by Lauren Carr
“He did say she was rude,” Mac said.
Bogie laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“I never heard about this.” David didn’t know whether to be amused or concerned about Robin’s encounter with Senator Harry Palazzi.
“Remember,” Bogie said, “all Palazzi was wearing was his bathrobe. When he got in Robin’s way, she planted the pointy toe of her stiletto pump right in the family jewels. She said not only did he land on the floor, but also that it was a full body slam. She ran for the door. Now, we can’t forget that this guy was a trained law enforcement officer. He managed to grab her by the ankle and pull her down to the floor.”
“Oh, my,” Archie said. “Tell me Robin got away.”
“Well,” Bogie gestured for them to come around to see his computer monitor. “After it was over, Robin didn’t have a scratch. You can’t say the same for Senator Harry Palazzi.”
The picture on the monitor was of a younger Senator Harry Palazzi with his arm in a cast, a broken nose, and a black eye. The headline for the news article read that the junior senator had been injured playing football with some of his security officers.
“Robin did that to him?” David asked.
“Yeah,” Bogie chuckled while admiring the picture. “Never mess with a murder mystery writer who takes her research seriously.”
Mac wasn’t so amused. “We need to put a stop to him. He’s raped more than just Dee Blakeley and Florence Everest, and he tried to attack my mother. I’m convinced that the same guy who killed Dee killed Khloe and those two other women. He’s had plenty of time to escalate, and it can’t be a coincidence that both Khloe and Dee had connections to Palazzi that made their deaths beneficial to him.”
“Problem is,” David said, “we can’t find any connection between Senator Palazzi and the woman in Hollywood, or the woman in Pittsburgh.”
“Listen,” Mac said, “We know this. The senator isn’t the type to get his hands dirty. So these murders weren’t committed by him, but for him. If he uses a paid contract guy, he could be taking on contracts for other people, but using the same M.O. Maybe the other two women weren’t for Palazzi, but for someone else.”
“Now we’re talking about a pro, Mac,” David said. “A pro wouldn’t leave his semen behind. He’d know that, if he ever got picked up, his DNA would directly connect him to these murders. So what is it? A professional hit for Palazzi, or a maniac?”
Frustrated by the logic in David’s point, Mac paced the squad room to sort out his thoughts. Bogie went into his office to answer the ringing phone on his desk.
“Is Senator Palazzi’s DNA in the system?” Archie asked Mac.
“Yes,” Mac said. “We were able to get it with Blakeley’s case.”
“Is it a match for the semen left with Khloe and these other two women?” she asked.
“No,” David said with a shake of his head. “No match at all.”
“Was there any evidence left behind at the Blakeley murder?” Archie asked.
“Nothing to trace back to Palazzi,” Mac said. “I didn’t expect there to be. The creep even had a solid alibi for the time of the murder. He spent the whole evening playing chess with his son, Bevis.”
Bogie came out of his office. “We got some luck. That gay friend of Khloe’s that she was spilling her guts to? His name is Nick Fields. He used to be a singer with a rock group. According to the producer for Khloe’s show, it was like a package deal when they signed on Khloe. She insisted that he be on the show, too, so they had him in a scene or two every couple of shows and he made some money.”
“Then she knew him before the show,” Mac said. “Like while she was living here and he helped her to pull that stunt.”
“He went to Hollywood with her,” Bogie said. “He came from Smithfield, Pennsylvania, not far from here.”
“Do you have a current address for him?” David asked him.
“Potomac, Maryland.” Bogie handed a slip of paper with the address on him. “I’ll run a background check.”
“Mac,” David said while studying the address, “looks like you and I are going to take a road trip.”
“Can we do it Monday morning?” Mac asked. “There’s an angle I want to check out.”
“Are you going to keep me in the loop on that angle?”
“If something comes of it.”
“Fair enough,” David said. “Monday would work better for me, too. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon.”
“With anyone we know?” Archie asked with a wicked grin.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” David said. “But not who you think.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
In her office off of the morgue, Dr. Dora Washington was shrugging out of her lab coat when Mac, with a manila folder tucked under his arm, came in. The unexpected visitor made her jump. “You scared me,” she giggled while patting her chest.
“Considering where you work, I wouldn’t expect you to scare easy.” Mac followed her to her desk where she sat down to slip off her flats and put on a pair of red stiletto heels. “You’re on your way out.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.” She took her purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk, set it on top, and opened it. “I don’t usually work on the weekends, but there were some things I didn’t want to let go until Monday. I have a minute for you. I’m not meeting my date until one o’clock.”
“Saturday afternoon date?” Realizing he didn’t know very much about the medical examiner’s personal life, he asked, “Someone special?”
She grinned up from the mirror in her compact where she was checking her lipstick. “As a matter of fact, he is.” She gestured at the folder. “Is that for me?”
