Gone Too Far (Devlin & Falco), page 6
Kerri showed her badge. “Ma’am, I’m Detective Devlin, and this is Detective Falco. We’d like to speak to you about Asher Walsh.”
The door closed once more, followed by the sound of the security chain rattling before opening again. Ms. Taylor might be in her sixties, but she had a lean figure and an alert, watchful gaze. An attractive woman with silver hair and blue eyes. The pink sweater lent a feminine softness to her faded, comfortable jeans and casual white tennis shoes. Fashionable pearl-rimmed glasses sat on her keen nose, making her eyes look even larger. Those large eyes were a little red. Maybe she was suffering from allergies, or maybe she’d already heard the news about Walsh. Unless she avoided the television and radio altogether, it was doubtful she’d missed the press conference.
The lady gestured toward the room on the left. “Please, join me in the parlor.”
“Your flowers are beautiful, Ms. Taylor.” Kerri settled on the small sofa that was more like a love seat. The many windows in the room filled the small space with light. Houseplants were scattered about. The lady had a green thumb or a housekeeper with one. Either way, she liked her plants.
“I learned long ago that gardening was the best sort of therapy for quieting the mind. Beats the hell out of Prozac and isn’t illegal. Would you like tea or water?”
Sharp witted as well, Kerri noted. Not that she’d expected anything less from a law professor.
“I’m good. Thank you,” Kerri said as Falco sat down next to her. He declined the offer of refreshments as well.
Taylor relaxed fully into her chair. “A friend in the mayor’s office called and told me what happened to Asher.” The facade of strength never faltered, but emotion glittered in her eyes. “I knew a bad end was coming. It was only a matter of time. I warned him, but he was as stubborn as I am, so there was no stopping him from charging forward.”
Falco shot Kerri a look. “Can you explain what you mean, Ms. Taylor?”
“Let’s start with the fact that he was even in Birmingham. Do you think that young man came here after graduating at the top of his class at Harvard and then clerking for a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice because it was the best he could do? Please. The opportunities available to him were endless.”
“Did he come to Birmingham to be near you?” Kerri asked. The lady had no children or family remaining in the area as far as they had found. “You’re related to him in some way?”
“I suppose that played a small role in his decision.” One elbow propped on a chair arm, she clasped her hands together in her lap. “When he was a child—until he was fifteen—he came for a few weeks each summer. But then his father decided he didn’t really want anyone making the connection between the Walsh family and this one, so the visits became shorter and far less frequent.”
“Then you are related to him,” Kerri offered. “On his mother’s side?”
“His father would say not, but it’s true. Lana and I are sisters. When I was only two, our mother left my father and me. She moved to Boston to go to college. She was very young when she had me. Her greatest wish was to escape her southern heritage and pursue a different life. Eventually she married again and had another child, my sister, Lana—Asher’s mother. To make a long story short, I grew up here with my father, and Lana grew up in Boston. Our mother insisted we know each other, so she’d fly me up to Boston each summer. Lana and I kept in touch to some degree until our mother died. After that, not so much. We had very different pursuits. As my daddy often said, my little sister got my mother’s looks, but I got her brains. I became a law professor, and my sister found herself a rich husband. Her husband doesn’t like me. I’m certain I don’t meet his high standards.” She made a soft sound, a sort of laugh. “I suppose it’s only fair since I literally despise the bastard.”
Kerri bit her lip to hold back a smile at her bluntness.
“But they allowed Asher to visit you,” Falco noted.
“Only because they wanted to jet all over the world, and Asher, being quite the handful, made traveling difficult. Mother died before he was born, so there was no one else save nannies, and I don’t think they liked the idea of anyone knowing so much about their private lives. Asher was one to repeat every word he heard his parents say. It was quite a problem until the desire to have a car outweighed the boy’s need to annoy his parents.”
“He stayed in contact,” Kerri said, “even after he stopped visiting so often?”
