by Mayer, Dale
Alex stopped in the kitchen and stared at the backyard. A short fence surrounded the yard, but there was no back gate, no entrance or exit coming in from the other properties. Short of jumping the fence, that was certainly possible. She’d seen it happen. These cookie-cutter homes and cookie-cutter backyards were fenced to give each person a little bit of privacy and a little bit of space. But, if someone wanted to, it was easy to hop between houses.
He likely came in over the fence to hide the true direction he had traveled from.
She turned back to Owen. “Did she hear a vehicle?”
He shook his head. “The first sound she heard was him accidentally kicking a kitchen chair. She has no pets so knew she had an intruder.”
“So she came downstairs instead of calling the police? Even though we’ve put it out everywhere on the news we have a rash of break-ins?”
Both Sandra and Owen nodded.
“Send me a report as soon as you’ve got something written up.” She stepped outside the back door and surveyed the small porch. No clear footprints could be seen in the grass as it had been trampled by law enforcement.
She turned back to Owen. “Did anyone find tracks out here before it was trampled?”
“There was bent grass but not necessarily footprints,” he admitted. “We have photos.”
“I want to see those images to confirm how he approached the property.”
Owen brought out his phone. “I have a few here.” He flicked through his cell phone and then held up one of the snapshots.
She studied the backyard. The trail came from the corner. “We need to check the other houses in this area.”
“I can do that,” Sandra said. “Several officers are going door to door, to see if they heard or saw anything. But no one has spoken with these adjacent owners.”
“Let’s get on that. This guy will hit again and soon.” Alex turned to the light yellow-toned house. “But I don’t know what he’s after. I need to know that,” she murmured. “He was interrupted here too. But then he knocked the woman unconscious and had the entire house available to pore over and steal what he wanted with no more interference… and yet he didn’t.”
Owen nodded slowly. “At least not that the owner’s seen.”
“The TV is too big for him to carry away for a long distance,” Alex said. “The owner’s purse is still here. Her wallet with money and cards are still inside,” she mused. “Did she have any expensive jewelry?”
Owen shook his head. “No, she was quite puzzled when she realized he hadn’t taken anything. But, as you look around the house, not a whole lot is a quick snatch-and-grab.”
“How about a laptop?” Sandra asked. She turned to view the house. “I don’t remember seeing a laptop.”
Owen checked his notes. “Yes, it was still there.”
“There has to be some reason why he was here,” Alex said. “All these women were alone in their homes at the time of entry, except one. I’m concerned he’s getting up the nerve to do so much more.”
Sandra and Owen winced.
And Alex knew they understood what she meant. “Sometimes people need several trial runs to prepare for what it is they really want to do. But I would have thought an unconscious woman was a perfect opportunity. Maybe he thought he’d killed her?” she said a bit absentmindedly. “Maybe, when she collapsed, he thought he’d hurt her worse than he had, and he took off, scared?”
“That makes sense,” Owen said. “There’s got to be some reason he left.”
Alex walked back inside. “Where did she wake up?”
Owen led her into the living room. “She woke up here, on the floor in front of the couch.”
“And that’s where she’d been fighting with him?” That made no sense. The coffee table was still perfectly straight in line with the couch. “They didn’t have a fight in here. Nothing’s shifted. Nothing’s moved. Nothing’s broken. The lamps are perfectly fine. The tables and everything are lined up as if nobody had even been in here.”
The two officers stood aside and surveyed the living room. “No, you’re right. That doesn’t make any sense.” Owen checked his notes. “I just have down that she was in the living room. But I don’t know exactly where they were fighting.”
“Or the intruder straightened the furniture. But why?” She turned to him. “Find out where they’d been fighting and ask if she straightened up the furniture herself. I especially want to know if she was laid on the couch itself because that would show a different level of compassion for an intruder.”
Owen snapped his notebook shut. “I’ll head to the hospital now and get a few more details.”
“No, on second thought, I’ll go to the hospital,” Alex said. “You guys finish this up. Check with the neighbors and see if they heard or saw anything, particularly the three that are kitty-corner to this property. And make sure he didn’t hit two houses last night. For all we know, this house was an afterthought with the real hit being somewhere else.”
The others nodded and broke away. Alex returned to her car and stood for a long moment. She also had to deal with the problem of why she hadn’t been called. She pulled out her phone and called dispatch.
After one ring, dispatch answered, “Good morning, Alex.”
“Why wasn’t I called when the break-in came in?” she asked.
“We have a call logged to your phone at the same time as Owen and Wilson were called. Are you saying you didn’t receive one?”
“No, I didn’t receive one.”
“We have a call logged in though.”
“And did you speak with somebody?”
“I didn’t make the phone call. I just have it down that the call was made. Oh, it says no answer.”
