It had been weird to see Eric again. He looked good and had clearly gotten his life together. I was happy for him but wasn’t sure why he thought we needed to see each other again. Since he had gone through all the considerable trouble of tracking down the information for this stalker, however, I at least owed him another drink. But he needed to understand that I was trying to focus on moving forward, and he was a painful memory from the past. So why did it feel like the same thinking applied to Terrence as well? At least Terrence was engaged, so he was off-limits.
“So what made you reach out to your ex?” Terrence asked. “I mean Eric, not me.”
“Very funny,” I said. “Look, how many computer hackers do you know? If you know the best, you reach out to him. We weren’t really getting anywhere with your contacts.”
“Is that the only reason?” he asked, looking at me through his dark sunglasses.
“Of course that’s the only reason,” I snapped. “But even if it wasn’t, what business would that be of yours?”
“OK, OK . . . Damn, I was just asking. You’re right, it’s none of my business.”
“Exactly. Anyway, where’s your fiancée?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but we arrived this afternoon, and I dropped her off to rehearse for the fashion show before I headed over to your hotel.”
“Oh, she needs to practice walking?” I couldn’t stop myself from the snide remark.
“I don’t know what they do at these things,” he said, laughing. “I just know she’ll be there for the next four hours and then we’re going to dinner.”
So I guess that meant he wasn’t going to come to my party tonight. Not like I had formally invited him, but I had secretly hoped that he’d want to come. Of course then that would mean that he’d be with her, and I certainly didn’t want the supermodel on the red carpet of my party. That’s the last thing I wanted to see.
“Well, then we’ve got two hours to figure out why threatening e-mails are coming from a dead woman’s computer,” I said.
“According to the Phoenix police files, Kalinda Walters lived with a roommate, a Sean Beckman. A computer science major at the University of Arizona.”
“Sounds like we may have our guy,” I said, looking at the window.
Terrence stopped the car in front of the Gardens, a large stucco apartment complex forty-five minutes from our hotel. A few palm trees lined the street. A little boy sped down the block on his bicycle while another boy trailed him on his scooter. We walked into the brick courtyard of the complex past several rows of metal mailboxes and a swimming pool full of young co-eds splashing around in the cool blue water. Just being out of the car for five minutes left me dying to join them as a trail of sweat made its way down my back.
We got to building C and walked up two flights of stairs to unit 2D. When Terrence knocked on the door, a small dog could be heard barking behind the door.
“Yeah, who is it?” a man’s voice said.
“Sean Beckman? My name is Terrence Graham, and I need to talk to you about Kalinda Walters.”
The door opened to reveal a thin man in his early twenties with pale freckled skin and a shock of curly red hair. He was wearing a large white T-shirt with a University of Arizona logo on the front, socks, and flip-flops. And even though he was wearing baggy basketball shorts, I doubted he’d ever played the game a day in his life.
“Are you from the police department?” he asked, looking at us skeptically.
“Not exactly, Sean,” Terrence said. “I’m from the New York district attorney’s office, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about the e-mails coming from this apartment to Marcus and Vanessa King.”
Sean immediately tried to slam the door, but Terrence jammed his foot in the doorway.
“Look, Sean. We won’t take up too much of your time. We just want to ask you a few questions. You can let us in now to talk, or we can come back with a few officers from the Phoenix police department and have an entirely different type of conversation.”
“I don’t have to let you in,” he insisted as he pressed his thin body up against the door, still trying in vain to push it closed.
“No, you’re right, you don’t have to let us in,” I said, leaning in so that Sean could see my face. “But I also don’t think you want us to continue this conversation in front of your apartment so all your neighbors can hear about you sending threatening e-mails from a dead woman’s computer.”
Reluctantly Sean opened the door and let us enter the apartment. We walked by the small kitchen with a cracked linoleum floor and sink full of dirty dishes. Just off the entryway was a tiny living room sparsely decorated with a cheap but serviceable black IKEA sofa, two matching chairs, and a black wooden coffee table littered with half-empty coffee mugs, dirty paper plates, and a MacBook Air. A large University of Arizona pennant hung over the couch. The black TV stand across the room held a large television, a few textbooks, a PlayStation console, and two framed pictures of Kalinda. In one, she was fresh-faced and smiling, standing next to Sean in a graduation cap and gown and holding the dog that greeted us. In the other, she wore tight gold spandex shorts and a matching black-and-gold halter top, the dance uniform of the Phoenix Lasers.
The barking little dog, a small white and gray poodle, hopped around our feet excitedly.
“Down, Chee Chee. Stop it,” Sean said as he scooped up the little dog. He walked to the back of the apartment and put the small ball of fur into one of the bedrooms and shut the door behind him.
Joining us back in the living room, Sean invited us to have a seat on the sofa and shifted nervously on his feet.
“Cute dog,” I said, motioning to the photo of the three of them on the TV stand.
“Thanks. I got Chee Chee for Kalinda as a graduation present. She loved that dog. But you’re not here to talk about Kalinda, right?” Sean asked as he took a seat in one of the well-worn chairs. It was obvious from the way he said her name that he had more than a roommate interest in the slain dancer.
