Fatal Fall

by Diane Capri

  The issues that had roamed through her head all night resurfaced. She had come to Randolph because she believed Peter Whiting could be her son. When she started questioning Peter’s birth date, before she knew he had to have been adopted, the Whiting house was burned down. When she went to Kid’s Own to find Peter’s hospital records, his labor and delivery nurse was murdered.

  Somehow, Peter Whiting’s fall and her desire to find her son had collided and ignited something. The connection seemed too firm to ignore.

  The steam fogged the top of the elegantly curved mirror. She turned the water temperature up to the hottest she could stand.

  There were plenty of people who had been affected. John and Barbara Whiting, for starters. They’d gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal Peter’s adoption, and Jess didn’t understand why. Each and every day there were thousands of children adopted. Usually to great joy all around.

  Jess worked conditioner through her hair, rinsed, and stepped out of the shower. She wrapped a towel around herself and sat on the edge of her bed.

  Her mind had spent the night spinning ever more elaborate stories about Peter’s adoption to explain the Whitings’ behavior. She’d considered everything from blackmail to kidnapping and discarded those theories just as quickly.

  Jess toweled off and dressed.

  None of her late night imaginings could explain why the Whitings might murder Norah Fender, the woman who had helped them obtain the son they so obviously cherished.

  Jess looked at the clock by her bedside. The hotel restaurant was open by now. She styled her hair using the big mirror in the bathroom. The right side of her face and her nose were puffy and red. A red gash crossed her mouth where the blood clotted over the cut. Her nose wasn’t broken, but she couldn’t breathe very well. Her forehead had an ugly purple hue. She did the best she could with her makeup to look presentable, collected her phone, and headed down to breakfast.

  The hotel foyer was empty except for a vaguely familiar man standing with his back to her, one hand leaning on the counter. A woman stood with him. Senator Alistaire Meisner and his wife, Margot.

  The owner was behind the desk, head forward, nodding as Meisner talked.

  Jess crossed the marble floor. When she was close enough to hear the conversation, she slowed her pace.

  Margot noticed Jess first. An instant frown shadowed her near-perfect features. A moment later, Meisner slapped the owner on the shoulder and turned around. His expression mirrored his wife’s when he saw Jess.

  “Mrs. Meisner,” Jess nodded. “Senator.”

  Meisner paused ever so briefly and then flashed a false smile so broad his ears lifted a fraction. The practiced face of a career politician greeting people he had hoped never to meet again, while he shook hands and kissed babies for votes.

  Jess shook his proffered hand, ignoring the feeling of something cold and slimy crawling down her back. “Jessica Kimball. We met in the woods near your estate.”

  “Yes,” Margot said.

  Meisner nodded. “I remember, of course. You work for my friend Carter Pierce. Taboo Magazine, right?”

  A lie. Carter didn’t even know the man. “Do you have a moment?”

  Meisner looked at his watch.

  “I just wanted to ask you about Crystal Mackie,” Jess said.

  The smile on Meisner’s face inched down a fraction. “Please forgive my rudeness, but have you been in an accident?”

  “Thank you for your concern.” Jess touched her face. “It’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing. Looks like you ran into something.”

  Jess took a deep breath. “A door. Someone pushed me into it.”

  Margot gasped. Meisner raised his eyebrows. “I hope you filed a police report.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Your nose definitely needs some work. Maybe your forehead, too.” Meisner cocked his head and flashed a smarmy smile. “I can recommend Doctor Eric Hewson. You’d have to go to Seattle, of course, but he’s very good. Especially with cosmetic procedures.”

  “Thank you. I’ll consider that.” She paused, biting her tongue to keep the retort about Margot’s obviously Botoxed facial lines in check. “About Crystal Mackie, she worked for you, just before she disappeared, didn’t she?”

  “That was a long time ago.” Meisner frowned and wagged his ample chin as if he felt genuine sorrow. Which, Jess was willing to bet, he did not. “Tragic situation. Caused a lot of good people a lot of heartache.”

  “I’m helping her mother.” Jess nodded. “She wants to know what happened to her daughter. Any mother would.”

  “After all this time? We all know what happened to her, surely. She ran away. She’s never coming back.” Meisner shrugged.

  “A lot of young girls run away from home, Miss Kimball.” Margot shook her head as if the truth was too much to bear. “It’s sad and painful for the runaways and for those they leave behind.”

  Jess nodded. “You were the one who reported her missing, weren’t you, Senator? After she didn’t show up to work for a week?”

  Meisner took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All of these questions were answered years ago. I have issued statements that are available from my office. If you’d like to contact my assistants, they will help you get copies. I have no additional comments for your magazine at this time.”

  “I’m trying to establish what brought a girl’s life to an end.”

  “To an end?” Meisner screwed up his face and made clucking sounds with his tongue. “She disappeared, yes. I suppose that was the end of the life she was living here. But no body was found. She had an abusive boyfriend, and her car was found abandoned at a bus station.”

  Margot nodded. “People make the decision to move on with their lives. To make a break from the old life to a new one. Hopefully, a better one.”

  “You think she left? Went somewhere better?”

