Shattered

by Allison Brennan

  Lucy smiled. “I thought so. There’s something familiar about you.”

  “We haven’t met.”

  “No, but there’s a familiarity in those who served, especially career. My brother-in-law Duke was in the army for three years, he doesn’t have the same edge that Jack does.”

  “But they both work for RCK.”

  Lucy glanced at Max. Max ignored the question in her eyes—was David actually getting more information out of Lucy than she could?

  “Yes.”

  “Max has their press kit. Made me read it.”

  Lucy laughed. “RCK does a lot more than hostage rescue and personal security.”

  “But that’s what they’re known for.”

  “True, it’s how they started the business. They employ many former servicemen and women. The transition years, especially if you were deployed overseas, are difficult. Being able to use those skills can help bridge the gap between service and civilian life. Some can never fully leave.”

  “It’s a way of life.”

  “But you left.”

  “I hadn’t planned to, but it was the right time.”

  There was another knock on the door and Max inwardly groaned. David was expertly working Lucy, and she wanted more … but she didn’t dare interject because Lucy was sharp enough to figure it out. Max didn’t even think that David was knowingly pumping Lucy for information about herself and her family.

  Max let Katella in. “We’re glad you could make it,” she said. “We have some names and want to compare them to your list.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help,” he said, but it was clear to Max that he was skeptical.

  “Coffee?”

  “Thank you.”

  Why hadn’t she ordered room service? She made Katella a cup with the Keurig and David introduced himself.

  Katella seemed impressed with her wall of information. “This is extensive.”

  “Nothing we didn’t tell you on Thursday, but I like the visual,” Max said.

  “You said four victims, but you crossed off this last victim.”

  “Not the same killer,” Max said. “We now have two different cases, and Caldwell is already on trial. I don’t want to focus on her right now”—she handed Katella the mug—“we have a lead on Justin Stanton’s killer.”

  “Possibly,” Lucy qualified. “Max used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information about certain county employees, and Andrew expedited the request—he pulled the information himself. But we wanted to make sure that if there were any legal issues, we had the paperwork as backup. We have all the information that we’re legally able to obtain on eighteen employees. Women, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five at the time of Justin’s murder, who left employment within a year of his death.”

  Katella handed Lucy a two-page list of handwritten names. “These are all the women who were interviewed—their personal information, such as their address at the time of their interview is in the files. I didn’t think to copy it.”

  “We’ll double-check the addresses if we have a common name. How do you verify identity when you interview someone?”

  “Driver’s license, though if we’re canvassing we wouldn’t ask for ID. We make note of the house we approached.”

  Max hadn’t thought to ask that question, but it made sense. Double-checking the information they obtained from Andrew with the information Katella gleaned at the time of the murder.

  Lucy read the names and immediately said, “Danielle Sharpe.”

  “How did you see that so quickly?” Max ran a finger down the print out that Andrew had given her.

  “I had a few names in my head based on the information on the spreadsheet.” Lucy asked Katella, “What do you remember about her?”

  Katella seemed to be surprised that they’d narrowed the suspect pool down so quickly. And to be honest, Max was surprised herself. It was never this easy.

  Easy? Was this really easy? Or did you just have someone who knew exactly what to look for?

  “Um—” Katella seemed flustered. He opened the box he’d brought and dug through loosely organized notepads, most of which had sticky notes with names written on the tabs. “I marked each of those interviews. Let me find it…”

  It took him a minute, but he located the notebook. “Here—I didn’t interview her myself. Oh, yeah. First responders interviewed her that morning. She was a neighbor who helped in the search. Remember, we didn’t find Justin’s body until late the next day. For a time we thought he might have left the house on his own and got lost.”

  “We?” Lucy asked.

  “I didn’t—kids his age don’t usually wander out of the house in the middle of the night, and I wasn’t called until the body was found. However, because he had his blanket some people thought maybe he got it in his head to camp or something. His mother told us he loved camping and was planning for a sleepaway camp with his best friend.”

  Max looked at Lucy and saw pain. Bittersweet memories? Was she the best friend?

  “Sharpe handed out flyers to all the neighbors.”

  “You said she was a neighbor, but was she interviewed at Andrew’s house?”

  “Correct.”

  “Did she give her address?”

  “No. We were in a different mode then—search.”

  “And you never interviewed her again.”

  “Yes, I did. I had her number, called her on the phone and asked follow-up questions. She didn’t have anything that helped. Here.” He handed Lucy his notepad.

  While Lucy scanned the interview shorthand, Max looked at the line item that Andrew had prepared. Danielle Sharpe, age thirty-one, had left employment at the end of the year—six months after Justin’s murder. She was a legal secretary, but it didn’t indicate if she worked for Andrew or another prosecutor.

  “How do the legal secretaries get assigned?” Max asked.

  Lucy looked at her in confusion. “I have no idea.”

