Did she ignore the odd creak that night? Brush off a feeling that someone was in the museum with her?
Or was she taken by complete surprise, attacked in her office out of the blue?
All at once I realized something and called Finn. He answered on the second ring, his tone sharp. “I’m on my way in. Can it wait?”
“No. How did the killer get out of the museum? Betty Starbuck activated the alarm system when she returned from the Burger Shack. We’ve been focusing on the theory that either the killer came in with her—i.e., someone she knew—or the killer remained inside after the last of the gala guests had left, hiding somewhere, like a restroom or an alcove. What we haven’t determined is how did the killer leave after he or she murdered Betty? The building stayed alarmed until Jerry Flowers arrived at five a.m.”
“He must have hid and then escaped at some point later in the day. The museum was searched, wasn’t it?”
“I assume so.”
“You assume so? What the hell does that mean? You’re not sure if it was cleared?” Finn was angry. “Jesus, Gemma. The killer could have been there all along.”
“I wasn’t first on the scene. By the time I got to the museum, the chief and the techs and even the goddamn media were there. So lay off me. I’m going to call Chavez, see what he says.”
I hung up and dialed the chief’s number.
Chavez picked up on the first ring. “This better be good. I’m about to play the eighth hole, and I’ve got a hundred bucks against the mayor on this game.”
“I’ll be quick, Chief. Did you or anyone else do a sweep of the museum, the morning Betty Starbuck was killed?”
“Of course we did a sweep. Jerry Flowers was scared to death when he called it in. Chloe instructed him to find an office or a closet and lock himself in until we arrived. Hell, we had no idea what we were walking into. Fred Newman and I did the sweep ourselves,” Chavez said. “There was no one there.”
He covered the phone and shouted something that sounded suspiciously like an insult directed at someone’s mother. “Gemma? I’ve got to go. The mayor’s about to go ballistic.”
I called Jerry Flowers next. His mother answered and, after I introduced myself, she asked me to hold while she woke Jerry up. I checked my watch—it was one in the afternoon.
Must be nice, I thought.
Then I remembered that the kid had been waking at four in the morning to start his cleaning job by five and felt sorry for disturbing his sleep.
“This is Jerry.”
“Hi, Jerry. I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a few more questions for you, about the morning you found Mrs. Starbuck’s body.”
“Yeah, sure. What do you want to know?”
“Talk to me about the alarm system.”
Silence, then Jerry said, “Well, like I said earlier, I have a code. I enter it into a panel on the back door, wait for the beep, then go inside and reset it. When I leave, I do it in reverse.”
“Only you didn’t reset the alarm that Saturday.”
“I didn’t?” Jerry sounded confused and more than a little afraid. “Are you sure?”
“I called the alarm company to find out when Mrs. Starbuck had used her codes. They pulled the records and explained that she left the building and then returned, disarming and arming the museum along the way. When you arrived, you disabled the alarm but never armed it again. I believe that is how the killer exited the building.”
“Oh my god, I think you’re right,” Jerry gasped. “There was so much trash, I could see piles of it as soon as I got there. It’s such a pain in the ass turning the alarm on and off every time I haul a load of garbage out to the back bins that I must have thought ‘screw it’ and just left the alarm off.”
My heart sank. Though it was what I’d expected, it added a new dimension to the case.
Another moan, then, “So you think I was in there with a killer? I didn’t hear or see anything, I swear. If someone else was there … they were quiet. Jeez, I could have been killed!”
“Better not to think about that, Jerry. If it makes you feel better, I believe Mrs. Starbuck was targeted. I don’t think you were in any danger.”
“Oh thank god,” a female voice responded. Then Jerry shrieked, “Mom! Get off the fucking phone!” and I swallowed a much-needed laugh.
“Thank you both. I’ll call back if I have any further questions.”
I stood and paced the squad room, then glanced in the break room and saw a lone doughnut remaining. It was a strawberry glaze, pale pink with rainbow sprinkles. I wondered if anyone would notice that I’d eaten three doughnuts in the space of an hour.
