Nothing to Hide

by Allison Brennan

  “Then why did you arrest him?”

  “Drunk and disorderly—that’s the story. To build a case. A case that we cannot build. I’m going to do something tomorrow that Jerry will be angry with, but I don’t know how else to get him to see the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “I talked to the vet tonight. We can take the dog tomorrow or Monday and I’m going to bring the dog—named Justice, ironically—to the jail and see how he reacts to Garrett.”

  “Smart.”

  “Jerry isn’t going to like it. I think he’s coming around, after our interviews today.”

  She was tense, and Sean pushed back her hair as they lay in the dark. “What else?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about the case.”

  “That’s not unusual.”

  “What’s driving me crazy is that on paper Garrett King is the best suspect possible. He has a motive—however weak—to kill all four of those men. Standish because his father hired him over Garrett to build a deck. James because he convinced his father to cut Garrett off, make him live on his own. Garcia because he fired him—except he didn’t fire him. His assistant fired Garrett, and Garcia had been helping Garrett find another job. So why would he kill him?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Sean said. He turned on the lamp next to the bed. They wouldn’t be sleeping much anyway. “Garcia didn’t fire him, so why is that a motive?”

  “Garcia was the boss. In charge of the kitchen. But his assistant—and we confirmed this with management—is the one who handles employees, including termination. And Garrett knows this because he was fired. So there’s no real motive—except on the surface.”

  “Except that most people would think that if you’re fired, your boss is the one responsible.”

  “But Garrett knows he’s not responsible.”

  “I’m not talking about Garrett. I’m talking about anyone who didn’t work at the hotel. Anyone who doesn’t understand the structure of the individual work environment would logically assume that Garcia fired Garrett. Because Garcia hired him, and was his boss.”

  “Okay. And? Garrett has a good reason for wanting his father dead—he cut him off. There’s not a lot of money involved, but Garrett had been living there, rent-free, and Victor King had a good job and retirement. We’re getting a copy of Victor’s will, but I think if Garrett splits the estate with his sister, they sell the house, et cetera—I’d guestimate that after taxes and expenses he’ll clear a quarter million.”

  “That’s a lot to kill for.”

  “But I don’t see him hurting his dog.” She sighed. “Who would frame him?”

  “Wow, high jump.”

  “You said it yourself—it’s logical to think that Julio Garcia fired him, and that’s why Garrett killed him. But following that logic, Garrett would have killed Mitchell Duncan, the assistant, who rode him hard and actually did fire him.”

  “So we’re looking for someone who would know about Garrett’s problems with these people.”

  “His father would have, but he’s dead. Maybe the neighbors, who seem to know everything about the family.”

  “Friends? Drinking buddies?”

  “Garrett has a lot of drinking buddies. I suspect he’s an alcoholic, or borderline. Spends a lot of time in bars.”

  “Could he be working with someone?”

  “I thought of that … but if I were a cold, calculating killer I wouldn’t trust a drunk. A drunk might talk, let something slip, turn me in for a reduced sentence.”

  “How did you learn about these connections?”

  “Standish and James from Victor King’s appointment calendar. Garcia from the neighbors who said that Victor had told them that Garrett had been fired again, and then through a search of Garrett’s apartment we learned he’d worked at Sun Tower. We confirmed it when we showed Garrett the picture of Garcia. He flat out admitted it. And we know that the termination happened at the end of June—right before Victor met with James about retirement planning, and a few weeks before he hired Standish to rebuild his deck—which Standish completed before taking the job in Houston.”

  “Maybe it was someone connected to Victor who could learn all these details. Maybe Victor was the ultimate target, and Garrett is the scapegoat.”

  “So far, Victor King led a simple, happy life. He taught history in high school. Widowed three years ago. Has friends, has family.”

  She leaned back. “I feel like we’re never going to solve these murders.”

  Sean turned off the light and kissed her. “Sleep. It’ll come to you. It always does.”

  * * *

  On Sunday they relaxed at the house all morning. Lucy desperately needed the day off to unwind, but she had to confirm her theory.

  “When are you going to be home?” Sean asked after they had a leisurely brunch. “I thought you had the whole day off. You haven’t had a day off in forever.”

  “Two hours, tops. I talked to the vet and Jerry and we want to try something.”

  “You convinced Jerry to let the dog be a witness?”

  “Something like that,” Lucy said.

  “The younger boys are staying at Padre’s camp for a couple more days—they’re having fun now that they know Brian and Michael are safe. But Father Mateo wants us to come over for dinner. Kane told him what happened, and I don’t really know how he’s taking it. But we’ll make it right.”

  “I know you will, and I’ll be back long before dinner, I promise.”

  She showered and dressed in casual clothes, then drove to the vet. They were closed on Sunday, but the vet met her there and agreed to follow her to the jail, then take the dog back with him. The dog was cleared to be released, but there was no one to take him so they were boarding him.

  Jerry met Lucy at the jail. He didn’t look happy, but he had agreed to this plan. He absently scratched Justice behind the ears, and the dog wagged his tail frantically. “Let’s do this fast, Jeanie is already grumpy because I haven’t been home much these last ten days.”

