Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery)

by Dashofy, Annette

  The house smelled remarkably clean for a bachelor pad. The only illumination came from the streetlight outside. She made out the forms of a sofa, coffee table, and chairs, but waited for her eyes to get used to the dark. “Allison,” she called.

  No reply.

  “Matt?”

  The swish of tires on pavement broke the silence. Was Matt coming home? Zoe watched at the door, but the approaching car failed to slow and passed by on the road below.

  Within a few moments of standing in the silent living room, Zoe became accustomed to the low light. Details of the room grew more evident. A television sat in one corner. A laptop occupied a desk against the back wall.

  The laptop that held Allison’s correspondence and photos?

  Zoe resisted the urge to smash it. “Hello?” she called. “Is anyone home?”

  She wandered toward the kitchen in the back of the house. The cabinets and countertops looked unchanged, but the table and chairs were different. Her hand went to the light switch she knew was on the wall, and she flipped it, flooding the room with light.

  While the house smelled clean, the kitchen didn’t appear to have been on the maid’s list. The soles of Zoe’s boots stuck to the greasy floor and the counter felt tacky. Wincing, she wiped her fingers on her coat. She turned and inspected the room, unsure of what she was looking for. Evidence that Allison had been there? Or maybe Logan?

  Almost a dozen pill bottles perched like soldiers on the kitchen table. Zoe picked one up and read the label. Vicodin. The prescription was in Matt’s name. Probably for the broken leg. But, no. It was dated weeks earlier. She checked a second one. Oxycontin. Dated two weeks ago and almost empty. The others were for more of the same or similar painkillers. All in Matt’s name, all prescriptions written from several different doctors and filled at a half a dozen different pharmacies.

  Damn Matt. She’d believed he’d long ago kicked the addiction that began with that blown knee in the high school championship game. The one that had destroyed his basketball career and put an end to his athletic scholarship. When had he started the pain meds again? Or had he ever really been clean?

  Then she spotted it. Amidst the prescription bottles on the kitchen table lay a familiar key ring advertising Figley’s Feed Store and a brass house key. Her key. She grabbed it, clutching it hard as though it might try to escape. What the hell?

  Pieces fell into place in Zoe’s mind. Matt was behind the computer theft. He knew those photos were on it. The break in at her house? It wasn’t McBirney at all. It was Matt. He knew she kept a spare key on the doorframe and took it. When she interrupted him, he fled and came back later. But Mrs. Kroll interrupted him.

  That perverted bastard.

  She stared at the key. And the drugs. Damn. It was all evidence. Or would have been if she hadn’t touched everything. Well, she wasn’t going to leave her key here for him to try again. Not when she hadn’t changed the locks yet. She stuffed it in her jeans pocket.

  Should she search the rest of the house? No. Better to get the hell out of there before Matt returned. There had been many times in her life when she’d wanted to kill him, but never as strongly as right now.

  She flipped off the light switch and crossed to the front door. Unlike Matt, she remembered to return his key to its rightful spot above the door.

  Stars blinked in the clear sky above, promising a bitter cold night. Already, ice had skimmed over those damp spots. Zoe clutched the railing and picked her way down the steps to avoid a quick ski run without the skis. At the bottom, she fumbled in her pocket for the truck key.

  Something shiny in the snow next to the sidewalk caught her eye. The overhead spotlight reflected off a chunk of glistening ice between the shrubs. Or was it? Zoe squatted down for a closer look. Ice? Or a fragment of glass?

  No. Not a fragment, but a lens. An eyeglass lens.

  A bass drum could not have made as much noise as the pounding of her heart. She reached for the lens. But stopped. She’d already contaminated the evidence in the kitchen. Not again.

  Shaking fingers located her cell phone. Somehow, she steadied them enough to punch in Pete’s number.

  Pete found Baronick where he’d left him in front of the hospital. He demanded and received a large evidence bag into which he stuffed the folded up coat. As he marked the tag, he explained to the detective what it was.

  “I’ll have Grace take a look at it,” Baronick said. “Good work.”

  Pete glared at him over his reading glasses.

  “Where are you headed now?” Baronick said.

  Pete double-checked the information he’d written. “Back to Vance Township.” No sense mentioning the detour he intended to take along the way. He handed the bag and the pen to Baronick, who added his signature to the chain of evidence.

  “I’ll let you know when we locate the Bassi kids,” the detective called after Pete, who waved an acknowledgment.

  He didn’t know where the girl was, but Logan was waiting for him at a pizza joint a half-dozen blocks away.

  Those six blocks happened to be through one of the worst neighborhoods Brunswick had to offer. Once-grand Victorian houses, now reduced to derelict fire hazards with broken windows and boarded-up doors, lined the streets along with abandoned storefronts and weedy vacant lots. Sylvia would have had a stroke if she’d known her grandson had trod these sidewalks. But Russo’s Pizza sat on a corner of Main Street where the transition from slum to university campus began. Logan blended in with the college kids hanging out on a Saturday evening.

  Pete slid into the booth where Logan nursed a cola and a slab of cold pizza. The kid’s eyes were rimmed in red and underlined with dark circles. His knuckles were bruised and swollen.

