The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

  Chloe swiped all the tiny bits of paper into her bin and stacked the textbooks up in a neat pile. They would probably be sent to the second-hand bookstore or sent to a poorer school somewhere who needed them. It no longer mattered to her. She wasn’t going to read one more page of any of them. She could not care less about the value of x or y, or why the Japanese had used kamikaze pilots in their attack on Pearl Harbor, or the correct use of effect and affect. If colleges wanted to see good grades and healthy extracurricular activities logged and impeccable lineage descending from the Mayflower, it no longer troubled her.

  Next she began to do a slow reconnaissance of her room, looking for things of value. It struck her that she didn’t really own anything of real significance. It was a pretty pathetic showing for 15 years spent on the earth so far, she thought. Her parents were not wealthy by any means, and everything she owned was functional. She owned only the pairs of shoes than she needed. Only one purse, a closet of well-worn clothes. Her most treasured possessions were her classic novels in the bookshelves, where Anne of Green Gables nestled closely with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hardy Boys, and To Kill a Mockingbird. They would mean very little to anyone else, she thought. Though she had sympathized with the scrawny, unloved Anne and been shocked by Edmund’s betrayal, these scenes might not have moved others in the same way. Though she could find no other use for them, she couldn’t bear to destroy them. And so she left the bookcase alone.

  Finally, she came to the last possession of any significance. It was a C made of gold, hanging on a thin, gold necklace around her neck. Her friend Grace had bought it and given it to her on her 12th birthday. She had worn it every day since, a reminder of how close their friendship had once been. She hadn’t been able to take it off since.

  Except today.

  Today, she unclasped the necklace and let it fall into her palm. It was warm and shiny.

  She closed her fist around it, and looked at herself in the mirror briefly.

  She didn’t like what she saw, and averted her gaze.

  Her tasks for the day completed, she left her room and went downstairs. For the first time in a long time, she was at peace.

  ****

  Dinah and Elise flew home late that afternoon. Dinah’s head was still buzzing with what she’d learned. She passed through the security checks and onto the plane without noticing anything around her. Her mind was too busy wondering if she had it right — was the killer Angus? Or someone else altogether? From her companion’s silence, Dinah knew that Elise was wondering the same thing.

  Elise drove them home from the airport in Norfolk down to Ten Mile Hollow. She could have been driving them to Mars for all Dinah knew, her eyes vacant, mind racing. It was a beautiful drive — the gray skies that brought sleet and rain had lifted, leaving behind a clear, crisp night. Dinah barely noticed until Elise turned into her driveway and found herself staring at the house as though she didn’t recognize it.

  “What if we’ve got it wrong?” she asked Elise as they walked from the car to the house. “What if it isn’t Angus?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Elise. “I thought I knew, but it turns out I don’t.”

  Elise called up to Chloe and looked marginally better when she heard her daughter’s voice drift down. She opened the refrigerator door and Dinah saw that it was bare.

  “I’ll order pizza,” she suggested.

  “Great idea,” agreed Elise. “Do you —”

  She was interrupted by her cell phone buzzing on the counter. It was Dr. Walker.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi!” bubbled the medical examiner. “Thought you might find this tidbit of information useful: the DNA found underneath Malia Shaw’s fingernails was a match with the swab you took from Angus Whitehall.”

  Elise sucked in her breath. “Really? Have you got any results back from Lola Albright’s body yet?”

  “Not yet. You’ll be the first to know when we do.”

  “Thanks, doctor.”

  Elise hung up and Dinah felt as though she could no longer question Angus being the man who had killed both women. A sense of completion drifted over her. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place, and you couldn’t argue with DNA.

  Dinah and Elise met the following day with the Assistant District Attorney, Tony Steinhardt, for the first time. He wanted to know whether he should prepare for a grand jury. Steinhardt had been in the job for only a few years, but his reputation for being a fawning bootlicker was legendary. The District Attorney, Elliot Parker, was a very smart and very ambitious man, who unashamedly had his eye on the governor’s mansion. As a result, he salivated over the high profile and controversial cases that came to their office. A whiff of a political scandal — he slavered. A celebrity misdemeanor — he drooled. A mass shooting or serial killer — he was a rabid dog.