  “Jeanie and Sean both,” Lucy said.

  “This might not even work. This dog doesn’t look like he’d hold a grudge.”

  “If King hurt him, he’ll react.”

  “No court is going to accept this as testimony.”

  “We have the vet here observing.” The vet was behind the one-way glass. Jerry and Lucy were waiting with the dog for a deputy to bring Garrett King in from holding. “We have to know if we should even be looking for another suspect. Because I keep going back to the fact that Garcia didn’t fire Garrett King, so there is no real motive for his murder.”

  Jerry didn’t comment.

  A deputy knocked and opened the door. Garrett King walked in, his hands cuffed in front of him. As soon as Justice saw his owner, he pulled at the chain, his tail wagging, limping as far as he could get.

  Garrett walked right over to the dog and got down on his knees. He had tears in his eyes when he said, “Hey, Justice, I missed you.”

  The dog whined and jumped on Garrett, knocking him down, and licking him frantically all over his face and neck.

  Jerry caught Lucy’s eye and sighed.

  “Back at square one,” he grumbled.

  “No, we’re not,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Monday Morning

  Lucy skipped the FBI staff meeting Monday morning to go to the sheriff’s office. She feared Jerry was still angry with her because she’d brought Justice, the dog, to visit Garrett in holding yesterday.

  He wasn’t. In fact, he had Garrett arraigned first thing in the morning and released on bail for the drunk and disorderly.

  “He didn’t do it,” Jerry said.

  “I thought we agreed on that yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, that dog was so damn overjoyed to see him, and Garrett cried. Mitchell Duncan—if he was dead and Julio was alive, I’d think more that Garrett was guilty. But there’s also evidence.”

  “What evidence?”


  “The soil that Ash found in Garcia’s car doesn’t match any of the crime scenes. It doesn’t match Garcia’s property, King’s property, or Garrett’s apartment. There is a gas can at Garcia’s house, in the garage, but it’s clear it hasn’t been touched in months. Garrett has no alibi—he was home, alone, for each of the crimes—but a lot of people are home alone late Friday night. We’ve found no physical evidence at his apartment or in his truck—no duct tape, no gun, no mallet or sledgehammer. He could have tossed everything after he killed his dad, but where? In the lake? Possible. But get this—I had Ash give his truck a rectal exam, and it’s clear he hadn’t been up at the lake in weeks. He analyzed layers of dirt or some such thing and said he hadn’t been up recently … which makes me think that Garrett wasn’t lying when he said he and his dad had a blowout over Labor Day weekend and that was the last time he’d seen him. We really are back to square one.”

  “No, we’re not. I’ve also been thinking a lot about this. Sean said something that made me wonder—who would know about Garrett King? Who would know that he was angry with his dad, that he had been fired, that he was jealous his dad had hired Standish and not him? It could be someone close to Garrett—or close to Victor. And it got me to thinking what William Peterson said the other day—that Steven James didn’t normally take small estates like Victor King’s. Why did he take this one?”

  “I already sent an officer to pick up the files, since the warrant came through. But I still don’t see where you’re going.”

  “Where are we on finding Teri James’s ex-husband?”

  “I have his contact information, I didn’t think he could contribute anything. And you cannot be thinking that woman had anything to do with this.”

  “I think we should find probable cause to test the soil in her yard. We’ve been going around and around, and it might be as simple as this: We couldn’t figure out how the killer knew where James would be since it’s such a short drive to his house from the airport. I’ve driven the route multiple times. He passed the golf course on his way home—why did he pull in? We know that he called his wife and they spoke—she knew when he would be coming home, when he would reach the golf course. He has no other calls to or from his phone. I also want to talk to Abby without Teri James around.”

  “That’s problematic.”

  “Not if I think she’s at risk.”

  Jerry was thinking. “Okay, let’s say I buy into this insane theory. Why? What’s the motive? She doesn’t control Abby’s trust fund. She doesn’t get millions of dollars. She gets an allowance, right?”

  “And a seat on the board. But maybe their marriage wasn’t as idyllic as we were led to believe. Abby might know that. And think of this: Every interview we’ve done, no one talks about Teri. It’s like she almost doesn’t exist, or has never connected with people on a personal level.”

  “You’re going back to that shrink.”

  “That shrink? My brother? Yes. I am. The killer is cold and impersonal. Someone who doesn’t make human connections. Someone with little empathy. And you saw it, that’s why you wrote those notes about Abby’s relationship with her stepmother. I’ve gone around and around and around and this is the only thing that makes sense. We know the killer doesn’t have to be physically strong.”

  “Your brother leaned toward a male killer.”

  “And Hans, who has at least ten more years’ experience than my brother, leaned toward a female killer. Not that I would discount my brother, but at a minimum, they couldn’t conclude male or female. I’ll bet she has researched serial killers and created this crime scene to make us think specific things. That’s why it looks like a stage, like she set a scene. The bread crumbs Dillon talked about.

