See No Evil (20 page)

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

Swearing under his breath, Connor started his truck. Passing the officers talking by the side of the road, he drove to Julia’s house. So angry—with himself, with Julia, with Davies and Rayo—Connor didn’t trust himself to speak.

At her house, he jumped from the truck and walked to the edge of the cliff, staring at the ocean. He took a deep breath, then another. Hands on his knees, head down, he finally felt his heart slow.

He rarely got into confrontations anymore. Half the force had been with him, quietly or publicly. The others had been quietly neutral or, like the cops today, blatantly antagonistic. Because his precinct had become so divisive, he had to quit. His boss suggested moving to another city, maybe up in northern California, but Connor couldn’t leave his family. They were all he had left after the job. His parents, his brothers and sisters. He didn’t want to grow into a bitter cop with nothing but a chip on his shoulder.

But that basically was what had happened over the last five years. He’d let his anger fester.

Turning against his own people had been next to impossible. He wouldn’t have done it without Julia’s ultimatum. And while he hated her for it, he realized that it was the only way those dead girls could have justice.

Only now did he realize that Julia had actually done him a favor by calling him as a hostile witness.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He hadn’t heard her approach.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice clipped.

“I didn’t realize how hard it had been for you after the trial.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

He turned, grabbing her by the arms. “I don’t need you fighting my battles for me.”

“I wasn’t fighting
your
battle. I was fighting my own. We’re on the same side.”

“Are we?”

She looked stricken. “I thought so, but maybe I was wrong.”

Connor dropped her arms and ran both hands through his hair. “Damn. Just forget it.”

“I will. If you can.”

Could he? She was offering him an olive branch, why did he hesitate to take it?

“I’ll try.”

She nodded, touched his face before quickly dropping her hand. “It’s a start.”

“We have more important things to worry about. The fact that someone tried to kill you is at the top of the list.”

“We don’t know that he tried to kill—”

He cut her off. “A stranger runs you off the road—a private road—and stops the car. I don’t think he wanted to exchange insurance information. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“But we haven’t learned anything that helps us with Emily.” She glanced at her watch. “We need to get to the hospital.”

“You haven’t heard the news.”

“What news?”

“Bowen’s dead. Apparent suicide.”

“Apparent?” she repeated.

“Dillon’s suspicious, and Will is hopefully going to be more forthcoming about their investigation. We need to talk about sharing what we have.”

“No.” She crossed her arms. “You can’t give anything to the prosecution. They’ll use it against Emily.”

“Do you believe Emily is innocent?”

She looked like he’d slapped her. “How can you even ask that?”

“Well,” he said, “I think she’s innocent, and I also think the best way of proving it is by bringing the cops on board with what we know. Full disclosure.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. Will’s one of the best. He’s not going to railroad Emily.”

Connor pulled Julia into his arms and held her. Her body shook with silent sobs. “This is more about the past than it is about the present, isn’t it?” he quietly asked.

She nodded against his chest, hands clenching his shirt.

“I will not let Emily go to prison or juvenile hall or a mental hospital,” Connor said. “We will protect her together. I believe she’s innocent, and right now I think Will Hooper will listen. Trust me on this.”

“I trust you.” Her voice was a mere whisper, but the words were powerful.

TWENTY-TWO

A
FTER
J
ULIA CHANGED
and cleaned up from the accident, Connor drove her to the hospital. It was already nearly noon.

In the observation room outside Emily’s room, Dillon looked Julia over. “Are you okay? Do you need to see a doctor?” Dillon touched the bruise on her forehead.

“I’m fine. Really.”

Fine physically, she thought, but worried to death about what they were asking Emily to do. She played with the rings on her fingers until Connor squeezed her hand. “Remember what I told you,” he said.

Dillon said, “I just talked to Emily. She said she wants to talk to the police and tell them everything.”

Julia released a pent-up breath. “I don’t know what’s the right thing to do anymore.”

