For a moment, she flashed back to the Sunday mornings when she had often worn one of David’s shirts while they relaxed in bed with the Arizona Republic and the New York Times. Catching a sob in her throat, she forced the thought from her mind and belted her skirt around her, letting the shirt hang out over it.
McClain had left the bedroom door slightly ajar—only an inch or so—but enough so that she could hear him puttering around in the kitchen. The aroma of something roasting in the oven drifted down the hall, infused with an underlying scent of rosemary. McClain was apparently a “classic rock” guy, and on the radio in the background, Beverly could hear Sammy Hagar lamenting the fact that he couldn’t drive fifty-five.
She debated the wisdom of trying to sneak a look out into the hall. If she stretched the cable as far as it would go, she could just reach the bedroom door. She had no way of knowing what the floor plan of the house was outside of the bedroom and bathroom. She knew that the bedroom door swung quietly on its hinges. If she opened it a bit farther, would McClain see or hear her from the kitchen?
She took two steps in the direction of the door and then stopped. In the past, McClain had always closed the door when he left the room. Why had he left it slightly open now? Was he testing her, waiting to see if she would attempt to take advantage of the opportunity? And what would he do if he caught her?
She took another small step toward the door and reached tentatively out to the knob. On the radio, Sammy gave way to Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Beverly suddenly realized that McClain was no longer making noises in the kitchen.
She turned, walked quickly back to the bed, and sat down. Just as she did, he walked through the door carrying silverware and napkins. Handing them to her, he said, “Dinner’s almost ready. You can set the table. Your beverage choices this evening are water and beer—or both, if you’d prefer.”
“Both, please,” she replied.
Ten minutes later, he returned carrying two glasses of water and clutching two longneck bottles of Miller Genuine Draft between his arm and his chest. He set the drinks on the table and said, “Have a seat.”
Beverly took her chair while McClain made another trip to the kitchen. He returned with two salads, set one of them in front of Beverly, and took the chair on the other side of the table.
The salad consisted of a variety of fresh mixed greens—romaine, endive, and red-leaf lettuce—along with some diced cucumber and some thinly sliced red onions. It had been lightly tossed with balsamic vinaigrette, and in truth, it was an excellent salad. Beverly ate a few bites, then looked up to McClain. “Thank you for the salad. It’s very good.”
He flashed her a look of self-deprecation. “Sorry about all the junk food so far. Normally I don’t eat that kind of crap—not any more at least. But I’ve just been too busy too cook.”
She hesitated for a few seconds, calculating how best to play him, and wondering how far she should press her luck. Then she swallowed another bite of the salad and said, “I don’t want to make you angry, but can I ask what you’ve been busy doing?”
McClain set down his fork and looked at her for a moment as if trying to decide how to respond. Finally he gave a small shrug. Looking away from Beverly, he said in a soft voice, “My daughter was in a softball tournament this weekend. Most of the time I was gone, I was watching her play.”
Beverly was genuinely dumfounded. It had never occurred to her that this sadistic rapist—this fucking murderer—might have a family, let alone that he might care about them. The bastard had shot and killed David without giving it even a second thought. He had destroyed the only family she had, and then the cocksucker had nerve enough—balls enough—to have a family of his own?
The thought of it—the rank injustice of it—infuriated her beyond anything that McClain had done to her thus far. It took every ounce of self-discipline she possessed to prevent herself from flipping the table into his lap and cursing him to hell. She took a deep breath, nodded slightly, and looked up at the rotten son of a bitch. “How old is your daughter?” she asked.
“Nineteen.”
“She’s in college?”
“Yeah, ASU. She plays first base.”
Beverly nodded again. “She must be pretty good if she’s playing at that level.”
The asshole actually blushed. “Yeah. She was a high school all-star and won a full athletic scholarship.”
“You must be very proud.”
Again, he seemed embarrassed. “Yeah. Whatever. She’s a good kid.”
He set his napkin on the table. “Keep your salad if you want, but the chicken should be ready now.”
He got up from the table and left the room, taking his empty salad plate with him. Watching him go, Beverly curled her fingers into her hands and pressed her nails into her palms. She took a few deep breaths, then slowly exhaled and took a long pull on her beer. Attempting to channel her rage as productively as possible, she finished the salad.
After a few minutes, McClain returned with two plates. He’d roasted a small chicken and divided it in half. He’d also prepared oven-browned potatoes and fresh green beans, seasoned with lemon. He set Beverly’s plate in front of her.
“It looks very good,” she observed.
He shrugged. “One way to find out.”
They ate quietly for the next twenty minutes, and in fact the food was excellent. Beverly wondered where someone like McClain had learned to cook, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him. He finished a few minutes ahead of her and waited patiently while she finished. Finally, she pushed the plate away, leaving only a little bit of the food uneaten.
McClain made two trips taking the dirty dishes out to the kitchen. Then he came back into the bedroom. “I have to go out for a while,” he said. “Would you like another beer before I go?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
He returned with the beer in one hand and her blouse and bra in the other. The blouse was on a hanger and it was obvious he had ironed it. He gave her the beer and then, somewhat self-consciously, handed her the clothes. “These are ready, but you can hang onto the shirt if you want.”
