Long Shadows, page 12
“I received the judge’s trial docket info late last night and went over it. There seems to be no cases worth looking at, including the RICO one.”
White said, “I was hoping there would be something there to tie into the blindfold and the weird note left behind.”
Andrews finished his coffee and eyed them. “Any particular place you want to start today?”
“Why don’t you and White collect the warrants and go check out Lancer’s and Draymont’s places.”
On these words, White gave him a death stare that Decker avoided altogether.
“And what will you do?” asked Andrews.
“I’m going back to the judge’s house.”
“Why?” asked White sharply.
“To look at it again. We can meet back up later.” He held up his hand. “Keys to the rental?”
White tossed them to him and added icily, “There you go, Decker, knock yourself out.”
After he walked off, Andrews and White sat there in silence. Finally Andrews said, “Anything going on I need to know about?”
White continued to stare at the departing Decker before turning to Andrews. “If you find out, be sure to tell me.”
Chapter 27
IT HAD BEEN A SHITTY thing to do to White, Decker knew. And he’d still done it. He had his reasons. He didn’t know if they were good ones, but they were his.
And he’d gotten an idea in his head and had decided to just run with it. Alone. For him, sometimes alone was best.
He drove to Cummins’s gated community and used his credentials to clear security; the same guard was there.
“Any of that stuff I dropped off help you guys?” the man asked.
“Working on it,” said Decker as he tapped the gas and sped off.
The forensics team was still at the house. He put on his gloves and booties and made a beeline for the bedroom. The bodies had been removed but he had had Helen Jacobs email him the pictures of the deceased from the crime scene.
His personal cloud had been percolating last night and early this morning. And when he had laid one memory plate on top of another, a number of inconsistencies had popped up. That was why he was here.
He opened the door of a bedroom down the hall from the judge’s. It was as neat as a pin, a place for everything and everything in its place. He could tell this was Tyler Davidson’s room only because of the two footballs perched on a shelf and some high school textbooks set out on a desk.
This looks nothing like my old teenager bedroom. I was a slob back then and still am. But Tyler was clearly focused and organized, at least while he was with his mom.
He returned to the judge’s bedroom, sat in a chair, and took in the space, slowly, one section at a time. He slipped out his phone and went through the photos of Judge Cummins, one image at a time, from her toenails to her fingernails, hair, face, and clothing. He went into the bathroom and made a careful search of the drawers, counters, and cabinets. He did the same with her closet.
Then he sat in the same chair and looked at the images of the slain Alan Draymont. The twin bullet holes in his chest. The suit. All the rest.
One memory frame after another slipped through his mental process, with every discrepancy noted and analyzed.
Okay, I can finally feel it coming together.
He went downstairs and looked in the dishwasher and saw what he thought he would. The same for the recycling bin. The forensics team had made a note of all this, but no one had put it all together yet. Until now. Things were becoming apparent to him that he should have seen before.
Because you’ve half-assed this case up to this point, that’s why.
Draymont had known Alice Lancer. He had been to her home. That was not unusual—they did work together. She was the one who had been tagged as knowing about Draymont’s assignment with Cummins, and the threats. But his place had been tossed. And Lancer was missing. And so was Patty Kelly. He knew of no connection among the three of them, though he was now certain there had to be one.
Based on his memory analysis and what he had found here, he phoned Helen Jacobs and asked her a question. Then he asked her a more detailed query for which she did not have the answer.
“I’ll get right on that,” she had said, almost apologetically.
He had already checked the list of contents of the bathroom trash can made by the forensic team, and what he thought should have been on that list wasn’t.
He stared down at the toilet.
Yep, probably flushed.
And if he was right about all this, the case would take on a whole different dimension.
Decker walked out of the house and saw Doris Kline lifting some groceries out of an old-model yellow Mercedes convertible.
“Need some help?” he asked.
She turned and saw him. “Sure, save me a trip.”
He grabbed two bags while she carried one. His bags clinked. He looked in them to see the bottles of vodka, scotch, and gin. The lady apparently liked them all. He saw several boxes of crackers and a wedge of cheese poking out of her bag.
“Having a party?” he asked as he followed her into the house.
She looked at him slyly. “Yeah, a party of one, unless you’re interested.”
“On duty, sorry. Besides, I don’t think it would go well with the eggs I had for breakfast.”
He set the bags down on the kitchen table and looked around the space. Dark, not overly clean, dated furnishings, and just a sad air all around.
He glanced at her to find Kline watching him.
“What did you expect?” she said. “I told you my ex had the better lawyer. I got the house and he got the cash. Now he’s traveling the world making whoopie while I can barely pay a high schooler to cut the grass.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.”
“I was stupid. Still trusted him after he cheated on me, more than once. My fault.”
“I think the fault lies with him.”
She unscrewed a bottle of vodka and poured it into a glass. She added some tonic and mixed it with her finger. “I knew I liked you. Have you found out who killed Julia?”
“Working on it. Did you ever see Cummins and Draymont together?”
