Blood Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 2)

by Stephen Penner

  ***

  Whatever Warwick might have been expecting—and she wasn’t really sure what that was—it was definitely not what she encountered when she and Chisholm walked into the conference room.

  Seated at the far end of the table was a surprisingly young woman, slight of build, with cropped blond hair, heavy dark eye make-up, an extremely tight baby-doll T-shirt with the word ‘diva’ arcing beneath the pink collar, and a pair of very dark, almost black, blue jeans, which hugged her form almost as tightly as her shirt. Warwick couldn’t see the girl’s feet inside the black leather boots that disappeared up the jean legs, but she guessed several of the toes sported toe-rings to match the nose-stud which sparkled pink above the woman’s left nostril.

  The young woman looked up at the entering police officers. “Hey,” she said in subdued greeting.

  “Lady MacLeod?” Warwick tried to make it sound like a greeting, not a question.

  “Please,” the young woman cringed at the words. “Don’t call me that. ‘Jessie’ is fine.”

  “Okay, Jessie. I’m Sergeant Warwick. This is Sergeant Chisholm.” Warwick sat down at the conference table; Chisholm followed suit. “We’re investigating the disappearance of your son. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us.”

  “Of course.” Jessie wrung her hands. “I’m— I’m glad to do whatever I can, you know, to help or whatever.”

  “Great.”

  “Um, but—” Jessie clutched her small black leather purse from the floor. “Do you mind if I smoke? I—”

  “Not at all,” Chisholm said before Warwick could answer, and slid an ashtray over from the far end of the conference table. “Here you are.”

  Warwick tried not to flash a disapproving glare at Chisholm. She’d talk to her about it later. Not only did Warwick not like cigarette smoke, but she would have preferred her subject to be a little edgy, eager to finish the interview as quickly as possible. It would have helped Warwick control the conversation that much more easily. Oh well.

  Jessie took a long drag and exhaled rather a lot of smoke. “Thanks. Aye, that’s better.”

  “So then,” Warwick started, but she didn’t get any farther.

  “I didn’t do it,” Jessie MacLeod announced.

  Warwick shook her head sharply. “What?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Jessie repeated. “I didn’t kidnap Douglas.”

  “Okay,” Chisholm replied slowly. Warwick just eyed the young woman.

  “That’s why you wanted to talk to me, right?” She blew more cigarette smoke toward the floor.

  “Well, we did want to talk to you about Douglas’ abduction, yes.” Warwick replied carefully. “But—”

  “Well, I didn’t take him. I mean, I wish I had. I should have. But I didn’t. Maybe if I had— maybe then he wouldn’t have been kidnapped, but, well, I didn’t.” She took a breath. “So I guess that’s it.”

  Warwick pursed her lips. It was time to take control of the interview. “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning then.”

  Jessie MacLeod rubbed her nose with her cigarette-less hand. “All right.”

  “You are Janet MacLeod. We’ve established that.”

  The young woman laughed slightly and looked at Chisholm. “Uh, yeah, right. I’m Janet MacLeod. Jessie.”

  “And you’re David MacLeod’s wife.”

  “Barely,” was the reply. “The divorce’ll be final next week.”

  “And how old are you, Jessie?”

  She smiled, understanding the question behind the question. “Twenty-two. He’s thirty-seven.”

  Warwick nodded. “All right. And where are you from? Not Aberdeen?”

  “No, I’m from Fort William. Although, I’ve moved to Aberdeen now. I would travel with David sometimes for business and I liked it here. It’s bigger than Fort William but still Highland. I like being in the Highlands.”

  “All right then,” Warwick continued. Chisholm wondered whether she shouldn’t be taking notes. “And how,” Warwick asked, “did you meet David?”

  Jessie shook her head and sucked on the cigarette again. “Aye, that’s a story.” She cleared her throat, just to note the drama of the impending information. “I was a waitress in a pub in Fort William. David came there one night for dinner. And after closing, David took me back to his hotel room and shagged me.”

  Nice, Warwick thought to herself, careful not to let the thought appear on her face.

  “That’s nice,” Chisholm observed aloud, her sarcasm obvious.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Jessie laughed sardonically. “Real fairy tale stuff. But it gets better.”

