The Murder Book

by Lissa Marie Redmond

  Ricky was looking at Joy with amused contempt. “You think I’d tell Vince to stab a fellow officer? Just to steal a file? On a case I worked my balls off on? Look at my notes in that file. I worked that case hard.”

  “But your brother Sam was never a suspect,” Joy pointed out.

  “Why the hell would he be? I’m just as shocked by all this shit as you folks are. My two brothers are going to jail. The people at my mother’s assisted living home thought she had a heart attack last night. She’s in Mercy Hospital right now hooked up to a heart monitor. She’s eighty-eight years old.” He thrust his finger toward Joy’s face to make his point. “If I’d have known my brothers were up to this, I would have brought them in myself.”

  She flinched but kept the interrogation going. “What about the pictures of you and Sam in the police car immediately after the shooting?” she pressed. Lauren could see the crime scene photos spread out on the desk next to Ricky.

  “It was freezing out. My rookie brother was walking the beat. I let him warm up in my car. He didn’t say anything about anything and I sure as hell didn’t suspect him.”

  Convincing. Lauren clenched her jaw as she watched his performance. But you’re a professional liar. Your brothers wouldn’t have made a move without asking you first.

  “It’s hard not to believe him,” Lewis said in the smooth, confident voice that lulled juries to his side.

  “He let his brother walk away from murdering a teenager.”

  “He had no knowledge of that and no history of being heavy-handed when he was on the job. He was a good cop.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when my doctor checks on how well my sutures are healing next week. Want to see my scars?”

  His eyes dancing over Lauren’s face, a smile creeping across his mouth as he gave her a quick glance up and down. “That’s an interesting offer. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to take a rain check. Excuse me.” He carefully inched behind her and Reese, making his way to the door. “It’s time I cut this interview off.”

  “This is wrong, Lincoln,” Lauren’s voice raised a notch as he got past Reese and opened the door.

  Lewis paused, half in and half out of the room, hand on the knob. “You got two of the three brothers. You won. Be happy with that.” He slid out, closing the door behind him.

  “You okay?” Reese asked. Through the window they could see Lincoln Lewis enter the interview room and Ricky getting to his feet.

  “No.” Lauren pushed past Reese out into the main office. Ricky and Lewis walked out together, Lincoln plucking a camel coat off the back of a chair as he passed.

  Lauren followed them down the stairs, vaguely aware that Reese was by her side. She was fixated on the back of Ricky’s head, with its greasy comb-over, bobbing down with each step he took. Ricky didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge her in any way, but Lauren knew he was aware she was behind him. Dandruff was sprinkled across each shoulder of his suit jacket; his winter coat was draped over his arm.

  Greasy, dirty, disgusting excuse for a human being. Lauren tried to mirror Reese’s cool, calm exterior, but knew she was only being marginally successful as they reached the first-floor landing. Outside the Church Street door, reporters were already pressed to the glass, filming, shouting, and pushing each other for position. Stopping short of the doorway, Lewis turned back to Reese, “Can we get a little help here?”

  “Very little,” he answered dryly, then looked down the hallway where two uniformed officers were milling around by the entrance to the property office. “Hey, guys? Could you make a path for our friends here?”

  The two young coppers nodded and proceeded to hold open the door and simultaneously hold back the press. The shorter officer yelled at the crowd, “Coming through, people! Don’t block the sidewalk! Get out of the way!”

  Lewis grabbed Ricky’s coat and threw it over his head, covering it as he led him out of the building. The two coppers followed along, cutting a path for them through the cameras and questions. Lauren and Reese brought up the rear, catching the attention of one astute cameraman. “Aren’t you the detective who got stabbed?” he asked. Cameras swung around to capture both Lauren and Ricky walking on the sidewalk through the unshoveled snow.

  A young Latina reporter stuck a microphone in her face. “How does it feel to watch Richard Schultz walk away?”