“Draymont is the dead guy?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, I mean, he was over some nights the last few weeks.”
“Some nights? So, not every night.”
“Well, his car wasn’t there those nights, so I just assumed he wasn’t, either.”
Decker sat down at the table and eyed her. “I know she was your friend, but I need to ask you something.”
She sat down across from him and sipped on her drink while she gave him a knowing look. “You want to know if they were having sex?”
“Yes, but what made you think that?”
“He was young and handsome and she was still young and lovely and single and alone. I would’ve jumped into bed with that guy in a heartbeat. The men around here are mostly bald and fat. And all they want to do is play golf. Makes you lose faith in the American male.”
“Anything more specific?”
She looked at him with a coy expression. “Just things that maybe a woman picks up on that men never do.”
Decker sat back. “Let me tell you what I picked up on. He wasn’t wearing a tie. Everyone in a suit at Gamma Protection does apparently. At that hour, he was in the house, not outside. There were two wineglasses in the dishwasher and an empty bottle of merlot in the recycling bin. The judge had makeup, lipstick, and perfume on when she was killed. I don’t think she was asleep at all. The fingernail and toenail polish she was wearing was the same color as the bottle on her bathroom counter. She’d put it on that night, presumably, which you wouldn’t really do unless you were expecting someone. It was a particularly hot shade of cherry red. It was also on one of the wineglasses.”
Kline smiled. “Go on, Agent Decker. You’re just hitting your stride, I can tell.”
“There were clothes on the floor of her closet, all items of lingerie, as though she was thinking about what to wear that night. Some tissues were in the wastebasket with lipstick marks on them. Same color the judge was wearing. That was probably either the judge wiping off excess, or Draymont getting rid of kiss marks on his face. The bed covers were really messed up and the mattress was several inches off-kilter from the box springs. We thought that represented a struggle with her killer. But now I think it was two people being energetically intimate.”
“At least she had fun before she left this world,” said Kline thoughtfully, her lips trembling. She composed herself with a long drink from her glass. “And I must say, you’re very observant. For my part, I had just seen a couple of times the way they looked at each other. And when I asked Julia about him she went overboard explaining how it was all professional. Which led me to think, ‘She doth protest too much.’”
“You didn’t tell us that yesterday.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Our questions were pretty general.”
She lifted her glass. “Well, now you know.”
“The security gate log showed Draymont arriving around eight that night. Was that his usual time?”
“Around that. Actually, I don’t think he was here last week at all. And he’d been at her home two days before he was killed. At least I saw his car.”
“Do you know when your other neighbors the Perlmans are getting back today?”
“Their flight gets in around eleven. They’ll probably be here around twelve thirty or so.”
“Have you told them about Judge Cummins?”
She shook her head. “I…I didn’t have the heart to. Maya and Julia were very close. It’s not something you want to do over the phone.” She finished her drink. “So, what will you do with that information?”
“Keep digging like I always do. The truth is worth it.”
And as he left her, Decker reflected that it actually felt good to say that.
Chapter 28
YOU WERE RIGHT, AGENT DECKER,” said Helen Jacobs.
They were huddled over the body of Julia Cummins at the morgue. Decker’s electric blue tsunami had come and gone, but left him a bit pale and shaken. He hated that reaction as much as he hated anything. It made him feel weak and not up to the task. And he knew others seeing it might think the same.
Screw synesthesia.
“She’d had sex before she died?” he said.
“Yes. I checked for that, as I said when I saw you at the crime scene. But I was really looking for an assault, considering that she was murdered. I went over her entire body. I checked for the usual finger pad bruising on her arms, legs, and neck, suction bites, especially on her breasts, petechiae in the eyes and palate, bruising to the inner lips and behind the ears, all places typically impacted by a sexual assault. I used swabs and a Foley balloon catheter to check her vagina. The physical structure of that part of the anatomy makes detection of an attack difficult, so I also used a colposcope and an ultraviolet light to do my exam. All the results came back pretty much negative for a sexual assault.”
“And since you found no firm evidence of sexual assault, you proceeded no further on that line?”
“That’s right. No assault meant no sex at all, at least in my mind.” Jacobs looked embarrassed. “I should not have made that assumption. But I suppose I was influenced by her violent death. You never see consensual sex end that way. At least I haven’t.”
“She was also found dressed—in her underwear—but still dressed. Perps who commit sexual assaults don’t usually take the time to re-dress their victims unless it’s some sort of ritual killing.”
“I guess that influenced me, too. And none of the clothing was torn or damaged, except by the knife strikes. In a sexual assault the attacker always tears some of the clothing, particularly the underwear, to show his aggression and dominance. But once you texted I dug a little deeper. There were the smallest of signs around her vagina, just a bit of swelling. There was no tissue damage, or bruising, the sort of thing you see with pretty much every sexual assault. And when I went back and looked again, there was also very slight evidence of a vaginal lubricant.”
“So the encounter was planned?”
“Apparently.”
“Did the man use a condom?”