“Thank you.”
McClain nodded and, saying nothing more, turned and walked out the door. Beverly listened as he locked it. Then she heard again the small metallic click that followed. She waited a couple of minutes to be sure that he was actually gone, then stripped off his shirt and put her own clothes back on again. She put McClain’s shirt on the empty hanger and hung it on the doorknob. Then she walked into the bathroom and poured the beer down the sink.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
McClain picked up the backpack and walked out through the kitchen feeling decidedly out of sorts. Today, for the first time, he’d actually found himself feeling some sympathy for the woman. And flashing back to the resigned, defeated look on her face as he’d handed her the clean towel in the shower, he even experienced a small twinge of guilt about the way in which he was treating her.
Thinking about it, he was pissed off—both at her and at himself. So she came while he was screwing her this afternoon. So what?
It was a normal human reaction, and he’d expected that it would probably happen at some point. Every woman he’d ever been with had always insisted that he was great in bed and that he had a huge dick. Sooner or later, Beverly was bound to get off, whether she liked it or not.
Obviously, she hadn’t liked it. She’d been upset with herself when it had finally happened, and that he could understand. He knew that he probably wasn’t her favorite person in the world right at the moment. What he could not understand, though, was his own reaction to the fact that it had happened. He’d felt a tenderness for her that led him to wonder whether he was being entirely fair to the woman. Suddenly he’s doing her laundry and cooking her a goddamn dinner like he’d invited her over for a fucking date or something. She’d even gotten him talking to her about Tiffani, for chrissake.
What the hell was he thinking? The woman had conspired to s
crew him over. She’d help cost him both Tiffani and Amanda, not to mention seventeen years of his fuckin’ life.
Shaking his head at the thought of it, he opened the door from the kitchen and stepped out into the garage. Once he’d dealt with the judge, he decided, he’d take the bitch back to bed and show her something about sympathy.
McClain flipped on the light in the garage, then unlocked the garage door and lifted it open. It was another beautiful night in the desert, the air crisp and clean, and he inhaled a deep breath. God, it felt good to be free.
He checked to make sure that no one was loitering about, watching him, then opened the door to the van and climbed in. “Hey, Your Honor,” he said. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I had a little lady who needed my attention more than you did. Anyhow, it’s better that we do our business together now, rather than out in the broad daylight.”
His arrival produced no reaction from the judge, who lay completely still under the painter’s tarp. McClain waited for a moment, expecting Beckman to shift his position at least slightly, but the tarp didn’t move even an inch in any direction.
McClain got out of the driver’s seat and squeezed his way into the back of the van. Squatting down, he picked up a corner of the tarp to see Beckman’s lifeless eyes staring back at him vacantly. “Oh, shit, Judge!” he protested. “What the fuck did you go and do to me now?”
He pulled the tarp down farther and checked Beckman for a pulse, knowing that he wasn’t going to find one. Had the old bastard not been able to breathe with the duct tape over his mouth? Did the shock of being grabbed cause him to have a heart attack? Had the afternoon heat been too intense in the close confines of the garage and the van?
Shaking his head in disappointment, McClain concluded that whatever it was really didn’t much matter at this point. He certainly wasn’t sorry that the old man was dead, but he very much regretted having missed the opportunity to talk with him before he died. McClain had wanted Beckman to know why he was going to die and who was going to do it to him. He hoped that the old goat had suffered like hell before it happened.
Working in the cramped quarters of the van, McClain rolled the judge’s body up in the tarp and secured it with duct tape. Then he backed the van out of the garage, locked the garage behind him, and headed west.
He drove a couple of miles before finding the sort of place he was looking for, then pulled into an alley behind a row of darkened buildings. Halfway down the alley, he stopped next to a large Dumpster with its lid hanging open. He got out of the van and checked to make sure that there was no one else around. Then, moving as quickly as he could, he slid open the side door of the van and pulled the judge’s body out.
The old man probably didn’t weigh even a hundred and fifty pounds. In one fluid motion, McClain hoisted the package up to his shoulder and pitched it into the Dumpster. Then he got back into the van and drove carefully back home to deal with Beverly Thompson.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
On Tuesday morning, Tony Anderson called to report that the crime lab had taken an inordinate amount of hair, fibers, and other physical evidence out of Richard Petrovich’s Chrysler.
“I’ve never seen a car that filthy,” he complained. “I’ll bet the damned thing literally hadn’t been washed or vacuumed in a year. We’ve probably taken samples from half the population of the greater metro area out of that car. Unfortunately, though, so far we’ve got nothing that matches up to any of your victims. I’m sorry, Sean. I’ll fax over the preliminary report.”
I thanked him and hung up the phone. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised by the news, but it left us in a very difficult position. Maggie and I both agreed that Petrovich just didn’t feel at all right for the crimes we were investigating, and we had absolutely nothing to tie him to any of them, save for the DNA evidence that put him in Beverly Thompson’s Lexus and in Karen Collins’s home. But if he wasn’t the guy, how in the hell did his hair get there?
