With this, the two men acquiesce, though they still look frightened. If we were anywhere else, I might think they had seen or heard something and had been threatened to keep their silence. But given our current circumstances and location, I feel certain their wariness is about their liaison being discovered.
As soon as the two men are done providing their information, which Hurley verifies with the dispatcher over his phone, we let them go, releasing the last two cars inside the tape.
With that done, we head for the front of the motel, where Patrick Devonshire is waiting patiently next to Craig Knowlton’s Lexus. He hands Hurley a fob. “There was a key ring with a fob and several other keys on it,” Patrick explains. “But this car doesn’t have a key, just a fob. Jonas removed the ring and the keys and bagged them for evidence. And he dusted this fob for prints, so we’re free to use it. Apparently, it not only unlocks the car, you have to have it in the car in order to start the engine. And you don’t need to push the unlock button on the fob if you have it on you. You can simply open the door, even when it’s locked, as long as you’re carrying the fob.”
Hurley frowns at this. “Modern technology,” he grumbles, shaking his head. “What the hell is wrong with a simple old key?” He looks at me and does a gimme gesture with one of his hands. “I need some more gloves,” he says. I set down the scene kit I’ve been carrying with me, open it, and take out a pair of gloves for him. He dons them, opens the driver’s door, and looks inside. The car is neat and clean, almost obsessively so. The only stray item I can see is a coffee mug on the passenger side of the cup holder in the middle console.
“I need an evidence bag,” Hurley says. I retrieve one from my kit and hand it to him. Then, with his gloved hand, he removes a four-inch-long, blond hair from the headrest and drops it into the bag.
“Not sure how important it is,” he says. “But both of our victims have dark hair. It will be interesting to see what color hair Mrs. Knowlton has.” He seals the bag, and when I hand him a marker, he labels, dates, and times it before handing it to me. Then he locks and shuts the door, and turns back to Patrick. “Have it towed in to the police garage,” he says. “It doesn’t look like there’s much here, but maybe we can verify that Meredith Lansing was in the car.”
Patrick drops the fob into an evidence baggie, but he doesn’t seal it. For a moment, the three of us stand there in silence, taking in our surroundings. I hear birdsong emanating from the back of the motel—presumably from the woods—and glance at my watch. It’s almost five, and the sun will be up soon. Already the skyline in the east is lightening.
Hurley finally turns to Patrick and says, “Mattie and I are going to head into town to do the notifications. You might as well go help the others in the motel room. Call me if anything significant crops up.”
Patrick gives a quick nod of assent and then shuffles back to the room, looking like he’s going off to his execution.
CHAPTER 4
“I hate doing these notification things,” Hurley says, once we’re on the road. “And this one is particularly nasty.”
“I wonder if either of the spouses knew about the affair.”
“Hard to say. I’m rather hoping they didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it eliminates any possibility of this being something other than what it appears to be. Hopefully this will be a straightforward case, a quick and easy one for us that we can put to bed fast.” He yawns, and adds, “Which is where I’d like to be right about now.”
Quick and easy sounds good to me, too. But first we have the dreaded notifications to make.
After a couple of miles go by, I broach a topic that has been high in my thoughts for the past few weeks. “Have you made any progress on the Jeremy Prince case?”
Jeremy Prince is an ex-military man who killed three, possibly four people in the area a few weeks back. A young student nurse named Carolyn Abernathy was one victim, and my coworker, Hal Dawson, and his fiancée, Tina Carson, were the others that we’re sure of. There is good reason to think he might have also killed Marla Weber, the girl whose headless body was found in some woods near Pardeeville. Evidence we found at that scene—a prescription for insulin—led us to the home of a man named Tomas Wyzinski, a diabetic who lived in a house in the country with his mentally challenged brother, Lech. When Bob Richmond—another Sorenson detective—and I arrived at the Wyzinski house, we looked through the window in a back door and saw Tomas Wyzinski collapsed on the floor of his kitchen. In an effort to help him, we entered the house, whereupon I quickly determined he was in insulin shock and in need of some form of sugar. I went to his refrigerator to look for some orange juice, but what I found instead was Marla Weber’s missing head.
