One Wrong Move, page 24
Tad retook his seat, and Joel didn’t give him a moment’s rest. “Tell us about the mystery woman, as you called her.”
“I don’t know anything about that woman,” Tad said, shifting in his seat and dabbing his perspiring forehead with a silk handkerchief he pulled from his shirt pocket.
“You don’t know her?” Joel pointed at her crime-scene photo.
Tad gagged and turned his head. “Please take that away before I get sick again. I don’t know her!”
“Then maybe you need another look.” Joel leaned forward with the picture.
“Fine.” Tad huffed. “Take the picture away and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Joel sat back, steepling his fingers, indicating with a dip of his chin for Tad to proceed.
Tad grunted out an exhale. “She was the woman from the gala. But that’s all I know.”
Joel looked up at Christian and then Andi and indicated with a slight move of his head for them to jump in anytime.
Christian pulled out a chair for Andi, and she slid into it. “Thank you.”
He nodded, then flipped a chair around, straddling it. He rested his hands against the chair back and interlaced his fingers. “We know you’re lying.”
Tad blanched. “Nice tactic.”
Christian arched a brow. “Tactic?”
“Yes. To get me to talk. I don’t have anything to say.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to help us, but you’re next,” he said.
Tad swallowed. “Wh-what do you mean?” His pitch was high enough for dogs to hear.
“Whoever these guys pulling off the heists are,” Joel began, “they clearly don’t like loose ends. And like it or not, you’re a loose end.”
“Why . . . why would you say that?” Tad’s voice quivered, despite his poised posture.
“Because,” Joel continued, “you know both of the other victims, and you know who’s behind the heists. You can either give them up or become their next victim.”
Tad swallowed, then wiped his brow. “I can’t.” He shook his head. “I’ve never even seen them. I don’t know who they are.”
“Oh?” Joel sat back and shifted, crossing one booted foot over the opposite knee. “You do know them.”
“I just said . . .” Color rose up Tad’s neck.
“We know you hired them,” Andi bluffed.
“We know you needed the insurance money,” Christian added, courtesy of Greyson’s digging into Tad’s financials. “You’ve got a hefty gambling debt, and you needed a way to pay up before they . . .” Christian drew a line across his neck.
Tad sat back, arms crossed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about this,” Andi said, leaning forward. “We know you met with your mystery woman months before the heist. We have eyewitnesses.”
Tad’s gaze darted from them to the door, then back again.
“You lied to us about when you met her,” Joel said. “And you know what else you’re lying about? Hiring two men to rob your galleries.” Joel straightened. “And here’s the thing. They murdered people, which makes you an accomplice.”
What minuscule color remained in Tad’s pale face drained. “I had nothing to do with any of that.”
“Then tell us what you did, and maybe we can keep you safe,” Joel said.
Tad shifted. “You don’t really think . . . I mean, you’re just bluffing about me being next, aren’t you?”
“They’ve murdered two women. Why not you?” Christian said.
“I’m not lying. I’ve never seen them. I have no idea who they are. I only worked through Julia.”
“Ah.” Christian cocked his head. “So you do know her name.”
Tad gripped his shirt, running his fidgety fingers along the row of buttons.
“We know it too,” Joel said. “Julia Brown.”
“How did you communicate?” Christian asked.
“She called to set up our first meeting.”
“And then?” Joel pressed.
“Then we used a PO box.”
Joel scooched forward. “Where would that be?”
“In Santa Fe.” Tad’s fingers fixed on a single button, squeezing it between his forefinger and thumb.
“Great,” Joel said. “You’re going to take me.”
“No way.” Tad shook his head. “They’ll know I talked.”
“Who will?” Joel asked with a lift of his chin.
“The men . . . the thieves.” Tad swallowed.
“Ah,” Andi said. “So you did hire them?” She looked at Christian and smiled. Ambrose Global wouldn’t be paying out a dime.
“No.” Tad cleared his throat, crossing one leg over the other and smoothing a wrinkle from his white linen pants with his hand. “They approached me.”
“Start from the beginning,” Joel said, setting a tape recorder on the table and pressing Record.
“I never met the men. The ones in the heist video. That’s the first I ever saw them, and that’s the truth. I only met with Julia. She was the middleman, if you will. She told me she had two clients who wanted to help me out with my gambling debt and make me rich.”
“And you jumped on it without thinking of the consequences,” Joel said.
“How was I supposed to know it would get deadly?”
“How could you bring Alex into it?” Christian asked. “She was just a kid.”
Tad ran a hand over his head and exhaled. “I didn’t pull Alex into anything. She must have seen something, done something that made them mad. It had nothing to do with me.”
“Made who mad, Tad?” Joel pushed.
“The . . . the men in the video footage of the heist.”
“So they killed her for it?” Christian asked.
“I don’t know anything about her death,” Tad said. “I swear.”
“What about Julia?”
“Again, I don’t know.” His voice hiccupped.
“Where are they going to hit next?” Andi asked.
“I have no idea.”
“So they have no further use for you,” Joel said, then looked at Christian. “That’s a tenuous place to be.”
