Dead Calm

by Annelise Ryan

  “I thought that would make you happy,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that it makes it even more likely that the Kupper family is tied in to this thing. And they’re a powerful family. We’re talking about a judge and a congressman, Mattie. That’s not going to be easy.”

  “We’ll figure out a way. Together we’re an indomitable team, Hurley.”

  He gives me a meager smile, one that suggests I’m delusional.

  We have reached the police station, and Hurley pulls into the underground entrance to Jonas’s lab area. We drop off our evidence and give Jonas the details of where we found it and what we hope to get from it. In exchange, Jonas informs us that he found a partial print on one of the bullets in the gun found in the motel room. It’s a match for John Lansing.

  This is both good news and bad news—good because we’re closer to solving our case, bad because I was hoping we could go for some lunch now. But Hurley says, “I want to talk to John Lansing right away. He might decide to run if he suspects we’re on to him. I want to nail things down before he can.”

  My stomach lets my disappointment be known by grumbling in protest once we’re in the car.

  “I take it you disagree with our schedule,” Hurley says with a smile as I rub my complaining stomach.

  “I’ll survive,” I say. “Hell, I can live off the fat in my thighs alone for at least a week.”

  “I like your thighs,” Hurley says with a salacious eyebrow wiggle. He starts the car and pulls out of the lot. “It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to see them up close and personal.”

  He’s right. It has been a while. Sex has kind of fallen off our radar of late, mainly because our schedules are so crazy, but also because I’m so exhausted lately and we never seem to have any time alone when Matthew isn’t vying for our attention.

  “I know,” I say with a wistful sigh. “We need a date night.”

  “What we need is a honeymoon,” Hurley says.

  “That would be nice,” I agree. “But until Izzy can hire on someone to help, it’s not going to happen. Plus, I don’t know if I could leave Matthew to go anywhere.”

  “He’d be in good hands if we left him with either Dom or your sister,” he says.

  “I know, but I’d miss him.”

  “I miss you,” Hurley says in a quiet voice.

  I know he’s right, but I also know it will be a struggle for me. And since it isn’t going to happen anytime soon, I decide I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

  We arrive at John Lansing’s apartment complex and make our way up to his door. Hurley knocks and we wait, but nothing happens. He knocks again. There is a window off to the right, but the blinds on it are closed.

  “He can’t have gone far,” I say. “He didn’t have any wheels. He and Meredith shared a car, and we have it impounded.”

  “He could have taken a taxi,” Hurley says. “Maybe he’s already flown the coop.”

  I sense his agitation, and out of curiosity, I try the doorknob. It turns easily, and I give Hurley a look. He chews on his lip for a second, debating. Then he shrugs and gives me a nod. I push the door open.

  Inside, we see John Lansing lying on his couch. “Mr. Lansing?” Hurley hollers. Lansing doesn’t move. We step inside, and as we venture deeper into the house, we see the stuff on the coffee table: an empty bottle of pills, an empty highball glass, a near empty bottle of vodka, and a single sheet of white paper with some writing on it. Now that I can get a closer look at Lansing, I see that his color is pale . . . too pale. I hurry over and touch his neck, feeling for a carotid pulse. But as soon as my fingers feel the cold, hard skin, I know we are too late.

  “Don’t touch anything else,” Hurley says. He takes out his cell phone but stops before punching in a number. Instead he leans over and reads the note on the table, done in pen, the letters printed in all caps.

  I can’t go on without Meredith. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.

  At the bottom, scrawled in a wavering hand, is the name John.

  I look at the bottle of pills and see it is the sleeping pill prescription written for Meredith that I’d seen in the medicine cabinet on our first trip here. Except that bottle had only four pills left in it. I bend down and peer more closely at the container and see that the date on it is seven days ago and there were fifty pills dispensed. I remember looking at the bottle in the medicine cabinet and noting the medication and who it was for, but did I notice the date? Unlikely, because it would’ve struck me as odd that so few of the pills were left. That’s assuming the bottle in front of me now is the same one that had been in the medicine cabinet.