“Emily is going to be fine,” Connor said. “You need to think about yourself. Someone just tried to kill you.”

Will Hooper stepped into the observation room. “Excuse me? What’s this about someone trying to kill the counselor?”

“Connor’s exaggerating,” she said. “Someone ran me off the road. We don’t know that they were really trying to
kill
me.”

Will opened his notebook. “Who were the responding officers?”

“Davies and Rayo,” Connor said.

Will frowned. “Any problems?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Connor said. “They called in the crime scene so if there’s any evidence they’ll gather it. The truck had no plates.”

“This just gets better and better,” Will grumbled.

“What happened at Bowen’s place?” Dillon asked.

Will said, “I don’t believe Dr. Bowen committed suicide. He supposedly put a noose around his neck and jumped off the balcony, but his fingerprints were nowhere to be found. And get this. He cut himself with a glass downstairs—he’d poured himself a little drink. But there was no blood on the railing, not even a flake. He would have had to touch the railing someway to get over it. We found a towel with blood at the top of the stairs. And then the paper. Where he allegedly wrote his suicide note. It looks like his handwriting, but we couldn’t find that paper anywhere in his house.”

“An elaborate setup with amateur mistakes,” Dillon said. “They didn’t make those mistakes with Montgomery.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Will said.

“What did you find?” Julia asked.

Will laid into them. “Why should I share anything with you? You’ve been running around investigating this case on your own without giving me even a courtesy call. I find out Connor talks to a potential witness, Billy Thompson, about another Wishlist murder. And before I can talk to Emily’s friends, he’s talking with them. And you—”

He pointed an accusatory finger at Dillon. “You’re the last person I expected to be running around like a vigilante. Bowen filed a report against you Friday after you harassed him at the country club.”

“I didn’t harass him.”

“I didn’t think you did either, but it shows that he was getting nervous and you were in the middle of
my
investigation—yet denied me access to a key witness.”

“I’m just trying to protect my niece,” Julia said.

Will rubbed his face with both hands. “Right. I understand that. But we’ve now come to full disclosure time. I’m eager to talk to Emily.”

Dillon nodded. “You can talk to her. But I’m still her physician and if I cut off the interview, no more questions.”

“Fair enough,” Will agreed.

“And you should know some other things.”

Will sat down, took out his notebook. “Finally.”

Julia told Will about Jason Ridge’s Deferred Entry of Judgment and Bowen’s role as his psychiatrist recommending the leniency.

“Who was the judge? Don’t tell me Victor Montgomery?”

“No. Vernon Small.”

Will stared at her. “Small? He never met a criminal he didn’t like.”

“He’s dead.”

“I guess I heard that, but how?” Will asked.

“I don’t know. I assumed old age.”

Will made a note in his notepad. “I wouldn’t assume anything right now.”

“And there’s another thing, but I don’t know how it fits in,” Julia said. “Jason’s ex-girlfriend is Michelle O’Dell. She’s at Stanford now. But apparently they both knew a girl who committed suicide, Shannon Chase. She hung herself.”

Will straightened. “Hung herself? Just like Bowen supposedly did? Far too many coincidences,” Will concluded. “Now I need to ask Emily about these people.”

Julia and Connor observed through the window as Dillon and Will went into Emily’s room. For Will’s benefit, Emily recounted her story, though it was now a much calmer version than on the day after Victor’s murder. Still, she stayed true to the facts as she’d stated them before.

As Julia heard Emily recount Victor’s rape and subsequent sexual abuse, a tear escaped. Connor wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her into the nook of his arm. “She’s going to be okay, Julia,” he said. “She’s strong, just like her aunt.”

“Thank you.”

Will asked about Jason Ridge, but Emily didn’t know him. Nor had she heard of Michelle O’Dell or Shannon Chase.

Dillon took up the questioning. “How long have you been a member of Wishlist?”

“A couple years, I guess. Ever since the vandalism.” She looked down, embarrassed. “I’m really sorry I did that.”

