by Merit Clark
It was possible all Corie saw was Brice. He’d fallen in such a way that he blocked the bedroom doorway. She’d been trying to get the dog out of the blood and away from the body. She’d been shocked, confused, panicked.
Frank indicated a gunshot wound on Brice’s chest. “There appear to be three anterior defects and two posterior.” That meant three bullets had entered and only two had exited. One of the gun shots or “defects” had hit the victim’s shoulder. That one hadn’t been serious.
Frank continued. “No apparent defensive wounds. There are indications of anal penetration.”
“Corie told us he didn’t have any visitors,” Serena said dryly.
Jack snorted. They’d found used condoms in wadded-up tissues on the nightstands, their wrappers on the floor. A whiskey glass on one nightstand, a wine glass on the other. Clothes scattered about. A small table had toppled, perhaps during a struggle, and the plant that had been on it spread dirt across the off-white, wool Berber carpeting. A man’s bathrobe—Brice’s?—was on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Didn’t expect you back yet,” Frank said.
A second woman’s voice spoke. “He’s tougher than most folks.”
Jack turned and looked at Tiffany Quintana, one of the evidence techs processing the scene. Another friendly face.
“Can I assume since you’re back so soon that things went well?” Frank asked.
Frank had a full head of gray hair, a mustache, and the demeanor of a kindly grandfather. If someone had to dissect your loved ones you’d want it to be Frank. But Jack was excruciatingly self-conscious. He wanted to work. He had to work. And he needed his team to focus instead of worrying about him. “What about time of death?”
Frank took the hint. “Best preliminary estimate I can give you without a full exam is seven to ten hours, possibly a little longer. Rigor appears to be advanced. Lividity appears fixed with minimal blanching.” So Brice hadn’t been moved since he was killed, which was consistent with the presence of a sunburn-like color staining the half of his body closest to the floor.
“He died early in the morning then, maybe five, six o’clock at the latest.” Serena made a note.
Jack fingered a bottle cap in his pocket as he looked around. He hadn’t given lunch a second thought. While they were waiting around for the warrant, he’d sent a uniform out for sandwiches. Now the turkey wrap threatened to come back to haunt him. Literally. He couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing. Jack never ran outside, not once, not even as a rookie. And this scene was a vacation compared to some he’d worked. His body did whatever he demanded of it, functioned on sporadic food, less sleep, and ran a seven-minute mile. At least until recently when it got him good with one large, mutinous malignancy.
“Don’t expect this kind of heat in October, huh?” Frank spoke as if he knew exactly what Jack was going through.
“What’s up with the dog?” Tiffany asked.
Frank’s gaze took in the bloody paw prints. “I was curious about that, too.”
“Corie Markham came in with her dog,” Jack said. Still felt strange to say that name. “Says she grabbed him right away.”
Frank whistled. “Couldn’t have grabbed him too fast, based on the looks of things. At least he didn’t help himself to a snack. It’s bad once they get a taste of human flesh. You can never trust ’em again.”
“Yuck.” Tiffany walked to the bedroom windows, which were closed. “Got some usable prints from the windows, most likely the vic’s.” She was a looker in her late twenties with long dark hair and a smooth olive complexion. When they first met, she and Jack had tried dating a couple of times but found they worked much better as friends. At least that’s what Jack concluded.
Jack looked at the tightly closed windows. “Hot night. I’d have wanted the windows open. Apparently there’s no AC in here, only in the main house.”
“And the drapes are open.” Tiffany wrinkled her ski-jump nose. “What kind of imbecile sleeps with the drapes open?”
Jack felt a bitter smile tug at the corner of his mouth when he looked at the fabric, a cheerful pattern featuring horses and horseshoes, neatly pulled back on either side of the large picture window. Corie loved horses. “Well I don’t, but you never know. Maybe he was an exhibitionist.”
Tiffany gave him a wry look. “Or maybe somebody was trying to get a little more light in here without being obvious.”
“What else you got so far, Tiff?”
“The fan wasn’t on but we got some residue off the buttons.” She shrugged. “Maybe the killer turned the fan off for some reason? And the shell casings we found are nine millimeters.”
Jack abruptly turned away and walked out of the bedroom. A lot of people owned nine mils. It was a popular gun. It didn’t mean anything. He didn’t know enough yet to jump to conclusions.
Tiffany followed him into the living room and drew his attention to the couch. “A hole’s blown out of a cushion, consistent with someone using it to muffle the sound of the shots.”
“Well that narrows it down to anyone who’s ever watched CSI. Or Perry Mason for that matter.” Jack walked over and stared at a row of framed pictures on the living room wall.
“Wanna know what else we found?” Tiffany asked.
“Nah, I thought I’d wait for the movie.”
“You okay?”
He glanced at her and saw her smooth forehead creased with concern. He realized he was turning the bottle cap in his pocket over and over with his fingers. Great. He was becoming OCD on top of everything else. The cap was from a bottle of iced tea he drank with lunch, and for some unknown reason he’d read the saying imprinted inside the lid: “An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.” It struck him as ironic, or maybe he was superstitious after all.
