Dead Lies (6 page)

Anna listened intently, amazed they’d learned so much already.

“That’s a start,” Kreeger said.

“I also had the guys comb the house for the usual stuff,” De Luca added. He consulted his notebook. “So far we got two laptops, a couple of electronic organizers, calendars, bills, financial records, stacks of mail…” He looked up. “We can walk through together later to see if there’s anything else we need.”

“You got it,” said Kreeger with a nod. “Thanks, Leon.” He turned and walked to the foot of the bed, where he had a good view of the balding figure crouching over the body. Kreeger seemed to have forgotten about her, so Anna decided to join him. Neither of them spoke as they watched the man unwrap a condom and slip it over the tip of a long chemical thermometer he pulled from his bag. He inserted the device into the corpse’s rectum and waited until it beeped with a reading. He pulled it out, pulled the condom off, stuck it in a plastic evidence bag, and put it and the thermometer back into his bag. Then he scribbled on a clipboard.

The man spent several more minutes examining the body, concentrating on the wound on the back of Bill Vance’s head. When he turned it over, Anna noticed the bullet hadn’t exited through the forehead, which meant it had lodged somewhere in the man’s brain. She imagined the goopy mess the M.E. would find during the autopsy. Hollowpoints were designed to curl backwards on impact like a flower blossoming in fast motion, obliterating soft tissue.

Anna studied the victim. With fine features, a strong jaw and a runner’s body, he had been a good-looking guy. What a striking couple he and his wife must have been, she thought.

The M.E. rose from the floor and turned slightly toward them. He was short and compact, and there were beads of sweat dotting the space between his nose and upper lip. He took of his rubber gloves and dropped them on the floor next to the dead man’s feet then removed his gold-rimmed glasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with two fingers and blinked a few times then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sensing he was being watched, the M.E. turned fully, and his eyes lit up when he recognized Kreeger.

“Jerry!”

“Good to see you, Bob,” said Kreeger, stepping forward. “Merry Christmas.” They pumped hands heartily, as if meeting over a dead man and wishing each other happy holidays was the most normal thing in the world.

“It’s been a while, Jerry,” said the M.E. “But that’s a good thing in our business.” His voice was surprisingly deep for a man his size, but somehow it matched his wide open smile and friendly demeanor. He looked like the kind of man you’d want to be your doctor. That appeal made Anna wonder why he’d chosen to work with dead patients rather than living ones.

The detective chuckled. “So, what can you tell me about the victims?” he said, his smile quickly replaced by the look people adopt at wakes.

The M.E. glanced at the body and grew similarly serious. “It looks like this deceased died of a single gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “With the woman downstairs, it’s not so clear. She’s got three gunshot wounds and also some blunt force trauma to the head. I’m not sure yet whether she died from the shots or the beating.” He looked up at Kreeger. “In any case, both victims’ temperatures were around 94 degrees, so they died within the last few hours.”

The detective was nodding. “Gene told me the perp used a .22.”

“That’s consistent with the size of the holes,” said the M.E.

“Any defensive wounds?”

“None that I could see on either of them.” The man looked down at Bill Vance again. “This guy was shot in the back of the head, so I doubt we’ll find any. The woman was a little more banged-up, but there were no visible marks on her hands. Again, we’ll take a closer look at both of them when we have them on the table. Beyond that, there’s not much more I can say at this point.”

“Thanks, Bob,” said Kreeger.

“Give my office a call in the morning,” said the M.E., consulting his watch. “Someone can tell you when the autopsies are scheduled.”

Kreeger nodded.

The M.E. turned to two assistants wearing bulky jackets stamped with the Medical Examiner’s seal. “Okay, you can take it now,” he waved.

Anna and Kreeger stepped out of the way as the two young men rolled the gurney in from the hall. They carefully placed the body into a green bag and lifted it onto the gurney, securing it in place with seat-belt-like straps that hung over the sides. Then they piled several plastic bags containing the man’s clothes and shoes on top and tucked them between the body bag and straps. When they were satisfied everything was secure, they wheeled the gurney out.