“What are you talking about, Sean?” Terrence asked. “We want to talk about the letters.”
“The letters!” Sean shouted as he fought to keep back the angry tears welling up in his eyes. “I can’t believe you guys are here harassing me, and Marcus King’s the one that murdered Kalinda.”
“Look, calm down, Sean,” I said, trying to start over. “We just want to find out what happened. Let’s start from the beginning. Why were you sending the e-mails, and why were you using Kalinda’s computer?”
“Why should I tell you two anything? The cops don’t believe me, and you guys won’t, either.”
“Sean, we’re just looking to clear up some things, so the more cooperative you are now, the easier it will be down the line,” Terrence said.
“I told the cops everything I knew already, and they didn’t believe me. They believed that lying son of a bitch King.”
“What exactly did you tell the police, Sean?” I asked.
“Tell us everything and start from the beginning,” Terrence said.
I could see that Sean was really getting worked up and was probably going to shut down on us any minute.
“Who are you, anyway?” Sean asked, suddenly turning to me. “Are you with the district attorney’s office, too?”
“No, my name is Nia Bullock, Sean. And I’m a reporter.”
“Are you writing a story on Kalinda?” he said with a tinge of hope in his voice.
“Not exactly, Sean. But I can tell you cared about your friend Kalinda a great deal. How long were you all friends?”
“We moved in together her senior year to save on rent. She was a great friend and such a nice person. She was just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.”
“It sounds like you guys were good friends. Did things between you and Kalinda ever go further than that?” I a
sked. Maybe the roommate got jealous of the relationship with Marcus and killed her in a jealous rage.
“Are you kidding?” Sean snorted. “As you can see, we’re kind of the poster couple for Beauty and the Geek. Kalinda and I were just friends. Would I have liked for it to have been more? Sure. But I knew that was never going to happen, so I settled for having her as a friend. I didn’t have many of those around campus since I spent most of my time in the computer lab.”
“So why didn’t Kalinda move out after she graduated last year and landed a job dancing with the Phoenix Lasers?” Terrence asked.
“Those dancers don’t make shit. I made more at my summer internship at Google last summer than Kalinda made in her first year. She thought it was going to be all glamorous dancing and being on TV, but it was a lot of hard work, and she had to deal with a lot of rules she didn’t like.”
“What kind of rules?” I asked.
“The dancers weren’t allowed to date the players, and if someone found out that they were, the dancer would immediately be fired. Kalinda complained about that rule because she said the players were always coming onto her and some of the other girls. She said some of them were kind of cute, but she didn’t want to lose her job.”
“Did she like her job?” I asked.
“Yeah, she did. She loved to dance and liked the attention she got.”
“Did Kalinda get a lot of attention?” Terrence asked. “Did that bother you, Sean?” I could tell he was picking up on my thought that maybe this kid had been jealous and afraid Kalinda was going to leave him.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking. The police thought the same thing in the beginning, but I’m not some crazy jealous stalker dude who killed my roommate because I was in love with her. Did I care about Kalinda? Yes. But I’d never hurt her.”
“So what do you think happened to Kalinda?” I asked.
“About two months before Kalinda died, she started seeing some new guy. She was real secretive about it, which was unusual for her because she was always pretty open about who she was seeing. I met other guys when they came to the apartment, or I’d hear her talking on the phone with them or she and her friends would talk about them when they’d come over. But this new guy? Nothing. Whenever I asked her why she was being so secretive, she’d say she couldn’t tell me. Her Facebook status, which usually said ‘In a relationship’ when she was seeing someone, was changed to ‘It’s complicated.’ Then one day I was taking out the trash and saw her getting into a black Porsche Panamera with dark tinted windows and flashy rims, and I assumed she was seeing some rich married guy who didn’t want his wife to find out.”
“You didn’t see the driver or anything else?” Terrence asked.
“Nope, like I said, the windows were tinted. I did see the license plate, though, and I remember it because I have a photographic memory.”
“Did you ever see the car again?”
“No, not that car. But another time I saw her getting into a Mercedes with tinted windows, and I memorized that plate as well.”
“Anything else in your mind that made this relationship stand out from the rest?” Terrence asked.
“Well, the gifts.”
“What gifts?” Terrence and I asked in unison.
“You saw how Kalinda looked. I mean, it wasn’t unusual for guys to buy her stuff, but this was on a whole other level. She started coming home with expensive jewelry, fur coats, and shit.”
“Why didn’t the police try to track down those purchases?”
“Well, you see, that’s the thing,” Sean said leaning forward. “Two days after Kalinda’s body was found, someone broke into our apartment and stole all that stuff.”
“Did they take anything else?” I asked.
“No, the only things missing were from Kalinda’s room. They didn’t take any of my computer equipment, the TV, PlayStation, or anything.”
“What did the police say?” Terrence asked.
“Yeah, and how are you tying this all to Marcus King? You said she knew there was a policy against dating players, and that she didn’t want to lose her job.”
