“I know where we can get prints,” Carolyn told her. “Thomas was at Neil’s last night. He drank a glass of tea. I put it in the dishwasher.”
“Your brother probably washed it already,” the detective said.
“I doubt it,” she told her, thinking that would have been true in the past. “I left John and Rebecca with him tonight, so he probably hasn’t had time to do any cleaning. I’m sure Thomas touched other things as well. Send a CSI team over there. I’ll call Neil and tell him they’re coming.”
“Your brother’s house isn’t a crime scene, Carolyn.”
“You have three people who saw Marcus at his office yesterday until nine at night. Thomas showed up at Neil’s around seven. Besides, I have another lead.”
“Wait,” Mary said, “Marcus was involved in this, Carolyn. Kathleen Masters said she shot him thinking he was her husband. We don’t know what happened to him. He isn’t here. At least he’s not dead. Dead bodies don’t walk away.”
“He’s on his way to the hospital. The bullet wound isn’t life-threatening. I need to go. I’ll call you later.”
Carolyn booted up her laptop. Something had been bothering her since she’d reviewed the reports on the Helen Carter case, one of the reasons she’d decided to have John and Rebecca stay with Neil another night. Opening the Grace Findley file, she picked up the phone and punched in the number for the victim’s parents. After telling Mr. Findley who she was and apologizing for waking him, she asked if she could stop by.
Grabbing her briefcase, she raced to her car and headed for the Findley house. They lived in Santa Paula, a city not far from Ventura. Something Carter had said to her now seemed important, especially in light of what she’d learned tonight. There was also the similarity in names. Criminals such as Thomas who used aliases were known to occasionally pick similar names. Part of Thomas’s psychosis seemed to revolve around his desire to take over his brother’s life. Marcus had not only inherited the family fortune, he had maintained their father’s respect.
The mystery man Helen Carter had mentioned was named Martin.
Another factor was that the man had asked Grace Findley to marry him after only a short period of time. All the pieces were coming together. Thomas had married Lisa Sheppard, or at least had lived with her as husband and wife. He could have hired someone to pose as a minister, tricking her into believing they were legally married, even filled out phony paperwork and told her it was a marriage license. With money, a person could do anything. There was also Kathleen Masters from Carmel, the woman who claimed the man she’d killed was her husband. Not only had Thomas been a murderer, he appeared to have been a polygamist as well.
Pulling up in front of a modest stucco home, Carolyn parked and jogged to the front of the house. A haggard-looking man in his bathrobe answered. “What’s this about?” he asked, leading her down the hall to the kitchen. “My wife’s asleep. She’s been on tranquillizers since Grace was killed, and I don’t want to wake her.”
Carolyn handed him the two pictures of Matthew Sheppard, the one where he wore a cowboy hat and was standing next to Lisa and the computer-enhanced image Mary had prepared. “Have you ever seen this man before, Mr. Findley?”
The man slipped on his reading glasses to study the images as he and Carolyn sat at the kitchen table. “Well, yes,” he said. “This is Martin Knight. He asked my daughter to marry him. I mean, it wasn’t official or anything. Her mother and I were thrilled. Martin was a swell fellow. He was brokenhearted when that awful woman killed our precious Grace. We haven’t talked to him in a long time, though. He sold pharmaceuticals. When the papers implied that Grace had been involved with a lesbian, he…” He paused and dabbed at a tear in his left eye. “I’m sorry. All we wanted was for Grace to have a normal life. Can you blame us for that? If she’d stayed with that woman, she would have never had children.”
“The police will be in contact with you, Mr. Findley,” Carolyn said, thinking the best thing for Grace would have been for her to do whatever made her happy. “Do you happen to have any pictures of Martin?”
“No, no,” he said, walking her to the door. “We tried to take some snapshots of him and Grace one day. He said he was camera-shy. I wish we had. It would have been something nice to remember.”
“Do you recall if he had a scar on his right arm?”