Then Chloe Parker rushed in. Her husband, Bud Parker, owned the Midnight Alley, and the bottle she filled at the tap was shaped like a bowling pin. “Hey, Gemma. I heard you brought doughnuts! Are you going to eat the last one?”
“Help yourself. I like your water bottle.”
“Thanks. I’ll bring you one on the house. Got to run.” She headed out as quickly as she’d come in, and I continued pacing, treading over the same narrow circle, walking in the footsteps of the countless cops who’d walked this same floor before me.
If the killer had escaped the museum the way I thought—through the disarmed doors—then he or she was incredibly lucky. There was no way to know that Jerry Flowers would leave the building unlocked. It meant that the killer likely didn’t know about the alarm system until he or she had tried to leave the museum after Starbuck’s murder but before Flowers’s arrival and then was forced to hide and wait somewhere.
It was the first real inkling I had that perhaps Betty Starbuck’s murder wasn’t planned after all; perhaps it wasn’t the work of a cold, calculating killer but rather the tragic end of an act of passion, a moment of rage.
If that was true, it gave weight to the possibility that the Chesney and Starbuck murders were unrelated. And if that was true, we could remove the museum as the common link and look for suspects unique to each woman.
In Betty Starbuck’s case, I felt that brought us squarely back to Kent.
* * *
Back at my desk, I set aside the cases and turned to my unofficial assignment, finding the source of the leak in the department. Bryce Ventura’s Twitter post had gone out on Wednesday morning. I pulled up the master roster and started cross-checking names and dates. Eventually, I had a short list of employees—both sworn personnel and civilian—who had worked the night shift on the previous Tuesday and would have seen my false report on the Red Board.
The worst thing about the list was that I knew every one of the people on it. Chloe Parker, Lucas Armstrong, hell, even the intern had pulled a late shift and worked a double. No matter who the leaker turned out to be, this would be personal.
This would hurt.
I groaned as I realized something else that should have struck me much earlier. Because of the way shift change worked, there were usually a few people who overlapped due to meetings running late, emergency call-outs, that sort of thing. I’d need to include on my list all the people who worked the day shift on Tuesday, too.
Damn. My genius plan to narrow down the suspect pool wasn’t so genius after all.
“Gemma.” Finn was suddenly hovering above me, staring at me with an odd and somewhat formal expression on his face. “Can I talk to you, in private?”
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
He didn’t answer and instead walked to the conference room. Once we were both inside, he closed the door and lowered the blinds.
“You’re acting weird, Nowlin.” I took a seat on the edge of the table and let my feet swing back and forth. “What gives?”
Finn stared at me, his blue eyes darkening. “Gemma, I know.”
I stared back at him, suddenly uneasy at the look on his face.
“I know you’re the leaker.”
It was the last thing I expected to hear, and I burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wanted to know you
r side of the story before I go to Chief Chavez. Look, people make mistakes all the time. Maybe there’s something else going on, something at home, that’s screwing with your head. There’s no way you can keep your job, but perhaps the chief will handle this quietly.” Finn stuck his hands in his pants pockets and looked away, embarrassed for me. “He likes and respects you. At least, he did.”
The smile slid off my face. “So you’re the one. You’re the one investigating me. I should have suspected it. This is ridiculous, Finn. I’m not the leaker. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence pointing to you.”
“Oh really? So Chavez has you on the case, too? Come on. You’ve worked every shift that there’s been a leak. I saw you talking with Bryce Ventura on Friday afternoon.” Finn finally looked back at me. Though his tone was mild, there was deep anger in his eyes. “People trusted you. I trusted you.”
“Okay, I’ll play along. What’s my motive, Finn?” I was angry now, too. “Huh? You got that all figured out?”
“That’s the one piece I don’t have. Why don’t you tell me? You’ll feel better getting this off your chest. I thought the cases were getting to you … or you and Brody were having trouble again,” Finn said. “But it’s all become clear now. You’ve got a guilty conscience. I can see it all over your face.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap any longer.”