  Lauren stopped, and Reese did as well, watching Lincoln Lewis rush his client to a waiting black sedan with tinted windows. How does it feel? Camera flashes went off all around her. Her eyes narrowed as Ricky was driven off. He covered up a murder, he tried to have me killed, and he possibly beat Joe Wheeler to death. Two out of three isn’t good enough.

  Lauren turned and walked back into headquarters.

  This wasn’t over by a longshot.

  49

  Twenty-four hours later, almost to the minute, Wayne Kencil’s number flashed across the screen of Lauren’s new phone. She almost didn’t answer it. Commissioner Bennett had ordered her and Reese to take the next two days off when she went back into headquarters after watching Ricky leave. “I don’t want you back in the hospital,” she told Lauren in the hallway outside of the Homicide office. “I want both of you out of the public eye. Completely. Go home. Let the rest of the squad take care of this. It’s over for you right now. I won’t tell you a third time.”

  Lauren had been pissed, Reese only slightly less, but they’d followed orders and went back to her house. Reese was almost packed to leave but decided to stay one last night. Another day with Watson helped calm her nerves. At least it had, until the AG’s investigator called.

  “I just got a call from your captain,” Kencil sounded breathless. “Seems Ricky Schultz didn’t show up for an appointment with Lincoln Lewis, so Lewis went over to his apartment. You and Reese need to come take a ride with me.”

  Twenty minutes later Wayne Kencil picked them up in his brand-new maroon Dodge Charger. “The attorney general’s office must be doing well if they can afford to give out take-home cars like these,” Reese commented from the passenger seat. Lauren sat silently in the back, dread creeping up her spine. She knew Reese was making small talk because he was nervous.

  Kencil ignored Reese’s comment, glancing up at the evening sky instead. “There’s a storm coming. I saw it on the news before I left my house. They say it’s a bad one.”

  It was already dark. Ominous clouds rolled off the lake, accompanied by a wicked wind that stung the cheeks and froze the snot in your nose. Lauren didn’t need a weatherman to tell her what was coming. You could feel it in your bones.

  Kencil didn’t say it and Reese didn’t voice it, but Lauren knew they were all thinking the same thing. Ricky had done something very bad, maybe to himself.

  They drove the rest of the way to Ricky Schultz’s apartment in silence.

  A traffic cop had Ricky’s street blocked off, keeping the hordes of media vans at bay. The reporters craned their necks to see who was in Wayne’s car as they were waved inside the perimeter. News stations monitored police radio broadcasts, heard everything the cops put over the air. Try as the department might to put as little as possible over the air, the media still put two and two together when Evidence, Photography, Homicide, the duty inspector, and a district supervisor were called to that particular address. Lauren put a hand up, blocking her face from the glare of the cameras trained on them.

  Another uniformed cop waved them into a space and Lauren wondered if Ricky was feeling any remorse at all. Probably not, she thought, opening the back passenger-side door and stepping out into a slush puddle. For a guy like him, it’s always going to be family first.

  But that didn’t explain what they were doing at his house now.

  Riley and Reese let Kencil lead, following him toward the house. Cops were scattered across the front lawn, talking with their backs to the news cameras, well aware that they had microphones
that could capture your conversations from a distance.

  They passed the squad cars lining the narrow North Buffalo street, clouds of exhaust pouring out of their tailpipes as the coppers kept their doors locked with the motors running so the cars stayed warm.

  Lauren looked up at Ricky’s house. It was a typical Riverside double, Lauren knew; she’d answered a hundred calls in houses just like it, with a large front porch and an upper fenced balcony. The upper apartment looked vacant to her; there were newspapers covering the darkened windows. The walkway to the porch hadn’t been shoveled, but boots had trampled the snow down into a hard, bumpy packed surface.

  A late-model red sedan sat in the driveway, two inches of snow covering the windshield and hood. That told her the car had been sitting there at least a day. Ducking under even more crime scene tape, Lauren grabbed onto the black wrought iron railing as she took the porch steps carefully. She eyeballed the front picture window, covered in heavy drapes. While she and Reese and Charlie were running around, Ricky had been hiding out here, like a rat in his hole.

