A Killer Cover Up

by Danielle Collins

“Of all people…” She shook her head. “I barely knew him. But there had to have been something, maybe a story he was working on, that brought my husband’s death to the surface. We have to find that connection.”

  “We do. And that’s why we’re starting here.” Adam pulled into a parking space and they both got out. A gust of moist air hit them and Margot pulled her coat closed.

  They walked toward the buildings, following signs for the computer lab located in the library building, according to Dexter. He’d offered to come with them but, after a few questions from Adam, they knew that he wouldn’t be able to do anything he couldn’t do from North Bank, so Adam said they’d handle it. They’d call him if they needed him.

  Adam held open the door for them and they entered the quiet interior of the library. After asking a student for directions, they came to the entrance of the computer lab. A young man sat behind a desk fiddling with a mouse, chin propped against one hand.

  “Excuse me,” Adam said, coming up to the man. “Are you in charge of the lab?”

  “Yeah.” The man kept his gaze on the computer screen for a few seconds longer then tapped in a command before looking up at Adam. He blinked when he saw the badge Adam held out.

  “North Bank PD. I’ve got a few questions to ask you.”

  The man’s eyes went wide and he nodded. “Yeah. Su-sure. Whatever you need.”

  “I’m investigating an email that was sent from one of the computers here. The person in question was most likely not a student and I’m curious how he would have gone about creating a fictitious email address on one of these computers.”

  “Uh, right.” The man blinked, pushed up his glasses, and jumped into an explanation. “Anyone who comes in and doesn’t have a school access code can get a guest login to use for, like, thirty minutes.”

  “Anyone?” Adam asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Well, okay, not anyone. But someone with a good reason can.”

  “Give me an example.” Adam’s tone bartered no room for excuses.

  “Like a guest of someone else, a visiting faculty member, or like— I don’t know? Someone with a good reason?” Sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Margot felt bad for the man.

  “All right.” Adam looked down at his phone, swiped up a few times with his thumb, then turned the phone toward the man. “Do you recognize this man?”

  She barely caught a glance at the picture before Adam had turned it toward the man, but she saw enough to know it was a shot of Paul. It looked like it had come from his bio page on a news website.

  “Y-yeah. Yeah, I recognize him.”

  “And?” Adam prompted.

  “I remember giving him a guest login. He was a visiting faculty, I think. That’s what he said. He was here for maybe a half an hour or something and then left. That’s it, I swear!”

  “Did he have to sign in or anything? Give some sort of identification of who he was?”

  “Oh, I just remembered.” The young man looked back at his computers and began typing furiously.

  “What?” Adam asked.

  “He had a WCC badge.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A badge for the college. Everyone who’s a guest can get one. I remember seeing it, which is why I felt all right giving him guest access. Here.” The man typed one last command and a printer nearby came to life. He rushed over and delivered it to Adam with a hopeful smile.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a list of everyone who was a guest on the day you’re talking about. I remembered I had nachos and that means it was Tuesday.”

  Margot suppressed her smile but peered over Adam’s shoulder at the page. It was a list of roughly ten names and phone numbers.

  “Great. Thanks so much for this information.”

  The man nodded vigorously and asked if they needed anything else. Adam said they didn’t and they exited the lab. He waited until they were outside to look over at Margot.

  “This isn’t Paul’s number.”

  “What?”

  Adam pulled out his phone and showed her an email. “We have all of his information and, while this could be a fake number or a burner phone, I know for certain this isn’t his.”

  “But he used his real name,” she said, indicating where it listed Paul Henman on the sheet.

  “True,” Adam admitted. “I’d lean toward one of two options then. He didn’t want to give his number or he didn’t have one.”

  Margot wrinkled her nose. Could an investigative reporter truly do his job without a phone, let alone a smartphone? It would be more likely he didn’t want to give his number, but if that was the case, then whose number had he given?

  “I’m going to call it,” Adam said with a grin.

  Margot merely shrugged her agreement and, once they were in the car, waited as Adam pulled out his phone and tapped in the number. He pressed call and then put it on speaker phone.

  One ring. Two—

  “Hello?”

  It was a female voice on the other end of the line and Adam spoke up. “Hello, I’m looking for Paul Henman,” he said, his gaze sliding to Margot.

  “He’s, uh, not here.” She sounded hesitant. “Where did you get this number?”

  “From the community college. Actually, I—”

  The phone went dead, and Margot blinked. “She hung up on you?”

  “Apparently.” Adam dialed someone else and put the phone up to his ear. After a few stilted words, he ended the call, sent a text, then looked up at Margot.

  “Who did you call?”

  “I went over the woman’s head,” he said with a soft smile. “I’ll be getting the location of the phone any minute now—” His phone pinged and he looked down. “Let’s go.”

  They drove to the east side of town. It was a nice neighborhood with small, modest homes in good condition. Margot helped him navigate to the location Adam’s contact had sent him and they pulled up in front of a light blue house with white shutters and a nicely groomed front lawn.

