Grain of Truth (Innocence Unit Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  But anyway, the motive for Saanvi and Kevin was that the two had struck out at her parents because her parents were too strict and confining, keeping Saanvi from the life she and Kevin wanted together. But the fact that Saanvi and Kevin had been out that night barhopping and staying out late with no thought of consequences seemed to belie the motive right there.

  Iain flipped through the pages of transcriptions.

  Crime scene photos. He looked at the bodies, sitting on the couch. Blood spattered on the wall behind them and out the doorway into the hallway. Propped against the couch was a picture that hadn’t yet been hung on the wall. It was a butterfly.

  Photos of the bodies. Close-ups of Dr. Mukherjee and his wife. Their faces. Their wide frightened eyes. The gunshot wounds in their foreheads. The blood.

  But what was that? Was that a shadow on the photo?

  Iain turned the photo to get a better look. There, on the neck of Tempest Mukherjee, just under her jaw, was an oval-shaped bruise about an inch and a half long and half as wide. Huh. What gave someone a bruise like that?

  Iain cocked his head. Hold on.

  Hold on.

  Was there a similar bruise on Dr. Mukherjee too?

  Yes, there was.

  Well, well, well. What did that mean?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Frankie Hart set down her purse on the kitchen table and collapsed into a chair there. “Oh, hell, Rufus.”

  Her husband, Rufus, was at the stove, stirring something that smelled delicious. Frankie thought she was one of the luckiest women in the world to have met a man like Rufus. He cooked like a four-star chef, and he was always willing to do it. Frankie burned spaghetti, so she was glad to have someone else in the kitchen. Their deal for their entire marriage had been that Rufus cooked and she cleaned up. She very much liked the division of labor, especially on a night like tonight, where she was bone tired.

  “Your second day was that bad?” said Rufus.

  “She hates me.” Frankie took off her shoes, which were killing her. They weren’t even high heels. Frankie refused to wear high heels, which she thought of as institutionalized torture for women.

  “Elke Lawrence? Your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think she hates you. How could anyone hate you?”

  “She does though.” Frankie’s voice came out like a wail. “I can’t believe I took this job. I can’t believe it. I was making better money as a defense attorney.”

  “No, you weren’t. You were making sporadic money at best, and you were always heavily discounting your rates so that people could afford you. This is a steady paycheck. We need that. Thad needs that.”

  “Oh, about Thad. Sweetie, we need to find a different after-school program for him. I got a call today that he can’t stay at the one in Fairfield.”

  “What? Why not? They didn’t say anything to me when I picked him up.”

  “That’s because they prefer to give bad news on the phone.” She scoffed. “They said he could stay through the day, but that he wasn’t a ‘good fit.’” This kind of stuff happened more often than not, and no amount of explaining that Thad had a mild form of autism ever seemed to make anyone more understanding.

  “Oh, geez. What do you think he did?”

  “They said that he’s been uncooperative and resisting punishment.”

  “What kid wouldn’t?”

  “Right?” She rolled her eyes. “But I guess he was throwing stuff at the teacher and she couldn’t do anything with him.” She sighed. “I could handle this, I really could, if my boss didn’t hate me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “I’m telling you, she does.”

  “Did she tell you she hated you?”

  “No, but she interrupted me and she wouldn’t pick any of my cases. And then she gave me an assignment—which obviously was something beneath me, something for a secretary to do—and then when I didn’t have it done in two minutes, she was in my office asking where it was. I don’t know what I did to get on her bad side.”

  “You said she was never easy to work with in the court room.”

  Frankie sighed. “I know, I know. Maybe I should quit. Maybe I should open up my old practice again.”

  “Geez, Frank, it’s your second day. Give it some time, maybe?”

  She was quiet.

  “So… you going to pitch her a different case tomorrow?”

  “No, we’ve already got a case,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “Do you remember the case about twenty-five years back where that girl and her boyfriend killed her parents?”

  He thought about it. “The father was a doctor at the college?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Wait, they’re innocent?”

  “I’m not sure, but maybe.”

  “Well, see, there you go. This is what you wanted to do, Frankie. Get innocent people their lives back. You can’t quit now.”

  She smiled wanly. “I guess not. What are you cooking?”

  “Coconut curry.”

  “Oh, that sounds wonderful.”

  “You gonna set the table?”

  She smiled. “Of course.”

  * * *

  It was nearly 9:00 in the evening by the time Iain got back to his apartment, and he wasn’t pleased to find the door unlocked. Shit.

  “Harley?” he yelled, coming inside and shutting the door behind him. Why the hell had he given that woman a key to his apartment? She’d wormed it out of him, just like everything else. Why was it so hard to resist her?

  “Iain, where the hell have you been?” came her voice.

  She was in the kitchen. He took off his suit jacket as he walked down the hallway. His kitchen opened onto a small dining room. He had a little table there, flanked by two chairs. A chandelier hung over the table. The light fixture had come with the apartment. He draped his jacket over the back of one of the chairs and loosened his tie.

