Blood Silence (14 page)

She nodded. “Frederick would put it in a few times a summer. Given its age, he never liked to have it sit in the water for too long, so he rarely slipped it down on the dock. He would launch it and then re-trailer it.”

Mac nodded as he looked down the left side of the boat, which was parked a few feet away from the side of the garage. He thought it was odd that the canvas cover back toward the stern was loose. “Hmpf,” he snorted as he slithered his way down the wall a few feet.

“What?” Lich asked.

“It seems to me that if you’re going to store a beauty like this and maintain it to perfection, you would make sure the cover was secured tighter. The knotting for the cover is undone over here.” Then he noticed a small streak of mud along the side of the boat and a footprint on the base of the otherwise pristine white Shoreline trailer. He lifted the cover a bit more and peeked into the boat.

“Meredith, was your husband meticulous in his care of this boat?” Mac asked, still underneath the canvas cover, sensing he already knew the answer.

“That would be an understatement. He loved this thing more than life itself.”

“So, any chance he’d leave chunks of mud in the boat?”

“None.”

“You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Not a flippin’ chance.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mac answered as he lifted the canvas cover off the back of the boat. Everyone walked around to the other side, standing between the Jaguar and the boat. In the back seating area of the boat, were chunks of mud lying on the floor.

“There is no way Frederick would leave that in the boat. He just wouldn’t. It would ”—she searched for the word—“offend him. I’ve cleaned, polished, buffed, and vacuumed this thing out after a two-hour boat ride on a Sunday. He would never leave the boat stored like this. Never.” Then she had a thought. “And I’m not the only one who would know this. Lots of people have seen his anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive psychosis with this boat. They all gave him endless shit about it.”

“You’re sure?” Mac asked.

“Absolutely positive.”

“Then write all those names down,” Mac answered and then asked, “When is the last time he had it out?”

Meredith thought for a moment. “It was Labor Day weekend. The weather was nice. We had some company out on Sunday, and he put it in. On Monday, he stayed out here after I left, to clean the boat and cover it.”

“Any chance he had it out since then?”

Meredith shook her head.

Mac looked at Lich. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah.”

“Which is what?” Lyman asked.

“The killer hides in here,” Mac answered. “Otherwise, how does the mud get here? Your husband is freakishly meticulous about this boat, so there is no way he leaves this mud in here, so it was someone else. Why not the killer?”

“So he hides in the boat?”

Mac nodded. “I’m betting he knew that Sterling and Gentry were coming here because … the killer has been watching them, just like Biggs. I bet the killer scouted the house because, after all, they were coming out here. Heck, the killer might have even gotten inside another time and searched the house and found—”

“The gun,” Lich finished the thought. “I’m with you.”

“So that night, the killer picks the lock on the back door to the garage, slips in here, and hides in the boat.” Mac was rolling now. “Sterling and Gentry get here. The killer hears them, maybe gets the idea they’re amorous. So he lets them get inside and lies in wait for nearly two hours. Then, the festivities probably over, the two of them in bed, sleeping, he then slips inside the house, grabs the gun from the master bedroom, and then walks into the room and smokes them both.”

“Then, to complete the setup, he escapes out the front door,” Lich suggested.

“So no evidence of forced entry—he leaves the front door unlocked so it looks like Meredith came in the front door,” Mac added as he pushed the button to open the garage door.

“And he runs out the front door to the car that is parked to the north of the house.”

“Why do you say to the north?” Lyman asked.

Mac flipped open the investigative report. “Because the neighbors living in the two houses to the south called 9-1-1 to report shots fired. They also both reported seeing the Mercedes drive by their houses
to the south
.”

Lich smiled. “Mac, that’s two pieces that make this look like a setup.”

“I’d say. There is no reason for Meredith to hide in the boat, and in fact she couldn’t, based on the timeline. You’d only hide if you beat them out here, and she was at the reception when the alarm for the house was shut off,” Mac suggested. “Plus, there is a footprint on the boat trailer. It’s a tread for what I’d imagine is a hiking boot.” Mac walked to Meredith, kneeled down with a tape measure, and measured the width of her foot. He then went back to the boat and measured the width of the print on the trailer. The trailer print was a little over an inch wider than Meredith’s foot, and she was wearing boots.

“Mac, the killer came in that side door, loosened the cover of the boat, climbed up inside, and waited,” Dick concluded.

Mac shuffled his way back along the wall of the garage to the front of the boat. He went to the inside door, slowly opened it, and then closed it. He moved slowly forward and then stopped as he emerged from the back hallway into the main body of the house and living room. The floor of the house was wood, all the way back to the bedroom. “Would you leave your boots on?” he mumbled to himself. “Those would not be quiet on this floor. You’d slip them off.” He turned back to the floor mat and looked down. There were chunks of mud. “Dick!”

Lich pushed the door open. Mac explained what he was thinking.

“I agree,” Dick answered, nodding. “Good call.”

Everyone else approached, and Mac pointed out the mud on the mat. “We need pictures of this. We need it logged. We should have that mud tested to match it up with the dirt around the house,” he suggested.

“I’m going to hire my own forensics expert based on what you found,” Lyman stated. One look at Lyman’s face, and you could see a defense strategy forming.

“Do that,” Mac suggested and looked over at Lich, whose nose was back in the investigative report. Then Lich walked outside and down to the end of the driveway. He looked north and then south and then back toward the house. “What is it, Dicky Boy?”

