by Lauren Carr
“That’s a lot of maybes,” David said. “Gibbons ran off to Europe. If it was revenge, they would’ve had to find out what country he had run off to, fly overseas, and hunt him down in that country to kill him.”
“Gibbons was murdered.” Stunned, Mac repeated the word murdered over and over again while leafing through the reports in the file.
Peering at the bottom of his empty coffee mug, David said, “Granted, we don’t have any of the evidence on hand for the Gibbons murder, but I can’t help thinking it’s farfetched to assume that it would be connected to our case.”
Mac replied, “Most likely Gibbons’s parents came to Maguire to find out who killed their son. I assume, since he was the one behind helping Freddie escape prosecution and getting out of the country, he’s probably the only one who would have given enough of a damn to help them find out what happened to him.”
“Did the P.I. find anything?”
“The clerk at the hostel said that Gibbons had a beautiful American woman with him when he checked in.” Mac repeated, “She was American.”
David argued, “There’re a lot of American women in Europe. Gibbons was a sexual predator that’d killed one of his victims. This woman could have been getting even with him for a rape he’d committed over there after leaving here.”
Mac shuffled the Gibbons folder to the bottom of the stack and read the label on the next one. “Jillian Keating. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
David’s eyebrows met in the center of his forehead. “Another case in that folder rings a bell?”
“Eight years ago you couldn’t turn on the news without seeing Jillian Keating.” Mac thumbed through the pages in the file to refresh his memory. “Usual case. Andrew Keating was in his seventies. She was late twenties. Whirlwind romance. He married her in Vegas where she’d been a stripper. Days after the honeymoon ended, she poisoned him. I caught her. Defense got my evidence suppressed saying that the warrant wasn’t valid.” He laid his hand flat on top of the file. “Guess who her defense lawyer was.”
“Who?”
“Natasha Holmstead,” Mac told him. “Maguire’s wife. The Keating case was the first time I got to see Holmstead up close and personal. She got Jillian Keating off.”
He growled deep in his throat. “I can still see the smirk on Jillian Keating’s face when she left the courthouse and climbed into the back of her limo after the case had been dismissed. I wanted to throttle her.”
“The same way you wanted to do Gibbons?”
“It’s cases like that, where you know who the killer is, and the killer knows you know, but you see them walk away…” Mac sighed. “When you actually see them walk away, and they look you right in the eye, and there’s nothing you can do. There’s no way you can make it right. Justice is completely out of your reach.” He swallowed. “Cases like that haunt me.”
“Who blew the prosecution? Maguire?”
Mac recalled, “George Vance was the prosecutor in the first chair on that case. This was a couple of years before he became Deputy U.S. Attorney. Vance is good, nothing like Maguire. He was as furious as I was when Keating got off. When Sutherland ruled to suppress my evidence, we ended up with nothing. Everyone knew she did it. But if the jury wasn’t allowed to hear about the poison, then there was no way they’d convict. There’d be reasonable doubt. Makes me wonder.”
David asked, “What makes you wonder?”
“Theoretically, Sutherland and Holmstead are on opposite sides,” Mac said. “I remember back when Sutherland was a prosecutor. He was passionate about getting the bad guys off the street. Holmstead has gotten the slimiest of slime released. He tossed out my poison in the Keating case and now they’re living together. I can’t believe he’s dirty though. Since they’ve gotten together, he removes himself from any cases that she’s defense counsel on.”
David stretched across the table to read the label for the next file, which was Leo Samuel. “You already told me about Samuels. What’s in that last folder?” He slid the case file in Mac’s direction.
“Hogan. First name Gerald.” Mac turned the file around in order for him to read the label. “Gerry Hogan.” He scanned the narrative until he recalled the case. “This wasn’t my case, but I do remember it. Rape and murder following a college fraternity party. A freshman girl went to a frat party and had too much to drink. Gerry Hogan offered her a ride home. Only he slipped something into her last drink. He raped and strangled her. The case made it to trial. The prosecution had all the evidence they needed, but his lawyer put the victim on trial. They found where she’d uploaded some dirty videos of herself with S&M paraphernalia onto the Internet, and showed them to the jury. The defense claimed that she consented to the sex and the strangulation was an accident.”
