by Anne Frasier
He was pissed.
“We’ll talk later,” she told Jay Thomas. “I’ll give you preliminary details you can take to Savannah Morning News.”
Jay Thomas nodded and moved away, but not before snapping a photo of Lamont.
“Why didn’t you call me?” the FBI agent said.
“This crime is unrelated to the Savannah Killer. Not really your jurisdiction.”
“I just got off the phone with the mayor. A dead chief of police is just as high profile as the Savannah Killer. He wants me involved in every aspect of this new case, and I’ve gotten the okay from the FBI.”
He didn’t waste time. Hearing that David found the body probably had him salivating.
“Where’s Gould?”
“In the backyard. He’s pretty shaken up.”
“I plan to shake him up some more.”
Exactly the problem. “I don’t think you’re the person to conduct an interview with him.”
“He was first on the scene. I need to talk to him. Now. While it’s fresh in his mind.”
Elise doubted the events of David’s discovery were going anywhere soon. “You aren’t the person to speak to him, considering your history,” she said.
“And who is the person to speak to him? You? Avery? Your father?” The last word came with a sneer. “I’m the only person for this.”
Unfortunately, he had a point.
Feeling she couldn’t leave Lamont unattended, she joined him as he strode through the house as if he owned it.
Inside was the typical scene, one she’d witnessed many times before. John Casper, along with the crime-scene team, attended to the body. Cameras were in action; evidence cards were placed about the room; samples were being collected. John, his face pale and strained, spotted Elise and looked ready to say something, then noticed Lamont and clamped his lips together.
The agent bent over the half-nude body. “Sliced throat,” he said, taking strange note of the obvious. “Ear to ear.” He straightened, hands in his pants pockets. Without moving, he perused the room. “Forced entry?”
The presence of Lamont once again left Elise with the urge to cover Hoffman. “It doesn’t look like it,” she said.
“So most likely an acquaintance killing.”
“That’s my guess, but it’s too early to speculate.”
“I like speculation. It can often lead to the truth.”
This wasn’t the time to get into it with him. “No sign of forced entry, so yes. Could very well be someone Major Hoffman knew.”
“Any sign of sexual assault?” he asked John Casper.
“No scratches.” John lifted one of Hoffman’s hands. “Nothing under the fingernails. I’ll know more once I perform an autopsy.”
“Care to guess time of death?” Lamont asked.
“Body is in full rigor,” John said. “That, combined with air and body temperature, puts the approximate time of death between eleven p.m. and one a.m., May twelfth to thirteenth.”
Lamont nodded. “We need to get a list of close acquaintances,” he said.
“Avery’s on it,” Elise said.
“I’m ready to talk to Gould,” Lamont told her.
Elise’s emotions were overriding common sense. She wanted to cover poor Major Hoffman’s body, and she wanted to keep Lamont away from David, but she couldn’t shield or protect either one of them.
“He’s in the backyard.”
She might not be able to protect David from Lamont, but she wasn’t going to let the man do the questioning without her.
David was right where she’d left him, this time without the dog. In another area of the yard, a crime-team member was working on the animal, collecting samples. Elise doubted the dog would provide them with much, if any, information, but the animal itself was still considered collateral evidence.
Lamont positioned himself at the bottom of the steps so he was face-to-face with David, elbow on his knee as he leaned in close. Threatening interrogator body language, which might set David off since he’d know exactly what Lamont was doing. The first person on the scene was a suspect until proven otherwise, but it was hard not to miss the gloat surrounding Lamont. He wanted to take David down.
Lamont jumped right in. “Where were you last night between the hours of eleven p.m. and two a.m.?”
“Home.”
“Alone?”
“With Isobel.” David, even in his stunned state, saw where this was going.
“Isobel?” Lamont pulled out pen and paper, poised to jot down information. “I need her full name and phone number.”
“She only has one name,” David said. “Isobel is my cat.”
Lamont’s jaw tightened, but he plunged on. “You and Coretta Hoffman were in a relationship, isn’t that right?”
“Your line of questioning is inappropriate at this time,” Elise said before David could reply. “I suggest you focus on the details of Detective Gould’s discovery of the body and not his personal life.”
“That’s okay,” David said. “I have nothing to hide.”
Lamont asked more questions—these fairly typical, with answers Elise already knew. She was beginning to relax, when Lamont turned things upside down.
“Weren’t you somehow attached to a similar murder?” Lamont asked David. “One that took place two years ago?”
David stared at him.
Lamont flipped through his tablet. “A woman named Flora Martinez?” Pause for effect. “Her throat was sliced too. Ear to ear.” More gloating.
“What are you getting at?” Elise demanded.
“I’m saying it’s awfully strange that two women Gould was dating ended up dying in the exact same way. That’s what I’m saying.”
“An odd coincidence,” Elise said.
“Or a pattern.”
“I wasn’t dating either of them.” That from David, who still didn’t seem upset by Lamont’s accusation.