“I know you are,” Dillon said. “Wishlist is supposed to be confidential. So maybe you didn’t know Jason by name. What about anyone who talked about football, someone who isn’t around anymore?”

“I really can’t remember. Some of the guys talk about sports, but I don’t really pay attention to that.”

“Do you know Judge Vernon Small?” Will asked.

Emily rolled her eyes. “What a weasel. My mother made me go to his funeral. He and Victor were great friends, but I thought he was creepy. He looked at me like…like Victor did.”

“When was his funeral?”

“I don’t know, before Christmas last year.”

“Did anyone on Wishlist talk about Judge Small?”

“No, we rarely mentioned any names. But Judge Small is the one who put me on probation after the graffiti. I get three years for some stupid spray painting, but he lets some rapist off with a warning.”

Dillon asked Emily, “How do you know about that?”

Emily frowned. “I-I don’t know how I know.” She leaned back and thought. “Something I read maybe?”

“Something on Wishlist?”

“Maybe. I really don’t remember, but I know I heard it somewhere. And I remember thinking he was as big a hypocrite as Victor.”

“Emily, have you ever been approached by someone who asked you to help them mete out justice?”

She shook her head. “No.” Then her eyes widened. “But I did get a weird text message on my phone a couple months ago.”

“What did it say?”

“Could I meet at Starbucks Wednesday afternoon.”

“The Wednesday Victor was killed?”

She shook her head. “No. Long before. Like in January.”

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know. I responded and asked who wanted to know.”

“And did you get a message back?”

“Yeah. It said, ‘A friend from Wishlist.’”

“Did you meet the friend?”

“No. This was right after I sent that message to the list about wanting to castrate Victor. It sort of freaked me out. I didn’t think anyone knew me on the list.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Will asked.

“Because I just remembered. Honestly, so much has happened this week, that stupid message wasn’t on my mind.”

Outside Emily’s room, Dillon handed Will a tape of Emily’s first interview, the day after Victor’s murder. “You’ll see her comments today and her comments then are the same.”

“Would you have given this to me if they differed?”

Dillon shrugged. “So now what?”

“I have a helluva lot of legwork in front of me,” said Will. “I have Emily’s cell phone records, and haven’t had a chance to search through them further back than the last couple weeks. And I want to verify her statement.” He shook his head. “This case is like an octopus of victims with no body. And what does this Jason Ridge have to do with it? He’s dead.”

“He was a patient of Bowen’s,” Dillon said.

“And he raped a girl and was given a Deferred Entry of Judgment by Judge Small, who’s also dead,” Julia said. “Ridge’s slate was wiped clean so he could play football.”

She turned to Dillon. “Did you ever get Montgomery’s campaign reports?”

“They’re in my office. I haven’t had a chance yet to go through them.”

“We should pull Small’s, too. They’re online through the county elections department,” Julia said. “Small, Montgomery, Bowen, all dead.”

“Montgomery didn’t have a connection to Ridge.”

“Not that we know about,” Julia said.

Will slammed his notepad shut. “You need to look at the facts, not conjecture.”

“The
fact
is that Small, Ridge, and Bowen were all involved in Ridge’s DEJ and they’re all dead,” Julia said. “I don’t know how Victor fits in, but he does. Maybe just as a smoke screen.” She nodded, convincing herself as she said it. “That’s it. A fakeout. To lead the police down the wrong path. What about Paul Judson? He was shot in the eyes after the Wishlist message from Billy Thompson suggested he needed his eyes examined.”

Connor put up his hand. “Billy came to me this morning. I forgot about it when Julia was run off the road. But it’s important.” He told them about a girl, eighteen or nineteen, who had approached Billy, gave him a sexual favor, and asked him to become part of a special group. “Billy has solid instincts and walked away from the situation, but after I talked to him about Judson and Wishlist he remembered the girl and thought it might be connected.”