“Not at first.” She sighed, a sad smile furrowing her face. “Hormones, you know. The teenage years are fraught with love and loss. But by the time he was in law school, he found his way to me again. I think he realized we were very much alike.”
“How so?” Kerri asked.
“Our determination. Our love of the law. Most of all, I think, was our distaste for the privileged class.”
“People with money,” Falco pointed out. “But his father is very wealthy, and he went to Harvard.”
“And his distaste grew. No one was more surprised than me when he chose to move south rather than join his father’s esteemed firm. Leland had been planning that moment since Asher was born.” She gave a small shrug. “Granted, I imagine his father was more surprised. In fact, I’m certain he was gobsmacked. I was quite overjoyed.”
Kerri steered the conversation back to the present. “Once he moved to Birmingham, did he spend a lot of time with you?”
“There’s a condo he leased, but he rarely stayed there. It was more for appearances, in my opinion. He spent most of his nights here. I knew there was trouble when he didn’t come home last night. I scarcely slept at all. I wanted to call him, but he’d asked me not to. He had an important meeting. He assured me he would explain everything today.”
Kerri’s instincts moved to the next level. As cooperative as this lady appeared, she knew the law. Obviously better than most. To go beyond the room she’d invited them into, they needed a warrant. Or her permission. She seemed all too happy to talk, but she might very well balk at anything more. Still, it never hurt to ask. “We were planning to visit his condo next. Perhaps that’s not where we need to start. May we see his room here?”
Ms. Taylor sat forward in her chair. She stared silently at Kerri for a long moment. “You do whatever you have to if it helps find who took Asher from me. He was a brilliant young man with a bright future ahead of him. More importantly, he was a good person. He wanted to help others and to rid the world of drugs—he was very antidrug—and other evils. Truth is, Detectives, he was too good for this world.” She stood. “His room is on the right at the end of the upstairs hall. I’ll make tea.”
Falco followed the lady from the room. “Is there any way I can help?”
“No. No. You go along and do your job, Detective. I’ve been making tea since I was old enough to light the stove.”
Kerri climbed the steep stairs slowly, studying the framed family photographs. There were several of Walsh when he was a kid but only one of Lana, his mother. The photo appeared to be thirty or so years old. Lana and Naomi stood in front of some historic building that was obviously not in Alabama. By the time Kerri reached the landing, Falco had caught up with her. The house appeared to be trapped in its last update. The seventies, she decided, considering the owl accents and geometric shapes and patterns in some of the paintings. No recent upgrades or decorating.
“You think there’s any chance the lady actually knows what Walsh was doing with Kurtz?” Falco asked.
“I have a feeling she knows a great deal, but like any good lawyer, she’s not going to tell us anything before it’s necessary.”
There were four doors along the narrow hall. The first on the right was a pink bedroom with lots of lacy curtains and shabby chic linens. The gold shag carpet screamed more of that seventies vibe. The perfume bottles on the dresser suggested it belonged to the lady of the house. The next door was a large vintage bathroom complete with a massive soaking tub. Across from the bathroom was a second bedroom. This one dark and masculine with heavy antique wood furnishings, including a four-poster bed. The musty, closed-up smell was indication enough that it had likely belonged to Naomi’s father.
The final door led into the largest of the bedrooms. Across the room a door to an en suite stood ajar. An open set of bifold doors displayed shirts and suits and a few pairs of jeans. Though still dated, the furniture was newer than the other furnishings in the house. This was likely the room Walsh had used when he’d visited growing up as well as since moving to Birmingham. This space was another indication of how much Naomi Taylor adored her nephew. She’d given him what was obviously the owner’s suite.
Falco opened a dresser drawer. “Looks like Mr. Walsh was as organized at home as he was at work.”
Kerri glanced at the neatly aligned hangers in the closet once more. “I think we can safely assume the man liked all things in their place.” Neat and reserved.
