Microphones and Murder

by Erin Huss

  I re-read the email over again. If I remembered correctly, Jeremy said Blake Kirkland apologized for sharing the video, not for posting it. He had no intention of uploading it to YouTube, and yet he blamed himself for the aftermath.

  “There’s more,” Camry said. She opened another email. My gosh, she’s productive when I’m inebriated. “Also in the trash I found an email sent to every employee at the Direct Dental Santa Maria Branch, including Amelia, the CFO, and CEO with the YouTube link.”

  “That’s terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

  “Liv, this wasn’t about someone who posted a video because they thought it would be funny. This was sabotage.”

  It sure was.

  I knew the video had been uploaded to YouTube, I had no idea it had been sent out to everyone Amelia worked with.

  “Can you hack this Scottydog00 email account to see who he is?” I asked. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  Camry’s shoulders fell. “The email address has been deleted, and resurrecting dead emails is beyond my superpower.”

  Episode Twelve

  She

  Every little movement, every little sound, every hint of light hurt my cranium. Of all days for Detective LeClare to schedule a meeting, she had to pick today. I used my hand as a visor to protect my eyes from the assaulting fluorescent lights in the police station’s lobby. A lady in a muumuu was at the counter speaking to a policewoman behind the Plexiglas, claiming her ex-boyfriend was stalking her, and her ex-boyfriend was at the other counter, claiming she beat him with a spatula. He brought the spatula as evidence.

  “Should we tell Detective LeClare about the email and Scottydog00?” asked Camry, who was sitting beside me in a black pencil skirt, white collared shirt buttoned to the top and black blazer. The same outfit she wore to court when she was charged with a Class B misdemeanor for email hacking. She was lucky to walk away with only a fine.

  “What you did is unethical and illegal,” I said under my breath. “We can’t let anyone know about it. And we can’t use the information you found unless someone else gives it to us.” As much as I wanted to find out what happened to Amelia, I wasn’t about to risk Camry going to jail.

  “So that’s a no?”

  I cringed at the sound of her voice. Not because I found it annoying, but because it was so damn loud.

  “Do you think Detective LeClare will let us look at the surveillance video from October 10?” asked Camry.

  “I don’t know,” I muttered.

  “What about notes from Leon’s interview with Carlos?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I bet she doesn’t know about the guest parking citation. Do you think she does?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She probably does. Leon probably saw it,” she said, drumming her hands on her kneecaps. “He probably talked to her apartment manager and nothing came of it.”

  Probably.

  “But we could use that, right? It’s a good find?” She bounced her right leg. Which made the bench bounce. Which made me vomit.

  Good news: there was a potted plant close by to barf in.

  Bad news: it was fake.

  That’s unfortunate.

  “Um...you okay, Liv?”

  “I don’t know.” I smoothed out the front of my blouse and swiped a stray hair behind my ear. It took three layers of concealer to hide the hangover on my face and one glass of Alka-Seltzer to get me out the door.

  The back pocket of my jeans vibrated. I knew without looking that it was Oliver texting, again. He wanted to talk. There was no time for talking. Not when I had a job to do, a sister to keep out of jail, and I was too embarrassed to face him.

  “Are you Liv Olsen?” came a smooth voice, and I gazed up at the tall, tall, woman I assumed to be Detective LeClare or a supermodel in detective clothing. Either way, she looked like Tyra Banks and was great with child. I almost rammed my head into her protruding belly.

  I stood up slowly and extended a professional hand, each movement felt like a great achievement. “Thank you for meeting with us,” I said with a forced smile.

  LeClare slipped her hand into mine and gave it a hard shake, jiggling my intestines. Ugh. “My pleas...” She dropped my hand. “Oh no, not again,” she said, eyeing the fake plant.

  Oops.

  “Johnson,” she called to the officer behind the counter. “We got a mess out here.”

  Johnson, a young cop with a buzz cut, peeked out into the lobby. “Got it, boss,” he said and disappeared.

  “Sorry about that.” LeClare rubbed her belly when she talked. “Why someone throws up in the plant when there’s trashcans all around the room is beyond me.”

  I wanted to say it’s hard to concentrate when you’re hungover, but I decided to keep that comment in my brain. I followed the detective to a small windowless interrogation room that smelled like coffee and felt like a sauna. The three of us took a seat at the table.

  “Thank you for coming in,” said LeClare. “I know you’re busy.”

  “I was happy to get your call.” I pulled at the collar of my shirt. It was hot in there. “Can I set up my audio equipment?” I held up my bag.

  “I thought you might ask,” she said. “I’ve talked this over at length with the DA’s office, and I can’t record an interview at this time, nor can I give any case specifics to you.”

  Well, crap.

  “Why are we here then?”

  As it turned out, we were brought in to talk about the apple incident. I told her about Leon, our conversation with Richard, the threat Carlos made, and the post on Facebook. Camry and I both told her our theories of why the apple was thrown: to scare us off, a prank, or a failed attempt to get our attention.