“I never saw them. I have no idea who they are. There’s no reason to kill me!” Tad’s rushed speech bordered on a holler.
Christian leaned forward, his gaze fixed on Tad. “You’re assuming they need a reason.”
FIFTY-FOUR
DECKARD FOLLOWED HARPER back to the lab. They were waiting until the officer working the evidence locker on the day Andi supposedly pulled the shirt out of the locker was on shift. Arriving nearly a half hour early, Harper took the time to run Deckard through every step of processing the DNA Andi had performed that night, along with showing him the storage facility. The data from that night showed that Andi had extracted and identified the partial match to Mitch.
“If only it’d been a complete match one way or another,” he said as they wrapped up and headed out for the evidence locker.
“Andi was only one skin cell shy of a full match,” Harper said, walking beside him.
“One cell?” His step hitched. “That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“You’re saying one more cell and it would have been considered a complete match to Mitch?”
“Exactly.”
When she put it that way, it made the identification even stronger in his mind. But Mitch? Could Deckard really have misjudged him so? Could Mitch really have played him that well? His chest tightened as they scanned into the evidence building. If Mitch was Anne’s killer, he’d find a way to prove it, but with Mitch’s conviction being vacated, there was no way to charge him with the crime again.
His muscles coiled. What if he’d put a guilty man back on the streets?
“Hey, Mack,” Harper said, greeting the man in the cage. “How you doing today?”
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “Can’t complain.”
Kiddo? Deckard arched a brow.
“I’m the youngest on the team. Still a newbie,” she said. “You don’t make ‘full rank’ until it’s been a year. But we’re well past that,” she said playfully. “It’s been over two years. I’ve earned my stripes.”
Mack chuckled, his whole diaphragm moving. “I suppose you have, but kiddo just fits.”
“Great.” She smirked.
Mack smiled, lifting his chin. “Who’s this?” he asked, his gaze fixed past Harper onto him.
“This is my friend Deckard MacLeod. He’s really interested in how all this works.”
“Deckard Macleod . . .” Mack tapped his pen on the counter. “MacLeod.” He frowned. “Are you the one that busted Miranda Forester?” he asked, his voice hard and questioning.
“Oh, come on, Mack. You knew her as Andi too.”
“Fine. He worked for that Abrams guy and busted Andi.”
“You don’t sound pleased,” Deckard said.
“I’m not.”
Deckard looked at Harper. “I thought no one else here believed Andi was innocent.”
“In the lab. And I didn’t know until right now that Mack did.”
“No one ever asked my opinion,” Mack said.
What was it with people copping out because no one asked? Step up, people.
Mack leaned forward, resting his arms on the counter. “You’re one of those private detectives, right?”
“Yes.” Was this it? Had Mack seen what happened with the shirt?
Mack looked around. Deckard followed his gaze. No one else was present, thankfully.
Mack leaned his whole torso on the counter, his mouth nearly flush with the cage. “I’m not proud of this, and this has to remain between us. Detective-client privilege and all that.”
Not exactly how that worked.
Mack took a sharp inhale, then released it in a nasally stream. “I think my wife is cheating on me.”
Okay, not at all what he was expecting.
“Can you help me out?”
“I’d be happy to help when this investigation is complete.”
“Great. And the money? I don’t have a lot. That’s why I haven’t hired a PI yet.”
“I’m sure we can work something out.” Deckard didn’t do cheating spouse cases. His expertise centered on cons and scams, but for Mack—if the man was going to be helpful—he’d make an exception.
“Okay. All I can tell you is what I know.”
“Which is?”
Mack shifted his head, the overhead light hitting the gray in his dark hair cropped short. Once convinced they were still alone, he sat back, linking his arms over his robust stomach. “You ask. I’ll answer.”
“Were you working when Andi brought in the evidence from Anne Marlowe’s case?”
“Yes.”
“And did you go through the contents of the box?”
“No. That’s up to the analyst to properly pack it up and store it. Andi was the last on the chain of custody. She signed it in the logbook, stored it, and then headed out. Nothing unusual there.”
“And the day she was accused of taking an item from the box?”
“I wasn’t on shift. Randy Fox was.”
Harper frowned. “But the schedule sheet said it was you.”
“Then it’s wrong.”
Great. Someone on the inside had altered it. The question was, who was responsible for it all? His money was on Todd.
“Can we see the logbook from that day?” Harper asked.
“Oh . . .” Mack sat back. “I’m not supposed to show those.”
“Just a quick look,” Deckard said, hoping the promise he’d look into Mack’s cheating wife would work in their favor.
Mack looked around yet again. Nobody. “Okay,” he said, “but I never gave you this.” He stood and moved to a row of cabinets. It took a minute, but he fished it out.
“Here,” he said, flipping to the page in question.
Deckard skimmed the page, looking for Andi’s name. Harper watched over his shoulder.
“There she is,” Harper said.
Deckard scanned the line. It had Andi’s name, date, time, and an item number. “I’m assuming this number correlates to the evidence box from Anne Marlowe’s case?”
“I can look it up just to be certain.” Mack typed it in. Click. Click. Click. “Yes, that’s correct,” he said.
