by Lisa Turner
As Billy approached, Vanderman flashed a surprised look at him then switched back to Frankie. “Dr. Sharma has asked me to represent him. Unless you have a warrant you are to have no further contact with him.”
“This is a murder investigation. We’re not going away,” she said.
Sharma started to answer. Vanderman raised his hand. “Young lady, what don’t you understand about the word ‘no’?” He glared at Billy, who was now standing beside Frankie. “Good evening, Detective. I’m surprised this woman works with you. She needs to be reined in.”
Billy felt Frankie go rigid at his side.
A code of civility existed between defense attorneys and homicide cops who oppose one another year after year. In this case, Vanderman was asserting himself at Frankie’s expense to impress his client.
“Doctor Sharma and Miss Lee were close,” Billy said. “He may have information we need to bring down her killer.”
“You know better than to use this approach,” Vanderman said. “Direct any questions you have to my office.”
Billy gave Sharma a cold stare. “Advise your client my partner and I will be talking with him real soon.”
They left the hospital, Frankie marching beside him with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket.
“Guess we’ll write that one up as ‘failure to properly engage the suspect,’” she said, and gave him a pinched smile.
“Vanderman was posturing. He needs to justify the fifty-thousand-dollar retainer fee he’s about to extract from Sharma.”
She scowled. “I sure made it easy for him.”
“We’ll get him next round.” He put up his hand for a fist bump.
“You know I don’t do that,” she said.
“Come on.”
“Why should I?”
“It’s what successful partners do who support each other. Like Michelle and Obama.”
“I’m a Republican,” she said.
He processed that and decided to drop it. “It’s late. How about some comfort food?”
They were in the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru waiting on their coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches when a security officer working the CJC entrance called.
Billy put him on speaker. “Go ahead.”
“Got a guy here with a shitload of files. He wants to talk about the Lee investigation. Claims to be related to your victim.”
“Did he give his name?”
“Judd Phillips.”
Frankie shrugged.
“Keep him there. We’re twenty minutes out.”
Chapter 14
They drove downtown beneath the star-studded sky. Traffic from the Grizzlies game was streaming out of the FedEx Forum and jamming up Poplar in both directions. They ate their grilled cheese sandwiches while they waited.
Billy worked through the family names he knew that were connected to the Lees. Nothing clicked. Phillips could be a Memphis branch or someone related by marriage. The guy showing up like this might be involved in the murder or just plain nuts. There was no shortage of crazy in this town.
Frankie parked in the garage next to the Criminal Justice Complex. The elevator took them to the mezzanine level overlooking the atrium. During the day defendants packed the place for General Sessions Criminal Court, traffic court, and Judge Tim Dwyer’s drug court where he authorized alternative treatments for non-violent offenders instead of jail time. At night the atrium echoed with the sound of the custodians running floor buffers.
They peered over the mezzanine’s rail at the guy seated on a bench near the door with a stack of files next to him. He had a solid presence, sturdy shoulders and thick forearms. He wore a beat-down canvas hat, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a leather vest, and tan trousers.
Phillips looked around, studied his knuckles, jigged his knee.
“Nerves,” Billy said.
“That’s Judd Phillips from Nighttime Poker,” Frankie said.
“You watch TV poker?”
“I watch him play no limit-hold ’em tournaments. He’s good.”
“The hell you say.”
She smirked.
Phillips slipped a flask from his pocket and took a swig. He might be a poker-playing TV star, and the ladies might see him as the rugged romantic type, but Billy had him pegged as a drunk.
They took the stairs, the whir of the floor buffers covering the sound of their steps. Phillips jumped to his feet when he saw them coming and knocked into the stack of files. Two slid to the floor, spilling their contents.
“Sorry,” he slurred. “I’m a little under the weather. Name’s Judd Phillips, Caroline Lee’s second cousin.” He dropped his head and widened his eyes as if exhausted. “Can’t believe this is happening. Finn’s gone. Now Caroline’s dead.”
