A Twist of the Knife

by Becky Masterman

  I looked at the photograph with the three children that had been used in the aging. “Henry, would you do me a quick favor?” I asked him to do a simple computer aging on the oldest child, who was maybe about ten years old when the picture he had was taken. “That ten-year-old would have been around fourteen at the time of the crime. So age her … seventeen years.”

  I heard something in the close background, like he was doing something else while he was talking to me. His patience was wearing thin. He said, “Don’t you people ever talk?”

  “What, who else asked you to do this?”

  “Laura Coleman, the agent who was there with you when the remains were found. She’s been calling the whole time we were assessing the remains. She already asked for the same thing.”

  “Okay, what was the result?”

  “Result? Some woman. I just did what she wanted and sent it on. I assumed she’d share it with y’all. Ask her, I’m late to class. And figure out who’s in charge, for cripes sake.”

  What was Laura doing? Now I was getting mad. Sure, I may have killed someone on impulse and felt good about it. But I’d never plotted it, never descended on someone out of cold vengeance. That makes a difference. I needed to go after Laura Coleman myself, and I still had so much doubt of Laura’s guilt that I went to Todd’s office and told him where we were going.

  * * *

  On the way over to Laura’s I filled Todd in on what I knew. That Laura had been in touch with Aggrawal the way I had about only finding two bodies at the site. That she had beat me to it. And that when I asked Aggrawal to age all the photos, he told me Laura had already asked him to do that.

  “Sounds like she’s conducting her own investigation,” Todd said.

  “Just stick with me in this, little brother.”

  Laura’s car wasn’t in its parking spot, but you never knew. She didn’t answer the door, and that breaking-in business was getting to be typical of our visitations. I’d taken one of her keys, so I didn’t have to break in this time. Besides, second-floor with front entrance and a large kitchen window—I would have made more of a mess and possibly been spotted.

  She wasn’t just being inhospitable, she wasn’t home. I looked around quickly and saw the unrepaired hole in the wall where she threw the medicine ball, and Marcus Creighton’s personal effects still littering her desk in a very un-Laura-like mess. I pointed it out to Todd, who went over and picked through it. “There’s a letter here,” he said.

  “The one Alison Samuels wrote to Creighton,” I said without looking. “Laura has probably read it a dozen times and gotten madder and madder.”

  “This letter isn’t to Marcus Creighton,” he said. He wandered in the direction of Coleman’s bedroom.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I got cause here,” he said.

  I turned to look closer at the letter and saw that it wasn’t typed like Alison’s letter to Creighton, it was handwritten. On top of that, it had been torn up into small pieces and was taped back together. I remembered what Wally said about finding some “bits and pieces of stuff” under his bed and putting them into the box with the rest of the effects. It was my guess that Creighton must have ripped it up himself and Laura pieced it together. I read, Dear Kirsten.

  In denial to the last, I thought. But then I was distracted by the photographs lying next to it. Hopefully the photographs I had come to find.

  There were the photographs of the exploited child Alison Samuels had found on the Internet, and the photograph of the same child aged in reverse to about eight years.

  The other photograph showed the three children from Creighton’s album, the one on the boat, that must have been taken a few years before the murders.

  A final photograph was the one Laura must have requested from Henry Aggrawal. It took the boat photo and aged all three children about sixteen years. The photo showed Sara and Devon, the eight-year-old twins, as they would have looked upon graduation from college.

  And there, at approximately age thirty, with longer hair and brown eyes, was Alison Samuels.

  Todd came back into the room with a Victoria’s Secret gift box. The pink satin ribbon used to tie it was untied.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s either perfume or where she hides her vibrator,” I said, covering the quaver in my voice with a joke.

  “Neither,” he said, and opened it to reveal a very unladylike collection I’d seen before: pepper spray, rape whistles, a set of brass knuckles, and … wait for it … the stun gun.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Coleman is really big into self-defense,” I said. I opened the desk drawer where the stuff had been before. She had moved it all to a safer hiding place. But her gun was neither in the drawer nor in the box. I took my cell phone out of my tote bag.

