Judgment

by Carey Baldwin

  Well, that certainly explained his contradictions. He’d apparently learned to cope intellectually, but some of his social impulsivity remained. “Incredible.”

  “A real miracle. Anyway, that’s how the whole puzzle thing started. After that night, I brought him a new kind of puzzle every week: Tangrams, ciphers, logic puzzles—­he especially loved peg solitaire. If I brought it, he solved it. And from then on, I never heard one word about that child being disabled again.”

  “Hey, where are you guys?” Spense poked his head around the corner, then joined them in the study. He looked from Caitlin to his mother and back again, a suspicious frown on his face.

  Guilty heat crept up her neck. He must know they’d been talking about him.

  “Is this the right box?” He twisted toward his mother.

  “It is, son.” She dusted her hands on her apron and shot an admiring glance at Spense. But her words were meant for Caitlin. “Not a day goes by I don’t miss Jack Spenser, but one thing’s for sure. After his dad died, Atticus stepped up.” Her eyes never left Spense’s face as she spoke. “He sees that I have everything I could possibly need, and a good deal of what I don’t. If you ask me, he’s more than lived up to the name I gave him.”

  His mouth lifted in a giant grin. “It’s just a box, Mom.”

  “Sure it is, son. Just a tiny little box off a high shelf. Who wants tea? I expect it’s black as berries by now.”

  Mrs. Spenser scurried into the kitchen, and Caity’s heart lifted at the woman’s joy over her son. Looking at Spense, she saw him differently. Not just as an agent who’d put his life in danger for her, not just as an exasperating man who made her feel things she didn’t want to feel, but as a devoted son, a boy who’d lost his father too young and taken the weight meant for a man on his shoulders. More than anything, she wanted to believe in him and trust him with the things that mattered most to her. Could it really be so hard? She gritted her teeth and screwed up her nerve. “Spense . . .”

  He was flipping through his phone, checking the missed calls. He’d turned his phone off when they’d stepped inside his mother’s home—­one more sign of the care he took with her. He slipped his cell in his pocket and glanced up. “Yep?”

  She cleared her throat, nervously, deciding to start with an easy request and build up to the doozie. “If I asked you to get the evidentiary files from the police on the Sally Cartwright case, would you do it?”

  He shrugged. “I know you think Sally’s case is connected to the Ferragamo case. And as much as I doubt Kramer’s innocence, it’s a question that really ought to be asked, especially given the tie-­in signature of the missing temporal bone.”

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  “I’ll consider it. Technically, we should leave the investigation to Baskin and his crew, but since they’re already overextended chasing down crime-­scene evidence from both the courthouse and the hospital, I’m betting looking into the Cartwright case is a low priority.”

  “So you’ll do it.” Her mouth had gone dry. This was a good start. He’d agreed to her first request, so maybe she should just keep rolling.

  He nodded, slowly. “It may come back to bite us in the ass, but yes, I’ll have Herrera get hold of the Cartwright files.”

  She let out a long sigh and fought to keep her voice from shaking. “Fantastic. And I’ve got another request, since you owe me.”

  He shot her a huge grin. “How the hell do you figure I owe you? I saved your life, and the way I see it, if there are any favors to be handed out, I should be on the receiving end.”

  “You owe me precisely because you did save my life. My life is now connected to yours. I won’t ever be rid of that . . . erm . . . connection.”

  That made him throw back his head and laugh, rather loudly. “Roger that. But since I’m doomed to be connected to you, too, you owe me right back. Stop dancing around your point, Caity, and just tell me what else you’re after.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Spit it out for Chrissake.”

  “I need you to get me the evidentiary files on Gail Falconer.”

  His head was already shaking before she got out the ner in Falconer. “Sorry, Caity. No can do.”

  “You mean no will do.” Why had she thought she could count on him? Just because of some tear-­jerk story about his father? Well, she’d lost a father, too. She gulped back the anger that was boiling up from her gut and making her insides burn. Giving in to emotion never got a person anywhere. “If you wanted to get your hands on the Falconer files, you could do it. You don’t even need an excuse, but if you think you should give one, you can simply say you think they might be connected because Baumgartner represented the defendants in both cases.”

  “By that reasoning, I’d have to ask for the files on every client Baumgartner represented over the past fifteen years. I doubt anyone would want to go through the hassle of finding them for me. Not to mention I’d look like an asshole.”

  “But my father’s case and Kramer’s were both capital murder cases, so that sets them apart from his others. Besides, the cases are connected through me.” She pressed her lips and said a Hail Mary, knowing her next argument wouldn’t fly, since Spense was convinced the shooter was a serial killer. “You could milk the vigilante angle.”

  He waved her off.

  “You’re just making excuses. If you don’t want to help me, say so.”

  “Look. I’ll admit I could get the Falconer files if I really wanted to. And I do understand what’s going on here. I get it, Caity. And I do want to help you, but this isn’t the way.”

  “I’m not sure what you think is going on here, but what I’m asking is for you to help me investigate the Falconer case.”

