Watch Your Back

by Rose, Karen

  ‘Her debut what?’ Hyatt asked.

  ‘Her debut ball,’ Stevie said. ‘The wealthy elite apparently still do this.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ Agent Kate Coppola accused, eyes narrowed.

  Stevie shook her head. ‘I was surprised too, but it’s true. Lisa had her debut ball right after she graduated from Bryn Mawr. She seems smart enough.’

  ‘Why did she choose Robinette, then?’ Coppola asked.

  ‘The man can be charming,’ Stevie said grimly. ‘If she believes herself in love, she could be a hard sell. But if the bloom is wearing off the rose, we might get to him through her.’

  ‘We’ll try,’ Joseph said. ‘But not until we can figure the best way to do it.’

  Dr Brodie spread lab reports on the table. ‘If we can somehow get her to supply us with a hairbrush or toothbrush, that would be great. We have the DNA profiles from the hair found at the beach house and the blood found at Daphne’s farm. They’re an exact match. Now if we only had something to match them to.’

  Stevie’s head came up, her eyes finding Clay’s. ‘We do, actually. What about Levi?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘That would connect Robinette to the crime scene.’

  ‘Levi? Robinette’s son?’ Joseph leaned back in his chair, nodding. ‘We can show a familial relationship. Did you run DNA on Levi eight years ago?’

  ‘No,’ Stevie said, ‘because he was never formally charged and booked, but we can. The ME’s office keeps blood samples, right? They autopsied him.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Brodie said, typing on her phone. ‘Just texted the lab with the request.’

  ‘I just hope the kid’s blood didn’t disappear like his dad’s cigarette butt,’ Hyatt said darkly.

  ‘If it has, we can dig him up. Levi is buried next to his biological mother in a little parish cemetery, south of Baton Rouge.’

  ‘How did the boy’s mother die?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘Overdose,’ she said. ‘That Levi had followed in his mother’s footsteps was one of the things Robinette lamented when he brought us the boy on a silver platter. She died while he was stationed in Iraq and he couldn’t get leave to come home. He arranged with his friend, Rene Broussard, to take Levi in. Rene was married to Julie, who cared for Levi like he was her own.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Agent Coppola frowned. ‘Robinette married his friend’s wife? How?’

  ‘Rene had died a few years before,’ Stevie said. ‘He was found half-naked and dead in a known hangout for prostitutes. Julie was devastated according to her employees, and nobody thought she married Robinette for love. Remember the employee that created the distraction so that I could get Robinette’s cigarette butt? He told me that Julie was afraid that Robinette would take Levi away, after Rene died. The employee believed that Robinette had leveraged Julie’s affection for Levi to get her to marry him and give him a “cushy VP job”.’

  ‘So Julie married Robinette,’ Coppola said, ‘and gave him the job he wanted. But then Julie was killed. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Stevie swallowed hard. ‘I never had the opportunity to find out for sure. Julie was found in a car with her head chemist, made to look like they were running away together. I figured then that Robinette had gotten power hungry and killed Julie to gain control of the pharmaceutical company. I guessed that the head chemist was too loyal to Julie to cooperate after she was dead so Robinette killed him, too, or there was something else going on – like maybe the two knew something about Robinette they shouldn’t know. What that was, I don’t know. But one thing that everyone in the factory was sure of was that Julie loved Levi and that Levi loved her, too. I agreed. I didn’t believe Levi killed her. But after Levi was dead, Robinette apparently didn’t want him buried near Julie, so he shipped the body south.’

  Hyatt turned to her with a frown. ‘Wait. How do you know where the boy’s buried?’

  Her chin lifted slightly. ‘Because I went to the funeral.’

  JD’s brows shot up. ‘You really were on Robinette, weren’t you? Did he see you there?’

  ‘I didn’t think so at the time. Now, I’m not so sure.’

  Hyatt looked stunned. ‘You went all the way to Louisiana? How? I never approved it.’

  ‘I flew,’ she admitted. ‘I was on admin leave after I shot Levi and I had time. I believed his father had set him up. I wanted to watch Robinette’s behavior at the funeral.’

  ‘What did Paul say about this?’ Grayson asked, looking as stunned as Hyatt.

