The Safe Word

by Karen Long

  “I didn’t call for a car ok? Check the phones and you’ll know that I never…” he began.

  “Oh we did,” responded Eleanor leaning closer to him and watching as his eyes saccaded in rising panic. “You are right. We have checked your cell and the office phones to see if any outgoing calls were unaccounted for but strangely there weren’t.”

  Malcolm didn’t understand the implications but they weren’t lost on Lana Turner who was shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

  “All numbers were accountable.”

  “So?” snapped Malcolm.

  “How could someone arrange for a car to arrive at a specific time if they hadn’t called or emailed anyone? We’ve checked everyone’s mail in the office, including yours and there was no contact regarding a pick up. But a car did turn up at the time you were heard to say out loud to Miss Willis that it would turn up, that is at four forty pm, and you have a missing five thousand dollars from your bank account. You arranged with someone personally that Cassandra Willis would be picked up and murdered. How do we know this? Because Cassandra Willis wasn’t the first murder victim to have been killed in this manner and for the same price.” She paused for several moments. “I am about to arrest you for the murder of Miss Cassandra Willis.”

  Malcolm slammed both hands against the table. “I didn’t kill her! I just wanted her…”

  “Mr Stringer,” said Lana Turner putting a restraining hand on his arm. “I suggest you take a moment to collect your thoughts.”

  “I just wanted the bitch to get a taste of her own medicine!” He looked desperately from one woman to another. “That’s all!”

  Eleanor gratefully accepted the coffee that Laurence handed to her as they huddled together in the corridor outside Interview One and discussed proceedings in hushed tones.

  “You’ve got enough to charge him with pre-meditated murder?” whispered Laurence.

  Eleanor grimaced at the amount of sugar in the coffee. “No, not yet but I’m meeting Marty and the DA in five to run through what we’ve got. I have to get his statement signed and filed before I can join you so while I do that I need you to start the location procedures for Cindy. All he’s given us is this physical description of the woman,” she handed him a piece of paper which Laurence scrutinised. “And the fact that he only met her in the coffee shop on the ground floor of his office building. If he reveals anything else I’ll call you.”

  “So the implication is that the killer had a woman working with him collecting business and organising pick-ups?” Laurence scowled. “That seem plausible to you?”

  Eleanor shrugged and frowned. “It’s not unheard of but I’ve not come across that sort of relationship before.” She fell silent, thinking. Laurence was about to add a thought when the expression on her face told him to give her a few minutes.

  “Tracy Earnshaw,” she said quickly. “What did she look like?”

  “Tall, fit, attractive, blonde.” Laurence looked at Eleanor’s brightening face and then down at the description of Cindy in his hand.

  “Fuck!” He looked up. “You think Tracy could be Cindy?”

  “Malcolm Stringer couldn’t tell if a woman was wearing a wig and the only link we have between Lydia Greystein and the kidnapper was Tracy Earnshaw.”

  “But Tracy said she didn’t give Lydia the phone number; that she had already acquired it by herself the time she saw her in the gym.”

  “That’s what she said but Mandy, the hooker from Xxxstacy who overheard the conversation stated that Tracy had ‘organised’ it for Lydia. So, here we have a woman…”

  “Or two women…” said Laurence.

  “One or two women who are acting as middle men for our killer. They drum up the business and link the victims up with him. Look at Cindy’s description; ignore the hair because that’s an easy fix. Could Tracy be Cindy?” Eleanor whispered urgently as she saw Marty Samuelson and the DA walking briskly along the corridor in her direction.

  Laurence nodded, “Yes, they could.”

  Eleanor nodded at the two men and pushed the coffee back into Laurence’s hand. “Smith went to track down Tracy this morning call him and get yourself down there. I want her in, now.”

