by Marc Timms
She opened her mouth, but two police patrol cars pulled up before she could answer, and out stepped Detective Dempsey. She was surprised by his arrival. Johanna assumed that detectives would be the second squad of sorts, the people who came in to investigate after the patrolmen had come to the scene. However, here he was.
Johanna looked herself over, as best she could, and she knew her outfit was ruined. This was not the way to put forward a good front. So far today, she’d been attacked twice by a car. She was reacting, rather than solving anything.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Dempsey said, as he approached her. One of the patrolmen snickered, none too subtly, and Dempsey shot him a look that could kill. Johanna thought she needed to be friends with that officer to learn what was really going on around here.
“I was expecting to call the police again today,” she responded.
“Today?” Thomas asked. “What have you been up to?”
Johanna didn’t care for the ping-pong of queries about her multiple attacks today.
A patrol officer came over and murmured to Dempsey for a minute or so, and then he left. Dempsey looked back at both of them.
“So here’s the deal. The car that tried to hit you was stolen. That falls smack in line with the other two stolen cars and their associated crimes. In that way, it seems to follow the same pattern.”
Johanna looked at Dempsey. There was more to this story. She couldn’t determine what he was not saying yet. She wanted to know why it wasn’t a clear-cut case with the other two stolen cars. “But . . . ?” she asked.
Dempsey nodded. “From all accounts from the other customers here, it looked like Thomas was the intended victim, not you. If the car was aimed at you, I would definitely say the incident was tied into the other thefts that you reported. If it was aimed at Thomas, then that means two of the three auto theft incidents had to do with you—and two had to do with the murder in the locked house. A dead tie, so to speak.”
Johanna could understand the conundrum. The motives and suspects would come from one case or the other—unless they were all tied together. That was possible, Johanna supposed, but she had felt the coincidences to be too great before. Maybe she’d been correct, and the cases were tied together.
Dempsey looked at her. “What’s going on in that brain of yours?” he asked. “What’s your thoughts on this? Was the car after you or Thomas?”
Johanna looked at both men. “At first, I was sure that the car was after me, but it kept coming towards the table, even after Thomas shoved me behind the barrier. It could be that the car was hard to manage, and the driver couldn’t pull away fast enough. Or it could be that Thomas was the real target.”
Thomas nodded. “I was pretty certain that the driver was after me. As you said, it didn’t stop its path until I was behind the concrete barrier.”
Dempsey took down some notes. “So you two were in the best position to see the driver? What did he—or she—look like?”
Johanna spoke first and said, “I don’t really know. Thomas pushed me out of the way, and when that happened, I was more focused on landing right side up than watching the driver.”
Dempsey turned to Thomas. He’d shut the notebook and tucked away his pencil. Johanna assumed that Dempsey expected nothing more out of the other man. “I was in the same boat as Johanna. I wanted to get us both to safety as well. Looking at the driver wouldn’t accomplish that, so I didn’t focus on them. It might have been a guy because I seem to remember that his head nearly touched the roof of the car. So I might have to assume it was a male because he was tall.”
Dempsey nodded. “Anything else?” The pencil had stayed in his pocket. He obviously had no expectations of getting any objective evidence from either of them.
Thomas shook his head. “No, I have the same issue as Johanna. I was trying to get out of the car’s path.”
Dempsey looked at both of them again and then walked away. In the meantime, the restaurant had moved the table behind the cement barrier. They had replaced their drinks as well. Johanna sat in her chair, but she felt like she couldn’t relax. Her nerves were shot, and she felt wound too tight, as if she would spring out of the chair at any second.
Thomas sat down and gave her a grin. “So do you want to change your response to my question about the two crimes being tied to each other?”
“It seems so odd,” Johanna replied. She was rattled, and her thoughts weren’t coming out quite clear. “They’re such different crimes.”
“They’re all murders,” Thomas replied. “So that seems like something in common.”
“Your aunt’s death was premeditated. It was planned very carefully. The killer was long gone before anyone discovered her. The crimes in the car seem haphazard: spur of the moment. The killer in the car was witnessed by me, granted at a distance, but seen. Then he chased us in the stolen car. So that seems sloppy.”
“So, what’s the answer?” Thomas asked. “It just seems to be muddling . . . all of this.”
“That might be the motive. By making things more confusing, then the police will be stymied. Goodness knows, it’s a lot to go on.”
“So you’re not sure of who did it? Could you identify the man who was in the car with the dead woman? You said that you saw him?” Thomas looked rapt with the conversation, and Johanna felt awkward. They were discussing his relative as though she was a character in a novel. It didn’t feel quite right. Of course, Jessica’s family was spread out—she had no spouse, no living parents, and just a few nephews and nieces. They wouldn’t be as close as a nuclear family was.
“How well did you know your aunt?” Johanna asked.
“Not well. It’s a long story, but I only saw Jessica once a year or so. My parents passed away when I was young, and then I saw Jessica at family holidays.”