  “Who are you calling?” Todd asked.

  “Alison Samuels,” I said, showing him the photo. “This just got more complicated.”

  “Why did Coleman have this photo?” he asked.

  “Because Alison Samuels is Kirsten Creighton.” I stopped denying that Laura Coleman might have gotten herself into trouble and shifted into protecting whoever might get in her way. I heard Alison’s phone ringing and her voice telling me to leave a message. “Dammit, doesn’t anyone answer their phone anymore? Why carry a cell phone if you’re not going to answer it?”

  I snapped my phone shut and picked up the Dear Kirsten letter. “Marcus knew it. He knew it all along, but he never told anyone. Not even Alison Samuels. Maybe this says why.”

  I dialed another number. “Hey, Frank. Thanks for sending that report on the print ID so quickly. Yeah? Yeah? I figured. Thanks.”

  I turned to Todd. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m a little confused,” he said. “Where are we going and who are we going after, Laura Coleman, Alison Samuels, or Erroll Murry?”

  “I think all of them,” I said. “Puccio was employed by Will Hench, so he sent that print ID to him first. Will Hench would have called Laura immediately. And because your Captain McClay leaked the news and also because Alison gets police broadcasts, I imagine they’ll both be going to the same place.”

  Now it was Todd’s turn to take out his cell phone. I asked him who he was calling. When he told me, I said, “Sometimes backup is good and sometimes it gets people killed. Trust me on this, would you?”

  “Protocol,” he said.

  “I know, I know. But right now we don’t know why we’re calling backup or even where to direct them. I think it’s a strong possibility that Alison has found out about Erroll Murry and has gone to Vero for a confrontation.”

  “I can’t picture Alison Samuels hurting a fly.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe Kirsten Creighton would.”

  “Where does Laura Coleman fit into all this?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not positive anymore who Laura is after or why. Let’s see if Alison is home before we do anything else.”

  We got back in his car and headed out, passing by Alison’s house again to see if her car was still there. It was not.

  “Vero?” Todd said. “I got the location at the briefing.”

  “Yup,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I know for sure and what I’m thinking on the way.”

  Forty-four

  Now that we were in forward motion, I took out the letter from Marcus Creighton written to his daughter the night before his death.

  Dear Kirsten,

  Even with what will happen in a few hours, the overriding feeling at this moment is relief that I can finally call you that, if only in this letter. I’ll give it to Laura Coleman and tell her it’s for Alison Samuels. I trust her not to read it, and smile thinking of how similar the two of you are in your passion for justice.

  If you didn’t identify yourself to me, I suppose there must have been a reason.

  I’ve wondered what you knew about that night, if anything. Where you were that you escaped (that’s what gave me hope that Sa
ra and Devon might be alive), why you were convinced I was guilty. It’s a mystery to me. But I’ll keep your secret. You have such a strong sense of right and wrong, I fear that if you were truly convinced the real killer was still out there, you’d do anything to find him, even if it meant sacrificing yourself.

  What I want to be very specific about, is the certainty that neither you nor I are responsible for the death of our family.

  I see you have grown into the kind of person who won’t stop trying to get what you believe is justice. In your case this is too dangerous. Stay Alison Samuels. Keep doing your good work to save children. I’m proud of what you do, and I don’t want to do anything to hinder it.

  I am guilty, not of murder, but of lust and greed and selfishness. Maybe this last thing, keeping your identity secret, will redeem me.

  Your loving father

  Respectfully

  Dad

  I folded up the letter and put it in my pocket.

  After both of us paused, for thought, I figured, Todd said, “He tore the letter up. At the end he decided not to tell her he knew.”