  Eleanor walked away from him waggling her phone meaningfully. Laurence watched thoughtfully as Eleanor was ushered by Marty Samuelson into Interview Two and glanced again at the paper. He felt his heartbeat rise as he pondered the possibility that Tracy Earnshaw could be acting as broker for the killer. First he had to check whether Tracy was alibied or could have physically managed to disguise herself as Cindy and have sufficient time to get across town to the coffee shop and meet Malcolm at the times he indicated. He opened his phone and ran through the contacts till he found Smith. Smith answered on the fifth ring. “Yeah?”

  “Listen are you still with Tracy Earnshaw?” asked Laurence.

  “Yup, lookin’ at her right now,” answered Smith.

  “I need to ask her a few questions,” said Laurence striding down the corridor and heading for the car pool.

  Smith stared at what remained of Tracy Earnshaw’s face. “That’s gonna be difficult,” he answered carefully.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Laurence tapped loudly on the door to Interview Two and heard Marty Samuelson’s exasperated tone, “What the fuck!”

  Laurence opened the door and stepped in ignoring the outraged expression on the chief’s face.

  “I need to speak to DI Raven, Captain,” said Laurence quickly but firmly.

  “So do I and I take precedent!” barked Samuelson.

  “Sir, this is of the utmost urgency,” said Laurence feeling his throat tighten as Samuelson slammed down his pen.

  Eleanor stood up and maneuvered Laurence quickly out of the room.

  “Tracy Earnshaw’s dead; shot in the face and found by Smith in her home twenty minutes ago. The gun was in her hand but Smith’s not buying suicide,” said Laurence quickly the second the door closed.

  Eleanor stared at him in disbelief and then dialled Smith. “Smith? It’s Raven. Tell me what you’ve got.” She listened in silence as he gave her the bullet points. “You got an estimated time of death on Earnshaw?” she asked.

  “Waiting on ME. This is going to take some time as Doc’s in the cutting room,” Smith said pointedly, knowing that Eleanor would realise that Dr Hounslow was autopsying Ellis and Paget.

  “Who are they sending?” she asked quickly.

  “Crime Scene are on their way, Coroner’s here and Timms has just arrived.” As if on cue Eleanor could hear Timms’ voice in the background.

  “Give me your best guess,” she said. “I won’t hold you to it.”

  “She’s in full rigor and cold as the room so I’m guessing twenty-four plus. The neighbour hasn’t seen her for ‘a while’ as he put it, so judging by the temperature and smell, between one and three days. You can narrow it down to two as she was interviewed by Whitefoot.”

  “You need Whitefoot?” she asked.

  The audible snort from the other end of the phone wasn’t lost on Laurence.

  “Ok, you and Timms process this and call it into Johnson. Find out who the gun was registered to, if she had a permit and next of kin to identify her.”

  “That’s gonna be a challenge for mom,” stated Smith.

  “Smith I need you to turn the place over. You’re looking for a long brunette wig ok?”

  There was a pause as Smith considered this. “Roger that.”

  “I need you to find Cindy asap,” said Eleanor to Laurence.

  “But if she’s Tracy then…” started Laurence, nursing a suspicion that Eleanor was sympathetic to Smith’s desire not to have him on site.

  “That was an idea not a fact and ours to prove. Cindy is the lynchpin to finding out who the killer is and without her I have nothing that will stick to Malcolm Stringer. If, as we believe, he paid her the five thousand to dispose of Cassandra then she knows who and where the killer is. And if Tracy Earnshaw is not a suicide and
has been murdered then Cindy might be the next on his list.”

  Laurence nodded his approval. “Where do I start?”

  “Last place she was seen. The coffee shop in Stringer’s building.”

  “You’ve got nothing Detective,” snapped the District Attorney Ralph Heidlmann, shuffling the papers Eleanor had laid out for him. “And that gives you forty-eight hours before you release Mr Stringer.” Heidlmann stood up and began to pack the documents into his briefcase.

  “I’ve got three murdered civilians and two cops on the slab!” pleaded Eleanor.

