The Murder Book

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  Reese held up the manila envelope Helen had given him. Nothing was written on it. It could have contained anything, but Reese waved it in Vince’s face. “Sorry, Vince, but we’ve got to go. I got what I came here for, and we’re running late.”

  Vince’s eyes ran over the folder, possibly trying to figure out if it was something for Lauren’s case or totally unrelated. Lauren could sense he wanted to linger, to fish for more information. Him coming up to her in the hall was not a coincidence, she was sure, but something of a calculated risk. He wanted to gauge what they knew.

  “No problem.” Vince stepped back as he spoke. “I hope you feel better, Lauren.”

  I hope someone straps you to an ant hill and pours syrup on you. “Bye, Vince. And thank you.” For letting me know you’re a remorseless piece of shit who covers up an eighteen-year-old kid’s murder.

  Lauren and Reese left Vince Schultz standing in the hallway. Waiting until they were in the confines of the car, Reese let out a long breath. “It took everything I had not to throttle him.”

  “My first instinct was to shoot him,” Lauren said bitterly. “It’s my only instinct, actually.”

  Sliding the manila folder onto the dash, Reese threw the car into drive. “I called the lab. The samples are still there. All we need is a comparison, and it’s game over.”

  “We could have gotten one from Vince just now. Punched him in the nose, gathered some of the blood. The tests would show the familial link.”

  Reese dismissed that idea. “While that would have been fun, then it would be all subpoenas and hearings and lawyers. They could get to Rita. No, we’re going for the straight-up abandoned sample from Vince’s little brother, Sam. I don’t want a family tree. I want Sam Schultz’s direct match.”

  “And how are we going to get that?” Lauren was trying to bring her heart rate down, breathing in deeply, then exhaling slowly. “I think he’ll notice a tall blonde and a biracial guy following him around all day trying to recover his used Kleenex.”

  Reese fished around in his back pocket, eyes never leaving the road, until he produced another glossy piece of paper. He passed it over to Lauren. “These were on everyone’s desks today. I snagged one when I was in the office.”

  It was a fancy invitation to Sam Schultz’s campaign kick-off party that coming Saturday night, December 1st, at the new Strand Hotel. Formal attire required, only two hundred dollars a person.

  “You want to crash his party?” Lauren cocked an eyebrow.

  He shrugged. “Why not? I look good in a suit.”

  “Because Vince and Ricky both know me and know I’d never go to a political fundraiser in a million years.”

  “We know for sure where our suspect is going to be Saturday night. We know he won’t be expecting us.” Reese hit the horn on a man turning without using his signal in front of them. “You need to call your ex-husband and have him buy two tickets under his name.”

  Mark Hathaway had always been a big donor to political campaigns. Lauren used to hate when he’d drag her out in a sequined dress to some function or other. She’d cringe in a corner most of the night, nursing a drink, making awkward small talk with other donors’ wives while her husband schmoozed and worked the crowd. Reese was right, Mark buying tickets wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

  “Since when do you make the operational plans?” Lauren asked, reluctant to revisit that portion of her life with Mark.

  “Since you got put on injured reserve,” he shot back. “Let’s do this. We get the sample, call the DA, tell him what’s up. Carl Church gets the lab to rush it through. We get a match, all the brothers go to jail.”

  “Sam’s DNA on the gun doesn’t prove Vince attacked me,” she pointed out.

  “It’s enough for us to get search warrants for his apartment, his car, his work locker. Vince Schultz is a slob. He’s probably wearing the same crusty uniform he had on the night he stabbed you. You know those are the same boots; he’s too cheap to buy new ones. The knife is probably on the all-purpose tool on his belt. He has no idea we’re on to him or his brothers. If we’re lucky, we can nail them for you and for Gabriel without exposing Rita. I’m telling you, this is the best plan.”

