First Offense (25 page)

“Right, we’ll just forget about the fingers and wait until Ann’s fingers end up in a pickle jar,” Reed said sarcastically, standing and grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair. “I’m going to the lab to see what they’ve come up with.”

Abrams was stung by his words, but knew it was useless to retaliate. Reed was going to keep berating him until the case was closed.

“So, you coming or staying?”

“I’ll go,” Abrams said, reluctantly getting up and following the detective down the hall.

Once they were outside in the parking lot. Reed suddenly stopped short. Abrams walked on and then looked back, wondering what was wrong. “Are you coming?”

Reed opened his mouth to speak and then closed it, shoving both his hands in his pockets and feeling around for his antacids. Instead, he brought forth a toothpick and clamped his teeth on it. “I blew it this morning,” he said, quickly shifting the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

“How?”

“Thumped on Dr. Sawyer.”

“You’re joking?” Abrams said, his eyes coming alive. “Jimmy’s father? What did he tell you? Did he tell you where the kid is?”

Reed was staring over Abrams’s head. “I think I broke his fucking hand.”

Great, Noah thought, that would really advance their case. They couldn’t find Sawyer, so Reed was beating up on his father. “So, go on, what did he tell you?”

“Nothing,” Reed mumbled.

“Nothing?” Abrams repeated, looking at the ground and then back up at the detective’s face. “You broke his hand for nothing. Reed? What did that accomplish?

Maybe the man would have came around in time and told us where Jimmy is hiding.”

Spitting the toothpick out, the detective narrowed his eyes at Abrams. “He was insulting Ann. He even took a swing at her. I guess you would have let him say anything he wanted, huh? Just stood there and listened while he called her a tramp.”

All of Abrams’s simmering resentment exploded. “I resent that. Reed. Lay off, okay? You act like I don’t give a shit about this case, that I don’t care about Ann’s safety.” He stopped, slapping at thin air. “Go to the lab without me. I’m going out to find the damn suspect.” He started walking off across the parking lot and then turned to yell back at Reed. “I think you’re the one who has his priorities confused. Sergeant.” Opening the door to his unit, Abrams climbed in, slammed the door shut, and sped out of the parking lot.

“I’m sorry, but she can’t see you,” Alex said.

Tommy Reed had snagged Phil Whittaker in the parking lot for the ride to the crime lab, and was now facing off Alex in the outside offices. Right through the door was the lab where Melanie Chase worked. “Hey, Mel,” he yelled as Alex moved in front of the door to block him, “I need to talk to you.” When the blond-haired rookie held his ground, the detectives exchanged a glance.

“There’s only so much I can take,” Reed said. He positioned himself on one side of Alex, while Whittaker moved to the other. “On three,” Reed said, counting out loud. They effortlessly picked up the slender man by the armpits and deposited him a few feet from the door.

“That wasn’t nice,” Alex said huffily.

The two men strode into the laboratory. On one wall was a bank of whirring computer terminals behind glass. The rest of the room was divided up into work stations with various pieces of sophisticated equipment and microscopes set on white Formica counters. Melanie Chase, wearing a white lab coat, was perched on a high stool, sorting through some slides. “What have you got, Reed?” she said, without looking up. “It’d better be good.”

Reed threw his arms out. “Me.”

“You?” she said, looking the detective up and down. Then she winked and smiled. “I might take you up on that offer one of these days, buddy. You’d better be careful.”

Reed smiled broadly, fingering one of Melanie’s curls. “Cute,” he said. “Sort of like Shirley Temple.” In another instant, though, he was all business. “What can you tell us, Mel? We’re desperate here. At least give us the rundown on the Henderson house.”

“Oh,” she said, rummaging through papers on her desk, “I was just about to dictate that report. Here it is.” Reed tried to snatch it out of her hands, but Melanie pulled it back. “It’s handwritten, asshole.” Her eyes began scanning the report. “Okay, something fishy went on in that house. I’m not sure what, but something.”

Reed and Whittaker pulled up two stools and faced Melanie. If anyone could hand them the goods, it was she.

She continued, “We found trace elements of dimethyl benzyl ammonium chlorides everywhere, chemicals used in commercial cleaning products. I don’t know how much you remember, but here’s some pictures of the inside of the house.” She stopped and handed the two men a stack of eight-by-ten photos. “Look at all the boxes and shit. Now look in that box right there. What do you see?”

