The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6)

by Mike Markel

  “That was the interview when she identified Martin Hunt as one of the rapists, right?”

  “Yup. After we told her about what ‘Bye, Bye Virginia’ meant.”

  “She’s the kind of girl, her first instinct with cops is to lie or not give anything up. I say we just act like it was Martin, and she’ll correct us if we’re wrong. What do you think?”

  “That’s good. Want to call her now?”

  “Yeah, dial her for me, would ya?”

  Ryan dialed her. I picked up and hit the lit button on my desk phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Elena, Detective Seagate. I’m calling to tell you you can go home now.”

  “It’s all over?”

  “Your part of it’s over. We arrested Martin Hunt, from the fraternity. He tried to kill Abby Demarest.”

  “She dead?”

  “No, she’s alive. We hope she’s gonna be okay. But Martin Hunt is gonna go to jail for a long time.”

  “For rape?”

  “For the moment, it’s just for trying to kill Abby. The way it works, we can have you come into police headquarters and make a statement about what Martin and the others did at the fraternity party. If the prosecutor thinks we can use that information to bring additional charges against Martin, we’ll do that. Not today, though.”

  “So I go home now?”

  “Yeah, but before you go, we want to ask you a couple of questions about that video.”

  “We already talk about that.”

  “I know, but my boss wants to get a couple of things straight. We can do it right now on the phone. You don’t have to come in to headquarters.”

  She sighed. “Ask.”

  “After Martin shot the video of you and Abby, did he give you the memory card?”

  “I don’t know what is memory card.”

  “A plastic thing inside the camera where the video is stored.”

  “No give me anything. Abby give me five-hundred dollars, and I go.”

  “Just to be clear, you didn’t put the video on the Internet.”

  “I don’t have computer. Don’t know how to use computer.”

  “And you didn’t hear Abby and Martin talking about putting the video on the Internet?”

  “I take money and go.”

  “All right, Elena. Thanks very much. Go home, now, okay?”

  Elena hung up.

  “Rude woman,” I said.

  Ryan smiled. “Okay, so we’re in agreement that Martin Hunt ran the camera.”

  “True.”

  “And that Krista didn’t upload it to the porn site?”

  “That one’s a little less certain, but that’s how I see it. Abby and Martin made the video, so it makes sense he’s not gonna hand the video to Krista.”

  “Whatever Abby and Martin were up to,” Ryan said, “Krista was labor, not management, right? Now the question is, Why did Abby tell us she didn’t know the videographer? Why did she try to pin it all on Krista?”

  “Because she’s embarrassed. It’s her first lesbian episode, and she wants a video of it. She’s done straight videos, but not les ones. Martin turns around and uploads it without her knowledge or permission—and her life turns to shit. So she spins it so it’s the whore doing all the skanky shit. I could see that.”

  “Want to see if we can talk to her?”

  I nodded, and he phoned the hospital. They told Ryan the doctors said she is tired but appears to be coherent. We could have five minutes.

  Ryan and I rushed out and drove to the hospital. Her room was on the fourth floor. I walked up to the officer sitting outside her door. It was a young guy named Durvitz.

  I nodded to him. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, Detective.” He looked at his watch. “Almost two hours of nothing.”

  “Don’t sell nothing short.”

  We walked into Abby’s room. She had her bed set so she was half-lying, half-sitting. She was thumbing through a People.

  She looked up at me and Ryan. She looked a little pale, but most people wouldn’t be able to see she almost bit it this afternoon. “Detectives.” A smile came over her face.

  “Hey, Abby,” I said. “Remember us? Karen Seagate? Ryan Miner?”

  “I do,” she said. “I do.”

  “So your brain’s still working?”

  “As much as it used to.” She rolled her eyes, then addressed Ryan. “The nurses told me you pulled me out of the water?”

  “I did.” Ryan offered an uncomfortable smile.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No big deal. Part of the job. I’m glad to see you’re doing okay.”

  She leaned forward. “Any way you can get me out of here? I keep telling them I’m okay. This place creeps me out.”

  “Sorry.” Ryan shook his head, but he looked relieved to not be talking about his bravery. “I’m sure it’s just a precaution. They’ll spring you as soon as they can.”

  “Abby,” I said, “the docs want you to rest. They said we could only have a few minutes with you. We want to tell you where we are, okay?”

  “Yeah, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “First, Detective Miner and I witnessed Martin Hunt pulling you out of your car, beating you up, and throwing you into the reservoir. He’s admitted doing that, and he’s gonna do some jail time for that.”

  She nodded her head. Her expression was solemn. “I feel kind of bad about that, in a way, you know? Because this is really going to screw up his life. But what he did? I don’t even remember hitting the water. If it wasn’t for …” She eyes began to shine with tears, and she pointed to finger at Ryan. “I’d be dead.”

  “And we spoke with Dean Dawson at the university. They’re going to work with you—whatever it takes. If you want to stay at CMSU, they’ll help you with accommodations and everything. If you want to transfer to another university, they’ll help with that, too.”

  Abby Demarest began to break down now. “I can’t believe what happened to Jennifer.”

