Double Jeopardy (Entangled Select)

by Linda Wisdom

  Josh leaned forward and slapped the report on her desk. “This details the post you performed on Cal Streeter,” he reminded her.

  She nodded as she picked up the report and scanned it to refresh her memory. “Oh, yes, your alleged rapist. Actually, I’d have to say he was the real victim in this case.”

  He barked a laugh of disbelief. “Wait a minute. He raped his victim and then tried to kill her before she somehow got hold of his gun and shot him in self-defense. Now you’re playing cop and stating there’s no way it could have happened the way she said. That there was no rape, but you didn’t explain where you got this new information. Or did you happen to be hiding in the closet while all this was going on?”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “I stated my findings in the report.”

  “Then do me a favor and cut through the medical bullshit you scribbled in here and tell me why he couldn’t have raped her.”

  “I’ll put it in simple terms that even you can understand. At some time in his life, Cal Streeter was castrated, and not by choice,” she explained, settling back in her chair and propping her crossed legs on top of her desk. “Judging from the old scars, he must have been in a freak accident that left him your run-of-the-mill eunuch. The toxicology tests also revealed he had enough barbiturates in his blood that even if he had all his equipment he couldn’t have gotten it up for the sexiest woman in the world. Why he was in her bedroom, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine he would have had rape in mind.”

  She held up her hand to stop his expected protest. “Yes, I’m well aware there was evidence that she’d been sexually assaulted not long before Streeter was killed. But let me play the devil’s advocate.” She waved her hands around to emphasize a point here and there as she talked. “The evidence that some call assault could also mean she was into rough sex. Did anyone check to see if she had a past history of playing around with BDSM?”

  Josh frowned. The police and medical reports he’d read hadn’t brought that up. But now he could see how it could be a logical conclusion. “Let me make this clear to you. I don’t like people telling me how to do my job.”

  He focused on her long legs. Funny, he’d never thought of those ugly green cotton surgical scrubs and hot pink Crocs as sexy. Even if the odd-looking shoes did have tiny rust-colored spots on them that he uneasily figured had to be blood. Even her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense braid that shouldn’t have looked tempting, but did. He was barely tossed out of a relationship and he was already looking at other women!

  “Neither do I, but I believe in looking at both sides of an issue.” She smirked. “I’d say your so-called, open-and-shut case has a few holes in it, Counselor.”

  Josh hated with a vengeance to have someone tell him there was a good chance he might be wrong. He hated losing, and he hated it even more when he couldn’t argue with such good logic. “I didn’t realize forensic pathologists had such a grasp of the letter of the law. Wait, don’t tell me”—he held up a hand—“you also have a law degree, but for the time being you’re playing with the medical part, right?”

  “It’s a good thing you’re a classic monster-film buff. Otherwise, I’d deck you for that. When you work in forensics, you become used to sometimes discovering surprise information that can blow open a case previously considered open-and-shut.”

  She lifted her legs off the desk and leaned forward. “Yes, I can see you didn’t want to hear that. Too bad, Counselor, because if this case goes to court, I will be stating my qualified medical opinion that there is no way on earth Cal Streeter could have raped Sally Warner. I don’t say it just for the hell of it, either.”

  He also leaned forward. “Tell me something, Doc. Since you didn’t get to meet the man until he was dead, how do you know what he could and couldn’t do when he was alive? Who says all men who’ve been castrated can’t get it up? Maybe he ate a few dozen oysters beforehand.”

  Lauren got to her feet and braced her hands on her desk as she leaned across the cluttered surface until her face was close to his. The faint scent of formaldehyde, disinfectant, varied chemicals, and other odors he didn’t want to think about perfumed her skin. He fought the urge to sneeze.