The walls were a pale, almost white shade of blue. No shag carpet in this room. The hardwood floors were scuffed and scratched from decades of life. The bed, dresser, bureau, and night table were all crafted in the rock maple of the early to mid-twentieth century. Kerri remembered her grandmother having bedroom furniture exactly like this.
She went to the nightstand while Falco moved through the dresser drawers. Each drawer would be emptied and checked top, bottom, and sides; then the removed items would be replaced as they’d been found. They inspected between the mattress and box spring as well as under the bed. While Falco examined the floor for any loose boards, Kerri walked through the bathroom and checked the small cabinet and inside the toilet tank. There weren’t many other hiding places.
Back in the bedroom, she walked to the closet and started the process of examining every pocket in his wardrobe. When Falco finished with the floor, including scrutinizing the ventilation ducts, he joined her at the closet. The space was only about five feet wide and maybe two feet or so deep. Nothing like modern walk-in closets. Falco settled onto his knees and began checking the shoes lined in a well-ordered row along the floor of the closet.
The edge of something yellow caught Kerri’s eye. Whatever the glimpse of yellow was, it was at the back of the closet. She struggled to part the abundance of clothes. When the view to the back wall of the closet was cleared, she spotted several squares of yellow. Paper. A frown tugged at her brow. Sticky notes. Lots and lots of sticky notes.
“Have a look at this.” She held one side of the hanging garments back and waited for Falco to stand.
He reached for one of the notes. “Osorio.” He stuck that one back to the wall and snagged another. “Cross.” His gaze shifted to Kerri. “We need to get these clothes out of the way.”
They removed the items from the closet, piling them on the bed until the closet was empty. Most of the back wall was covered with sticky notes and photos and news articles.
“This is the case he was working on,” Kerri murmured, stunned by how much research the man had done into the Osorio cartel and potential connections to Birmingham. Most of the articles were about the cartel. Sticky notes listed names and locations. Dates. All sorts of information that likely tied together somehow but showed no logical order in its current context.
“We need to talk to Cross again,” Falco said. “If how many times her name appears here is any indication, she knows a hell of a lot more than she’s telling.”
“I picked up on that.” Kerri had suspected the woman was not being fully forthcoming.
Her cell vibrated. She dragged it from her pocket and read the text message there.
When are you coming home?
Tori.
“Let’s document all this,” Kerri said. “We’ll do a walk-through of the Kurtz home to see if there’s anything related to this, and then you go talk to Cross. I need to get home sooner rather than later.”
“Everything okay?”
Kerri had allowed this case to push the incident at her daughter’s school away for a while, but it was still there. Writhing and expanding in the back of her mind, warning there was a strong possibility that some aspect of her and her daughter’s lives was not ever going to be okay again.
“I don’t know yet. I hope so.”
6
7:30 p.m.
Devlin Residence
Twenty-First Avenue South
Birmingham
Kerri placed her weapon in the lockbox on her bedside table. Heaving a big breath, she peeled off her jacket and tossed it onto the bed. They’d found nothing to indicate anyone had been in the Kurtz home since the owner had left yesterday, headed to his place of business. Not a single sticky note or anything else regarding Cross or a drug cartel similar to what they’d found in Walsh’s closet was discovered. A forensic tech would do a sweep, and she and Falco would have another look.
But not tonight.
Most disappointing was that they had found nothing that even hinted at whatever had been happening between Kurtz and Walsh. No indication that Kurtz had been doing anything other than enjoying life or that he’d even known Asher Walsh.
The stop at Diana’s house was the same as always. Diana pretended she was great; the twins—her boys—were great. Robby, her husband, was great. The dance studio to which she’d dedicated her life building was great.
Everything was great.
Kerri wondered how much of Diana’s prescription medication it took to make everything great.
She rubbed at her eyes and reminded herself that she would probably need more than medication if something happened to Tori.
