Criminal Intent (MIRA) (32 page)

“Oh, God,” she said, “you’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

“You have a computer? Check it out if you don’t believe me. I imagine by now the
Journal-Constitution
’s picked up the story.”

“But why—who—”

“I can’t be sure, but my money’s on Marcus.”

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“I don’t know what it is you have on the Brogan brothers, but it must be good.”

Something changed in her eyes, some subtle change of color, and
he knew he was right. “Look,” he said, “I know a small portion of this puzzle. You know the rest of it. Somebody’s out there killing people, and I suspect that unless we get together and do a little information sharing, you and I will be the next victims.”

It lay on his desk, neatly lined up with his desk blotter, the plain manila envelope that Dixie had left there for him. Davy picked it up and held it for a while in his hands. What he was about to do was unethical, and a clear violation of Annie Kendall’s civil rights. He had no business digging into her personal life. She wasn’t a crime suspect, and he could probably be fired for using police resources for what would be looked at by most people as a personal matter.

But something wasn’t right here. Something was a little off. Annie’s words, earlier today, had really bothered him:
We don’t have time to get into it right now. I’ll tell you everything tonight.
She hadn’t answered his question when he’d asked if she was in some kind of trouble. Instead, she’d danced her way around it. Even more worrying was the stranger who was flashing her picture around town, asking questions about her, trying to track her down. Claiming to be an old college buddy. Even Dee hadn’t bought that one, not once she’d had time to think about it.

No, Davy thought, he wasn’t invading Annie’s privacy. He was trying to protect her. With renewed confidence, he peeled open the flap of the envelope and removed its contents.

There wasn’t much. Driver’s license record, a brief work history, an equally brief credit record. To his immense relief, no criminal record. Annie Kendall was squeaky clean. A little too clean, he thought as he perused the documents. The woman had to be in her midthirties. Yet the only work history connected to her social security number went back only four months. Before she moved here, she’d worked at some kind
of diner in Vegas. Davy frowned. Hadn’t she told him she used to be a high school guidance counselor?

Her credit record was equally scanty. She had a single VISA card she’d taken out five months ago. Her spending was moderate, and she paid off her balance every month. Other than that, she had no credit at all. The only previous address on record was an apartment in Vegas, where she’d lived for close to five months. Her driver’s license had been issued by the state of Nevada approximately four months ago. Beyond that, there was nothing. No previous address, no previous license. No nothing. It was though she’d sprung to life, fully formed, less than six months ago.

Before that, Annie Kendall hadn’t existed.

His insides knotted up as he studied her far-too-scanty background. As a federal agent, he’d regularly dealt with unsavory people who possessed a list of aliases and fake identities as long as the Great Wall of China. Generally, it was done to cover up a criminal background. Sure, there could be other reasons, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people hid behind an alias to conceal their misdeeds. You do something you shouldn’t, you don’t want to be found, so you become somebody else.

The reason Annie Kendall’s background went back only a few months was because Annie Kendall was a total fabrication. The woman he was trying to protect, the woman he was in love with—Christ, he knew how to pick ’em, didn’t he—didn’t really exist.

He wondered dully how many other lies she’d told him. Not that she’d told him much of anything. They’d been too busy responding to the animal attraction between them to do much talking. But it explained a lot of things. Why she drove an old beater of a car. People without credit didn’t buy new cars. Why she was tight-lipped about her background. Why, as rumor had it, she’d paid cash for the Twilight. Where had that
cash come from? Was it drug money? Had she stolen it? Had the stranger showing her photo around Serenity come here to recover what was rightfully his? If so, he wasn’t going to be impressed to find that she’d invested it in a crumbling, fly-by-night motel whose roof was caving in while weeds overtook the parking lot.

“Fuck,” he said to the empty room.

If she wasn’t Annie Kendall, then who the hell was she? Davy thought about it some more, while the clock ticked in the silence. Then he picked up his phone and buzzed Dix. “Bring me the file on the break-in at the Twilight.”

