to the evidenced truth. “I don’t know how this could have happened.”
“It would explain why you had such a draw to help Lacy, such compassion.”
Tears fell down his cheeks. He bit his bottom lip. “My wife, she would be devastated if she…she can’t find out…oh my God, what have I done?”
“Lacy was confused. She thought Maurice was her father, but you were. Both of you shared her mother one night.”
His jaw slid askew.
“When we were there at Maurice’s house, the first time we met you, he said that’s why you stay away from ten-dollar whores.”
“Oh God.” Hargrove massaged his forehead with one hand. The tears had stopped falling, but he truly appeared before them a broken man. “We were celebrating this new contract we got. It was Maurice’s idea. There was a lot of scotch involved.” He looked up from the table to Madison. “I woke up the next morning beside this woman. I didn’t even remember her name. We were both naked. I don’t know how he did it, looking back, but Maurice had convinced me it wasn’t what it looked like, that I didn’t sleep with her. What a mess.” His voice petered off and he stared past them. “What am I going to tell my wife?”
“Just tell her the truth,” Madison said.
“Did you ever find the necklace?”
“No, I’m sorry we didn’t.”
“I CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE WHAT he’s going through,” Terry said outside in the hallway.
“We’ve got to set Kendal up and make him pay for this. Until we do, Hargrove has to sit tight.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“We need to log in as Bates. See if a message is already there. If not we’ll fire one off to Slayer1962.”
“What makes you think he’s going to respond? He knows she’s dead. Wouldn’t he want to back away from it completely at this point?”
Madison shook her head. “Kendal’s all about the money, not just the results. If he paid for Hennessey and Bates to kill Lacy, he’d expect them to be responsible, to be able to prove it.”
“So, just show up at their place. He must know who they are.”
“And risk us finding everything out? No way. The papers have been terming Lacy’s death as suspicious. Kendal knows we’ve been investigating the case. He probably believes he owes them the balance of the promised money. Hush money at this point.”
“How do we know he didn’t already drop the cash?”
“Guess we don’t, but we don’t have a choice. Bates told us about the proposal and the handle name; he would have told us the rest. Besides, he seemed afraid that the fact Lacy killed herself would get out.”
“Are you going to tell Bates?” Terry asked.
“What? Tell him he buried his child? Not yet.”
AT LEAST TERRY HAD KNOWLEDGE of the gaming console. They obtained the one from Bates’s apartment, not for evidence, but the department was on a budget and they needed an Xbox. Terry wasn’t willing to part with his. He logged on under Bates’s profile and went to the messages.
“Nothing there.”
Madison’s cell rang. “Knight…yes…okay.” She tried to flag Terry’s attention from the system. “Thanks, Sam.” She hung up. “You’re on the job, you know that. No gameplay at work.” Madison laughed.
“Life is so unfair.”
“You’re telling me? The results are back on the gun. The bullet that killed Lacy was definitely fired from the gun we found in Bates’s apartment.”
“Okay, we figured it would come back that way.” Terry’s eyes never left the screen. “I’m going to message him and see if we can get him out of hiding. Until we hear back from—”
The screen blipped and an oval came up in the top right-hand corner with the message, SLAYER1962 IS ONLINE.
Terry looked at Madison. “He didn’t waste any time.”
“He was waiting on Bates to log on.”
Another blip and an oval that read YOU HAVE A MESSAGE.
“Open it. What does it say?”
Terry turned to her.
“Come on.”
He shook his head and smiled. “You have no patience.”
“I was born that way. Terry?”
“You said parents blamed their kids for everything. It seems it works both ways.”
She jabbed his arm.
“Here we go.” Terry clicked the envelope icon.
“Perfect, he wants to meet.”
-
Chapter 55
THE DROP-OFF LOCATION WASN’T anything exciting like leaving a lunch bag full of money in a garbage can of a busy intersection. Slayer1962 wanted to meet where he had left the first installment—the kid’s apartment. While the first time had been a drop only, this time he wanted to meet face to face.
“You mess this up, you’ll never see daylight,” Madison said glancing in the rearview mirror to Hennessey, who was cuffed in the backseat.
They had pulled Hennessey because the meeting was to be at his apartment.
“You’re going to do this exactly as we instructed you.”
“You said we’d deal.”
