Truth and Consequences

by V. J. Chambers

  “I do like you, I just—”

  “I cannot get straight what you want.”

  “Harley, you know that I adore you. But I need to take a shower and go to work, so can you please leave the bathroom?”

  She didn’t move. “And why don’t you ever go anywhere with me?”

  “What?” Why was she changing the subject?

  “You’re ashamed of me, aren’t you? You only like me when you’re a little bit drunk or when your dick is hard—”

  “Harley, that is not true.”

  “It is. You won’t go out with me and my friends ever. They think I made you up. And I want you to come to dinner at my grandmother’s house, and you won’t do that.”

  “You have literally never asked me to do either of those things.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip. “Does that mean you will?”

  “If I say yes, will you let me get in the shower?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That’s what’s important to you right now?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what’s important.”

  Her nostrils flared.

  “But, sure, yes, I’ll do the dinner thing. And go out with your friends.”

  “Really? You’ll really do that?”

  “Really.”

  She smiled. “All I had to do was ask?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Her shoulders sagged. She turned and went out of the bathroom.

  He sighed. Then he pulled the door shut.

  “You sure you don’t want company in the shower?” she called from the other side of the door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Amos knocked on the door to Elke’s office.

  She looked up at him. “Amos? Am I missing another meeting?”

  “No,” he said. Now that he thought about it, she looked a little out of sorts. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was only wearing lipstick. He hadn’t noticed earlier, and he kicked himself for it. He tried to be tuned in to the people he worked with. Amos considered it his personal mission to try to make people feel better whenever he could. “You okay?”

  She laughed a little. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. Why are you here if it’s not a meeting?”

  “Really, you know, you can talk to me if you want,” said Amos, sliding in to her office. He sat down in front of her desk. “I’m a good sounding board, and I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Amos, what can I do for you? I don’t need to talk.”

  “People think that I’d be a blabbermouth, because I’m kind of bubbly and outgoing, but I’m really not at all. I swear, you tell me something…” He made a motion as if he was zipping up his lips.

  She laughed. “I don’t think you’re a blabbermouth. But I don’t have anything I want to talk about. I swear.”

  He didn’t believe her, but he decided not to press the point. Doing that might make her uncomfortable, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. “Okay, then. Well, I’m here because I’m having no luck finding that girl that Curtis Fisher says is his alibi.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot I put you on that,” said Elke. “What’s her name again? Mary Johnson?”

  “Yeah,” said Amos. “So, she’s listed in the yearbook that year, but there’s no picture or anything. I called the school to ask if for her address, and they gave it to me, but she doesn’t live there anymore. The phone listed for her is disconnected. So, I just tried looking for her the old-fashioned way, but do you have any idea how many Mary Johnsons there are?”

  “Uh, a lot?” said Elke.

  “And her mother’s name is Ashley Johnson and her father is Robert Johnson. So, like, I mean, I’m just drowning in people with no way to narrow it down. What should I do next?”

  “I don’t know,” said Elke, drawing her eyebrows together.

  “Well, I don’t know either,” said Amos. “There are way too many people for me to go through all of them.”

  Elke shook her head slowly. “What about her middle name?”

  “Lee,” said Amos. “It doesn’t narrow things down.”

  Elke didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe we should ask Curtis if he knows where she is?” Amos asked.

  “No, he doesn’t know,” said Elke. “He wasn’t much help with that. He’s been in prison for years. How could he know?” She sighed. “You know, I’m sorry, Amos, but I’m just having a hard time focusing right now.”

  “Because something’s wrong,” said Amos.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she insisted. “I just… I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Look, you have other things you could work on?”

  “I do,” said Amos.

  “So, why don’t you work on those things and maybe we’ll get an idea on how to locate Mary,” said Elke.

  He nodded. “Sure. I can do that.”

  She smiled. “Great.”

  * * *

  Elke wasn’t sure what to do. She was feeling like a complete idiot for not going to the police, especially since she’d been threatened as well as Patrick. Her first inclination was to go back and see Felix, but she knew that was what he wanted. He wanted her there. He had some stupid idea that their marriage was salvageable when it wasn’t. If she went to him and begged him for help, then she’d be playing into his hands.

  No, she needed to come up with some other way of dealing with this.

  But she couldn’t think of anything. And she was so worried about it that she couldn’t concentrate on work, and everything was crumbling.

  She was beginning to think this Curtis Fisher case was a bad call. Should she drop it? No, she didn’t think so, not until they had gone through it thoroughly. Before she backed off, she wanted to be sure that Curtis was guilty.

  A muffled bang from outside her office. It sounded like someone had thrown open a door.

  She got up and left her office, stepping into the hallway. She peered down, but didn’t see anything. She could see the top of Iain’s head in his office and Frankie in her office, looking at the computer. The glass walls laid everything bare.

  “Where’s your boss?” said someone.

  Oh, God. Was that someone associated with Felix, come to shake her down in her office?

  Elke hurried down the hallway towards the voice.

