At Close Range

by Laura Griffin

  “Trying to get the baby to drop.” Mia pressed her hands against her lower back and sighed. “One of the nurses told me walking helps. That and sex.” She smiled. “But Ric’s not home yet, so . . .” She tugged a phone from the depths of her cleavage and checked it. “You know where he is? I thought he was with you.”

  “No idea. But you should definitely text him. He’ll be home in a flash.”

  “I should.”

  Dani cast a look down the block. She got that nervous feeling again, and she knew Ric wouldn’t like Mia out walking around in the dark.

  Dani started up the sidewalk toward their house, and Mia fell into step beside her.

  “I guess you need to talk to him about work?” Mia asked.

  “It can wait till morning. I just wanted to bounce some ideas off him.”

  “I hear it’s a tough case.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mia shook her head. “I feel for his wife. She’s got to be torn between heart-wrenching grief and wishing she could string him up by his wandering little penis.”

  “Yep.”

  Dani surveyed the house as they neared the porch. Pots brimming with marigolds flanked the steps, and a porch swing swayed gently in the breeze. The place positively glowed with homeyness, as though it somehow knew there was a baby on the way. Dani’s house seemed like a hovel by comparison. She needed to drag out her lawn mower and do a quick pass, but the weekends always seemed to get away from her.

  Mia’s phone dinged as they reached the door. A smile spread over her face as she read the screen. “He’s on his way home and offering to pick up ice cream. I’ll tell him to skip it.”

  “No way. You two chow down. I’ll catch him tomorrow.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Mia opened the door and a waft of chilly air drifted out. She tipped her head back and sighed.

  “Lock your doors. Tell Ric I’ll see him tomorrow.” Dani smiled. “And good luck with that other thing.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Dani was late to her own meeting and bypassed the coffeepot on the way to the conference room as Ric walked into the bull pen.

  “Late night?” Dani asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s Mia?”

  “Climbing the walls.”

  “Listen, I’m glad I caught you.” Dani checked her watch. “You’re taking that gun to Delphi, right? I think we need to put a rush on it. Reynolds will probably approve the expense—”

  “It’s done.”

  She stared at him. “You took it in already?”

  “Last night.”

  “We need to put a rush—”

  “I did.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “How fast can they turn it around? We can offer to pay an expedite fee.”

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Dani. Breathe.”

  “Sorry.” She took a deep breath, blew it out. “I get bossy when I’m nervous.”

  “I know.”

  Of course he knew. They’d been working together since she was a rookie. Which made it all the more unreal that she was now leading him, giving him orders instead of taking them.

  She studied his face, amazed that he seemed so calm. He looked tired, and she doubted he was getting much sleep these days. But he didn’t look frantic, as she did. She’d glanced in the bathroom mirror this morning and been totally caught off guard by the deer-in-the-headlights look reflected back at her.

  “Sorry,” she repeated, then wanted to kick herself. “I just keep thinking . . . there has to be some mistake. That weapon’s not in the firearms database. It hasn’t been through the system. But why else would Scott have handled it?”

  Ric didn’t answer, but his silence was answer enough. The simplest explanation was also the most impossible for Dani to accept.

  Ric knew Scott, but not like she knew Scott. It wasn’t like Ric and Scott went way back. It wasn’t like Ric knew, as she did, that no matter what the evidence said, there was absolutely no way Scott had committed this crime.

  She could feel the advice coming. “What is it?”

  “I know this is your first time leading up a case like this, but you’ve got to be objective, Dani.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes.”

  Ric studied her. All along, he’d sensed her loyalty to Scott. She’d never said anything about her feelings, but Ric had known them anyway because he was a good detective.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said, pushing open the door of the conference room.

  Dani stepped into the room and tried to step into her confident persona. She could do this. She was doing this. She was heading up her first major investigation, and they were making progress. They actually had a suspect list neatly printed on the large whiteboard.