  “Why not?” Meisner shrugged. “From what I understood of her circumstances, almost any life would have been better than the one she had.”

  “Why did you wait a week before reporting her missing?”

  He gave another fake sympathetic smile. “It was years ago. I went over everything at the time with the police. I tried to help everyone. I did everything I could to assist with the search. I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything else to add after all these years.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything—”

  He held up his hand, palm out, and scowled. “I sincerely hope not. Your magazine’s lawyer would be hearing from mine.”

  Jess nodded. “That’s why we have lawyers on retainer.”

  He took a breath. “I have every sympathy for Charlene Mackie and all those affected by her daughter’s disappearance. It was a sad and emotional time for them, I’m sure. Yes, she was in my employ, as are dozens of others. I have an estate manager who deals with our personnel. As I said, you are free to contact my office for a copy of my official statements containing all the facts.”

  He held out his hand. She wanted to fire back at him, marshal her questions until she had the answers she wanted. But she wasn’t prepared. There were too many moving parts, too many unknowns, and she had no doubt that she would lose any argument with him unless she held all the answers.

  Jess smiled. “I hope to meet you again, Senator. Perhaps Taboo will cover your campaign. You’re running for President next cycle, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “Give my best to Mr. Pierce, will you?” He gripped her hand in a hard shake. She squeezed back and stared into his eyes. He didn’t blink. She released her grip, and he held on for a full ten count before he turned away. His wife nodded and walked beside him.

  Jess watched them go. He pulled out a phone as he left the lobby. The Meisners hustled down the front stairs heading for a large Cadillac with its engine running and a chauffeur waiting to open the rear door. The limo swept away, steam trailing from its exhaust, billowing into the cold, damp air.

&nbs
p; Jess stared at the space where Meisner’s car had been. Several uncharitable thoughts sprang to mind. What the hell was he hiding?

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Jess ate breakfast served on a white linen tablecloth in the hotel dining room. The coffee arrived in a bright chrome pot. The aroma alone sharpened her senses. She was surprised she could smell the coffee at all, and she hoped it meant her nose wasn’t permanently damaged.

  She sent a message to Mandy to request Meisner’s old prepared statements on the disappearance of Crystal Mackie. Meisner’s lawyers would be calling Carter Pierce soon if they hadn’t already. The old statements would be ammunition if he needed it.

  As she finished her meal, her phone showed a message from Captain Nelson, requesting her presence at the station. She poured another coffee and savored every sip.

  Thirty minutes later, her shoes clicked on the marble as she crossed The Montpelier Hotel’s foyer toward the exit. The owner was still standing behind the reception desk. He smiled and beckoned to her. “Miss Kimball.”

  She walked over.

  He grimaced. “I’m sorry to say that we are fully booked tonight through next week.”

  Jess frowned. “I already have a room.”

  “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “When you checked in, you said you were only staying one or two nights.”

  “Yes, but my plans changed.”

  “We’d have told you when you checked in if we’d known you wanted an extended stay.” He held his hands out, palms upward. “A large party with a previous booking, I’m afraid. We must honor it.” He pointed toward the south. “There’s The Plum Inn. I’m sure they have rooms. Not that I’d really recommend the place. I could find you a lovely hotel in Seattle.”

  “Thanks.” Jess exhaled. “I’ll manage.”

  She settled her bill and gathered up her things from her room. When she crossed the foyer a few minutes later, the owner was nowhere to be seen. She put her bag in the trunk of her car and drove to the police station.

  The sky was a uniform gray from horizon to horizon. There was no sun. Only diffuse light that cast no shadows. Water dripped from the eaves of the station as she walked in through the creaky aluminum door.

  Charlene’s gaze flicked to Jess and returned to her work. Officer Gardner stopped his hands on his keyboard and glowered.

  Nelson appeared from the corridor that led to his office. She followed him and took the same chair she had occupied a couple of days earlier. Nelson closed the door and sat down behind the desk.

  Jess smiled. “Do I need legal representation?”

  “I’m hoping none of us do. I need to sort through these facts and report to the mayor. Depending on what you have to say, Charlene and I might both be out of a job by the end of the day.” When she started to speak, Nelson put his hand up. “First off, Charlene is our most junior officer with the least amount of training. She’s our dispatcher, and that’s about the limit of her ability, frankly. She has no authority other than the very limited tasks I assign to her. And we have no jurisdiction outside of Randolph.”

  “Anyway, I’m the one who found the body—”

  “After you broke into a private residence.”

  “With reasonable cause. The killer had set a fire.” Jess squared her shoulders. “Charlene stayed in the car, so she’s not to blame for the break-in. Captain Gonzalez has all the details. Call him and ask.”

  Nelson sighed. “They took Charlene’s prints.”

  “We both gave them exclusion prints to speed up the crime scene processing. We’d been inside the building. We were cooperating with local law enforcement. There was no reason to refuse.”

  He held up a piece of paper. “The mayor’s already had a letter from the Kid’s Own legal department.”

  “About what?”

  “A warning shot.” He flipped it onto his desk. “Privacy concerns. They want some sort of data protection agreement signed. Promises not to talk to the press. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  “It’s their job to protect their data. We don’t owe them anything.” Jess shrugged. “The lawyers can sort out whether records related to concealing a fraud and selling babies are covered by medical privacy. I’m guessing they’re not.”