  “Hold on, Hurley,” I say. “I need to check on something.” I go back to the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. There is no prescription bottle in there. Next, I take out my phone and call the dispensing pharmacy. They tell me that the most recent refill was seven days ago and there were none before that for almost six months.

  I tell Hurley what I’ve learned. “I’m certain there were only four pills in that bottle when I saw it before, so he must have taken a bunch of them out and stashed them somewhere. There are a total of forty-six pills missing.”

  Hurley looks at the bottle, then at me, then at John Lansing’s body. “This ties everything up with a neat little bow,” he says.

  “Maybe a little too neat,” I say. “This feels off to me.”

  Hurley shoots me a quizzical look.

  “That signature at the bottom of the page doesn’t look at all like John Lansing’s, assuming he signed the life insurance policy taken out on him. And Patty mentioned that he came in specifically to sign it. I remember thinking the handwriting was very tight, heavy, and angular, as if whoever wrote it was angry. This”—I point to the signature on the supposed suicide note—“is a good attempt to imitate it, but it lacks the heaviness and the angularity of the signature I saw.”

  “He might have been well under the influence when he signed it. That could affect the way he wrote.”

  “Maybe,” I admit, though I don’t agree. “But then why block print the note? That takes concentration.”

  “You don’t think this is a suicide, do you?” Hurley asks.

  “I don’t. John Lansing didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. For one thing, I think he was too much of a narcissist. He considered himself smarter, better than the average Joe. That’s why he wouldn’t settle for a job that was, as he put it, beneath him.”

  “So give me your theory,” Hurley says. This is unlike him. He normally develops his own theory of a crime scene soon after seeing it and is typically skeptical, if not reluctant, to consider opposing views. The fact that he is so open to my opinion on this one makes me think the lack of sleep and hectic schedules are getting to him as much as they are getting to me.

  “Okay,” I start, “if we assume that John Lansing killed both Craig and Meredith, how did he get to the motel and back? Meredith’s car was at the hospital, and Craig’s was at the motel. Supposedly, Craig drove out to the motel, but we know Craig was already dead when he was shot. So how could John Lansing get Craig’s car to the motel and then get back to town? He could have driven Meredith’s car to the hospital and walked home from there, but the motel? That’s way too far.”

  Hurley nods. “He had to have had an accomplice,” he says. “We already surmised there were probably two people involved.”

  “And perhaps that accomplice wanted to eliminate the only person who could point a finger at her.”

  Hurley shoots me a look. “Her?”

  “It had to have been Pamela Knowlton. Who else has a motive here?”

  “So we have another murder on our hands,” Hurley says, finally punching a number into his phone. He looks toward the heavens as he puts the phone to his ear. “This case is really starting to tick me off.”

  CHAPTER 21

  I call Otto and ask him to meet us at John Lansing’s apartment. While we’re waiting for him and the other
cops to show up, I head out to the car and grab my scene kit. As I’m coming back into the apartment, Bob Richmond pulls up. Right behind him is Brenda Joiner.

  Once I’m back inside, I don some gloves and start poking and prying at John’s face, neck, torso, and limbs. “Judging from the fact that rigor is present in his face, neck, and upper torso, but not his abdomen or limbs, I’m guessing his time of death was somewhere between midnight last night and four this morning,” I tell the assembled group. “We can be more precise once we open him up.”

  I snap pictures of the scene, including a close-up of the prescription bottle. Something tugs at my mind, a nag that I can’t quite identify. After a few seconds, I shrug it off and continue.

  Hurley fills Richmond in on our findings and then tells him to go and get Pamela Knowlton and bring her down to the station. “Once Jonas and Otto get here, I want to have a chat with her. I’m beginning to think she was the mastermind behind this thing. I think she set it up so that she could collect on her husband’s life insurance policy, and she used John Lansing to help her. Then she killed him to ensure he wouldn’t rat on her. I think they set up the whole business with the burner phones, making it appear as if Meredith and Craig were having an affair. Then they set up the motel scene to make it look like a murder-suicide. Odds are Pamela promised John Lansing part of the proceeds if he helped her, then she made sure he wouldn’t be around to collect.”

