Nothing to Hide

by Allison Brennan

  “We have another thing—Steven James called his wife when he was leaving the airport. She answered. They spoke for two minutes. We subpoena those records. We find out where she was when she got the call. We get all her records for every night in question. We get a subpoena for the grease in her car—Ash said he could compare two samples and determine if they are identical. Now, the defense could argue that the grease isn’t a perfect match, that the oil could be in any car or ten percent of the cars out there, but it’s one more small piece to build the case. We may not find the smoking gun, but enough circumstantial evidence may be enough for the DA. We do exactly what we have been doing, but focused on one woman. Teri James.”

  He looked at her for a long minute, then smiled, slightly. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “No. But it’s going to be fun when we arrest her. How fast can we get an advocate and the ADA over to Abby to interview her?”

  * * *

  Lucy and Jerry were witnesses to the ADA interview with Abby. The advocate was a young lawyer named Elijah Christian. At first Lucy was skeptical because he looked too young to have graduated from law school, but he held his own with the experienced ADA, and staunchly protected Abby’s rights.

  Lucy’s phone vibrated, and she took it outside. It was Sean. “I have something,” he said.

  “Dinner?”

  “What? No. The videos you asked me to collect. I found something. How fast can you get home?”

  “Five, ten minutes? I’m in the neighborhood.”

  “Call your partner, he’s going to want to see this.”

  Lucy went back in and whispered to Jerry, “Sean found something on security. Want to look at it with me?”

  “Yeah. We don’t have to be here. But that girl is good. The ADA is on the fence, but I think she’ll be with us to go to a judge. And—damn, I think you’re right about Teri James.”

  They left and Jerry followed her home. Becky lived in nearby Alamo Heights, so it didn’t take long.

  “That was fast. Good,” Sean said and led them into his office. He was excited. Jesse was sitting on the couch doing his homework. “Jerry, my son, Jesse. Jesse, this is Deputy Investigator Jerry Walker. He’s been working with Lucy on the case I was telling you about.”

  Jerry leaned over and shook Jesse’s hand. “Good to meet you.”

  “Dad found something really cool.”

  “It’s my area of expertise.” He turned his computer screen so that they could all see, then he picked up a remote so he could play a compilation. “You’re lucky I have a good relationship with the neighbors and helped a lot of them with their security systems, without getting paid.”

  “That’s neighborly of you, sweetheart,” Lucy said.

  “More than half the people in Olmos Park have some sort of security system, but very few have external cameras. I focused on James’s street, as well as all entrances in and out of the neighborhood. A lot of systems don’t store data—no archive. But the data is usually there—it’s just hard to get to. However, out of the fifteen systems where I extracted data, I found three that should make your case. I’ll continue going through others—you’ll want them for court—but this should get you a warrant.”

  He pressed PLAY and narrated. “The night Billy Joe Standish was killed, Teri James left her house at seven thirty. You see her vehicle passing the corner of her street as she turns onto the circle.”

  “There’s no clear view of her face,” Jerry said.

  “But it’s her car—the camera captures license plate numbers.” He pointed to the corner where the computer had input a digital number that matched the one that was slightly blurry. “I love this system, it’s used in a lot of gated communities, so I was surprised to see it here, but the owner is a doctor, a single mom with three daughters. A little paranoid, but I can respect that. I gave her a couple security tips in exchange for this data.”

  “All heart,” Lucy said.

  Sean grinned. “She returned, drove past the same camera, at eleven thirty-five p.m. Now, I don’t have a camera—yet—showing her arriving in her driveway, but at this angle you can see her face, partly. Enough to identify her.”

  “I concur,” Jerry said.

  “The night her husband was killed, she left before the phone call. I’m guessing she was tracking his plane, and knew when he landed, and was going to the golf club to wait for the call. The golf club doesn’t have an external security camera, but other businesses may.”

  “We checked all the businesses—nothing pointed to that street.”