  Now she could hear Amos. “If you’d like to make an appointment—”

  “Screw that. I want to talk to the bitch,” said the voice.

  Elke passed the conference room, and now she could see someone on the other side of the glass, talking to Amos. It was a tall man with broad shoulders. He was wearing a suit jacket, and he looked familiar.

  Because she’d seen him with Felix before?

  No. Because he worked for the Haven Hills Police Department.

  She emerged into the front area where Amos’s desk was set up and confronted the man. “What’s going on?”

  “There you are,” he said, looking her over with a dismissive look on his face.

  “Here I am,” agreed Elke. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m Tim Powell.”

  Elke raised her eyebrows. So what?

  “You’re Elke Lawrence,” said Powell. “You never took your husband Felix Weaver’s last name, which must have been convenient when you divorced him after he got locked up.”

  Elke’s nostrils flared. “Again, is there something I can help you with?”

  “I just wanted to come and look into your eyes,” he said. “I wanted to meet you.”

  “Who are you?” She was starting to feel rattled.

  “I’m a cop,” said Powell. “Who are you?”

  “You seem to know all about me,” she said in a cool voice.

  “You requested the files on the Curtis Fisher case.”

  “Is this what that’s about?”

  He just smiled. “I’m watching
you, Lawrence. I just want you to know that.”

  “And I think I just want you to leave.” She nodded at the door. “Now.”

  He laughed. “Already a little shaken up, huh?” He turned and started for the door. And then he turned back to her. “Have you seen the crime scene photos?”

  “What?” she said.

  “In the Fisher case,” he said.

  “Yes, of course.” She’d actually only given them a cursory glance because she’d been so busy with the Patrick stuff, but she couldn’t very well admit that.

  “You still think he’s innocent?”

  “Is this because you don’t want us investigating the Fisher case? Why do you care?”

  Powell surveyed her, looking her over from head to toe. Then he turned and stalked out the door.

  Elke threw up her hands. What the hell?

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Do you know Tim Powell?” Elke said as she came into DA Arthur Andrews office.

  Andrews stood up at his desk. “Um… I think he was the investigating officer on the Fisher case. I’ve heard you’ve requested those files.”

  Elke’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, well, I guess that makes sense.”

  “You sure you want to poke the Fisher case? Fisher’s guilty. We’ve got his DNA.”

  Elke sighed.

  Andrews gestured for her to close the door behind her.

  She did.

  “You’ve seen the drawings and you still think he’s innocent?”

  “Drawings?”

  “Of the dead girls?” said Andrews.

  Elke sat down opposite his desk heavily. “I suppose I haven’t been through the file as closely as I could have. And believe me, if Fisher is guilty, we’ll be happy to drop it. But now that I’ve started the investigation, I feel as though I need to make sure that the evidence—”

  “There’s DNA, Lawrence,” said Andrews, sitting down too. “What more evidence do you need?”

  “I’m not actually here about Fisher.”

  “Right, you said something about Tim Powell.”

  “He came to my office and… and threatened me.”

  Andrews raised his eyebrows. “Really? What did he threaten to do?”

  “Well, I don’t know, not in so many words. He said he was watching me, or that he had his eye on me, or something like that.” It had been extremely unsettling.

  “You’re jumpy after the Mukherjee case,” said Andrews.

  “Well, yes. My apartment was broken into. Hudson’s girlfriend was abducted. It was all very harrowing.”

  “And those guys are in jail,” said Andrews. “Those guys are not Tim Powell. What exactly did he say?”

  She got up. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. I suppose he’s just upset I’m digging into his case.”

  “Probably,” said Andrews. “But you let me know if he comes by again, okay? Because it’s not good behavior for him to be acting in a threatening manner. I can exert some pressure if I need to.”

  Exert pressure? In other words, Andrews had no power over the police department. Elke opened her mouth to say something, and then thought better of it. She closed it.

  * * *

  Holly Ross worked at a daycare for preschool kids. When Frankie arrived to talk to her, Holly was busy helping children use fingerpaints in the back of the massive classroom where the daycare was located. But Frankie got one of the other women working to go get Holly so that she could talk to Frankie for a few minutes. The woman said it was no trouble at all.

  Frankie still felt bad. Heck, she felt bad about coming to interview this woman in the first place. Holly had lost her sister and been assaulted by her sister’s murderer. Dredging all of that up wouldn’t be easy on her.

  That was probably why Frankie hadn’t called ahead. She hadn’t wanted Holly to hang up on her or refuse to talk.

  Holly was wearing an apron. She wiped her fingers on it, leaving smears of red and blue paint. She was a pretty woman in her early twenties. She looked confused when she approached Frankie. “You want to talk to me?”

  “Yes, sorry for just showing up out of nowhere. I work for the Conviction Review Unit in the DA’s office. We’re actually doing a bit of preliminary investigation into, um, Curtis Fisher’s case, and I have to ask you a few questions. I’m very sorry.”