  “Let’s conduct an experiment, Counselor. Purely for the sake of research, of course,” she said, in a sultry voice that hit him below the belt. “We’ll start the evening out with a special cocktail I’ve whipped up just for you. I’ll pump you so full of downers you’ll be a virtual zombie. Then, I’ll seat you in a very comfortable chair where you can watch me stand in front of you while I slowly strip off my clothing in accompaniment to some bluesy jazz. Then I’ll slip into a black sheer nightgown and walk over and curl up in your lap. There will be a backdrop of several rows of scented candles to add to the mood.”

  She slowly ran her tongue across her lower lip. Her physician’s half easily noticed Josh’s heightened respiration and color. Good; she was definitely getting to him. “Now,” her lips formed a sexy O, “let’s see if you can get an erection and do what your brain is screaming for you to do before you go insane.”

  For one moment, Josh was convinced his heart had stopped. The mental image of Lauren wearing a sheer nightgown was more than enough to perform a tap dance on his libido. He coughed to clear his throat. “Don’t worry, Doc, all I have to do is look at you and a hard-on is the least of my worries.”

  She dipped her head in indication of his fast reply.

  “Very good, Counselor. You’re hoping I’m going to be curious enough to check out the condition of your crotch. Isn’t it a good thing I have such wonderful willpower? You know, I hate to sound smug, but this is a time when I know I’m right.”

  “You were the one to bring up the subject of erections, not me.” Josh flicked a corner of the report with his fingers. “So the bottom line is you’re convinced Cal Streeter couldn’t have raped Sally Warner.”

  “Not only am I now convinced, but if you’d fully read the report, you’d have noted that the blood type found in the semen retrieved from Sally Warner was O positive, and Cal Streeter is A negative. According to the doctor who examined her at the hospital, only one blood type’s semen was found in her. And it obviously wasn’t Streeter’s.” She held up her hands. “But then, I’m only the coroner, not a member of the bar. The rest is up to you and your investigators.”

  Josh mentally called himself every name in the book. “So it’s up to my investigators to find out why Cal was shot.”

  “You’re the prosecutor.”

  “Glad you’re finally admitting it.’’ He shook his head. “Doc, it’s been interesting.” He held out his hand.

  “Glad to know you’re man enough to admit when you’re wrong.” She allowed him to clasp her hand.

  For a moment they stared at each other as if unsure where to go next.

  “You use a unique kind of air freshener down here,” Josh commented, for lack of anything else to say.

  Lauren shrugged. “You stick around these smells long enough, you don’t notice them. I’ve been used to it since medical school. No matter where we were on campus, people only had to take one good whiff and they knew they were near medical students.”

  “I’m glad that wasn’t something I had to worry about.” He picked up the report and moved toward the door. He stopped just before he reached it. “You’ve got quite a voice, Doc. The kind that some would say should be registered as a lethal weapon. You know, I bet you could make a fortune in the phone sex racket. Hell, I’d even call up and pay to let you talk dirty to me.” With that he sketched a salute and left.

  Lauren blinked, stunned by the abrupt change in conversation. She dropped back in her chair and laughed.

  “Just remember, I wouldn’t come cheap,” she called after him.

  …

  It was late before Josh was able to get away from his office. He shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other as he made his way out to the parking lot.

  “You look tired.” A tall, red-haired woman started wal
king next to him.

  “Probably because I am,” he admitted. “How’s it going for you, Mitzi? Is Steve still obeying the restraining order we filed?”

  She nodded. “So far. Brian said he thought he saw him lingering outside the schoolyard a few days ago. He went to find a teacher and by the time one came out, whoever it had been was gone. I talked to his teachers and they’re keeping a close eye out, just in case.”

  Josh patted her shoulder. A product of an abusive home life where his father believed he had to use his fists to keep his family in line, Josh grew up determined to do what he could to make sure no woman would have to endure the kind of hell his mother had. When Mitzi Harper, one of the clerks in the Public Defender’s office, had been beaten up by her soon-to-be ex-husband and had tearfully begged to find a way to be free of him, he’d guided her through the process of pressing charges against the man and filed a restraining order to keep him away from her and their children. Since then, he’d received two dozen peanut butter cookies, his favorite, every Friday from the grateful woman. He never dreaded seeing the cookies the way he dreaded seeing the flowers.