  “Hopefully, the mayor will be satisfied with that answer.” Nelson shuffled through the papers on his desk and selected a half dozen pages held together with a bulldog clip. “Preliminary autopsy report on Norah Fender. Expedited. Got a courtesy copy about an hour ago.”

  “What does it say about the cause of death?”

  Nelson flipped to the third page. “Victim died from asphyxiation. The subject had been heavily dosed with,” he waved his hand, “some drug with a long name that caused paralysis. They found needle marks. Death likely occurred minutes before the body was discovered.”

  “No kidding. The murderer was still in the room when I found her.” Jess paused to calm her breathing. “Killing Fender wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. No one carries drugs that cause fatal paralysis, just in case they might come in handy.”

  He folded his hands on his desk. “Premeditated murder. The most dangerous kind.”

  “A professional killer. Definitely not Charlene Mackie and not me, either.” Jess nodded. “Does it say how long it took for the drug to kill her?”

  Nelson flipped through a few more pages of the autopsy report. “A large dose of sedative. Too large.”

  “We arrived about forty minutes earlier,” Jess said, slowly. “Knocked and rang the bell, and got no answer.”

  “You think he was there already?”

  “It was black inside the house. No movement.” She shrugged. “I figured there was no one home. But he could have been around at the time, I guess.”

  “You see the guy’s car?”

  “Chrysler sedan. White.”

  “You or Charlene get the license number?”

  She shook her head and touched the side of her face.

  Nelson said, “Looks painful.”

  “It’s improving.”

  He turned another page. “The front door was broken.”

  She shook her head. “Just the security chain. No damage to the door outside. Looks like Fender opened the door when he knocked or rang the bell. But she had the chain on. He pushed inside, busting the chain.”

  “And you entered through the back door?”

  She shrugged. “There was a fire brewing on the stovetop, so I pushed the back door open.”

  Nelson nodded as he read on through the report. “So we’re thinking he was faking an accidental death.”

  “Right up until he used my gun to put holes in her body. He went from faking an accidental death to setting me up in an instant.”

  “No way Charlene was capable of all of that without help.” Nelson shook his head. “But you’re a one-woman crime magnet.”

  “Someone’s spooked. For sure.” She paused. “But why? I haven’t done anything to spook anybody.”

  “You’ve done something. We need to figure out what it is.” Nelson cocked his head and then returned to the reports. “Fender’s place was extremely tidy, it says here.”

  “She was a neat freak, but her place had been searched. I’m not sure when the killer found the time to search it. He rushed out when he left, for sure, because I chased after him.” The timing was only one of the open questions about his behavior. She had a long list if she ever met the guy.

  Nelson nodded and pulled out another report. “Crime scene techs concluded the same thing.” He turned over another page.

  Jess nodded and straightened herself in her chair. “She had lived in that house a while. If she was a danger to someone, why didn’t they deal with her before now? I mean, why was she killed only at the point when we went to talk with her?”

  Nelson shook his head.

  She said, “Maybe whoever killed her didn’t know about her before. He didn’t know who she was and how she was connected to whatever has been spooking whoever it is that’s spooked.
”

  “Spooked enough to kill.”

  Jess cocked her head. “Maybe. Could be the spooked guy. Or it could be someone else. A hired hit. If the killer was a professional.”

  “Let’s go about this a different way,” Nelson said. “Who knew you were going to visit Norah Fender?”

  “Charlene and I. That’s all. Because we didn’t make the decision until we got in the Crown Vic after we left Kid’s Own.” Jess took a deep breath and thought the question through. “But plenty of people could have figured it out. Doctor Nepovim from the Kid’s Own records department, for sure. The Whitings have got to know I’ve been looking into them and their son. They knew Fender professionally and what she was doing. Probably others could have figured it out, too.”

  Nelson raised his eyebrows. “Someone from Kid’s Own makes the most sense. Wouldn’t be the first time someone figured saving a reputation was worth killing for.”

  “The timing’s wrong, though.” Jess shook her head. “Charlene and I went straight to Fender’s from the hospital. No one from Kid’s Own could have arrived faster than we did.”

  “How long from the hospital to her place?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Tops.”

  He frowned. “Who knew you were going to the hospital?”

  “Beats me.” Jess shook her head. “I didn’t even know I was going until Charlene called me, and I didn’t tell anyone.”

  He exhaled. “So Charlene is pretty much the only link…”

  “Wrong answer. Even if she was capable of doing something like this, she didn’t do it.” Jess shook her head. “First, she was completely shocked when she saw her daughter’s handwriting on those medical records. She was barely able to speak, she was so upset. She couldn’t even drive. There’s no way she arranged a professional hit in the lapsed time between our visit to Kid’s Own and an hour later.” She took a deep breath. “Second, if she’d talked to anyone at all, I’d have known. She was in the car with me the whole time. She didn’t make a single phone call. I can vouch for that.”

  He thought about what she’d said for a bit before he frowned and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “How much do you actually know about Charlene Mackie?”