The M.E. picked up the bag he’d been packing and slung it over his shoulder. He shook hands again with Kreeger, nodded at Anna and said goodnight.

Kreeger finally turned his attention back to Anna. “All right, let’s finish up,” he said.

She spent the next ten minutes describing how she, Frank, and Sanjay had come upon the second scene, and how Sanjay had discovered the empty jewelry tray in the closet. Finishing up her tale as they stood at the entrance to the closet, Anna noted that it didn’t look so pristine anymore. There were strict rules about how the cops should handle evidence, but no rule that said they had to search for it neatly.

“Jerry, you probably want to take a look at this,” a voice called out from across the room. She and Kreeger turned their heads simultaneously, almost bumping shoulders in the process.

A young man wearing a C.S.U. windbreaker was standing by the bedside table, and as she and Kreeger approached, Anna knowingly eyed the khaki-colored lockbox in his hands. Cops kept their guns in them. She had a similar one at home. Damn, she thought. The husband was an ex-cop. She’d totally forgotten to tell Kreeger. She opened her mouth but he was already halfway across the room. She caught up with him and brought him up to date, apologizing for her oversight. He acknowledged her mistake with a nod and a scribble in his notebook, and then they both peered inside the metal container, which revealed a shiny Smith & Wesson semi-automatic and two boxes of ammunition.

The detective who’d found it handed Kreeger a fresh pair of gloves, and Kreeger gave his notebook to Anna so he could slip them on. Reaching inside the box, he carefully removed the gun, making sure to keep it pointing toward the wall. He ejected the magazine from the handle and saw that it was empty. Then he opened the action with a snap and peered inside, making sure there wasn’t a bullet hiding in the chamber. The gun wasn’t loaded.

“This must have been what the husband was going for,” Anna said quietly, feeling sheepish that she’d thought him a coward earlier.

With no trace sarcasm Kreeger responded, “Yeah, but he wasn’t fast enough.”

CHAPTER 6

I
T WAS 3:30 A.M. WHEN KREEGER’S CELL PHONE RANG AGAIN, PUNCTUATING
the quiet of the Vance’s living room, which he was using as a temporary command post. He flipped the cover. It was Jane Carmichael, the prosecutor who’d gotten the ping registration, calling again. “Gimme some good news.”

“We got a hit,” Jane said.

“Great. Where?”

She gave him a commercial address in Perona, a town about fifteen miles south of Avondale. “Do you need directions?”

“I know the place.”

“Okay, call me when you find the phone.”

“Sure, Jane,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.” But he knew he wouldn’t call her. A newly divorced mother of two teenagers, she had made her interest in him clear. But even though she was attractive and extremely fit, there was also something too—he hated to be cruel—
desperate
about her. Her clothes were a little too tight, and she wore a little too much makeup. And while he, too, felt lonely since his own divorce, he didn’t want the fact that they were both alone to be the reason they got together.

Maybe he was a schmuck for thinking that way, given that he hadn’t had a date in over a year, but he didn’t care.

The woman seated opposite him, on the other hand, well, she was someone he’d like to get to know better. Anna Valentine was intriguing, to say the least. She’d not only blatantly broken the rules with that disposable camera of hers but hadn’t held back any of her opinions while they were doing the walk-through. Most patrol officers in her position would have been more deferential, but she’d spoken to him as an equal, treating him almost like a visitor to
her
scene. No doubt she’d grown those balls of hers in Brooklyn.

At first he’d been put off by her self-assurance, but he’d quickly warmed up to her. She was smart, and he’d enjoyed hearing her intelligent observations of the crime scene. And did he mention she was sexy as hell? It was her eyes. Those beautiful sexy eyes that conjured fantasies of a lazy weekend at a country bed-and-breakfast. And that body—thin and delicate but with feminine roundness in all the right places. He could hardly take his eyes off her.

The only flaw he could see was her feet. She had bunions the size of golf balls, which even a mannish pair of police shoes couldn’t hide. Kreeger felt for her. His mother had also had bunions and had suffered pain and self-consciousness her whole life. He wondered if Anna had ever considered corrective surgery. It hadn’t been an option in his mother’s day, but now it seemed common enough.