I was thinking about all of this when the phone rang again and the receptionist announced that Jack Collins was downstairs asking to see me. I put on my suit coat, went down to meet him, and escorted him back up to my office. He dropped into my visitor’s chair looking like he hadn’t slept in a month. “How are you doing, Mr. Collins?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t really know, Detective Richardson. I’m still basically in a state of shock. The medical examiner has released Karen’s body, and her funeral is tomorrow morning. But between your investigation and the preparations for the funeral, it’s like I haven’t had any time to begin grieving yet.”
“Again, I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I know how difficult this must be. What can I do for you this morning?”
“Well,” he replied, “the reason I’m here is because on the night of the murder you asked me about a woman named Alma Fletcher.”
“Yes, sir?”
He shifted in the chair a bit. “Well, as I said that night, the name meant nothing to me. I didn’t think I’d ever heard it before.”
Leaning forward, I said, “And now?”
“Well, I’ve been going through some of Karen’s stuff, looking for photos and things like that to display at the visitation and the funeral? This morning I was looking at one of her old scrapbooks and found a newspaper clipping that she’d saved.”
I nodded my encouragement and he continued. “Seventeen years ago, Karen served as a juror in a murder trial. The clipping was about the trial, and the article quoted the jury foreman—or forewoman, I guess it would be. Her name was Alma Fletcher.”
Collins reached into the pocket of his shirt and came out with a yellowed news clipping. Scarcely able to contain my surprise, I took it from him, carefully unfolded it, and quickly read the story. Fletcher and Collins had served together on a jury that had convicted a defendant named Carl McClain on a charge of first-degree murder.
According to the article, McClain had been charged with the strangulation death of a prostitute named Gloria Kelly. The presiding judge was someone named Walter Beckman and the prosecuting attorney was Harold Roe. Interestingly, the lead detective in the case was Mike Miller, a longtime veteran of the department who’d been my first partner when I joined the Homicide Unit, nine years after the trial. As Collins indicated, the jury forewoman had been Alma Fletcher. And McClain’s court-appointed public defender had been a woman named Beverly Deschamps.
With Collins still sitting in my visitor’s chair, I grabbed the phone and called Beverly Thompson’s office. Her administrative assistant confirmed the fact that prior to Beverly’s marriage to David Thompson, her last name had been Deschamps.
I thanked the woman, hung up, and called Tom Meagher, an assistant county attorney and my occasional opponent on the tennis courts. Thankfully, he was at his desk and he answered the phone on the second ring.
“Tom?” I said. “It’s Sean. Seventeen years ago your office convicted a guy named Carl McClain of first-degree murder.”
“Yes, we did,” he replied. “And three months ago we turned him loose.”
“Why in God’s name did you do that? The guy was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.”
“Yes, he was,” Meagher sighed. “Then, inconvenient as it was for all concerned, especially for Mr. McClain, it turned out that he was innocent.”
“And we know this how?”
“DNA evidence,” he replied. “Plus, the real killer confessed. The victim was a hooker, and McClain was with her just before she was killed. There was semen in the body that matched his blood type, and of course back then, they couldn’t get any more precise than that. McClain apparently changed his story a couple of times and was not a very effective witness on his own behalf. As a result of all of that, he got himself convicted and sent to Lewis for the rest of his life.
“That was the end of the story. Except that four months ago the common-law wife of the victim’s former pimp ratted her husband out for the killing. Initially he denied it of course, but a DNA
test proved that the semen from the vic was his, not McClain’s. He finally gave it up and admitted that he’d killed the woman because she’d been holding back money on him.”
“And what became of McClain?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Tom replied. “The state apologized profusely and let him go. He’s a free man, and we had no right to keep tabs on him. I imagine that by now he’s probably out shopping for a lawyer so that he can sue the hell out of us. What’s your interest in all of this anyhow?”
“My interest is that, within the last two weeks, two of the jurors at McClain’s trial have been shot to death. The attorney who defended him has been abducted and her husband was killed as well.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Meagher exclaimed. “This is the Thompson case?”
“Yeah. After she graduated law school, Thompson spent two and a half years in the PD’s office. One of her clients was Carl McClain.”
“Jesus Christ, Sean, I don’t know what to say. McClain was clearly innocent of the hooker’s murder, and he’d never been charged with any other crime. Obviously, we had no cause to hang on to him or to track his movements once he left Lewis.”
“I know that, Tom,” I replied. “And I’m certainly not blaming you guys. But it looks like McClain may be looking to settle scores for the time he lost.”
“Jesus,” he said again.
I thanked Collins for coming in and hustled him back downstairs. Then I sprinted back up to the third floor and found Maggie coming out of the women’s john. I grabbed her by the hand and said, “Come with me.”
“What the hell’s going on?” she asked as I hurried her down the hall.
“We’ve got the wrong guy, Maggie. It’s not Petrovich. It’s somebody named Carl McClain.”
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