  She thought back to the way Vince had stood there, as if it was nothing that she had been hurt. Like she’d fallen down the stairs or got rear-ended in the parking lot. He had stabbed her from behind and then mercilessly cracked her in the head. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her, he’d been trying to destroy her. The way Joe had been destroyed by a tire iron. The way Gabriel Mohamed had been destroyed by a bullet. She fingered the metal clasp on the back of the envelope.

  Well, she thought as she watched pedestrians cross in front of the car at a red light, her bitterness turning to anger, it’s my turn now.

  34

  Lauren spent the rest of her Thursday night at home, dreading seeing her ex-husband in the morning. She’d changed into her pajamas almost as soon as she and Reese came in the door, stomach still in knots over running into Vince Schultz. She sat with Watson in the kitchen, watching Reese take abuse from his latest lady friend on his cell phone.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve just been really busy. I know. I know. I know.” He looked over at Lauren who was smirking, then turned his back to her. “I’ll be right there,” he assured the woman on the phone. “I’m leaving now. Goodbye.”

  “My nurse Anna giving you a hard time?” Lauren asked, slightly amused and grateful at the distraction that Reese’s love life provided for her.

  “What? No. Anna and me are taking a break. The whole Wheeler thing freaked her out. That was my friend Ebony. Remember her? We dated two years ago?”

  “Didn’t she dump you when you wouldn’t move in with her?”

  “It was a mutual break-up,” he corrected, adjusting his baseball cap. “Anyway, I have to meet her over at Carlin’s bar. You going to be okay on your own?”

  Lauren nudged the sleeping Watson with her foot, who responded with a furious wag of the tail but didn’t look up. “I’ve got my guard dog here. I’ll be fine.”

  He grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter. “Don’t wait up.”

  Giving him a two-finger salute as he left, she called, “I never do. And it gets us in trouble.”

  The back door banged shut behind him. Lauren had cranked the heat, but she was still freezing. She wrapped her hands around her mug of decaf coffee to warm them. She had given in to Reese’s demand that she drink decaf after six because the sound of her walking around upstairs all night kept him awake. She wanted to try to explain it wasn’t the caffeine that caused her to wake up every two hours, it was nightmares. Switching to decaf seemed easier. But it didn’t help her sleep.

  Alone at last at her kitchen table, she propped her iPad up on the little stand that folded out of the cover of its case, slipped her readers on, and brought up the sign-in page for Facebook.

  Lauren Riley officially had seven Facebook friends: Erin, Lindsey, Reese, Dayla, her mom, her sister, and a girl she had gone to high school with named Marie Butkiss, who she had found while scrolling around. She loved the fact that she was reconnected with Marie, who had been her best friend and now lived in Michigan. Reese had shown Lauren how to put pictures of her daughters on her account and share them with Marie so no one else could see them. Marie responded with pictures of her son and daughter, only thirteen and seven. Lauren slipped a couple shots of Watson in too. She would have felt like a bad mom if she hadn’t.

  Lauren had spent the night before on her sister’s page, going through photos of her nephews, snapshots of Jill and her husband posing in front of their rustic, cabin-like house in the Pacific Northwest, and reading posts Jill had written over the last five years. Lauren had no idea how much she’d missed of her sister’s life by being so disconnected. Her stubbornness against technology had backfired on her. When Lauren’s sister instant messaged her because she sa
w she was online, they spent an hour typing back and forth until Lauren absolutely had to get offline and go to bed.

  Tonight, Lauren wanted to stalk her daughters. She clicked on Lindsey’s page, liking a couple of things she posted, leaving a comment under a selfie of her and her roommate at a concert: Looks like fun!! Adding a smile emoji for good measure. I’m getting good at this social media stuff, she told herself.

  Pouring herself the inky bottom of the coffeepot, she sat back down and opened Erin’s homepage. Her youngest daughter’s beautiful, pixie-like face filled her screen. My baby, she thought, paging through her photos. When did you get so grown up?

