Targeted
The Ray Schiller Series
Book 3
Marjorie Swift Doering
Copyright
Targeted
Published by Marjorie Doering
Copyright 2015 Marjorie Doering
Cover by Tanja Grubisic
'[email protected]'
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the writer’s imagination and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The use of the name of real persons, places, organizations or products is for literary purposes only and does not change the entirely fictitious nature of this work.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
ALSO BY MARJORIE SWIFT DOERING
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
About the Author
Web of Silence: Preview
Dedication
For Mom…a never-ending influence
Gone for so long.
Never forgotten.
Always in my heat.
Acknowledgements
I want to express my gratitude to my entire family, near and far, for believing in me and supporting what I love to do. I love you all more than you know.
And as always, my sincere thanks to the members of my writing group, Donna White Glaser, Helen Block and Dave Tindell. You’ve helped me make my stories so much better than they would have been without your valuable insights.
To Al Mueller, who retired from the world of homicide investigations to pursue his outstanding skill as a topnotch photographer (Muddy River Photography, Winona, Minnesota), I found more than a consultant when we met; I found a friend. You rock!
ALSO BY MARJORIE SWIFT DOERING
The Ray Schiller Series:
Dear Crossing
Shadow Tag
Targeted
Web of Silence
And: Mosaic – An anthology of short stories by ten talented authors
TARGETED
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. ― Aristotle
1
Minneapolis, Minnesota – Late October
“Urgent you come home immediately. Please!” Hugh Conley read his wife’s frantic message a second time before slamming his laptop shut. Knowing he’d missed his flight to Jacksonville wasn’t sitting well. “This had better be good.”
The cab driver squinted at his passenger’s dim reflection in the rearview mirror. “You say something?”
“Yeah, to myself. Just drive.” Conley cringed at the odor coming from the cabbie—a smell like rancid meat and stale beer. He cranked his window down another inch and checked his watch: 10:50 PM. According to the timestamp, Amy’s message had been sent nearly thirty-five minutes earlier. Even though she hadn’t answered the call he’d made before leaving the airport, her email aroused more curiosity than concern.
With his cell phone MIA, he decided Amy could count herself lucky that he’d checked his laptop, luckier still he hadn’t ignored her damned email and boarded the plane. It was time the stupid bitch realized how fortunate she was to be married to him—to accept she’d never be able to manage on her own if she went through with the divorce. Whatever her problem was, he wouldn’t mind gloating about it in person; it might even make missing his flight worthwhile.
The taxi rolled to a stop in front of his and Amy’s Edwardian-style house in the Elliot Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. Silence shrouded the street and, except for a light at the front door, the house stood dark and silent against the starless sky.
“It’s so damned urgent she didn’t even bother to wait up,” Conley grumbled.
The cabbie cast a glance toward the back seat. “What?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” He tossed several bills over the seat in the driver’s general direction and gathered up his laptop and single suitcase. “Listen up, pal. Here’s the best tip you’ll get all night: spend some of that money on a bar of soap and a bottle of mouthwash.” With that, he slipped out of the cab into the chilly night and slammed the cab door as the driver sped away, the tires squealing in protest.
Hugh strode up the walk to the front door. The house’s lead glass windows, the wood trim and moldings, the pocket doors, the fireplaces, the claw foot tubs—all of it had captivated Amy from the start. She called the house a classic. He called it antiquated.
Brittle, wind-driven leaves swirled around his legs as he let himself in with his key.
“Amy!” His voice bounced off the walls as he lowered his 6’1” frame and set the suitcase and laptop down in the foyer. “Amy, where are you?” Silence answered him. “Whatever your problem is, it had better be awfully damned important.”
Mood as dark as his hair and eyes, he ambled from one downstairs room to another giving each a cursory glance before moving on. Cursing under his breath, he flung his tan, cashmere topcoat over the back of the couch. “Where the hell are you?” he shouted.
Overhead, a floorboard creaked.
Taking his time, he went to the liquor cabinet and filled a glass with three fingers of scotch. He tipped his face toward the ceiling and shouted, “You’d better have one hell of a good excuse for screwing up my plans tonight.” The liquor burned a trail down his throat, reigniting the dying embers fueled by earlier drinks. “I had to reschedule my flight. Now I’ll have to track Larry down at the convention in the morning.”
Another creak.
Tossing the remainder of the scotch after the rest, he sauntered to the staircase and turned his face toward the second floor. “Are you going to get your damned ass down here and tell me what this is about or do I have to come up there?”
There was no reply.
“Bitch,” he muttered. Ripping the tie from his neck, he draped it over the oak banister. “Larry makes me a partner, throws a party for me, and the first thing I do is bail out on him. You’ve made me look like a jackass.”