  Stevie smiled sadly. ‘He bought my plane ticket. He didn’t want me driving to Louisiana because I was pregnant and tiring more easily. We didn’t have a lot of money and I felt guilty that my stubbornness had cost us some of our savings.’ Then she met Clay’s gaze. ‘He said I wasn’t stubborn, that I was tenacious and he didn’t consider that a failing.’

  Clay squeezed her hand. ‘Because it’s not.’

  Her smile was small and sad. ‘But I tugged the tiger’s tail a little too hard, didn’t I? I think now that Robinette must have seen me there, because a week later, Paul was gone.’

  ‘Not your fault, Stevie,’ Clay said. ‘What happened at the funeral? What did you see?’

  ‘Not much. Robinette had friends standing around him at the graveside, but I didn’t see anyone there for Levi. I remember thinking that. No grandparents, teachers, relatives. Nobody. There was no fuss, no excitement. Nothing to see.’

  ‘How did you know the people there were Robinette’s friends?’ JD asked.

  ‘One of them was Brenda Lee in her wheelchair. The others stood around her and Robinette like they’d known each other for years. All straight and tall . . . like they were all military. Wait a minute.’ She drummed her fingers on the table, her eyes unfocused as she searched her memory. ‘One of them might have been Henderson. And a big guy who might have been Westmoreland. Joseph, do you have his photo?’

  Joseph found it in his folder and gave it to her. ‘Is this him?’

  ‘I think so, yeah. I need to go home. To my house.’

  ‘Why?’ Clay asked, surprised.

  ‘Because I took pictures of the people with Robinette that day. They’re on the camera I was using before Paul was killed.’ She faltered for a moment but then her chin came up. ‘I assume it got packed away. I never saw it again, but Izzy might know where it is. I need to find it.’

  ‘Wait.’ Joseph pulled her back into her chair when she started to rise. ‘Why is the camera so important? We know about Brenda Lee Miller, Henderson and Westmoreland.’

  ‘But there were others there,’ she said. ‘Let’s assume that Robinette killed Julie to get control of the company. The employees said he was a figurehead who spent more time golfing than working. They said the real brains had been Julie and her first husband, Rene.’

  ‘That Robinette killed his wife for power I can buy,’ Joseph said. ‘What does that have to do with the funeral pictures you took with your camera?’

  ‘Brenda Lee became his PR person when Julie died,’ Stevie said. ‘You told me on the phone yesterday that Westmoreland is the head of security for Filbert Pharmaceutical Labs. Robinette got control of the company and brought in his cronies from the old days. If we can find some of those other people, maybe one of them can lead us to Westmoreland.’ She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Or shed more light on Henderson’s assertion that we don’t know “jack shit” about Robinette. That’s been worrying at me.’

  Joseph grew quiet. ‘Me, too. I don’t think she was bluffing. Okay, we’ll get the camera. Novak, that’s yours. Izzy’s at the farm. Ask her about Stevie’s old camera.’

  ‘And when I find the funeral photographs?’ Novak asked.

  ‘Check their faces against FPL’s website,’ Joseph said, ‘and send a copy of the photos to my Army contact, the one who found Westmoreland
for us yesterday.’ He looked at Stevie. ‘I can see you thinking. What else do you have?’

  ‘I was thinking about the roles that Robinette would need to fill when he took over Julie’s company. Julie was the face of the company and Robinette took that role, supported by his PR person. But Robinette would also need a new chemist, for example. The old chemist was found dead with Julie. They both had the same blunt force wounds on the backs of their heads.’

  ‘Sloppy when you think about it,’ JD said with a frown. ‘Robinette seems too smart to stage an accident that was so obviously a murder.’

  ‘It wasn’t all that obvious,’ Hyatt said, giving Stevie a look that was equal parts regret and approval. ‘Stevie diagrammed the accident scene, showed how the crash couldn’t have caused the head injuries and got the ME to change his cause of death determination to homicide.’

  ‘Because a few of the employees had reached out to me, told me it smelled fishy to them,’ Stevie said. ‘I figured Julie’s murder was not premeditated. If Robinette had had time to plan, he wouldn’t have been so sloppy. Control of the company was the only motive that made sense, unless he really did discover them having an affair.’

  ‘Even if it was a crime of passion,’ Agent Coppola said, ‘he set up his son to take the blame.’