“Let me guess,” David growled. “The jury refused to convict.”
“It was hung. Prosecution saw no point in trying again since they knew the defense would trot out that video.”
David spun the list of names around to read them over. “From what you’re telling me, these are all cases of killers who got off.”
Agreeing, Mac recounted Natasha’s visit to Spencer Manor. “She told me that Maguire was investigating old cases in order to cause a scandal so that he could be appointed U.S. Attorney.”
“Do you think something dirty was happening behind the scenes that got all these murderers off?”
Sitting back in his seat, Mac thought back over the events behind each of the cases.
While waiting for his answer, the police chief collected the files and replaced them in the accordion folder.
“Knowing the attorneys on each of these cases,” Mac finally said, “the only one I would have suspected of taking a bribe to let a killer off would be Maguire. But he was the one digging this up and the one that got killed.”
“He certainly wasn’t any candidate for Good Guy of the Year,” David said. “Even so, he had this list of cases for a reason. It looks like, if we want to find out who killed him and why, we’re going to have to look back through them, too.”
Keeping his hand on the list of names, Mac watched David seal the accordion folder. He wanted to smuggle the list home to ask Archie to research the cases in order to uncover the common thread between them. There had to be more of a connection than that they had all escaped justice.
“Give me the list, Mac.” David held his hand out to him.
“What else have you got?”
“Hand me the list.” David snapped his fingers.
“Before you let me see that folder you didn’t know what this list of names meant. Now you know,” Mac said. “I’ve cooperated with you. The least you can do is let me see the crime scene pictures and evidence box.”
“I told you enough already.” David snatched the paper from his hand. “As a matter of fact, I told you more than you have any need to know.”
A tap at the door by one of his officers signaled the end of their interview. The police chief was needed outside. After unsealing the folder again to place the list inside and gathering everything he had brought into the room, they went out into the hall.
The commotion in the reception area could be heard throughout the station. Tonya stood back while Bogie, all six feet four inches of him, tried to contain Stephen Maguire’s assistant.
“They belong to the office of the United States Attorney,” Hamilton Sanders argued. His face was as red as his hair, which was so curly that it looked like he could bounce a ping pong ball on top of his head.
Based purely on a calculation of the number of years that he had been a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mac knew that Hamilton had to be in his mid-thirties. Between the freckles on his baby-face and his skinny frame clothed in an oversized suit, he looked like a teenager in his daddy’s clothes.
Spying David with his gold chief’s badge pinned on his chest, he rushed to plead his case while raising his voice in order to drown out any potential opposition from the deputy chief
.
“Chief O’Callaghan, I am Hamilton Sanders. I have a letter here from United States Attorney Boris Hunter asking you to please turn over any case files you found in Stephen Maguire’s room or otherwise in his possession.” He waved his letter in front of David’s face and chest in a non-verbal order for him to take and read it and do so now. “They’re the property of the federal government and classified. We can’t risk them falling into the wrong hands.”
“Really?” David replied. “I was planning to make copies of them and post them onto the world wide web.”
Not realizing the police chief was joking, the lawyer gasped. “You can’t do that?”
“He’s not serious, Ham.” Mac shook his head at David to inform him that Hamilton Sanders didn’t have a sense of humor.
Hamilton told him, “Lieutenant Faraday, you have no authority in this case. You aren’t even a detective anymore.”
“Stephen Maguire was murdered at my inn. That makes his murder my business.”
“That plus him breaking up your marriage makes you a suspect,” Hamilton countered. “Chief, I hate to be one telling you how to run your investigation, but it really isn’t wise making suspects privy to the details of your case.”