Mr. Findley adjusted the sash on his robe. “Now that you mention it, he did. He said he was robbed. The thug cut him with a knife.”
All they needed now, Carolyn thought, cranking the engine on her car, was to compare the unidentified prints found in Grace Findley’s apartment with those of Thomas Wright. Even the most meticulous killers were occasionally sloppy. What had Grace found out that caused him to kill her? There were dozens of questions that would never be answered. Grace Findley, Lisa Sheppard, and Eleanor Beckworth had taken them to their grave.
Carolyn rolled down the window. The air seemed fresher and more fragrant, as if someone had finally thrown out a trash can full of rotting garbage. She felt revitalized, able to take on the world again. She didn’t know where things would go with Marcus, but she could once again trust her judgment. More important, this had been the day she’d been waiting for. As soon as she checked on Marcus, she would drive to the jail and tell Helen Carter the news.
She had saved a life, maybe not a spectacular life, but nonetheless a life.
EPILOGUE
Monday, October 23—4:45 P.M.
Carolyn, Hank, Mary, two FBI agents, and two attorneys from the DA’s office, and DA Kevin Thompson were assembled around the large table in the conference room at the police department.
Hank was interrogating a man named Freddy Olson, a thirty-two-year-old hacker who went by the name of Resare, Eraser spelled backwards. He was wanted in seven states, and had cut a deal with the Feds in exchange for information on other crimes. The FBI was extremely interested in finding out how he’d managed to crack their system. Olson would still go to prison for four years. If he’d refused to cooperate, his sentence would have been considerably longer.
The body found on Marcus’s property was positively identified as Thomas Wright. Charley Young had located a scar on his right forearm, and the same DNA recovered from the crimes scenes. When his fingerprints came back as a match to those found in the apartment of Helen Carter’s lover, Grace Findley, they knew Thomas Wright had been a serial killer.
Hank asked, “When did you first start doing business for Thomas Wright?”
“Maybe fourteen years ago,” Olson said, smacking a wad of gum. “He wanted me to establish a variety of fictitious identities for him. He paid well. I had no complaints until recently when he tried to stiff me for fifty thou.”
“Precisely what did you do for him on this particular occasion that was worth this kind of money?”
“I hacked into the Bureau of Vital Statistics and erased all records of his birth,” Olsen answered, tipping his chair back on its hind legs. “That was a bitch, let me tell you. Not as difficult as DMV, though. New York has a pretty tight security system. It took me about three months to get into that baby.”
“Do you know of any other names Dr. Wright used outside of Dean Masters and Matthew Sheppard?”
“Yeah,” he said, slapping the chair back onto the floor. “Morris England, Tad Summerset, Burt Wasserman, Harold Carmichael. Shit, there’s so many, even I don’t remember them and I invented them.”
“Do you know what addresses he lived at when he used these aliases?”
“Nah,” Olsen told him. “I don’t even know the states. He was an elusive guy, man. You saw all the different pictures, didn’t you? He was good at making himself look like someone else. The cowboy gig was pretty funny. I mean, he used to be a shrink. He was a sophisticated dude. I was curious so I asked him about it. He said he liked to sample different lifestyles. I guess that’s how he got his kicks.”
“He got his kicks by murdering women,” Mary said, standing and slamming her chair back t
o the table. “You’re lucky the FBI needed information, Olson. If it’d been left to me, I would have made certain you were prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
She gestured for Carolyn, and the two women stepped out into the corridor.
“Think there are other victims?” Carolyn asked.
“I hope not,” Mary said, resting her back against the wall. “Now the FBI will have to check on all these other identities. Didn’t that prick in there know what kind of man he was dealing with? Law abiding citizens don’t use dozens of different names. We also don’t know if Wright used another hacker and there are even more identities to track down. This case is going to take years to resolve. To be honest, I don’t think we’ll ever know all the crimes Wright committed.”
“Hank said you found something out about the key.”