  I walked over to her bedside and put my hand on her shoulder. “That wasn’t you did that. It wasn’t your fault.” She gripped my hand. “The fire marshal is gonna find whoever did it. They will.”

  “God, I hope so. This has been such a nightmare.” She wept for a long moment. “How can all this shit happen? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t use that language.”

  Ryan smiled. “It’s okay. Some cops use that word, too.”

  “Professor Rinaldi, dead. Jennifer, dead.” Her eyes widened. “Me, almost dead.”

  “Well,” I said, “the hardest part is behind you now. Your job is to rest.”

  “I know. I know.” She tried to put on a smile. “Everybody tells me that.”

  “We’ll check in with you, okay, Abby? I mean, when you get out?”

  She nodded, then turned to Ryan. “I have to say it one more time, Detective. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Ryan blushed. “It’s fine. Forget it.”

  “I mean, not only for saving my life, but everything you two have done. You arrested Martin, and you arrested Krista, right?”

  I spoke. “Little later this afternoon. We’re still working out some legal details.”

  “I feel like such an asshole about that.”

  “Some time I’ll tell you about a few of the things I’ve done.” I forced a smile.

  “I still feel something for her, even though she killed Virginia. I should have known better than to get involved with her.”

  “It happens,” I said. “Don’t blame yourself too much.”

  “Even after she told me about it.”

  “When did she tell you that?” I said.

  “That night, in bed.”

  “Yeah, what did she say?”

  “She admitted she did it. It was just what Dean Dawson told me: Professor Rinaldi caught her stealing. She threw her out, was going to press charges.”

  “We might want to come talk with you a little more about that some t
ime. But try to put it out of your mind. Just concentrate on getting stronger, okay?”

  She wiped away her tears and smiled. “Thank you, both of you.”

  Ryan and I walked silently out of the hospital and across the parking lot. We got in the Charger. I turned over the engine and lowered the windows a crack.

  Ryan buckled his seatbelt. “Abby seems to have a little problem with telling the truth.”

  “I noticed that.” I hit Cool and Fan to get some of the warm air out of the cruiser.

  “Figured it out?”

  I smiled. “I think so.”

  Chapter 33

  The screen on my phone said Rawlings Fire Department. I picked up.

  “Detective Seagate, this is John Hynde, Fire Department. You got a second?”

  “Sure. What do you need?” I turned off the engine and hit Speaker on my phone.

  “I wanted to check something with you. It’s about the arson. The state fire marshal’s investigating team got in touch. You said this woman Abby Demarest had moved out of the apartment on Wednesday, is that correct?”

  I turned to Ryan. He said, “No later than Wednesday.”

  “Did you hear that?” I said into the phone.

  “Yeah, I did. Here’s the thing. We’ve got an eyewitness, a retired guy walks his dog around the development all the time. He says he saw Abby Demarest parking her car in her spot on Thursday evening, a little before the arson attack. He went over to her—you know, to chat—and she told him she was in a hurry and couldn’t talk right then.”

  “Maybe this guy had his dates wrong?”

  “He and his wife were out of town Sunday through early Thursday. He picked up his dog from the vet midday on Thursday.”

  “Well, maybe Abby just popped in to get something, and the arson happened later that evening. Just a coincidence?”

  “Could be. I’ll note it. Just wanted to make sure I had the dates right on when she’d left the apartment. Thanks for your help.”

  “No problem, Chief.”

  I ended the call and looked at Ryan. “If Abby torched her own apartment, maybe she uploaded the video.”

  Ryan sat there, his eyes closed, as if he didn’t want to follow this line of reasoning. He opened his eyes slowly, then shook his head in disbelief. “Help me understand why she would do that.”

  “She wanted to get into porn—”

  “Why?”

  “She’s bored? It sounds exciting? Bad self-image? Needs money? I don’t know. She was proud of the job she did screwing Krista, she wanted everyone to see? Does it matter?”

  He looked at me. “I’d like to think it does.”

  “Let’s put the motive aside for a minute and just see where the theory goes. One reason or another, she does the video with Krista and decides to put it online. Then all the harassment starts.”

  “If she’s orchestrating the whole thing, maybe there wasn’t any harassment,” Ryan said. “She did it all herself.”

  “That would take some expertise, wouldn’t it? I mean, to send yourself texts and emails and shit like that?”

  Ryan scratched at his chin. “Maybe Martin Hunt was in on it. Between the two of them, they could borrow phones and computers and send all kinds of threats to her.”

  “Or she got some real threats. Idiots like that Richard Albright guy. She sees the threats coming in, the word spreads around campus that there’s this student in a lesbian porn video, and she decides to amp it up a little.”

  “So she torches her own apartment?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Why not?”

  “Did she mean to kill her roommate?”

  “If she’s a total psycho, yeah. It makes for a much bigger story.”

  “I can’t believe she would do that.” He shook his head. “No matter how screwy she is, she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “It’s involuntary man, voluntary man, or murder,” I said. “We don’t have enough facts.”

  We sat there in the car for a minute.

  “We need to talk to the chief,” I said. I didn’t want to get a second reprimand today for failing to play well with others.