  Stature-wise, he was unimpressive. He made up for it with silvery hair and a chiseled face made for the camera. He cut a distinguished figure, sober and grave with the responsibility that rested upon his shoulders.

  It was this salubrious example that Tony Steinhardt followed to the letter. Steinhardt was the DA’s protégé, which was to say, he groveled at the man’s feet the most. His groveling prowess seemed to overrule his less than stellar law school results. Still, as an ADA, he had performed solidly, and Elise grudgingly admitted to Dinah that the case would be in good hands with Steinhardt and his second chair, Elizabeth Masters. Elise knew Elizabeth in passing, and preferred her company to Steinhardt’s. She smiled at Elizabeth briefly and turned her attention to Steinhardt.

  Steinhardt was not one to engage in small talk, so over Elizabeth’s embarrassed look, he said impatiently, “Well, what have you got?”

  Dinah raised her eyebrows. She’d worked with prosecutors before and this one, in particular, seemed to lack certain social niceties. It was fortunate that he was such a skilled prosecutor. He’d entered the office empty-handed, but Elizabeth had a notebook and pen.

  “Let me begin with Malia Shaw’s murder. Several independent eyewitnesses saw the perp in the victim’s apartment around the time she was killed. Both gave good descriptions of our suspect and his vehicle, because he’d been there many times before,” began Elise. As she spoke, Elizabeth wrote notes at a furious pace.

  “Are they reliable witnesses who could testify in court?” Steinhardt asked.

  “Yes, I believe so,” said Elise. “The perp’s alibi is shaky at best and leaves a large hole of unaccounted time right around when the victim was killed. Secondly, we found in both the victim and perpetrator’s homes a stash of professional fake passports, social security cards, and drivers’ licenses, suggesting close links in the past with illegal activity.”

  “Really?” Steinhardt’s eyebrows shot up. “What sort of illegal activity?”

  “I discovered through the course of the investigation that Mr. Whitehall and both the female victims were members of a white supremacist gang years ago in California. They executed violent attacks upon racial minorities. Whitehall was the lieutenant of his group. Then they decided to betray the gang’s leader, Randall Shutter, and steal almost a quarter of a million dollars from him. At this point, all three of them vanished. The fourth member of their cell, Harry Purcell, remained loyal to the leader. Both he and Shutter swore revenge against Whitehall and the two women.”

  “What happened to the money?” Steinhardt asked.

  “We traced it to an account solely owned by Angus Whitehall, in his real name. I found that the victim, Malia Shaw, who was a heroin addict with no obvious means of supporting herself, received an amount of about $1,000 a month into her bank account. She also had the lease on her apartment paid for by cash six months in advance, which totaled $1,800. We ran traces on the money and found that via a system of dummy accounts, it came from this original account in Whitehall’s alias.”

  “He was paying her?” Steinhardt asked. “Why?”

  “He invoked his right to remain silent,” exp
lained Elise. “All he would say was that they were old friends and that he felt compelled to make sure she was okay.”

  “To the tune of what, $15,000 a year?” Steinhardt shook his head.

  “I believe the money was in reality hush money,” continued Elise. “Keeping Malia Shaw in plenty of heroin ensured that she wouldn’t open her mouth.”

  “You think the money is the reason he killed her?”

  “Yes, I do. We obtained DNA from Mr. Whitehall, and it matches the DNA taken from the victim’s apartment and from beneath her fingernails,” finished Elise.

  “So what’s your theory?” Steinhardt asked.

  Elise paused thoughtfully. “I think that Whitehall and the victim have known each other for a long time, and share a shocking and violent past. They escaped the gang, knowing that their lives were forfeit once they’d done so. For whatever reason, they’ve stayed together ever since, relying on false identities to keep themselves safe. He’s paying her money, maybe to protect himself, maybe in blackmail? He gets sick of shelling out so much cash and kills her. Though to be honest, she was doing a pretty good job of killing herself with drugs anyway.