  Richmond stares at the scene a moment, nodding slowly. “How do you think she did it?” he asks.

  Hurley looks at me. “How many of those pills would it take to kill someone?”

  I think a moment. “Rough guess, ten, maybe fifteen. The effect would be greater if alcohol is involved. The combination of the two would slow the respiratory drive until the person stopped breathing altogether.”

  “I’m betting we’ll find traces of that same medication in both Craig and Meredith,” Hurley says. “She used what she had left on John. I think she came over here and shared a drink with him, only she spiked his to get him extra drunk, crushing up those pills in it. With fifty pills in that prescription, there would have been plenty to go around. If anyone saw her car here, or saw her here, she could always say that she came by to talk to him, to find out if he knew about the affair her husband was having with John’s wife. And that when she left John, he was morose but still alive. Easy enough.”

  “And it was smart of her to use Meredith’s prescription,” I say. “I didn’t find any scripts in the Knowlton house, so this gives her one more degree of separation.”

  The others nod. I look at the prescription bottle again, feeling that same nudge in my brain. Something . . . but it eludes me.

  Otto arrives then, and we fill him in on how we got here and what we found.

  “The sleeping pills aren’t a surprise,” he says. “Arnie informed me just a bit ago that he found the same drug in both Craig’s and Meredith’s stomach contents.”

  After examining the body, Otto agrees with my estimate on the time of death, telling the others the same thing I did, that we can be more precise once an autopsy is done. I help him bag John’s body for transport, and while we’re waiting for the Johnson sisters to arrive to pick up the body, I assist Jonas, who has also arrived, with bagging and tagging evidence. Richmond stays until Otto and I are done packaging Lansing’s body, before heading out to find and pick up Pamela Knowlton. Otto then takes Hurley into the kitchen and has a chat with him. I try to overhear what’s being said but can’t.

  When they return to the living-room area, Hurley gets a phone call. “It’s Richmond,” he says just before answering. “Have you got her?” he says into the phone, bypassing such niceties as a simple hello. He listens for a moment, says thanks, and then disconnects the call. “Richmond is on his way back to the station with Pamela Knowlton. He said she came willingly, without any objection, though she looked puzzled as to why we wanted to talk to her.” Hurley focuses on Otto. “I’d like to have Mattie sit in on my chat with the woman, if possible. She has a keen sense with people, and she knows Mrs. Knowlton from our previous dealings with her. But if you need her to assist you with the autopsy, I’ll understand.”

  Otto says, “It will be an hour or more before the body gets to our morgue and gets checked in. I can do that part if you want to borrow Mattie until then.”

  “That’s great,” Hurley says. “Thanks, Doc. I’ll get her back to you as soon as we’re done.”

  While this conversation leaves me feeling a bit like chattel that is being passed back and forth, I’m glad Hurley has asked for me to come along. I love the interrogation process, and Hurley is right. I’m good at reading people. That stems in part from my years working as a nurse in the ER. Patients I saw there lied all the time, sometimes about serious things, sometimes about innocuous things. I learned early on to double any amounts the patients admitted to when it came to their smoking, drinking, and drug use habits. And I also learned all the manipulative behaviors people use to get what they want, whether it be narcotics, an unnecessary CT scan, or antibiotics for what is clearly a viral infection. After a while, I learned all the little tells that so often give people away, the subtle shifting of the eyes, a certain hesitation before answering a key question, a fidget here or a squirm there. Most people don’t lie very well, though there are exceptions.

