Justification for Murder (10 page)

S
affron laid in bed without being able to move. Her eyes were locked on the white ceiling. She was staring at a small spider web that had come loose on one end. Cat purred while kneading Saffron’s armpit with long, sharp claws. It hurt, but not more than the pounding in her head. She could hear the sounds of cars driving by and the faint rattle of blinds brushing against each other in the light morning breeze. She willed herself to move, but no muscle obeyed. She wondered if she should just stay there for the rest of the day. Her phone rang three times and it went to voice mail. The sound split her head in a million pieces.

Very slowly she grabbed Cat, pulled her close and kissed her forehead. She set her aside and, as if walking through molasses, managed to shuffle to the bathroom to take a shower.

About thirty minutes later, she was able to move around with intermittent nausea. She fed Cat and decided to go to Starbucks for coffee instead of making it at home. On her way to the garage she checked email and hit the key for the car door to open. When she heard no noise, she looked up and froze in place.

“What the hell?” she said out loud. A cold shiver ran through her back. “Where’s my car?”

She walked around the garage, wondering if she had parked it somewhere else. She didn’t remember doing that, but her head hurt too much for her to be totally sure. After going around twice, she decided to go up to the concierge to report the car stolen, then remembered she had lent it to Emma. On the way out of the garage, she called the hospital. Even if she wasn’t seeing Ranjan anymore, she still felt responsible for the accident.

“Good Samaritan Hospital, how can I help you?”

“Can you transfer me to the Clinical Observation Unit?”

“Please hold.”

Once she was connected, she said, “I’m Saffron Meadows. I was in a car accident with Ranjan Balasubramanian. I just wanted to check how he was doing.”

“Kristina,” Saffron heard the woman call out, covering the phone but not enough to mute it. “The girlfriend wants to know about the patient in Room 305.”

Saffron heard a muffled voice, and then the woman spoke back into the phone. “Here’s the head nurse.”

“Hello, I’m Nurse Mitchell,” she said. Before Saffron could say anything, she continued: “The concussion was light. I think most likely he’ll be discharged sometime this afternoon. I think his uncle is in the room with him. Would you like me to transfer you?”

“No, that’s okay. Thank you.”

She hung up and had an incredible urge to call Ranjan on his cell. But she forced herself to put the phone back in her purse and move on with her day.

Once outside of the garage she approached the patrol car that was watching out for her. The two officers were engaged in a lively discussion about football. Saffron stood about a foot from the window, not wanting to interrupt. The younger one, in the driver’s seat, saw her first and motioned for his partner to roll the window down.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning, Miss Meadows. Thanks for the pizza last night.”

“Ah, sure. Of course. I’m glad you liked it.” It took her a second to remember that she had come down to ask them if they wanted any food before she got hammered.

“What can we do for you?” the one closer to her asked when the silence started to feel uncomfortable.

“I feel really stupid asking for this. And I’m not even sure it’s allowed.” She paused, looking at the backseat of the car. It looked clean at least. “But my friend borrowed my car last night and I was wondering if you could take me back to the station.” She blushed and put a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have an appointment with Detective Lynch this morning.”

The two officers looked at each other and the more senior one said, “Yes, of course. Jump in.”

There was a steel mesh partition separating the backseat from the front. It looked sturdy and closely knitted. She passed her fingers over it, wondering how many people had done so before her, then pulled her hand, as if stung by fire, and she wished she had Purell in her purse.

“The modern cars have Plexiglas,” the older officer explained, seeing her curious expression, “but we haven’t got the upgrade yet. I’m sorry about that.”

“No worries. It’ll give my neighbors something to talk about,” Saffron said, sliding back on the hard plastic seat.

“We didn’t see anything suspicious last night, Miss Meadows,” the younger officer said, hoping to make her feel safer.

“Please, call me Saffron.”

“I’m Sergeant Colin Russell and he’s Officer George Bush. No relation,” he said and chuckled, as if it were an inside joke.

Saffron smiled and, unable to shake their hands due to the partition, she waved.

“Very nice meeting you both. I feel bad you’ve been put on this job. What did you do to piss someone off so badly?” she said and regretted it immediately. She had probably just offended the two men who were trying to protect her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any disrespect,” she said, feeling the heat burn her cheeks.

“None taken. Actually, this is overtime for both of us, so we do it gladly.”