I stood up and walked to the door, then turned around. “You’re making a big mistake, Finn. If you go the chief with this pathetic theory, he’ll laugh you right out of the office.”
“I’m not wrong, Gemma!” he called after me as I walked down the hall, my head pounding, my stomach in knots, my face on fire.
We’d been partners for six months.
Finn was chauvinistic and pig-headed, quick-tempered and sarcastic. He also cared very deeply about the same thing I did, which was getting justice for victims of crime.
Lately, too, the son of a bitch had made me laugh.
The two of us had grown into a comfortable relationship, the sort you dream about when you’re first in the academy and you start understanding just how deep the trust must be for a police partnership to be successful.
In many ways, the partnership becomes as intimate as a marriage. After all, this is the person who’s supposed to have your back when the shit hits the fan.
I sat at my desk and clenched my hands together in my lap, the nails biting in to my palms.
Bastard.
Chapter Thirty-four
Determined not to let Finn spoil the entire weekend, I took advantage of Sunday’s warm weather and cooked out in the backyard, inviting our closest neighbors over for dinner. I picked up half a dozen trout fillets at the fishmonger and grilled them next to foil packets of cubed potatoes heavy with butter and seasoning. A couple of six-packs of beer, a green salad, and a carton of strawberry ice cream rounded out the meal.
Our neighbors were a young couple. Elsa was twenty-three years old and made six figures working remotely for a tech firm based in San Francisco. Her husband, Eduardo, was two years older. Originally from Colombia, he was a paramedic in town, and he and I had over the years worked a number of accident scenes together.
I envied what appeared to be an easy love between the two of them. We sat in the backyard in shorts and summer tops, passing the baby around, refilling our plates and enjoying the lazy day. Elsa and Eddie were both entranced by and terrified of Grace.
“Isn’t it a lot of work?” Elsa asked. She lowered her straw hat over her eyes, then raised it again and winked. “I love my downtime. Napping, catching up on shows. When do you relax?”
“You mean with the baby? I don’t think I’ve relaxed since before I was pregnant. Parenting is both exhausting and exhilarating,” I said, and hastily added, “but worth every minute, of course. Just look at that smile.”
Elsa and I looked over at Grace who grinned at us from Eduardo’s arms. The baby grunted, and Ed’s face took on a look of concern. Then, “Oh hell,” and he held the baby out from his body.
“She, uh, needs some attention in her drawers,” he said. The concern on his face grew to a grimace, and he gagged. “Oh god, it stinks. Someone, please. Take this monster away.”
I started laughing. “Don’t you deal with blood and guts all day?”
“Blood and guts are one thing. Poopy diapers are another thing,” Eddie said. “Please, the smell … I’m going to be sick.”
Still laughing, I set his plate down and took Grace. To Elsa, I said, “The trick is getting Dad used to doing diapers from day one.”
“Yeah … maybe we’re good with just the cat for a few more years.”
Later, we cleaned up the dishes from dinner and then Grace and I said good-bye to Elsa and Eddie as they began the quarter-mile walk down the canyon to their house. After the baby was in bed, I grabbed a sweatshirt, then took Seamus out to the front yard and watered the flower boxes. I tidied up the porch, brushing leaves from the seats of the teal Adirondack chairs and shaking dust from the woven welcome mat. Seamus found a large stick with a knobby end and contented himself by gnawing on it.
I found myself thinking about Eddie and Elsa, and what appeared to be their easygoing relationship. I was envious. Though I was sure they had their struggles just like any other couple, they seemed so in love and so … kind. How many times had Brody and I been short-tempered with each other? How many times had we chosen a quick retort over a kind one?
Brody was a good man. He was a good father. And he’d make a wonderful husband. I just couldn’t escape the niggling doubt in the back of my mind that wondered if he’d make a wonderful husband for me.
