by Laura Snider
Katie narrowed her eyes. “You know there is more to this than that. Like, why? Why would Ashley do it?”
“I don’t have to prove motive,” Elizabeth said. A small, sardonic smile formed at the corners of her lips. “If the two of you are such buddies, you should be happy. Ashley is safe in jail. Nobody is going to hurt her there. She’s amongst friends.”
“No. I am not happy. Nobody should have to exchange freedom for safety.”
Elizabeth threw her head back and laughed. “You’re so funny, Katie. That’s what we do every day. Those planes struck the Twin Towers on September 11th and now we can’t fly anywhere without a strip search. That’s a loss of freedom, but nobody bats an eye at it.”
“That’s totally different from incarceration.” Katie balled her fists. Her nails bit into her hands. She pressed harder and harder, trying to keep her anger in check. She welcomed the burn of pain as four bloody crescent moons opened along each of her palms. It reminded her that this was reality, not a warped dream.
Elizabeth cleared her throat and fussed with a stack of papers at the corner of her desk. “How is the Mimi Muuma investigation going? You were supposed to find the person who stole her car.”
Katie snorted, and George squeezed her shoulder. She met his gaze. Calm down, George’s eyes said. We will figure it out later.
Katie took a deep breath and allowed George to answer. She was too agitated.
“We have resolved that case,” George said. “Our reports should be on file by Monday.”
Elizabeth lifted a sculpted eyebrow. “Oh, and who did you arrest?”
“Nobody. Except Mimi, possibly,” Katie growled. “Nobody stole her car. The little brat forgot where she left it. Probably because she was too drunk or high or both.”
“We found it parked behind Mikey’s Tavern,” George said.
Elizabeth Clement leaned forward, her hands on her cheeks. “Is Mikey Money selling drugs to Mimi?”
They suspected that Mikey sold drugs, but Mikey was too smart to get caught. They could not even get anyone to do a controlled buy from Mikey. He was too well liked. Rumor had it that he only did it to pay for his son’s surgeries. The kid was special needs, and Mikey did not have health insurance. Under those circumstances, not even the junkies were willing to turn state’s evidence and jam Mikey up.
“Mikey has to be stopped,” Elizabeth said.
Katie rolled her eyes. “We’ve never found drugs in Mikey’s Tavern. And don’t turn this on Mikey. This investigation was about Mimi. She screwed up. She made a false report. She needs to take accountability for her actions.”
“She’s a kid,” Elizabeth said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll tell her mom to ground her or something.”
“She’s eighteen,” Katie said through clenched teeth. “An adult. If it were anyone else, you’d ask us to issue the warrant.”
Katie could not stand the injustice of it. She had been sixteen years old, a juvenile, when forced to fend for herself. Mimi was two years older than Katie had been at the time and she was still a “kid” so long as her parents were rich and powerful.
“Oh,” Katie continued, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “but not the Muuma family. Not them. They are too important. They contribute too much to your campaign and society and all that, blah blah blah.”
Elizabeth’s face reddened, and she shot to her feet.
Katie smiled. Finally, a reaction, she thought. Elizabeth was not quite as refined as she pretended.
“You think you have the moral high ground, do you, Katie?” Elizabeth growled. “Well, I know about your past. I know about your dad. I know he is rotting away in Anamosa right now.”
Anamosa State Penitentiary was a high-security prison in the eastern part of the state. And Elizabeth was right, Katie’s father was there. He would be incarcerated for the foreseeable future.
“I know what you’re doing,” Katie said. There was something about Elizabeth’s fury that had a calming effect on Katie. “And I’m not taking the bait. My father took advantage of people. He stole their money. But I was sixteen at the time. I learned from what he did. And I vowed to always do the right thing. That’s what I’m doing here. You,” she pointed an accusatory finger at Elizabeth, “unfortunately, cannot say the same for yourself.”
Elizabeth slammed an open palm against her desk. “Don’t you dare insult me.” Her eyes widened to comical proportions, and her chest heaved. “This discussion is over. Get out of my office.”
“Fine.” Katie stood, and George followed her toward the door.
“I’ll be talking to Chief Carmichael about this.” Elizabeth’s hand remained outstretched, pointing at the door. Her arm shook with fury.
“You do that,” Katie said.
“I am the chief law enforcement officer in this county. You will do well to remember that.”
“Then maybe you should try acting like it.”
“You will do as I say.”
Katie shrugged. “Sure.” But that was a lie.
19
Katie
December 12th – 10:30 a.m.
“The nerve of that woman,” Katie fumed as she stormed down the hallway. The walls of the County Attorney’s Office were a very light shade of pink. Still-life paintings of flower arrangements hung in gold frames, covering the wall space. She passed lilies in a clear vase. Roses in a teapot. Hydrangeas in a mason jar. It was far too girly for Katie.
George jogged to keep up with her. Katie passed Elizabeth’s assistant’s desk without slowing. Violet waved, but Katie was too furious to wave back. She exited through the glass front door and into the bright morning sunlight. The County Attorney’s Office was a new building at the corner of Eighth and Main, directly across the street from the police department and kitty-corner to the jail. Katie made a beeline for the jail.