“Yes, but I don’t expect you to look at it now.” He shrugged. “It’s my copy of a case file from when I was in Washington. The young woman was a rape victim. The night before she was to testify before the grand jury, she was stabbed to death. It was a viciously violent attack.”
“Like Khloe Everest’s murder,” the doctor said. “Was she dismembered, too?”
“No,”’ Mac said. “And her uterus wasn’t stolen, either. But this happened twelve years ago. Obviously, Khloe’s killer is deranged. I’m wondering if this attack could have been an earlier attack by the same—?”
“Killer, before he had time to escalate to where he is today,” the doctor said.
“If you look at the stab wounds in Dee Blakeley’s murder and compare the specifics about that attack to Khloe’s attack, do you think you could tell somehow if they were done by the same person?”
“Do you mean like comparing handwriting samples?” she asked. “The words may be different, like the victims, written years apart, like these two attacks, but if you compare the thrusts, angles, and characteristics that would be unique to this attacker, we might be able to determine if they were committed by the same person.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Mac said.
“Never know until we try.” She laid the case file in the center of her desk. “Who is Dee Blakeley, anyway?” She stood up and went over to the coat tree in the corner of her office where she had a dress encased in a garment bag. Taking the bag with her, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. “She must be important if you kept a copy of her case file after retiring,” she called through the door to him.
“She didn’t want to testify against Senator Harry Palazzi,” Mac raised his voice for her to hear him through the door. “His people warned her against doing it. Her parents told her that it was a losing battle. I talked her into doing it. When she was murdered, her parents blamed me.”
“And you blame yourself,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
Stepping out of the bathroom, the medical examiner revealed herself to be transformed. Her skin-tight short red dress hugged every sensuous curve of her body. Her red high heels revealed a pair of long legs that seemed to go on forever.
“You like?” she asked.
“I
like,” Mac said. “That’s enough to make a man forget how brilliantly smart you are.”
“Exactly.”
“Where are you going to lunch?”
“The Cornish Manor.” She took him by the arm, grabbed her purse, and escorted him out of the office. “But I will take a look at that file first thing Monday morning.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
On his way out of town back to Deep Creek Lake, Mac followed her red Porsche out of the parking lot and through Oakland for a mile before she turned right to go down the short road to where the Cornish Manor was located in a sprawling country setting. Mac continued driving his sports car on the road to the lake. On the other side of the intersection where the medical examiner had turned right, he spotted a Spencer police cruiser with its left turn signal on, waiting for Mac to clear the intersection before following Dr. Washington’s Porsche.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Chelsea told David during the drive from her condo where they had spent the morning hanging curtains. “Would you like to go snowmobiling before dinner?”
“I’d love to, but I can’t,” he said. “I’m meeting a homicide detective from Pennsylvania to compare notes from one of her open cases against Khloe Everest’s murder.”
“How long will that take?” she asked.
“All afternoon,” David said with a sigh. “We need to go over every detail of both cases to see if we can find a pattern for this guy. Plus, there’s a case in California that fits our guy’s M.O., too. She has a copy of that case file.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I understand.”
“I guarantee there’ll be weekends that I’ll be spending alone while you’re working a case after you become a prosecutor.” He saw Molly gazing back at him in the rearview mirror. “Is Molly ready for law school?”
“Molly can handle anything I throw at her,” she replied. “I was hoping we could spend some time together now before I start law school this fall. It’s going to get really busy then. We’ll be lucky if we can ever find time to be together.”
“And we don’t spend time together with my driving you everywhere?” He pulled the cruiser in through the stone pillars marking Spencer Manor.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Actually, I don’t.” David turned off the car engine.
The cruiser was filled with silence. She peered over at him where he sat staring straight ahead in the driver’s seat before reaching over to lay her hand on his. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
“I know you are.” He shrugged. “You still don’t trust me.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.” He turned to her. “I cheated on you fifteen years ago and broke your heart. I get that. Maybe if the shoe was on the other foot, I’d have just as much trouble trusting you. But I’ve been here for you for all these weeks. When you ask me for anything, I’m there, day or night, no questions asked. I think that should count toward some level of trust.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then prove it. Kiss me. Here. Now. Not a sisterly kiss, but like you really mean it.”
Her eyes wide with fear, she gazed at him. Her mouth opened slightly while she stared at him. “I…”
“I didn’t think so.” David popped open the door and slid out of his seat.
Her heart beat so hard that she thought it was going to pop out of her chest while she watched him open the back door to let Molly out. The German shepherd ran around the front of the cruiser to wait for David to yank open her door.
Chelsea gasped.
“I need to go.” He handed her purse to her. “I’m expecting to get home really late. So I’ll see you in the morning. Good-bye, Chelsea.”
