by Mary Burton
“You’re doing everything but being careful.”
“Those allow me to sleep at night, so I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning.”
“You checked the rearview mirror five or six times while we drove here from the hospital. You also cupped your hand over the keypad when you punched in the code. Each move was automatic. Well practiced.”
“Trouble seems to find me.”
He stood at the door. “I’ll be here early tomorrow. About seven.”
She raised her hand. “Ready with bells on.”
Again he paused and studied her, and she could almost read his thoughts in his frown. “I know,” she said. “I’m a puzzle with too many missing pieces.”
“You sure as hell are.”
He strode down the hallway while she stood for just a moment watching him. She closed the door and fastened all the locks. The apartment had never felt empty until this moment.
She moved across the open space to the antique bed behind a silk screen. Relief leaked over her lips in one breath as she sat down and eased back against the pillows. She adjusted her body once or twice until the incision in her abdomen didn’t pull.
She opened the bedside table drawer and removed a small box. From it, she pulled one of Gina’s heart necklaces left to her by her aunt. She touched the gold and then, taking a deep breath, fastened it around her neck. She lay back on the bed and touched the cool, delicate metal as she watched the reflection of light on the wooden ceiling beams.
He’d been watching the hospital parking lot and the cab, expecting Kaitlin to emerge alone. He had another opportunity to take her, and he’d been so tempted to do just that. But the black SUV pulled up, and Detective John Adler stepped out and sent the cab away. He disappeared through the double doors.
Twenty minutes of waiting and the cop reappeared. This time he was escorting Kaitlin, who sat in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse. The detective was almost solicitous as he opened the passenger door and helped Kaitlin into her seat. Anyone else watching might think the detective was concerned about her.
Adler would be a fool to care for her. She was a chameleon. She wasn’t the poor victim. And though she was making a lot of noise about finding Gina, there was no fixing her betrayal.
He was careful to stay back several car lengths as he followed them, and he sped by as Kaitlin got out of the car. Her SUV was still in the lot, and Kaitlin was now locked inside her apartment and alone. But she couldn’t stay inside forever. Sooner or later, she would have to venture out.
A resident hustled up the stairs to the front door and punched in the security code on the keypad. Propping the door with a rock, the young woman hurried back to her car and grabbed what looked like a large framed picture. She set the picture inside and then removed the rock. The door closed.
It would be easy to slip past a resident with overloaded arms, but that would leave a witness. Better to wait until he could get Kaitlin alone.
INTERVIEW FILE #22
PERSONS OF INTEREST—DEREK BLACKSTONE AND BRAD CROWLEY
The former hell-raisers, Derek Blackstone and Brad Crowley, maintained a close friendship. They liked the clubs, the cigar rooms, and the ladies. As it so happened, they both had solid alibis the nights of Jennifer’s and Erika’s murders. And despite intensified focus, the cops could find no forensic or eyewitness evidence to link either man to the murders. But Detective John Adler would soon unearth their role in the Gina Mason case.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thursday, March 22, 2018; 4:00 p.m.
Kaitlin slept the entire afternoon, and when she awoke the sunlight had dimmed across her apartment. Rolling on her side, she rose up on her right arm. Her head had cleared, and her gut didn’t ache as badly. She eased her bare feet to the floor and stood. She actually felt human.
Crossing the cold floor toward the kitchen, she opened the freezer, grabbed a frozen pizza, peeled off the packaging, and tossed it in the oven, which she turned on.
While the oven heated, she dug her phone out of her backpack, irritated to discover the battery was dead. Plugging it in, she waited as the device charged.
She removed her recorder and notepad on the Gina Mason case. She turned on her computer and began to dig through her emails.
She spent the next twenty minutes reading her students’ messages.
The smell of cheese, tomato, and garlic drew her attention from the screen. She grabbed a large plate, opened the oven door, and slid the pizza onto the dish. She sliced it into wedges and returned to the sofa.