  Harley was sitting on the counter in his kitchen. The cabinet next to her was open and she was taking canned goods out of it and putting them in an Amazon Prime cardboard box. She was wearing skintight jeans and a flannel shirt. Her eye makeup was smudged. She always wore too much eye makeup. Jet black eyeliner that didn’t match her hair or her eyebrows. It was always smudged, and it made her look trashy.

  Iain kind of liked that, though. “What are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said, smiling at him. “Should I have called first?”

  He let out a sigh. “Why are you going through my cabinets?”

  “Well, did I tell you about what happened at Starbucks?”

  “Harley.” He folded his arms over his chest.

  She hopped down off the counter and sashayed over to him. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Iain. It’s been too long.”

  “Stop,” he said. He should back away from her. But he didn’t.

  She pressed herself close. She reached up for his tie and tugged at the loosened knot, pulling his face down to meet hers. She kissed him.

  He shut his eyes. He liked kissing her. She always made the first move, and that made things easier for him. Most women were hard to figure out. Harley wasn’t. He liked how straightforward she was.

  She pulled away, but she kept her hands on his tie. She began to untie it. “So, anyway, I got the flu real bad. I was throwing up for days. And I called the manager at Starbucks on like the second day. I would have called the first day, but I was sick as a dog, and I couldn’t even get out of bed. Well, I mean, except to go the toilet and throw up. Even though there was nothing in my stomach.”

  He made a face. “Spare me the gory details. Why were you calling Starbucks?”

  “Oh, I had a job there.” She finished untying his tie and pulled it off him. She tossed it on the table and smiled at him.

  Okay, he had a pretty good idea of where this was going. “You lost your job and you need money, and that’s why you’re
here.”

  “I am not asking for money.” She unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.

  He pushed her hands away. “Harley, listen—”

  “I thought I’d just take some food is all.” She put her hands back and unbuttoned the next button down.

  He seized her wrists. “How much?”

  “It’s not about money, Iain. I have enough for my bills, just not enough for groceries.”

  He sighed. “How much?”

  “Stop it,” she whined and wriggled away from him, pulling her hands out of his grasp. She went back over to the counter and began hunting through the cabinet for more cans. “I’m not here for money. It’s not like that.”

  Iain and Harley had been friends since high school, if you really wanted to call their relationship a friendship. Iain didn’t have a lot of friends, but he had enough experience with the concept to know that friends didn’t constantly take advantage of each other, the way Harley did to him.

  No, okay, that wasn’t entirely fair. Sure, he was always giving Harley things. Money, food, a place to stay, more six packs of beer and bottles of wine than he could count…

  Harley showed up and they slept together. And then he gave her things. He felt uncomfortable about it sometimes. It seemed manipulative, perhaps on both of their parts. And sometimes he was plagued with thoughts that bothered him. He wondered if Harley liked him at all or if she just used him.

  He liked her. She made him crazy, but he liked her more than he’d ever liked a girl. And in the grand scheme of things, she was as close as he’d ever really had to a longterm girlfriend. Not that she was his girlfriend. He couldn’t have actual girlfriends, because they always got annoyed with the amount of time he spent on his job. They wanted him to promise to show up for dates and dinners. They wanted him to make them a priority, and he just… couldn’t. But Harley didn’t care about that at all. She’d show up every now and again, and they’d have an evening together. Sometimes, they’d get drunk and talk late into the night about all kinds of things. Sometimes, he felt closer to her than he felt to anyone on earth.

  But she was always gone in the morning, and she didn’t put any demands on him. No responsibilities. He appreciated that.

  He crossed the room to her.

  She turned to face him.

  He put his hands on the counter, one on either side of her, blocking her in. The counter at her back, his arms on either side, his body in front of her. His voice dropped in pitch. “You have anything planned this evening?”

  Her mouth opened slightly. She looked up at him, a knowing smile playing on her lips. “No plans.”

  He kissed her neck, the hollow under her ear. He knew she liked that.

  She gasped, closing her eyes.

  “Let’s have dinner and, um, catch up,” he murmured. “And then I’ll take you grocery shopping.” He knew that they wouldn’t go to a grocery store. Instead, he’d write her a check or something. But she’d feel better if she didn’t come right out and ask for money and if he pretended he wasn’t going to give it to her. It was easier that way.

  “Okay,” she whispered. Her hands went back to the buttons of his shirt. She unbuttoned the third one, and one of her hands slid inside to glide over his skin.

  He sucked in breath at the sensation.

  She sighed. “God, Iain, I missed you.”

  And then they were kissing again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the morning, when his alarm went off, Iain got out of his bed and his head was pounding. He’d been up too late with Harley. He’d had too much to drink.

  She was gone, of course. He’d fallen asleep tangled up in her bare limbs but woken up alone. And he didn’t mind that at all. Having Harley around in the morning would be nightmarish. It had happened before, once or twice, especially after what had happened with Dale. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the house after that happened. He remembered the way she clung to him, the way she cried.

  Yes, there was definitely something real to their relationship. They had a shared past. He’d done things for her—

  But he didn’t really like thinking about all that, and he didn’t have the time anyway. He wanted to get to work early this morning to get in and talk to Jimmy about those bruises on the Mukherjees’ necks.