“Yeah,” Mary said. “We discovered some of Holden’s things inside a car he’d stolen. There was a bunch of letters his mother had written to him in prison. She kept asking him to forgive her for the way she’d treated him as a child, and told him she was saving money for him when he got out of prison. She must have been living like an animal inside that old house. The water and power had been turned off for years. When we got a court order to open the safety deposit box at Washington Mutual, we found close to twenty grand in cash. The money will be distributed to Holden’s surviving victims and their families.”
Carolyn said, “Ventura is out of it, right?”
“Yeah,” Mary told her, “unless we come up with another body.”
“What’s going to happen to Kathleen Masters?”
“Self-defense,” the detective said. “There’s not a jury in the world that would put that poor woman in prison. She’s been through enough pain to last a lifetime. Kevin Thomas is even dropping the gun charges. She’s back in the hospital. They say she’s suffering from exhaustion and some kind of infection. I spoke to the doctor last night. He said she’ll be all right. She was supposed to be home recuperating, not running all over the place chasing after her bastard husband.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Carolyn said, thinking of her conversation with Veronica, “has any new evidence turned up in the Abernathy killing?”
“Nope,” Mary said, somewhat disinterested. “From what I heard, it’s already on the back burner. No witnesses, no fingerprints, no DNA. Whoever killed him seems to have gotten away with it.”
“What about Lester McAllen?”
Mary brushed her hair behind one ear. “Well, that’s the Sheriff’s case, and as far as I know, there are no leads there, either. I do know one thing.”
“What?” Carolyn said, hoping it had nothing to do with Tyler Bell.
“Guy butchers a little kid like that,” the detective told her, “I doubt if anyone’s busting their chops to find the person who killed him. Know what I mean?” She smiled. “Everything must be going right for you in the romance department. Turn around. Looks like you’ve got company.”
Marcus was striding toward her, dressed in jeans and a pale blue sweater. Carolyn’s face lit up and she rushed over to embrace him. Together, they walked back over to where Mary was standing. The detective extended her hand. “No hard feelings, I hope,” she said. “Guess you were the right Wright brother after all, no pun intended. How’s your shoulder?”
“Almost well,” Marcus said, glancing over at Carolyn. “I had a great nurse.”
“You got that right,” the detective told him. “Take good care of our lady. Treat her wrong and you’ll have Hank back on your ass.”
Marcus put his hand on his head. “Oh, no,” he said, joking. “Trust me, Carolyn is in good hands. Seriously, though, I know Hank’s a good man, but I don’t think he cares much for competition.”
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” Mary said. “You won’t believe who he’s all hot and heavy with…Martha Ferguson, of all people.”
For a minute, Carolyn drew a blank. “You mean Dr. Martha Ferguson? I thought he couldn’t stand her.”
“Things change.”
Marcus said, “Did you tell Mary about our trip, sweetheart?”
“We’re going to Paris,” Carolyn said, a sly smile on her face.
“Wow,” the detective exclaimed. “I should be so lucky. When are you leaving?”
“Next weekend,” she told her. “We’re staying at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. Who wants to fly all the way to Europe? You spend half your vacation just getting there and back. I just got back from a leave of absence and Marcus has a business to run, so this fits our schedule.”
“Are you guys eloping or something?”
Carolyn laughed. “Not exactly,” she said, locking eyes with Marcus. “But we’re going to have two days to ourselves without kids.”
“Humph,” Mary said, arching an eyebrow. “Why is it I don’t need to ask what you’re going to be doing? Now that’s the kind of vacation I need. You wouldn’t happen to know any available men, would you, Marcus? Black, yellow, brown, I’ll take whatever I can get as long as they’re decent.”
“Dozens,” he said. “I’ll start asking around and let you know.”
Carolyn linked arms with Marcus and they took off down the corridor. Before they disappeared around the corner, she glanced back at Mary and waved.
Don’t miss Nancy Taylor Rosenberg’s next thriller starring probation officer Carolyn Sullivan…
REVENGE OF INNOCENTS
Coming in hardcover from Kensington in May 2007!