  “Then do the work! Malcolm Stringer may have paid to have Cassandra Willis carved up but you’ve got nothing that would stand up in court. He will walk and anything else you try and do later will fall on deaf ears. Get a confession and preferably find Cindy. Until then you cannot charge him with pre-meditated murder and he will be back on the streets in forty-eight. Are we clear?”

  Eleanor nodded. Samuelson said nothing, his jaw set hard.

  “Good day,” said Heidlmann as he swept out of the room.

  There was silence for a moment as the two officers contemplated their next move. “I can get him to confess,” said Eleanor.

  “You need to focus and prioritise,” said Samuelson with unusual calm. “Malcolm Stringer selected the victim and he will serve the max for that but he’s not going anywhere. He gets released in forty-eight; he goes home to gloat. I need you to get out there and catch the bastard that’s doing this ok?”

  Eleanor nodded. He was right.

  “I’ve got to make a press statement in an hour and I want you there,” said Samuelson. Eleanor groaned.

  “We make a statement and we have some control. Ignore the hacks and they print any shit and look for leaks, you know that.”

  She nodded.

  “Ok, what do we give them and what do we hold back?” he asked.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Timms as he peered inside a small closet in Tracy Earnshaw’s bedroom.

  “Long brunette wig,” responded Smith.

  Timms looked at the two polystyrene mannequin heads on the shelf above the clothing. One sported a shoulder length blonde wig, the other a mid-length brunette. Both wigs were obviously real human hair and looked to Timms as if they would have been costly.

  “Yup, got that plus another blonde one,” stated Timms. The closet was tidy containing a mixture of hand-knitted sweaters and cardigans, some jeans and a couple of pairs of leather shoes with a low heel. None could be described as particularly expensive or glamorous. The shirts and tops Tracy favoured were of a functional cotton design.

  Timms sighed and continued to poke around. “Where’d you say she worked?” he asked. “Some fancy gym on Wellesley Street?”

  “Huh?” Smith was deep in conversation with the coroner who was explaining why it was extremely unlikely that Tracy Earnshaw would be autopsied within the next forty-eight hours due to the increasing numbers of bodies being deposited at the morgue.

  “Yeah. Personal trainer according to Whitefoot. Why?” he answered finally.

  “Cos there aint nothing resembling gym wear here. This wardrobe aint saying fitness guru to me,” responded Timms thoughtfully. “I’m gonna go check her washing ok?”

  Timms squeezed his bulk past the two crime officers, Smith and the coroner’s assistant and marvelled at how so many people could have squeezed into such a small bedroom. He glanced at the body which was still being processed. “Some’at aint right here,” he muttered to no one in particular. He’d already made a cursory search of the bedroom and spare room finding only a mixture of underwear, pulp novels and bric-a-brac. The bathroom had yielded little in the way of information and the small neat kitchen even less.

  “What you looking for in there?” asked Smith.

  Timms closed the washing machine lid and turned to face Smith. “Gym wear…lycra. Something that tells me she worked as a personal trainer.”

  “How about these?” said Smith passing Timms a sports bag which contained a pair of top-of-the-range running shoes, two lycra tops, one with ‘Bodyworks’ embroidered into the breast and a pair of tight running pants. “That do it for ya? Found it under the bed.”

  Timms scowled as he looked at the bag and its contents.

  “There!” said Laurence stabbing a finger at the screen. The security officer stopped the image and ran the enhancement. “That’s her…” he leaned closer to the screen and stared at the grey and shadowy figure of a woman as she carried a coffee over to the table furthest away from the CCTV. She was considerably taller than Malcolm, probably 5ft 10” or 11” without the heels. She wore large owlish sunglasses, which obscured the greater part of her face. The long dark hair fell away from her face and formed a curtain over her shoulders. Apart from her well-toned figure there was very little to identify her.

  “Run it through a few more frames.”

  The woman pulled a chair out and sat with her back to the camera. Laurence clamped his teeth with frustration as he saw her remove the sunglasses. All he could see for the next thirty minutes that the pair sat together was Malcolm Stringer’s stupid face as he laughed and gesticulated wildly.