  A young female officer stood at the front door, just inside the frame with a metal clipboard in her hand, dutifully logging in everyone who came on scene. She looked new, and a little frazzled, with her black leather gloves making it hard for her to write. She motioned to two boxes at her feet: latex gloves and shoe covers. “Everyone is down in the basement.” She pointed to a door standing open directly ahead of them, in the kitchen. Reese bent down and grabbed boxes, letting everyone pluck what they needed before dropping them back by the officer’s foot.

  Kencil looked at Lauren and stepped aside. “I think you better go in first on this one.”

  Lauren noticed a yellow plastic evidence marker bearing a black number 3 sitting just off to the right of the door as she tugged on her shoe covers. Squinting as she stood up, Lauren asked the cop at the door, “What’s that?”

  “Possibly blood. There are two more drops near the door to the basement, so be careful. And don’t grab for the doorknob. More suspected blood.”

  Swallowing hard, Lauren didn’t reply.

  It was hot in the apartment; someone had cranked the heat up, amplifying the greasy kitchen smells coming from the unwashed pots and pans sitting on the stove. Lauren could clearly see what looked like two dark, fat drops of blood marked off with their own yellow evidence tents set to the left of the door frame.

  Passing by the barely furnished living room, the four of them crossed the stained linoleum of the kitchen floor to the opening to the basement.

  Voices drifted up the stairs from below. An ugly green shag carpet covered the steps heading downward into the dimly lit basement. As Lauren descended, she became aware of the faint scent of burnt paper and mold. She used both hands pressed against the walls to steady herself as she stepped down. A basement office, she observed absently, kind of like mine.

  Lauren stopped cold, sharply sucking in a breath.

  Every head in the room swiveled to look at her. Frozen in place, she suppressed a gag. Reese and Kencil were trapped on the stairs behind her, unable to get past.

  Sitting in a metal folding chair at an old wooden desk, facing a computer, was Ricky Schultz. A kitchen knife was sticking out from his chest, just in front of his left arm, which hung limply down by his side. His head was tilted forward, stringy hair hanging in his face, bald spot uncovered. The nasty dark stain on his cheek was stark against the paleness of his drained face. A red ribbon of blood, now dry, had run down to his hip and along the chair, collecting into a small, black pool on the carpet. An open pack of cigarettes lay next to the blood spot, under Ricky’s hand, as if he’d merely fallen asleep and dropped them.

  Thankfully, Lauren’s left hand was still pressed to the wall, holding her up as her knees threatened to buckle underneath her. She couldn’t wrench her eyes from him. His face was the color of cold ashes, gray and dull. Ricky’s blue polo shirt had been too small, and his beer belly stuck out from under it in hairy, dimpled folds, covering his lap. On the wall above the computer was the badge-shaped retirement plaque the union gave everyone as a parting gift. It was the only decoration Lauren could see.

  “It looks like someone got to Ricky,” Joy said, stating the obvious.

  “Do we know who was the last person he had contact with?” Wayne Kencil asked from behind Lauren. She still hadn’t moved.

  “No. He received a phone call to his cell from his mother’s aide at seven thirteen this morning. It lasted eighteen minutes. Interestingly enough, he also spoke to our old friend Kevin King at eleven twenty-seven for thirty-two minutes.” Joy held up a plastic evidence bag with an old-fashioned gray flip phone in it. “This was on the table in front of him. We took an iPhone off him yesterday for evidence. Lincoln Lewis said he gave this as a loaner until we were done with Ricky’s, so they could stay in contact in the meantime. The call log shows all Ricky’s calls, the last one around one o’clock this afternoon. That was to Lewis. Ricky was supposed to meet him at Lewis’s office downtown at four. He never showed. Lewis called and called, waited until five thirty, then drove out here. He saw the blood on the front doorknob and called 911.”

  “Where’s Lewis now?” Reese asked from somewhere behind Lauren on the stairs.