“You said you found something else. What is it?” Jack asked.
She held up an evidence bag proudly. “A woman’s ring. Found it under the bed not too far from the body.”
Jack took the bag from her and couldn’t quite suppress a disgusted sigh.
Serena had followed them into the living room and was watching him. “You don’t look happy.”
“What’s happy got to do with anything?” He turned back toward the artwork on the wall, framed abstract prints hung at evenly spaced intervals. “This reminds me of those puzzles; see if you can spot the ten differences between these two pictures.”
Tiffany laughed. “I used to be good at those.”
There was a gap where a picture should have been to maintain symmetry. Jack’s fingertips traced the lightly textured wall and he found the small hole made by a nail. Evan Markham’s voice rang in his ears: ‘I joined them to appear friendly.’ Right.
Jack crouched down and found a small piece of glass wedged between the edge of the carpet and the wall. “Tiff, can you get this for me?”
She carefully picked up the shard with tweezers and put it in a bag. “That could be anything.”
“Always thinking positive, aren’t you? See if you find a picture anywhere with broken glass. Have you guys gone through the trash yet?”
“Aaron’s working on it.”
Corie said Evan was a stickler for keeping the guesthouse perfect and that Brice complied. But they found the remains of a joint in a makeshift foil ashtray on the kitchen counter, along with an open bag of potato chips, a tub of some kind of spreadable cheese, and a box of bakery cookies. There were dirty dishes in the sink.
A power supply for a laptop computer also sat on the counter. The computer itself, along with Brice’s cell phone, was missing.
“Keep me posted, Tiff.” Jack paused on his way out the door. The beveled glass panes of the elegant door were intact and the jam wasn’t splintered. If it was a break-in, it was the neatest Jack had ever seen.
Serena followed him outside. “There are several sets of footprints leading from the front door to the parking space out back. If the killer parked in back it might mean they were familiar with the pr
operty.”
“Maybe. Wonder if the place was cleaned recently?” Jack made a note in his pad as they walked. “Cleaning crew could have made some of the footprints outside.”
“Now who’s thinking positive?”
There were two entrances from the road onto the property: the curving driveway that snaked along next to the main house and led up a slight incline to a three-car garage, and a second, shorter, gravel drive that ran behind the guesthouse. When Jack first arrived he’d quipped to Serena about how maybe they were supposed to use the “service entrance,” which is what the second driveway appeared to be at first.
That was where they found Brice’s car with the trunk open. The trunk didn’t appear to have been jimmied and they found a set of keys on the ground.
He and Serena were halfway up the flagstone path when Tiffany called his name.
“I’ll go on ahead and check on the processing in the main house.” Serena left.
Tiffany walked up, shaded her eyes from the sunlight with one hand, and peered up at him. “How’re you really holding up?”
Jack couldn’t quite muster a smile. “Haven’t puked on anybody’s shoes yet.”
“No one would care if you did. Everybody knows what’s going on.”
“Great.”
“I meant . . . the department’s the worst place for keeping a secret. It’s like a big, dysfunctional, armed family. You know that.”
“I’ve got a lot of work to do, Tiff.” Jack felt a twinge of guilt. He had rebuffed her offers to help over the past weeks, preferring to puke and enjoy his misery without an audience.
“I know.” She hesitated. “Wanna grab something to eat later? Whenever you’re done?”
“Who knows when this day’s gonna end,” Jack said. “And I’ve still gotta manage to swing by the doctor somehow.”
“I know,” she said again, “but you’re not going to feel like going to the store after a long day, so let me know if you decide you want to get something.”
“Will do.” He turned and jogged up the rest of the steps.
Chapter 4
It should be a good thing that Jack knew Corie, right? They had a shared history and conventional wisdom said that should make Corie more inclined to open up to him. Except that in this case their shared history involved actions on Jack’s part that, if anything, would make Corie inclined to shoot him instead of Brice. In addition to Brice. If she shot anyone. He felt that, even in light of fourteen years as a cop including six as a detective, this strained credulity. Which was a problem.
Perhaps some recalled high school with fondness or nostalgia, but Jack wouldn’t be that confused teenager again for anything. Corie’s maiden name was Farantino. They originally met because students were seated in homeroom alphabetically: Farantino, Fariel. When he first saw her, Jack was fifteen and he thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He sat behind her in class and stared at that hair and sometimes had to sit on his hands to keep from touching it. A few years later, by some miracle, they started dating. But they’d barely gotten started when Jack succumbed to temptation in the form of Corie’s best friend—and Evan’s baby sister—Hennessy. At eighteen, he had no defenses against seduction. And no sense. And absolutely no awareness of how one mistake could change the course of your life.
Instead of following Serena to the main house, Jack decided to talk to Corie again, alone. He found her still sitting at the table in the RV with what looked like the same cup of coffee, now cold, in front of her. “Corie, if you’re in trouble, you need to tell me.”
She looked up at him, startled. “What?”
“Where’s your gun?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I know it looks bad.”
