by Diane Capri
He nodded. “We tried to drive off, but the accident caused the fuel switch to cut off. We couldn’t move.”
“Your wife was with you in the rear seat, directly behind the driver.”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“And your driver was shot.”
He nodded. “I was hit twice myself.”
“The police retrieved nineteen bullets from your car.” She paused. “And your driver was killed. Shot in the head at point-blank range.”
“Yes.” He looked down briefly and blinked as if the facts were still hard to bear. He cleared his throat. “Karen was injured, too. A flesh wound, I was told when I woke up in the hospital. But she lost some blood. Police found it in the car. After the gangbangers took her.”
“The Devil Kings. Right.” She nodded, watching him carefully. “What about the calls? The ones made to the leader of The Devil Kings? They say the calls came from your cell phone.”
“Some gangbanger named Hades. I’d only vaguely heard of him at the time.”
“He and his gang have been terrorizing people across Arizona and New Mexico for the past decade.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s not believable that you’d never heard of him, is it?”
He raised his head and glared at her. “I was a heart surgeon. It’s a hard job. When I got home, I was exhausted. I’d crash and sleep until my next shift.” His tone was edgy, defensive.
Jess chewed the inside of her lip. “Cell phone calls are automatically logged on computers. You know that.”
“Yeah, when the calls are made or received. Which means you’ve got to have the number to call in the first place.”
“Which you did.”
He slapped the table and yelled. “How do you think I could get the number of a burner cell phone for some gangbanger I’d never heard of?”
“You tell me.” Jess didn’t flinch. He was already in prison. She could walk out anytime. He needed her, not the other way around.
“Sorry. It’s frustrating.” He sighed and laced his fingers behind his neck. “I’m sitting here. They say I hired this Hades to kidnap and kill my wife, and caused the death of a good man in the process.” He slammed his open hand on the table and shouted, “All of this is nonsense!” Slam! “There seems to be nothing I can say that makes a difference to anyone!” Slam!
He stopped talking, but his eyes were wild. For the first time, she wondered if Warner was unhinged. If he’d behaved like this at the trial, no wonder the jury had believed he was capable of the violence with which he’d been charged.
“Your computer was used to search references to Hades,” she said. “Seems like you did know who he was.”
“I told the detectives.” He shook his head, and his voice was calmer, almost robotic. “I have no idea how that stuff got there. I never did those searches.”
“What about the searches for untraceable methods to kill human beings?”
“Well, sure. Of course. I’m a doctor. So I looked up how to kill people by shooting them with a gun several times in the chest.” He practically snarled with sarcasm.
Jess cocked her head. She didn’t know quite what to make of him. The anger made sense. If he was innocent, which was highly unlikely from everything she knew about the case, of course he’d be angry. On the other hand, he might simply be angry because he’d been caught. She’d seen it go both ways.
“Damn it.” His face reddened, but his tone remained calm. “I could walk into the hospital pharmacy at any time, and choose any drug I wanted, and never get caught. Why the hell would I need to research murder methods?”
She waited for him to elaborate. She was pretty good at spotting liars, and she watched for the signs.
“You have to believe me.” He leaned forward. Slowly, earnestly, enunciating each word. “I did not, I repeat, not have my wife kidnapped, or killed. Or anything else.”
Jess watched his face and hands. He seemed sincere enough, but sociopaths always came across authentically when they wanted to. “The jury didn’t believe you. Why should I?”
“Think about it.” He inhaled deeply and steadied his delivery. “Let’s say I wasn’t all that thrilled with my wife and wanted to get rid of her. Which isn’t true, by the way. Have you never heard of divorce? When one wants to stop being married these days, it’s really not that hard to accomplish.”
He ran splayed fingers through his thick, red hair. He stood and paced the room. “You think I’d have hired the kind of guy who killed our driver? One of the most decent men I’ve ever known? A man with a wife and two kids? What did I have against him, huh? And then I do the whole thing so damn stupidly that I’d get myself caught? Just how dumb do you think a Harvard-trained heart surgeon is these days?”
Jess cocked her head. His arguments were logical. Which was not the same thing as being true. “Hades has a string of crimes on his rap sheet, but there are two cases of kidnap for ransom that he might have been involved in. If he was the kidnapper in those two cases, he did it for the money. He killed the victims after he collected the ransom. You never paid a ransom for your wife, did you?”
“I tried to pay. The police botched the handoff. They claimed no one appeared at the meeting point. And Karen had money of her own. Maybe he took hers. We’ve never found any of it.”
He threw his hands in the air. “This is my wife for God’s sake. I loved her. Do you get that? She was beautiful. Accomplished. I was the envy of everyone I knew. Why would I kill her? Her body has never been found. So she could be alive, and what are any of you doing to find Karen? Huh?”
Jess wouldn’t be led off topic. “What about those phone calls?”
Warner stared at her a moment before he sank back into his chair. His voice was weary now. “All those phone calls with Hades. They were made late at night.”
Jess nodded. “Meaning what?”