  There was Erin striking a pose in front of the funky Shark Girl sculpture at Canalside. Here was another one of her making a duck face with her sister on Thanksgiving. Her heart skipped a beat at a picture of them at the beach last summer when Lauren had managed to get both girls home the same weekend. The summer before they’d both stayed at school, and she’d only gotten to see them separately, making her miss them even more. Lauren clicked on the picture to make it bigger. All three were sitting on a blanket. A nice older gentleman had offered to take the picture after a five-minute struggle to selfie it with the sunlight blinding them. He’d directed them, telling them to get closer, smile, now hold it, as he stood there in his long shorts and black socks with sandals. The result was a close-up of all three smiling straight into the camera, the sunlight just right on their faces, radiant in the joy of the moment.

  Underneath the photo, little “thumbs up” and heart icons indicated how many people liked or loved the picture. Fifty-one likes and two hundred and seventeen hearts. Lauren clicked on the heart to see who loved their photo.

  David Spencer was first on the list.

  Furiously trying to remember the steps, Lauren clicked back to Erin’s friends list and opened it up. She had 1,167 friends. Lauren typed David’s name into the search bar and sure enough, there he was. David Spencer had friended Erin. Or Erin had friended him.

  Next she clicked on David’s name and went to his page. His banner was a spectacular orange and red sunset shining through two mountains. His profile picture was cropped and whoever had been in the photo with him had been cut out. But it was him. David was showing off his dyed blonde spikey hair and killer smile. Literally a killer smile. Lauren clicked on the “About” icon, but it didn’t yield much. Only that he was a criminal justice student and the high school he’d graduated from. Nothing about a job. Under relationship status: “It’s complicated.”

  Complicated. Lauren wondered what shiny Melissa thought about that statement.

  He had over a thousand friends as well. I don’t even know a thousand people. Lauren scrolled through his friends list, which consisted of mostly young, very attractive females. And I thought Facebook was just for old people.

  Still staring at his homepage, Lauren took her cell phone out of her pocket and called Erin. Simultaneously filled with fury and fright, Lauren tried to calm herself.

  Erin answered right away. “What’s wrong?” The panic in Erin’s voice was unmistakable.

  “A lot actually.” Lauren’s protective mother instinct was now in overdrive. “Why are you friends with David Spencer on Facebook?”

  “Who?” She sounded confused.

  “David Spencer. I was on your page and I saw that he liked one of your pictures, and I see that the two of you are friends.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t even know who David Spencer is. Wait—isn’t he the guy you helped get off from that murder last year?”

  “Yes.” Lauren tried to control the anger in her voice. “Why are you two Facebook friends?”

  “I don’t know. He probably sent me a friend request and I accepted it. I don’t know every single person I’m Facebook friends with.”

  “How can you accept a friend request from someone you don’t even know? Has he tried to communicate with you? Sent you any messages?”

  “Mom.” She drew out the mom so that it sounded more like maaaammm. “That’s not how Facebook works. People friend you and you friend them back. You want to have a lot of followers.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why, you just do. So people know you aren’t a loser, I guess.”

  “You’re going to be a loser and unfriend him and block him, or erase him, or whatever you have to do. Do you understand?”

  “Okay, Mom. Chill. I’m doing it now.” Lauren waited, listening to the soft rustling sounds of Erin manipulating her smart phone. From somewhere in the background another female voice called out, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” she muttered to the voice. “It’s just my mom.”

  “Is that your dormmate?” Lauren asked.

  “Yes.” There was another pause. “Okay. I’ve unfriended and blocked David Spencer.”

  “But he already knows where you go to school, who your friends are, and where you hang out, right?”

  Erin sighed into the phone. “I guess.”

  Lauren took a deep breath. “It’s not safe to have all those people have access to so much information about you.”

  “Mom.” Erin sounded like she was trying to not lose her patience with Lauren. “Things are different from when you were my age. This is how things are.”

  Yeah, killers can track you or your family over the Internet. Stalk you, toy with you, torture you with fear. Lauren bit her tongue on those thoughts but told Erin, “I know. I get that. I’m just trying to protect you.”