I had to testify in the Tomas Wyzinski trial, a nerve-wracking experience since it was my first time in a courtroom as anything other than a spectator. Izzy has been prepping me for testifying for the past two years, but until the Wyzinski case, I never had to do it.
It seemed like an open-and-shut case. I mean, let’s face it, the woman’s head was in the man’s refrigerator; evidence doesn’t get much more damning than that. But after giving my testimony, questions began to arise about the case, questions related to our other homicides. I discovered that both Hal and his fiancée, Tina, had been in touch with Tomas’s brother, Lech, and had been looking into the case. Initially, Hurley and I thought maybe it was because Tina, who was a local librarian, was working on writing some mystery novels of her own, and she had thought the case would be good research material. But when I went out to the Wyzinski house and talked to Tomas’s brother, Lech, more doubts arose. Lech showed me a notebook his brother had kept with extremely detailed information about everything that Tomas ate, what his blood sugars were, and how much insulin he took. Tomas Wyzinski was a very well controlled diabetic who took his illness seriously and managed it with admirable oversight. So how had someone that anal about his food and medication managed to take too much insulin? Had it been a suicide attempt? An accident? Or had someone tried to kill Tomas, too, framing him for Marla Weber’s murder in the process?
When I learned that Tomas Wyzinski had taken and passed a lie detector test, it added to my growing doubts about the case. The prosecuting attorney dismissed the test, stating that sociopaths and a few others could pass them even when they were lying. And it wasn’t admissible as evidence anyway.
In addition, Lech had mentioned something to me about a “bad man” who had visited the Wyzinski house, and he described the car the man came in as “blue” and “topless.” Jeremy Prince had driven a blue convertible.
“I get the feeling you’re holding out on me, Hurley,” I say. “We can’t just let this case slip away.”
“I know that,” he says irritably. “But this case is dangerous. Meddling in it is like playing with fire. And I think you’re too involved. It’s become too personal for you.”
His use of the word “meddling” irks me. “Of course it’s personal,” I shoot back at him. “My friend and coworker was murdered, as were other people. And my testimony might have helped convict a possibly innocent man.”
There is a moment of silence before Hurley addresses the elephant in the room. “And then there’s your father.”
Ah, yes. My father.
In the process of investigating Hal’s and Tina’s deaths, we learned that a man had been sighted lurking around both of their houses on the day they were killed. We eventually figured out that this man was none other than my father, Cedric Novak, a man who left my mother and me when I was four years old, never to be heard from again until recently.
Our inquiries rang a bell at the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Chicago at one point, and after a visit there, we learned the real reason my father had left thirty years ago. He’d gotten into trouble with some very bad and powerful people who were involved with the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, he ended up in the Witness Protection Program for a number of years. He eventually left it, but he st
ayed off the grid as much as possible, maintaining a low profile and a philosophy of no contact with my mother and me.
Unfortunately, after leaving the Witness Protection Program, he managed to get himself into trouble again, albeit unwittingly, when he took a job in a Chicago mail store run by a corrupt man named Quinton Dilles, who was using it to smuggle drugs and launder money. An undercover cop named Roy Gilligan, who at one time was Hurley’s partner, was investigating the place and ended up murdered. My father was the primary suspect—and in some circles, he probably still is—though I now know he didn’t do it. He was in the company of the U.S. Marshals when the killing happened—an unimpeachable alibi, but one no one was eager to share.
These matters complicated my burgeoning relationship with Hurley. The point in time when I learned that my father was a suspected cop killer was also the point in time when I discovered I was pregnant. Hurley started proposing to me soon after, and I kept declining, both because I had the secret knowledge that my father was a suspected cop killer, and because I feared Hurley was offering to marry me simply because of the pregnancy.