  The means of the murder is pretty simple. He was already a regular visitor; she knew him and she probably trusted him. She was tiny, only about the size of a teenager. The years of drug abuse left her frail, almost skeletal. Not to mention she was very high the morning she died, according to the medical examiner. He could easily have overpowered her, a small, drugged woman, and it wouldn’t be difficult to manually strangle her.

  “I believe his motive to be purely financial. He has kids who need to go to college and he wants to further his career, while he’s watching the victim shoot his money into her veins. Getting rid of her makes perfect financial sense.

  “As I’ve mentioned, his alibi is pretty wobbly. We have eyewitnesses who place him at the apartment the day she died, and he was inexplicably away from work for a good chunk of time, during which he could have easily driven to the victim’s apartment, killed her, and gone back to work.”

  Steinhardt nodded enthusiastically. “And we have the DNA match.”

  “The case for killing Lola Albright isn’t quite as straightforward. She shared the same violent past, but otherwise didn’t have the same dependence upon Whitehall. I think that ultimately she was a threat to him in terms of wanting her share of the money and the possibility that she might talk, thereby endangering his life. He has a pretty decent alibi. His wife says he was at home the night Lola died, and she can’t be compelled to testify otherwise. We still don’t know where Lola was killed, so we don’t have any witnesses, nor do we have any DNA linking them together yet.”

  Steinhardt looked pensive. “Okay,” he said, after a few moments. “Here is what we’ll do. The evidence for Shaw’s murder will take us to a grand jury, and we’ll sail through that. Once we’ve arrested and charged Whitehall, we’ll have some advantage to find out what happened to Lola. Can you keep working on that for us? The important thing, in the meantime, is to make an arrest.”

  Elise smiled. “Sure. Of course.”

  Steinhardt was now finished with the conversation and stood up. “Okay,” he said briskly. “Let me know about the DNA. I’ll organize a grand jury. Anything else?”

  That was her dismissal. Elise and Dinah left the office, leaving behind a pumped-up prosecutor and his rather tired-looking second chair wilting beside him.

  Now, their focus would be on Lola. There would have to be some way to tie in her murder to Angus Whitehall, and Dinah was determined to find it.

  ****

  The sky was a meekly pale blue, as if too scared to wage a battle against the enormous forces of the cold. The sun watched on from afar, shedding light but no warmth on the frozen ground.

  It was a Thursday morning, and Angus had decided to take the day off. He figured he wouldn’t be in the role of Ten Mile Hollow First Baptist Church pastor for much longer, and he wanted to prepare. He knew that this would involve having to tell Louise the truth. The thought made him want to violently throw up, but he couldn’t see any other way.

  When he made his way into the kitchen. Louise was busy getting the kids ready for school, but she’d made him a coffee. “Sorry — you’re on your own for breakfast,” she said, with a forced smile that was a shadow of its former self. “Grace, we need to leave in ten minutes!”

  “But I haven’t done my hair!” Grace protested, jamming a piece of toast in her mouth.

  “It won’t make any difference,” chimed in Marcus. “You’ll still look like a freak!”

  Grace tried to swipe her brother but missed and almost knocked over Angus’s coffee.

  “Enough!” he snapped. “Get ready for school and stop giving your mother a headache!”

  Grace headed for the bathroom after shooting a murderous look at her brother, and Marcus, with a grin on his face, continued to eat his Cheerios. Louise rubbed her eyes, which were red with exhaustion.

  Angus knew that it was his fault that his wife wasn’t sleeping — he heard her get up several times a night. He hadn’t been brave enough to get up to check on her, but his gut instinct told him she would be crying quietly in the family room. He’d rolled over in bed underneath a blanket of bleak shame.

  The doorbell rang. Louise shook her head. “Great,” she muttered. “I’ll get it!”

  Angus opened the newspaper and began to read, trying to tune out the chaos around him.

  Moments later, the tone in his wife’s voice made him start. “Angus. The police are here.”

