Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) (9 page)

“Is that how you see yourself with Hurley? As his sexual partner?”

“No,” I snap. “Not totally anyway.” Maggie’s probing questions feel like fingers thrust deep into a raw wound. It’s making me irritable, and the kid seems to sense this. I feel a hard punch—a foot, a fist, a head butt?—and shift my position again. Then I take a deep breath and try to make myself relax. “Clearly Hurley and I have a shared affection for one another. And we also share this,” I say, rubbing a hand over my Buddha belly. “But that doesn’t mean we have what it takes to spend a lifetime together as a couple.”

“Has Hurley asked you to marry him?”

Once again, I wonder if she has some sort of insider knowledge. “Why would you ask me that? Don’t you think I would have told you if he had?”

“Honestly?” she asks, and I nod. “No, I don’t think you would tell me, at least not right away.”

Damn, Maggie is better at this than I realized. Either that or she has me bugged.

“So has he?”

I sigh, knowing it’s no use trying to lie to her. “Yeah, he has.”

“And how did you answer?”

“I told him no.”

She sighs, nods, and shifts in her seat, getting comfortable. She holds her pen poised over the tablet in her lap and says, “Tell me how it happened. And don’t give me the abridged version. I want all the details as seen through your filters.”

I glance at my watch. “I don’t think we have enough time, do we? My hour is almost up.”

“As it happens, you’re my only patient today,” Maggie says with a smug smile. “I typically take Tuesdays off, but I made an exception for you because I know how complicated your schedule can be. So I’m all yours for as long as you want.”

I
tell Maggie how I went from interviewing the Ames family, to killing someone, to getting a marriage proposal, all in the space of twenty-four hours.

Before I left the police station on the Saturday night that Derrick Ames was killed, and after I was able to stop sobbing long enough to speak understandably, I assured Richmond that everything was fine; it was just my time of the month.

Once Richmond felt confident that I wasn’t going to have a complete meltdown on him, we went into his office to make some phone calls.

“I want to speak to as many of these people as I can before our pool of suspects has a chance to get to them,” Richmond said.

He placed a phone call to Blake Sutherland’s cell phone number first. There was no answer, so he left a message asking her to call him back as soon as possible.

We had better luck with Donna Martin, who answered her phone in a sleepy voice and verified the fact that Wendy Ames had been at her house earlier, giving a time frame that matched the one Wendy had provided.

We were able to reach two of the three men that Mandy named as interested suitors. One of them, the family friend, was in New York for a week on business, a fact easily verified by calling the hotel where he said he was staying. The second man, a music teacher at the high school, said he had been at a band concert during the time of Derrick’s death and gave the names of several schoolkids and parents who would verify this. The third man, Sam Littleton, who was also a teacher at the high school, didn’t answer his phone, so Richmond left a message.

Richmond’s last planned call of the night was to the home of Jacob’s friend, the one he supposedly had dinner with. “I know the Fitzpatrick kid,” Richmond told me. “He’s a troublemaker. They busted him last year for dealing pot, and he did some time in juvey, so if Jacob is hanging out with him, heaven knows what they were up to.”

Richmond put the phone on speaker, and when a sleepy-voiced woman answered, he said, “Is this Mrs. Fitzpatrick?”

“It is. I see from my caller ID that this is the police. What’s Sean done now?” she asked, her tone resigned and tired.

“Nothing that I’m aware of,” Richmond said, and the sigh of relief on the other end of the line was easily audible. “I’m calling to verify some information about someone else. Jacob Ames said he was at your house with your son for dinner this evening. Is that true?”

“Sort of,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said. “He came over, and then he and Sean locked themselves in Sean’s bedroom to play video games for several hours. They didn’t even come out for dinner.”

“What time did Jacob leave?” Richmond asked.

“Hmm, I think it was around eight, give or take.”

“Mrs. Fitzpatrick, do you know for sure that the boys were there the entire time?”

“Well, I could hear the sounds of the game being played through the door to Sean’s room. And I did holler at them a couple of times about dinner, and Sean kept saying they weren’t hungry.”