“Are you suggesting that maybe someone in this group was trying to recruit him?” Will asked.

Dillon said, “It makes sense. They must have some method of recruitment. People in Wishlist are the perfect recruits. They all have anger management issues. Most probably have other mental problems as well—ADHD, sexual abuse, kleptomania—it’s the perfect recruiting ground. And someone like Bowen who knows all their weaknesses, knows how to manipulate them, could turn them into killers.”

“You believe that?” Will said.

“I do,” Dillon said.

“But Bowen is dead.”

“Maybe they turned on him,” Dillon said.

“Or maybe,” Connor interrupted, “he was one of their intended victims all along.”

Will jumped up. “I need to meet with Bowen’s next of kin. If we’re on the same side again,” he said pointedly to Dillon, “do you want to join me?”

“Sure, but why?”

“Bowen’s son is a psychiatrist-in-training. And he stands to inherit a few million bucks.”

“People have killed for much, much less.”

Eric Bowen didn’t seem terribly distraught when Will and Dillon met him at the Coroner’s Office.

“You don’t have to identify the body,” Will told him. “We’ve already made a positive ID from fingerprints.”

“I just want to see him,” Eric said.

“They’ll arrange it.” Will nodded to the coroner’s assistant to prepare Bowen’s body for showing. “Do you mind answering a few questions?”

“Not at all.”

“Were you close to your father?”

Eric shrugged. “Yes and no. He was a hard man to get close to, but we had an okay relationship.”

“Did he seem upset about anything recently? Did he seem different than usual?”

“At his party last night, he was his usual self.”

“Which is what?”

“Arrogant, generous, and solitary.”

Dillon asked, “What do you know about his online therapy group, Wishlist?”

Eric’s jaw tightened. “I told him he was opening himself up to lawsuits. He didn’t like my advice, so we never talked about it again.”

“Do you know how the group started? Where the list of members might be stored?”

“There’s no list. Dad wanted it to be truly anonymous. He kept no records of who said what. He didn’t want people using their real names or talking about specific people. He intended it to be a forum for kids to talk to each other and learn that they’re not alone with their fears and problems. Good in theory, I suppose, but Dad didn’t want to see the problems. He only saw the potential for recognition. He wanted—needed—to be recognized in his field.”

Sadness crossed the son’s face.

“He told me he started the group for teenagers who self-mutilate,” Dillon said.

Eric nodded. “Yeah, he did.”

Will changed the course of the conversation. “Your mother died of cancer many years ago, before Wishlist.”

“Yes.” His voice cracked.

“I’m sorry, Eric,” Will apologized. “I’m just trying to understand what happened to your father.”

“When you called me, you said he committed suicide.”

“Additional evidence has come to light that indicates your father’s death may have been made to look like a suicide.”

“What does that have to do with my mother?”

“Today is the anniversary of her death, correct?” Will looked at his notes. “In your father’s appointment book, it indicated that he planned to go to the cemetery this afternoon.”

“My mom died in November,” Eric said. “He was probably visiting his sister’s grave.”

“His sister?”

“Aunt Monica. She died of cancer seven years ago today.”

“Was he attached to his sister or distraught over her death?”

“I always thought he was more upset about Aunt Monica dying than my mother, but maybe just because I was more upset about Mom than he was.” Eric shook his head. “Dad kept his emotions buried. For a therapist who told everyone they needed to talk about their fears and anger, he never talked about his own.”

Julia and Connor were in her home office. She was looking at contributor reports online and trying to make a connection between Montgomery and Small, other than their apparent friendship. She had all the files and articles stacked and sorted and went through them meticulously.

“Okay,” she said to Connor. “Let’s go through this step-by-step. Open up that cabinet. Over there, in the bookshelf.”

He did, revealing a white board. She tossed him a marker.

“Here’s what we know,” she began. “Jason Ridge was arrested for rape, pled no contest, and was given a DEJ a few months later. This was nearly two years ago.”