  Hurley and I head back to the station a few minutes later, both of us dismayed as we drive past my office, where the assembly of newspeople and vehicles is still gathered by our front door. We enter the police station break room through the back door from the secured parking area and head down a hall that passes between offices and the interrogation/conference room. Richmond is sitting at his desk, and when we enter the office—one he shares with both Hurley and Junior Feller—he spins around in his chair to give us an update.

  “Your suspect is in the conference room, and I tested the recording instruments to make sure they’re working.”

  “Did you tell her anything about why we wanted her to come in?” Hurley asks.

  Richmond shakes his head. “Not really. I just told her you had some more questions to ask her about her husband’s death. I implied it was routine. I didn’t Mirandize her.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Hurley turns to me and waves a hand toward the door. “Shall we?”

  I lead the way—I’ve been in that room enough times that I could find my way there blindfolded—and enter the space. I settle into a chair close to the door, right beside the audiovisual equipment switch. Hurley closes the door behind us and settles into the seat next to me on the other side of the switch. Pamela Knowlton is sitting on the opposite side of the table, doing something on her cell phone—a game or texting, I can’t really tell—and she doesn’t acknowledge our entrance until we’re both seated. Arrogance or innocence, I wonder.

  When Pamela finally looks up at us, she smiles warmly. “Hello again,” she says, shifting her gaze between me and Hurley. “That other detective said you needed to talk to me more about Craig.” There is a hint of a question in her voice, telling me she’s confused as to what else we could possibly need to know.

  Hurley always takes the lead in these sorts of things, and I wait for him to do so. He reaches down beneath the table and flips on the AV equipment. Then he starts things off by stating the date, the time, the case this is in reference to (he refers to it as the suspicious deaths of Craig Knowlton and Meredith Lansing, sidestepping the whole murder-suicide declaration), and who is present. When that’s done, he gives Pamela his most charming smile and informs her that our session is being recorded and that he needs to cite the Miranda warning to her as part of the procedure. He does so, and she doesn’t seem bothered, though she does look a little puzzled by it. When Hurley is done, he asks Pamela if she understands her rights.

  She nods and says, “Yes, of course.”

  “Mrs. Knowlton, I need to inform you of some things we have discovered about your husband’s case.”

  This gets a reaction. Her
expression looks like Matthew’s did the first time he tried—and spat out—broccoli. “What more could there possibly be?” she says. “Isn’t it all sordid enough already? Our clients are asking all sorts of questions, and I don’t know how to answer them.”

  “Yes, I imagine that must be difficult,” Hurley says, sounding genuinely sympathetic, though I’m fairly sure he’s not. “But some irregularities turned up when we performed the autopsies, and it seems that your husband’s death wasn’t a suicide after all.”

  Pamela stares at him, blinking several times. “What are you saying?” she manages after several seconds. “Did that woman he was with kill him?”

  “No,” Hurley says. “But someone did.”

  I watch the play of emotions over Pamela’s face as she considers what Hurley just said. I see confusion, disbelief, skepticism, horror, and then what looks like anger. “Are you telling me my husband was murdered?” she says, her voice tight.

  “It appears that way, yes,” Hurley says.

  “Who? Why? How?” Pamela looks genuinely confused and overwhelmed by this new information. If it’s an act, it’s a good one. Her eyes tear up, and her chin starts to quiver.

  Hurley doesn’t answer any of her questions. “Mrs. Knowlton, I noticed that your husband’s life insurance policy had a suicide clause in it, one that expired exactly one day before he was killed. The fact that you are the beneficiary of that policy, and your husband’s death was staged to look like a suicide, makes me want to look at you a little closer. Do you understand why?”

  Pamela again goes through a gamut of emotions, starting with confusion, then quickly moving on to disbelief, and ending with offended. Her next question comes out tightly controlled, her anger boiling just below the surface. “Are you suggesting that I killed my husband, staged it to look like a suicide, and apparently killed some woman as well, all so I could collect on Craig’s life insurance?”

  “You have to admit, the timing in relation to the life insurance policy is rather uncanny,” Hurley says with a shrug.