  He started coffee and took several aspirin. He got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and guzzled it. He took a hot shower. He fried himself an egg and made some toast. By the time he’d eaten and drunk half his coffee, he felt much better. His apartment was just down the block from the office, so he walked to work in the morning. The walk eradicated the last shreds of his hangover.

  He had to stop in to the CRU to pick up the file he wanted, but that only took a few moments. Then he headed for the police headquarters, which was right next door.

  He found Jimmy in the morgue, where he worked. Jimmy was one of the few people who worked for the Haven Hills Police Department who he felt a real camaraderie with. They only ever talked about work, but Jimmy always seemed as excited and curious about the crime scenes as Iain was himself.

  “I thought you got a different job,” said Jimmy. He was eating a donut. Jimmy was rail thin, but he was always eating. People were amazed that he had such a healthy appetite when he looked at dead bodies all day, but nothing fazed Jimmy. “I thought you were at the CRU.”

  “I am,” said Iain. “I’m looking into a case, actually. I want to show you something.”

  “Oh, what?” Jimmy was eager.

  Iain handed over the crime scene photos. “Do you see it?”

  Jimmy furrowed his brow. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “Under the chin, on the neck.”

  “Humph,” said Jimmy, who had just shoved the rest of his donut in his mouth.

  Iain waited while Jimmy chewed.

  “Weird. It’s on both of them,” said Jimmy.

  “Yeah,” said Iain. “You ever see anything like that before?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “Damn,” said Iain, shaking his head. “I was hoping you could tell me what it was.”

  Jimmy handed the photos back. “Sorry. If anything comes to me, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks,” said Iain. “I appreciate that.”

  * * *

  “This is a tricky case,” Elke was saying. “It’s almost as if we have to prove that someone else did it in order to exonerate Saanvi and Kevin.” She was in the conference room, standing in front of the white board with a marker in her hand. “Hopefully, we’re going to get back the DNA information soon, and we’ll be able to prove that Alan Kelley and Jeremy Squires committed this murder. Hopefully, it’s going to be that easy. But in case it’s not, we need to be prepared with some other theories and ideas of ways to proceed.”

  Frankie, Iain, and Amos were all sitting in front of her. Amos was scribbling notes in a notepad, but the other two were just silently watching her.

  “So,” said Elke, “I think we should make a list of suspects.” She uncapped the marker and turned the board. She wrote Kelley’s and Squires’s name in the upper left hand corner. “There are other suspects as well. We’ve all been through the file.” She turned and wrote Rory Gutierrez on the board. “Just to summarize, Miss Gutierrez worked as a student assistant at the college health clinic where Dr. Mukherjee worked. She was apparently very angry over the failing grade that he’d given her. She was going to be denied credit for her work. At the time, she was looked into because she might have been angry enough to kill. But she had an alibi and was ultimately ruled out.”

  Elke looked out at everyone, eyebrows raised, waiting to see if anyone had anything to add.

  No one said anything.

  She turned back to the board and wrote Zachary Wheeler and Joseph Chapman on the board. “These two are members of some kind of white supremacist group.”

  “They claim they’re just about family values and Christianity,” said Frankie.

>   “Of course they do,” said Elke, rolling her eyes. “Because everyone thinks Jesus is on their side.”

  Amos smirked.

  “They were angry with Dr. Mukherjee because of abortions,” said Elke. “But I have to admit I’m a little fuzzy on all that. Frankie, did you understand?”

  “He was sending college girls to Planned Parenthood,” said Frankie. “And apparently, they wanted him to give them the option of going to some pro-life crisis pregnancy counseling service or something. They said a lot of hateful things. They had a publication at the time, but now they run a podcast. Anyway, in their publication, they called Mukherjee a murderer and they said that he didn’t deserve to live. They said that he should be publicly hung.”

  “But there was no evidence that they did anything violent,” said Iain. “Admittedly, they’re awful people, but they have no violent history.”

  “They also apparently were angry that Dr. Mukherjee had been featured in a magazine about gun ownership,” said Frankie. “Dr. Mukherjee kept a gun for self-defense, and he was featured in the magazine. I guess they thought that only white people should be in the magazine.”

  “Or people who opposed abortion,” said Iain.

  “Do we have any other suspects?” said Elke.

  Everyone was quiet.

  “No?” said Elke. “Well, let’s go back over everything with a fine-toothed comb, then, looking for anything we missed.”

  Iain raised his hand. “I, uh, found something in the crime scene photos. Both of the victims have similar shaped bruises on their necks.”

  Elke considered this. “What do you think that means?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Iain. “But it’s interesting.”

  Elke nodded. “Definitely. Good work, Hudson.” She smiled at him. Then she turned to Amos. “Make copies of the file for all of us if you don’t mind. We’ll spend today going back over it.”

  “Sure thing,” said Amos.

  “You turned in the paperwork to request the DNA testing?” Elke asked him.

  “I sure did,” said Amos.

  “Excellent,” said Elke. “Hopefully we get those results back soon and we’ll find out we did all this work for nothing.” She smiled at them.