Sheepishly he broke his stare. He didn’t want Anna to catch him dwelling on her feet, which she had tucked part way under the club chair, as if in an unconscious attempt to hide them. His eyes rose to her lovely face, but again he forced himself to look away. Anna was half his age, way too young to ever consider hooking up with an old guy like him.

He snapped his phone shut and got back to business. “We got a hit on the ping registration. Wanna come, Anna?”

She looked up, her eyes blazing with excitement. “Absolutely,” she said, closing her own phone.

For the last two hours she’d been helping him call police departments in surrounding towns to see if any moving violations had been issued around the time of the crime. The hope was that the killer had been caught speeding in his haste to get away. But so far their efforts had turned up zilch.

“It’s a commercial area, so don’t get your hopes up,” he warned. “And the signal’s steady. It’s probably a dump site.”

She smiled as if to say, “Yes, I understand.” But the shine in her eyes belied her caution. He understood how she felt. He’d made more collars than he could count, but there was still nothing like the thrill of making a bust.

After rounding up De Luca and a junior detective named Mike Steele, Kreeger and the three other officers exited the house and walked down the driveway. Rubber-neckers now gone, the local cops were no longer required to stand guard behind the tape. They watched the house from the warmth of their squad cars. He didn’t blame them. It had to be twenty degrees out.

Kreeger turned to De Luca. “Why don’t you ride with Mike,” he said, ignoring the smirk on De Luca’s face as he followed Anna to her car.

Five minutes later, he and Anna were speeding south down Route 17, with De Luca and Steele following in an unmarked vehicle. “I don’t know Perona at all, so you’re going to have to direct me,” Anna said.

“I will,” said Kreeger. “Just go until I say stop.”

Eventually Anna bumped over a set of train tracks crossing the highway. “Okay, slow down,” he said, pointing to the entrance of a parking lot with a large, windowless store set back a few hundred feet from the road. “Pull in here.”

“What is this place?” she asked as they pulled into the lot. Kreeger could hear the sound of their crunching tires as they rolled slowly over the uneven asphalt.

“It’s one of those stores that sells everything. Grills, porch furniture, clothes, sheets and towels. I brought one of my daughters here a couple of summers ago to get some things for college.”

“It looks like nobody’s home,” Anna said, eyeing the metal security gate covering the double front doors. She ducked her head a bit and craned her neck as if the windshield didn’t offer her an adequate view of the area, and Kreeger stole a glance at the graceful curve of her jaw. He noted the protrusion of her collar bone at the V of her shirt, as well as a small gold cross on a chain.

“I guess it is a dump site,” she said, sounding disappointed.

He pulled his eyes away. “Drive around back,” he ordered, radioing the other car to take the opposite direction and meet them on the flip side. Spotting no vehicles or people as they slowly circled the store, Kreeger told Anna to park. The other officers followed suit, and the four of them got out and looked around. Except for their breathing, the parking lot was totally silent and still. The only sound was the steady roar of cars on a distant highway. He looked around, zeroed in on the pair of dumpsters on the left end of the store and pulled out his phone.

“Did somebody call the owner?” he heard Anna say. “Maybe he can get us into the building.”

“I’m not sure we’re going to need to,” Kreeger responded, dialing a number. As the familiar chords of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony chimed from the direction of the dumpsters, he caught Anna’s grin. It pleased him.

“Ready for a little dumpster diving, Mike?” he said to the lean, six-foot-two detective who wore a military-style crew cut and spoke with a Southern drawl. Steele had joined the department after serving three tours in Iraq and moving north to marry a local girl, and Kreeger was glad to have him. He was a fine cop with nerves as strong as his last name implied.

“Sure am,” Steele said. Closing the ten feet to the cars with four giant steps, he opened the trunk of the unmarked car and retrieved a box of plastic gloves. He handed the box to De Luca, slipped a pair on, then trotted to the dumpsters.