  “You know what?” drawled the security operative tapping the screen with his pen. “I’d say she knew where the cameras were and made sure she wasn’t spotted. She keeps to the edges of frame when she enters and leaves the building and never takes her sunglasses off where the camera can picture her.”

  Laurence nodded his head in agreement. “You can copy me the data from all of her visits?”

  “Yup. Doin’ it now.”

  Laurence had spent the last couple of hours speeding through the CCTV digital footage taken over the past week. As a matter of course nothing older than seven days was kept on file but erased.

  “You think we can enhance this any more?” asked Laurence hopefully.

  “Maybe,” said the operative unconvincingly. “But you’re dependent on the resolution and this is good but not like the ones they use for potential high crime areas like banks or airports.”

  Laurence gratefully took the disc that the operative handed over.

  “You’re homicide right?” asked the operative.

  Laurence nodded.

  “She murder or been murdered?”

  Laurence thought for a moment and then shrugged.

  Eleanor took her seat next to Samuelson and stared with growing apprehension at the ever-increasing numbers of press that were squeezing themselves into the precinct’s conference room. Cameramen vied with press photographers to set up their equipment along the aisles. Neatly dressed female reporters harangued technicians to move faster and secure a better position for their microphones. Eleanor had prepared a statement with the approval of her boss who was kitted out in full regalia, including cap. Knowing that the gathered press was unlikely to settle down voluntarily, she cleared her throat and began to speak. There were several seconds of shuffling before pause buttons were flipped and a sea of red LEDs appeared in the rows of cameras.

  She kept the briefing succinct and unemotional sure that the media would supply that by the bucket load. She and Marty had spent some time discussing whether or not to reveal the ‘Kidnapping’s Arranged’ card. Not to do so would be irresponsible and may make them culpable if someone already in possession of one of the cards, decided to book a sexy treat for either themselves or a loved one. By the same token, once revealed by the press it would make any further contacts with the killer a shoo-in for a pre-meditated murder charge, so it was decided that it would be their first point. There would be no mention of the name Lee Hughes, nor would the specifics of the killer’s MO be described. Eleanor ended the statement by asking the public to report any dangerous sexual encounters they may have had, all of which would be treated in complete confidence. The second that she closed her mouth a sea of hands and microphones shot into the air.

  “Detective Inspector, why hasn’t the public’s attention been drawn to these murders before? P
erhaps the latest victim,” a thin woman in a burgundy suit checked her notes, “Cassandra Willis, may have avoided the same fate as Lydia Greystein if she’d been notified by the press.”

  “I cannot comment in detail about the specific details regarding Miss Willis’ death but I believe that not to be the case,” replied Eleanor. She watched as the reporter opened her mouth for a supplementary but Claddis McAvoy from the Toronto Sun barged in angrily.

  “Are you saying that your department knew that the murderer of Lydia Greystein was posting cards advertising his services and you did nothing to stop this? Despite your assurances to my colleague that the sadistic murder of Cassandra Willis was unavoidable would it not have been if the public’s and Miss Willis’ attention had been alerted to these cards?”

  Eleanor spoke calmly and cautiously, “As soon as the link was made the department and I used this knowledge to trace the cards and remove them.”

  Several other hands shot up but Claddis was on a roll. “So you’d say categorically that after linking the murder of Lydia Greystein with the individual who left the ‘Kidnappings Arranged’ card you scoured the area and commandeered all of these cards thus preventing the likelihood that any other poor soul would inadvertently arrange either their own or another’s sadistic murder? Because we know that no press statement regarding this matter was made.”

  Eleanor paused before responding. She’d encountered Claddis McAvoy on several occasions and his tone and increasingly smug expression were making her nervous that there was an unpleasant revelation about to be made.

  “Because…” intoned Claddis theatrically reaching inside his jacket pocket, “this is one of those cards picked up only this morning by myself.” He held the card aloft, adopting an expression of concerned righteousness for the photographs that he knew would make it into the evening’s papers and afternoon broadcast.