“Okay, sleeping with,” Lamont said. “Let’s put it that way.”
Now David seemed to connect. “Fucking them? Is that what you mean? Like you were fucking my wife?”
Lamont’s face turned red. “I’m gonna take you down, you son of a bitch.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Elise said, afraid of another brawl. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
Lamont cooled off a little, tucked his tablet inside his jacket, and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “I’ll see you downtown,” he told David.
Elise took Lamont by the arm and led him aside, away from David. “This is exactly what I was talking about. You can’t interrogate him.”
“You’re not seeing what’s right in front of you,” Lamont said. Briefly distracted, he squinted up at the sky. “Man, it’s hot.” He broke down and removed his jacket. His armpits were circled with sweat.
“The pattern is more than just the murders,” he said. “Look at the dates of the homicides. May twelfth. Both of them. Come on, Detective Sandburg. I know he’s your partner, but don’t be blind. The guy’s not right in the head. I’m not saying he doesn’t have his reasons to be out of his mind. He does. But this is my theory: this death anniversary rolls around, he loses it, and he kills the handiest person in the room, who just happens to be the woman in bed beside him.”
“What about last year? There was no murder last May.”
“None that you know of. Murderers often get away with second and third and fourth killings that go undocumented. Common knowledge. And that’s cool as long as we get the asshole off the street.”
He was confusing her.
“Think about it. That’s all I’m saying. This is more than a coincidence. This is an MO.”
“The Martinez murder was committed by the TTX Killer, who ended up being Marie Luna,” Elise argued.
“Can you be sure of that? The TTX Killer is dead.”
He was right. Dead, with no confession.
“I read the report,” Lamont went on to say. “No evidence to connect the killer to the crim
e. Another thing? The Martinez murder didn’t fit the TTX profile.”
He was right about that too. He’d done his homework, and she couldn’t help but feel that nothing could make Lamont happier than to tie David to not only one but two murders.
“Hell, Gould might not even know he’s doing this crazy stuff. That’s what I think. Maybe he goes into some kind of state. I’ve seen it before. Or maybe he took something. You know that prescription medication that makes people sleepwalk and do all kinds of crazy stuff? There are several documented cases of people doing some seriously bad things when taking that new drug. What’s it called?”
“Slumberon?” Elise tried to keep her face and voice neutral; inside, her mind was reeling.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” He seemed happy to see that she was considering his theory. “So he just goes off and releases himself by killing. Or sometimes killers reenact an event, kind of like a flashback where they actually act it out.”
She glanced over to where David sat on the step, just sitting there in the bleeding sun, still dazed. She thought about taking him to her place, but then she thought about Audrey.
In that moment, she realized Lamont had succeeded in planting doubt. She didn’t want David in the house with her daughter.
“We need to bring him in for questioning,” Lamont said. “Hopefully we’ll find enough evidence to hold him. You have to help me do that.”
“It’s not David,” Elise whispered. But heaven help her, her words held no conviction.
“You’re making an assumption based on emotions. I understand. I get it. Think about it, Elise. That’s all I’m asking. Think about it.” Lamont’s phone rang. He checked the screen, then answered, moving away for privacy.
Seeing Lamont leaving the vicinity, David got to his feet and crossed the yard to join Elise. He looked a little better. His face wasn’t as pale and his gait was normal. Those were the things she noticed. “Am I done here?” he asked. He looked down at his bloodstained shirt. “I want to go home and change.”
A female officer appeared with the poodle in her arms. “What are we going to do with her?”
All three of them stared at the dog.
“What about Major Hoffman’s family?” Elise asked.
“I’m not sure she has any close family,” David said.
“A will? Maybe she made provisions for the dog. Some people do.” But Elise’s mind wasn’t in the conversation. She was thinking about what Lamont had said.
“The dog needs a place right now,” the officer said.
“I’d take her, but I’ve got a cat.” David reached out and petted the animal, his blood-caked hand stroking the dog’s curly white coat. “What about you?” he asked Elise. “You’re always saying you should get a dog.”
“That’s more talk than anything. I don’t know anything about dogs. And if I did get a dog, I was thinking a puppy. I was thinking something that’s not a poodle.”
“Poodles get a bad rap,” David said.
“They aren’t very protective.” She couldn’t believe they were having a somewhat normal conversation about dogs when she was wondering if David was a murderer.
Elise thought about what having a dog around would involve. Feeding it, taking it for walks, Audrey getting attached. Then she thought of the alternative—a shelter. “Give me the damn dog.” She took the animal and tucked it under her arm. It squirmed a little before settling down. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car,” she told David.
They circled the house.
In the time they’d been in the backyard, the crowd in the street had tripled. They had to work their way through bodies to reach David’s vehicle.
Wind blew the scent of something sweet in their direction. A new form of sorrow pushed down on Elise, and it came with the suspicion Lamont had cast. She was a decent cop, and she knew that what he’d said made sense. If it was true, she didn’t know how she’d carry on.
