Wild Spring

by Tripp Ellis

  "She continued to hemorrhage internally. Some of the internal organs were so traumatized they were practically pulverized. She lost blood pressure… I’m sorry, we did the best we could."

  "I thought she was stable," I said, my throat tight.

  “We did too. I’m sorry.”

  It took a moment for me to muster the words, "I know she was in good hands."

  "She's in better hands now," Parker said before ending the call.

  I slipped the phone back into my pocket and tried to keep it together. A mix of sorrow and rage swirled within me. I didn't need to say a word to JD. He could read the look on my face. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry, brother."

  I gave a grim nod of appreciation for his concern. "Let's get out of here.”

  We left the station and hopped into the red Porsche. We cruised back to Diver Down. The place was packed, and neither one of us was in the mood for loud, obnoxious revelers.

  We walked down the dock, boarded the Avventura, and made a beeline for the bar. JD poured two glasses of whiskey and handed one to me. "To Caprice."

  "To getting the bastards that killed her,” I said.

  We clinked glasses and sipped the fine whiskey.

  “How do you plan on going about that?" JD asked.

  "I don't know yet."

  "You know, we could always…"

  I knew what he was suggesting. “I’m not taking that off the table. But I've got Isabella looking for anything that could tie them to a pipe bomb. You hear anything from the forensics lab?"

  JD shook his head. "I would imagine that Nico is pretty pissed off at his goons for missing the target."

  I nodded. “I bet Slater is in a whole heap of trouble.”

  “You think he’s the guy?”

  “Former military. EOD. Absolutely. He’s got the technical know-how. That bastard rigged it up in the middle of the night under the driver’s seat. It was definitely intended for me.” I paused and exhaled a frustrated breath. "You better watch your back. If they came for me, they'll come for you."

  JD shook his head. "They won't move again so soon. They've got internal strife to deal with. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we find Slater in an alley with a bullet in his skull. You don't get the opportunity to screw up like that twice."

  “You think Nico will kill one of his own?”

  “What would you do to the man who killed your sister?”

  He had a point.

  JD and I spent the rest of the evening working our way through the bottle, trying to make the day seem less terrible. But no amount of whiskey was going to change what had happened.

  The next day we decided to pay Nadia a visit. We drove over to the Platinum Dunes and knocked on her front door.

  There was no answer, but her white convertible Mercedes was in the driveway.

  I peered in through the glass sidelights. The beveled edges distorted my view. I didn't see any movement.

  I nodded to JD, and we walked around the side of the house. I looked through the kitchen window, then continued up the driveway and stepped through the gate onto the patio.

  The pool was crystal clear, and boats were docked in the canal. I walked around the patio and looked in through the living room windows. That’s when I saw the first sign of trouble.

  Bloody footprints on the tile tracked out of the hallway that led to the master bedroom. The footprints kept going across the living room, fading toward the rear entrance.

  I drew my weapon and moved to the back door. I checked the handle—it was locked.

  With a few swift kicks, the door flew open, splintering the doorframe. The small panes of glass shattered and sparkling shards sprinkled the floor.

  I pushed inside with my weapon in the firing position. I advanced toward the living room and picked up the faded trail of bloody footsteps. I carefully stepped around them, clearing the area as I pushed deeper into the house.

  "Nadia?" I shouted.

  There was no response.

  The alarm hadn’t been set.

  I crept down the dim hallway to the bedroom. The door was ajar, and I could see the corner of the bed. There were two sets of feet sprawled out. I pushed open the bedroom door and eased into the room.

  Nadia and her lover, the doctor, lay amid a pool of bloody sheets. It looked like someone had spilled a nice Pinot Noir. Both had been shot twice. Crimson stains speckled the white fabric and the nearby walls.

  The two had clearly been engaged in a lustful act. Their naked bodies were pale and lifeless.

  "Gee, I wonder who did this?” JD said.

  "Somebody who’s jealous and has anger management issues," I replied.

  JD called Sheriff Daniels, and it wasn't long before the place was crawling with forensic investigators. They snapped photos of the bodies and the footprints. They measured blood spatter and angles, trying to determine the trajectory of the bullets. Based on entry and exit wounds, they placed the shooter somewhere near the bedroom door.

  "Shooter walks in, catches them in the act, doesn't like what he sees, and puts a stop to it," JD said.

  Something was odd about the scene, but I couldn’t quite place it at first. "How long have they been dead?"

  Brenda sighed. "Judging by the body temperature, I’d put the time of death somewhere between midnight and 2 AM last night."

  "Caliber?"

  "Looks like a 9mm. I'll tell you more when I get back to the lab."

  "Whoever did this had a key to the house,” JD said. “That, or the door was unlocked."

  "I can think of a few people who might have had a key," I said.

  This had Landon Walsh written all over it. It would seem blatantly stupid to kill Nadia and her lover hours after he was questioned for the murder of Chuck Kennedy. Then again, criminals aren't always the sharpest tools in the shed.

  “I’d certainly call this a crime of passion," JD said.

  Passion turned to rage.

  “What’s the doctor’s name?” I asked.

  “ID in his wallet says Richard Spencer,” Brenda said.