  “Oh?” Chisholm seemed genuinely entertained.

  “Oh yes.” Another inhale of smoke. “I became his girl in Fort William. Whenever he was there for business, well, you know. A girl in every port, as they say. And it was fine, you know, because he was David MacLeod, Chieftain of the Clan MacLeod of Harris, and I was just Jessie Sterling, waitress. It was convenient for him. It was well enough for me. But you see, I’m one of seven kids. And my mum was one of eight.”

  Chisholm looked askance.

  “We’re quite fertile, we Sterling women,” Jessie explained. “It didn’t take long ‘til I got pregnant.”

  “Ah,” Chisholm replied.

  “I figured I’d be a single mother. Or maybe— Well, I knew there were other options.”

  “But MacLeod wouldn’t have it, would he?” Warwick asked.

  “No,” Jessie confirmed. “Surprised me actually. He took me for my word that it was his. And so there I was, twenty-one and pregnant with—”

  “With the heir to the MacLeod Clan,” Warwick observed.

  Jessie took a last drag off her cigarette and crushed the butt in the glass ashtray. “Aye. The heir to the Clan MacLeod. So those ‘other options’ were out of the question. He wasn’t about to see his heir aborted. Or adopted; one doesn’t put an heir up for adoption.”

  “And you don’t have an heir out of wedlock,” Warwick observed.

  “I do recall the word ‘bastard’ being thrown about a bit,” Jessie confirmed with a grin. “Apparently it had the potential to wreak rather a lot of havoc on the eventual succession to the chieftaincy. Not to mention the general discredit it would bring to the clan. Particularly his half of it. I discovered that David has quite the inferiority complex about MacLeod of Harris versus MacLeod of Lewis.”

  “So he proposed,” Warwick deduced.

  “Yes. And quite a show it was too. On bended knee and all that.” She flashed the large diamond ring she still wore on her left hand. “He didn’t skimp on the rock either. And then,” she paused and fluttered heavily mascaraed eyelashes, “we got married.”

  “Quite the courtship,” Chisholm observed with a shake of her head.

  Jessie laughed lightly. “Aye, but it wasn’t so bad. He was actually very caring during the pregnancy—doting even. I was very well taken care of. All the best doctors and such. And then I gave birth to the most wonderful, beautiful baby boy.”

  Chisholm’s face softened at the story. Warwick waited for it.

  “A week later,” Jessie continued, “he took Douglas from my very arms and served me with the divorce papers.” She displayed an angry, clenched smile. “And I haven’t seen my son since.”

  Warwick set her chin on her hands and frowned as she processed what she’d heard. It was time to ask the million pound question.

  “All right. And where were you Sunday night? When Douglas was kidnapped?” Her voice was still friendly, almost casual, but the import of the question was clear.

  “How do you mean?” Jessie blinked heavily and reached for another cigarette. After lighting it and exhaling the first dark smoke, she assured, “I told you: I didn’t do it.”

  “Of course.” Warwick didn’t blink back even as the smoke wafted past her face. “So if you can just let us know where you were, we can confirm it and then officially eliminate you as a suspect.”

  “A suspect,” Jessie almos
t spat as she took another long drag off her cigarette. Then, exhaling the resultant billow of smoke through her nostrils, admitted, “Well, that makes sense, I suppose.”

  Warwick smiled encouragingly. Chisholm had already leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

  “Well, let’s see…” Jessie began. “That was Sunday, you said?”

  “Sunday night into Monday morning,” Warwick clarified.

  “Right.” Another lung-full of cigarette smoke. “Sunday night I ate dinner out. With a friend.”

  “A friend?” Warwick echoed.

  “Yes, a friend.” She paused. “A gentleman friend. It was a late dinner. We finished around nine o’clock, so I don’t suppose you’ll need his name, will you? It could complicate … other matters.”

  Warwick hesitated. Chisholm didn’t. “That’s up to you, Mrs. MacLeod. As Sergeant Warwick explained, the more you tell us, the easier it will be to confirm your alibi.”

