Found Innocent

by Carolyn Arnold

  Madison brushed past him into the room. She sat across from Dunn.

  “How did you do it? How did you know Hargrove’s log-on name for Xbox?”

  Dunn’s eyes lifted from where they had been fixed to the table surface. They revealed a conflicted mess of thoughts, webbed behind the color of blue.

  “Peter’s house.”

  “From Peter’s house?”

  A slow nod. “I’ve been over there before. I know his wife.”

  With her words, and the cover of darkness that shifted in over her eyes like a clouded veil, Madison knew there was still much to uncover.

  “We were friends.” A sickly smile showcased. “She trusted me.”

  It had been established that she had first met Peter Hargrove at a meeting for local entrepreneurs. Even though Dunn only managed Modern Computers, she had some business ideas. After that first meeting, they ran into each other in a bar, the same bar where Hargrove ended up hooking up with Lacy’s mother. Dunn had been carrying a love for Hargrove since their second sighting.

  “They had me over for dinner. She took a shine to me.” Sadness reflected in Dunn’s eyes. “She liked me more than her husband did.”

  “You played games on Peter’s console?” Madison tried to redirect the conversation back on course.

  “Yes.”

  “So you knew his name, but how did you know the password?”

  She laughed. “Now that’s the best part. You probably think he makes regular use of a password? Well, he does. He runs proposals past me before approaching his partner. He always said his partner undervalued him. And he did, you know.”

  Madison searched inside for patience.

  Dunn’s attention weaned from Madison back to the table. Her fingertips caressed the surface as the touch of a lover on skin. She lifted her eyes. “I jacked his account. Not too hard to do if you know what you’re doing. The Internet is a terrific resource.”

  “You set up the man you love for murder?”

  “Is he in prison? I think not. Charges never would have stuck to him, but he needed to be taught a lesson. May I see him now?”

  Madison disregarded her question. “How did you hook up with Bates and Hennessey?”

  “They were online friends of Peter’s. People talk too much, run off at the mouth, thinking they can hide behind a fake name and a gaming console. People can be found. Easy.”

  “Still doesn’t answer why you’d approach them, how you would even know they were connected with Lacy.”

  Her eyes lifted from the table, her fingers stopped moving.

  Madison waited out the silence. She knew how much Maurice hated the idea of Hargrove helping Lacy and how he was concerned about the bottom line when it came to the business. “Was someone else involved? Was it Maurice Kendal?”

  All movement stopped.

  “Did he put you in touch with the kids?” Madison remembered they had told her they never met Dunn in person. She sensed this had been a lie.

  “I followed her home from work one night.”

  “Lacy?”

  “Yes.” She looked up from the table. “She went to some motel.”

  “Do you remember when this was?”

  “Not long after she started. I wanted to know what was so special to have Peter going out of his way to help her. She met up with someone there.”

  “And you don’t know who?”

  Her eyes glazed over, and her fingers pinched as if feeling the textile of fabric, yet nothing was in her hands. “I thought the one vehicle looked like Kevin’s.”

  “That must have bothered you.”

  Her hand balled into a fist. “She had the man I loved and was screwing around on him.”

  “I take it you waited things out.”

  “A few hours later, she came out and got on a bus. I followed her until she got off. It wasn’t the condo. I watched the place for the next few days and worked up the nerve to knock on the back door.” She stopped there as if her story were complete.

  “This is when you met Hennessey and Bates?” They had left this part out.

  “You cops always call people by their last names?” Dunn paused. “But yes.”

  “And you thought the best way was to communicate over Xbox?”

  “It’s secure, private, different.”

  Madison nodded.

  “When can I speak with him?”

  When Madison and Terry had told Hargrove that Dunn had set out to orchestrate the death of Lacy, his face hardened, as an ice block.

  “We told him.”

  Dunn straightened, hopeful expectation tattooed on her expression.

  “He didn’t want to talk to you.” Madison had softened the blow in translation. Hargrove’s words had been that he hoped Dunn would die in prison.

  Tears fell down Dunn’s cheeks, which were a bright hue of red. “I was doing this for us.”

  Madison felt sorry for Dunn. She had loved a man and she would never see that love reciprocated. Maybe Madison should have kept her mouth shut, but she felt compelled to let this woman know, to possibly help give her some closure, some understanding.

  “Peter was never sleeping with Lacy.”

  “I don’t be—”

  “She was his daughter.”

  “His daughter?” She mulled over the statement—the implication and where this left her. Her face lit into a large smile. “He cheated on his wife at some point. I will get him. I will win his love.”

  -

  Chapter 57

  “SHE’S DELUSIONAL AND NEEDS THERAPY,” Madison said. “She thinks she can win over a man who is in love with his wife.”

  “Well, she’ll have a lot of time to think about it. Twenty-five to life for conspiracy to commit murder,” Terry said.

  “See where love gets you.” Madison smiled, but the expression was wisped away without acknowledgment from Terry.

  Silence fell between them and Madison sensed Terry wanted to ask what exactly had happened back at the house, but he refrained.