Ignoring the typed notes, the statements, the photos, he went directly to the fingerprint records. He found the info he’d gotten back from the state police and quickly skimmed it. There, near the bottom, was the name he’d been looking for. Robin Spinney, DOB 9/19/69, last known address 43 Preston Drive, Atchawalla, Mississippi. No criminal record. Pete had said he’d separated the prints of the employees from the others, but maybe he’d missed one. Maybe he’d accidentally sent Annie’s on through with the others. The age was right. She didn’t have a southern accent, but she might not have lived in Mississippi all her life. It was a long shot, but nobody seemed to know who this Robin Spinney was. And how many thirty-six-year-old women from Mississippi could be renting videos at the Twilight?

So he did a little more digging, this time without Dixie’s help. It didn’t take long. Within minutes, he had it, staring up at him from his computer screen. Robin Spinney’s DMV record, complete with photo. Like most driver’s license photos, it looked like a mug shot. Not at all flattering. She was much better looking in person, this Robin Spinney. Or, as he knew her, Annie Kendall.

Damn it, Annie. Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble? Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?

Of
course, she did intend to tell him. At least that was what she’d said. Who knew how much of what she planned to tell him was truth, and how much was fabricated? Just as her entire existence was fabricated. He was surprised by how much it hurt. He might not know much about relationships, but he was smart enough to know you didn’t build one on lies. Not if you wanted it to last, anyway.

He put his hand on the phone, intending to call her, then left it resting there. What was he supposed to say to her?
You lied to me, shame on you.
What good would that do? He didn’t know who she was or what she was running from. Until he knew that, he couldn’t begin to determine his next move. He might only be a rent-a-cop, but he was still a sworn officer of the law. If she was mixed up in something illegal, he was duty-bound to arrest her. He tried to imagine slapping a set of hard metal handcuffs on those lovely, slender wrists. Tried to picture her in a holding cell, with a rock-hard bunk and a seatless toilet that smelled of urine and God only knew what else. The mental image made him sick to his stomach.

He picked up the phone and buzzed Dixie again. “I need you to find the number of the police department in Atchawalla, Mississippi—”

“Hang on,” Dixie said. “Spell that, will you?”

He spelled it for her, waited until she’d written it down and given him the go-ahead. “Call them,” he said, “and see if you can get the chief on the phone for me. If the chief’s not available, then get me somebody who’s been on the force for a while.”

He hung up, drummed his fingers on the desk, pondering what kind of mess he’d stepped into and just how he was going to extricate himself. Or if he was going to extricate himself. Sex put crazy ideas into a man’s head. Love put even crazier ones there. Visions flitted through his head, visions of Mexico, Canada. Someplace where they could hide, he and Annie and her daughter, and nobody would ever find them.

Dix
rang back through, effectively shredding his outlaw fantasies. “Deputy Wade Pickett of the Atchawalla County Sheriff’s Department on the line for you.”

He thanked her, waited for the click that told him she’d transferred the call. “Deputy Pickett?” he said. “Thanks for talking to me.”

Pickett seemed a jovial type. “So you’re calling from Maine,” he said expansively. “What’s the weather like up there?”

“Sunny and warm. Nice and dry. We had a few days of high humidity, but it’s passed.”

“Shoot, it’s hotter down here than summer loving. Damn air conditioner’s broke again. It breaks down at least a couple times every summer. County’s too cheap to invest in a new one. I got a fan in the window to keep me from suffocating, but it ain’t doing much. Anyway, you don’t want to know about that, I’m sure. What can I do you for?”

“A name came up in an investigation I’m working on. One of your local citizens. I’m just taking a shot in the dark, hoping you might have some information you could pass on.”

“I’ll do what I can do. Shoot.”

“Robin Spinney. Female, DOB 9/19/69, blond and blue—”

“Hell, yeah, I know Robin. Mac’s wife. We went to grammar school together.”

“Mac?”

“Mac Spinney. Deputy Mac Spinney. Great guy. He died a couple years ago in a car wreck. It was a damn shame. But you don’t want to talk about Mac. It’s Robin you’re interested in.”