  “Yes, well…” Jessie’s eyes widened a bit at the word ‘alibi.’ “I had a late dinner with a gentleman friend and we finished up a bit after nine. We ate at Le Bistro Écosse, if that helps. Then we went out for a few drinks. That is, I did. My friend decided to go home.”

  “And where did you go for drinks?” Warwick this time.

  Jessie paused again and flicked her cigarette in the ashtray. “I forget the name of the place. A small nightclub down on Dunfinnich Quay.”

  Warwick thought for a moment. “Club Frankenwald?”

  “Yes.” A guarded smile lit Jessie’s face. “I believe that may have been it. Adorable place. I hadn’t been there before. We stayed there until, oh, probably one o’clock.”

  “We?” Chisholm leaned forward

  “Pardon?” Jessie inhaled again from her cigarette.

  “You said ‘we.’ ‘We stayed there until one o’clock.’”

  “Did I?” Another flick of ash into the waiting glass receptacle. “I meant ‘I.’ I stayed there until one o’clock. I must have said ‘we’ because I was thinking about the people I met there. Jolly nice folks. Good fun. I had a wonderful time.”

  “And you wouldn’t happen to remember any of those folks’ names?” Chisholm inquired.

  Jessie exhaled a large billow of smoke toward the visiting sergeant. “Afraid not.”

  “What then?” Warwick pushed her along.

  “Then? Then I went home.”

  “Alone?” Chisholm prodded.

  “Alone,” Jessie confirmed. She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Warwick clicked her tongue lightly. “So,” she summed up, “you were alone from around one o’clock until you woke up the next morning?”

  “Right,” Jessie extinguished her second cigarette in the ashtray. “I woke up around nine.” She smiled. “Maybe ten.”

  “And you’ve no one,” Chisholm interjected, “who can vouch for your whereabouts starting at about nine o’clock Sunday, is that correct?”

  Jessie pursed her lips to one side. “I suppose that’s correct.”

  Warwick nodded her head. Chisholm shook hers. “That’s not very helpful, Mrs. MacLeod.”

  “I suppose not,” Jessie replied with a shrug. “But it’s the best I can do.”

  An awkward silence fell upon the room. Chisholm decided to fill it. “Do you still have a key to the townhouse here in Aberdeen?”

  Jessie grinned. “No. I had one before, of course, but I’ve returned it to him. Through my lawyer.”

  “Your lawyer?” Warwick felt obliged to ask.

  “Aye. Glynis Campbell, in the Hastings Building.”

  Before Warwick could follow up a sharp knock resounded off the door. Warwick looked at her watch. Right on time, she thought. “Come in,” she said.

  Fraser Kerr pushed open the conference room door, an ink pad and paper towels in one hand, a rigid letter-sized card in the other—and a boyish smile still plastered on his face.

  “We’ll just need,” Warwick explained with a gesture to Officer Kerr, “to get your fingerprints before you leave.”

  A puzzled expression traversed the young woman’s face, but she shrugged yet again. “All right.”

  Kerr swooped in and deftly pressed Jessie’s fingers to the ink pad, before rolling each fingerpad onto the card to obtain ten square smudges. He then handed her the paper towels, snapped close the ink pad and handed the fingerprint card to Warwick.

  “Pretty bird,” he whispered admiringly out of the corner of his mouth, but he escaped into the corridor before Warwick could administer any verbal or physical reprisal.

  Jessie’s voice pulled Warwick back to the task at hand. “Can I go now?” she asked wiping the ink from her fingers.

  “Yes,” Warwick replied “We’ve got your address. You’re not planning on going anywhere any time soon, are you?”

  “Just my lawyer’s office later today. But she’s here in town. Otherwise I’m not going anywhere.”

  “All right then.” Warwick stood up, followed by Chisholm and Jessie MacLeod. “Thank you for coming in, Lady MacLeod.”

  The young woman laughed again. “Right. ‘Lady MacLeod.’ It sounds quite romantic.” She shook her head as they walked into the hallway. “The exit’s that way, right?”

  “Right.” Warwick pointed down the hallway, away from the direction of her office. “Straight ahead, then left at the corridor. Thank you again.”

