Compromising Positions

by Beverly Bird

  Still, it continued to bother him. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to disparage one or both of them, swiping a blank release form, then contacting the press.

  His phone suddenly rang again, startling him, breaking into his thoughts. He reached to answer it, smiling to himself. A point in her favor. It hadn’t taken her long to come to her senses and call back.

  “Jesse Hadley,” he answered.

  “It’s Roger Kennery.”

  Jesse blinked, feeling disappointment swell inside him. And that was new and unwelcome, too.

  “Roger,” he said carefully. “What’s up?”

  The man was the captain of the homicide unit of the P.P.D. He was someone else Jesse rarely encountered in person. He spoke to Kennery on the phone when a case demanded it, but they rarely met face-to-face.

  In the same moment, Jesse registered that Kennery’s purpose couldn’t be good if the man was calling him at home on a Sunday morning.

  “Something’s happened up in Chestnut Hill,” the captain answered. “I thought you might want to be notified on this one right out of the starting gate. In fact, given that your sister is out of town on her honeymoon, I’m on my way up there personally. I’m calling from my car phone.”

  Jesse considered what he didn’t say. This was obviously one of those cases that Kennery unabashedly threw his sister’s way because of her family connections. Tessa might be a Hadley, but to their parents’ great chagrin, she was also a damned fine homicide detective. Her husband was the maverick of the Homicide Unit, but he was one of the best the P.P.D. had to offer. They’d been partners before they got married, when protocol demanded that they be reassigned.

  “Money involved?” Jesse guessed. “Political clout?”

  “Chauncy clout.” Kennery clarified.

  Jesse stared at the wall, not assimilating the captain’s reply. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Lisette Markham Chauncy,” Kennery repeated. “Her maid found her at nine-fifteen this morning when she didn’t come down for breakfast.”

  The room seemed to tilt.

  “She’s dead? Lisette.?” Jesse shot to his feet only to sit down again hard. He had the absurd notion that at least now he knew why Angela’s beeper had been sounding off while he’d been speaking to her. “Dead?” he repeated.

  And then an unpleasant sensation swept over him. A cold, clammy feeling of guilt. He had talked so disparagingly of the woman the last time he had seen her.

  “Murdered?” he asked, his voice strangled. What a stupid question, he thought immediately. Of course it was murder, or Kennery wouldn’t be calling him.

  Lisette? Mousy, harmless, husband-hunting Lisette?

  “Like I said, I’m on my way there now,” Kennery replied. “Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks. I’ll...uh, I’ll meet you there.” Jesse hung up.

  He was shaken enough that he didn’t think about Angela again until he pulled into Lisette Chauncy’s driveway. The dark green coroner’s van that always gave him the willies was already parked there. Jesse got out of his Mercedes, feeling vaguely ashamed.

  In spite of the shocking circumstances, he was actually looking forward to seeing her again.

  Chapter 5

  Angela was having a hard time maintaining her emotional equilibrium on this one. It wasn’t just that she had glimpsed the victim—however briefly—striding across a lawn only two weeks before. It was more that something about this whole crime scene was so profoundly sad. She suspected that Lisette Chauncy was enjoying a great deal more attention now than she had ever had when she was alive.

  The detectives along with the lab and forensics staff worked in the woman’s bedroom without any of the off-color and grim jokes that usually accompanied their procedures. No one wanted to make a mistake here, she observed. There would be no oversights on this one.

  Angela schooled her own expression into professional curiosity as she watched, but everything inside her was cringing. She had been out running again before Jesse, then Ed, had called. She kept her hands deep in the pockets of her sweatpants so no one would notice if they trembled.

  She thought she was putting on a pretty good show of cool practicality until Jesse Hadley walked into the room.

  Her breath left her. Her pulse slammed. What was he doing here? He never showed up at crime scenes.

  Then again, this victim was a Chauncy, and a personal friend to boot.

  “Doctor,” Jesse said, stopping beside her. Just as though they had not argued on the phone just an hour or so earlier.

  She dragged air in and managed to give him little more than a curt nod. Inside, she scrambled to regain her composure.

  She wouldn’t look at him, but it didn’t matter. He smelled good, and he was close enough that she couldn’t avoid realizing it. This was crazy, she thought helplessly. She was at a murder scene. She was upset and striving mightily not to show it. And all she could think of in that moment was that he smelled like something dark and strong and mystifying. Something tantalizing that actually made her want to lean closer and breathe it in.

  She couldn’t quite put her finger on the scent and knew that even if he told her the name of it, she probably wouldn’t recognize it. It would be something expensive and exclusive.

  She felt him staring at her and swallowed carefully.

  Jesse was thinking that she was the most improbable-looking chief medical examiner he had ever encountered. He had no doubt that if anyone here didn’t know who she was, they would ask her to leave the room. No colorful, short dresses this time—they had been hard enough to accept, especially in light of her position. This morning, her hair was caught up at the crown of her head with some stretchy, elastic, purple thing. From that point downward, it spilled wildly to her shoulders. She wore no makeup. She had on gray sweatpants that clung loosely to her bottom and thighs, running shoes with no socks—glimpses of skin peeked out at her ankles—and a loose T-shirt that had been cut off at the waist. The front of it was emblazoned with some artwork depicting a Grateful Dead concert.