  She averted her gaze from Scott’s name at the top of the list as she took the seat at the head of the table and looked over her team. “Where’s Jasper? He’s supposed to be with us full-time.”

  “Reynolds sent him to cover a motor vehicle accident on Route 12,” Sean said.

  “Since when does a motor vehicle accident trump a homicide investigation?”

  “The driver is Yvonne Greene,” Sean told her.

  “Who?”

  “Some rich doctor’s wife. She’s a loose cannon. We’ve had her in twice on DUIs. She swerved around a work crew this morning and crashed her Mercedes into a tree, and now she’s threatening to sue everyone out there.”

  Dani flipped open her notepad. “Okay, well, someone update Jasper when he gets in. Meanwhile, I assume everyone read the ME’s report? No sign of sexual assault, no foreign DNA under the fingernails—of either victim. And, based on the bullet wounds, the pathologist concluded James was shot first in the chest at point-blank range, then in the groin.”

  The men winced.

  “Sean, let’s start with you.” Dani made direct eye contact with the detective as he folded his arms over his chest and watched her. Sean was strong and athletically built. He was a nice-looking man and could be charming when he wanted to. He could also be a pain in the ass. Like now, for example. Sean was older than Dani, and she knew he resented that she’d been tapped for this job instead of him.

  “Where are we on the purse and the phones?” she asked.

  “Still no sign. We did a thorough canvass of the area, and I even checked with pawnshops. Those two iPhones haven’t turned up anywhere. Ditto the victim’s purse and the two wallets. I checked with the banks and credit card companies, and no movement on any of the accounts.”

  “And the phone carrier?”

  “No outgoing calls since the night of the murder.” He opened a file. “Last one from James was a call to his wife’s cell phone about five o’clock. Last one from Tessa was a call to James about eight fifteen.”

  “Probably when they made plans to meet,” Ric said.

  The door opened, and Reynolds walked into the room.

  Dani bit the inside of her mouth and tried not to lose focus. “Okay, so . . . although the phones and wallets are missing, it doesn’t look like a robbery. It has the hallmarks of a crime of passion, especially when you consider the nature of the attacks. James Ayers had been shot in the chest, so the shot to the groin is just malicious.”

  “I’d say being shot in the chest is pretty malicious, too,” Sean commented.

  “You know what I mean. It’s unnecessary.” Dani opened her file to the ME’s report on Tessa. “And the female victim shot twice in the back? The pathologist said the first shot was fatal and the second shot was someone standing directly over her, point-blank range. So, again, that seems like overkill.”

  “Where are we on the wife?” Sean asked. “Maybe she hired Black.”

  Dani tried not to flinch.

  Silence settled over the room, and Sean glanced around. “What, we’re not investigating just because we know the guy?” He shook his head. “This is a
small town. We know everybody.”

  “We are investigating.” Ric gave him a sharp look as he flipped open his notepad. “I looked at the money. The widow, Audrey McCabe Ayers, has two checking accounts—a joint and a separate—and two savings accounts, one with close to a million dollars in it. No large withdrawals, and I went back two years.”

  “A million dollars?” Sean leaned forward. “Where’d she get that kind of money? Her husband’s a bio teacher, right?”

  “Professor of microbiology,” Dani confirmed. “He makes eighty-five grand a year, which is slightly less than he was making at his last job.”

  “Think she has family money,” Ric said. “She mentioned her dad owns a Ford dealership in Corpus.”

  “McCabe Ford?” Sean looked at Dani. “Damn, you better believe she’s loaded. They’ve got, like, three or four dealerships down there. Jeeps, Fords, Chevys.”

  “Let’s get back to Scott Black,” Reynolds said. “Who checked out his alibi?”

  “He doesn’t have one,” Sean said. “The phone dump shows a call placed from his phone at seven sixteen to a friend in Austin, and it pinged off a cell phone tower here in town. Next call was to his cell phone about nine forty-five, which was the Delphi Center calling him to the crime scene. That call pinged off a tower on the outskirts of Austin.”