“Thanks,” Deckard said, then shifted his attention to Harper. “Does it look like Andi’s handwriting?”
“Yes . . . but the item numbers are different from those of the time and date.”
Both he and Mack leaned forward, looking.
“You sure about that?” Deckard asked, not noting a difference.
“She crosses her sevens,” Harper said.
“Okay . . . oh . . .” All the sevens were crossed, but the ones in the item number were all up higher on the stick part of the numeral. “Excellent job,” he said.
Mack furrowed his brow. “What am I missing?”
“They’re crossed in different places,” Deckard said.
“Are you sure she just didn’t get sloppy?” Mack asked.
Harper arched a brow. “Andi, sloppy?”
“Fair enough.” Mack’s cell rang. “Hang on,” he said before answering, then stood to take the call, shifting his back to them.
Deckard took the opportunity to jot down all of Andi’s information, along with who else was in and out of the evidence locker that day.
“Sorry about that,” Mack said, lifting the logbook, closing it, and returning it to the cabinet.
“Thanks for all your help,” Deckard said. “One more thing. Do you know when Randy will be in or how we can get ahold of him?” He could find it, but it would go faster if Mack just handed it to them.
“He moved,” Mack said.
“Moved to a new job?”
“In a way. He moved back to Boston, but you didn’t hear that from me. He didn’t tell anyone else where he was going. Just left.”
“When was this?” Deckard asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d say about a week after everything happened with Andi.”
“Meaning, after I started digging into things?” Had Randy been spooked by it? Did he have something to hide?
“No.” Mack shook his head. “I’m pretty sure he’d left before you and that defense lawyer realized the shirt was gone.”
Ten minutes and a finished conversation with Mack later, Deckard followed Harper down the long rows of the storage facility, evidence containers piled high on the shelves, nearly reaching the ceiling.
“Wow,” Deckard said. “This is a lot of cases. A lot of crimes.”
“Sad, isn’t it,” she said.
“Very.” Crime was pervasive. It always had been in his world. But at least he was on the right side of the law now.
Harper moved to the section the evidence from Anne’s murder was in, and they searched the aisle, reading the victims’ names.
“Ah. There it is,” Harper said, pointing up. She moved for the sliding ladder and pulled it over.
“I can get it,” Deckard offered.
“It’s okay,” she said, already climbing the ladder steps. “Got it.” She pulled, lost her balance, and came tumbling down, clutching the box. “Whoa!”
“Got ya,” Deckard said, catching her, the box and all. His arms wrapped around her, holding her. The skin where her shirt was askew was warm and soft. It was the most innocent of touches, but something sparked through him all the same. “I should put you down,” he said.
She nodded.
“Right,” he said, moving his bottom arm first, and not releasing her until both her feet were firmly on the ground.
“Okay,” she said, setting the box down, then lowering to the cold concrete floor beside it.
He followed her lead, sitting beside her.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” She pulled out a sling backpack and opened it. She fished out two plastic wine glasses.
“Looks like a rendezvous to me,” Deckard said. No one took wine hiking.
She pulled out an unopened bottle of wine. “I’d have to agree.” She set it aside and fished a little deeper. “Wine opener,” she said. Lastly, she pulled a neatly folded lightweight blanket. “The register also says there was bread, cheese, and chocolates. Food items get disposed of after being tested.”
“Tested?”
“For poison, date rape drugs, et cetera.”
“And none were found, if I remember correctly.”
“Correct.”
She pulled out Anne’s clothes, the bloodstains visible through the plastic evidence bag. Next came the shoes . . . with zero blood on them.
“That’s odd,” he said.
“What is?” she asked.
“If you’re stabbed, blood is going to splatter. You’d think it would be on her shoes, at least some of it.”
“Not if she was lying down while stabbed, like I surmised. Think about it. If he knocked her out, which I strongly believe he did, then he could have laid her in the rock pile, straddled her, and stabbed away,” Harper said.
Deckard rubbed the back of his neck, playing the scenario through his mind. “Why not just stab her on the bench?”
“I’m guessing so it would look like Simmons went into a passion-fueled rage. The killer put the rock in the pile with the rest to make it look like she’d fallen back on them.”
“Then he what . . .” Deckard said. “Straddled her and stabbed away? No, then there’d be other cloth traces. He knelt beside her and stabbed away? I swear. It’s the weirdest murder I’ve ever seen.”
Harper shook her head. “I’m sorry to say, I’ve seen weirder.”
He arched a brow.
“Trust me.” Harper shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Why not just stab her standing up?” Harper said. “If the killer was setting up Simmons, why go through the trouble of knocking her out?”
“He probably didn’t want her to scream. Kids party back in those woods. He wanted to silence her before he killed her.”
“A fair scenario. But why leave the shirt?”
“So Simmons would be blamed, and I’m sure the killer didn’t want to risk carrying any evidence with him.”
“Again, makes sense,” she said, then pulled out Anne’s purse, which was found in the trunk of her car. “Keys . . .” she said, jangling them. She continued, pulling out a miscellany of items, and last came Anne’s work badge for Councilman David Markowitz’s office. “He’s the councilman with that new sprawling condo complex coming downtown.”