  She looked innocent and fresh-faced and naive. Only her expression belied the image. Her jaw was clamped tightly enough to hurt him.

  “Well?” he asked finally. He didn’t want to know and had to ask. “Where’s Lisette?”

  “She’s already in my van.”

  Thank God. He didn’t think he could have endured encountering her body. He drove his hands into his jeans pockets in case they might reveal his agitation.

  “Did you talk to her parents?” Angela asked after an awkward moment. Prom downstairs, she could hear the aggrieved shouts of Abe Chauncy and the steady, heart-wrenching sobs of Gwen, the woman’s mother.

  “Certainly.”

  “And?”

  “They want blood, and they want it yesterday.”

  “Of course.” She hesitated. “Captain Kennery thinks it was someone she knew. I’d have to agree with him.”

  Jesse’s heart skipped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Her pretty face hardened again. “Meaning that the people she knew don’t kill each other? Anyone can be incited to murder under the right circumstances. Counselor.”

  He was quiet for a moment, acknowledging that without words. “So what happened exactly?” he asked.

  Angela took a careful breath. “She was found sitting—propped up, actually—in bed. She was wearing a lavender silk negligee. Her mother swears Lisette never owned anything even remotely like it, but it’s always been my experience that mothers don’t generally know that sort of thing. It’s still on her, of course, but I’ll bag it for the lab. It looked expensive, exclusive. Maybe Homicide can find out where it came from.”

  Jesse nodded.

  Angela didn’t like telling the next part. It was what bothered her most of all. “There was a box of chocolate-covered strawberries on the bed beside her. One was missing. I’ll be able to tell you later whether she ate it, or if perhaps her killer did.”

  Jesse’s stoma
ch squirmed. He couldn’t immediately answer, and didn’t want to envision how she would find out.

  “There was also an opened bottle of champagne on her bedside table, half-empty.”

  Jesse finally swore.

  “I wasn’t able to find any wounds whatsoever except the gunshot,” she went on with deliberate dispassion. “The bullet shattered her left temporal parietal skull and exited the other side. That’s what they’re looking for there.” She nodded at a group of cops searching the opposite side of the room.

  Jesse thought about that. “Her cheek?”

  “The side of her head,” she corrected. “Probably the bullet was meant for her temple, and she tried to avoid it at the last possible moment.” She had to close her eyes then, although that was almost worse. She could still see the woman as they had found her. “That was the only sign that she had even remotely put up a fight. From the angle of the shot, I think her killer would have to have been seated on the bed beside her.”

  That did it. Jesse left abruptly, veering to the bathroom.

  She stared after him, bemused. When he came back, he looked pale.

  “She had more fun just before dying than she ever had in her life,” he said hoarsely, a halfhearted explanation.

  Angela nodded helplessly.

  He tunneled his fingers through his hair. He’d done all he could do here, Jesse realized, and he knew he should leave. For the sake of his own psyche, if nothing else. He’d done damage control with the press gathered outside, giving them one of the brief and none-too-informative statements they hated. He’d spoken soothingly and righteously to Lisette’s parents. He’d done all the things a good D.A. was supposed to do before he actually got down to the business of making a case with the evidence. And he couldn’t do that part of his job until it began trickling into his office.

  He looked down at Angela again, and he didn’t move.

  “Now what?” he asked. “What happens next?”

  “Now I take her back to the morgue as soon as I make sure there’s nothing else going on here that I need to know about.”

  “Will you call me as soon as you’re through?”

  Angela hesitated, but this was business. She glanced at him briefly. “Okay.”

  “I’ll be at home.”

  “I never wrote down your number.”

  No, he thought, she wouldn’t have. He wasn’t sure if he was irritated or—in spite of everything—amused.

  He went back into the upstairs hall, to a small cherry table he’d seen there. It had already been checked and dusted for prints. Everything in the house would be, before this morning was over, whether it seemed likely that the killer had touched it or not.

  The center drawer had been left open. Jesse spotted a pad of paper and a fountain pen and took them out, touching nothing else. He held the pad up to the light to make sure that there were no indentations remaining from the last sheet that had been written upon. When he found nothing, he scribbled his number and returned to Lisette’s bedroom.

  He slipped the piece of paper directly into the pocket of Angela’s sweatpants. “Don’t lose it.”

  She jolted when his fingers skimmed her hip. Then a sensation of warmth flooded through her. He left the room. She stepped into the doorway and stared after him, shaken.

  His stride was long, arrogant, confident. His black hair was vaguely windblown. Her legs went a little weak. How did the man manage to get to her this way?

  The closer he got, the more he touched her, the more he scared her.

  Jesse stopped in the living room to talk to Roger Kennery before he left, and a few moments later she trotted down the stairs. She looked like a high-school cheerleader headed for practice.

  She paused to speak to one of the lab technicians. Then she tossed her ponytail and went out the door.