  “He could have committed the murders, then rushed up there,” Reynolds said. “He had, what, half an hour?”

  “Plenty of time,” Sean said.

  “And he was alone,” Reynolds continued. “And he never made it to the bar to meet his friends, so no one can vouch for his whereabouts.”

  “Let’s go back to the crimes, though.” Ric looked at Dani. “You’re right—this does look like a crime of emotion. Not exactly what you’d expect from a special ops badass hired to do a hit.”

  “Unless he and Tessa were having an affair,” Sean put in. “Then maybe he’d be emotional.”

  Dani clenched her teeth and tried not to react. She looked at Reynolds, who was staring pensively at the whiteboard.

  Damn it, she needed to take control of this meeting. She wanted everyone out working the case, tracking down new leads that were actually going somewhere, not sitting around, speculating.

  “Let’s get back to the facts,” Dani said. “Fact one: James Ayers and his wife moved down here last fall from New Mexico, and his new job came with a pay cut. Fact two: three months ago, his former research assistant made the same move, also taking a pay cut. Fact three: Tessa Lovett and the professor left their workplace Sunday evening and were shot and killed during what looks like a lakeside tryst.”

  “We need to figure out why they left their old jobs and came here for less money,” Ric said. “I’ll check into it.”

  “Right. And we need to figure out what else might be going on in that workplace,” Dani said. “The colleague of theirs I interviewed—Oliver Junger—said people seemed aware of their affair, with the exception of James’s wife. And she lied to me, by the way. She said she’d never met Tessa, but Junger said he once saw them talking together. Maybe there was some other love triangle going on.” She looked at Ric. “You interviewed their supervisor, Kreznik, right? We should look at him.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Ric said. “He told me he was the one who originally hired both of them.”

  “I’ll run background on the guy,” Sean said. “See what I can come up with.”

  “And the other thing—maybe James was having multiple affairs,” Dani said. “Based on the mementos piled up outside his office, looks like he was a popular professor.”

  “I can go by there again,” Ric said. “We can gather up the notes and cards and see if there’s anything that raises a red flag.”

  Dani nodded. “I’ll call up Tessa’s sister in Santa Fe, see if she can shed any light on Tessa’s personal life. If the romance was going south for some reason, the victim might have confided in her sister.” Dani glanced at her watch. “Let’s get going.”

  Everyone started to file out.

  “Hey, Sean, hold up a sec.”

  He stopped to look at her, and she waited until everyone was out of earshot.

  “I know you’re ticked off they made me the lead.”

  He held her gaze, not denying it. “It wasn’t your decision.”

  “I need to know that any hard feelings you have won’t get in the way here. Are you committed to the case?”

  His face tightened. “That’s insulting.”

  “It’s important. This case is a mess, and I don’t need any added problems to deal with. I can’t afford to screw this up.”

  “Then don’t.” He walked out, leaving her alone in the empty conference room.

  She took another look at the whiteboard, where the timeline of the murders had been neatly mapped out and Scott’s name topped the suspect list.

  “Dani?”

  She turned around to see Christine standing in the doorway with flushed cheeks, as though she’d just run up a flight of stairs.

  “I got that report you wanted from the bank. Scott Black’s credit card activity?” She held out some stapled paperwork. “There’s an ATM withdrawal.”

  Dani skimmed the list until she spotted it. She glanced up. “Did you check with the bank?”

  “Went by there personally. They’ve got it on tape.”

  Dani stared down at the report. “That son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Brooke studied the smooth black pieces under the ultraviolet flashlight, looking for anything she’d missed. Granules of fingerprint dust shimmered pink under her beam.

  The door swung open and a wedge of light fell over her table.

  “Hey, close the door, would you?”

  “We have a visitor,” Roland said.