So she was a cop’s wife. A cop’s widow, to be precise. It explained her familiarity with his gun belt. She’d probably helped her husband with an identical one a hundred times over the years. “That’s right,” he said. “What can you tell me about her?”

“Nice
lady. She and Mac had a little girl. Cute little thing. She used to play soccer with my daughter. Uh…what the hell was her name? Sophie? Yeah, that’s it. Sophie. That kid’s one hell of a soccer player. Robin used to be at all the games, cheering her on.” He finally took a breath. “You say her name came up in an investigation? She’s not in any kind of trouble, is she?”

“Why do you ask? She get in trouble a lot?”

“Robin Spinney?” He chuckled. “Hell, no. Just the opposite. She was active in just about every community endeavor that took place in Atchawalla, at least she was before Mac died. She also worked full-time at the high school. Guidance counselor or something like that. The kids liked her. Everybody liked her.”

So at least something she’d told him was true. “You know her well?” he asked.

“Well enough. When Mac was alive, the four of us—her and Mac, me and my wife—used to get together once a month for dinner and a movie. After he died, well…you know how it is. You don’t know what to say to somebody in that kind of situation. You sort of drift apart. The numbers don’t add up any more. Four’s a nice even number. Three’s just plain awkward. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“The last couple of years were rough on her. Losing Mac like that. And then Boyd. She left town right after he died. Kinda sudden. Said something about a sick aunt. Just pulled Sophie out of school and took off. Her house is still sitting there with the grass growing up around the windows.”

“Boyd,” he said. “Who’s Boyd?”

“Mac’s best friend. Matter of fact, now that I think about it, she left the same day he died. People were talking about it, saying she could at least have stuck around for the funeral. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe she was just being paranoid. I been a
little bit that way myself. But you know that saying, about things happening in threes? I figure now we got our third hit, my ass is probably safe for a while.”

“Your third hit?”

“We’ve had three members of the Atchawalla County Sheriff’s Department die in the last two years. Sudden deaths, every one of ’em. First there was Mac. Died in a car wreck while he was on patrol. Six months ago, Boyd Northrup blew his brains out with his service revolver at the breakfast table one morning. Nobody could believe it. He hadn’t been acting depressed or anything. Not a single warning sign. His poor wife came home and found him. She was eight and a half months pregnant at the time. It was an awful thing.”

Davy’s stomach knotted itself into a hard little ball. There was something here, something dark and scary that Robin Spinney had stumbled into the middle of. He just hadn’t figured out yet what it was. He drummed his fingers on the desktop. He did his best thinking when he was in motion. “You said there were three?”

“Last night,” Pickett said, “somebody broke into Sheriff Brogan’s house. A burglar’s the best we can figure, although he didn’t own much worth taking. The noise must’ve woke him up. When he confronted the fella, the intruder shot the sheriff dead right where he stood.”

The fat broad at the Big Apple had been more than helpful.

He’d learned a long time ago that most people generally were, if you knew how to handle them. And Teddy Constantine knew how to handle people. You just flattered them a little, asked your questions, and stood back and waited. Most people would fall all over themselves in an effort to fill the silence. This broad—Dee, according to her name tag—had been no exception. She’d responded to his smile, to his charm. Responded
like a giggly teenage girl to his compliment about how nicely her blue shirt brought out the blue in her eyes. Then she’d spilled like a geyser about Annie Kendall, who’d just moved to town with her daughter Sophie and had bought the Twilight Motel, which should have been flattened by a wrecking ball years ago. But the former owner had turned it into a video rental store, except that somebody had trashed the place a few days ago and put it out of commission, at least temporarily, so she wasn’t sure what the Kendall woman would do now. Especially with Estelle needing a job because she was pregnant, big as a house at only six months, and she needed to save as much money as possible to tide her over while she was out of work when the baby came.

He’d almost shot the bitch, just to shut her up. She’d given him way more information than he needed. He didn’t know who the hell Estelle was, and he didn’t care. An address for the Twilight would have been sufficient. Her directions were easy to follow, though. Just cross the old bridge and follow the state highway along the river. It was a couple of miles on the right. He couldn’t miss it.