  “I also spoke with Abby’s great-aunt yesterday,” Lucy continued. “She is a character, I’ll say that. And she was absolutely forthcoming about Abby’s trust. It’s untouchable. Except … the guardian is paid to serve on the trust board. One hundred thousand dollars a year to advise and consult, plus ten thousand dollars a month for living expenses until Abby is eighteen.”

  “Over two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Steven never took the money. The ten thousand a month he donated to a charity his first wife had founded to research rare diseases—Bridget’s best friend died from a rare disease in high school. The hundred thousand he reverted back to the trust, minus actual expenses, which he billed separately. They never totaled more than fifteen thousand a year. He made a good salary at Allied and lived on it. But I have another theory.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic. “I don’t think Teri James has family here, or if she does they are estranged. I need to confirm that with Abby or her ex-husband. And I don’t think that money is the primary motivator, though I’m sure it has something to do with her actions.”

  “Then why? If not for money, why kill her husband?”

  “You’ve talked to her more than I have. She is cool, she is unusually neat and tidy, she works from home, alone, and doesn’t appear to have much of a social life. I think the strain of trying to live a normal life with a husband and stepdaughter took its toll. She couldn’t be herself—but she couldn’t keep up the act.”

  “So she kills her husband? Why not just divorce him?”

  “And maybe that’s where the money comes in. Maybe she doesn’t do all that well on her own, and wants the money to live on. Or maybe she couldn’t accept that she couldn’t keep up the charade. It could make her feel inferior, and that’s something that would grate on her.”

  “Psychobabble again,” he said, but surprisingly, his expression didn’t match his words. He was rethinking the case. He would come around, Lucy was certain, except for one thing: evidence.

  Jerry said, “We still have nothing tangible.”

  “Track down the ex-husband. Let’s talk to him, see what he has to say. Then I want to talk to Abby, after school, before she goes home.”

  * * *

  Roger Abbott was an asshole, Lucy thought after only a ten-minute conversation. But the conversation was gold.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” Jerry said on the speakerphone. “We only have a few questions.”

  “I hope so, because I have work to do, and I really don’t care what my ex-wife is doing.”

  “I have in my notes that you were married for five years.”

  “Yes. The divorce was amicable. We haven’t spoken since.”

  “Have you remarried?”

  “No. Not interested.”

  “You know that Teri remarried.”

  “I heard, I don’t care.”

  Jerry made a face at Lucy that almost had her laughing.

  “Teri said she moved back to San Antonio to be close to her family, but we haven’t been able to find her family.”

  “Because they’re all dead or moved away. She was born in San Antonio, but they moved to Denver when she was in high school, after her parents divorced. She came here with her mother, a cold bitch of a woman. Two peas in a pod, though Teri wasn’t a bitch. She was just a cold fish. Still lives here, as far as I know—but I don’t keep track of Teri’s family. Her father moved to Florida or something. She never talked to him in the years we were together. Never even talked about him. She’s an only child, never talked about aunts or uncles or cousins so I don’t know what family would be left in San Antonio.”

  That in and of itself didn’t mean anything—she could have returned to San Antonio because it’s where she lived as a child and she had fond memories.

  “She’s a self-employed accountant,” Jerry said, “works out of her house.”

  Roger laughed, one disturbing bark of a sound. “Because she doesn’t get along with anyone. She had a great job here in Denver for a CPA, but she blew it. She wasn’t promoted, so she installed a virus into their servers and destroyed the business from the inside out. By the time they figured it out, the backups were also corrupted.”

&nb
sp; “And she wasn’t prosecuted?” Lucy asked.

  “They couldn’t prove anything. She actually got a severance package from them. It took them years to rebuild.”

  “But you knew about it.”

  “Not because she told me, but when I heard about the accusation I thought, yeah, that’s Teri. She would quietly destroy someone and not think twice about it. She doesn’t need the credit. She just wants the job done. She probably hasn’t thought about it since.”

  Lucy asked, “But you married her. Why? Doesn’t sound like you two had a whirlwind romantic courtship.”

  Again, the barking laugh. “Romance? Who gives a shit about that? Teri and I were realists. We got married because it was convenient and helped us both out at the time; divorced for the same reasons. I was never home because I travel for work three weeks out of the month, mostly to Japan. She liked that. And she kept an amazing house. Spotless. When I had to entertain, it was always perfect. She liked to entertain, put on the big production. And she’s smart and can hold a conversation with anyone about anything, which helped me with my clients. But when I was promoted to vice president and traveled less, she didn’t much like having me home. And I didn’t much like spending more than a couple nights a week with her. We talked, agreed to divorce, split our assets, and went our separate ways.”

  Lucy couldn’t imagine living that sort of life, and by Jerry’s expression, he was befuddled as well.

  “And you haven’t talked to her since your divorce—ten years ago now?”

  “Correct. Well, I wouldn’t say I haven’t talked to her at all. She came up six or seven years ago for business and we had dinner to address a few minor financial things that came up after our divorce. It was amicable. She may have said she was seeing someone, but I wasn’t really paying much attention. Now I really have to go. Anything else, call my secretary and she’ll set up an appointment.”