“I told you. I work long days. I’m tired when I get home. I need sleep. I don’t get up in the middle of the night to make phone calls to some guy I don’t even know.”
“Can you prove you were sleeping when those phone calls were made?”
“We can’t exactly ask my wife, can we?” He blew another long puff.
Jess shrugged. “Where do you keep your cell phone at night?”
“The question should be where did I keep my cell phone. Because I don’t have the phone anymore. Or my house.” He sighed and seemed to give up the fight. “It was in the kitchen. On the counter. We had chargers there.”
She frowned. “You didn’t get emergency calls at night?”
“I had a work phone for emergency calls. Kept it by the bed. There was a charger built into my alarm clock.”
“The calls to Hades were made on your personal cell phone.”
“Exactly. And think about that. Everybody who’s ever picked up a newspaper knows what you said. Those cell phone calls are logged, maybe even by national security agencies. So, who makes repeated, traceable calls to a murderer on their personal cell phone? Even people who hate me can’t think I’m that stupid.”
Jess watched him. He wasn’t stupid, but maybe he was arrogant enough to think he’d never be suspected in the first place. Enough to be reckless, too.
“What about the surveillance photos? You, Hades, and his gang. Shreds your argument that you didn’t know the man, don’t you think?”
“You must know I testified about that, too.” He hung his head again. His tone was weary now. “I didn’t know who they were. They stopped me under a bridge. I was driving home. There’s an underpass. They raced past me on motorbikes and blocked the road. I had to stop or run them down.”
Jess raised her eyebrows.
He cocked his head. “Oh, come on. What would you have done?”
“The pictures show you outside the car, walking with Hades.”
“The bikers had guns pointed at me. You can’t see them in the pictures, but they were there.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Mainly that they would kill
me if I didn’t do what they wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Walk around under the bridge for five minutes.”
Jess raised her eyebrows again.
“Really. That was it.” He waved his hand at the door and the world beyond. “I told everyone that.”
“But you didn’t report the incident at the time, did you?”
“Report what? Nothing really happened. I didn’t know who he was. A bunch of bikers made me walk around at gunpoint. I thought they were going to kill me. So, when they let me leave, all I wanted to do was go home and forget about it. And honestly, at the time, it was embarrassing. Nothing happened. I just felt like a fool.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
“I told my wife.”
“And what did she say?”
“That I should report it.”
“And yet, you still didn’t report anything.”
“My wife was a worrier. I told her, leaving the situation alone was for the best. Reporting guys like that gives them a grudge against you and makes matters worse. Once I explained that to her, she agreed.”
“What about the thumbprint?” She’d saved this question because it was perhaps the most damning piece of evidence presented at the trial.
Warner blanched. He bowed his head. A few moments later, he cleared his throat and looked directly into Jess’s unwavering gaze. “Thumbprints can be faked, too.”
Jess shook her head. “All the calls made to Hades were done by unlocking your phone with the PIN code. Something that could have been done by someone else. Except for one call. Just once, you unlocked your phone with your thumbprint, and called him.”
“I never called him.”
“It was a ten-minute call, the night after your meeting at the underpass. Your phone kept perfect records. When it was unlocked, and how. There’s no mistake.”
He shook his head. “That never happened. I never called Hades. Ever. Not from any phone.”
“The prosecution didn’t see it that way. They argued you just made a simple mistake. A mistake that proved you were the caller. The jury must have believed you made the calls.”
“The whole world can think what they want, but I never called him.” Warner folded his hands together and leaned both forearms on the table between them. When she didn’t ask another question for a while, he posed his own. “So, what are you doing to find Karen?”
“I’m not looking for Karen.”
Warner’s face fell. His mouth hung open. “You said—”
“I’m looking for her sister. Melissa. She’s disappeared,” Jess said. “Same as your wife.”
His red-faced anger resurfaced. “Well, obviously I had nothing to do with that! I’m in prison!”
“I find it remarkable that your wife disappears, then—”
“Kidnapped. My wife was kidnapped.”
“Her sister has disappeared.”
“She’s been kidnapped?”
“All we know is that she has been missing for several days.”
“Missing?” He snorted and stood up. “You’re just looking to sell magazines. You’re all alike.”
“It’s an amazing coincidence,” Jess said.
“So what?” He sighed and slumped down into his chair. “Has there been a ransom note?”
“Not so far.”
“Then why do you think it’s got anything to do with Karen? Or me?”
“Help me find Melissa, and we’ll ask her what she knows.”
“Nothing much I can say. Karen and Melissa didn’t get along. She didn’t even come to our wedding.” He snorted and shook his head. “Came to the trial, though. Crept in wrapped in a headscarf and thick makeup, but I saw her.”
“When was the last time you saw Melissa before Karen was kidnapped?”
He shrugged. “She never wanted to see anyone. A loner. Probably something from her childhood.”
Jess leaned forward. “Like what?”