“Go home. Take a shower,” she told David as he ducked into his black Civic. “Eat something. Try to get some sleep. I’ll stop by later.”
“What’s going on, Elise?” Brittle and gutted, he’d still managed to pick up on her unease. “You’re sad.”
“Major Hoffman is dead. I should be sad.”
“Right.” But he wasn’t convinced. He continued to watch her, and for a moment, just a moment, she felt a surge of fear. Ridiculous. David would never hurt her. But if he’d killed Martinez, and if he’d killed Hoffman . . . that meant she didn’t know him at all. It meant she’d never known him.
“Don’t leave town,” Elise warned.
You’d think she’d slapped him.
David’s eyes narrowed. “What did Lamont say to you?”
“That you’re a suspect,” she said, trying to divert the conversation. “We’re just following protocol.”
David slammed the car door and rolled down his window. “You think I might have done it, don’t you?”
“Just don’t leave town. I’ll check on you later.”
Before he could press her more, she turned and walked back toward the house and crime scene.
Her phone rang. Securing the leash, she put down the dog and pulled her phone from her pocket. Checked the screen: Mayor Burton Chesterfield.
She’d had little contact with him since the day his daughter’s body had been found, choosing to let Avery handle interviewing the mayor and his wife. No sense inviting trouble.
She answered the phone.
“So it’s true?” Chesterfield asked. “Major Hoffman is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Murder?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.” A long pause, then: “Is there any chance this has something to do with whoever murdered my daughter?”
“Highly improbable. The MOs are nothing alike. This looks like an acquaintance crime.”
“Any suspects?”
“Not yet.”
She could feel him thinking.
“We’re without a chief of police,” he said. “We can’t be without a chief of police with the city in crisis.”
“I’m trying to keep on top of things, sir.”
“That’s good, because I’m making you interim chief.”
Surely there had to be a better choice. “I can’t—”
“I’m not asking you, Detective Sandburg. I’m telling you. You know the drill. Set up a press conference and get back to me with the time. The public is waiting.” He disconnected.
CHAPTER 31
I don’t want to be here,” Elise told John Casper as they suited up in the prep room. Five hours had passed since the discovery of Major Hoffman’s body, and the autopsy was about to begin.
“Nobody wants to be here,” John said.
“I think he might.” Tying her yellow gown, Elise nodded in the direction of the guy on the other side of the glass, already waiting and eager in the autopsy suite. Victor Lamont. Despite Elise’s arguments, the FBI agent had conducted an in-depth interrogation of David at the police station, but as good as he thought he was, he hadn’t hit upon anything significant enough to hold or arrest Elise’s partner. It was obvious Lamont hoped the autopsy would remedy that. She’d never been around anybody so eager to see a body cut open.
“That has to be tough, working with someone you aren’t crazy about,” John said. “Any idea when David will be back? With your being interim chief of police, I’d think you could reinstate him.”
John was a good friend, but Elise was keeping the suspicions about David to herself for now.
How did he do it? she wondered. How did he always remain John? He was young, yes, and he had a fiancée he loved, but how did it not get to him? In an attempt to evade his curiosity about David, she asked the question aloud.
“Death is a part of life,” he told her simply.
She slipped on elastic shoe covers. “Not murder.”
“Even murder.”
Yes, but she could argue that he didn’t have the responsibility
of keeping people alive. That might have been the difference between them. For her, every day was a day of failure, and that knowledge weighed heavy on her. And if her partner turned out to be a cold-blooded killer? She was done. She was over it. All of it.
“Why do you do this?” she asked.
John smiled as he snapped on his second pair of latex gloves. He looked as young as the day she’d first met him when she’d mistaken him for a kid making a delivery in his ragged jeans and red Converse sneakers and his wildly curly hair.
“When I was little, I used to take things apart,” he told her. “Radios, TVs, anything I could get my hands on. It drove my mother crazy. But I had to know how things worked. Later, I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, so that plays into the how and why. Some medical examiners are fascinated by death. I won’t lie about that. But most of us have an overwhelming desire to solve puzzles. I want an answer, and each body tells a story.”
“That’s kind of beautiful.”
John handed her an elastic cover for her hair. “I know it’s weird,” he said, “but I love what I do.”
“I wish I could say the same about my job.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You bring compassion to the role. We sure as hell don’t want somebody like that guy as head of homicide.” He nodded toward Lamont, who was staring at them through the glass, impatience on his face.
Glad he couldn’t hear them, yet wondering if he could lip-read, Elise said, “I don’t know. I’m starting to feel kind of sorry for him.”
John laughed. “That’s what I’m talking about. Compassion.”
The door burst open. “Are you two ready?” Lamont asked.
Normally a high-profile murder would fill the suite with a number of people from various departments. Out of respect for Major Hoffman, a decision had been made to keep the numbers down. It would just be the three of them, along with John’s fiancée, Mara, and the diener—John’s assistant who helped with the positioning of the body and was in charge of lights and photography. Jay Thomas hadn’t minded when Elise told him not to come.