“Are there any other family members I haven’t met?” Johanna said. She thought that technically she hadn’t met the niece, but she’d heard about the woman from Lilly. Maybe there were more.
Johanna thought back to the driver Jessica had hired to take her home. However, they had stopped at a lawyer’s office. At the time, she hadn’t thought of a will. Jessica might have stipulated which children were to get the estate if there were multiple nieces and nephews. She made a note to learn who the heirs were after she finished here.
“There’s another girl, but I’ve never met her. She was the daughter of another aunt. She and Jessica squabbled years ago, and they hadn’t spoken since. So when Jessica died, we didn’t know how to even contact her to let her know. I feel bad about it, but I don’t have a clue how to get in touch with her niece or sister.”
She made some small talk after that until Thomas could see that her interest was waning. “This was really nice. We should do this again.”
Johanna, whose mind was full of ideas and leads by this point, nodded. “That would be wonderful.” She looked around, but the police were long gone. She had hoped that they might have a clue as to what the will held. If Jessica had gone there before her death, Johanna suspected that the need was urgent.
Chapter 3
Marnie was waiting for Johanna when she returned home. The lunch had been exciting and had highlighted some of the leads they needed to follow up on, but Johanna still had no idea how all the parts fit together. Who were the missing women she’d seen snuffed out in the cars? Who was the man who had killed them?
Were they related to Jessica’s murder, and were they connected to the car that had tried to run them over at lunch? Those were just the broad issues; Johanna cringed at the thought of all the details she had to determine to make sure that her solution would fit all of the facts.
She and Marnie discussed all of this in the context of the coffee date with Thomas. Marnie asked questions about the man and his interest in her friend. None of that helped with solving the murders.
“We need to talk to the lawyer if we want to find out who benefited from the will,” Marnie said. They both stood up and walke
d out of the apartment, heading to the parking lot. They stopped dead just outside the door of Johanna’s building. Her car was gone, disappeared—stolen. Sometime between the time she’d come home and now, an unknown person had taken her car. Johanna cringed that her vehicle could be at the park with a dead woman lying in the back of the vehicle.
Dempsey did not look happy to see them again. “What now? The dispatcher said your car has been stolen.”
Johanna described her car in detail, the make and model, the color of silver metallic, the four doors, the tinted windows.
“Was there anything in the car worth stealing?” he asked. This time his notepad was open, and a pen was in his hand.
Johanna listed the contents that she could recall, registration, some sunglasses, a coffee cup, and the various other items thrown on the passenger side floor. Nothing in the car was worth the time in jail for taking it.
“Great. Any ideas on the missing car?” he asked.
“Yes, I do have some ideas. I think it could be at the park, with a man and a dead woman inside of it. Just like the last two cars that were stolen.”
“Three,” Dempsey corrected.
“So does it not strike you as odd that my car was the next to be taken?” Johanna asked.
“Actually, yes. In the other three cases, the cars were in no way related to the other things. Your car almost seems like a taunt. You’re the woman who saw those murders, so now I’m going to steal your car, which makes it more difficult for you to follow me or get in my way.”
Johanna had not thought of it in that way. “But Jessica’s car was taken, and she was in the middle of things—just about as much as she could be.”
Dempsey rolled his eyes at her. “If I had all the answers, then I would have this case solved,” he pointed out.
“So this could just be a coincidence?” Johanna asked.
“I’ve heard that word too many times on this case to believe it. At this juncture, I have to assume that it’s related to the other thefts and perhaps the murders. You need to be careful because this person knows where you live. I don’t want you to end up as the next dead woman in a car.” The detective’s face was turning red by the time he had finished.
Marnie looked at Johanna as they got into Marnie’s car, which had not been touched in the parking lot. “I can’t believe that you still want to do this after your car was stolen. If it was me, I’d go inside, lock the doors, and stay there until the police learned who did all this.”
Johanna shook her head. “No, this feels way too personal. I want to solve this now and not wait for the police. There’s too much going on. I think they’re kind of overwhelmed by all the crimes occurring at the moment. I know I saw those women being strangled, so I have a lead on them, as I am not questioning two of the crimes.”
“But we’re going to the lawyer, which has to do with Jessica and the locked room murder,” Marnie pointed out.
“Her car was stolen. These cases all seem to mesh together. Now my car. It’s harder for the police to admit that the crimes are not all part of a larger picture.”
They talked about other things until they grew close to the lawyer’s office. Marnie slowed down. “I don’t know what’s going on up here, but the road is closed.”
Johanna got out of the car as Marnie came to a stop. “Be right back. I don’t have a good feeling about this. I’m betting that whatever happened, happened to the man we were going to see.”
She walked down the street until the police tape blocked the way. Johanna put her hand above her eyes to shade the light that came from the fire on the upper levels of the lawyer’s office building, which appeared to be a larger converted older Victorian home. Johanna couldn’t determine if the lawyer was still alive or if he’d been killed by the fire. The body count was getting high, and the fright that Marnie had talked about earlier was starting to grip her as well. Whoever was behind all of this had no problems with killing anyone who got in the way.