“Did you hear Jacob say anything during that time?”

There was a long pause before Mrs. Fitzpatrick said, “You know, I don’t recall that I did. But then Jacob tends to be a quiet boy. He gets moody at times, but I’ve always found him to be a well-mannered young man. I’ve been hoping he might have a positive influence on Sean. Why are you asking so many questions about Jacob? Is he in some kind of trouble? Should I try to keep him and Sean apart?”

Apparently the Sorenson gossip mill hadn’t made it to the Fitzpatrick household yet. Richmond skillfully avoided answering the question by saying, “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. I’ll let you know if I have any other questions.” Then he disconnected the call. I felt pretty sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick would sit stunned for a few seconds, staring at the phone, and then she would start making calls to find out what was going on.

“Do you really think Jacob killed his father?” I asked Richmond, trying to imagine what it would feel like to know you raised a patricidal son. Had the divorce thing messed him up that much? And if so, what chance did a kid of mine have if Hurley and I didn’t end up together? It was an unsettling thought, and for an instant I had this image of my future son’s face plastered across TV screens nationwide with a CNN banner running across the bottom detailing some horrific crime he’d committed. This parenting stuff was some scary shit.

“I don’t know,” Richmond said. “But I think it’s possible.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s late. Why don’t we pick up again tomorrow? I’ll call you.”

That sounded fine to me. I was tired, a state of existence that seemed to be my norm of late. My OB doctor had checked my blood and iron levels, both of which were fine, and suggested that perhaps my exhaustion was a combination of emotional stress and the physical effects of all the vomiting I’d done during the past few weeks. And since I hadn’t confided half of what was going on in my life, she had no idea just how much stress I was under at the time.

As I was about to leave, Richmond’s phone rang. “Hold on,” he said, glancing at the screen. “It’s Izzy.”

He answered the call, told Izzy I was there though we were about to call it a night, and then switched the call to speakerphone.

“I didn’t turn up anything more with Derrick’s autopsy,” he said. “It’s pretty much what we expected and what I told Mattie earlier regarding the broken bloody nose and the bruises. The knife wound was the ultimate cause of death, though the barbecue fork might have done the deed if the knife hadn’t since it was lodged in his heart. I’ve got Arnie sampling and typing the blood on the knife on the off chance that some of the killer’s DNA might be there.”

“So we got nothing,” Richmond said, his frustration from earlier still clear in his voice.

“Not so fast,” Izzy said. “Arnie has something for you. Hold on.”

A few seconds later, Arnie’s voice came over the phone. “I was able to lift a partial print off both the knife and the barbecue fork,” he told us. “I’ll run them against our suspect pool samples and through AFIS tonight to see if I get any hits. If not, I’ll go back to the crime scene first thing tomorrow morning and continue processing the scene with Jonas. Maybe we can lift some prints from elsewhere in the house that will be a match.”

Richmond told Arnie about the Ames family interview and the people he hoped to talk to tomorrow. “I was going to call all of them first thing in the morning,” he said. “But I’ll wait and see if you get a hit from AFIS. Maybe we’ll get lucky and snag the killer based on a print alone.”

“You may not have to call anyone,” Arnie said cryptically. “I have something else that might solve the case for you. You know that camera you found between the cabinet and the refrigerator?”

“Is there something on it?” Richmond asked, his voice rising with excited anticipation.

“I’ll say,” Arnie said. “I found a handful of videos. Most of them are pretty mundane: pans of the rooms in the house and some outdoor clips that I suspect were test runs Derrick made with the camera to get used to using it. Then there’s the last video, which starts with a shaky image and then provides a line of sight across the kitchen floor from that space where you found it. My guess is it got knocked off the counter and the fall turned it on.”

“What does it show?” Richmond asked.

“Some feet and lower legs,” Arnie said. “But it wasn’t just what I saw, it was what I heard.” Once again he paused for dramatic effect.

“Come on, Arnie, spill it,” I said, growing impatient with his game. “What have you got?”

“I’m pretty sure I have video of your killer.”