  “You look like hell,” Pete told him.

  Logan made a feeble effort at a smile, but failed. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Of course I’d come. Where have you been these last two nights?”

  “I spent one night in the high school. I slipped in during a JV basketball game and hid in one of the bathrooms until everyone was gone. Then I drove here. But I kept seeing cops and security guards everywhere I went. I ended up at the hospital. Pretended I was visiting some sick dude. Swiped some food off a tray that someone didn’t want. Slept in the trauma unit’s waiting room with a bunch of other people. No one says anything when they think you’ve got family being treated.”

  Pete had to admit, it was pretty damned ingenious. Better than the mall, which cleared out at closing time. “Your sister was at the hospital earlier, and now she’s missing. What do you know about that?”

  Logan took a long swig from his cola. “I saw her.”

  “Where is she now?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Honest. I don’t. She got really pissed at me and took off.”

  “Why is she pissed at you?”

  The boy squirmed in his seat. “I told her I wanted to turn myself in. She didn’t want me to.”

  A waitress interrupted them and asked if Pete wanted anything. From the frown on her face, he gathered Logan’s cola and cold pizza weren’t adequate rental for the space they occupied. He ordered coffee and a whole pepperoni pizza to go.

  After she left, Pete leaned forward. “You mentioned turning yourself in on the phone. What exactly is it you’re turning yourself in for, son?”

  Logan blinked and a stream of tears rolled down his cheeks. He swiped them away with the sleeve of his shirt and gingerly rubbed his inflamed knuckles. “It was me. I killed Mr. McBirney.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Pete leaned back in the red vinyl bench seat and watched the kid fight to blink away tears. Some confessions came hard. Some came easy. Some, like this, came too easy. But as he watched Logan Bassi pull himself together, Pete’s gut told him the boy wasn’t lying.

  Damn it.
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  “You know I have to take you in,” he said.

  Logan gave a quick nod that was punctuated by Pete’s cell phone ringing.

  He expected to see Sylvia’s name on the caller ID, but the screen displayed ZOE instead.

  “I can’t talk right now,” he said by way of a greeting.

  “I found something.” Zoe sounded breathless, panicked.

  “What?”

  “An eyeglass lens. I think it’s Ted’s.” The phone beeped and Zoe swore under her breath. “My battery’s almost dead.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Matt Doaks’ house. Outside. A bunch of prescription painkillers and my missing house key was on his kitchen table.”

  Her words tumbled into and over each other in his head. “Matt Doaks?”

  Logan slammed both palms down on the table. “Who is that?” he demanded.

  “Is that Logan?” Zoe said.

  “Both of you, shut up,” Pete snapped. “Yes, it’s Logan.”

  While Zoe was thanking God in Pete’s ear, Logan appeared on the verge of climbing over the table. “Who is that?” he repeated.

  “It’s Zoe.”

  “Did she find the pictures on the computer?” Logan said.

  “Yes,” Zoe shouted.

  What the hell was this? A conference call?

  Her phone beeped again.

  “What pictures?” Pete said.

  Logan opened his mouth to answer, but Pete held up a finger to silence him.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, so shut up.” The kid was a minor. And Sylvia’s grandson. Pete wasn’t about to step over—or even anywhere near—the line on this one. “Zoe? What pictures?”

  She proceeded to tell him about the e-mails and the attached photos she’d stumbled across after he’d left with Sylvia. That son-of-a-bitch Doaks.

  “So I came over here to—I’m not sure exactly what. Beat the crap out of him, I suppose. But he’s not here. I let myself in—”

  “You what?” Pete said. “Zoe.”

  The waitress appeared and set a cup of coffee in front of Pete.

  “I used to live here. I know I shouldn’t have, but it didn’t feel like breaking in. I knew he hid a key the same way I do.”

  “That goes both ways. He knew where to find yours, too.”

  “Right. Only I put his key back where I found it. He kept mine. Anyhow, when I was leaving, I spotted something shiny in the snow next to the sidewalk at the base of his steps. It’s an eyeglass lens. I haven’t touched it.”

  “And you say Doaks isn’t there?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay. I’ll get someone over there right now. You get out of there before Doaks shows up.”

  “I’ll wait until the cops get here,” she said.

  Damn Zoe. “Don’t argue with me.”

  “If I spotted this thing, Matt might, too—” The phone beeped again, followed by silence.

  “Zoe,” Pete shouted into the phone. “Zoe?” He let out a growl. Who the hell was on duty? Saturday. That would be Nate Williamson, one of the part-timers. He punched in the number.

  “She found the pictures?” Logan asked.

  Pete glared at him without answering. When Nate picked up, he ordered him to Doaks’ house. “Run every red light, break every speed limit, but get there now,” he told the officer.

  Pete picked up the cup of coffee and took a long sip. What he really needed was bourbon, but caffeine would have to do. Many questions plagued him at the moment, but one nagged at him more than the rest. “I have to ask you. These pictures were of your sister and Doaks, right?”

  Logan lowered his head. “Yeah.”

  “So why did you kill McBirney?”

  He shifted in his seat and chewed his lip. “Because he was raping my sister.”