After living on hospital food for several days, the pizza tasted wonderful. She picked up her phone and read through texts until she reached Steven Marcus’s name. She agreed to meet him on Saturday evening with Adler at a coffee shop near her apartment.
Scrolling through the phone, she found Erika’s last text. I’m ready to be interviewed, but it has to be today. Come to my house. Now before I lose my nerve.
Sitting back in her chair, she closed her eyes and imagined herself leaving her classroom and driving to Erika’s house.
She stepped into Erika’s home. The situation didn’t feel right. And then the rush of footsteps, the crack of pain to her head, and the softly spoken words.
“I am coming back for you. You deserve to be punished.”
She’d thought she’d dreamed the words, but realized her mind had been replaying a memory.
“I am coming back for you. You deserve to be punished.”
Adler and Logan pulled up in front of the small brick rancher set on an acre of land on the city’s south side a few minutes after four in the afternoon.
Logan rubbed his hand over his leg. “It feels good to be back in this car. Still smells like cheeseburgers and your damn aftershave, but it’s nice. Never thought I’d get anywhere close to a cop car again.”
“You’ll be back soon enough.”
Logan shook his head. “I could use a break. Today the hits keep coming.” Hands at his sides, he wiggled his fingers before fisting and unfisting them. “Suzanne called this morning. She’s filing for divorce.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“As much as I want to blame it on the injury, it’s been coming for some time. Being a cop’s wife is not what she bargained for.”
“Your ex and my ex could start their own club.”
A mirthless grin tugged at Logan’s lips. “I don’t even want to guess what they’d call it.”
Adler shook his head, knowing losing even a bad marriage was a punch in the gut. “Let’s focus on Steven Marcus. He’s not expecting us until Saturday. He told Kaitlin something about a deadline, but I don’t think it would hurt for us to talk to him for a few minutes now. I’m going to let you ask the questions. You know the Mason case better than me at this point.”
“I’m not an official cop.”
“You’re a homicide detective. You just happen to be on leave. Besides, we aren’t arresting Marcus. We’re just looking for background information.”
Logan shifted his gaze to the house and, grabbing his cane, opened the door. “Let’s do this.”
Adler came around the side of the car. Another cop might have hesitated to help Logan stand, but he had no reservations. They were a team, and he knew Logan would have done the same for him if the situation were reversed. He grabbed Logan by the arm and helped him to his feet.
“Thanks.” Logan righted himself and gripped his cane.
Adler let Logan go first up the sidewalk, and he slowed his pace. Logan leaned heavily on a wrought iron railing and climbed the three steps.
“Not bad,” Adler said.
“Give me a week and I’ll be doing backflips.” He rang the bell. “I called ahead, and he seemed happy to meet with us.”
“Good.”
The front door opened to a lean, midsize man with short-cropped hair. He sported glasses and wore a blue collared shirt and jeans. “Detective Logan?”
Logan shifted and tightened his grip on his cane. “Tha
t’s right. Thanks for seeing us.”
Adler leaned in, his hand extended. “I’m Detective Adler. I understand you’re the expert on the Gina Mason case.”
Marcus grinned. “I don’t know about that, but I spent a good deal of time on it. A case gets under your skin, and it’s hard to let go. You two must understand that.”
Logan’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I hear you. Sorry to bother you. You must be pretty busy.”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Please, come in. I’m afraid the house is a bit of a mess. My wife is out of town, and I’m letting the place go to hell. Figured I’d do something about the mess right before she comes home.”
A half-dozen different newspapers were spread across a long worn couch set up in front of a wide-screen television that played a muted twenty-four-hour news station.
“I’m a bit of a news junkie,” Marcus said. “I can’t help but follow everything.” He scooped the newspapers off the couch and carried them into a nearby kitchen. “Can I get you two coffee?”
“No, thanks,” Logan said, leaning on his cane. “We don’t want to hold you up too long.”