Warner mimicked drinking as if he held a booze glass in his hand. “Karen and Melissa’s parents were alcoholics. Wild parties. Died in a car wreck. He was driving drunk and wrapped the car around a tree at ninety miles an hour. Girls were left to fend for themselves. Karen turned out okay, but I think Melissa was emotionally damaged. She’s a drinker, too, Karen said. Shame really.”
“When was the last time the sisters got together?”
He shook his head. “Never that I know about.” He waved his hand. “We might have received a Christmas card sometime, but that was the extent of their relationship.”
“Doesn’t that seem a bit odd to you?”
“Look, they weren’t close. Didn’t I say that already? I invited Melissa for the holidays once. Karen damn near bit my head off. Thankfully she didn’t turn up. I don’t want to sound uncaring, but I was glad Melissa stayed away. Even the mention of her name put Karen in a bad mood. Might have been some sibling rivalry thing, but I never dug into it.”
“Has Melissa ever gone missing before?”
He shrugged. “We’d be the last people to know.”
Jess closed her pad, pushed her chair back, and stood up.
Warner leaned forward. “I don’t belong here, Jess. It was a clever setup, or an understandable mistake. Either way, I’m innocent, and I pray every day that Karen is alive and she’ll be found. Can’t you look for her? It would make a great story for your magazine. I’d give you an exclusive. Karen would, too.”
Jess gave a flat smile.
He put his hands on the table. “Will you help me? Please?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m looking at your case.”
“My defense team, the prosecutors, the other reporters. They all looked at my case. We see how that turned out. You’ve got to find out the truth. I’m sorry about Melissa, I really am. But…”
Jess pinched her lips together and kneaded them with her fingers. The guilty verdict made sense to her based on the evidence. Warner had told her nothing new.
The police investigation was solid. The prosecutor presented his best evidence. Excellent lawyers defended Warner. And the jury decided.
But no motive. And no body. Was Jess sure Donald Warner was a cold-hearted killer?
And even if he did kill his wife, how would he have arranged Melissa’s disappearance and the destruction of her house from behind these thick concrete walls?
“If I find out anything,” she nodded once, “I’ll be in touch.”
She turned and left the room while he was still at the table, hands folded in front of him as if he might begin to pray.
The interview had produced no solid answers, and now she was mired in the case. At least until Melissa Green was found.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monday, May 22
Santa Irene, Arizona
Jess sat in the Mustang and dictated her notes while the interview was fresh in her mind.
It was almost completely dark by the time she finished. She flipped on her headlights and started the Mustang. She drove out of the prison, through the air locks, past the guards and the rings of razor wire, and out onto the main road. She turned toward Santa Irene and settled into a sixty-mile-an-hour cruise along the two-lane highway, the Mustang’s engine barely struggling.
Warner hadn’t been what she had expected. His concern for his wife seemed sincere. His protests hadn’t once slipped or revealed she was dead. He acted as if he believed they were a couple, even now.
The best liars never gave up the con game. Maybe that was his secret, too.
The evidence against Warner was overwhelming enough, and the jury had found him guilty. Still, the verdict could have gone the other way. Most of what Warner said was true or could have been. Internet searches could have been done by anyone with access to his computer. The phone calls could have been made by anyone with the PIN to unlock his phone. The thumbprint call was problematic, but anyone clever enough to pull off such a charade could have figured out how to fake his thumbprint, too. There were lots o
f ways it could have been done. He had paid the ransom and, as he said, the drop failed. The kidnappers escaped.
Warner’s discussion with Hades under the bridge was harder to explain away. It could have been that Warner wanted to talk to Hades, and thought he was out of sight. That’s what the prosecutor had argued at the trial. But Warner claimed Hades forced him, which the jury didn’t believe.
The most perplexing question about the whole Karen Warner case was the missing motive. The motive was never an element of the crime that the prosecutor had to prove, but without motive, nothing made sense, and it was hard to get a jury to convict.
Both Donald and Karen Warner had been wealthy. Like he said, they could have divorced without any hardship. They could have been living happy lives at opposite ends of the country right now. Warner was right. He had no obvious motive to kill his wife.
It was full dark by the time Jess reached the outskirts of the town of Bear Hill. A few commercial buildings popped into view, and the traffic slowed.
She passed a gun store and doubled back. After she showed her concealed carry permit and ID, the owner was cooperative. She completed the paperwork, and he was prepared to receive her Glock from Morris.
She was booked at the optimistically named Bear Hill Hotel. A franchise geared toward traveling salesmen, not designed for a lengthy stay. Sterile, everything geared for economy. She lugged her bags to her room on the second floor. It was clean and spacious enough, with a large bathroom. She stripped and stuffed all her smoke-saturated clothes into a laundry bag and stuck them out in the corridor. She eagerly washed off the day’s grime and the smell of fire that clung to her entire body. She towel-dried her hair and dressed in pajamas before calling Morris.
“Jess,” he said, his voice upbeat.
“I’ve got an address for you to ship my gun,” she said.
He laughed. “No, Hi Henry?”
“Well, I—”
“No, hope you’re doing okay? Or, good to hear your voice?”