“Where are you going?” George asked. “I thought we needed to talk to the chief.”
Katie shook her head. “I want to see Ashley first.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
Katie picked up her pace. “It’s an excellent idea.”
George grunted his dissent.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Katie knew George would not let her go alone. She was upset. A walking grenade. He would be there to ensure that nobody pulled her pin.
“Oh, I’m coming.”
She could hear George’s footsteps behind her. He was not giving up.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your father?”
“He stole from people. It isn’t something I broadcast.”
“You were just a kid.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You must know that nobody blames you. Elizabeth was completely out of line when she brought it up.”
“Listen, George.” Katie swung around to face him. “The truth is that my dad is in Anamosa. I thought he was a good man, and it turned out that I was wrong. He stole people’s retirement funds, their college savings. It’s just…” She let the words go. George did not understand, and he never would.
“Is that why you didn’t go to college?”
Most officers had a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Katie did not. Katie threw her hands up in exasperation. “Yes. Of course. How could I possibly consider college when my father stole that from others.” She also could not afford college. She, too, had lost everything.
“Don’t do that,” George said, shaking his head. “You can’t punish yourself for something he did.”
“It wasn’t just him. I enjoyed that money for sixteen years. I lived a lavish lifestyle. I lived in a giant house and swam in my backyard pool. I had nannies and cooks and housekeepers. I had the perfect life. And then I found out that it was all purchased with somebody else’s money.”
“But that wasn’t your fault.”
“I never said it was. But I am not innocent. I enjoyed what those people will never get. And for that, I have a d
ebt to pay.”
Katie marched inside the front door to the jail, up the stairs, and to the counter. A girl stood behind the glass. She was young with large, kind eyes. She wore a nametag that said “Kylie” just above the star on her uniform.
Kylie, Katie thought. She was the jailer working on December 9th. The one who allowed Victor Petrovsky’s visitor inside.
“Hello. How can I help you?” Kylie asked.
Katie needed to ask Kylie about Victor’s visitor, but she wanted to see Ashley first. “Yes. I’m here to see Ashley Montgomery.”
Kylie eyed Katie for a moment, studying her uniform. “You must be Katie Mickey.”
“Yes. That’s my name.”
Kylie shook her head. “I’m afraid you can’t see Ashley.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
A document lying on the table caught Kylie’s attention. She picked it up and stared at it like it was the most important thing in the world. Katie doubted it was of any importance aside from its potential to end the conversation. Kylie began to turn away from Katie.
“Wait,” Katie said, desperation clawing its way up her throat. She did not understand. “Can I leave Ashley a note or something?”
Kylie shrugged. “You can try. But I don’t think she’ll read it. She said she didn’t want anything to do with you.”
Katie was on the verge of exploding. Why wouldn’t Ashley want to see her? They were friends. They were just laughing together last night. Something was horribly wrong, and Katie was not going to leave until she knew what it was. She would wait it out. Ashley was not going anywhere. Katie would just have to sit here until Ashley changed her mind.
George tugged at her arm. Katie whirled to meet his gaze. Her lip curled, and her hand balled into a fist. She was ready to rip him apart. She did not need any more of his just calm down nonsense. But there was a gentleness to his expression that stopped her short.
“Please, Katie,” George said. “Let’s just leave.”
Katie leaned against him as all her anger and frustration seeped out. Everything had been so good yesterday. And then today, her life had flipped upside down. She supposed that was all there was to life. A series of good moments followed by a much longer series of bad ones.
“You can’t help her in here,” George whispered as he led her down the stairs and out the front door. “All you can do is try to find the real killer.”
“Will you help me?” She felt like she was a sixteen-year-old girl again. Drowning all alone. Waiting for someone to offer her a life raft.
George patted her hand, then released her. “Yes.”
“Shit,” Katie said, stopping still in her tracks. “I forgot to ask Kylie about the December ninth jail recording.”
“No need,” George said. “Tom found it. It was a glitch in the system. Tom hired an IT guy to look at it. It took an entire day, but they found it. Tom emailed me a copy of it early this morning.”
“He did?” Katie said, her eyes widening. “Have you seen it? What’s on it?”
Questions swirled in her mind. It could be the key to Ashley’s release. Or at least part of the key. She had originally suspected Ashley’s guilt in Von Reich’s murder, but she didn’t any longer. The trumped-up charges for Petrovsky put an end to all that. Someone was framing Ashley, and Katie had more than a few reasons to believe that Erica Elsberry had something to do with it.
“The footage is grainy, so it’s not very good. A woman meets with Petrovsky.”
“Who is it?” Katie could hardly contain her excitement.
“I don’t know for certain since she kept her head down, but she looks an awful lot like Erica Elsberry.”
Erica Elsberry. Katie knew it. Erica was at the center of everything. It was no coincidence. “But why would Erica take such a risk? I mean, if Tom hadn’t been busy, he would have seen her.”