  Brooke shoved her goggles to the top of her head and looked over her shoulder. She’d expected Ric Santos to show up this morning, but the man who followed Roland into the lab wasn’t someone she knew. Brooke plucked the earbuds from her ears as he neared her table.

  Wide shoulders, strong build. He had a look of confidence, and she didn’t need to see the badge clipped at his waist to know he was a cop.

  “You must be Sean Byrne,” she said.

  “That’s me.” He smiled. “Guess you got my message earlier?”

  “I told Ric I’d call him when I was finished.”

  “Thought I’d drop by to see if we could get an update.” He stopped beside her and gazed down at the dismantled gun scattered across the parchment paper.

  “I’ve made some preliminary findings, but I still need to go through it all again.”

  “What have you got so far?”

  Brooke switched on the overhead light and shot a look at Roland, giving him the unspoken Thanks a lot for bringing this guy back here. Detectives were notoriously persistent—at least the good ones were—and they always tried to rush her.

  She looked at Sean Byrne and slid off her stool, putting a bit of space between them as she swiftly reassembled the weapon. “Six good prints,” she told him, placing the Glock on the center of the paper. “Three on the grip, three on the slide.”

  The corner of his mouth curved up with a smile. “You’re quick at that. You shoot?”

  “God, no.”

  He leaned a hand on her table. “Why not?”

  Why didn’t she shoot? Because she spent a huge chunk of her time dealing with the aftermath of people who did. But that was getting a little personal with a man she’d met ten seconds ago.

  “Not really my thing,” she said.

  She pivoted to her computer and pulled up a digital image of the full fingerprint card for Scott Black. His prints, like those of all Delphi Center employees, as well as police officers and others involved in the criminal justice system, were in the database. Brooke tugged off her gloves and maneuvered the mouse, overlaying the digitized images of the prints she’d recovered from the gun with the prints from the database.

  “The friction ridge details
on all six prints are consistent. In other words, my findings corroborate those of your CSI. The prints belong to Scott Black.”

  Sean stared at the screen. Besides a slight tightening of his jaw, his face gave nothing away.

  Was he buddies with Scott or not? Law enforcement was a tight community, but the people at Delphi weren’t LEOs in the traditional sense. They were scientists. And the lab was enormous. Brooke had worked here for years and still hadn’t met everyone—including the ballistics tracer whose fingerprints were on her computer screen right now.

  Of course, she knew his name and she’d caught a glimpse of him in the coffee shop a time or two. There wasn’t a woman at Delphi who hadn’t noticed Scott Black.

  “We sure this is the gun?” Sean looked at her.

  “From a ballistics perspective, no. The tests haven’t been run yet. And I hear you have a spent bullet from the crime scene? But since that bullet was recovered by someone who now happens to be a suspect—”

  “It’s worthless as evidence,” Sean finished for her.

  Brooke leaned against the table and looked at him, and she saw that his eyes were a warm hazel. Superlong eyelashes, too, which she didn’t really want to think about, because this guy was everything she didn’t like about detectives—pushy, arrogant, and overconfident. But he was undeniably attractive, which was just her luck, because she was taking a break from men.

  “You’re right about that. But I can tell you with certainty that this is your gun.” She adjusted the overhead lamp. “See the muzzle here?” She picked up a pencil and pointed to a tiny speck of brown, almost invisible to the naked eye.

  “What’s that, blood?” Sean eased closer to look.

  “Yes, due to blowback. When the bullet leaves the barrel, air races to fill the space, creating a vacuum that can pull tiny bits of material, such as blood, back to the gun. One of our DNA tracers swabbed this and ran it against a sample we have from the ME. It belongs to the male victim.”

  “He was shot at close range.”

  “I heard.”

  She gazed up at the detective, frustrated that she still couldn’t read his expression. Was he happy about this news or not? On the good side, he had a suspect whose prints were all over what was clearly the murder weapon.