  “Hmm. That surprises me. I can drive the most logical route and see if there are any home systems that might capture her car. But here—she returns home thirty-five minutes after the phone call.”

  Sean hit the remote again. “The night Julio Garcia was killed—same thing. She left the house at eight fifty-five, arrived home at twelve thirty-five a.m. And this last Friday—she left at eight thirty, home at twelve thirty a.m.”

  “What was she doing after the murder?” Lucy wondered out loud. “She had to be doing something—King was killed just before ten p.m., right? And it takes only an hour to drive back.”

  “My guess,” Sean said, “was disposing of the evidence. Gun, mallet, duct tape. If her goal was to frame Garrett King, she doesn’t need them anymore.”

  “How would you dispose of them?” Jerry asked Sean.

  “Middle of the lake,” Sean said, “if I didn’t have time to really destroy them. If I had the time, I’d put everything in a vat of acid, seal it, and bury it somewhere, or dump it in the middle of a lake.”

  “She didn’t get rid of them,” Lucy said. “She wants us to find them, so she hid them somewhere that would implicate Garrett King.”

  “But we didn’t find anything in his apartment, King’s house, or his truck.”

  “Because that would be too obvious,” Lucy said. “She’ll leave everything at a place that connects to Garrett King—or his father—but it’ll take us time to find it. She’s smart. Arrogant. And she doesn’t care if we don’t find it right away because there’s nothing to connect her to these murders, or so she thinks.”

  “If she destroys them,” Sean said, “that is even better—you think the killer is Garrett because of circumstantial evidence, but without a witness, or the weapon, or physical evidence you can’t prove it. And ditto for her—no witness, weapon, or physical evidence. Even this time line is circumstantial. I doubt it would even go to trial.”

  “But it might be enough for a warrant,” Jerry said. “The ADA is still with Abby. I’m going to have her come here and look at this.” He stepped out of the office.

  “Great,” Sean said, adding sarcastically, “I love having a prosecutor in the house.”

  Lucy rubbed his back. “We went by the book.”

  “Mostly.” He winked. “But seriously—there is a camera right across the street from her house, but the owner wasn’t home and I couldn’t reach him. It could give us the final hammer.”

  “The video won’t prove anything—except establish a time line. She could argue she went shopping or just on a drive. But it will layer on circumstantial evidence.” She sat down next to Jesse. “How you doing?”

  “Good. My ribs don’t hurt as much, but I can’t play soccer until I’m cleared, which really sucks.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to do more damage. You’re actually lucky, because it’s a small hairline fracture right where the cartilage attaches. It’ll heal quickly. I suspect you’ll be back in four weeks rather than six.”

  “I’ll still miss half my games.”

  Sean ruffled his hair. “Yeah, it sucks, consider it your punishment.”

  “Is Kane still here?”

  Sean nodded. “He isn’t going to leave until he knows there’s no repercussions to taking down Jose Torres and his gang. And Brian is having a tough time. Kane convinced him to go to practice today.”

  Jesse said, “Uncle Kane stayed the whole time and watched.�
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  “Sometimes, I don’t think Kane was ever a kid,” Sean said. “Good news is Siobhan is driving up tomorrow. She’s staying in the pool house.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Lucy said. “I can’t wait to see her.”

  Jerry came back in. “The ADA will be here in a few minutes. She wants to know if you have signed permission from the homeowner.”

  Sean said, “I can get it if necessary. I didn’t steal it, if that’s what she thinks.”

  “She’ll probably want an affidavit from the homeowner, I’ll tell her to deal with it.”

  They chatted a bit until the ADA arrived. She looked at the videos, took notes, asked questions. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’ll try. I’ll see who’s on call tonight, some judges are easier than others. Did she say anything to contradict what we see here?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “I asked her where she was when her husband called her from the airport, and she said home. That’s in my notes. It was a standard question, I didn’t consider her a suspect at the time.”