  Holly still looked confused. “Wait, what? Conviction Review…” Then she raised her eyebrows in recognition. “Oh, I remember hearing about this. You overturn convictions, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Holly’s face twisted. “You don’t think that Curtis is innocent?”

  “We…” Frankie shook her head. “This is simply preliminary. We’re looking into the case, that’s all.”

  Holly let out a slow breath. “Oh. Oh my. I’m glad you came to me and not my parents. If they knew this, it would upset them a lot.”

  Frankie winced. She felt awful. She wanted to tell Holly that, for what it was worth, she didn’t think that Fisher was innocent. But she couldn’t do that, because it would color the interview, and she needed to try to be as objective as possible.

  “They probably couldn’t handle it. They’ve lost two children, you know, and it’s taken a toll on them.”

  “Two children?”

  “Yes, my baby brother died. SIDS. Very tragic. I was only six at the time. I can hardly remember, but that nearly broke them. Then, losing Allison, that was even worse. I’m all they have left. I have to protect them.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Frankie. She felt ill. How was she even going to find the words to ask this woman these questions? All of it was simply too horrible to contemplate.

  Holly gestured. “Let’s walk out here in the hallway. I wouldn’t want any of the children to overhear.”

  Frankie followed Holly out in the hallway. The walls were decorated with a mural of a rainbow and the ocean. There were fish swimming around under the water. She tried to gather her thoughts, to think of what she wanted to ask Holly, but her mind was churning.

  “I suppose you want to know about Curtis and me,” said Holly.

  “I…” Frankie took a deep breath. “He claims it never happened.”

  Holly narrowed her eyes. “Well, of course he does. He wouldn’t admit to something like that. But it did happen. I fell for it because I was a young, impressionable girl, and because I was flattered by the attention. There was a bit of competition between my sister and me. I liked the idea of stealing her boyfriend, as awful as it sounds. But quickly, he showed his true colors and began asking me to do things that I didn’t much enjoy.”

  “And your sister didn’t know?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Holly. “In a way, I’m glad she didn’t find out before she was killed. Even though I know Curtis was responsible, I still feel guilty.”

  “Because you initially consented?”

  Holly looked uncomfortable. “I was fifteen years old. I don’t think I really could consent. He wanted things from me, and I had to give them to him.”

  “Were there consequences if you didn’t comply?”

  “He threatened me with bodily harm. He told me he would kill me if I didn’t do what he said, and I believed him. He also told me he would kill me if I told anyone what we were doing.”

  “I see.”

  “I can’t believe you’d ever consider that he was innocent,” she said.

  Yeah, that was about how Frankie was feeling. She sighed. “Listen, there’s only one more thing, and I’m sorry about it, but I have to ask. Fisher claims you’re making all this up.”

  Holly’s nostrils flared. “Yes, you said that.”

  Frankie cringed, feeling awful. “He gives you a reason for it, and I just need you to deny it. He says that you’ve done it because you wanted to make sure he went to jail, since you were convinced he was guilty of killing Allison.”

  “That’s insane,” she said. “Why would I make something like this up? You realize I had to testify in a courtroom, in
front of my parents, about sexual things? I wouldn’t do that to myself if it wasn’t true.”

  * * *

  Frankie burst into Elke’s office. “We can’t keep working on this case. Fisher is guilty.”

  Elke looked up from her desk. “Yeah, I’m starting to think so too.”

  “You are?” Frankie felt relieved. “Why?”

  Elke held up several sheets of paper and handed them to Frankie.

  Frankie peered down at them. They were drawings of naked girls with huge breasts. They were lying on the ground in various poses, but they all looked… dead? “Oh, God.” She shoved the pictures back at Elke.

  Elke sighed. “He seems like a sicko, to be honest.”

  “He drew these?” said Frankie.

  “Yeah,” said Elke. “If you dig through the file, you find all kinds of things. Like the crime scene photos? You look at those?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m not an expert,” said Elke. “Maybe we should ask Hudson about it, because he knows about this kind of stuff, but cutting up someone’s face like that? That’s anger. That’s personal, isn’t it?”

  “I think so,” said Frankie.

  Elke sighed. “He did it, didn’t he?”

  “I think so,” said Frankie again.

  “Okay, then,” said Elke. “So you stay in the office with me while I call his mother.”

  “Sure,” said Frankie, smiling. She was so glad that they were going to be done with this case and that she wasn’t going to have to worry about it anymore. It was such a relief. She waited as Elke dialed the phone in her office. Elke had put it on speaker phone so that the sound of ringing filled the office.

  They waited as it rang.

  “Hello?” said a voice on the other end. “Ms. Lawrence, is that you? I have your number programmed in. What have you found out?”

  Elke took a deep breath. “Uh, yes, it’s me, Mrs. Fisher. Listen, I, um… I’m not sure your son’s case is a good fit for us.”

  “Call me Gloria. And what do you mean? You’re backing out on us?”

  Elke made a face at Frankie.

  Frankie made a face back. What did Elke want her to do?