I spent nearly a year believing my father was a cop killer. Then his past met our present when we tied Hal’s and Tina’s murders to that of Carolyn Abernathy. We learned that Carolyn was subsidizing her nurse’s training by working in the medical records and billing department in the clinic attached to the local hospital in Sorenson. We also discovered that Hal had a sister who had died the year before under questionable circumstances after taking a new weight-loss drug—a death Hal had been investigating at the time of his murder—and it steered us down a path that tied our current case to the one that had led to my father’s disappearance into the Witness Protection Program thirty years before.
Then we learned that Tomas Wyzinski had a degree in chemistry and had worked for a pharmaceutical company up until a few years ago. That’s when we realized our modern-day case and the one my father was involved in were inexplicably entwined. Everything was related: my father’s tangling with a pharmaceutical company thirty years ago, evidence that some people high up in the justice system were in cahoots with the pharmaceutical company, Tomas’s history of working for a similar company, Hal’s sister’s death—a death he was looking into right before he was killed—possibly being related to a drug similar to the one involved in my father’s case, and Carolyn Abernathy’s job working in medical billing.
Jeremy Prince had been the thread that tied all of this together, and we flushed him out by using a ruse. We had Alison Miller, who at the time was the Sorenson newspaper’s ace photographer and reporter, do a news bite on TV claiming that someone responsible for the deaths of Carolyn, Hal, and Tina was talking to the police. As a result, Jeremy Prince had shown up at our house, nervous and jittery, and after a few harrowing moments during which I feared our family was about to become the next murder victims, Prince essentially turned himself in, confessing to three murders—though also intimating that there had been a fourth—and asking for protection for him and his family.
He claimed that somebody, or some entity—he never got to tell us who or what—had hired him to do some contract work that had started out only a little shady. The pay was good, and since Prince had two kids and a wife with multiple sclerosis whose health was declining, the money had been an irresistible draw. When the work he was being asked to do escalated to contract killings, he balked, but he claimed that the people who hired him threatened to harm his family if he didn’t carry out their instructions. His fear that our news bite would lead to his employers carrying through on their threat convinced him to turn himself in. Sadly, just as Hurley was loading Prince into our car to take him down to the police station, a black SUV drove by and gunfire erupted.
I thank my lucky stars every day that Hurley and I weren’t hit, since both of us were outside at the time of the shooting. Alison Miller was there, too, but she wasn’t as lucky. Death came instantly for her in the form of a bullet to the head. Prince was also shot with a fatal blow, but he didn’t die immediately. He lived long enough to tell Hurley where his family was, elicit a promise that his family would be protected, and then give Hurley one name—or at least that’s what Hurley has claimed.
Hurley held true on the promise he made to Jeremy Prince as he lay dying in our driveway and had the U.S. Marshal’s Office take care of hiding Prince’s family and establishing new identities for them. But since then the case has lagged, or at least it seems that way because Hurley brushes off every question I throw at him about it. He does so again now.
“I did a little digging,” he says vaguely. “But I haven’t come up with anything.”
He isn’t looking at me, and I’m certain he’s lying. “Why are you being so cagey about this case?” I ask him. “It’s been a month since Prince was killed, and every day that Tomas Wyzinski spends in prison is eating at me. I need to know if I’ve helped convict an innocent man.”
Hurley says nothing. He stares straight ahead and keeps driving.
“You’re playing this one awfully close to the vest, and that’s not like you, Hurley, at least not where I’m concerned. I thought we were a team.” I utter this last part with a whiny tone that I hate hearing, but it’s already out there.
Hurley shoots me a look, and I’m expecting it to be one of irritation, exasperation, impatience . . . I don’t know which. But it’s a look of worry, and it makes my guts tighten a little.
“Tell me,” I say. “What are you hiding from me, Hurley? I need to know.”