  “It says this is the home of Vera Maxwell,” Adam said, looking through his messages. “Wonder who she is and why Paul put her phone number down.”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence?” Margot asked, knowing his response before she even asked the question.

  “No. I’ve got a hunch, though. Let’s go.”

  They walked down the path to the front door and Adam knocked. A tall, slender woman with shoulder-length black hair opened the door. She squinted at the brightness but didn’t open the storm door.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “Hello, I’m Detective Adam Eastwood,” Adam said, flashing his badge, “and we’d like a word with you about Paul Henman.”

  She looked surprised for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I—I can’t.”

  “Please, Miss Maxwell, we just need a few moments of your time.”

  Margot thought for sure the woman wouldn’t give in, the look on her delicate features clouded with hesitation and laced with fear, but finally, she reached up and turned the lock, opening the door to let them in.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. I don’t know anything that will help.”

  Adam shot Margot a look behind the woman’s back at this statement but didn’t say anything. She showed them to a neat sitting room, the couch draped with a soft blanket and comfy throw pillows.

  “Please,” she said, indicating the couch.

  They sat and Adam leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “We won’t take up much of your time, but I do need to ask you some questions regarding Paul.”

  “Who are you?” she asked Margot.

  Margot smiled. “I knew Paul from a long time ago,” she said, trying to find a connection that didn’t completely give the woman all of the information but didn’t leave her in the dark either. “And I’m a friend of Detective Eastwood’s.”

  “What do you want to know?” Vera said, her seat in a reclining chai
r near them making her look even smaller.

  “What was your relationship to Paul?” Adam asked.

  “We were dating. For over a year. He was living here,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. She’d no doubt heard the news of his death, and yet no one had known about her.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Margot said, infusing her voice with as much understanding as she could.

  “Yeah. It was a shock to hear it on the news, but we were really private about our relationship. I…I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

  Margot looked toward the door and noticed the suitcases. “Were you going somewhere, Miss Maxwell?”

  “No.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Or yes. I’m an investigative journalist in the Middle East. I just got back from an assignment to find out that my boyfriend was killed. Never thought the States would be the dangerous place.”

  “We were just over at the college,” Adam continued, “and Paul listed your phone number as his contact point. Do you know why he would do that?”

  “Yeah.” She smoothed a hand over the pillow in her lap. “I’ve got a work phone, so I used that when I was overseas. You know, call home on their dime since I’m risking my life for them.” She gave Adam a jaded look then returned her gaze to the pillow. “I let Paul use my phone when I was gone. He is—was…” She swallowed. “…so cheap. Anything to save a buck.”

  “Do you know what he was working on most recently?”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not completely sure. We didn’t talk about work a lot when I called in. You know, trying to separate the job from our relationship.”

  “So you have no idea what he was looking in to?”

  She shot a hard look at Adam, eyes narrowed, and Margot could finally see the hardened journalist Vera Maxwell was.

  “Why do you say it like that? Do you think what he was working on got him killed?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Margot saw the impact those words had on Vera.

  “No. I don’t know, but now I definitely want to find out.” Her eyes blazed.

  “Miss Maxwell,” Adam said, softening his tone, “I can assure you that I am doing the best I can to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Right.” She leaned back and crossed her arms.

  “Would it be possible to look at Paul’s belongings?”

  Her eyes turned hard and Margot knew what would come next if she didn’t somehow try to intervene.

  “Miss Maxwell—may I call you Vera?” Margot said.

  The woman’s cold gaze turned to Margot, but after a few seconds, she softened. “Sure.”

  “My husband knew Paul a long time ago. He respected him and his work. My husband was—” She swallowed, finding it difficult to say murdered even after all these years. “—murdered, and I have reason to believe that Paul was actually trying to help me solve the mystery of his death.”

  Vera’s eyes warmed immediately, filling with tears. It was as if she’d finally found someone who truly understood her.

  “I assure you Detective Eastwood is only trying to do the best job he can and that he will treat this case with the most attention to detail he can, but he can’t do that without all of the evidence. You’re a reporter. You know the importance of evidence and seeing all of the facts for what they are. Please, will you help us?”

  Vera let out another long sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath, then nodded. Turning to Adam, she said, “You can look through his things.”

  8

  It only took a few calls and thirty minutes of waiting until a team of Adam’s colleagues were there and ready to take over the house. Margot felt bad for Vera, knowing how difficult it was to have your home invaded for the sake of truth, but she seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps it was due to her career overseas and living with an understanding that life never went as planned.

  Margot waited around, watching as officers came in and took out boxes of things. Adam assured Vera that Paul’s things would be returned, but she merely shrugged as if the fight had gone out of her.

  Finally, as the officers carried out the last of the items, Vera came up to Margot. “I almost forgot.” She pulled Margot down the hall and stopped at two doors. She pulled one open, revealing towels and extra blankets.

  “I don’t know why, but I just remembered Paul looking in here the day before I left. He’d been gone all day and I was mad at him because I was leaving that night.” Vera stuck her hand in the closet and began rummaging around as Adam joined them in the hallway.