“Ah, cool.” She looked out the window. Everything went by very slowly at less than twenty miles per hour. “You’ve been in the force long?”

“I’m going on my third year,” Bush said.

“I was a detective for twelve years but started back on patrol because I needed a change of scenery.” Russell shared.

Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said to the officers. “Good morning, Detective Lynch. What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to know when you think you’ll be here.”

She checked her watch. “We should be there in another five minutes at the most.” She saw Sergeant Russell nod.

“Perfect. ‘We’ you said?”

“Yes, Sergeant Russell and Officer Bush are taking me to the station. I’m getting the full criminal experience, but without the handcuffs,” she said and winked at Russell, who smiled back at her.

“Oh, okay.”

“Detective?” she said before he could hang up. “I’m going to need some serious coffee. Is there somewhere we can go before we get to work?”

“There’re a few options.”

“Perfect. See you soon, then.”

S
orensen’s eyes were bloodshot and felt like sandpaper every time he blinked. Four coffee stains decorated his light blue shirt. He had worked the crime scene with CSU until he was satisfied. He didn’t expect to find anything significant, but he still liked to be thorough and made them go through everything with a fine-tooth comb.

He had met with Virago inside the house. “This is Detective Erik Sorensen,” she said, introducing him to a large man and a teenage girl, who was holding a sleeping girl in her arms. “He’s our lead investigator.”

Sorensen shook hands with both and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss. I will do everything in my power to find out who did this.”

They both nodded. Large tears fell on the man’s face. He wiped them off with one hand.

“I think we have enough for tonight.” Virago said. “I’ll brief Detective Sorensen on what we’ve talked about. Would you mind coming to the station tomorrow if we have more questions?” Virago asked, trying to wrap up.

“Yes. Anything we can do,” Mr. Hughes said and pulled out his wallet. “I don’t think I’ll be in the office, but you can contact me on my cell.” He handed them both a card.

Sorensen looked at the card. The paper was thick and glossy, the letters raised in shiny gold: “Robert L. Hughes, Director of Mergers and Acquisitions, Norman and Smits.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sorensen said before leaving.

When they got outside, Virago said, “The purse is missing. It looks like a mugging gone bad, but this is not the neighborhood for it. I want you to check the husband’s alibi first thing tomorrow morning. His law firm is in downtown San Jose, on First Street, I think he said he had a few conference calls with Asia in the evening, so it should be easy enough to check.”

Sorensen made a mental note to go to the law firm as soon as Clark Evans was done with the autopsy. “Any problems in the marriage?” he asked.

“Not that he would admit to. The baby-sitter seemed to agree. But check with friends and neighbors too.”

Virago started heading toward her car.

“Any particular reason why you feel the need to tell me how to do my job?” Sorensen asked. The tone of his voice was cold. It didn’t have the affable edge it normally did.

Virago stopped a few feet from him and turned. They locked eyes, and she exhaled slowly. Sorensen waited.

“You’re right, Detective. Go and do what you do best.”

He nodded and she went to her car.

Less than four hours later he opened the morgue’s double doors and found the medical examiner halfway done with the autopsy. The air was stale and cold, but he welcomed the chill.

“How many times have I told you that I don’t do autopsies first thing in the morning?” Sorensen asked. He turned around and swallowed hard. After he’d had a minute to compose himself he faced the body. “At least you could have warned me.”

The woman’s chest was open. The medical examiner removed the heart and placed it on the scale that hung from the ceiling. He checked the weight, pushed the foot switch of the recorder and said, “The heart is normal, weighs nine-point-one ounces and doesn’t have any apparent signs of stress outside of what would be expected for a thirty-six-year-old female.”

He turned the recorder off and placed the heart on the smaller table, on his right-hand side, so he could open it. While he explored the right ventricle, he said, “I’m glad you could make it. You know I started over an hour ago.”

He stared at Sorensen through his face protector before he focused again on the heart.

“I know. I’m sorry. I got here as soon as I could. I worked the case until almost three a.m.”

“And yet you had enough time to get coffee. Or are those from yesterday?” He pointed at the coffee stains on Sorensen’s shirt.

“No. They’re fresh. I would’ve brought you one, but you’re such an asshole, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Clark’s face twitched. “Detective, you know I don’t approve of such language in my lab.”

“Apologies.” Sorensen slurped his coffee. “Cause of death?”

“Asphyxiation.”