Alarms went off in Billy’s head. “I’m Detective Able. This is Detective Malone. Who’s this Finn?”
“Our cousin. He disappeared five years ago. All they found were his folded clothes beside a rice field.”
“I remember the case,” Billy said. The media had played down the disappearance after the Crittenden County Sherriff’s Office suspected suicide. The tragedy was never connected to the Lee family.
Judd swayed. “I was in Vegas this afternoon taping a show. A video on a Memphis news app came up showing Caroline’s Camaro. I caught the first flight out and drove directly here.”
“You have information about her murder?” Frankie asked.
He looked surprised. “No, I haven’t talked to Caroline in months.”
“Then why are you here, Mr. Phillips?” she asked.
“Please. Call me Judd.” He shook his head. “Guess I didn’t think it through.”
Bullshit, Billy thought but kept his mouth shut. Frankie was back in the saddle after the incident with Vanderman. Let her run.
She nodded toward the bench. “What’s in the files?”
“Finn’s case. I hired an investigator after he disappeared …” Judd paled. He glanced around.
Billy pointed to the bathroom. “That way.”
Judd hustled off and through the door. They heard retching, silence, and then sink water running.
“We can’t talk to him in this shape,” Billy said. He tapped a number into his mobile and gave the address for the CJC.
Frankie knelt to gather the spilled files. She stopped to read a document and held it up. “He hired Walker Investigations. That’s a good firm.”
“The best. Walker has moved on. Oregon I think.”
Judd came out of the bathroom carrying his hat. He ran his hand through his hair. “Man. I must’ve gotten hold of some bad fish on the plane.”
“Yeah, right.” Billy could smell whiskey fumes three feet away.
Frankie held up the files. “You’re thinking your cousin’s disappearance is connected to Caroline’s murder?”
“They both hooked up with a really bad man when they were at Rhodes College. The investigator I hired believed the guy was involved in Finn’s disappearance. He’s been incarcerated but now he’s on the loose. So yeah, I think it’s possible.” He dropped his gaze and turned the brim of his hat in his hand. “I apologize for coming here in this condition.”
“Detective,” the officer at the door called. “You ordered a cab?”
Billy fixed Judd with a stare. “You better have fifty bucks on you, because you’re not driving home.”
Judd nodded, took the files from Frankie, and handed her a card. “Here’s my number and address. Whatever you need, I’m available.” He picked up the rest of the files and walked away with as much dignity as he could muster.
“I saw a photo in Caroline’s study, five kids with Easter baskets,” Frankie said. “I’ll bet Judd was the tall one.” Her eyes widened. “Hold on. Something just hit me. I’ll meet you upstairs.” She took off after Phillips.
Like hell, I’ll meet you upstairs. Billy stood there and waited. A few minutes later she came back cradling all the files in her arms.
�
�Was he ever embarrassed,” she said. “He never loses his cool on TV. Nothing shakes him.” She waggled a second card in her fingers. “Here’s his producer’s mobile number. I’ll check out his alibi tomorrow.”
“What’s your interest in those files?”
She shifted the files to her hip. “The piece of paper I found in Caroline’s car? It had the name Finn Adams on it.”
Chapter 15
Three in the morning Billy and two night shift detectives sat at their desks in the squad room, the click of their keyboards and the occasional cough the only disturbances. Frankie left after one o’clock with the Adams files under her arm. He worried she might get sidetracked with the cold case but decided not to bring it up after her skirmish with Vanderman. She was going to make mistakes, not because she cut corners—there was nothing imprecise about Frankie—but because she believed she had all the answers. It’s important to control the need to be right. Most of the time you aren’t.