  “In the back of a patrol car. He insisted on coming inside with the first responding officer.” Joy wore a disgusted look. “Who was too stupid to tell him to stay the hell out of a crime scene. Lewis saw everything.”

  “How could this happen? There should have been ten media trucks parked outside this house,” Reese said. “We should have his murder live on video and streaming.”

  “They were parked in front of his ex-wife’s house.” Joy let the crime scene photographer snake past her in the cramped space. “Apparently they didn’t believe her when she told them he didn’t live there anymore. They camped out there and only descended on this block when the police radio call came out.”

  “We were supposed to be going for the trifecta here. We got two brothers arrested and now one dead. Every frigging news station in the country is stationed outside this place right now,” Kencil said, anger rising in his voice. “How the hell are we supposed to explain this?”

  “As case fucking closed,” Reese chimed in, sounding pissed at Kencil’s tone. “Someone exacted their own justice on Ricky. They didn’t want to wait until you guys in the attorney general’s office got your shit together.”

  Kencil ignored Reese’s outburst. “Any sign of forced entry?” he asked Joy.

  “No. Other than the knife wound there’s no other trauma that we can see.” Joy pointed to the weapon. The police photographer bent forward and snapped a shot of it. “But from the angle of the wound, and those drops of blood, I doubt he was stabbed sitting here. I think his body position is staged. I think the killer either talked his way in or pulled a gun at the door, made Ricky come down here, stabbed him, and sat him facing the computer screen.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of work just to kill a guy.” Kencil sounded unconvinced. One of the evidence techs was carefully bagging a cigarette butt from a cheap tin ash tray on the desk. Oddly, the ashtray looked like it was filled with the remnants of burnt paper. A red plastic disposable lighter and an evidence tent marking it item 18 sat next to the almost overflowing tray.

  “I doubt the killer carried Ricky down those stairs. The whole scene, the blood drops upstairs, his positioning, screams staged,” Joy insisted. “The whole thing looks wrong to me.”

  “A former assistant district attorney would know how to stage a crime scene,” Reese pointed out. “Maybe Kevin King knew about Gabriel’s murder and Lauren’s stabbing the whole time. Maybe he was afraid Ricky would talk.”

  “I’ve got a patrol car going to over to King’s house to pick him up right now,” Joy said. “But he’s a lawyer. He won’t talk. And I doubt we’re going to find any forensic evidence at all if this scene
really is staged.”

  “It is.” Lauren’s voice sounded foreign and hollow to her. Reese’s hand came down on her shoulder, more to hold her up than to comfort her. From the reflection in the computer monitor Lauren could see Ricky’s mouth ajar, and his eyes half open, like he was drunk or stoned instead of dead. The killer stabbed him, sat him in that chair, and watched him die.

  “How do you know that?” Kencil’s voice cut through her thoughts.

  She stared straight ahead, reading the message printed across the screen in bold, black type: You can find out just about anything on anybody using the plain old internet.

  “I just know.”

  Damn David Spencer to hell. The certainty of his actions washed over her like a wave. His presence in the room was almost palpable; she could practically smell David in the musty basement. Lauren knew right then that David had killed Joe Wheeler. She knew he stabbed Ricky Schultz, then watched him die, choking as he tried to suck in a breath, like she had.

  She pictured David sitting Ricky in that metal chair, probably speaking to him in low, soothing tones while he watched the blood drip down the old man’s side, onto the shag pile. A criminal justice major would have no trouble figuring out how to muddy up a scene. Her jaw tightened as the truth of the situation hit her. Drop some blood where it doesn’t belong, write a cryptic message no one can figure out, confuse the cops. Except for the cop the message was meant for. That cop would know immediately.

  The cases involving the Schultz brothers might be over, but David had effectively sucked her back into the sphere of his life. He was teasing her, pulling her back to him.

  He killed Joe Wheeler and now Ricky Schultz because they hurt me. He wants to see what I’ll do about it. If I have the balls to come after him. He wants me to be a part of this sick game he’s created.