  “There was that line, ‘I see you’ve grown into a woman who won’t stop trying to get justice.’ I bet that’s what made him change his mind while he was writing the letter. Marcus had an inkling that if Alison was convinced the killer was still out there, she wouldn’t stop, and might reveal that she was Kirsten Creighton in order to flush him out. Speaking of bait.”

  “Makes sense,” Todd said.

  “I think Alison thought her father was guilty. But then she found out about the fur in the burial tarp from Aggrawal, and figured her father at least had an accomplice, because of his asthma. And you know what else? She heard Will Hench say at the interview that they were looking at evidence that one of the witnesses perjured herself. Accomplice. Perjury. Wouldn’t take a genius. She didn’t know the truth, but she thought Shayna Murry did. And Shayna Murry died rather than rat out her brother.”

  “But wait. Alison Samuels got tasered.”

  “Did she really?” I tried to remember our conversation the night I visited her, and wondered if that had made her nervous enough to cover her tracks. “Or was she just deflecting suspicion to Laura in case I was figuring it all out? Even Captain McClay suggested that she could have done it herself. I nixed that idea, but maybe he was onto something.” I stretched my right hand over my left shoulder and touched my midscapula. “Young limber person could take off the cartridge and reach her upper back. We didn’t ask exactly where the contact occurred. What we do know for sure is that only the person who killed Shayna Murry would know that a stun gun had been used.”

  “Laura knew,” Todd said. When I didn’t answer, he went on, “Erroll Murry hasn’t been at his place since they put out the APB. Now they’ve put a dragnet around the area, all roads north and south monitored, Coast Guard watching the waterways for his boat.”

  “But if you were looking, and you had a tracking dog, where would you start?”

  “At his place. Pick up a scent.”

  “That’s where Laura and Alison, together or separately, are headed.”

  “They’re both after Murry?”

  “How should I know? Maybe Laura wants to question Alison on her own. I still can’t believe Laura tasered Alison out of revenge. Oh, frankly, I don’t know who did what, or what their next step is, I only know we need to get there before the three of them connect, like the mythical Furies, only destroying each other.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” he asked.

  “You mean what if we go to Vero and our two gals aren’t there? I may have been totally off the mark with Laura, but I think I know this. And if that’s not enough, I can’t afford to be wrong. Look at the situation. You got Laura. You got Alison. You got Erroll Murry. You got an attack dog. It’s a perfect storm.”

  “I’ve met Larry,” Todd said. “Working on a missing-child case. He’s not an attack dog.”

  “Not even Larry is telling the whole truth. So you got Laura, Alison, Murry, and Larry. On top of that you got who knows what surveillance.”

  “I’ll alert Delgado, my boss, and the FBI on the way.”

  We’d already pulled onto I-95, and Todd was moving pretty good, not too much traffic in the early evening. I touched Todd’s arm as he reached out for his car radio.

  “My point is, you call in all those people and you’ve got a bloodbath waiting to happen. Or a textbook scenario for suicide by cop. I could go on. Look, we’re on our way and it’s going to take a couple of hours to get there. And we can’t be far behind the others. We’ve got a little time to think about a strategy.”

  “What we need is SWAT.”

  “Less is more,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that, but I never got it. As far as I’m concerned, more is more.”

  “On top of what I already named? And us? No, you do that and you’ve got a mess. We need to finesse this.”

  “Oh yeah, the FBI has always been good at that,” Todd said.

  “It always comes down to this, doesn’t it? Your metro-cop inferiority complex on top of short-man syndrome.”

  “Waco. Ruby Ridge—”

  “Ancient history. You want to get Laura or Alison killed?” There was something there that wouldn’t let me lose either of them no matter what they had done.

  I took a deep breath. Being a Quinn, what Mom called bull-headed, wouldn’t get us anywhere. What we needed was compromise. Todd was clipping along at eighty miles per hour in a sixty-five zone. We were already passing the Hillsboro exit, but it was agonizingly slow.

  “Lights?” I suggested.