  “Despite trying to orchestrate Lacy’s death, the girl may have beat her to it. Crazy case.”

  “And Lacy, by all accounts, appears to have killed Kevin Thorne. That’s not going to be a fun one to get resolved.”

  “It’s not like you can sentence a dead person.”

  “We have to be very careful what we rule suicide or homicide. There has to be more accountability.” Madison’s eyes searched Terry’s.

  “But, Maddy, nobody is perfect either.”

  “People look to us, Terry. We provide answers. We are to bring justice to those who have been affected by crime.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we have you.” Terry put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  She smiled at him and turned away. They had found the photographs of Lacy’s dead body tucked away in Bates’s apartment, and when they had told him he was the father of Lacy’s baby, he had cried. Madison didn’t think even with all the time he faced behind bars that his pain would ever heal. She hadn’t informed Vilma about her fiancé yet, but she knew the woman deserved final closure. The case was officially reopened and would be amended.

  Her cell phone rang and it was Cynthia.

  “You want all your results now? Come get them.”

  “You wait until we have this wrapped up?”

  “Trust me. I’m sure you’ll still want to hear what I have to say.” A smile of victory carried over the line.

  “We’ll be right there.”

  “HAVE A SEAT, GUYS. This will take a while.” Cynthia opened a file folder on the table and took a seat. Madison and Terry followed her direction.

  “As I said, all of the results are back from this case.”

  “Please don’t keep us waiting any longer,” Madison said.

  “Lacy didn’t pu
ll the trigger on herself. We covered Hennessey’s entire apartment including the exterior door handle. Particulates came back a match to GSR, specifically lead, barium, and antimony. Now, while it’s true that transfer can happen easily, we also obtained prints on the knob which were a match to Hennessey.”

  “That part makes sense, as it was his apartment.”

  “It’s the GSR I find interesting.”

  “But couldn’t that transfer simply have been made when Hennessey picked up the gun to hide it?”

  “Evidence is stacking against him. Didn’t he say he found her that way?”

  Madison nodded.

  “So, if he picked up the gun off the floor, the concentration of GSR wouldn’t be in the quantities pulled from the door handle. It is my expert opinion that he fired the gun.” She shifted through papers in the folder and pulled one to the front. “There was also a fiber found on Lacy’s body.”

  “I don’t remember hearing about the fiber before now.”

  “Can you imagine how impatient you may have been then?” Cynthia laughed and Madison narrowed her eyes. “Anyhow, a sweater found in the dryer at the condo was a match to the color of the fiber. We sent it to an outside expert along with the exemplar and extensive testing proved it came from that sweater. We know Hennessey was living at the condo.”

  “All right, that proves he helped bury her, or in the least was around.”

  “Oh, here’s the best part. The sweater was tested for GSR as well. Well, we didn’t get too far with that because it had been washed, and who knows how many times before we collected it from the dryer. But we were able to pull blood trace that was a match to Lacy. Hennessey’s story was he came home to find Lacy dead, well, that’s all it was—a story.”

  “So, even though it had been a month—”

  Cynthia nodded. “Blood never lies.”

  “What about the bullet casing? Did you ever get the results back?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and prints on it were a match to Hennessey. He has at least the three things against him. The GSR, the blood, and the casing.”

  “Looks like we have all the evidence we need. He did kill her,” Terry said. “Just how does Bates factor in?”

  “Oh.” Cynthia smiled. “You remember his prints were on the shovel? Well, his epithelial was a match to what was pulled from Lacy’s fingernail.”

  “You are amazing!” Madison stood. “This is enough evidence to get them all behind bars.”

  “Maddy, this isn’t everything either. Sit down. Kevin Thorne, the man whose death was concluded a suicide? I have proof it wasn’t. You remember that Lacy had blood on her shirt.”

  Madison nodded. “We all assumed it was hers.”

  “Well, I’m paid to do more than assume.” Cynthia paused to smile. “I ran extensive testing on it and found microscopic blood droplets. It came back to Thorne.”

  Madison looked at Terry. “She called Hargrove and told him she was sorry.”

  “She must have given him Oz not knowing what it was, panicked, thinking she had killed him…when she cut him, she probably realized he wasn’t dead from the drugs,” Terry said.

  “Then she shot up with the other vial. That’s why she was high when she called Hargrove. Makes more sense too, because I couldn’t figure out how she would have been competent enough to slit his wrists while high.”

  “Hennessey and Bates must have shown up and helped cover part of the mess. But they didn’t want Lacy dying that way or they’d never see their money.”

  “They dragged her back to the apartment, where they killed her.” Madison’s heart fell heavy, burdened with the guilt of a young, dead woman who had tried to turn her life around, who had wanted to be found innocent—what an ironic tragedy.

  Cynthia closed the folder. “Sounds to me like you two have it all figured out now.”

  “Yeah. One hell of a case, well, two really. Wow. Complicated.” Madison looked at Terry. “I guess we also have the drug dealer to hold accountable for Sahara Noel as well. I only wish we had proof to hold Kendal responsible for his part in all this.”