“Okay, that needs to be checked. Because I was never called,” she said, her voice sharp. “I can’t have that happening again.” Alex realized she should be talking to the supervisor, not the woman on the line. “Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. “I’ll sort it out.”
She ended her call and quickly checked her phone history. Although it was stupid, she was relieved to see she hadn’t missed a call. That would be too embarrassing. She couldn’t think of any time in her career that it had happened, but there was always a first.
Back in her car, she turned it around and headed toward the hospital. When she got there, she found the woman had already been released. Alex growled quietly and said, “Do you have forwarding contact information for her?”
The nurse pulled up a file and brought out a sheet of paper. “She said she would be staying with her friend Kimberly Lane. This is the address. This is the phone number.”
“Did she have her cell phone with her?”
“Yes, her number is this one.” The nurse took a moment to run through the file and then jotted down the injured woman’s phone number.
“So she wasn’t badly hurt then. Just how severe were her injuries?”
The nurse smiled. “She got off lucky. She was just shaken. She had a small head injury, which would account for her being unconscious. She also had a few bruises and was shaken up, that’s all. She was in shock more than anything. But a friend came to collect her, and they went to have breakfast.” The nurse gave her a name of a popular local hotspot.
Alex nodded. She took the piece of paper and stepped outside. When she dialed the woman’s number, nobody picked up right away. She let it ring several more times and then decided she’d head to the restaurant herself. If the women were having breakfast, it would be a good time to catch both.
She walked into the restaurant, but there was no sign of two single women at a table. Feeling like an idiot, she turned and headed toward the front door as she called the woman’s cell phone again.
*
Macklin walked into the gym. If ever there was a day he needed to work out, this was it. He barely had the bar set up with weights when he heard a shout behind him. He turned and grinned when he saw a group of his teammates walking toward him.
&n
bsp; “Hey! You could have at least told us you were alive and well,” Ryder said.
Mason and the other guys all clustered around. Mason commented, “I wasn’t sure they would let you out so fast.”
Macklin shrugged. “She just asked me some questions.” But he knew they didn’t believe him.
They stayed and waited.
He sighed. “I’m trying to get used to the idea myself. But unfortunately it looks like somebody’s setting me up.”
And, typical of his friends, they all continued to wait, arms crossed over their chests. They wouldn’t let him go until they had the details. Not because they had morbid curiosity but because they wanted to know how bad things really were.
He explained, finishing with, “And, to top it off, somebody wrote my name in blood at the crime scene, as if Marsha had named her killer.”
Corey whistled. Ryder’s face was almost comical with the anger twisting up his features.
It made Macklin feel good to know they were behind him all the way. “I think the detective believed me, though I certainly had no alibi for the night Marsha was murdered. I was home alone.”
“We’ve been saying you should have another girlfriend,” Corey said with a big grin.
Macklin shook his head. “Remember that adage about, if you keep doing the same thing repeatedly, how do you expect a different outcome? Well, I don’t have any intention of repeating the Marsha scenario.”
“You do know not all women are like Marsha?” Mason asked seriously. “Still, this is bad news. Did Alex Carson have any other evidence pointing to you? DNA evidence, forensic evidence? A name is one thing that could be just a bitchy woman making sure she stabbed you once again in the back as she died,” he said. “I know that sounds terrible, but we’ve all met people who are so soured on life and so angry at everything that they’d do anything, including blaming the wrong man.”
Ryder interrupted. “Any chance she committed suicide and made it look like murder?”
“Not unless she smashed her own head hard enough to knock her out and gave herself a skull fracture.”
“So then could she even have been alert enough to write your name in blood?” Corey asked.
Right. Macklin’s gaze went from one man to the other. He liked that about these guys. They didn’t question his guilt. They already knew instinctively he was innocent. They were just figuring out the how and the who. Anybody could have made this look like Marsha had done it.
“I’m not exactly sure. Maybe I need to talk to Alex… Detective Carson, a little more about that,” Mac said slowly. “I wonder how long Marsha had been in her place? How many people would have known she was there?”
“Don’t get involved,” Mason said quietly. “If you’re too interested, it’ll look bad.”
“But I don’t have a choice,” Macklin said. “I’m not sure anybody else in the department will fight to clear me. If I look too damn good for the job, you know they’ll just charge me with it, so they can close the case and move on.”
“Caitlyn said Alex isn’t like that,” Ryder said. “They haven’t known each other all that long, but Caitlyn says Alex seems to be fairly straight up.”
“But we’ve seen lots of people who are on the up-and-up. But, when the pressure is on to close a case, they must do what they must do. Not necessarily in the best interests of anybody else around.”
“What do you think is going on?” Mason asked.
Macklin looked at him. “I think Marsha pissed off the wrong person.”
“But apparently you pissed them off too,” Ryder said quietly. “There was no need to write your name in blood, except to point the finger at you.”
“Are we absolutely sure there’s no way she could have written that?”