Madison didn’t respond to him but thought of Alex Commons. He hated it when she swooped in and made deals with drug dealers, although the fact she and Terry helped stop the distribution of Oz earned her some respect. After they had got the sample of the cocktail, Commons had pushed Coleman and Burgess into flipping on their supplier and the producer of the drug. A deal had been made and Oz was officially off the streets.
There was one thing still bothering her. How had Kendal gotten a hold of Bates’s online profile to connect in the first place? But they would get that information.
Terry sat beside her in the passenger seat. Hennessey was loaded up with surveillance equipment on his body. A small microphone taped to his chest would feed back to a recording device. It would transfer back to the van that trailed the department car Madison and Terry were in, as well as come over the earbuds they wore.
“No improvising. Stick to the plan,” Madison reiterated the directions to Hennessey.
They didn’t
think Kendal held any threat to him, but they would be nearby should that change. Madison and Terry were going to hide in the bedroom where Lacy had been shot. They were arriving an hour before the scheduled meet to get inside undetected.
Madison parked the car two blocks away.
“One wrong move, my partner will blow you away.” Terry uncuffed the kid.
Hennessey passed Madison a glare that only tempted her to pull the trigger. They walked behind him, at a small distance, toward the apartment.
They were in position in the bedroom, which was at the front of the building, and now all they had to do was wait. Madison looked at her watch. There were ten minutes to go when she heard movement outside on the front walk.
She strained to hear. Feet were definitely shuffling along the paved sidewalk to the back of the house.
Terry was near the front window and peeked through two horizontal blind slats. “They went by already. Didn’t catch a—”
A knock came on the back door.
“Game time,” Terry whispered. Madison silenced him with a finger to her lips and mouthed, shh.
“You have the money?” Hennessey asked.
“You do the job, or did she take care of it herself? The papers weren’t too clear.”
Madison turned to Terry. The voice sounded familiar, but it wasn’t Maurice Kendal’s. It was female.
“Bullet’s in her head. I buried her. You said the rest of the money on completion.”
Silence fell between them.
“Do you have the money or not? You paid me to kill her. I did,” Hennessey said.
Footsteps came toward the door and made the wood flooring groan.
“Where are you go—” Hennessey started but was cut off.
“Where’s your friend? Why isn’t he here? You were in on it together.” The footsteps stopped. “Where have you been?”
“Around.” Hennessey played it light and added a small chuckle in there. “You wanted her dead. We did it.” He laughed. “We got away with it.”
“Where is your friend?” The woman repeated her question.
“He’s at work,” Hennessey lied.
Everything went quiet again and Madison felt the woman debated whether to believe Hennessey.
“Let me see the picture.”
Madison mouthed, the picture? Terry looked as confused as she was.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” the woman demanded.
More floorboards creaked as a heavier weight moved toward the bedroom. The footsteps stopped outside, and the person, likely Hennessey this time, cast a shadow beneath the door.
Another door opened and touched the back of the bedroom one. It would have belonged to the hallway closet.
“Is this necessary? You know she’s dead. It’s in the papers,” Hennessey said.
“I want to see it for myself.”
“Yeah, I guess they don’t show dead bodies in the papers.”
Madison’s stomach tossed for a couple reasons. They had taken pictures of Lacy after she was shot, holding onto them like trophies to collect on a death. Another churning sensation stemmed from the fact they had searched the apartment and came up empty. Maybe they had shuffled the photos like they had the gun that killed Lacy?
“Oh man, he must have moved it. The cops have been all over us.”
“Hush! Something doesn’t feel right about this.”
“Whoa, don’t get like that.” The closet door shut and Hennessey thumped against the bedroom door. “We killed her like you asked. You paid us to kill her—”
“I paid you to succeed. That means no one going to prison for it.”
There was the definite click of a gun.
“Gun! Please don’t shoot me!”
Madison and Terry drew their weapons. They had one shot at this. Hennessey was pressed against the other side of the door. From the sound of it, the woman was just beyond that. They would have to be very careful about how they handled the situation or they could all end up with a bullet in them.
“Gun!” Hennessey repeated.
“Who are you talking to? Did you set me up?” Footsteps came nearer to the doorway.
“I didn’t—”
“Are there cops in that room?”
Madison motioned to Terry, and on the count of two, he pulled the door open. Hennessey fell in, toppling backward onto the floor.
Christina Dunn stood in front of them, gun raised high, ready to shoot. Her control wavered and the gun swerved in a small, uneven circle. She laughed. “I didn’t do anything. You heard him. They killed her.”