  LeClare slunk back in the chair to get more comfortable. “Santa Maria has a small-town feel to it, but there’s almost 110,000 people living here. This includes the unincorporated area of Orcutt where your aunt lives.”

  This I knew. What I didn’t know is why she was telling me.

  “With Facebook algorithms, a post will get lost if no one has commented on it. Especially in a sizeable group like the Moms of Central Coast,” she added.

  “Oh!” Camry said, having an epiphany. “That’s why we haven’t had any responses. Sorry, I don’t come from the Facebook generation. No offense,” she said to LeClare.

  “None taken.”

  “Don’t worry I’ll bump our post.” Camry smacked the side of my leg.

  I was not worried about anything being bumped. What I was worried about is why Detective LeClare was saying this.

  Was it her way of telling us, without telling us, that news of our podcast and whereabouts was not as widespread as we thought? That someone we had interacted with that day likely threw the apple?

  Which would leave us with Leon, Richard or Carlos.

  Leon was not an option. Richard appeared genuinely surprised when we told him, and he didn’t strike me as the athletic type. Someone had to have thrown that apple hard enough to break the window.

  Which left us with Carlos.

  But I had a hard time believing Carlos would throw an apple. He struck me more like a brick, or a rock, or a machete type of guy.

  “Do you think it was Carlos Hermosa?” I asked her.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “We honestly don’t have a suspect on this one.”

  “Did you run the prints on the apple?” asked Camry. “You can do that. They’re doing it in England.”

  “Well, we aren’t in England, are we?”

  I nudged Camry with my knee to get her to shut up. We needed LeClare on our side.

  “Have you been able to identify the body found at Waller Park?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Can you tell me if it was male or female?”

  LeCla
re took a moment to decide if she should answer.

  “Off the record.” I held up my palms. “I’m not recording, and I won’t repeat. I just want to know.”

  “The Medical Examiner says it’s a female between the ages of twenty and thirty, either white or Hispanic,” LeClare said. “We don’t know if it’s Amelia, we’re waiting on dental records.”

  Oh.

  Having to wait on dental records to identify the body made me wonder if the victim was so badly decomposed that she could have been dead longer than ten years. The worker said he saw clothing, if he’d found what Amelia was last seen in, then they should know if it was her or not.

  Unless Amelia changed before she disappeared.

  “Do you know why I’m so passionate about Millie’s case file?” LeClare asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Millie? Did you know her personally?” Only family and strangers called her Amelia.

  “We went to high school together.” Detective LeClare adjusted in her seat and cradled her belly with both hands. “After Detective Ramsey retired, the file was passed around and sat on the bottom of caseloads. There were no new leads. It sat in limbo. Is it homicide? Is it a missing-person case? When I was forced to sit at a desk—” She pointed to her stomach. “—I saw Millie’s file and decided to take another look, and do you know what I found?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing new.”

  Well, crap.

  “This is where you two come in. Forensics has improved greatly in the last ten years.”

  I thought she was going to continue, but she didn’t. Instead she stared at me and I stared back. I realized she was sending me a surreptitious message. Something she couldn’t say out loud.

  Unfortunately, my hangover brain was not computing.

  So we did this for a while.

  LeClare staring at me.

  Me staring at her.

  Camry’s eyes bouncing between the two of us.

  “Running DNA samples again would be expensive,” she added. “Even if the technology has improved greatly over the last decade.”

  Still not...ah, got it.

  “Well.” I sat up straight, crossed my ankles, and played it cool. “If the department isn’t willing to spend the money, then perhaps a little pressure from the general public would help change their mind.”

  “Perhaps it will.” Detective LeClare continued to rub her belly with big, deliberate sweeps of her hands.

  Got it.

  “When are you due?” I asked.

  “Four weeks and I’m off for eight weeks afterwards. When I return I’ll have to devote my time to active cases.”

  Right.

  Got that message loud and clear.

  LeClare believed, or so I assumed she believed since we were only conversing in code and I felt like death, that a new test would show more than Amelia’s DNA in her vehicle—just as Jeremy suggested. The agency won’t pay for it. I needed to get listeners invested enough in Amelia’s story for them to demand the agency run the DNA again using more modern technology.

  And I had four weeks to do it.

  No pressure or anything.

  But before I could go have a nervous breakdown, I had to ask about HJZoomer22 without revealing my stepsister was a cybercriminal. “Did you ever make contact with the poster of the video?”

  “Are you talking about Blake Kirkland?”

  “I’m talking about the person who posted it,” I said and stared at LeClare. It didn’t have the same effect when I did it.

  At least I didn’t think it did until the detective said, “We’ve spoken to that person, yes.”

  Darn. I’d hope she’d have a slip of the tongue and say, “We’ve spoken to her or him.” But she was too sharp.

  “Do you know about the contaminated soil in the Morning Knolls neighborhood?” I asked.

  LeClare’s head tilted slightly. “Sounds familiar, why do you ask?”