  “And you’re sure this video contradicts that?”

  “Absolutely,” Sean said. “I’ve verified the time stamps on the data with the metadata.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Basically, the video is time-stamped. There is hidden data on the disk as well, which confirms authenticity. So if your power goes out, and you lose ten minutes, the hidden data will show that while the time stamp may be off—depends on the system.”

  “She didn’t make a statement about where she was the other three murders?” the ADA asked.

  “I had no cause to ask,” Jerry said. “She wasn’t a suspect. Now she is. But I don’t want to tip our hand yet. Can you get it because of the one lie?”

  “It’s better than the video alone. Can you come with me? If the judge has questions? Abby was great, and she’ll be terrific on the stand, but nothing she says is going to get me a warrant—except for maybe the hole in the pants.”

  “We want those pants,” Jerry said. “The vet and our crime scene tech were able to retrieve fibers from between the dog’s teeth.”

  The ADA made notes. “I’ll try for the broadest warrant possible, but what do we absolutely need to get?”

  “Soil samples from front and back. Any gas cans. And hammer, mallet, or sledgehammer. Any gun on the property. And her car—we want to test the grease under the hood—Ash says we might be able to get a match, though it will only narrow it down, not be a definitive match. But Standish had to touch the engine, possibly under the hood or the frame.”

  “Would fingerprints last that long? More than a month?” the ADA asked.

  “I’ll ask Ash, but I would think so,” Jerry said.

  “Absolutely,” Sean said. “You’re dealing with a greasy surface. Unless someone steam-cleans the engine, the prints are going to be there for some time. I used to work on cars a lot—I would find my prints all over the place, even months later.”

  “We also want her computer and phone records,” Lucy said. “We’ll look at search history, any maps she may have viewed or downloaded, books she’s read. She’s smart—she probably didn’t keep any detailed notes about her victims, but she tracked them somehow. And even some of the smartest criminals don’t know how good the FBI is at undeleting data.”

  “They’re good, I’m better,” Sean said.

  “You’re the best.” Lucy smiled at him. “Plus, William Peterson, the CEO of Allied, is pulling down IT logs of every login into Steven James’s account. If we can prove she logged in on her computer when Steven wasn’t at home, it could help establish that she had reason to know information about Garrett and Victor King.”

  “We’ll let the FBI cyber unit handle the computer,” the ADA said. “Okay, this is good. Jerry? You want to join me? I just got word from my office that Judge Mackey is on call, and he’ll give me a warrant for this.”

  “Let me call my wife and tell her I’ll be late—again.”

  “Are we going to serve it tonight?” Lucy asked.

  “Why not? The sooner the better,” Jerry said. “But I want Ash heading it up since he’s been involved from the beginning, so I need to make sure he’s cleared for overtime. I’ll call you, and you can meet me over there, good?”

  The ADA looked at her watch. “It’s seven—probably two hours, take or leave.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Monday Night

  At 9:02 p.m. Monday, Jerry and Lucy served Teri James with a search warrant. The ADA was also there to observe—she wanted a solid case. The warrant gave them everything they asked for, even when Jerry added shoes to the list at the last minute.

  Teri sat in the dining room with a stone face. She sounded indignant at the intrusion, but she didn’t argue with them. She calmly called a lawyer, then sat down and waited for him while the police and FBI did their thing.

  Ash was thrilled to be heading up the forensic search, and Lucy followed him into the garage. He had a full team combing the grounds and the house, but he said he wanted the car himself. It was a six-year-old Mercedes sedan.

  He first looked in the interior. “This puppy has been cleaned recently—like in the last few days. Inside and out.”

  “That isn’t good.”

  “I’ll still go through the interior back at the lab—you would be surprised at what gets trapped in the rug, and blood is very difficult to get out. And the engine—that’s what I really want.” He popped the hood and looked inside. “Oh yeah.”

  “What?” Lucy asked.