Rather than hide in her room and worry about all the things that were wrong in her life, Kerri made the short journey to her daughter’s room. She hadn’t said much on the drive home. Myers remained in critical condition according to the television news report she’d caught a glimpse of at Diana’s before the channel had been changed. She had hoped Sykes would offer an update, but no such luck. She should have known better. Her daughter was a person of interest in the case, which ensured Kerri was excluded from ongoing details.
She rapped on the closed bedroom door.
“Come in,” her daughter called in that resigned tone that said, You’re going to anyway; why bother knocking?
Kerri opened the door and walked in. Tori leaned against a stack of pillows on her bed, her laptop perched on her waist.
“Anything interesting on social media?” She’d done her homework at Diana’s. A crystal ball wasn’t required to know she was almost certainly searching for anything new about her injured classmate.
And maybe whatever gossip had cropped up about the incident.
“Nothing I want to talk about.” Tori closed the laptop and held it to her chest like a shield. “What’s up?”
Settling onto the side of the bed, Kerri studied her daughter for a moment. Same dark blondish-brown hair as Kerri. Same brown eyes. Tall for her age and thin. And smart. Tori was really smart. Far smarter than her mom or her dad had been at this age.
“Have you recalled anything about what happened that might affect the investigation?”
Tori stared defiantly at Kerri as if she hoped to back her off the subject. Not happening this side of the grave.
Admitting defeat, Tori muttered, “Someone in Brendal’s family posted on Facebook that her condition is unchanged. Critical. And she’s still unconscious. They’re asking for prayers.” She blinked rapidly to hold back the emotion shining in her eyes. “I don’t know why anyone would pray. All that praying I did for Amelia didn’t help one bit.” She glared at Kerri again. “I probably wasn’t doing it right. Maybe because I never really went to church much.”
The easiest way to release guilt was to heap it onto someone else. “Your father didn’t want you encumbered with religion.” Although Kerri had been raised in church and old habits died hard, she hadn’t disagreed with him entirely. “We can pray together if you’d like.”
“Forget it.”
For about five seconds Kerri allowed her daughter to stew in her latest excuse for why she felt so miserable. Then she asked the question to which she desperately needed an accurate answer. “Do you feel like what happened to Brendal was in any way your fault?” Kerri held her breath. She didn’t want to believe her daughter capable of this sort of violence—and she didn’t—but she did need to know what had happened.
Horror claimed Tori’s expression. “How could you ask that? Of course not!”
“But there’s something you’re not telling me, Tori. Something that’s bothering you. It feels to me like you’re battling some amount of culpability.”
Since hitting fourteen, Tori had become more secretive. It was normal. Kerri understood this. Until this year, she had known all Tori’s friends—girls and boys—her daughter had gone to school with since kindergarten. But everything was different now. After elementary more kids had merged into the private school Tori had attended her entire academic life. There were a lot of new names and faces.
Kerri and her sister had gone to public school. Diana’s kids did. But Tori’s father had insisted their one and only child would go to private school. To the same one he had attended. Funny how that fancy school hadn’t done one damned thing for his moral code, or perhaps he had missed that part. Either way, Tori was happy there. Her friends were there. The one good thing her ex had done in the divorce was agree to pay the tuition until Tori graduated. The concession was not for Kerri’s benefit or even for Tori’s. It was for his own. Nick couldn’t have his child attending public school. Even one he had abandoned emotionally and geographically.
“I told the police the truth,” Tori said, fresh tears gathering in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened. One second we were all standing there, and the next Brendal was falling down the stairs.”
Her voice shook on the last word. She swiped at her eyes.
Kerri gave her a moment to compose herself. “Your new friend, Alice . . . do you like her? I mean, really like her the way you do Sarah?”
A shrug lifted one thin shoulder. “I guess. Sarah and I have been friends forever, so it’s hard to say that I like Alice the same. I haven’t known her that long. She’s pretty and smart, but she doesn’t make friends easy. She likes being the center of attention. That turns a lot of people off.”