Conley set his empty glass on a stair tread, started up the steps and flipped the light switch. He flicked the switch a second time, then a third, but the staircase remained dark.
“Frickin’ house,” he mumbled.
He climbed the stairs to the still-darker landing and felt for the hallway light switch. Like the other, it did no good. “You better not have called me back here to fix a blown fuse or I’m going to be beyond pissed.” The only sound was the faint echo of his voice coming off the hardwood floors. “
What’s the matter, Amy? Are you afraid to come out and play in the dark?”
His taunts faded and the house lapsed back into sullen silence. Hugh let his fingers trail across the wall until they reached the doorjamb of the master bedroom. The dim glow of a streetlight backlit a silhouette midway between him and a bedroom window as he stepped into the unlit room. Before him, he could make out her shoulder-length hair and slim frame. He recognized the subtle fragrance of Amy’s favorite perfume.
“Okay, I’m here. What’s so damned important?”
Light glinted off metal as an outstretched arm rose in his direction.
Beginning to comprehend, he watched in horror. “Amy, what are you doing?”
The raised arm held steady, leveled at his chest.
“What the hell? Amy, c’mon. Stop horsing around.”
The sound of a gunshot reverberated through the room.
The bullet ripped through his flesh. He staggered back, stunned by the impact and searing pain, “Amy, don’t! Please, no!”
Two more shots followed, and Hugh Conley’s body slumped to the floor.
2
Early the next morning, Ray Schiller worked his way through a crowd of cops and spectators outside Hugh and Amy Conley’s residence. With his detective’s shield in view, he was Moses parting the Red Sea.
Bystanders mumbled to one another in hushed tones. Most craned their necks, determined not to miss a second of the drama unfolding on their street. Across the way, an old couple in flannel robes stood on their lawn, observing as they drank their morning coffee. If the outdoor furniture hadn’t already been stored away for the year, Ray wouldn’t have been surprised to see neighbors observing from their adjoining yards while stretched out on their lawn chairs.
The sirens had been silenced, but the lights on the emergency vehicles continued flashing in bright, steady cadence. Along the perimeter of yellow police tape, officers were keeping the area secured.
Detective Dick Waverly stood outside the residence, making a show of checking his watch as Ray approached, his trim, five-foot, ten-inch-something body slipping through the crowd. “Did you decide to sleep in, buddy?”
Ray held his hands up, palms out. “Don’t give me any grief, all right? I got here as fast as I could. One of my tires went flat just this side of Edina, and those lug nuts must’ve been welded on. So, what’ve we got?”
Waverly pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, took out a carrot stick and popped it into his mouth. “My breakfast,” he grumbled by way of explanation. Pointing a second carrot stick toward the second floor, he said, “The homeowner, Hugh Conley, is upstairs in the master bedroom, deader than a doornail. Three bullets to the chest—in a pretty tight pattern, by the way. Seems the little lady inside must know a thing or two about handling a gun.”
“Girlfriend? Wife?”
“Wife, but a divorce was in the works. She’s the one who filed the papers.”
“When did she report the shooting?”
“She didn’t,” Waverly said. “One of Conley’s friends did that about forty minutes ago—a guy named Gary Bartlett. Said he’d been away until early this morning—that he was listening to his phone messages and got the crap scared out of him. He heard his pal’s voice and the sound of gunshots. Conley was begging his wife not to shoot him. The whole thing is right on his answering machine.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Uh-uh. The time was eleven-oh-five according to the machine. I had it picked up. Bartlett says he tried calling Conley back—his cell phone and home number, but he didn’t answer. That’s when Bartlett decided it wasn’t a joke and called 9-1-1.”
“Is the wife’s voice on the tape?”
“I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but Bartlett says no.”
“Too bad.” Ray ran a hand through his dark-blond hair. “From the sound of things, even without that, it shouldn’t be hard to wrap this case up.”
“Don’t bet on it. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one, buddy.” Fending off a cool autumn breeze, Waverly pulled his jacket around his beer-barrel middle. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell was going on in this babe’s head after she offed her husband.” He stepped back, letting a couple of crime scene techs get past. “Between the shooting and the time our guys showed up, she had eight hours to dispose of the body, clean up the mess, call for help, or at least establish a decent story. This babe did diddly.”
“Could be she was too shaken up to get her act together,” Ray said, gray-blue eyes narrowing. “Either that or she’s as dumb as a box of rocks.”
“Dumb? That’s not the impression I got.” Waverly stuck another carrot stick in his mouth. “We swabbed her hands for gunshot residue. It came back negative. At least she must’ve had sense enough to clean that off.”