“He must have. There was no evidence of sperm in the vagina. I certainly checked for that.”
“I think the condom was flushed, not that it would have mattered. She lived alone. And I think they both must have showered afterward. And then the judge put on the clothing she was later found wearing. There were damp towels and washcloths in the laundry bin in the bathroom.”
“I guess that would make sense.”
“Can you still get a DNA match?”
“I hope so from other detritus left behind when people have sex, even with a shower. And there should be plenty of it on the sheets, which we have here, and I can also examine the towels and washcloths. Do you have someone to match it to?”
Decker pointed to Draymont’s body, which was lying on the other table. “That guy right there.”
Jacobs’s eyebrows lifted. “Okay, while I admit I missed the consensual sex piece, I never thought she would be sleeping with her bodyguard. But I guess it happens.”
“Do you have Draymont’s personal effects?”
She led him to a locked cabinet and opened it. Inside were a number of labelled plastic evidence bags.
“Clothes, shoes, wallet, other personal items.”
Decker examined each one carefully. He already knew about the suit and watch and shoes. He opened the billfold. Inside were three credit cards, one a personal platinum Amex.
“Thanks.”
“Her son came by to identify her,” Jacobs volunteered.
Decker shot her a glance. “Tyler came? Not his father?”
“He said his father couldn’t bring himself to come.”
“Damn. How did that go?”
“I covered her right up to her neck, so he couldn’t see…”
“Yeah.”
“He cried. But he handled it pretty well, actually. Better than I would have.”
“Life’s a bitch sometimes,” murmured Decker. “What about prints? Any luck?”
“We didn’t find any we couldn’t match. We found lots of Tyler’s prints, but none in his mother’s bedroom. And none of Barry Davidson’s.” She picked up her iPad and scrolled down. “We found several from the neighbor, Doris Kline. Prints from a maid service Cummins used. Some others we determined were tied to service companies, HVAC, plumbing, and other ones like that. Andrews had them checked out and all had alibis.”
“But not Doris Kline, right?” Jacobs looked up. Decker continued, “She lives alone. She found the bodies. She was home that night.”
“Y-yes, I guess that’s right. But do you think she could have done it? When I printed her, she seemed genuinely upset about the judge’s death.”
“I think anyone can do anything until it’s proved conclusively that they didn’t.”
Jacobs eyed him strangely and then shrugged. “While you’re here, there is something else I found.”
She led him over to a computer set up on a countertop. “I examined the blood found on the stairs and on the palm print on the wall of the stairs leading to the upstairs bedroom.”
“You mean the blood that came from the judge when she was attacked downstairs, and then fled upstairs to her bedroom where she was killed?”
“Well, that’s what I thought, at first. But the bloodstains on the stairs and under the palm print weren’t hers. They were Draymont’s.”
Decker glanced over at the two bodies, separated by a few feet in death, and perhaps by miles as far as the investigation was going.
“So the judge was not attacked downstairs?”
“Well, at least she wasn’t bleeding while downstairs.”
“So Draymont was probably leaving the house when he was shot. The judge came downstairs, probably when she heard the two gunshots. She found the body, got his blood on her that way, and then ran back upstairs, leaving his blood trace along the way?”
“That seems to be the case,” said Jacobs.
“But if the shooter was still there, why not kill her downstairs?”
“They might have tried to, but missed.”
“There were no bullet holes found other than the pair in Draymont,” Decker pointed out.
“Of course, that’s right. And she was stabbed, not shot.”
Decker rocked back on his heels. She was stabbed, not shot. Why the hell didn’t you see that discrepancy before, superpower memory or not?
“What caliber killed Draymont?” he asked.
“Nine millimeter. Both slugs were still in him. They’re in good shape for a ballistics match if we can find the gun.”
She showed him the rounds that were in another plastic evidence baggie. “They were fired from a distance of over four feet. No powder burns or other markings on the body.”
“Which makes sense. It would give Draymont no opportunity to wrestle the weapon away. Now, what can you tell me about the knife used to kill the judge?”
She brought up a file on the computer that showed the knife wounds on the dead woman together with a measurement scale.
“I’m estimating about a six-inch blade with a serrated edge.”
“Four defensive wounds on her forearms and two on her hands?”
“That’s correct. Unfortunately, there was no trace under her fingernails. She probably was focused on blocking the knife strikes and never got ahold of her attacker.”
“Right.”
“And, as I reported before, ten stab wounds to her torso, including the fatal one.”
Decker shook his head.
“What is it?”
“Maybe nothing. Thanks.”
He left and walked out into the heat and sunshine.
Gun, knife, impersonal versus frenetic. What the hell was I thinking? Well, you weren’t thinking, were you?
You don’t shoot someone and then chase down and struggle with a witness, and then knife her. She would have been screaming her head off, though with Kline on a CPAP machine and taking a sleep aid, and the Perlmans out of town, there would have been no one around to hear. Still, you would just shoot her, like you had Draymont. Bang, bang, no screams, no struggle. You didn’t have to get close enough to stab her multiple times.