Over a small fireplace were ten different awards Marcus had won a decade ago. “You left your job with the newspaper,” Adler said.
“Cutbacks,” Marcus said, returning to the room. “I wasn’t crazy about losing the steady paycheck, but I’m excited to do my own thing. I’ve already started a new website.” He motioned for them to both sit. Each took one of the easy chairs that faced the couch.
“I looked it up online,” Logan said. “Your site is dedicated to finding lost people.”
“Like I said, Gina got under my skin. I want to carry on the work.”
“Did you interview any of the girls who were with Gina the night she vanished?”
“I talked to Jennifer Ralston about six months after it all went down. She was just back from college. She said her first semester of college had been a nightmare and as long as she lived she’d never forget Gina. She was too upset to talk to me.”
“What about Erika Crowley?” Logan asked.
“As a matter of fact, I reconnected with her over the winter. I ran into her in a coffee shop. She still looks the same, so I introduced myself. She was open to talking, and we started meeting on a weekly basis. I think talking was like therapy to her.”
“What did she say?” Adler asked.
“She started off admitting she’d been afraid to leave her house the last few years, but she was trying to get better. We just chatted that first time. The next visit, she was annoyed with her husband. She said he was having an affair with a woman in his office. She was trying to figure out what a divorce would cost her.”
“What about Kaitlin?” Adler asked.
“We spoke on the phone and set up a meeting for Saturday. She’s interested in some kind of collaboration down the road. We both want the same thing, so it makes sense.” He shook his head. “I feel for all these women. They were young girls who were having fun, got a little drunk, and then Kaitlin and Gina happened onto trouble.”
“You must have theories about who did this,” Logan said.
“It’s pretty obvious. It was Hayward.” He shifted and leaned forward a fraction. “A lot of what he did before Gina vanished was kept off the record by his parents, but I’m not afraid to bend a few rules, and I found out a few things.”
“Such as?”
“When he was fifteen and a camp counselor at a coed camp, he had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl. She told the camp director, and his parents were contacted. They paid off the girl and her family, so it went away. A year later it was almost the same scenario at an out-of-state computer camp. After that there were no more complaints, but I think he just got more careful. Say what you want, but he is smart as hell. But no amount of smarts changed the fact he was a time bomb ready to go off.”
“You’ve heard about Jennifer Ralston and Erika Crowley?” Logan asked.
“I still can’t get over that they’re dead. And it’s not lost on me that they were with Gina that last night.”
Logan adjusted his grip on his cane and shifted his prosthetic leg. “Any theories?”
“Derek Blackstone. He looked after Hayward like he was his kid brother. It’s why he defended him in the robbery case four years ago and why he stepped up to defend him in that recent stabbing. I caught up to Blackstone fourteen years ago when the spotlight turned on Hayward. He said he, Crowley, and Hayward had sworn an oath of loyalty and they’d never turn their backs on each other.” Marcus shrugged. “Say what you want about them, but they stuck to their word on that promise, and nothing you say or do will change it.”
“The surveillance footage at the Crowleys’ shows Kaitlin pulling up at 2:05 p.m.” Quinn was sitting in the front passenger seat, flipping the pages of her small notebook. “She hesitates at the base of the stairs and checks her phone before she moves toward the front door and opens it. She steps inside, out of camera range.”
“Any sign of her attacker?” Adler said as they drove west on I-64. Using Erika Crowley’s calendar notations, Adler had located Diane Wallace, an employee of Margie’s Maids, who regularly cleaned the couple’s home. They were headed toward her house in a working-class neighborhood off Derbyshire Road.
“There’s a figure that passes in front of the window about a half hour before Kaitlin arrives,” Quinn said. “The figure appears to be male.”
“Someone was waiting for her just like Jennifer’s killer.”
“It appears so. I checked all the available security cameras nearby. One catches the intruder coming from the woods behind the Crowleys’ house.”