Reporters crowded the crime scene tape, shouting rapid-fire questions at them as they turned their backs and moved downrange.
“Damned media buzzards.” Waverly muttered, stroking his walrus-like mustache. “For the record, I’ve got the feeling Amy Conley’s gonna go creative on our asses, buddy.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her story’s straight out of La-La Land. The officers who responded to Bartlett’s 9-1-1 call said she was nearly hysterical when she let them in. Said she claimed she went to bed last night and didn’t wake up until they started pounding on her front door. Said that’s when she woke up and discovered her husband’s body only a few feet away. Our new widow swears she doesn’t have a frickin’ clue in hell what happened.”
“Yeah, that’s creative all right,” Ray agreed.
“Or downright nuts,” Waverly said.
“Maybe she plans to use an insanity plea as her defense.”
Waverly grunted and held the bag of carrots out to Ray. “Want one?”
He waved it away. “No, thanks. I had a stack of pancakes before you called.”
“Bastard.” Waverly jammed the bag back in his pocket and glanced at the crowd of gawkers.
“Man, I wish I could run a concession stand at these crime scenes; I could retire tomorrow.”
“Right,” Ray said. “Phyllis would probably like that; then she could monitor your food intake 24/7.”
“You’re a real killjoy, you know that?”
Ray gave him a fleeting grin. “I want to do my walk-through, then meet this woman. Are you coming?”
Waverly didn’t answer but followed Ray to the door. “Tell ya this much, buddy… The new widow’s a pretty, little thing. Ya look in that doe-eyed face and it’s kinda hard imagining her firing three rounds into her husband’s chest.”
They added their names to the crime scene sign-in sheet, and the officer on duty let them into the foyer. Ray took note of the laptop and suitcase on the floor. “Hugh Conley’s?”
Waverly nodded.
“Was he coming or going?”
“Coming, from the looks of it,” Waverly told him.
Ray saw Hugh Conley’s cashmere topcoat tossed across the back of the couch. “So, he left his things in the entryway, came in here and took off his coat.” Ray turned his head, checking the surroundings. He stepped around the couch and walked to the tie still dangling over the banister before walking to the empty tumbler on the third stair. Leaving the glass untouched, he lowered his face near the rim and took a whiff. “Scotch.”
“Yeah,” Waverly said. “There’s an open bottle of Cutty Sark on the liquor cabinet.”
“All right. So, he comes in, drops his stuff off in the entryway, takes off his coat, has a drink, gets rid of his tie and empty glass, then heads upstairs. No apparent hurry. Seems pretty routine so far.”
“Until you get upstairs,” Waverly said. “And before you ask, there are no signs of forced entry. Nothing seems to be disturbed or missing…not so far, anyway.” As Ray continued his walk-through, Waverly accompanied him, double-checking what he’d already seen earlier.
Stepping into the formal dining room, Ray saw a
n officer keeping watch over their suspect. She sat at the table in jeans and a navy-blue, V-neck sweater. Her elbows were propped on the tabletop, her face buried in her hands. The woman’s small frame was trembling. Ray acknowledged the officer with a nod and backed out without a word. She’d keep.
He and Waverly headed upstairs and entered the master bedroom as the medical examiner rose from his crouch over the corpse.
“I’m done here,” the M.E. announced.
Conley’s body sat slouched against the bureau. His outstretched right leg lay across the left ankle in a figure-four configuration. Each of the three bullet wounds to his chest appeared to be little more than an inch apart. His head lay slumped toward his left shoulder, arms at his sides, the backs of his hands resting on the floor. His face was frozen in an expression of surprise.
Ray approached the M.E. “What can you tell us?”
“He’s been dead about eight hours,” he said. “Nine at the outside.” The M.E. stripped off his gloves, still focusing on the body. “The lividity suggests he died right here where he fell.”
The high velocity blood spatter on the wall above the dresser and the bloody skid marks down the front of the bureau confirmed his statement. A cell phone, the one Conley had apparently used to call Bartlett, lay near the dead man’s right hand. Three numbered markers sat on the floor near the center of the room, marking the location of the spent shell casings.
Ray looked toward the rumpled linens on the king-sized mattress. “Who was in the bed?”
“The wife.” Waverly sneered. “You’re not gonna believe this. She claims she was lying right there, sound asleep the whole time.”
“And she didn’t hear anything?”
“I said you wouldn’t believe it. Let’s finish the walk-through and you can meet her yourself.”
“I can hardly wait.”
The rest of the rooms on the second and third floors provided nothing of interest. A laundry area and workshop were in the final stages of completion in the basement, but neither appeared to have been involved in the commission of the murder.
Targeted: A Ray Schiller Novel (The Ray Schiller Series Book 3) Page 1