  Zoe plugged the cell phone charger into her truck while she sat shivering and waiting for the cops. She prayed that Matt wouldn’t show up before they did. What would she do then? Could she put on a sufficient act to keep him distracted? Pretend she was flirting with him? The idea nauseated her. When the Vance Township police cruiser rolled up next to her, she released the breath she’d been holding for what felt like hours.

  A gust of wind caught her full in the face as she stepped out of the Chevy. She pulled up her hood, holding it tight to her ears. Officer Nate Williamson, who was big enough to have played linebacker for the pros in his younger days, approached her.

  “Whatcha got?” he asked.

  Zoe led him to the base of the stairs and pointed to the lens poking out of the dirty snow and ice.

  Williamson squatted and frowned at it. “Did you touch it?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Very sure.” She considered reminding him that she was a deputy coroner and knew about crime scene security. Then she remembered picking up the pill bottles and pocketing her key from Matt’s kitchen table and decided to simply confirm that she hadn’t tampered with the evidence.

  Williamson retrieved a camera from the cruiser and started snapping photos. Within minutes, a county car rolled in, and two detectives in long black coats climbed out. One of them conferred with Nate while the other drew Zoe aside to ask her questions. Her name, her address, her phone numbers. Why was she here? Where all had she gone inside the house? What had she touched?

  She reluctantly admitted to entering the house, emphasizing that she used to live there. Instead of dreading Matt’s return, she now prayed for it. What if something had happened to him? There she was, having been in his house with intent to…What exactly?

  It didn’t matter. If anything happened to Matt, she would definitely be at the top of the suspect list.

  Again.

  While the county detective didn’t appear pleased with much she had to say, he didn’t arrest her. Instead, he told her to go home, and he’d contact her later.

  Zoe’s fears about the road surface were alleviated when she eased up behind a yellow PennDOT truck. She hung back, watching the de-icing material scatter from the back of the vehicle and coat those wet spots that had turned treacherous. A mile shy of home, the salt truck turned onto a side street, leaving Zoe to fend for herself the rest of the way.

  Mr. Kroll had salted the farm lane, too, and Zoe’s pickup climbed the hill with minimal effort. She didn’t let off the gas when she reached the house. Instead, she chugged to the top of the hill and then coasted toward the barn. She needed to check the animals and welcomed the momentary distraction.

  Light shone from the stall windows and seeped out from around the big sliding doors at the end of the barn. Odd. All of the boarders knew to turn off the lights on their way out. There were no cars or trucks parked in front. Apparently, someone had left before dark and not realized the lights were still on.

  Pete leaned back in the booth, stuffing down his rage as he listened to Logan’s story and jotted notes.

  “I went there to confront Doaks about what he’d done to my sister, but when I got there I found them in the bedroom.” Logan shuddered. “Allison was—was naked—and McBirney was on top of her with his fist drawn back.” Logan clenched his own fist. “McBirney had gouges in his back. Holes. He was bleeding real bad. There was blood everywhere. And Allison was holding a screwdriver.” His voice cracked.

  Pete reached across the table to grip the boy’s arm for a moment. “You’re doing fine, son. Take your time.”

  Logan nodded. Ran a trembling hand through his hair. “I tackled McBirney. Shoved him off my sister. We crashed into the wall and I—I started beating on him.”

  He paused, breathing hard. Reliving the experience, Pete guessed.

  “Next thing I know, Allison pulled me off him. She was crying and
—and I didn’t know what to do.”

  The boy fell silent. Pete gave him a minute to regroup before gently prodding. “What did you do?”

  Logan’s eyes grew dark. “I noticed Doaks standing there, and I tried to cover up my sister. I was gonna pound him like I’d done with McBirney, but Allison started saying how Doaks had saved her. And that she loved him.” Logan grimaced as if the words tasted foul in his mouth. “Then Doaks started going on about how he knew I wanted to talk to him about Allison, but we had to take care of this situation first.” Logan made air-quotes around situation. “He said we couldn’t let anyone find out Allison killed McBirney, and I’d helped finish him off. So he gave me the screwdriver to get rid of, and he was gonna see that Allison got cleaned up, and then he was gonna get rid of the body. It was stupid. I never should have left her there with him. But he kind of made sense at the time, you know? We had to protect Allison. No one could know. And—and…” The boy put his head down on the table, his shoulders quaking with silent sobs.

  Pete rubbed his eyes hard. Too bad he couldn’t blot out the mental picture of what the kid had gone through. Both kids. Sylvia’s grandchildren. How the hell was he ever going to make this all right?

  Zoe nosed her truck up to the big door and cut the engine. The chill of the night air stung her face as soon as she stepped out of the Chevy. She bustled to the smaller door and let herself through.

  Someone had brought the horses in and a few nickered at her entrance. The barn smelled of fresh hay and warm horseflesh. The animals hadn’t been in their stalls for long—no earthy aroma of manure tickled her nose.

  Zoe crossed to the message board on the feed room wall. Whoever brought the horses in should have noted whether they’d grained them or just fed hay, as well as any special attention anyone might need. But the most recent note was from the morning. Not only had one of her boarders left the lights on, they’d neglected this duty, too.