In one way, Johanna agonized over this and worried about her own life. Given that she’d witnessed two murders and her own car was gone, she was in the middle of a murder spree that seemed to have no end. She was worried that the killer would come after her next, if he hadn’t started a plan to do so already.
Yet despite the appearance of randomness, Johanna had an intuition that these crimes were related. For she could see the pattern of the older woman who had her car stolen taking another vehicle to the lawyer. Perhaps she was changing her will, or maybe just talking about estate planning. Whatever the woman had talked about with the lawyer had set off a series of murders. The old woman had died first in a locked room, and now the lawyer had lost his business. Johanna realized that most likely, all the documentation for Jessica’s estate was now gone, a pile of ashes where there had once been answers to her questions. Johanna worried that perhaps her own curiosity was driving the killer to do these things. If she’d not been so persistent in proving to the police she’d actually seen a murder, after spending the night out in the woods, the killer would have been more comfortable about the original crime and might not have attempted other murders.
Marnie came up and stood next to her. “Any sign of the lawyer?” she asked.
Johanna shook her head. To be quite honest, she had no idea what the man looked like. Johanna had expected to find him inside of his office, so facial recognition was out. Now looking out over the spectators, she had no clue who the lawyer was.
She did notice an older man, disheveled, standing off by himself, looking around. She poked Marnie and tipped her head in that direction. Marnie looked over and then pulled out her phone; she was obviously Googling the lawyer’s name to see if there was an image of the man. After a few seconds of typing, she held the phone over to Johanna. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
Johanna nodded this time and looked at the man again. He must have noticed their gaze because he walked over to them. “Hello, did you have an appointment with me today? If so, we’ll need to reschedule.”
Marnie took the lead with the question. “I’m so sorry to see this happen to you. We had a question about a recent will—her name was Jessica—I believe she came in to see you right before she was killed.”
Johanna was impressed. Marnie had breezed right over the fact that neither of them had any inkling of the woman’s last name. She’d been identified by her first name. Neither of them had apparently watched the local news to find out names, ages, and other such demographic information.
“Are you the next of kin?” he asked.
“A friend of a relative,” Marnie replied. Given the fact that they knew Thomas, Johanna thought that a true enough statement.
“Well, two things. First, you can tell the family that there is no new will. Yes, she came to see me, but she was killed before the will could be drafted and signed. So the old will is still in effect. I will tell you about the process, but I won’t answer anything about the contents of the will itself.”
Johanna took a turn. “Is it still in effect, or was it lost in the house that is afire?”
The lawyer looked like he might be ill. “I have backups for most of my paperwork. I imagine that the courts will confiscate them, in this case.”
“But you can’t be sure?”
“Not necessarily. It depends on the level of documentation, if the witnesses can testify, and if the document was maliciously destroyed.”
“So would there be an older will then, if that’s the case?”
The lawyer shook his head. “No, that’s the only one that I know of. So that would mean that she died intestate.”
Johanna had taken a college-level law class, so she at least knew the basics. In the absence of a will, all of the nieces and nephews would split the estate evenly, providing that Jessica had no sisters or brothers still alive.
She could get that information from Thomas and any information he might have about the last will.
What worried her the most was what had prompted Jessica to writ
e a new will now? Had something changed with one of her relatives? Had someone died or someone done something that now required them to be removed from the will? Perhaps Thomas would know that as well, or that might be something they would have to discover for themselves.
When they arrived back at the apartment, a man was waiting at the door. She suspected that he was the rental car person as he was holding a set of keys in his hand. She’d made arrangements with a rental car company since her own car was missing and possibly gone forever. She signed the necessary papers, and the two women went inside.
“I was thinking,” Johanna said and began to list out the train of thought she’d had at the lawyer’s office. “The destruction of the lawyer’s office is the first clue that points to a particular act. The place was destroyed because Jessica had left instructions on a new will and the lawyer held that last will. Because of that, the office was destroyed.”
Marnie nodded. “That then meant that the motive had been greed all along. Someone wanted the money, and so they had to stop the lawyer and kill Jessica. But why kill her first?”
“Well, as long as she was alive, there was a chance that she’d make a new will. I mean, I think it’s even legal in this state to write your own. If that happened, the killer wouldn’t even know if a new will existed.”
“So Jessica had to die. What about the rest?” Marnie asked. “The lawyer?”
“The lawyer didn’t have to die, but the killer had to take care of all the papers that the lawyer had. It was far easier for the killer to burn everything rather than find the specific paperwork and remove it. Plus, if everything was burned, the focus wouldn’t be on the person who wanted a new will. Every client’s family now had a reason—not just Jessica’s family.”
“Then why steal her car if you’re going to kill her and destroy the new will anyway?”
“That had to be to stall her somehow. I’m not clear on that yet, but it’s certainly a good place to start. Why would the killer want her to be delayed in getting to the lawyer’s office?”