  If she didn’t call him later, he would find her. He figured that between Lisette and the Shokonnet thing, he had plenty of reasons now to contact her. What he couldn’t quite fathom was his growing need to keep doing so.

  “What?’ he asked sharply, looking back at Roger Kennery. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Over here.” Kennery thrust a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a small study on the other side of the entry hall. “There’s something you need to hear.”

  Jesse followed him, not liking the tone of the man’s voice. A lab technician went with them. Kennery took a latex glove from the man and stepped up to an answering machine. He pulled the glove on, hit a button, and Jesse stared at the thing disbelievingly as his own voice filled the room.

  “Lisette. Sorry I wasn’t able to catch up with you at the wedding. I’ll visit later tonight, if you’ll be around.”

  Jesse felt his blood drain. “I didn’t call her.”

  Kennery raised a brow. “Actually, I have a hard time believing you would, given your well-documented taste in exceptionally good-looking women.”

  “That’s not me,” Jesse repeated, scarcely hearing him.

  “Oh, it’s you all right,” Kennery replied.

  “I didn’t call her!” He realized belatedly that he had shouted. He worked to get a grip on himself. But the implications of what he had just heard throbbed in his head along with his pulse, making him feel sick all over again.

  Kennery plucked the tape out of the machine and gave it to the technician to bag. “I’m sending it to Audio.”

  Jessed nodded slowly.

  “I’ve encountered this before,” Kennery explained. “It’s a snap to do with the right equipment. Take snippets of other tapes—a word here, a word there—and splice them together to make the voice say what you want it to say. Then record that onto still another tape that’s not been spliced. At first glance it looks legitimate. In fact, it takes equally specialized equipment to determine that it’s not genuine, but we’ve got it and we’ll do it.”

  Jesse’s head was spinning. His anger was building. Had someone tried to frame him? Had someone killed a pathetic, defenseless woman in order to get to him? Guilt made his skin crawl.

  “Or it could have been the other way around,” Kennery mused, as though reading his mind. “Maybe someone killed her for their own twisted pleasure, then decided to throw the blame your way.”

  Jesse thought of the Shokonnet thing. Suddenly, he had a strong hunch that these two incidents were connected. Somehow. Except given the supposed report of negligence turned into the press the Shokonnet thing had probably been aimed at Angela Byerly. This time someone clearly wanted a piece of him.

  What the hell was going on here?

  “No,” he said sharply. “They killed her in order to throw the blame my way. I just haven’t figured out why yet.” He went to the hall again and looked outside. The avid press was still gathered there. He swore succinctly. “Who else knows about this?”

  “You, me and that lab kid,” Kennery said.

  “It can’t get out.”

  “That goes without saying. I’ll talk to the lab, keep it quiet.”

  It wouldn’t work, Jesse thought. People talked, if only among themselves. His mouth crooked into a bitter smile. “Maybe somebody’s on my side.”

  “What?” Kennery asked, startled.

  Jesse didn’t answer, but he thought it would be damned hard to win a mayoral election with something like this hanging around his neck. Unfortunately, it would be equally difficult to take the district attorney slot. He could run for mayor without currently sitting in the District Attorney’s position, but he would lose a big advantage over his opponent. Especially with the specter of murder hanging over his head.

  His expression grim, he started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Kennery asked.

  “My office.” Tapes of his voice. There were only two places where they could be found. His office, and that little dictating recorder he kept in his briefcase.

  Then he would find Angela Byerly again. In spite of the way she turned him upside down, he realized suddenly that he ha
d need of her brain.

  He could very well be in deep trouble.

  Angela left the refrigerated autopsy room and headed for her office, shivering slightly. She’d dictated her findings onto tape, but she wanted to jot down a few of her more vague impressions while they were still fresh in her mind. They had no place in an official report, but by the same token, they might prove important later.

  She turned into her office and stopped dead.

  This time, she couldn’t have avoided the reaction for all the tea in China. Her mouth dropped open and her pulse rate soared. If Jesse rarely appeared at crime scenes, then he had never showed up in her morgue before.

  “I’m really having a hard time avoiding you these days,” she said when she finally found her voice.

  He’d been sitting with one hip on her desk, leafing through a forensics magazine he’d found on top. He put it down and pushed to his feet, then crossed slowly toward her where she stood rooted in the doorway.

  “I need you, Doctor.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Her heart jolted up into her throat. She stared at him disbelievingly. For a minute, she thought he actually blushed.

  “I need your help,” he clarified, then he scowled. “What’s all that?”

  She’d already pushed her hood back as soon as she’d left the autopsy room. It tended to be hot and confining, but she couldn’t risk any of her own hair or skin cells mingling with what the victim carried. She took her face shield off, as well, along with a pair of orange-tinted glasses.

  “It’s a big, bad world out there, Counselor,” she answered, wondering why she felt like laughing at his expression. He looked utterly horrified and not at all arrogant or confident at the moment.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “AIDS. Tuberculosis. Meningitis. Hepatitis. Shall I go on?” She held up the glasses. “As for these, they help me see in nonlight.”

  He recovered a little. “You’re worried about all that with Lisette? AIDS and whatnot? That’s who you were working on, right?”