  “Depends,” Katella said. “Andrew would know best. I know he has his own dedicated legal secretary, and a few of the other senior attorneys do as well, but it’s more a pool system. They get assigned based on workload and experience.”

  “Andrew was a new ADA, so he would have been part of that process. He could have crossed paths with her. Max, there was no line item about marital status.”

  “It wasn’t in the employee records, though there was emergency contact information.”

  “We need that, but I want to pick Andrew’s brain. Give me two more legal secretaries on the list, I don’t care who, and I’m going to run all three by Andrew.”

  “I don’t understand,” Katella said. “Why not just ask him?”

  “Because if I’m right, this woman killed his son, and Andrew isn’t going to be thinking like a prosecutor—he’s going to be thinking like a grieving father.”

  “There’s one more name in Katella’s notes,” Max said. “This woman—Jan DuBois. Why didn’t you home in on her?”

  “She doesn’t live in the neighborhood.”

  “Does that have to be a factor?”

  “Her previous employment was as dispatcher in the sheriff’s department of San Diego County. I’m confident that whoever killed Justin came from out of state. Danielle fits that.”

  Max was skeptical. She believed in instincts—depended on them—but she was also methodical in her approach.

  “But,” Lucy continued, “I’ll include her in my questioning to Andrew. Good?”

  “Yes.”

  There were no other common names to both lists. Max pulled one other legal secretary who had left employment one year almost to the day of Justin’s murder and Lucy called Andrew and put him on speaker.

  “Andrew, I’m here with Max, her assistant David Kane, and Detective Katella.”

  “Don, how’ve you been?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  “Andrew,” Lucy said, “I have three
names I want to run by you.”

  “You think one of them killed Justin.”

  “Not necessarily. I don’t want you to overthink it, okay? Just tell me if you know them, what you remember about them, first recollection.”

  “Who?”

  “Jan DuBois.”

  “Jan? Don’t tell me—”

  “Don’t read into this, Andrew. Just spill it.”

  “I’ve known Jan for years. She’s been married to Bill DuBois since before I met her. He’s now the assistant sheriff. She was a legal secretary for several years after she had two girls, thirteen months apart, then when they started school she went to law school. She’s in private practice now. The girls—jeez, I haven’t seen them in ages. They’re probably in college. They were a few years younger than Justin, if I recall. I see Bill and Jan at least once a year.”

  “Katella interviewed her about whether she knew of your relationship with Sheila and about your marriage.”

  “He interviewed a lot of people on staff.” There was a tone of bitterness in his voice.

  “Buddy,” Katella said, “I was doing my job.”

  “I know, Don. Sorry. It was a miserable year.”

  “Christina Hernandez.”

  “I don’t remember her.”

  “She was the legal secretary to the DA, left employment in June the year after Justin’s murder.”

  “I don’t remember, seriously. I vaguely remember the DA’s legal secretary, but I didn’t interact with her much. Hold on.” Max heard him rummaging through files.

  Lucy said, “Don’t give me anything I shouldn’t have.”

  Max was going to tear her hair out if they had to walk the straight and narrow. This was the reason she didn’t like working with cops.

  “You could leave the room,” Max said.

  Lucy gave her such a look that Max almost did a double take.

  “Just an idea,” Max mumbled.

  Andrew said over the phone, “I can tell you that she doesn’t fit your profile, does that help?”

  “Yes, just keep her information handy. Last name. Danielle Sharpe.”

  Silence.

  “You don’t know her, either?” Max said. Damn, and she thought it had been a good lead. Didn’t mean she was innocent, but she would be harder to investigate if they had to go back to square one.

  Andrew said, “I remember Danielle.”

  “It was nearly twenty years ago,” Lucy said. “That’s a really good memory.”

  Lucy sounded almost like she was interrogating Andrew. It was subtle, but Max didn’t miss the tone.

  “She almost screwed up one of my biggest cases in my early career. Not something I would forget.”

  “Explain.”

  “It was more my fault for trusting her with something so crucial, but she’d done outstanding work for one of my colleagues, and I was still new—I’d only been in the DA’s office for two years at that point, still making a name for myself.”

  “What specifically did she do?”

  “I had her researching cases to back up a fraud case I was prosecuting. She screwed up every citation. Every single one. I called her on the carpet for it—she blamed the computer program she was using, that it had shifted columns so everything was one off. Still, the DA pulled the case from me and gave it to one of my rivals.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Why shouldn’t I have? Mistakes happen—I was furious at the time.”

  “When was this?”

  Andrew took a long pause. “I got the case at the beginning of the year. It would have been around April. Before Justin. Are you saying she killed my son because I got her in trouble?”

  “No,” Lucy said. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Then why all these questions?”

  “Do you know if she was married?”

  “I didn’t know anything personal about her. I never worked with her again. I considered her incompetent, but ultimately, it was my responsibility to double-check her research.”

  “Thank you. I’ll let you go and—”

  “Stop. Don’t you dare hang up, Lucy! Is this the woman who killed my son? Why? Dammit, Lucy, you owe me that!”