“Dial it again, will ya?” Steele said to Kreeger. A few seconds later, the music began again, and the lanky officer hoisted himself up onto the edge of one of the bins. Swinging his legs into the container, he lowered himself inside. After quickly locating the source, he held up the phone for the others to see.

Kreeger slipped on his own pair of gloves and took it from the younger officer. “Keep looking,” he ordered then turned his attention to the I.D. screen. Finding the recent calls list he noted that the last one had been made at 6:02, two minutes before the 9-1-1 call had come in. The name of the caller was Web. So far the brother’s story was checking out.

“Found something else,” Steele announced, holding up a black leather jacket. “And it’s bloody.”

Kreeger took the jacket from him and carefully checked the pockets. Nothing. Then he looked at the label, which said “Cottner,” a brand he didn’t recognize. It was size XL.

Behind him, Steele said, “This is too easy.”

Kreeger turned and saw Steele holding out a plastic bag. He reached for it and glanced inside. Then he tipped it forward so Anna and De Luca could get a look, too. For a moment they all stared at the sparkly collection of jewelry. There was little doubt now. The killer was after something besides the loot.

“Well,
sheeyat,
” said De Luca, summing the situation up nicely.

“Why here?” Kreeger heard Anna say after a moment.

The three men looked at her.

“Why’d the perp dump the stuff here?” she repeated. “I mean, where does Route 17 south go? It’s not really a major highway, is it? It narrowed to a single lane about a half a mile back.”

Kreeger began to see what she was getting at.

She continued. “I mean, if the perp wasn’t from around here, he’d take one of the major highways out of here, like Route 4 to the city. But we passed that intersection several miles back.”

“Or he’d access Route 80,” offered Steele from the dumpster. “That’s at least a mile-and-a-half behind us. He could even get the Parkway from there.”

“He might’ve dumped the stuff then doubled back,” countered De Luca.

Anna shook her head. “If I was the perp, I’d be thinking, ‘How can I get far away from the crime scene as fast as I can and still dump the evidence where no one will find it?’ ” She paused and her forehead furled in thought. “I’d have done it at a rest stop on I-95. Easy in, easy out. Plus, garbage must get hauled out of those places daily. Nobody would ever have found the stuff.”

“Right, Anna,” said Kreeger. “I’d have done the same thing. This guy could be local.” He looked around, as if looking for a giant arrow in the sky pointing to the killer’s house. If only it was that easy.

“All right then, let’s get a team out here,” he said, feeling just a bit guilty that the Crime Scene Unit would have to put in a few more hours of work before they could get home to their families. Merry f-ing Christmas. “Hopefully we’ll get some prints off those dumpsters,” he added.

“I’ll call it in,” said De Luca, heading back to the car.

A picture of the killer was beginning to form in Kreeger’s head. Wearing an extra-large jacket and a size 12 shoe, he’d be a big guy, six feet or taller. From the way he’d cased the Vance’s’ house and not been seen by the neighbors, he was both careful and unobtrusive. He was also smart enough to use a suppressor to muffle the sound of his gun and to wear gloves so as not to leave prints. Yet he wasn’t quite smart enough to turn off Serena’s cell phone before he dumped it.

He was also a sociopath. You’d have to be to murder two people with precision and impunity.

Was this a contract killing, Kreeger wondered, or was the guy a lone wolf with a psychotic fixation—or personal grudge?

Anything was possible at this point.

Pulling off his gloves one finger at a time, Kreeger widened his visual sweep beyond the parking lot. He found what he was looking for about a hundred yards south of Nickel’s. It was an Apple Saving’s Bank with a drive-through window, and from this distance he could just about make out a pair of security cameras on either side of the glass.

The veteran cop felt like a man poised to crank the lever of a fifty-dollar slot machine seconds before the matching lemons fell into place. He’d won sixteen hundred bucks in Atlantic City last year, and the feeling had been the same as those moments throughout his career when he realized he’d cracked a case. If their luck continued to hold out, that grainy piece of video footage would reveal the killer at work.