  “What I think is you want to use your shiny new skills and your not-­so-­shiny new amigo—­assuming we are amigos now—­to prove your father’s innocence and clear his name.”

  “I want to know the truth. I deserve to know the truth.”

  “I’m tempted to quote Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men here, but that’s too easy, and I don’t want to sound flippant. So let me ask you this. Is the truth really what you’re after? What if the evidence points to your father’s guilt?”

  Her heart started tripping faster. He was seriously considering her request; she could tell. “It won’t. Because he’s not guilty. He can’t be.”

  His face drained of color, and he looked past her, over her shoulder, like he’d just noticed the most interesting spot on the wall. “The Cartwright case is a good chance for you to learn some criminal investigative skills, and I’ll help you with that because it’s relevant to Ferragamo. But even that means there’s going to be hell to pay for overstepping our bounds as consultants.”

  Her hope was sinking faster than a barometer in a hurricane.

  “So if you want me to agree to the one, you have to promise to drop the other.”

  “The one being the Cartwright files and the other being the Falconer case.”

  “Right.”

  “You won’t help me investigate Falconer even though you know my father might have been executed for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “That’s the whole point, Caity. You say might to enlist my help, but the truth is you’re absolutely convinced your father was an innocent man. I don’t want to see you hurt again. If you find out you’re wrong, how will you ever get over that? I’m not sure I could if our places were reversed. And if I’m being honest, I’ve read through the court transcripts already.”

  “When did you do that?”

  One shoulder lifted. “While you were in the hospital.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “You think I didn’t know you wanted to get the case reopened? Your investigators have been making themselves a pain in the ass with the authorities for years. It’s no secret, Caity. I read through
the transcripts because I care about you. But it’s because I care that I won’t get the evidentiary files for you now. If you want them, you’ll have to figure a way to get them on your own.”

  “If you truly cared about me, you’d help me.”

  “I am trying to help you, Caity. So please drop this. Don’t make me say something I’m going to regret.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t talk. All she could do was stare at him in disbelief. She’d thought he was her friend, but that wasn’t true. “Stop patronizing me and say what’s on your mind,” she ground out.

  He rubbed his palms over both eyes, then half turned away. “From what I’ve seen, based only on the court transcripts mind you, I believe your father raped and murdered Gail Falconer.”

  First her lips went numb, then her whole face. That old, familiar stiffness came back to her heart, like it was too brittle to pump the blood through her veins. A voice in her head was screaming at her to yell at him, to fall on him and beat his chest with her fists. But that would only make things worse. Her chin came up. “Fine,” she said, keeping her voice soft and controlled. “No worries, amigo. I’ll ferret out the real killer myself.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sunday, September 15

  Rutherford Towers

  Phoenix, Arizona

  CAITLIN SAT CROSS-­LEGGED on Spense’s floor with crime-­scene diagrams, autopsy photos, and ME reports organized into neat stacks in front of her. Next to those stacks, her e-­reader was charging. Also on the floor, Spense leaned on his elbows, stretching his long legs out beside her.

  From the sheepish look on his face, she thought he must regret the harsh words they’d had at his mother’s house. And maybe she did, too, but one thing she didn’t regret was knowing where he stood on Falconer. If Spense had no intention of helping her with her father’s case, she preferred to know it now. That way she’d be better prepared when the time came to strike out on her own. Meanwhile, she had no intention of letting her personal disappointment get in the way of solving the Ferragamo case.

  Watching Spense at the end of a long day, with a loosened collar, his hair tousled, and faint lines of fatigue building up around his eyes, made a lump well in her throat. There was no denying the fact she enjoyed his company and she cared about what happened to him. When he was happy, her own mood lifted. When he was weary, she wanted to offer him respite in her arms. Which is why she had to be more cautious than ever around him. A relationship of a romantic nature between Spense and her would spell professional disaster and was entirely out of the question. But over the past week, she’d begun to hope they could be real friends—­and now that hope had been dashed. No matter what, she could never let someone into her heart who believed, without ever having known him, that her father had been a monster.

  An hour ago, she’d wanted to lash out at Spense and raise her voice to him, tell him go to bloody fucking hell, but she’d refrained, and those urges had passed. She didn’t feel those things anymore. In fact, she didn’t feel much of anything except numb. Numb and ready to focus on the task at hand, which was not her disagreement with Spense but finding the Man in the Maze.

  “So, are you going to let me in on this epiphany you had at the museum, or are you going to make me wait for it?” Spense interrupted her thoughts, bringing them back on track.

  “I’m going to make you wait for it,” she answered. “But not for long. I just don’t want to get too excited until I verify a few things first. It’s been a long time since med school and the anatomy lab.” Flipping to the second page of the Ferragamo crime synopsis, she asked, “Okay if I use a highlighter on this?”

  “Sure. These are just copies. Go for it.”

  Swish.

  She did love the look and sound of a yellow marker on the page. Probably the perpetual student in her. She sniffed, and the familiar sharp scent got her neurons firing like she was back in school.

  Swish. Swish.

  “What are you highlighting?”