He’d stayed at his desk to review the neighborhood canvass reports. One woman said she’d seen Sharma’s Escalade parked on the street in the middle of the day three houses down from Caroline’s. It stayed there for about forty-five minutes. Billy figured that was the day Sharma had entered Caroline’s house looking for proof she’d been cheating on him. Motive isn’t a legal element of a crime, but it’s a big part of the story, something he always looked at. The neighbor said she’d left a note in Caroline’s mailbox. If Caroline kept the note, it was a piece of physical evidence that would impress the hell out of a jury.
Physical evidence reports had begun to trickle in. The prints CSU lifted had matched Caroline, Roscoe Hanson, and the park ranger. Everything else, including latents from the passenger’s side door handles, was unusable. The techs took soil samples from the field and made casts of eleven shoe impressions. A footwear examiner would compare those to any evidence they submitted from suspects. The examiner would then report his conclusions as a match, inconclusive, or elimination.
CSU had recovered blue fibers stuck in the fabric of the driver’s seat protector. The same fibers were found in the lace on the back of Caroline’s dress. Had the fibers been on the seat protector and contaminated her dress? Or had she been wearing something over the dress sometime that evening?
He made sure Frankie had been copied on all physical evidence reports before moving on to Caroline’s appointment schedule.
Her assistant had included a profile of clients listed on the calendar. Most were wealthy couples over the age of fifty. He would pass the calendar to another detective to review, and he would interview clients who’d been in contact with Caroline the day she was murdered.
His last act was to text Frankie and say he’d be back at seven in the morning.
On the street he bought a Commercial Appeal from the sidewalk box. The headline read: “Bizarre Murder of Socialite Attorney.”
The article gave Caroline’s full name and cause of death as gunshot wound. The reporter went into her relation to the Lee Law Firm and the prominence of the Lee family in the city. The “bizarre” reference in the headline was about the bison attack on Hanson. The last line mentioned Caroline’s engagement to “highly regarded neurosurgeon, Dr. Raj Sharma, who had not returned the reporter’s calls.” Perfect. The article would turn up the heat on the doctor.
Billy folded the newspaper and drove to the barge, fighting to keep his eyes open. He drank milk from the carton while standing in front of the refrigerator and then slept on top of the covers.
Wake from river traffic rocked the barge until the alarm went off at 6:15 am. In the shower, he started with the water as hot as he could stand it then ran it cold, letting the jets pound his face and chest. That’s when a memory came to him so clear it played like a movie.
It was a Saturday afternoon, mid October. He was fourteen at the time and spent every Saturday ringing up tickets at the diner’s register, wiping tables, and washing dishes. Mr. Lee and Uncle Kane were having their talk at the table by the diner’s front window. Five kids—three boys and two girls—had gone outside to the picnic table to eat their pie and ice cream. He remembered stepping outside with a load of trash and noticing the three boys trooping across the field to the train tracks that ran across the back of the property. The four o’clock Illinois Central was rolling past with boxcars, tankers, flat beds, and cattle cars. One boy stopped to pick up a stick and brandished it like a sword. The others marched across the field toward the train, the smell of burning leaves hanging in the air. He would’ve given anything to be one of them. Free.
He was rinsing out a mop when he noticed the girl with the dark hair seated at the picnic table with a book propped in front of her. Caroline was picking blackberries from the bramble growing at the edge of the parking lot. The dark-haired girl closed her book and walked to the car, calling something to Caroline. Caroline answered and raised both hands cupped full of berries. Then she turned to him, her face golden in the afternoon light. That was the image he would always hold on to. Caroline lifting the berries for him to see as if she’d known he was watching.
She was standing near the opening of an animal trail used by coyote and fox to get to a creek in the backwoods. A movement caught his eye where the trail broke through the undergrowth. A big raccoon lurched into the open. It stumbled and flipped on its back, paws shuddering with spasms, jaws snapping. The coon rolled up on all fours and staggered toward Caroline in a sideways crabwalk. A city girl, she stared at the coon not recognizing the symptoms of rabies. He jumped off the porch and ran toward the coon, swinging the mop and yelling. Caroline, finally understanding, bolted for the picnic table. His uncle Kane had come running out the front door with his .45 revolver. He shot the raccoon dead.