I sighed. Brody was everything I’d always wanted in a partner: loving, attentive, kind, intelligent, with a sense of humor and patience in spades. That’s what ultimately made his betrayal so devastating. It was like finding out your golden retriever had the personality of a wolverine.
Seamus barked, and I looked around. It was twilight, my favorite time of day in the canyon. Our driveway is long, our house set back from the road, and in the encroaching darkness it was easy to believe we were in an enchanted forest. In the sky, there were already twinkling stars, and I watched as the fast-moving lights of an airplane sped past them. Inside the house, the lone light I’d left on in the front window shone through the screen door. I softly hummed a lullaby that we’d taken to singing to Grace.
I tried to think of a word that described the scene, the hushed woods sheltering our little home, the night insects beginning to sing, the rapidly cooling air, and the only word that came to mind that felt like it did justice to the evening was peaceful.
As the last trace of sunlight blinked out and darkness settled in for the night, the house phone rang.
I ran in and picked it up before it could wake the baby. Then I took the call outside, not yet willing to give up the fresh night air.
It was Patrick Crabbe. He spoke slowly, his voice full of a wooziness that comes from illness or alcohol. I turned off the garden hose and sat down on the front step, looking out over our gravel driveway and our cars, neatly parked by the garage door. The short lanterns that lined the drive illuminated the tall pines and shorter juniper bushes, giving their usual green color a golden glow.
“Patrick? Patrick, I’m having a hard time understanding you. Where are you?”
“Home,” he answered. “I’m always home. I read in the paper that my brother might have killed my mom. Is that true?”
“Patrick, I can’t go into details with you. But please, I’m begging you, please put your faith in us instead of Bryce Ventura and his hack reporting.”
Silence, then Crabbe quietly said, “Okay. There’s more, Gemma. I found something disturbing in my mother’s office. I’ve been cleaning out her files, and there’s some scribbling on the back of a utility bill. I don’t know what to think about it.”
“What does it say?”
“I’m afraid. I’m going to lock my door tonight for the first time in years.”
A chill went through me. “Is there more?”
Another long moment of silence, then, “Yes.”
“Read me all of it, Patrick.”
“He’s changed. There’s an anxiety in him, as though he’s … as though he’s waiting for something. Or someone.” Patrick’s voice shook. “Gemma, who was my mother talking about? Why did she scribble these thoughts down?”
Well, Patrick, I’d say there’s a damn good chance she was writing about you, I thought.
“Hello? Hello, Gemma, are you still there?”
“I’m here, Patrick. I don’t know why your mom wrote those things. I think sometimes … sometimes things happen, and it helps to get them out of our heads and commit them to paper. I don’t keep a diary, but I’ll often jot things down either to help me remember or to purge them. What’s the date on the utility bill?”
He read me the date.
The bill was only a few months old.
At the end of the drive, a lone blue spruce tree stood by the road. I’d always liked the tree, the way it signaled our turn from the road, the way it stood, straight and proud. Now the tree reminded me of Lost Lake, and I thought of Sari Chesney’s body in the water, the way her feet had pointed across the lake toward the spruces on the other side. A dark thought flitted across my mind: we all come out on the other side, one way or another.
Patrick and I arrived at similar thoughts.
“Kent. This was right around the time Kent came back to town,” he breathed. I heard him open a cupboard or a door and then close it with a slam. “It’s just like in my nightmare. Every night it’s the same.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
A clarity returned to his voice. He told me about his dream, and I was glad for the sweatshirt I’d grabbed, glad to be home, with the warm light spilling from the front windows and my dog, my most loyal companion, by my side.
“Mother came back. I opened the oven door to put in a frozen pizza and she was there, curled up. Her skin was charred. It hung in tatters from her bones. She had waited for me. I screamed and she climbed out. When she tried to hug me, I lost my mind. I ran outside, but everything was different. Earth was gone, it was like we were on another planet. And everywhere I turned, Mother was there, waiting. Kent stood behind her, his face in shadows, his hands raised to the heavens. She kept asking me why I let her die.”
Lost Lake Page 23