Macklin looked at Corey and shrugged. “Anything’s possible. For all I know, she lay there bleeding out, wrote the name, and somebody came and clunked her on the head. Does it make any sense? No. Is it a working theory? No. I’m grasping at straws. There was something wrong with her. She was fixated on me. She was a stalker and just two steps away from a full-blown psychopath. But the bottom line is, she didn’t commit suicide. And that means, whoever killed her used that moment to point the finger at me.”
“So the next question that must be answered is, who hates you enough to do that?”
“I don’t know.” Macklin stared moodily out the windows. “Since I saw the crime scene photos, I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Corey’s tone was hard. “We all know law enforcement officers who took the easy way, not the right way.”
Macklin admitted it was a concern, but he had no way to judge Alex’s performance based on his interview. He shrugged. “It’s too early to tell.”
“The problem is, I think they are also short-staffed and overworked.”
Macklin got a short bark from Mason. “Isn’t it always that way? There’s a rash of break-ins and not enough law enforcement. It’s not good news.”
Macklin glanced at him. “I haven’t heard any details.”
“They have been warning everyone on the Silver Strand Housing complex. Four houses in about a five-block radius have been hit in the last week. One of them was early this morning.”
“Just break-ins?”
“Whenever he’s come across a resident, he’s had an altercation but only with the intent of escaping. We have an awful lot of hotshots and hotheads here. So that could account for the temperament on both sides of the law.”
“So high potential for the suspect to have been military personnel as well.”
“Certainly the odds are there. It doesn’t mean it’s a fact though. We have an awful lot of supporting staff here as well. And a lot of service people who are not military.”
“Any connection to Marsha?” Corey asked thoughtfully. “She was living alone as well. Didn’t she live in that area?”
Macklin pondered that. “A couple blocks away from the housing complex.”
“But definitely close enough to be possible. They may have to widen that grid soon.”
“But how does that make any sense? It was my name written in blood. It’s not exactly a common name and not exactly one to be mistaken for somebody else’s.”
“It could easily be that the break-ins were a cover-up,” Ryder said. “Completely distracting the investigation away from the murder.”
“The problem is, it’s all a guesstimate now. We don’t know anything. And unfortunately I don’t think the police do either.”
“Do we know any of the people who have been targeted?”
Corey walked a few steps away and brought up his phone. “Ryder, what about Caitlyn talking to Alex?”
“I don’t think they’re that close of friends. And, if Alex is any decent law enforcement officer, she won’t talk out of turn.”
“The news will have updates on where the homes were. We can always take a drive through the area and see if we see anybody we know there. I don’t believe I know any of the people targeted.”
“That’s a very valid word,” Mason said. “Targeted. Just like you were.”
Macklin looked at him strangely. “You’re thinking there’s a link between Marsha and these houses that were broken into?”
“Or there’s a link between you and past men of these other women. All single women. Likely all with relationships in their history. What’s the chance someone in that history is connected to you?”
“Huh.” Macklin shook his head. “I hadn’t thought of that. The trouble with that theory is, I’ve lived here for a lot of years. We’ve been working here for many more. My life will have intersected with these women who obviously have ties with the military, given they live in military housing.”
“Exactly. And the men they were associated with. So the question is whether that association is something somebody might hold against you.”
“I’ve made a ton of enemies, but I would have said they were all overseas. No terrorists should know my name, but we’ve been on
a lot of missions and stepped into some government coups.” He shook his head again. “It’s kind of hard to believe it would be somebody close to home. If you’d asked me even last week who hated me, the only person I could have said was Marsha herself.”
“And, for all you know, this is still her doing,” Corey said quietly. “It’s never quite so straightforward. And, when we’re dealing with somebody like Marsha, it’s even less so. First off, let’s find out more about her psychological problems, if she had any suicide attempts, anything that could possibly lead to the idea she may have hired her own murder, a suicide made to look like you did it.”
Silence.
Macklin looked at Corey with respect. “That’s a hell of a theory. It fits more in a horror novel than in my life, but it is a theory.”
Corey grinned. “I told you that I like writing fiction on the side, right?”
Everybody laughed.
Mason smacked the weight bar in Macklin’s hand. “Are you just going to stand around and talk, or were you planning to get some work done here?”
At that, the serious conversation dissolved, and joking took over. The men went through their workouts, helping each other, pushing each other, working against and for each other, until they all sat dripping in sweat and exhausted. But Macklin’s grin was bright. Fierce.
“The only good thing about doing a workout like this is it revives that sense of fighting. That sense of ‘I won’t let this beat me.’”
Mason chuckled. “In that case, it did its job. Not to mention you’re getting stronger, faster …”
“Uglier,” Corey interjected.
“Than ever,” Mason finished triumphantly.
The men headed off to the showers. But for all the levity and the fact that he did feel much better, Macklin knew it wasn’t over. This was just the beginning.