Tommy peered at the photos. “Just a bunch of dishes and things.”

“Filthy dishes, to be specific. Dishes with caked food on them. They didn’t even wash the dishes before they packed them.” Melanie didn’t give them time to make a deduction before she went on. “Sure, they were in a hurry, but they were also pigs. Why would they scrub down practically every surface of that house with a heavy-duty detergent if they didn’t have anything to hide?”

“To get their deposit back,” Whittaker offered.

Melanie shook her head. “These kids will never see their deposit. The landlord will probably sue them for damages. Doors were ripped off hinges, holes punched in walls, nail holes all over the place. They even burned half the kitchen floor, probably when they were cooking drugs. Why would they waste their time scrubbing down every solid surface in that house?”

“You think they had a body in there?” Reed asked.

“Well,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “I can’t say a body specifically, but they had something in there that they didn’t want anyone to know about.”

“The lab?”

“Possibly. But would they need to scrub the walls in the bedrooms? I doubt it. Now, if there were bloodstains or secretions of any kind, that’s the kind of fastidious cleaning you’d probably see.”

Reed was thinking of the fingers. “What about the break-in at Ann’s house?”

“That,” Melanie said, bristling, “is something else altogether.” She hated it when another officer was attacked, particularly someone she considered a friend like Ann Carlisle. “First, I need Ann’s gun to do a ballistics test. I pulled out a slug that’s possibly from another shooter, but I can’t confirm it without Ann’s gun, and she wouldn’t let me take it the other night.”

“You mean the perp shot back?” Whittaker asked, confused. “I thought he wasn’t armed.”

Melanie shook her head. “From Ann’s statements, I don’t think the perp ever got near the bedroom.” She stopped and drew a little diagram on a piece of paper, holding it out for the detectives to see. “Ann was on the north side of the room where the safe was located, right under the open window. She test-fired her gun from here and struck the door to the closet—she was disoriented by a reflection in the mirror.” Melanie stopped and looked at them. “That was shot one. The second time she fired, she was in the driveway. Shot two. Ann only fired twice, gentlemen, and of course we couldn’t find the second slug.” Melanie spun around and removed two objects from a cardboard box, holding them in the air one by one with a pair of tongs. “But what we have here is two slugs. The path of trajectory of one of them appears to be from the open window to the dresser mirror. From there it deflected and ended up in the wall.”

Reed leaped to his feet, acid bubbling up in his throat. If he understood Melanie correctly, the case had just taken a dangerous turn. “Then there was more than one suspect? Someone was outside shooting at Ann while she was shooting at the man in the house?”

“Bingo,” Melanie said, smiling. “Now, I have a blood sample from the broken windowpane. It’s a good one. Type O, for what good that does us. What we need for genetic fingerprinting is a sample of the suspect’s blood. Get me that, and we’ll be off and running.” She glanced back at her notes to see if there was anything else. “Where’s Sawyer now? You can also check for any recent cuts or lacerations.”

“Good luck, Mel,” Reed said gruffly. “Sawyer made bail and split.”

She shook her head, but she wasn’t one to dwell on negatives. “Get the D.A. to petition for a blood sample ASAP. Then the minute they pick him up, we can collect it. It takes some time to do a test for genetic fingerprinting. We send it to an outside lab. If you want the results for the trial…”

Reed and Whittaker started walking to the door. “Thanks, Mel,” Reed said.

“Don’t forget to bring me Ann’s gun,” she said before her gaze dropped back to the microscope and she moved another slide into place.

Ann was at her desk reading through a new case, a multiple-count child abuse. After she jotted down a few notes on a yellow pad, she removed the photos in the envelope inside the file and gasped. A five-year-old boy stood with his back to the camera, the clear imprint of an iron seared into his flesh between his shoulder blades. The next photo was the defendant in the case, the child’s mother. Originally from Vietnam, at age nineteen the woman still looked like a child herself. Tiny, dark, with the most impassive eyes Ann had ever seen. She sighed and was setting the photos aside when the phone rang.

“Hello. Probation.”

“Ann,” a voice said, “why does it have to be this way?”