  Lucy bristled, and Max said in a calm, controlled voice, “Andrew, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”

  He swore in the background. Something crashed to the ground.

  “Listen to me,” Lucy said. “Back off. I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I didn’t want to tip you off because you would go off half-cocked and try to find her. Confront her. She killed your son and everything you felt then, you’re feeling now. I will find her, Andrew, and if she is guilty, I will prove it. I promise you, Andrew. I’m not letting this go.”

  “Okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry—I’m just—you’re right. I haven’t felt myself since Max called and told me she was looking at Justin’s murder. I have a question, though.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you saying Don interviewed her? Is that why her name came up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Katella spoke up. “She was at your house the morning after Justin disappeared. There were dozens of people there—she said she was a neighbor, but I don’t have her address in the files.”

  “A neighbor. I didn’t know. I never saw her there.”

  “You weren’t home that morning. According to my notes, you were out looking for Justin with one of the first responding officers, then insisted that he take you to the station so you could run all sex offenders. Then I believe you went to your office to find out who might have been released recently that you put away. All the things I would have done—and did do—after he turned up dead.”

  “Those days are a blur. All I really remember was when Nell called me and said Justin was gone. I remember bits and pieces … but the pain is always here. Always.”

  “Andrew,” Lucy said, “you know me. You know I’ll never back down. I will find Danielle Sharpe, and if she killed Justin, she will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “I think it’s time you bring this to the police,” Andrew said.

  Max leaned forward. She wasn’t giving this up, not yet. She was close, and as soon as the police got involved, she’d be shut out.

  “We don’t have enough,” Lucy said before Max could comment. She shot Max a look and shook her head. What did she think Max was going to say or do?

  “What do you mean? We have a suspect! She matches all of your criteria.”

  “Andrew, we have no idea what her background is, where she’s from, if she’s married or was married or lost a child. We don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. We have no physical evidence to tie her to the murders. None. We turn this over to the police—even here in San Diego where you have clout—they will be stymied because they don’t have the resources to pursue this out of the area. They’ll pass it along to whichever jurisdiction she lives in now, and they’ll talk to her—and that will get us nowhere. She’s never been interviewed as a suspect to our knowledge, and I don’t want to spook her—not until we have something solid. This is a multijurisdictional case, and as soon as I have anything tangible, I’ll give everything to the FBI. You know they’ll be able to expedite this—I’ll call in every favor to make it happen. We don’t have it, not now. But we will.”

  “You believe that.”

  “Yes,” Lucy said without hesitation.

  “Let me know what I can do. Anything.”

  “Right now, go home. Do something to take your mind off this.”

  “That won’t happen, but I have a charity event I’m supposed to go to tonight. That’ll distract me for a bit.”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Lucy hung up. “David, would you be able to contact the assistant sheriff in Santa Barbara? I talked to him this morning. I don’t want to put in a formal request, but he seemed to be open
to answering yes or no questions if we have a name.”

  “You want me to ask if he interviewed Danielle Sharpe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tommy’s uncle has been helping—he’s a cop.”

  “Can he talk to the parents about her? I would like to talk to them myself if possible.”

  “I’ll feel him out, see what he thinks, but I suspect they want him to mediate.”

  “That’ll work for now, but later, they may need to come forward, go on record about this woman.”

  “Understood,” David said. He stepped out of the main room and onto the balcony to make the calls.

  “She didn’t give me the vibe,” Katella said. “I don’t even really remember her.”

  “That’s exactly what she wants and expects.” She snapped her fingers. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.” She got back on the phone. “Andrew, do you have employee photos? Would those be covered under the FOIA Max filed?” She listened, then said, “Send it to both me and Max. Thanks.”

  She hung up. Max was watching her closely. Lucy was certainly in her element, but there was something more—a maturity she hadn’t really noticed before. The focus? Yes. The borderline obsession? Yes. But she’d smoothly taken over the investigation. Had it just happened or had it been happening all along?

  What surprised Max more than anything was that she didn’t care as much as she thought she would. Yes, she wanted to write about these cold cases. Yes, she wanted to give justice to these innocent victims and their families. In the past, she would have fought tooth and nail against bringing in any law enforcement agency until she had practically solved their case and turned it over with a pretty monogrammed Maxine Revere bow. She would have fought and won—she knew how the game was played, she knew how to manipulate the system, and she firmly believed—because it had been proven to her over and over again that when the police got a cold case, nothing would happen, even if she gave them some juicy facts.

  Maybe it was Lucy herself. Max had the distinct impression—based on little things here and there—that Lucy was putting her career on the chopping block by working with Max. Not specifically because she was here with Max, but because she was pursuing an investigation without sanction from her office, way out of her jurisdiction. The more Max learned about the rookie, the more she realized she didn’t know—and damnit, she wanted to know everything. Lucy Kincaid was one of the most mysterious and interesting people Max had met in a long, long time.