  “Well, from the look of things, if he was involved on any level, he hid his path well.”

  “Yeah, son of a bitch.”

  “SEEMS THERE’S A BUNCH OF paperwork we’ll have to finish up,” Madison said as she slipped into her chair, Terry across from her at his desk.

  “Yeah, and you’re not leaving me with all of it this time. And you owe me twenty. You said Hargrove was involved. He wasn’t.”

  “Fair enough.” She pulled out the bill and handed it to him.

  “Good job on the case.”

  Madison looked up to Toby Sovereign, who held his hand extended to Terry.

  Madison searched her mind for an excuse to leave, but Terry had just warned her not to stick him with the paperwork.

  “I’m going to grab a coffee.” Terry gestured to the bullpen, got up and left.

  Madison narrowed her eyes at the back of her partner’s head. She felt a touch on her shoulder and looked up at Sovereign. “What do you want?” She asked, anger rising within her. She hated how his touch made her weak and vulnerable, how it retraced the past and yanked it into the present. But she couldn’t continue to fall victim to him anymore.

  He lifted his hand. “I can’t go on like this, Maddy.”

  Her heart raced and her stomach tightened.

  “You look through me. You won’t talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Are you sure about that?” His question hung there as he searched her eyes. “The other night? It was amazing. It was like old times.”

  He couldn’t be doing this. How could he think he could come back after all this time, after hurting her the way he had. No, she had to be strong.

  He continued. “If you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me anymore, I’ll never bother you again.”

  She felt sick. As she gazed into his eyes, her throat went dry.

  -

  Epilogue

  SOMETIMES THE ANSWERS ARE IN the past, and if that’s what it took, then that’s where Madison was going.

  She pulled her car to a stop across the street from Homeland Logistics, one of many fronts for the Russian Mafia. The sun was starting to set and waves lapped against the shore, combining with the sounds of the gulls to make a peaceful evening—if she were anyone else.

  Her plans were anything but peaceful. She had answers to gather and it started here. She had waited too many years for all her hard work to equate to nothing. It would be resolved today.

  She pulled the letter from her passenger seat and studied it. In Dimitre Petrov’s own handwriting, she read his message. She had resolved from the start she wouldn’t give any credit to a man who had killed his own parents and who was responsible for the deaths of so many. He didn’t deserve to be heard.

  He had been heard, however, and his days in court saw him serving twenty-five to life for a single murder. But accounting for one sin wasn’t enough to erase the bloodstains left in his wake.

  Madison pulled her visor down and studied her eyes in the mirror. She knew what she contemplated doing was stupid, reckless, extremely dangerous even, but what choice did she have. One man whose life was cut short at a young age deserved vindication. The voice of his soul begged for justice. She would see that he got it.

  She ran fingers through her hair with one hand and tossed the letter back to the seat with the other. If Terry had any idea what that letter contained, he would tell her to walk away, to finally admit this case was a cold one. But she couldn’t do that. This was personal.

  She turned the car off and walked across the street. A huge crane hoisted a container from a platform onto a ship. She watched it as she contemplated each footstep. She would go right in their front door and demand answers. She made it to th
e property of Homeland Logistics, and her hand went to her holster. She confirmed her gun was there—again.

  The door chimed when she opened it and a young woman sat behind a wood-laminate desk. Her eyes were dark and her structure thin. Her black hair was cut short, exposing a long, slender neck.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Tell Sergey that Madison Knight is here.”

  The woman’s eyes went to the gun on Madison’s hip.

  “Hurry. It’s urgent that I talk to him.”

  She got up from the desk, walked to the door, and flipped over the open sign so it would read closed to the outside.

  “Shift’s over.” She left.

  Madison heard banging out back and headed to its source. What would make the girl leave? Madison’s heart thumped, bouncing off her rib cage like a scared bird. She pulled her gun.

  She went through the door that came off the front room, her gun at the ready. She conducted a sweep and stepped through.

  Two men with hammers looked up at her and raised their hands.

  “Get to work!”

  The voice caused her to turn. The banging started up again.

  “I could say how nice it is to see you again, Detective Knight.” Sergey took the stairs down from an upper landing. He and Anatolli were Dimitre Petrov’s right-hand men.

  Sergey offered a sincere smile, the kind that sent shivers down her spine. “I see you came here to start a war.” He pointed to her raised gun and looked behind her. “Yet you came by yourself.”

  “I need answers.” She kept her gun held up but could feel her hand shaking.

  Focus on what you came here for.

  “Why did you kill the lawyer?”

  “Kill the lawyer? Ah, we’re still worried about that.” He rubbed his hands together and came to a stop in front of her. “You and me. We spend some quality time together first.” He walked until the barrel of her gun pressed into his chest. “You are not a killer, Knight. You are blue. Blue-blooded. Now, let’s put that away so we can talk like two regular people.”

  His Russian accent would haunt her nightmares if she made it out of here alive. She just needed the answers. She was tired of running around looking for them only to be in another dead end. Resolution was proving to be as elusive as smoke.