  He looked up, and saw Louise’s slight and bewildered frame, behind whom towered two uniformed police officers. They looked vaguely familiar. Behind them, stood Detective Elise Jones, her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the family. With her stood the former FBI agent and consultant, Dinah.

  “Hi,” said Angus. “What can I help you with?”

  “You’re Angus Whitehall?” asked one of the deputies, with a grizzled beard and weary eyes.

  “You know I am,” he said.

  The other police officer seemed to move like lightning, and Angus felt himself being spun around and his hands wrenched behind his back.

  “What —?” he cried, as Louise gasped.

  “Mr. Whitehall, you’re under arrest for murder in the first degree,” explained the grizzled police officer. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  He went on to recite the Miranda clause, while Angus felt the cold clasp of handcuffs close around his wrists.

  “What on earth is going on?” Louise demanded, her voice shrill. She asked the question just as Grace appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Daddy?” she asked, sounding like a little girl.

  Angus felt anger boiling up in his chest. It was precisely this devastating scene he had hoped to avoid. He wrested himself out of the deputy’s grasp. “Please don’t worry,” he said, calmly. “It’s just a misunderstanding, okay? I’ll take care of it.”

  As the two police officers began to lead him toward the front door, he called out to Louise, “Call my lawyer, honey. Have him meet me at the police station.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide and frightened. There was something else in them, too: a resignation, a sad understanding that this had been inevitable.

  He added: “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  Louise’s eyes betrayed her. She struggled to maintain composure on the surface, but he could see she was full of doubt. It had come as no surprise to her that he’d been arrested for first-degree murder.

  With that, he was dragged unceremoniously to the police car. Once inside, Detective Elise Jones slid in beside him.

  “Your timing was impeccable,” he said, the shock making him feel like he couldn’t draw a proper breath. “Thanks for doing it in front of my kids.”

  They sat in silence for several moments, then Elise said: “I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped.”

  Angus sighed. “Detective, I really didn’t kill her.” />
  Elise pursed her lips for a moment. “Then why won’t you tell me the truth? I’ve told you repeatedly that I’m willing to help you if you’d only be honest. If you’re not willing to do that, you tie my hands.” She added, “I know who you really are, Robert Langer.”

  He nodded and sat back, closing his eyes. It was not the police he lived in fear of.

  “Then you must know,” he said, “that we have many enemies. They are the ones you should be looking for, not me.”

  “Like Harry Purcell?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, Mr. Whitehall, the problem is that the evidence doesn’t point to Harry Purcell. It points to you.”

  Several moments later, they arrived at the Sherriff’s Office.

  Angus was stashed in a gray, windowless room furnished with a rickety table and two hollow, metal chairs. His handcuffs were removed, but it seemed like he was in the room for an eon before Detective Jones appeared, accompanied by Dinah.

  Dinah stood at the back of the small room with a thin file in hand. Detective Jones read him the Miranda clause again. “Do you understand?” she finished.

  Angus nodded. “I’d like my lawyer,” he said. “I don’t wish to say anything else at this time.”

  Jones glanced at Dinah and shrugged. “He’s on his way.”

  They both left the room.

  Angus sat back in his chair. He looked down and noticed that his hands were shaking badly — from fear and dread. The truth would finally come out. Would it set him free?

  Chapter 16

  Two hours later, Angus sat in that bare, cold police interview room with his lawyer, Julian Taylor, seated beside him, and Dinah Harris and Detective Elise Jones opposite him. ADA Tony Steinhardt stood with Sheriff Wilder behind the mirrored glass, listening.

  “I want to reiterate,” said Taylor, “that in return for my client’s open and honest testimony, and for assistance in bringing the correct perpetrator to justice, you will give him full immunity from crimes committed while a member of the Southern Cross Militia.”

  “As the district attorney explained,” said Detective Jones, impatiently. “There is no statute of limitations for attempted murder in the state of California. All we can do is recommend to prosecutors there that any charge be downgraded. Assuming your story checks out, of course.”