“What do those woods back up to?” Adler asked.
“A cul-de-sac in a middle-class neighborhood. No one on the cul-de-sac has cameras, but I had an officer knock on a few doors. Several people reported seeing a black or dark-blue American-made pickup truck parked in the cul-de-sac early that afternoon. One woman thought maybe it had to do with an electrical contractor. No one recalls the license plate.”
“Several of Jennifer’s neighbors said there was a dark truck with a plumbing sign on the side,” Adler said.
“Magnetic signs are easy enough to change,” Quinn added.
“A tradesman doesn’t set off alarm bells right away. And we know Kaitlin didn’t stab herself,” Adler said more to himself.
“Assuming she wasn’t working with someone.”
“Kaitlin with a partner? All I’ve learned about her suggests she’s a loner.”
Quinn shrugged. “Okay, maybe you’re right on that one.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed, Quinn.”
“I don’t like citizens like Kaitlin playing detective. They end up getting in our way or injured. She’s managed to do both in short order.”
It was dusk when he parked in front of Diane Wallace’s small brick house. The lawn was large, a throwback to the dairy farm that had occupied the land for a half century. In the last few years, the area around these small homes had filled in with increasingly larger homes on smaller lots.
There were several bikes in the front yard. In the driveway, an old Toyota truck sporting a magnetic sign that read MARGIE’S MAIDS was parked.
The detectives crossed the concrete sidewalk and climbed the front steps to a green door.
Adler rang the bell. “I called ahead and told Mrs. Wallace we were coming.”
“Right.”
Footsteps clattered inside the house seconds before the door opened to a pale woman with red hair streaked with gray. She wore a large oversize T-shirt that bloused over full breasts and faded jeans. She appeared to be in her midforties.
“Mrs. Wallace?” Adler said, holding up his badge as Quinn did the same. He introduced them.
She studied the badges and frowned before pushing the door open. “I’m not sure what I can tell you.”
They stepped inside to a small living room. A worn beige couch, flanked by two burgundy recliners, faced a sixty
-five-inch television now playing a muted cooking show.
After taking a seat, Adler asked, “Mrs. Wallace, can you tell us about the most recent day you cleaned the Crowleys’ house?”
“When I got there, Mrs. Crowley wasn’t home. But the last few months she’s been at yoga on Saturdays, so I didn’t expect her until about nine.”
“What time did you leave the house?”
“About nine thirty. It takes me almost two hours to clean it. I’m in the house six days a week.”
“Six days?” Quinn said.
“The Crowleys don’t like anything out of place.”
“Were you worried when Mrs. Crowley didn’t come home?” Adler asked.
“I thought it was unusual. She doesn’t leave the house much.”
“Why is that?” Quinn asked.
Mrs. Wallace rubbed her hands over her jeans. “I think she’s afraid to leave her house alone. She never discussed her fears with me, but I could see she was afraid. It was a big step for her when she started the yoga classes late last year.” She hesitated and then said, “She’d been seeing a doctor. I think he was helping.”
“So, Mrs. Crowley didn’t come home,” Adler said, doubling back. “What did you do?”
“I waited an extra fifteen minutes. She likes to review the work I’ve done. But finally I had to leave. I had another job.”
“You locked up the house.”
“I did,” Mrs. Wallace said. “I am sure of that.”
“Who has keys to the house?”
“The Crowleys, of course. Me. I think there’s a neighbor who does.”
“We checked. None of them had a key.”
She shifted, looking uncomfortable. “I know I locked that door.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s just that there were no signs of forced entry.” Adler smiled. “Did Mrs. Crowley have any friends?”
“None. For the longest time she kept to herself. She told everyone she was an artist, but she never painted. Her art studio was as pristine as the day she set it up. The canvases were all blank.”
“There’s a woman in town named Kaitlin Roe who’s interviewing people related to a cold case. Do you know if she ever met with Mrs. Crowley?”