“Excuse me? She was stabbed four times and she died of asphyxiation?”

“The second stab pierced her right lung, filling it with blood. The fourth did the same with the left one. She died in less than two minutes. There was nothing anybody could have done.”

Sorensen pictured the attack. The mugger must have been pretty strong to hold her in place while he stabbed her four times in her driveway. And if all he wanted was the purse, why not just grab it and run?

“Could she have screamed?”

“Before the last stab, yes, but probably not very loud.”

Clark put the inspected heart back on the larger table and started looking through some evidence bags. “Which reminds me of this,” he said, handing him what looked like an empty baggie.

Sorensen took it and brought it so close to his face, his eyes crossed. “What am I looking at?”

“You tell me, but I found it between the eighth and ninth teeth.”

“The top front teeth…She bit him?”

“Well, she bit something. It’s not human,” Clark said, looking down at the bag in Sorensen’s hand.

“Do you mind if I bring it to Lou?”

“That’s why I’m giving it to you.”

“Anything else you think I should know?”

“Well, the only other thing that I’ve noticed so far is that Emma Hughes had stage two breast cancer.”

H
arper Johnson built a fire outside his cabin. Lasky came wagging her tail and sat by his side. Once it began to roar, he walked into the house and grabbed all of the clothes he was wearing when he killed the woman last night. He’d checked and hadn’t seen any blood on them, but they retained the smell of death.

“At this rate I’m going to run out of clothes soon,” he said to Lasky as he threw his T-shirt into the flames.

The dog looked at him and cocked her head. Only one ear was raised. She stared back at the fire. He thought about the shirt he had put in the plastic bag with the woman’s purse. He cursed himself for having thrown it into a garbage container instead of bringing it to the house. He was not smart enough to do this job, he thought.

“Damn you, Tyler Warren,” he said out loud.

He threw his pants into the fire and thought about how, three years earlier, he had come to meet the man who would be the end of him.

He hadn’t known what to expect. At the funeral, Father Dominique had taken him aside and told him about a group that might help him cope with his loss. He nodded but didn’t really understand what the father was telling him. He walked outside. It was raining so hard it felt like an early evening rather than an afternoon in mid-February.

Father Dominique said a few words and motioned for Harper to speak. He looked up. He was surprised to see so how many people had come in this weather. Marjorie Johnson was a loved woman.

Harper had prepared a little speech. He pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket. It was immediately drenched, the words fading as the ink ran down the paper. He stared at it as if he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Then, lost, almost desperate, he looked up and saw several dozen eyes looking back at him patiently, encouragingly. Father Dominique put a hand on his shoulder and nodded for him to go on.

“My mother made the best banana nut muffins in the world,” he said.

Everybody laughed. The tension dissipated and it even seemed as if the clouds broke a little, letting some sunlight in. A shy rainbow peeked between the trees to the west.

“My mother fought real hard, but she’s now resting in peace. She was an incredible woman who loved everybody and was always happy to help people in need. I wish I was in heaven with her now.”

He lowered his gaze to the empty hole in the ground. Father Dominique instructed the two undertakers to lower the casket. Once it settled in the grave, Harper knelt down and grabbed some mud. He threw it on the pine box, but half of it stuck to his hand. He wiped it on the side of his dress pants.

Mary Anne, his mom’s best friend, provided food at her house, just a few miles from Harper’s home. The entire town came, bringing more food, drinks and flowers. Everyone had something nice to say about Marjorie. After a few hours everybody left, except Mary Anne, Father Dominique and Harper.

“Harper?” the father asked.

“Yes?” He had been lost in thought, remembering one of the last hours of his mother’s life. She had been very thin and her lips were cracked and blue.

“Here’s the information for that group I told you about.” He handed him a flyer.

“Thank you.” Harper folded it and put it in his pant pocket without looking at it.

“Promise me you’ll think about it,” the father said.

Harper nodded and excused himself after giving Mary Anne an awkward hug.

He had forgotten all about the flyer until almost a month later, when he finally got around to sending the pants to the local dry cleaner to get rid of the grave’s mud. He unfolded the piece of paper and stared at it. “Support group for family members of cancer victims.” He almost threw it in the trash, but something prevented him from doing it. Harper left it on the counter and went into town to get the pants cleaned.

A few hours later he came back and saw the flyer staring back at him. “Wednesdays at 7 p.m. Sacred Heart Parish, Saratoga.”