Hugging the accordion folder tight against his chest as if he feared the attorney would make a grab for it, David re-plied, “No less wise than handing over evidence to a suspect.”
Hamilton gasped. “I resent that.”
Instructing her to lock everything up, David handed the accordion folder and notepad to Tonya. The thick clumsy folder caused her to buckle under its heavy weight.
“About those files, Chief,” the attorney said while watching them disappear up the stairs to David’s secure file room.
“Tell your boss that he’ll get them when I’m through with them,” David said.
“I can’t tell him that.” Hamilton waved the unread letter in his face until David took it from him. “He sent me here with the express order to retrieve them ASAP.”
Mac asked, “Why did Maguire take them and bring them to Spencer in the first place?”
Hamilton glared at Mac for his intrusion into their conversation, before turning back to David, who pointed out, “The man asked you a question.”
Hamilton said, “I don’t have to answer him.”
David replied, “But you do have to answer me. If not, then I’ll get the answer directly from your boss.”
“Background work for an upcoming murder case, I sup-pose,” Stephen Maguire’s assistant said. “Mr. Hunter is asking you nicely for the return of those case files. He knows a lot of powerful people. One phone call and he can have me back here with a court order for you to turn them over.”
“If he knows a Maryland judge who would put your runaway case files ahead of potential evidence in solving a murder, then tell him to go for it.” David took a step toward Hamilton, who backed up at his advance. “In the meantime, they aren’t going anywhere.”
Wagging a finger in David’s face, Hamilton’s voice shook when he announced, “You haven’t seen the last of me,” before scurrying out the door.
Chapter Seven
Mac concluded there was something wrong with his psyche. When David finally agreed to permit him to see the crime scene photos and evidence collected for Christine’s and Stephen Maguire’s murders, his heart leapt, not unlike it used to when, as a child, he would wake up on Christmas morning in anticipation of unwrapping his presents under the tree.
Maybe it was genetic.
While reading his late mother’s journal, Mac discovered that Robin Spencer expressed similar anticipation upon delving into a new murder investigation. Yes, she acknowledged the tragedy of someone’s life being snatched away from them by another. But, she also marveled at the challenge of piecing together a puzzle which, in the end, could bring justice for the victim and closure for the family.
He wanted to have that closure for his children. He didn’t want them to go through life not knowing what had happened to their mother.
“Did you know about someone trying to kill Stephen Maguire a couple of weeks ago?” Mac asked when he followed David into his corner office on the top floor of the police station. With a view of the boat dock and lake and a four-foot fish mounted over the stone fireplace, his office didn’t resemble that of any police chief Mac had met in the past.
“I found that out the same day you found his body,” David said. “I had a nice long talk with the investigating officer in Georgetown. He even sent me a copy of the file.”
He set a black suitcase on the conference table. A slip of paper for the chain of evidence was connected to the strap. “This is the suitcase we found in Maguire’s room.” After checking the time on his watch, he signed the log slip.
“Why didn’t you say anything to me about it?” Mac asked about the poisoning while opening the suitcase.
“I couldn’t say anything until I officially cleared you as a suspect.” David slipped the lid off the evidence box. “Here’s what happened. A couple of weeks after he left Christine, Maguire went to a retirement party at some swanky club in Washington. Everyone who was anyone was there, including Christine. Around four in the morning, Maguire called 9-1-1. A couple of days later, the doctors figured out that he had been poisoned with arsenic. Luckily, it wasn’t a fatal dose, but he was in the hospital for a week.”
“Do the police in Washington suspect Christine of poisoning him?” Mac asked while examining Stephen Maguire’s clothes. The suitcase contained a few changes of clothes. Nicely tailored ones. He didn’t scrimp on his wardrobe.
“She was at the party and Maguire went to the trouble of getting a restraining order against her,” David said. “Of course, she became a person of interest when the police heard about the scene she caused at the party when she saw him talking to another woman. It sounded very similar to the scene she caused in the Inn’s lobby. Yet, they couldn’t connect her to the arsenic.”