  Stevie exhaled quietly. ‘And then hired Silas Dandridge to shut me up, one way or the other. It made me wonder how Robinette and Silas crossed paths. Silas worked for Stuart Lippman, the defense attorney. The cases we’ve seen so far have been connected at their source by court cases. The real guilty parties were contacted by Lippman or one of his underlings and sold the opportunity to make their crimes disappear after they were either arrested or charged.’

  ‘By framing innocent people,’ Grayson said. ‘But Robinette was never charged with Julie’s murder. Never even arrested. And he isn’t named on the list of cases Lippman left behind.’

  ‘Robinette must have had a few bad moments after Lippman died,’ JD added, ‘worrying that his name would be on the list. He must have thought he was home free when nobody came after him. Until you started digging, Stevie. You started turning up cases that weren’t on Lippman’s list. Robinette must have been worried you’d expose him. So he tried to kill you.’

  ‘That’s where I came out last night,’ Stevie agreed.

  ‘But how Robinette connected with Lippman and Silas is still the question,’ Hyatt said.

  ‘We might have the answer,’ Stevie said. ‘Clay’s assistant Alec has a program that takes persons of interest in an investigation and finds connections.’

  ‘It’s how we connected Tony Rossi to Danny Kersey, the retired cop in Arizona, who gave us Scott Culp in IA,’ Clay said. ‘We asked Alec to run Robinette against the participants in Lippman’s cases – the names had come from Stevie’s personal notes and all the police reports she’d been re-investigating. He worked all night and got one name – Virgil Barry.’

  ‘Virgil Barry’s son is on Lippman’s master list,’ Stevie said. ‘Virgil Junior was arrested for assault and battery, but the weapon used on the victim was found under the bed of another young man, who was later charged and convicted. Virgil Junior’s arrest was dropped.’

  ‘How does Virgil Senior connect to Robinette?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘They golfed together,’ Clay said. ‘The article Alec found was about an annual team scramble for charity. Robinette and Virgil Senior played on the same team for years.’

  ‘So we talk to Virgil Senior,’ Joseph said with a satisfied nod, but Stevie shook her head.

  ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘He and his wife were shot to death in a home invasion and robbery a few days after Levi Robinette’s funeral.’

  ‘And a few days before Paul and Paulie were killed,’ Clay added quietly.

  ‘Of course they were,’ Joseph said, disgusted. ‘Were their killers caught?’

  ‘No,’ Stevie said. ‘Virgil Senior and his wife were killed next to the locked safe in his home office. The investigator concluded that they were killed because they wouldn’t open the safe. But if Robinette got Senior to tell him how Junior’s charges disappeared, Robinette wouldn’t have let him live. I can’t imagine Virgil Senior voluntarily gave him Lippman’s name. In the cases we’ve reopened to date, Lippman’s clients said that they were told if they shared Lippman’s identity, they’d die, and so would the children they’d paid to protect. My theory is that Robinette threatened Mrs Barry to make Virgil Senior cooperate. When Virgil gave Robinette Lippman’s name, Robinette killed them both. Of course, we can’t confirm any of this with Virgil Senior, but the timing is too perfect to be coincidental.’

  ‘I agree,’ Joseph said. ‘Since we can’t talk to the father, what about the son? If Virgil Junior’s case was on Lippman’s master list, he would have been re-investigated this past year.’

  Stevie shook her head again. ‘He would have been, but Virgil Junior committed suicide shortly after his parents’ murder. OD’d on pills.’

  Grayson frowned. ‘Then that’s a dead end. That Robinette and Virgil Senior golfed together is circumstantial. Unless we can show how Robinette hired Lippman, we can’t connect him to Paul’s murder. We can still get him on the murders and attempted murders over the past few days through the DNA he left behind at the beach and at the farm, but not on conspiring to kill Paul and Paulie. I’m sorry, Stevie.’

  ‘It’s okay. I figured as much.’ Stevie glanced at Hyatt. ‘But there is one other possibility. According to Lippman’s master list, the cop who covered up Virgil Junior’s crime was Elizabeth Morton. She was also the cop that investigated the murder of Virgil Senior and his wife.’

  Hyatt sighed wearily. His expression was matched by the others in the room except for Kate Coppola, who looked confused.