George shrugged. “Maybe she waited for Tom to leave?”
“Maybe.” Katie chewed her lip. “That, or she knew Tom would be busy. What did she do in the recording?”
“She handed something to Petrovsky, and then he handed it back. But like I said, it’s grainy. The camera is situated near the ceiling behind the visitor.”
“You mean Erica Elsberry, not visitor,” Katie corrected. Because it was Erica. She felt sure of it. Grainy or not.
“The person we think is Elsberry. We didn’t get a good picture of her face,” George said. He eyed her in a way that said, Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. “As I was saying, I sent the video off to see if an expert can digitally enhance it. Hopefully, we can get a better look at the visitor’s face and the item that was passed between them.”
“That’s great news. Should we pay Erica a visit?”
George shook his head. “Not yet. We need more.”
Impatience flared within Katie. “Why not? We have plenty. We have someone who looks a lot like her on video passing something to Petrovsky. We know she gave a false name to visit Petrovsky. Erica found both bodies. She was at both scenes. What more do we need?”
“A murder weapon, to start. And we need a definite ID that it is Erica on the video. We need to know what Erica passed to Petrovsky. We also need to make sense as to the why. Why would Erica visit her child’s abuser and give him anything? The bottom line is that you need to take a deep breath and step back, Katie. This is important to you, right?”
Katie nodded. Nothing was more important than stopping a killer and righting Ashley’s wrongful incarceration. These two things threatened everything Katie stood for. She would do the right thing, and she would not screw this one up.
“Then we need to take it one step at a time. No slipups. No screwups.”
Katie did not like it, but she knew he was right. She would not get ahead of herself and make a mistake like the one she’d made on Petrovsky’s search warrant. Besides, they were in a better place than they had been throughout the entire investigation. They had no solid lead up until now. But with the video, they had somewhere to start.
20
Ashley
December 12th – 11:00 a.m.
Ashley was alone on her cell block. The only female incarcerated. A single woman surrounded by thousands of tons of steel and cement, all meant to cage her inside. The dark, windowless cell drained her soul of color, or at least the little color that she had left. It was lonely, but that was for the best. She could not trust anyone anymore.
Her solitude reminded her of the days following her mother’s passing. Her mom had gone slowly, painfully. Ida was her name. Ashley didn’t like to remember her as “Ida,” though. She was always Mom to her. Ida was a staple of the Brine society. A member of the Rotary Club and the church choir. She volunteered for Meals on Wheels every Saturday for as long as Ashley could remember. She held book club meetings on Tuesdays and attended Bingo on Wednesdays. By all accounts, she was a remarkable woman. But Ida’s selflessness did not make a difference in the end.
When Ida was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, people came every day to help with the housekeeping, baking, and chores. But that only lasted a few months. The river of people slowed to a stream, then to a trickle, until finally it was just Ashley and her mom. Ashley had been furious with her mother’s fair-weather friends, but it never bothered her mother. Ida always said that she was happy so long as she had her favorite daughter. Ashley remained there, holding her mother’s hand, right up until the bitter end. Alone.
Ashley blinked hard and brought herself back to the present. She lay on her lightly padded cot, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t know the time, but she guessed it was late morning. The jailers were moving around, putting an end to the silence that had pounded its way into her eardrums. The increased movement suggested that lunch was on its way. She was not hungry. She closed her eyes and allowed a single tear to thread its way to her hairline.
“Ashley,” a hesitant voice said.
Ashley swiped her cheek and turned her back.
“Ashley,” the voice repeated. “Please…”
The tone was so tentative, with more than a hint of sadness. It cut through Ashley’s armor. She sat up. “What?”
It was Kylie Monroe, the female jailer. The newest hire. Kylie shifted her weight and twisted her hands together. She was so young and innocent. Just a baby in Ashley’s mind. These inmates were going to eat her alive.
“You have a visitor,” Kylie said.
“No,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“But it’s your attorney.”
Ashley started to turn her back. She did not have an attorney. She did not know who was claiming that role, but she didn’t care to find out.
“It’s Jacob Matthews. He said he works with you at the Public Defender’s Office.”
“Jacob?” Ashley was skeptical. Kylie had to be wrong. She had probably confused Jacob’s name with someone else’s. “Jacob doesn’t come to the jail.” He had not returned since a client had stabbed him in the hand with a pencil.
Kylie shrugged. “I guess he does now. Do you want to talk to him? He looks like he’s really worried about you. A lot of people are.”
Ashley scoffed. “I doubt that.”
“He brought something for you,” Kylie continued. “It’s against jail rules to let you have it, but Tom told me to allow it.”
“I thought you were confused before, but now I know you have gone mad. Tom wouldn’t bend jail rules. And definitely not for me.”
Tom had been so upset with Ashley minutes before her arrest. And he had made no move to help her. He had been in the house, probably watching out the window as she was handcuffed, and he hadn’t even bothered to come out. Not that he could have done anything. His appearance would only have caused problems. But part of her still wished that he had done something.