  Then Lady Janet ‘Jessie’ Sterling MacLeod walked down the hallway and out to the lobby.

  “Well?” Chisholm inquired.

  Warwick sighed. “She’s lying. I’m not sure about what yet, but she’s lying.”

  23. Hard Evidence

  It was nice to have Chisholm around, Warwick conceded to herself. But as she sat alone in her dark office—its confines lit only by the inadequate glow of her desk lamp, the MacLeod file spread out before her, and her fingertips brushing against the mug full of tepid coffee—she was also glad for the time to herself.

  Chisholm appeared to be intelligent and insightful. And she played the role of sounding board expertly. Ideas, hunches and suspicions were developing at a more rapid pace than even Warwick was used to. That was good, given the imperative nature of the case, not the least of which arose from the exceptional vulnerability of the victim. But the partnership wasn’t entirely benign. At this pace it had become difficult to impossible for Warwick to allow her unconscious mind to mull over the information they were obtaining, particularly amid the din of discussion with Chisholm.

  Therefore, despite the clock hands having almost completed their race to the twelve, Warwick had no regrets for abusing her body with strong coffee and long hours.

  She glanced down at the file—or rather at its guts splayed out in front of her. Somehow, this reminded her of her last case involving bloody patterns etched at a crime scene, and she frowned as, even against her will, her thoughts wandered again to the young American student she’d met during that earlier investigation. And again against her will, an idea—a decidedly un-Warwick-like idea flashed through her mind. But summoning her will, she dismissed it, and shook her head sharply against its return.

  The late hour, she decided.

  The station was rather quiet now, the hush of night exerting its influence even on a profession which could ill afford to sleep. Nevertheless, officers on swing shift were coming in for the night, while those on graveyard were heading out into the dark Aberdeen streets. Warwick raised her mug and drained the cool, bitter remains. Then she stood up and walked into the hallway. Richards should be in by now.

  The gray linoleum corridor was calm. Echoes of voices and tired laughter trailed after her from the main lobby, but she was headed the opposite direction. She reached the back stairway and descended the rubber tipped steps surely, fatigue dampening any desire to hurry the descent into the basement. Then she walked back down a longer, gray our linoleum hallway to the small black sign with white letters, ‘Forensics.’

  “Elizabeth!” Officer Jenny Richards shot up from her short des
k behind the tall counter of the Forensics office. She was rather tall and extremely thin, with straight blond hair that fell limply to her shoulders. “What are you doing this time of night? Aren’t you still working days?”

  “Still on days,” Warwick admitted cheerily, “but still working nights as well.”

  “Aw, I should have known.” Richards leaned onto the counter from her side of it. “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s the MacLeod case. The kidnapping. Are the forensics done yet on the townhouse?”

  “MacLeod, eh?” Richards turned and crossed to the file cabinet at the back of the office. “Let me see what we’ve got. Come on back.”

  Warwick walked through the swinging wooden door at the far end of the counter and stepped up next to Richards, who was busy thumbing through a collection of six-by-eight-inch index cards in the second drawer down, her hair falling around her face.

  “Here we are,” she announced as she pulled out a light green card. Then turning again to her guest, “Yes. They’re done. Finished them up this morning.”

  “And what are the results?” Warwick asked as Richards took the card over to a wall of file cabinets and began searching for the proper drawer. “Any prints?”

  “Oh yes,” Richards replied. “The room was filled with good impressions. All over the crib, the window sills, the furniture. Even the floor.”

  “Great.” Warwick watched as Richards extracted a manila folder from the right-most file cabinet. “And were you able to match any of the prints?”

  “Oh yes,” Richards assured with a sly grin. “All of them actually. All of the good ones anyway.”

  “And?” Warwick widened her eyes.

  “And,” Richards couldn’t help the mischievous gleam in her eye, “they mostly belonged to Mr. MacLeod. We matched them from his military records,” she added in explanation.

  “Well, that figures,” Warwick replied, a bit disappointed. “What about the rest of the prints?”

  “Well, a fair number matched up with the ones we got from the nanny. Er, Nellie something or other?”

  “MacQuarrie.” Warwick shrugged. “That’s probably also to be expected. Were any of hers near the window?”