He went around to climb back into his cruiser, turned on the engine, and sped around the circle to head back out of Spencer Manor and down the point.
You blew it, Chelsea. She kicked at a stone in the driveway. You want him. He wants you. Why can’t you trust him? What is it that scares you so much?
The manor’s front door opened. Gnarly barged down the steps to greet Molly, and the two of them took off to the yard rolling down to water.
“Has David left already?” Archie called to Chelsea while slowly making her way down the ice-covered steps in her bare feet.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Rats!” Archie stomped one of her feet. “I had a message for him. Cameron called from the Spencer Inn. She’s starving and wanted to know what he wanted from room service.”
Cameron? Spencer Inn? Room service? “That lying snake in the grass! I knew I had good reason not to trust him! And here he made me feel so guilty for not trusting him! Oh, when I get my hands on him!” She dropped her purse in the driveway. “I’m…where’s the keys to your car?”
“You can’t drive,” Archie argued.
“Oh, yes I can,” Chelsea said, “It’s just that the police don’t want me to.”
“Chelsea, I think you should calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Her hands were curled up into tight fists wishing that David was there to punch with them. “I’m going to the Spencer Inn to catch that little liar red-handed! And if you don’t drive me, I’m stealing your car and driving myself.”
“Nick Fields,” Cameron repeated the name while staring at the composite drawing and the publicity picture they had received from the television studio. “That name sounds familiar.” She dug through her case file. They were sitting next to each other on the sofa with their reports, crime scene pictures, and case files spread out across the coffee table. In comparing the three murder cases, they had littered the suite’s sitting room with crime scene pictures of the three women and their dismembered bodies stacked up in garbage bags.
Anxious to share their information on the cases, David and Cameron spent minimal time catching up on their personal lives before getting down to work. Though she did take time to take his late lunch order and call it down to room service.
“He’s a singer?” Cameron brushed her cinnamon-colored bangs out of her greenish brown eyes. Her hair fell in shaggy, wavy layers down to the bottom of her neck. For the drive from her home in West Virginia, across the border from Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, she was dressed in worn jeans and a heavy sweater, which matched with her casual nature.
“According to the reality show,” David answered her question. “They don’t have much credibility in my book.”
“Mine either.” She let out a gasp. “I knew it.” She handed him the witness list. “I questioned him in Amber Houston’s disappearance. He was a male stripper at the club that Amber and her friends went to a few weeks before she went missing. They had gone for a bachelorette party for one of her friends.”
The loud knocking on the door kept her from finishing her train of thought. Instantly, her focus shifted to lunch.
“Her friends said she had struck up a hot and heavy friendship with him.” She handed the list to him while getting up to answer the door. “Room service must be anxious for their tip.”
David studied the list. “He wasn’t on our list. But Khloe said on her show that she had met him when he was singing at the club that she went to for her twenty-first birthday, and that was only a few weeks before her supposed disappearance.”
Cameron peered through the peephole. “I don’t think that’s room service.” She backed up and reached into her handbag for her gun.
David got up to peer through the peephole. “Chelsea?”
“Your girlfriend?”
“I wish.” He opened up the door.
“Why do you look so surprised?” Chelsea barged into the room.
Her fury was so great that Molly stuck near the door after coming in. His face filled with amusement, Mac followed close behind.
“I told you I wasn’t the same naïve little girl I was back in school.” With both hands, she shoved him in the chest and knocked him one step backwards. “You actually thought you could get away with it again. I sho
uld have known. You acted the same way when you took off to have your fling with Katrina. I knew you didn’t change.”
“How did you know I was here?” David looked over at Mac.
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Your cheap slutty girlfriend called the manor to ask what you wanted her to order you from room service,” Chelsea said.
“Who are you calling cheap?” Cameron asked. “I’ll have you know, I can be very expensive.”
Chelsea strolled around the sitting area in the suite. “Oh, I can imagine how cozy you two were planning this rendezvous here with no one to disturb you—just you two and—” She caught sight of the crime scene pictures spread out across the coffee table. She then looked up to see the gun that Cameron was holding in her hand. The detective held up her badge to show her.
“Yes,” Mac said, “just David and Detective Cameron Gates from the Pennsylvania State police and cozy pictures of murdered women.”
“Not only is she the homicide detective I told you I was meeting,” David said, “but she’s a married homicide detective.”
Cameron held up her hand to show Chelsea her wedding ring. “For one whole month. I’m a newlywed.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Chelsea accused them.
“I did tell you,” David said.
When Chelsea looked at Mac, he shook his head. “I wanted to tell you, but I learned long ago to never argue with a woman.”
“You did this on purpose,” Chelsea told David. “If you had told me that you were meeting a woman detective—”
“You would have assumed what you did assume,” David said, “which is why I didn’t tell you that Cameron was a woman. This proves it. You don’t trust me, and you probably never will.”