  “Don’t ever hesitate to call me if there’s a problem,” he advised, standing by her small VW Bug while she bent down to unlock her door.

  Her smile was filled with warm affection. “I will, Josh. Thanks.”

  He stood there, waiting, until she drove away before heading to his own car.

  By the time he walked into his house, he decided he wanted a cold beer. Jamming the small pile of mail in his mouth to free his hands, he pulled a bottle of Beck’s from the refrigerator. Dispensing with a glass, he drank deeply from the bottle as he headed for his office. The blinking red light on his landline phone indicated he had a voicemail. He punched in his code to retrieve the message.

  “Hello, lover.” The woman’s husky whisper sent chills through him instead of warmth. “I saw you at Judge Collins’s retirement party a couple nights ago. That navy-and-gray tie you wore was quite a surprise, since it’s well known you hate ties. But the real surprise was seeing you talking to that forensics specialist, Dr. Hunter. Funny, I didn’t think you’d go for a woman who fondles dead men all day long. Especially since you’ve been screwing Carol for the last few months. Although I have heard she’s far from a cold fish in bed. But I doubt she’s better than me.”

  Josh’s fingers hovered over the keypad, ready to delete the message as the voice taunted him. He thought about just turning it off, but he knew that wouldn’t shut her out of his mind. He set the bottle down as he forced himself to keep listening to the deadly whisper.

  “Oh, that’s right. The lively Carol dumped you, didn’t she? I wonder if it had anything to do with the flowers you sent her. She always liked unique things, so you’d think she’d appreciate the black roses. Unless she was a tad upset because you didn’t go to her celebration party. I wouldn’t worry; she only wanted to show you off to everyone. She wanted everyone to see how lucky she was to have the assistant district attorney in her bed. Don’t worry, lover. She was a viper. You wouldn’t have been happy with her for much longer, anyway.”

  Her whisper turned coarse. “Do us both a favor, lover. Don’t get any ideas about replacing that bitch Carol with the new doctor of the dead. Pretty Lauren might not end up as lucky as the others. I can’t allow you to hurt me anymore with all your affairs, lover. You’re all mine, no one else’s. Don’t you understand? I did everything for you!”

  As the rage in her voice escalated, so did Josh’s tension.

  He hit the off button and opened a nearby drawer, pulling out a small recorder. With distaste he replayed the message, this time recording it. He dropped the small cassette in an envelope and wrote across the front while punching out a phone number.

  “This is Josh Brandon. Is Sergeant Peterson still around?” He sipped his beer while waiting.

  “Peterson.”

  “Kevin, I’ve got another tape for our private collection.”

  “Your secret admirer strikes again, huh?”

  Josh wasn’t amused by his friend’s black humor.

  “Considering the number of murders committed because of fatal attractions, you’ll understand why I’m not all that flattered. Do you want to swing by the house tonight and pick it up, or I can drop it off tomorrow?”

  “Is it like the others?”

  “Pretty much. This time she talks about what happened with Carol.” He quickly filled the man in on Carol’s phone call that day. “She’s also saying next time could be worse.” He finished his beer, so furious he stopped short of throwing the bottle against the wall. “I can’t believe there still aren’t any clues about her identity. She knows everything there is to know about me and we know shit about her!”

  “What can I say, she’s one smart lady,” Kevin admitted. “She uses a different burner cell phone every time she calls. Investigation shows the phones are always paid for with cash in drugstores. She manages to never leave any fingerprints in your house, and no matter how many times you’ve changed the locks and beefed up security, she’s always been able to waltz right in. Every order of flowers she’s sent out has been paid in cash, and no one can agree on what she looks like, so that tells us she’s using disguises. So far, the description reads a tall or short redhead or blond with gray or blue eyes who wears glasses or not. One said she had a thick Southern accent; another said she sounded European, but he couldn’t even guess from what country.