“Well, the day Kalinda went missing, it was Friday, and she said she was going away for the weekend with the mystery guy. She thought things were getting pretty serious. She didn’t know where they were going. She said he just told her to pack for warm weather and meet him at the airport that afternoon. So when Monday came around and no Kalinda, I’m thinking maybe they decided to stay a little longer. Then Tuesday came and one of the other dancers called me and said Kalinda didn’t show up for practice. So then I started to worry, and I called the police.”
“And Wednesday the body was found,” Terrence said, completing the story.
“Yeah, Wednesday the police came to the apartment and said they needed me to come down to the medical examiner’s office and ID a body,” Sean said, his voice choking up with emotion. “I couldn’t believe what that monster had done to her body. How could someone do that to another person?”
“I’m very sorry, Sean. I know it had to be hard for you to see your friend like that,” I said.
“Yeah, but what came next was much worse. The cops asked me a lot of questions, and at first it seemed like they were trying to finger me for the murder, but I got crossed off the list once they confirmed that I was at the annual Hackers United convention in Las Vegas that weekend and there were several witnesses who saw me there. I told them they needed to find this guy she was dating. I recalled the license plate numbers I had seen, broke into the DMV mainframe, and found the cars’ registered owner.”
“Who was it?” I asked, holding my breath.
“The great Marcus King,” Sean said. “I gave the cops the information, and they said they’d look into it, but then they came back a few days later, claiming Marcus had an airtight alibi.”
“What was it?” Terrence said.
“He was playing the Dallas Panthers at an away game that night,” Terrence said, flipping through his copy of the police file.
“But what about the break-in to your apartment and the stuff you said was stolen?” I asked.
“They didn’t believe my story about all the gifts King had bought her. If that stuff hadn’t been stolen, they could have gone back to the stores and found out who made the purchases. I didn’t have any proof beyond some photos she had taken of herself in the mink jacket and a necklace that she had posted on Facebook.”
“Anything else unusual about the break-in?” I asked.
“No, nothing really. This is a pretty safe neighborhood.”
“Are you sure?” Terrence pushed. “No strange faces in the neighborhood around the time Kalinda disappeared?”
“Well, not to profile or anything, but a couple of days before the break-in, I thought I kept seeing the same large Hispanic dude in front of the building waiting in his car. I think it was a black Nissan, but I didn’t see the plate.”
“Did you tell the police?” I asked as I rummaged in my bag to locate a photo of Carlo. Terrence had confirmed that Carlo had rented a black Nissan Maxima from Hertz when he landed in Phoenix two days before Kalinda was killed.
“Of course I did, but those lazy assholes brushed it off. Not that I could blame them. It’s Phoenix after all, so the description of ‘Hispanic guy in a car’ doesn’t really take you too far.”
“Is this the man you saw watching you from the car?” I asked as I placed the black-and-white photo of Carlo in front of Sean.
“Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, he had sunglasses on, but I’m pretty sure that’s him,” Sean said as he looked closely at the photo. “Who is this guy?”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Terrence said as he took the photo from Sean and gave it back to me. “Look, the only thing we can tell you at this point for sure is that Marcus King did not murder Kalinda and you need to stop harassing them.”
“Did that man you just showed me kill Kalinda? Maybe he was working for King,” Sean exclaimed, unwilling to let go of his theory about his friend’s murder.
“Leave that to us to figure out, Sean,” Terrence said. “But trust me when I say you should leave Marcus and Vanessa King alone.”
“Well, I’m not sorry for what I did. That bastard deserves to fry for what he did to Kalinda,” Sean said as his face began to turn red and he raked his bony fingers through his curly hair in frustration.
“Sean, listen to me,” I said. “The police are right. Marcus King did not murder your friend. Trust me.”
“OK, then what do you want from me? Am I in trouble?” Sean whined. “Are the Kings pressing charges?”
“Look, if you promise not to send any more threatening e-mails or text messages, then we’ll talk to the Kings,” I said.
“So why did you start sending those messages?” Terrence asked.
“After the fucking cops refused to follow up anymore, because it was my word against King’s, I leaked some information to some of the local papers, hoping they’d investigate, but aside from a few gossipy stories about King possibly sleeping with Kalinda, nobody picked up the trail until you guys showed up today.”
“So you started sending those messages to Marcus and Vanessa because you thought he’d gotten away with murder,” I said. “We know how you sent the text messages and e-mails, but how’d you get the notes delivered to their homes?”
“There are underground hacker networks full of people who will deliver stuff for the right fee,” Sean snorted. “Look, Kalinda said they were getting serious, and she wanted to marry him. But this King guy was already married, and there’s no way he was ever going to leave his wife and kid for some dancer. Even I know that.”
“So you think Marcus King killed Kalinda when she saw that King wasn’t going to leave his wife?” Terrence said with a raised eyebrow.
“Kalinda was used to getting what she wanted. She definitely wasn’t used to guys telling her no. I think maybe Kalinda threatened to tell his wife or something, and he flipped out. And then he put her body out in the desert, hoping no one would find it.”
Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) Page 22