He checked the calendar. It was Wednesday. It would take him about forty-five minutes to get there. He decided to go.

The drive seemed longer than normal, and he considered turning back and going home a few times, but something, probably the void the death of his mother had left in his chest, made him continue.

The church was a small building with a large cross stuck in the middle of the tiny front lawn. The parking lot was half-full. He stood by his truck, locked and unlocked it, thinking of going back inside and driving off. He saw a middle-aged woman heading toward the church. She was holding a cotton bag. Two large knitting needles stuck out of it, and a string of fluffy red yarn trailed behind her as she walked.

Harper went in but stood by the door. The church was warm, the off-white walls had lost their original sheen, but the place had a homey and welcoming feel to it. The room had a large folding table with coffee and two large trays with cookies. There were two towers of paper cups and a few red stirring sticks. A single carton of half-and-half stood by the carafes.

Twelve metal chairs were arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. Only two were occupied. The woman he had seen in the parking lot was sitting on one of them. She was already hard at work, the knitting needles clicking and clacking as she passed the yarn from one to another. She was talking with a much younger woman, with bleached dreadlocks, wearing distressed jeans with holes in the knees.

A man in a suit sat across from them. A few others joined, and soon there were only two empty chairs left. Harper didn’t move. A woman in a long wool sweater and a colorful scarf got out of her chair and came to greet him.

“Hello, my name is Elena. Would you like to join us today?” she asked in a barely noticeable Spanish accent.

“I’m…I’m not sure,” Harper said.

“Please come. I bet you’ll feel better after.”

She put her hand on his elbow and led him gently to the group. She sat down and started the session.

“Good evening. I see that today we have some new and some old faces. Welcome to all of you.”

Harper looked down at his hands and listened to everybody talk about their week. They were all in different stages of grief, some contributing more than others.

“Would you like to share something with us?” Elena asked Harper.

“No.” He looked at her briefly, almost surprised to be addressed. “Not today. Thank you,” he added, feeling his first response may have been rude. He looked back down at his hands. They were rough with calluses and a few scabs he got from picking up and cutting wood. His nails were dirty. He felt a flash of embarrassment and hid them in his jacket pockets.

The woman with the knitting project picked a blue yarn ball from her bag and started talking about her son in Iraq. Harper was surprised that they all seemed to have some history together, and they talked more about their regular days than the grief and the void in their lives caused by losing someone they loved. He was relieved and upset at the same time. He wanted to know that he was not alone in his suffering, that there were others who were going through the same thing, and yet he found that all of these people managed to go on, live on, without their loved one around. He wondered if the same thing would happen to him and then resented the thought.

“Okay, I think they’re going to close the church with all of us inside if we don’t end soon,” Elena said with a broad smile that showed crooked teeth.

“Wait, I almost forgot,” the man in the suit said a little louder than necessary. “Somebody brought a stray puppy to work today.”

“Somebody abandoned a puppy?” the woman with the dreadlocks protested, emphasizing her indignity with a punch to her thigh.

“I took it in, but with Lucas being so young, I can’t manage both by myself. But I promised I would find a good home for her. Is anybody interested?”

His eyes were bright, shining with hope as he looked from one person to the next in the group. Everybody diverted their eyes when his gaze met them and shook their heads slightly. His hope quickly faded.

“What breed is she?” Harper surprised himself and regretted it as soon as he asked the question.

“A mutt. But I think she has some Lab in her.”

He walked closer to Harper but left enough space between them.

“She has big paws. I think she’ll be quite big.” There were faint wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled.

Harper nodded but still couldn’t make himself commit.

“Why don’t you come check her out. She’s in my car.”

He started walking toward the door, but before he got too far he looked back as if checking that Harper was following him. He wasn’t.

“Come on, no pressure,” he said and waved for him to join him.

Harper met him and they both walked out into a dark parking lot. The man in the suit stopped in front of a black Mercedes sedan. He unlocked the door, and the inside of the car lit up, startling a puppy that had been happily sleeping in the backseat. The dog stood up and started wagging her tail so hard the rest of her body moved with it.

“How old do you think she is?” Harper asked, standing a good few feet from the car.

“Probably eight or ten weeks. She’s going to need some potty training.”

“That’s ok, my cabin has a trap door leading to the woods,” Harper said.

“I’m Tyler, by the way. Tyler Warren.” said the man in the suit said, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.”