Madison knew she continued to talk but was focused on the gun, on her demeanor.
Madison was in front of Hennessey; Terry packed tightly to her right.
“Christina, we’re going to need you to put the gun down.” As Madison studied her, assessing and trying to calculate her next move, her thought went to motive. What would push her to this point?
The woman, whose hands and neck had been adorned with jewelry the last time they had seen her, wore nothing but a simple gold chain. Her makeup was modestly applied. Her painted eyes sagged downward like a hound contesting for a treat.
“Go away!”
“No one needs to get hurt. Put down the gun.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“We just want to talk.”
The woman mocked laughter, a tinge of insanity swept over her face. “Then you put your gun down.”
Madison held out a hand in surrender and replaced her gun to her holster. She noticed Terry flinch and hoped the brief hesitation wouldn’t cost them their lives.
“And him.” The woman waved the gun from Madison to Terry.
“Until you put yours down, his stays,” Madison said.
The woman shot a fiery glare at Madison.
“This doesn’t have to end badly.” Madison kept both hands up, palms toward Dunn. Swirling through her mind were the possibilities for a motive. The picture wasn’t completing itself.
“You have no idea what’s it’s like.” Tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks with anger as the seed. Her cheeks were a bright red, her lined brows arched downward like pointed arrows, and her eyes were like fiery pistons. “He loved her.”
He loved her? The words repeated in Madison’s mind as a question. “Peter loved her?”
“Yes.” The s came out as a hiss. “She was a whore, a druggie. He loved her, adored her, spent his money on her.”
Madison softened her voice. She would play this from the viewpoint of a woman, an equal. “Love isn’t always fair. We don’t always get what we want.” Flashes of her kissing Toby Sovereign layered in a bombardment of images.
“But I’d have had everything if I had him.”
“We can’t help who we fall in love with, Christina. I know.”
The gun faltered, shifting downward slightly.
Am I about to make a confession to get the situation under control?
“How would you know? You’re a cop, you’ve got everything together,” she said through clenched teeth.
Madison wanted to glance at Terry because she felt his energy shift, but she knew better. You always kept your eyes on the subject.
“I’m also a woman,” Madison said.
Dunn wailed. She brushed her one cheek with the hand that held the gun. She was quick to bring it down. Her eyes threatened Terry, one move and I’ll blow your head off.
“We all want to make it out of this. It’s up to you how it ends.”
“You say you know about love. How?” The single-worded question hurled from Dunn’s mouth as a bullet from a gun—the impact as severe to Madison.
She swallowed hard. “I’ve been hurt before.”
Detection of a faint smile. “You still love him.”
“What y
ou feel for Peter, it can’t be helped. He’s a great guy, generous, and giving.”
The woman studied Madison’s face.
“He gives from his heart,” Madison added.
“And other places! But he didn’t want me! The whore would do!” The situation was escalating again.
Madison couldn’t risk countering with the truth right now. The woman would perceive it as a lie to obtain the upper hand.
“I know what it’s like to be you.” Madison felt the strain in her voice as she attempted to verbalize her experience. “To love someone so completely that they can destroy your world, and your future, in a single instance, it’s not fair.” Madison hoped she had pacified her enough, but her eyes disclosed she wanted a continuation. “I was engaged to the…” Love of my life is what Madison wanted to say, but pride hindered her from saying the words out loud. “Anyway, he broke my heart, my belief in other people.”
“You still love him?”
Madison wished Terry wasn’t in the room so that he wouldn’t be able to witness this weaker side of her. She hesitated to nod but eventually did. “But it doesn’t matter now.”
“How can you turn it off like that?” Dunn’s question fell, impacting the room like a stone tossed into the river—ripples amplifying in its wake.
“You have to.” Madison’s heart raced; her stomach lurched. She noticed the woman’s shoulders sag.
“Please put down your gun. We can take you to talk to him.”
Dunn’s eyes went to the gun she held and then to them. “Okay.” Her voice fractured as her spirit was broken.
-
Chapter 56
“ANOTHER CASE SOLVED,” Terry said.
“We still don’t know how Dunn knew Hargrove’s log-on information for Xbox, how she connected with Bates and Hennessey, or even how she knew of them.”
Madison watched Dunn through the window of the observation room. She truly was a woman wrecked by love, a love she would never see reciprocated.
“Some answers you don’t get.”
“I can’t live like that,” Terry said.
“I know.”
Found Innocent Page 22