Billy shaved, dressed, brewed coffee, and went out on the aft deck to watch the dying moon spin its way down to the western horizon. The woman in the Camaro and the golden girl he’d watched picking blackberries were the same, only this time he hadn’t been there to protect her.
His mobile lit up. He expected it to be Middlebrook, but it was the top cop calling, Director Jefferson Davis.
“Sergeant Able, my phone rang last night until ten o’clock. The mayor said he’s getting the same kind of heat from important people—bankers, lawyers, and country club fat cats. They want the person responsible for the murder hauled in front of a firing squad by tonight. I assured them the investigation was our number one priority. That shut them down temporarily. What’s your operating theory?”
“We’re looking hard at Miss Lee’s former fiancé, Dr. Raj Sharma.”
“Christ almighty. The doctor who heads up Bathe Neuro Clinic?”
“Yes, sir. Miss Lee broke their engagement right before the wedding. The doctor was humiliated. He started harassing her. She was about to take out a protective order against him when she was murdered.”
“My God. Have you talked to Sharma?”
“He’s hiding behind Jerry Vanderman. I’ll try to get some answers today.”
“Not with Vanderman on board. What about that parolee you caught at the scene?”
“He says he happened on the car by accident, and a bison trapped him there. We’ve got no physical evidence to prove different. We’ll have to cut him loose later today. In my opinion, Sharma is our guy.”
Davis let several seconds pass before he spoke. “I’m leaving this in your hands. I expect you to bring charges sooner rather than later.”
Chapter 16
Frankie opened her eyes to the dawn light illuminating the room. The clock read 6:32 am. She sat up in the bed feeling stiff and cold. She’d fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes with a pen still in her hand from making notes on the Finn Adams case. Her mobile beside her pillow showed a 3:00 am text from Billy saying he would be back in the office by seven. She came to her feet, stuffing files and her notes into her satchel. Billy’s text had sounded like a challenge. If he was in early to the office, she wanted to be earlier. Competition makes for a great detective tea
m or it kills the deal.
Five days’ worth of work outfits hung in the closet set to go. She snatched a hanger and hurried to the bathroom. Her short hair and minimal makeup allowed her to shower, dress, and walk out the door in fourteen minutes. She knew because she’d road tested her routine until she had it down. This time she was backing out of the driveway and munching a PowerBar in record time, thirteen minutes and three seconds.
Details of the Adams case ran through her mind as she drove. Finn had disappeared eight days before his twenty-first birthday. A black-and-white headshot included in the file had given her the impression of a young nineteenth-century scholar, his coat collar turned up, long hair, chiseled romantic features, and a grave, earnest expression. He struck her as someone who hadn’t engaged in conversation. He debated.
A crime scene photo showed an Arkansas rice field flooded after the harvest to protect the soil. She knew the fields became a habitat that attracted thousands of ducks migrating south. Duck hunters leased the fields during hunting season. Good income for the farmers, deadly for the ducks.
A second photo was of Finn’s clothing—pants, a shirt, a jacket, and underwear, folded and neatly stacked beside the water’s edge. A pair of blue Nike Free Trainers had been placed on top.
A third photo was of a 1968 Chevy Camaro that had been found abandoned at the scene, the same car Caroline had driven to her death.
The Sherriff’s Office investigation appeared to be thorough at the outset, but once it was determined that the disappearance was due to accident or suicide the investigators had moved on. Judd had hired Walker Investigations, a top agency; however, even Walker couldn’t prove what had happened to the young man.
In the last file, she’d found a transcript of a telephone interview between Caroline Lee and one of Walker’s investigators that had been taped a few months after Finn’s disappearance. The investigator had first made Caroline comfortable with a few softball questions. Then things got interesting.