  “Nah, someone gets on the radio and asks if I need help. Easier to flash a badge if we’re stopped. I’ll speed up once we’re past West Palm.”

  “Watch out.”

  “I see him.”

  “Todd.”

  “What?”

  “Madeline.”

  “I told her, I get any inkling of dirty business she’s going down for it. Right now I don’t think they can pin anything on her. All they would have is what Mack says she said.”

  “Can you trust Delgado?”

  “Do we have a choice? My boss called his boss, so Delgado knows.”

  “Okay, tell me what you think of this. You call Delgado and tell him about Alison. Tell him we’re coming up. But tell him that Laura is on Alison’s tail and she should be left alone so as not to raise suspicion. That she’s got ranking jurisdiction since she’s FBI. That we’ll keep him posted of any changes.”

  “That’s not altogether the truth,” he said.

  “Yeah, well,” I said.

  “But it could work,” he said.

  Quinn after all. “Good brother. When this is all over I’ll buy you a doughnut.”

  “Fuck you,” he said amiably, and kept driving. We passed the Glades exit in Boca Raton.

  Forty-five

  Todd called Delgado and told him what I suggested. Then I filled Todd in on the story I either knew or conjectured. Here’s the way I was thinking that day on the way up to Vero Beach:

  Shayna Murry had known it was her brother who killed the Creightons. I’d seen the guy, and what Todd and I had proposed for his motive sounded right. He was just stupid enough to think he could remove the wife and insert Shayna into the house. But the two kids showed up.

  Atlantic Avenue exit at Delray. Boynton Beach.

  Where was Kirsten that night? I don’t know. What I do know is that she didn’t take the twins to the community sleepover. And I do know that Shayna wanted to protect the brother she had raised when her parents left them. So when Erroll told her he’d just killed the family, she lied for him. Said Marcus hadn’t been at her house.

  Palm Beach exits. Four of them. Todd jumped to a hundred miles an hour, safe on this part of the highway where there was less traffic.

  The thing with Shayna Murry was, lying made her an accessory after the fact, and she would have gone down for murder one herself. She was trying to sav
e not just her brother’s skin but her own. When she saw Creighton convicted, and getting the death penalty, the guilt had tortured her, but not enough to make her confess her perjury.

  Jupiter exit. As if the god himself was fucking with us, the thunder clapped loud enough to vibrate my dental fillings, and the rain started.

  “Oh, terrific. This is just fucking terrific,” I said, leaning forward to try to see anything out the windshield. All I could see was the wipers doing their best against what looked like we’d slid into a river.

  “Actually, it is terrific,” Todd said, increasing his speed. “It’ll hinder anybody ahead of us in or out of their cars, and no cop will be out to stop us. Help me watch the road for other cars.”

  I clamped my jaws as if that would help. Now I knew how Laura felt when I drove through the storm.

  Exit for Vero Beach. The rain stopped.

  It was a good thing Delgado agreed to withdraw the surveillance. There was one dirt road leading to Murry’s place, and with the number of people potentially converging here, it could turn into a parking lot of mud. Figuring they were still ahead of us, though hopefully not by much, Todd parked the car far enough away that it couldn’t be seen from the house, and at the same time blocked vehicles from getting away.

  I got out of the car first and immediately jumped back in again before Todd had time to holster his weapon. Without looking in the mirror I could feel my lips plumped like a bad Botox job. Todd swatted one of the mosquitos that had gotten in with me, then reached into the glove compartment for some repellent. “I didn’t think I needed to tell you,” he said.

  “I’d forgotten what this place can be like.”

  He gave me and himself a good spraying, and then we got out of the car and let the doors ease back without closing them entirely, just in case we were closer than we thought we were.

  Weapons in one hand, flashlights in the other, though turned off for now, we made our way down the dirt road between growth that still dripped with the downpour. It all hung close, feeling as if it resented that gash that had been cut in the middle of it, the strangler figs that crawled up the oak trees threatening to close in at any moment.