Ann felt every muscle in her body lock in place. It was Hank’s voice, her husband’s voice.

“Did you hear me?” This time the voice was louder and more abrasive.

She would know that tone anywhere. She opened her mouth and closed it. Finally she managed to get out, “Hank…is that you?”

“Ann,” the voice answered back.

She started shaking, feeling the past four years vanish. He had come back. Her husband was alive. She felt tears on her face. “Where are you? Oh, God, Hank…tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you.”

Ann held her breath and listened. There was no response. The phone went dead just as she noticed Claudette standing beside her desk.

“Who was that?” Claudette asked anxiously. “I heard you say Hank’s name. Do they have some new information?”

“It—it was Hank.” Ann looked up with a tremulous smile.

Not this again, Claudette thought, deeply concerned. When Hank had first disappeared, Ann had seen him in every face, every passing car, thought every phone call was him calling. “It couldn’t have been Hank. Honey, you’re just all strung out. Look at you.” She tilted her head and studied her friend’s face. “I think you’d better go home, Ann. You don’t look well. I bet you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since all this happened.”

“No,” Ann said, fixing Claudette with a firm gaze, “it was Hank. I know my own husband’s voice. I knew he was alive. I kept telling everyone he was alive, but no one would believe me.”

Claudette crossed her arms over her chest. “What did he say, then? Where is he? Where has he been for the past four years?”

“He…hung up. He just said, ‘Ann, why does it have to be this way?’”

“Sure,” Claudette said, angry that Ann was being so irrational. “Man’s been gone four years, and he calls up and says something stupid like that.”

“It was Hank,” Ann snarled, standing and shoving her chair back.

Claudette put a hand on Ann’s shoulder, pulled her chair back out, and pushed her back to a sitting position. “It was just a prank call. Don’t you see? Maybe someone read all this stuff about Hank in the newspapers. When you were shot, they played out the whole story again. Probably one of your probationers read it and decided to get back at you.”

“It was Hank’s voice,” Ann said, though now she wasn’t so sure. What if Claudette was right? But if she was, Ann thought, how could someone imitate her husband’s voice so well when he’d been dead four years?

“Look at me, girl,” Claudette said, spinning Ann’s chair around and bending down on one knee in front of her. “You’re losing it.”

“I’m not going to listen to—” Ann said, ready to spring from her chair again.

Claudette cut her off. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been watching you since this all began, and I’ve seen you going downhill each day. Then after that bastard broke into your house, you…”

Ann looked at her in a daze. Was her mind playing tricks on her? “I might be stressed out, but I haven’t lost my mind. Hank even seemed mad at me. I don’t know why, but I heard it in his voice.” She arched her eyebrows. “No one could mimic that, Claudette.”

The woman stood and straightened her jacket. “All you have to do is think logically. If it was Hank, why did he hang up? Why didn’t he tell you where he was?”

“I don’t know,” Ann said, truly confused. “Maybe he didn’t hang up. Maybe he was cut off or someone hung up for him.” She reached for the phone. “I’m going to call the highway patrol right now.”

Don’t,” Claudette said, a dark look in her eyes. You’re going to make a fool of yourself and stir up a hornet’s nest.” She watched as Ann thought through what she was saying. “Let it be, Ann. If it really was Hank, he’ll call back. With the stuff this Sawyer boy is saying about you, don’t you see how bad it will look if you run around telling everyone that your dead husband is calling you? They’ll think you really are a mental case…that Sawyer’s stupid story is true.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ann said emphatically.

“Believe it,” Claudette said sharply. “Here, come with me so we can talk in private.” She led Ann to an interview room, and once they were inside, Claudette closed the door. “People are talking, Ann. Sawyer’s story is all over the courthouse.”

Her breath catching in her throat, Ann said, “What are you saying?”

“I’m trying to explain the facts of life, woman,” Claudette said, her voice almost a whine now. “If gossip is juicy, people want to believe it’s true. It’s fun, gives them something to talk about over coffee.”

A look of surprise crossed Ann’s face. People were talking about her behind her back?

“You think no one’s ever slept with a probationer before?” Claudette continued, her breath on Ann’s face. “Think again, Ann. Few years back there was a big scandal with Pete Hendricks and that young girl. Do you remember that?”