  Everything. She’d always been an indiscriminate highlighter. But that wasn’t what he really wanted to know. “I’m interested in the descriptions of the temporal bone. Did you know that what we commonly call the temporal bone actually has four distinct parts?”

  “Nope.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “That was semirhetorical. I wasn’t expecting you would.”

  “So I should just let you proceed. Tell you what, next time you ask a semirhetorical question, just say so, and I won’t interrupt.”

  He was trying to be playful, but she wasn’t in a playful mood. She knew that Spense used humor to diffuse anger, but she wasn’t angry anymore, so the effort was wasted. “According to this autopsy report on the pharmacy tech, Darlene Dillinger’s throat was slashed with a serrated hunting knife. Noted, too, is that a piece of the temporal bone was carved from her skull and presumed to have been taken for a trophy. But what I’m not finding is any specific notation as to exactly which of the four parts of the temporal bone the killer claimed for his prize.”

  “You think that’s important.” He eased closer to her, looking over her shoulder, and she shifted positions so he could see what she was doing.

  In an effort to keep any unsteadiness out of her voice, she cleared her throat. It wasn’t that easy to stay cool around Spense. “It’s critical we find the answer. Sally Cartwright was strangled with a garrote. Darlene Dillinger had her throat slashed—­the MOs are different.”

  “Which partly explains why Baskin doesn’t seem to care both women had a piece of the temporal bone removed.”

  “But you taught me a killer’s MO often changes with time, as he becomes more expert in his craft. And from all I’ve read, his signature will almost always stay the same. So what we need to determine is whether or not the Cartwright murder and the Dillinger murder actually share the same signature. Unless the same area of the temporal bone was removed, the signature isn’t the same. I’m betting it was the same, and I believe it was the petrous part of the bone. But I want to be sure before I tell you the reason why.”

  “Baskin thinks removing Darlene Dillinger’s temporal bone was simply a vigilante’s attempt to replicate the signature in the Cartwright case. He thinks it’s his way of saying fuck you to the police.”

  “That’s a plausible idea if you assume the vigilante has been let down by the police in the past and wants to show the world they’re incompetent. But it seems unlikely. A vigilante would never want the public to think Kramer might be innocent; besides, as you and I both know, based on the nature of the crime, whoever killed Darlene Dillinger took his time. Took pleasure from the act. The UNSUB unquestionably is a sexual sadist. Like you said before, Judd Kramer may be innocent, or he may be guilty and we have a copycat killer on our hands.”

  “You know what bugs me about the copycat theory?” Spense tugged his ear. “This”—­he tugged harder—­“is my semirhetorical-­question signal. I don’t really want you to answer.”

  In spite of herself, she smiled.

  “What bugs me is a copycat wouldn’t only imitate Kramer’s signature, especially such a difficult one. It’s much more likely he would’ve also used the same MO as in the Cartwright case. With different MOs, either he’s not a copycat, or he sucks at being one.”

  “But if the UNSUB is not copycatting the Cartwright murder, then we have to strongly consider the possibility that Kramer is innocent, despite what our guts and all the evidence tell us.”

  “Let’s examine our choices,” Spense said. “Choice number one: Someone is copycatting Kramer’s murder of Sally Cartwright. Since he used a different MO and only copied the signature, that would mean we have a really stupid UNSUB on our hands—­which contradicts all the evidence that the Ferragamo killer is highly organized and intelligent. The other huge problem with the copycat-­killer theory is motivation. Even assuming our bad copycat viewed Kramer as c
ompetition and wanted to get rid of him for that reason, there’s simply no obvious motive for a copycat to go after Baumgartner . . . or you. As a matter of fact we have the same problem if Kramer is innocent. The issue with motivation is the only reason I don’t want to knock Baskin upside the head for focusing on the vigilante theory. I don’t agree with him, but with no other motive tying the murders together, I do follow his reasoning.”

  “Which brings me to my epiphany at the museum. What if the UNSUB is neither copycat nor vigilante?”

  “Then Kramer is innocent, and the UNSUB in the Ferragamo case killed both women—­but the motivational dilemma remains.”

  “Maybe. Before I say any more, how long will it take you to get the evidence photos from the Cartwright case I asked for?”

  A muscle flickered in his jaw. “They’re in the other room.”

  “But how did you get them so quickly? I just asked you for them an hour ago.”

  “I’ve had them all along. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you right away. I’ve been thinking Cartwright and Dillinger are connected for a while now.”

  But he hadn’t shared that with her. He went to retrieve the evidence files, and she wiped her damp palms on her jeans. That made one more thing he’d kept hidden from her. It seemed whenever Spense wanted information from her, they were a cozy one-­for-­all team. But when the shoe was on the other foot . . .

  Dropping to the floor beside her, he handed her the files.

  “Look, Spense, if we’re going to be working together—­”

  He gently grasped her shoulders and turned her toward him. “If we’re going to be working together, I have to stop holding back. Whatever information I have, whatever concerns, from now on, I promise I’ll share them with you. It’s not fair to expect you to trust me when I’m keeping things from you. When I say I’m sorry, I mean it, Caity. Won’t you please give me a chance?”