  “The engine hasn’t been specifically cleaned. It’s a beauty, well maintained, but if Standish touched it, I’ll find a print.” He popped the trunk next.

  The trunk was immaculate as well—not so much as a stray hair, at least that was visible. “Who’s this clean?” he asked of no one in particular. He inspected the carpet with a bright light. Then he went around to the main car again and looked carefully at the carpet. “I don’t want to get you all excited, but I may have this carpet fiber in my lab.”

  “I’m excited.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Ash said with a wide grin. “Remember when I said that the FBI sent back a detailed report of the trace from where the duct tape was on the bodies? The fiber was a specific color of gray. They couldn’t tell me where it came from—said it was a short, tightly wound carpet, likely from a vehicle but wouldn’t commit. But it’s enough for them to test against this.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Maybe, but the FBI still has the sample—we’re talking about two strands of fiber. We don’t want to screw this up.”

  “So you think that the duct tape was either on the floor of the car or in the trunk, picked up some of the carpet fibers, and when she used the tape on the victims, the fibers transferred to them, even though she removed the duct tape and took it with her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That would be amazing.”

  “Yeah, it would. I think this is my favorite case ever.”

  She wouldn’t go quite that far—not when she was seeking justice for four dead men.

  “Forensically speaking,” Ash clarified, as if he could read her mind.

  Two hours later they finished the search. They took Teri James’s computer, her car, two pairs of boots, a pair of sneakers, her phone, soil and grass samples from several places in her yard, and a bunch of tools from the shed—though Ash didn’t think that any of them were the murder weapon.

  No gun or Taser was found. A collection of duct tape rolls—some unopened, some half used—were found in the garage. Those were taken into evidence, but it would be difficult to determine they were specifically used unless trace from the crime scene was found on the rolls. But the worst thing was that they didn’t find a pair of jogging pants with a hole in them. They took all those that had been described by Abby—the whole array of colors—but none were navy blue as she’d indicated, and none had a hole in them.
r />   She must have disposed of the pants. They couldn’t find them in the trash, in any other room in the house, or hidden—and the team was thorough.

  Ash found a gas can, and that excited him the most—other than the car itself. It was in the corner of the garage.

  “But how can you determine if this was the gas can in the car?”

  “See the bottom?” He gestured through the clear plastic evidence bag. “Dirt and grass. I have the samples from Garcia’s car. It’s not as good as DNA, but it’s damn close. Basically, I think we’ll have a load of circumstantial evidence that when all put together is going to seal this case tight.”

  “I hope so, because we haven’t found the mallet or the gun.” Juries liked having the murder weapon. Proving such a violent crime—especially against a woman—was going to be difficult without hard evidence. But maybe, with enough circumstantial evidence, they could win.

  Or they could get her to confess. Dillon didn’t think that would happen, but Lucy couldn’t rule it out. If not confess, get her to slip up. Contradict herself. They needed to find a way to make her crack. A thousand tiny fissures might make her break.

  Jerry was talking to two cops outside the house when Lucy and Ash came up to him. “Everything is signed, sealed, and secured,” Jerry said. “Make sure this all gets to lockup tonight. No breaking the chain of evidence.”

  Ash nodded. “I’m on it. My team is going back together, we’ll log everything, confirm that what was sent arrived, secure the vault. We’ll jump right on this first thing in the morning.”

  When he left, Lucy said to Jerry, “Where’d the ADA go?”

  “Left about ten minutes ago. She was satisfied with the search, talked to James’s attorney, now I want to talk to her.”

  “She’s not going to talk tonight.”

  “I know, but I want her squirming.”

  They went back inside the house. The last of the officers were leaving, and it was just the four of them—Jerry, Lucy, Teri and her attorney, Theodore Cox.

  “Theo,” Jerry said.

  “Jerry. I told the ADA that Mrs. James will be available to answer any questions tomorrow. You have my card; call me to set up a time and we’ll come down.”