Jack didn’t answer. He approached the table but he didn’t sit down. “Why didn’t you tell me Brice had a visitor?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“You didn’t find that noteworthy? That he might have had company?”
“Brice was entitled to a personal life.” Corie didn’t exactly wilt under his scrutiny.
“So you do know who it was.”
“No.”
“Look, Corie. You can’t hold out on me because of—” Jack hesitated. “Because of anything that happened in the past.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Corie Markham?” He emphasized the last name. She froze and then started picking at the rim of the Styrofoam coffee cup. The silence lengthened and, with an effort, Jack waited her out.
She finally said, “I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know it seems . . .” She looked up at him and her eyes searched his face for a moment. “I don’t know how it seems.”
“So it is the same Markham.” Evan had already gone to college, so Jack had never met him, back in the day.
“Hennessy died you know.”
“I know. Corie, what the hell is going on?” It wasn’t that strange she married her best friend’s older brother. It did complicate things that Jack had slept with that very same friend, which meant, in light of current events, that he’d also slept with a suspect’s sister. A very long time ago, way before he became a cop, but still.
“I don’t know.” She looked down at the Styrofoam shreds she’d created and started pushing them into a neat pile.
“You better start knowing something. How a dead body wound up in your guesthouse would be a great beginning.” He set the evidence bag down next to the pile of white bits and showed her the ring, a delicate silver snake swallowing its tail with small rubies for eyes.
“What is that?” Corie frowned at the ring as if she found it distasteful and then looked up questioningly.
“You don’t recognize it?”
“No. Where’d you get it?”
Jack watched her for another long, disheartening moment. “How well did you really know Brice?”
“You really think this is because of something Brice was involved in?”
“You tell me.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me about Evan.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“How did he feel about you going back to school?”
“You asked me this already.”
“And I’m asking you again. Here’s a simple one: How long have you been married?”
“It’s very hard to tell what’s a cop question and what’s a Jack question.”
Jack let out a frustrated groan and leaned forward with his hands on the table. “Corie, you’ve got to start giving me some answers. You don’t know where your gun is, you don’t know where your husband is, and you don’t know very much about a man you allowed to live in your guesthouse.”
He stood up again and fought to get a rein on his impatience. He was trying to help her. Didn’t she see that? “Headlines’ll do. Married how long? What kind of business? Where’s Evan’s office? Who’re Brice’s friends? Just the facts, ma’am.”
She took a shaky breath and looked away for a moment. Then she seemed to make a decision because, when she turned back to him, she was defiant. “Just the facts? Sure, here are some facts: married almost five years, or it will be next May. Don’t think we’re gonna make it—not if I have anything to say about it anyway. I realize how that sounds. I realize I’m not giving you the answers you want. Sorry. I realize I’m not exactly rushing to Evan’s defense. Again, sorry. The business does consulting. For resorts. We work from home. Evan’s an expert witness helping high-end resorts defend themselves against lawsuits. Successfully I might add. Keep that in mind—he makes a great witness.”
“Jesus, Corie.”
“Want any more facts?”
“Who killed Brice?”
Her voice rose in frustration. “I don’t know! If I did I would tell you. I cared about Brice. I couldn’t hurt him. I know you haven’t seen me for a long time but do you really think I’m capable of murder?”
“Is it common for you to not know where Evan is?”
She gave a bitter laugh but she answered. “Yes. Lately it’s common.”
It was possible she didn’t know about the girlfriend and he decided he wasn’t going to tell her. Yet. He was stung by the irony of having cheated on Corie himself years ago. “What kind of problems are you having?”
“Shouldn’t you be more interested in why he’s not a murderer, instead of all the gory details about my marriage?”
“At this point I’ll be happy if you answer any question at all. Why isn’t Evan a murderer?”
Corie hesitated too long. “He just isn’t.”
Was she trying to cover for Evan or make him look guilty? What was she hiding? “And you were here—alone—sleeping like a baby while your friend was shot not once, but three times?”
“I told you, I took a sleeping pill.”
Her voice was miserable and strangled; Jack hated himself for losing his patience. “Corie, I know it’s been a rough day for you. But can you help me out here a little bit?”
“I don’t want to get a lawyer because I didn’t do it. But I will. We have a very good one on retainer.” She lifted her chin. “Do you have any more questions? If not, I’d really like to know when I can go back inside my own house.”
It was unfair but he couldn’t resist. “You can’t go back in your house until we finish processing it. But you can see your husband now. If you want to.”
“What does that mean?”
Jack’s voice was silky. “Don’t you want to know where he is? Because you haven’t asked. Evan, on the other hand, is desperate to see you. He must have asked me a hundred times where you are.”
During the long, miserable moment that followed, he saw her swallow.
Chapter 5
When Evan saw Corie emerge from the RV he called her name, rushed to her, and took her in his arms—or tried to. She didn’t seem at all happy to see him and he suddenly felt foolish and self-conscious. The cops pretended not to watch but they noticed everything.
“Corie.” Evan touched her hair but she wouldn’t look at him. Corie’s affect was completely indifferent. No relief, no tears, no reaction at all.