  I glanced around the room, then looked at the bloody footprints that led down the hall and across the tile toward the back door.

  They had a different tread pattern than the sneaker prints left at the liquor store murder. There was something else strange about them.

  “How did the shooter get blood on the bottom of his shoes?” I asked.

  “He stands in the doorway and walks toward the bodies for a closer look after he’s killed them,” JD said. “Just to make sure. He steps in the puddle that dripped down the side of the bed and onto the carpet.” JD pointed to the impressions in the carpet.

  “That doesn’t sound like a very bright thing to do.”

  JD shrugged. “People do stupid things.”

  I didn’t like it. “No. The shooter wanted us to find the footprints.”

  “Misdirection?”

  I nodded.

  “Let's talk to the neighbors," JD said. “See if anybody saw or heard anything."

  “Before we do that, I want to check something out.”

  43

  It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I was sure it would contain evidence of Nadia's affair with Landon and perhaps even a discussion of Chuck’s murder.

  Her sleek, rose gold laptop sat atop a desk in the study. I flipped it open, and the screen came to life. It asked for a password. There was a touch-bar with a fingerprint scanner. I brought the laptop into the bedroom, placed Nadia’s index finger on the biometric scanner, and the screen opened.

  I went straight to her email and searched for messages with Landon. There was a long email chain between the two, and it looked like she hadn’t bothered to hide it. I guess she figured the password on the computer would be enough to keep Chuck out.

  There were hundreds of messages between the two. They exchanged naughty notes, describing in detail the things they wanted to do to each other. Nadia had sent Landon multiple nude phot
os and provocative video clips.

  JD leaned over my shoulder, watching curiously as we replayed some of the clips, strictly for investigative purposes, of course.

  Let’s just say Nadia wasn’t camera shy.

  "Damn, I'd just about kill for that," JD muttered.

  "Do you want to take that in the next room," Brenda said.

  "Oh, yeah, sure," I said.

  There was something inappropriate about watching private sex videos in close proximity to the deceased.

  JD and I slipped out of the bedroom. We made sure not to step on the bloody footprints as we edged down the hall into the living room. I set the computer atop the bar counter and continued to sift through the emails. There was one in particular that stood out at me. It was from Landon. It read: I thought about it. Let's do it. I want to be with you.

  Vague, but I could only assume he was talking about Chuck's murder.

  We searched the house and her car for a burner phone, but we didn't find anything. I left the laptop on the counter and told the forensics guys to log it into evidence. Perhaps we’d find something more damning with a proper forensic analysis. Nothing is ever permanently deleted from a hard drive. The space is just reassigned. Until the data sector has been written over, the evidence is still recoverable. Most people just delete unwanted items and think that they’re gone.

  We left Nadia's house and knocked on the neighbors’ doors. Nobody saw or heard anything except for Mrs. Crenshaw. She lived next to Nadia, and from her kitchen window, you could see Nadia's driveway.

  She was a typical mid 40s socialite housewife in Platinum Dunes. She’d had some work done—good work—expensive. Hardly noticeable, except for a rather eye-popping set of store-bought endowments.

  With the strategic placement of Botox and fillers, she looked closer to mid 30s than mid 40s. She looked pretty good in her tennis skirt. The rock on her finger sparkled, as did the diamonds around her neck.

  "At first, I thought it was a car backfiring,” she said. “I got up in the middle of the night to tinkle, and I heard four pops. I looked out the bedroom window and didn't see anything, except a few cars parked on the street.

  "What time was that?" I asked.

  "After midnight. I'm not really sure."

  "Did you see anyone leaving the Kennedy residence?"

  "No. I didn't think much of it. I went back to sleep. I would have forgotten about it if you didn’t ask."

  "I see you have a video doorbell. Do you have it set to motion activation?”

  "I think so.”

  “Can we take a look at the footage?"

  "Sure.”

  She found her phone and launched the app. She scrolled through the history. Sure enough, around 1:15 AM, the camera recorded footage of a grainy figure dressed in black running across the lawn.

  It was dark and impossible to identify the suspect, but I was sure it was the shooter.

  I asked her to export the footage and send it to my phone.

  She did.

  Mrs. Crenshaw looked frazzled. "I can't believe they ran across my lawn. You really think that's the murderer?”

  "Could be, ma'am."

  "Frightening. To think that happened next door. What's the world coming to?"

  I shrugged.

  “It’s just tragic. First, Chuck is murdered. Now Nadia. They were such a sweet couple.”

  “Did you know them well?”

  She shook her head. “But they seemed happy. Then again, you never know what goes on between two people unless you’re one of those two people.”

  We thanked Mrs. Crenshaw, and I gave her my card. I told her to call me if she could think of any more details.

  “You know, come to think of it… Shortly after I heard gunshots, I did hear a couple of splashes.”

  “Splashes?

  “It’s probably nothing.”

  JD and I exchanged a curious glance.

  We marched back to Nadia’s house and surveyed the pool. There was nothing in it of note except for an automated pool cleaner. We moved to the dock and scanned the canal. I thought that maybe the shooter might have thrown the weapon into the water. But we found something else instead.