  “You think he put something here?”

  “All I know is that I do all of the laundry and cleaning, and he would do the cooking. It worked for us,” she said, shrugging. But—” She put her arm further into the closet. “—I remembered seeing him in here. He didn’t come out with anything, so it wasn’t that he needed a towel or a blanket. Ah!”

  She pulled back and in her hand was a mailer identical to the one that Julian’s journal had been sent in.

  “Thought so,” Vera said, handing it over to Adam.

  “Thank you, Vera.” He took it and opened the unsealed flap. Margot peered over and they both saw an older-looking VHS tape. “Interesting,” Adam muttered under his breath.

  “He’d been acting strange,” Vera said, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold. “I’d tried to get him to tell me what he was working on, but he wouldn’t budge. He did that sometimes, clammed up when it was something really important. I used to think it was because he didn’t trust me, but I grew to learn that he was just really private. It was all up here.” She gestured to her head. “He was brilliant, but he definitely stuck his nose where it didn’t belong.” She tried to laugh, but Margot could tell the humor was superficial.

  “We’ll look into this and keep you posted, I promise,” Adam said, offering her a kind smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice scratchy with emotion.

  They left, making sure that Vera had everything she needed from them and could get a hold of Adam should she find anything else that they’d missed. On the drive back to North Bank, Adam was silent, leaving Margot to her own thoughts.

  Vera had lost the man she loved to this mystery, but did it have something to do with Julian? Or was that a mere coincidence? Margot was beginning to think it wasn’t. Despite the fact that she couldn’t tie the pieces together, she was almost certain that Paul’s death was connected to Julian’s and that whatever had happened all those years ago was still an issue of some sort.

  “Would you mind calling Dexter?”

  “No, but why?” she asked, when Adam broke the silence ten minutes away from North Bank.

  “I think we should head to the station and I’d like him to meet us there. We’ll play the tape and, depending on what we find on it, we may need to use his expertise.”

  She nodded and dialed Dexter’s number. After explaining the circumstances, he agreed, saying that he’d leave Julia’s, where they were watching a cartoon with Nick, and meet them at the station. She hated to pull him away from time with Julia and her son, but she also knew that he was as committed to finding the truth as she and Adam were.

  Soon, they pulled in to the police station and made their way inside and to the media room.

  “I’ve got stuff set up,” Dexter said, “with the help of Simon here.” He grinned at the young officer.

  “This guy can do some incredible stuff,” Simon said, shaking his head.

  Dexter merely shrugged. “I may have shown him a thing or two while we waited.”

  Adam, usually game to chat, seemed focused and in no mood for teasing. The men seemed to understand this and went about starting up the video when Adam handed it over.

  “Margot,” he said, turning to her, “maybe you should wait outside.”

  Not for the first time, she considered what might be on the tape. It was Dexter’s comment about finding the tape that the image of her husband had come from that alerted her t
o what the VHS might contain. She had a feeling it would show her husband on the night of his death. Perhaps it might even show his death.

  She’d shoved the thoughts down, not willing to think of them any more deeply than she had to, but she couldn’t avoid the reality any longer. Did she want to stay?

  “I…” she started but stopped.

  Adam lightly gripped her elbow and maneuvered her to the hallway so they could talk privately. “We don’t know what’s going to be on this tape. I don’t want…” He trailed off and frowned. “I don’t want you to carry around images that would be better left unseen.”

  She knew he was being delicate and she loved him all the more for it, but she couldn’t step back now. It wasn’t how she’d lived her life.

  “No.” She took in a deep breath and met Adam’s gaze. “No. I want to see.”

  He opened his mouth as if to argue, but then he shook his head. “All right.”

  They went back into the room and Dexter had the video cued up. “Ready?” he asked, looking between Adam and Margot.

  Adam nodded.

  Dexter pressed play and Margot sucked in a breath as an image of Julian came into view. He looked just like she remembered him, the worn creases of his leather jacket pulled tight across strong shoulders. Something shifted inside of her and she had trouble breathing. Then Adam’s hand wrapped gently around her fingers, the warmth and strength there steadying her.

  This was the past and she had a new present.

  Julian walked down the alleyway toward the camera, his gait sure at first but then slowing as he came closer to the illuminated spot the camera was fixed on. He opened his mouth and it looked like he was talking, though the video was grainy and it was difficult to make out what he was saying.

  Then a shadow shifted at the bottom of the screen. This had to be the man from the snapshot that Paul had sent her, even though they couldn’t see him yet.

  Julian took a step closer then held out his hands, both empty. It was a sign of openness and Margot could all but hear him asking the person to have a conversation with him. Julian had been good at that, drawing people out.

  Finally, the shadow moved again and the man came into view. He matched the man in the image from the email. His shape was distorted by a bulky, nondescript jacket and his head was covered by a baseball cap. Because of the angle of the camera, they couldn’t see his profile or make out much of his face.