  Erin’s voice softened. “I appreciate it, Mom. I do. But I’m far away from David Spencer. I think I’m safe here.”

  Lauren didn’t say it, but in her gut, she wasn’t so sure.

  She hung up with Erin and immediately punched in Frank Violanti’s cell phone number. It rang and rang, and then just when she was sure it was going to go to voicemail, a whispered voice said, “Hello?”

  “Frank, it’s Riley. We need to talk. David Spencer friended my daughter on Facebook.”

  In the background Lauren could hear a screaming baby. She’d forgotten Violanti and his wife had gotten pregnant right before the start of David’s trial last year. “You woke up my son to tell me that?”

  “You don’t think it’s odd,” she demanded over the baby’s wails, “that David Spencer went out of his way to find and friend my daughter?”

  Lauren could hear him fumbling, probably trying to make a bottle and hold the phone at the same time. In exasperation he told her, “They’re the same age, doing what young people their age do, but we don’t understand what that is because we’re old. It’s harmless. All the kids are on social media constantly.”

  Lauren wasn’t buying that excuse. “I want you to call him and put a stop to all this. Coming to the hospital, trying to get close to my daughters. I’m warning you—”

  He cut her off. “Stop right there. I’ll call him, okay? But not tonight. My hands are full right now. I’ve got to go.” He hung up on her.

  What if it was your child? she wanted to ask Violanti, staring at her phone, and you couldn’t protect him? What would you do?

  35

  “Seriously, Lauren? I’ve been trying to contact you since you got stabbed, you don’t so much as send me a text saying you’re all right, and now you show up at my office asking me to buy you fundraiser tickets for tomorrow night? You’re unbelievable.”

  Lauren edged her way around the front of Mark Hathaway’s desk. Her ex-husband hadn’t gotten up when his secretary had buzzed her in, he’d just sat there with his hands folded in front of him, scolding her. She’d spent half the night scouring David Spencer’s Facebook account, looking at every picture, analyzing every post, every “like,” looking for clues into his intent for friending Erin. Even now, with Mark in front of her, she had to push her concern with David to the side and concentrate on the matter at hand.

 
Lauren knew she deserved Mark’s anger. Some of it, anyway. After all, the last time she’d asked Mark for a favor, they’d ended up in bed and—eventually—ended his second marriage. Then she had dumped him. But Mark had divorced her first, ten years before, leaving her shocked and devastated.

  I should have a timeline with me to keep track of all my disastrous, train-wreck relationships, Lauren thought. I can barely keep them straight in my own head: Baby daddy, Joe Wheeler, Mark Hathaway, self-enforced celibacy, Mark Hathaway, back to celibacy. I could write a manual of what not to do in romantic relationships.

  “I’m sorry. About everything. And I appreciate the flowers and the robe and the slippers—”

  “It’s not about a robe, flowers, and slippers. It’s about us and you damn well know it.”

  Lauren drank in his curly, near-black hair, his stormy blue eyes, and felt her resolve weaken. This was why she had cut him completely out of her life. She couldn’t trust herself with him. He got to her in ways that no other man ever had, and it broke her heart when she thought of how everything had turned out between them. She put a hand on his desktop to steady herself. “I know it is. I know you’re right. But I need you to do this for me. You know I wouldn’t ask you—”

  “If you could get this from someone else?”

  The anger in his voice toward her was foreign. During their entire relationship, brief as it was, they’d never had a real fight, not even when he’d up and left her. Or more precisely, when she threw him out after he had sat her down and told her he’d knocked up his secretary. Lauren had been more devastatingly sad than angry, telling him through her tears to pack his things and leave. He left her with a huge house, mortgage-free, a cash payout that ensured her daughters’ college tuitions would be paid, and a broken heart that had never healed. Which was what led to their grievous affair last year.

  She leaned a hip into the desk, suddenly feeling tired. “It wouldn’t have been fair to you. To drag you in again. Because if we talk, we meet for drinks. We meet for drinks, we end up in bed.”