Mac said, “His wife, Natasha Holmstead, who inherited all of his estate, was also at that party.”
“Do you buy that bull she’s selling about looking for an old watch?” David took a mini-laptop from the box and laid it on the table.
“Of course not,” Mac replied.
“There’s no gold pocket watch among Maguire’s stuff. A gold watch, but not a pocket watch. He’d packed light.”
“She’s lying, like all lawyers—except Willingham and Fleming.”
“No, they’d never lie,” David said with a note of sarcasm.
“Holmstead is good at what she does,” Mac admitted. “I know that there are innocent people who’ve been accused of murder. Our country’s justice system is based on everyone getting a fair trial. Where would we be if the accused didn’t have the right to the best lawyer that they can afford or get? But…” He gritted his teeth as faces of murder victims he had encountered during his career flashed through his mind. “Seeing and knowing what juries haven’t been allowed to see and know because of the likes of Natasha Holmstead convincing some judges to suppress evidence, allowing killers to walk out—” He sighed while shaking his head. “But, she’s just doing her job and making a hell of a lot of money doing it.”
While gesturing at the other contents in the box, David held up a set of keys on a gold chain with a small pocket knife attached to it. “We found all this on the table in his suite. It looked like he was working on something when he left to go upstairs to the penthouse.”
Mac took the keychain and studied it.
“The forensics lab searched all of his electronics inside and out.” David showed him a picture of a cell phone. “They found something very interesting on Maguire’s cell phone and laptop. His phone had a tracking program loaded on it. It was set up to send his text messages, call logs, emails sent and received, as well as its GPS location to a clone phone.”
Setting another picture of a cell phone next to the first, David announced, “This cell phone, which we found in Christine’s suitc
ase.”
“Maybe it was planted,” Mac said.
“It has her fingerprints on it,” David replied. “If Christine had Maguire under surveillance, she had to know that he was staying at the Inn. Are you sure it was your idea that she stay there?”
“Positive.”
David continued, “His laptop had a similar type of spy-ware that allowed someone with a laptop to monitor what he was doing, including check his email and examine what he had on his hard drive or flash.”
“Did you find the laptop used to monitor him among her belongings?” Mac set the key chain in the box.
“No, we didn’t.”
Mac said, “Christine wasn’t one bit technically inclined.”
David hesitated before responding, “Two weeks ago, she purchased the clone phone and a new laptop, which we suspect was used to keep track of Maguire. I’m sorry, Mac, but between finding these surveillance programs, her arriving in town the same day he checked into the Inn, and finding the clone in her suitcase, it looks like Christine was stalking him.”
“But someone else was in that room.” Mac studied the pictures of the two phones. “Did you find any external hard drive or flash drives in the room?”
“Nope. Only the laptop.”
Mac opened the laptop and hit the button to turn it on. “Both Archie and I have one of these. It’s built for portability. You can’t store a lot on the hard drive. You need a flash drive for file storage.”
“Found none.”
“Maybe the killer stole the flash drive containing information about what Maguire was doing here.” He shut the laptop off and closed the lid.
“Maybe, but he didn’t get this.” David held up a business card for him to read the name.
While Mac didn’t recognize the name, he did recognize the title. Private Investigator. The name was listed as Nancy Brenner. “Maguire had hired a private investigator.”
“And I know her,” David said. “I’ve got an appointment to see her later. Want to take a road trip?”
* * * *
After getting David’s invitation to ride along for the interview with the private investigator, Mac swung past Spencer Manor to change out of the sports jacket and slacks he had worn for his breakfast meeting and into comfortable blue jeans and a sweater. After discovering that Gnarly had shredded one of the pillows on his bed, he realized that he hadn’t taken the dog for a walk since the murders. Gnarly’s trainer insisted that boredom was the root to his misbehavior. This being the case, the German shepherd was invited to go along for the ride.