CHAPTER 1
Death showed up amid the smoke and flying embers. She was sitting on the front steps of Ventura High with Chloe when she saw his car. He would wait her on a side street. If she made him wait too long, he would beat her. Today, he would wait.
“They announced on TV that the schools were going to be closed,” Chloe, a short girl with brown hair and freckled skin, said. “I can’t believe my stupid mother didn’t tell me. I could have slept late. Now that we’re here, want to do something?”
“I can’t,” the other girl said, raising her eyes, then lowering them. “I have an appointment.” What would she look like in her coffin? Would they leave it open or closed? How many people would show up? The only thing that bothered her was not being able to control what they did to her after she died. It would be over, though, and over was enough.
“What kind of appointment?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean, you don’t remember?” Chloe said. “Is it a doctor, a shrink, a dentist? Do you at least know when you’re supposed to be there? If your appointment is this morning, we might still be able to do something this afternoon.”
“I have an essay I have to finish.”
“So what? Let’s have some fun today. You’re too uptight about everything.”
“I should have graduated last year, Chloe. I’m eighteen and I’m still in high school. How do you think that makes me feel?”
Chloe reached over and touched her arm. “Hey, are you okay? You’ve been acting weird lately. Where were you last week? You and Reggie didn’t run away and get married, did you?”
“No,” she said. “I was sick.”
Chloe persisted. “Did you have the flu?”
“I have to go,” she told her, annoyed by the barrage of questions. She stood and made her way through a small throng of students.
“Maybe we’ll get another day off tomorrow,” Chloe yelled. “Who knows? We might get lucky and the school will burn down.”
Her plan to hold him off wasn’t working. She’d devised a new plan, but the timing had to be perfect. Weak and dizzy, she knew if she passed out in a public place, they would take her to the hospital and find out what was hidden underneath her clothes.
As she stared at the black clouds rising into the atmosphere, she noticed her sweatshirt was covered in ash. When she tried to brush some of it off, strands of hair became tangled in her fingers. She coughed from the smoke, causing her ribs to ache.
She entered the
girls’ bathroom and locked herself inside a stall. Maybe he didn’t know school had been called off because of the fires. If she stayed in here long enough, he might leave. She wanted to put an end to it today, but she was afraid.
Facing death wasn’t easy.
Thirty minutes passed. She left the stall, walked to the door, and peered out. The school looked deserted. Her throat was sore from breathing in the smoke-filled air, so she got a drink from the water fountain, then returned to the bathroom and squatted down in a corner.
The door burst open. “You saw me out there,” he shouted, his face flushed with rage. “You know how long I’ve been waiting?” He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her to her feet. “I’m parked in the regular spot. To make certain no one sees you, wait five minutes before you come out.” He stared at her, then added, “You look like shit. Comb your hair. And why are you wearing those heavy sweats on such a hot day?”
Once he left, she splashed water in her face and smoothed down her hair. She didn’t have a brush with her. No wonder her hair kept falling out. It wasn’t strictly poor nutrition. He kept pulling it. He even did it when other people were around, but he always laughed, making it seem like a game.
She walked to the street behind the school. He called it their special meeting place. To her, it represented the gate to hell. When she saw his car, she looked straight ahead and continued walking. He slammed on the brakes and leapt out, rushing over and seizing her by the arm. Her books tumbled to the ground. “Don’t act like this,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” she said, glaring at him until he released her. “What kind of surprise?”
“Get in the car and you’ll find out.”
Fighting him was useless. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten. Was it last night or the night before? Every other day, she sliced an orange into three equal pieces and parceled them out over the course of the day. She was getting forgetful and suspected days passed when she didn’t eat anything at all. Since she cleared the plates every night, no one knew what went down the disposal. She glanced at her books on the sidewalk but made no attempt to retrieve them. If everything went the way she’d planned, she would no longer need them. “I don’t care about your surprise.”
Sullivan’s Evidence Page 40