  “How can we catch someone who’s doing such a good job at hiding her identity? Stalkers usually don’t care if you know who they are because they believe their love for you is pure. She’s not fitting any of the usual patterns, as if she knows what we’ll look for and changes at the last second. This is one smart bitch, Josh. She’s not going to make it easy for us, because she’s having too much fun playing games.”

  Josh looked over his mail, grateful nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  “I wonder why she doesn’t talk to me directly. It’s always done through the phone, where she disguises her voice, or through the mail. And nothing that can be traced.”

  The detective easily read his frustration. “Yeah, I’m not too happy about all this, either. Tell you what, I’ll pick the tape up tonight on my way home. That way, I can get it over to the lab first thing in the morning and see if we can get anything this time.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “No, but hell, I’m one of those optimistic types.”

  “Probably a good thing someone is,” Josh muttered, after he hung the phone up.

  Chapter Three

  “Good morning, Doc. I thought I’d make your day by letting you know that I’m a man who’s only too happy to admit when he’s wrong. And I’m ready to pay up.”

  Lauren shifted the phone receiver to her other ear as she worked to contain her smile at the sound of Josh’s voice. It wasn’t easy when she had to gaze at the surly expression of the young woman barely out of her teens Lauren had the misfortune to call her secretary. She stood in front of Lauren with a handful of papers scrunched against her hip as she rudely tapped her foot against the tile floor. Lauren wasn’t sure which was worse—her toe-tapping echoing on the linoleum, the frizz of blond hair that haloed her anorectic features and heavily made-up eyes, or her jaw snapping that damn gum Lauren would love to claw out of her fuchsia-glossed mouth.

  “Don’t tell me that Ms. Warner decided she may have made a mistake about poor old Cal after all,” she said smoothly, holding out her hand to her secretary. The crumpled papers were rudely slapped in her outstretched palm.

  “Something tells me you’re not alone.”

  “That’s correct.” She winced as she read the reports and found a number of misspelled words and not one of them more than a few letters long. She picked up her pen and circled the words. “How about I go over that report to refresh my memory and get back to you later?”

  “I’ll be here for another ten minutes.” He hung up without saying good-bye.<
br />
  Lauren looked up. “Sophie, the computer program you use has a spell-check program. If you don’t care to use that, I’m sure there’s more than one dictionary you can find online.” As long as you stay off Twitter and Facebook.

  The young woman shrugged as she reflectively scratched her neck where she sported a relatively new tattoo. “I guess so.”

  She handed the papers back. “Then I suggest you either call up the computer’s spell-check program, or use a dictionary and check out the words I circled.”

  Sophie’s jaw dropped as she stared at the inked circles. “Hey, I worked a long time typing that report up and there was nothing wrong with it.”

  Lauren ignored the younger woman’s accusations. “To begin with, elbow doesn’t have the letter a in it, femur doesn’t have an h, and penis only has one e.” Which I thought even you would know, she thought to herself. “From now on, if you’re unsure of the spelling, look it up first. In fact, even if you think you know how it’s spelled, look it up. I will not have any reports leaving this department with misspelled words or bad grammar. And I’m talking about words you should have learned to spell in the second grade.”

  Sophie snatched the report from her hand and stalked out of the office.

  Lauren rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. She looked through her Rolodex until she found Josh’s number.

  “This is Dr. Hunter, returning Mr. Brandon’s call,” she told the woman who sounded like his watchdog. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “Hey, Doc,” his gravelly voice rumbled in her ear. She tried to ignore the tingling sensation that went along with it by silently reminding herself the opposite sex was set almost near the bottom of her list. “Did I catch you in the middle of one of your infamous openings?”

  “While there are people I wouldn’t mind slitting open from stem to stern, and I truly don’t care if they’re dead at the time, I instead had the great pleasure of giving my secretary a spelling lesson.”