Richmond and I exchanged looks of disbelief that morphed into hope.

“I just e-mailed it to you,” Arnie said. “I’ll hold while you download it.”

Richmond settled in at Hurley’s desk, and I stood behind him, watching over his shoulder. It took him forever to log into his e-mail and download the attached video, so long that Arnie probably could have walked it over to us in less time.

“Okay,” Richmond said into his phone. “I got it.”

“Go ahead and start it,” Arnie said. “It’s short, just under a minute long.”

I watched as a blurry image flashed on the screen, along with a time and date stamp in the lower right corner showing the current date, a time of 7:28:07
P.M.
, and a flashing red warning at the top of the screen that said
LOW BATTERY
. Within seconds the blurry image settled into a view of Derrick Ames’s kitchen floor, and after a few seconds more, a close image of two pairs of jeans-clad legs and feet came into view, moving erratically. Based on the grunting and heavy breathing we could hear in the background, it wasn’t hard to tell that the two people were scuffling; either that or they were the worst dance couple ever. One pair of jeans—those on the person who was backing up—were basic, straight-legged denims. The jeans on the aggressor were stonewashed, boot-cut denims, and the back hems, which were ragged and dirty, dragged on the ground. After about ten seconds the feet disappeared from view, but there was another thirty seconds or so of audio: heavy breathing,
oomph
sounds, the thud of what sounded like fists against skin, and someone—I felt certain the voice was Derrick’s—yelling out “Stop, damn it!” A few seconds after that there was a loud crash. Then the video stopped.

Arnie said, “The feet you see on the right of the screen, the ones that were moving backward, belong to Derrick Ames. Those are the same pants and shoes the hospital gave Izzy when they handed over Derrick’s clothing. I don’t know who the second pair of feet belongs to, but those shoes are ASIC Gel Scout athletic shoes. That blue shade with the orange soles might help you find the owner.”

“I can’t be sure without a direct comparison,” I said, “but those ragged, dirty hems on the stonewashed jeans look exactly like the ones Jacob Ames was wearing tonight.”

“Did you notice his shoes?” Arnie asked.

“No, sorry.”

“Can you tell what size the shoes are?” Richmond asked.

“Given that we know Derrick Ames wears a nine and the other pair of feet look to be around the same size, I’d say odds are you’re looking for a nine, but they might be tens. The perspective changes from one frame to the next, and that’s the closest I can come without doing the math. I can be more precise for you tomorrow, though if you can find the actual pair of shoes, I won’t need to be.”

“Why is that?” Richmond asked.

“If you look closely at the footage you can see a very specific scuff mark on the inside of the left shoe, just above the arch. You can see it in several frames, but it’s clearest when the feet first appear. It’s shaped like the Nike swoosh. Find me a shoe with that mark and we’ll have a winner.”

Richmond replayed the footage, advanced it more slowly, and then froze it on the frame in question. “I see it,” he said. “If we play back footage from the lobby-area security camera, maybe we can see what kind of shoes Jacob was wearing. Nice find, Arnie.”

“Thanks. I’m going to head home and get some sleep, but I’ll be back at it early tomorrow. And if I get a hit from AFIS, I’ll let you know as soon as it happens. I have the computer rigged to call my cell and forward the info once it finds a match.”

“Sweet,” Richmond said. “You techies are all right in my book. I don’t care what everybody else says.” Richmond winked at me, and the two of us waited in silence.

Arnie didn’t make us wait long. “What does that mean?” he asked in what I’ve come to know as his conspiracy tone. “What are people saying?”

Richmond and I both laughed. “I’m just busting on you, Arnie. Nobody is saying anything.”

That wasn’t altogether true, given my conversation with Jonas earlier, but I decided to keep mum on that subject.

“Get some sleep,” Richmond said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Before I left for the night, Richmond played back the station’s security tape to see if we could get a look at Jacob’s shoes. But the tape didn’t show his feet with enough clarity to be able to tell.

Our mututal disappointment was palpable, and I sensed this case wasn’t going to be an easy one, if for no other reason than because there was a fork involved.