  Turns out that when you throw sneakers into the water, once the top portion becomes saturated, they flip over and float with their soles facing upward. The top portion of the shoe acts like a keel. Adding to the buoyancy, many modern sneaker designs incorporate air into the cushion of the sole.

  We found a pair of sneakers adrift by the dock. They were loitering by other bits of trash near a neighboring sailboat. We fished them out of the water and tagged them as evidence. The tread on the soles matched the bloody footprints in the house exactly.

  I called Daniels and told him to send the dive team to search the canal for a possibly discarded weapon. In the meantime, we canvassed the street, knocking on every door with a video doorbell. We found one device that had captured an additional glimpse of the suspect. That was it. Most of the devices didn’t have their motion sensitivity turned up high enough to activate when someone passed on the street. The dim footage we acquired wasn’t of much use. The figure depicted could have been anybody.

  We went back to the crime scene. By that time, Brenda had removed the bodies and loaded them into the van.

  She said she'd be in touch.

  We waited for the dive team.

  44

  We headed back to the station and filled out after-action reports. We had waited on the scene for the dive team, but they didn’t find any weapons at the bottom of the canal.

  “The ballistics don't match," Brenda said when she called.

  "What do you mean?" I asked incredulously.

  "I mean, the bullets that killed Nadia and Dr. Spencer have markings inconsistent with those made by Landon Walsh's 9mm."

  "So, he's using more than one pistol," I said.

  "Not necessarily. I think I know what's going on. Get me that gun. I want to run more tests."

  "You think you missed something?"

  "I wouldn’t say that I missed something… I just need to run more tests."

  “I talked to the computer forensics guys,” I said. “They found several deleted emails on Nadia's computer. One was very specific about the method of Chuck's murder. Landon said, ‘Don't worry. I'll make it look like a robbery.’ Nadia replied, ‘That's perfect. Make it look gang-related.’”

  "That should be enough for a warrant,” Brenda said.

  "Daniels took it to the judge. We’re waiting to hear back. Let me know when you have something for me.”

  “I will,” Brenda said.

  I ended the call and finished tapping out my report.

  A few minutes later, Daniels poked his head into the conference room. "Here's the warrant. Take Faulkner and Erickson and bring that bastard in.”

  A grin tugged my lips. “You got it, boss.”

  We left the station and raced over to Landon's house on Bluegill Way. His truck was gone, and after knocking on the door and announcing our presence, we broke it down. Erickson and Faulkner hammered it with a battering ram. Glass shattered, and the door flew open, splintering shards of wood.

  We advanced into the home with our weapons in the firing position and cleared the area with tactical precision.

  Landon was nowhere to be found.

  We searched the house, leaving no stone unturned. We found his 9mm pistol in the drawer where it had been the first time he showed it to us.

  I donned a pair of nitrile gloves and picked up the weapon. I sniffed the barrel. It had recently been fired. The sharp smell of residue filled my nostrils.

  We bagged and tagged the evidence and continued to search the house. We found his laptop, but we couldn't get past the security screen. I typed in a number of common passwords, but none of them worked. I had no doubt the IT guys could crack it.

  In the master closet, we found a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve black T-shirt, just like the clothing worn by the shooter in the liquor store m
urder. The clothes had been washed, and there wasn't any blood splatter on them, but we confiscated them for good measure. The Aaron Jackson sneakers weren’t on the premises.

  Daniels put out a BOLO on Landon, and I called Isabella to see if she could locate his cell phone. With a few keystrokes, she found the device. "It last pinged the cell tower 15 minutes ago at 2367 Sturgeon Street."

  "Thank you. Let me know if he moves."

  "You got it."

  I hung up, and we sped across the island to the residence at Sturgeon. It was a nice home in the posh neighborhood of Stingray Bay. I had no doubt that Landon was on a job site.

  We pulled to the curb and hustled to the front door of the McMansion.

  Faulkner and Erickson headed up the driveway, taking the back exit.

  I rang the bell, and a few moments later, a woman in her mid 30s answered. She had short red hair, cut in a stylish bob. She wasn't a bad looking woman. Not bad at all. Brown eyes, creamy skin, nice curves. Landon Walsh seemed to excel at selling his services to bored housewives with a penchant for remodeling.

  I flashed my badge, and her eyes widened.

  “Looking for Landon Walsh,” I said.

  "Yes, he's here,” she stammered. “Is there some type of problem?”

  "Where is he?"

  "I think he's upstairs, painting.”

  "May we come in?"

  "Certainly," she stepped aside.

  “Stay here for your own safety, ma’am.”

  We flowed into the home and spiraled up the staircase with our weapons drawn.

  The redhead’s curious eyes followed us.

  The smell of fresh paint filled the air as we crept down the hallway. The sound of a sticky paint roller echoed down the passage. We pushed open the last bedroom door on the left.

  Landon's clothes were speckled with paint, and the floor was covered with plastic drop cloth taped to baseboards. He rolled a coat of light gray onto the walls.

  "Landon Walsh, you're under arrest for the murder of Chuck Kennedy."

  His face twisted. “This again!?”

  "You have the right to remain silent…" I read him his rights.