He opens and closes his hands on the wheel, letting out a long, pursed-lip sigh. Then he chews on his cheek for a few seconds. I wait even though every inch of me is screaming on the inside, sensing that his resolve to stay silent is caving.
“I suspect this case is a lot bigger than either of us originally thought,” he says finally. “I also think it involves some very powerful people, and it needs to be handled with kid gloves. If we go into it with guns blazing, I’m afraid we’ll end up like Jeremy Prince.”
“Are you implying that I’m a guns-blazing kind of gal?” I ask, feeling a bit wounded even though some part of me wonders if he’s right.
Hurley shoots me an amused look. “I love you, Squatch,” he says, using his nickname for me—a shortened version of Sasquatch and a commentary on the size of my feet—“but let’s face it, you’re not a subtle person most of the time.”
“I can be subtle,” I protest. “Especially if the safety of our family is at risk.”
Hurley rolls his lips in, and I can tell he’s biting back a retort.
“Come on, Hurley,” I wheedle. “You can’t keep me out of this investigation. It was my friend and coworker who was killed. It was my testimony that got Tomas Wyzinski convicted, probably wrongly. And I was there when Alison and Prince were killed. I’m deep in this already.”
He says nothing, looking straight ahead. It irritates the crap out of me.
“If you think I’m some blithering idiot who can’t be discreet, then why did you marry me?” I grumble. I have no idea how our getting married relates to the situation, but my mouth is firing off with only part of my brain feeding it. “I thought you trusted me. I thought we were a team. I thought we agreed to share everything now that we’ve joined our lives together. I thought . . .”
“Fine!” Hurley snaps, making me flinch. “I’ll tell you what I know so far, or at least what I’m speculating. But it isn’t much. You’re going to be disappointed.”
“Try me,” I say, leaning back in my seat with a smug smile.
Hurley shoots me a dubious look, his eyes narrowing. “First you have to promise me that you won’t go poking your nose into things without my knowledge.”
“I promise.”
“You need to run everything by me. And I mean before you do it, not after the fact.”
Damn. “Okay. I promise.”
“Right before Prince died, he gave me a name.”
“I know that. Whose name was it?”
“Remember that boat Prince used to reach Hal and Tina?”
“Yeah, it was named Court A’Sea. You said it belonged to an attorney, and that it was stolen a day or two before the murders.”
“Correct. The name of the attorney who owned the boat was Randall Kupper.”
I run the name through my mental data bank. “Any relation to Judge Wesley Kupper?” I ask. “The judge who handled the Wyzinski case?”
“One and the same,” Hurley says. “And I recalled something I read in your father’s file at the U.S. Marshal’s Office the day we went down there. The ADA involved in your father’s case back in 1980 was Wesley Kupper, and one of the cops who was involved was Jason Kupper.”
Judge Wesley Kupper is a scary enough figure without thinking about him being involved in something so nefarious. He stands six and a half feet tall, weighs in at around 350 pounds, and has a booming voice and an intimidating presence. When he walks into a courtroom with his black robe billowing out around him, it’s hard not to make comparisons to Darth Vader.
“Okay,” I say, frowning. “I still don’t see where you’re going with this.”
“Remember the list of coded items we got from Hal’s thumb drive?”
The coded items he is referring to is an odd list of letters and abbreviations that were in a document saved on a password-protected thumb drive we found in Hal’s truck. So far, we have had no clue what any of it meant, or at least that’s what I thought. I suspect Hurley is about to change that belief.
“I don’t recall exactly what it said off the top of my head,” I told him. “I’d have to refer back to the file. Why? Did you figure it out?”
“Maybe, at least a part of it. One of the lines Hal had typed out was CP off JK.” Before I have a chance to parse this clue, Hurley continues. “I think it meant Chicago police officer, Jason Kupper. One of the other lines Hal had typed was ADA 1980 WK.”
“And Judge Wesley Kupper was an ADA in 1980,” I say, feeling a trill of excitement. “Was Kupper the name Prince gave you?”
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