  ‘Elizabeth Morton was Homicide, wasn’t she?’ Agent Coppola asked.

  ‘She was one of mine,’ Hyatt said, ‘but Lippman had coerced her into working for him by breaking her son’s leg. He still walks with crutches.’

  ‘Elizabeth was Phil Skinner’s partner,’ JD added, the tightness in his voice a clear indication that he hadn’t begun to get over witnessing the man’s suicide, just a few days before.

  ‘She also killed both Silas and Lippman,’ Stevie said. ‘She killed Silas in my living room to keep him from giving us Lippman’s name.’

  ‘And she killed Lippman because she’d finally planned to take her son and run and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t follow her,’ Grayson finished.

  Stevie nodded. ‘Elizabeth may be able to confirm that Robinette connected with Lippman. She’s doing her time at Jessup. We could be there in less than an hour.’

  ‘The question,’ Joseph said, ‘is which one of us will she talk to. We know she hates Clay and me. We helped catch her last year when she was trying to escape after killing Lippman.’

  ‘And I testified against her,’ Grayson said. ‘As did Paige. She hates us, too.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Hyatt said. ‘Stevie, you’ll be with me. You and she are part of the same club – both of you have had your children threatened. Lippman broke her son’s leg and Silas held your daughter at gunpoint.’

  Stevie had paled. ‘And killed my son.’

  Hyatt flinched as if she’d struck him. ‘I know. I’m so sorry.’

  The fight seemed to drain out of her. ‘Me too. When do we leave for Jessup?’

  ‘As soon as we’re done here,’ Hyatt said. ‘We’ll need to inform the investigation team from the state. This isn’t related to Scott Culp and the IA scandal, but a conversation with any dirty cop skirts the boundaries we were given by the State’s Attorney’s office.’

  ‘Let’s just recap,’ Joseph said. ‘Novak’s working on getting Stevie’s photos from Levi Robinette’s funeral so that we can hopefully identify more of Robinette’s employees. Brodie is getting a sample of
the boy’s DNA, either via autopsy samples or exhumation. JD?’

  ‘I’m going to prison, too, but not the same one as Stevie and Hyatt,’ JD said. ‘I want to get the statement from the bartender who drugged Sam Hudson. If he’ll confirm Kayla Richards’s ID of Silas, then that’ll be one more “I” dotted when Grayson brings this case to court. I’m hoping he knows more of the story, like how John Hudson met up with Silas in the first place.’

  ‘Good luck. Grayson?’

  ‘I have to go to court, but Daphne’s got the draft of my warrant. If you get anything physical linking Robinette and Silas, call her and she’ll revise the warrant and get it in front of the judge.’

  ‘I have a question,’ Stevie said. ‘If Elizabeth Morton isn’t willing to talk, do we have any leeway in making her an offer? Reduced sentence? Anything?’

  Grayson looked skeptical. ‘Maybe. I’ll call my boss on my way to court and will let you know your parameters. Don’t count on any big concessions, though.’

  ‘I don’t want to offer her anything,’ Joseph said coldly. ‘But we may have no choice. Clay, I assume you’re going with Stevie.’

  ‘You assume correctly.’ There was no way in hell Clay was leaving her side.

  ‘Just . . . stay out of Morton’s view. I’d like to avoid making her contrary from the get-go. Kate, I have two things for you,’ Joseph said to Agent Coppola. ‘I want to know more about that lawyer who showed up to represent Henderson yesterday, Cecilia Wright. Henderson didn’t want her, seemed to think Wright was in cahoots with Robinette.’

  ‘Cahoots?’ Coppola teased. ‘You’ve been hanging around Daphne too much’

  Joseph’s mouth curved briefly, but then the weariness moved right back in to claim him. ‘Find out who hired Wright or how she connects to Robinette’s organization. Does Wright work for him? Did he coerce her? Bribe her? Did she serve with Robinette? I want the connections.’

  ‘Got it,’ Coppola said. ‘And the second thing?’

  ‘This second thing is your higher priority. Get close to Lisa Robinette. I want her husband’s DNA today. Check with me before you execute anything. I’ll make sure you have backup. Let’s meet back here at one. We’re done here.’ He sighed. ‘Now I have to go to a meeting to plan two department funerals.’