  “But we need a plan to propose to him,” Ryan said.

  “There’s only one person who’s gonna know whether she did it.”

  “Martin Hunt.”

  “How do we get him to tell us?”

  Ryan said, “If he tried to kill Abby, that’s because she’s the only one who knows what he did, which was kill Virginia Rinaldi. He eliminates Abby, nobody can finger him for the murder, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if we tell Martin that we’re going to charge him with the Rinaldi murder—and we are going to do that—the bond between him and Abby is broken,” Ryan said. “There’s no reason for him to protect her anymore.”

  I said, “Any reason not to tell him we’re gonna charge him with the murder?”

  “Not as long as we have the signed confession on the felony assault on Abby.”

  “Okay, let’s run it by the chief.”

  We drove back to headquarters and brought the chief up to speed, everything from Abby’s telling us the bullshit story we made up about how Krista killed Virginia to the fire chief telling us Abby was seen near her apartment right before the arson. It took him a few minutes to think through this theory of the case. Then he asked us for a plan. We told him our idea about interviewing Martin Hunt. The chief didn’t see any downside to telling Martin he was going to be charged with the Rinaldi murder. “Go ahead and talk to him,” the chief said. “He’s in Holding.”

  We called Holding and got an officer to bring Martin Hunt up to Interview 1. We sat in the interview room and waited a couple of minutes for him to be escorted up. When he entered the room, I was shocked. Even though there wasn’t anything different about him—he hadn’t been roughed up or anything, and he was still wearing his own clothes—now he looked broken. His eyes had that hollow look you see all the time on guys on the inside. Sitting on the concrete bench in Holding, he had time to think, and he realized that his whole life had just turned to shit.

  “We need to talk to you, Martin. Sit down.”

  He did, then he looked at me without saying anything.

  “We want you to help us understand what happened with Abby and Krista and Virginia Rinaldi.” I paused, waiting for him to tell me he would or he wouldn’t or how I could go fuck myself. But he didn’t say anything.

  Finally, he spoke. “Why should I help you?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

  He held my gaze.

  “Because you want us to call the prosecutor and tell him you’re cooperating?”

  “Change the felony to a misdemeanor.”

  “That’s not gonna happen, Martin. Since you bring it up, I think I should tell you you’re gonna be charged with another crime.”

  “What’s that? The prostitution thing?” It came out as a sneer.

  “Murder. Virginia Rinaldi.”

  “If you had any evidence linking me to that, you’d have arrested me a long time ago.”

  “Remember an hour ago, when they did the cheek swab in Booking? You’re now officially a felony offender, and we can take the DNA of an offender.”

  “So?”

  “When you beat up Virginia Rinaldi, you remember her scratching you? Three fingernails.”

  He looked at me, expressionless.

  “If you pulled down the neck of your T-shirt, on the right side …” I pointed.

  He didn’t move.

  “I bet we’d see three marks on your neck.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Don’t wanna do that? That’s okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna match your DNA to the DNA of some tissue samples under her fingernails. If they don’t match, you do the time for the assault on Abby. If they do match, we add the murder charge.”

  His shoulders slumped and his eyes closed. His head started to shake a little bit, almost imperceptibly, then san
k onto his chest.

  “You okay, Martin?”

  Slowly he raised his chin and opened his eyes. But he was silent.

  “So, if it turns out the DNA matches, you’re looking at the needle. If the prosecutor says you cooperated, you might be able to take that off the table.”

  “I want to talk to the lawyer.”

  I nodded. “Okay. How about I call him now? Or do you need to see him in person?”

  “Phone.”

  Ryan pulled out his phone, called the public defender, and asked if he could give Martin Hunt a minute on the phone. Macmillan said yes. Ryan said to Martin, “Want us to leave?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you do.”

  Ryan handed Martin his phone. Martin explained the situation, then listened for about thirty seconds. Then he ended the call and handed Ryan back his phone. “I want that in writing.”

  “Tell you what, Martin,” I said. “We’ll call the prosecutor right now and ask him if he’s willing to put it in writing. If he says yes, you talk to us. You see the recording system is off, right? We have no official record for anything you tell us now. We can’t use it against you. Then, when the prosecutor’s office prepares the statement about dropping the lethal injection, you sign it and we get you to write up what you tell us now. That’s the best I can do. If you don’t work with us now, we’ll type your DNA anyway and match it to the sample under the professor’s fingernails. The clock is running. If we make the match before you decide to talk to us, there’s no deal. You didn’t cooperate, and you face lethal injection. If you talk to us now, we’ll work with the prosecutor.”

  Martin spoke to Ryan. “Call the prosecutor now.”

  “Good,” I said. “Ryan, call Larry’s office.” He did it and handed me the phone. I hit Speaker. I had to talk to a few people before Larry Klein got on.

  “Larry, Seagate. I’m with an offender named Martin Hunt, who has signed off on a felony assault a little earlier today. It’s related to the Virginia Rinaldi case. We anticipate charging him with that murder, and we want him to help us with a related case: the arson. I told him you’d file for life without parole rather than death if he cooperates.”