  “Several people have commented that Amelia didn’t look good the weeks leading up to her disappearance. I’m wondering if she was sick and maybe that played a part in her reaction at the gala. I spoke to someone last night that grew up in the house behind the Clark’s, and she said several people on her street had developed a brain tumor, thyroid cancer, and her own brother died of leukemia.”

  LeClare nodded. “Interesting theory...off the record.” She gave me a look of warning and I held up my palms again.

  “Not a word,” I promised.

  “I saw Millie three days before she disappeared, and she didn’t look good. When I read in her file that she’d recently gone through a breakup, I thought that might have been why she appeared so frail. But my original thought, at the time, was that she appeared emotionally beaten and even afraid.”

  “Why do you think she was afraid?” I asked. “Jeremy alluded to the same thing when we spoke to him.”

  “Yes, he mentioned that several times in his interview with Detective Ramsey.” LeClare’s eyes went distant, as if she were seeing things long ago. “I’m not going to pretend that I knew Millie well. We didn’t spend much time together in high school, but we did have several classes together. The reaction in the video appeared out of character for her, though. When I last saw her, we were at Morning Knolls Park and she was getting ready to go on a run. I asked her how she was doing. She said fine, of course. I didn’t ask about the video, but I’d seen it. She cut our conversation short and took off running. A little while later, as I was getting ready to leave, I passed the tennis courts and noticed Millie was sitting on the ground, crying, and staring at her phone.”

  Hold on. “She had her cell phone,” I clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “The one that was on the floor of her car when it was found?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she had it with her when she went on a run?”

  “Yes.”

  Aha!

  I was right. She didn’t disappear while on a run! She didn’t go to Orcutt Hollow Trail. Either Amelia or someone else planted the car there to make it look like she’d gone for a run and had either took off from embarrassment or she was taken.

  “Are you thinking Orcutt Hollow is not the primary crime scene?” I asked.

  “I’m not allowed to give case specifics,” she reminded me.

  “When was the last time you spoke with Jeremy Wang?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  I bit my lip. “He said Detective Ramsey never checked to be sure he was in Arizona. Have you?”

  Again, no answer.

  Shoot.

  Camry piped in. “And you’re sure it was Amelia’s blood on the steering wheel?”

  “Yes, it was Amelia’s blood mixed with her own saliva,” LeClare said.

  Saliva?

  This was new.

  Episode Thirteen

  The Stains

  Our meeting with Detective LeClare continued much the same. I asked a question. She didn’t answer. We did this for another thirty minutes before it was time to go.

  Three important tidbits of information extracted from our meeting:

  First, the body found at Waller Park was a young female, and she was not wearing the outfit Amelia was last seen in.

  Second, Amelia’s saliva was mixed in with her blood.

  Third, HJZoomer was a woman.

  Now I had to figure out how this new information fit into our case.

  “What are you doing?” Camry asked.

  We were sitting in my car, still in the parking lot of the police station. I gripped my steering wheel tightly, placing my fingertips exactly where the smudge of blood on Amelia’s steering wheel was found.

  Camry waved her hand in front of my face. “You there?”

  “Where’s the nearest fast food restaurant?”
I asked.

  Camry consulted her phone. “There’s a Jack in the Box about a mile away. Why? Are you hungry?”

  Heck no. I didn’t want to think about food. Chances were Hazel had a seven-course meal prepared for us at home anyway.

  But what I did need was free ketchup.

  I watched Camry in my rearview mirror exit Jack in the Box with a grease-stained bag in her hand. “Got the best hangover meal for you,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat.

  “The whole point of coming here was to get free ketchup.”

  “They don’t give out ketchup unless you buy something.” She grabbed a curly fry from the bag. “What has this world come to?”

  “I don’t know. What did you get?” The aroma of deep-fried food trigged my appetite.

  “Two tacos and fries. I love Jack in the Box when I’m drunk. It’s the only time they taste good.” She handed me a deep-fried taco still wet with grease. It was the most unappetizing thing I’d ever seen in my life. But I took a bite anyway.

  “Wow, this is good.”

  “Told ya.” She shoved a fry into her mouth. “I also got a handful of ketchup. They’re stingy with the condiments.”

  “That will work.” I wiped off my hands and grabbed the ketchup packets. “Can you take video of this and I’ll do the audio.”

  “Aye, aye.” Camry saluted me and got to work while I grabbed the picture of the bloodstains taken in Amelia’s car.

  Once we were recording, I applied a small amount of ketchup on my finger and grabbed the steering wheel tightly with both hands. The ketchup smudge didn’t match the picture. Not even close. Of course, I was using tomatoes and not actual blood.

  So there was that.

  I heaved a sigh and looked at Camry, who was standing outside the car with her phone aimed at me. “Do you have anything in your bag that I can cut myself with?”

  “Of course.” She dug through her purse and produced a pocketknife.

  “Why do you have that?”

  “People are monsters.”

  Touché.

  I used hand sanitizer to clean the knife and held it to the tip of my finger, giving myself a pep talk.