“So the 9-1-1 log says the first call came in at 1:33
A.M.
”

“Right.”

“Then the second call at 1:34
A.M.
”

“Okay.”

“And both neighbors indicate that … it took them a minute or two to make the phone call. They weren’t sure if the sounds were gunshots because—”

“Something like that doesn’t happen around here often,” Mac replied but could tell his partner was on to something. “Keep going.”

“After the neighbors made the 9-1-1 call, it was then that they both saw the car go by. They both saw the car
after
the 9-1-1 call.”

“Right,” Mac answered and then smiled. “It’s like this thing is happening in slow motion, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Dick agreed. “They hear the shots fired, they thought at 1:30 or 1:31. It takes a minute or two for the shots to register. The calls to 9-1-1 are at 1:33 and then 1:34. Then they are up, probably turning on the lights, looking out the windows, and then they see the Mercedes streak by, and one neighbor said they thought that was at 1:35
A.M.
”

“Does it take four to five minutes from shots fired to get to the car and drive away?”

“It shouldn’t,” Lich said. “Now you’ve explained some of the delay.”

“Putting his shoes back on,” Mac stated.

“But that doesn’t take but a few seconds, especially if you’re in a hurry of any kind.”

“Unless you’re not,” Mac suggested with a smirking grin.

Lich nodded. “Sterling’s house here is the last on the block. After the wooded area to the north, the street turns left and dead-ends down in that small cul-de-sac. No way out in that direction, so the only way out is south and past these houses. It shouldn’t take five minutes from shots fired to get to the car. The only way it takes five minutes is if—”

“Maybe, just maybe, you wanted to make sure someone saw you,” Mac finished, putting his hands on his hips and looking around.

“How did the sheriff’s investigators miss this?” Lyman asked, shaking his head.

“Because they focused on Meredith right away, because she checked all the right boxes—scorned spouse, prints on the gun, no forced entry, no alibi, huge motive, yada, yada, yada. So they didn’t flyspeck their investigation. We are.”

“And they missed some shit,” Dick said with a satisfied grin and then looked at Mac. “God, I miss working cases like this with you.”

Mac grinned. “Right back at you, partner.”

• • •

Three hours later, with their sweep of the lake house and interviews of neighbors complete, Mac stuffed his backpack into the back of his Yukon and closed the gate. A text from Riley said a group was meeting at the pub around 9:00. It was almost 8:00
P.M.
, and he could use a belt or two.

Mac looked up, and Meredith approached as Lyman and Plantagenate headed for his Escalade.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Meredith said, stopping ten feet short. “Watching you work today. That was”—she struggled for the word and then settled on—“Interesting.”

“We found some things today.”

“It still doesn’t prove me innocent,” Meredith stated, doubt in her voice, looking down.

“No,” Mac answered, shaking his head. “But this is a start. Think of it as we’re building a wall brick by brick. We found some bricks today.”

“Is this how most of your investigations start?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Mac answered after a moment. “In some cases, the killer’s identity is clear. Someone saw him or her do it, and it’s simply a matter of tracking them down. Others, like your case, you don’t know who it was. So it’s a matter of picking away at the case, looking at things, and talking to people until you find a thread, and then you start pulling on it to see what shakes out. Personally, I like those cases better. They’re more challenging.”

“Glad I’m creating some recreation for you.”

“Sorry, Meredith, I didn’t mean to suggest …”

Meredith gave a small smile. “I’m teasing, Mac. I’m not serious. I got what you meant. You always liked puzzles. So what are you doing next?”

“Tomorrow, I start looking into your husband’s law files.”

“Dick’s not helping?”

Mac shook his head. “He’s going back to the day job tomorrow.”

“So what do you hope to find in Frederick’s files?”

“You were set up. I believed that before today. I know so now. I think the by whom of that will be found in your husband’s life, which is largely his law practice.”

“And in what he was doing for this Callie Gentry?”

“Maybe. Or possibly she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A cold look washed over Meredith’s face. “Oh yes, she was in the wrong place at any time.”

F
or three days, Mac worked the case as he’d work a normal homicide investigation, which meant around the clock. In three frustrating days, he’d learned little about his case but plenty about Sterling’s law firm. Unfortunately, the only thing he’d really learned was that it was a craven place without a soul.

How else could you explain a place that just kept on humming as if nothing had happened, as if J. Frederick Sterling, a man who’d devoted nearly twenty-five years of his life to the firm, made it millions upon millions of dollars, had never existed. Here it was, a Friday night at 8:00
P.M.
, and the place was still a hub of activity.

A lot of legal work is pure drudgery, and while that is also true of other professions, those other professions don’t require eighty-hour-plus weeks as a demonstration of fealty to the profession. There was no way all these lawyers were working on matters requiring around-the-clock attention. The courts were not open on Saturdays, nor were most other professionally based businesses where executives would expect to contact their lawyers. Instead, the young lawyers were simply doing what young lawyers were expected to do in large law firms—work around the clock in a show of commitment to the practice, to show they were worthy of future promotion and eventually the holy grail—partnership. Mac had no doubt many of these people would be back at their desks Saturday morning, grinding away while the rest of the world enjoyed a much-deserved day off.

What truly struck Mac, however, was how many partners, including many senior partners, were still working at this late an hour, and on a Friday, no less. Didn’t they have families? Didn’t they have friends? Didn’t they have interests outside of work? Didn’t they want to go to dinner, a play, or a game? His impression was that after a long career spent at their desks or in courtrooms, these lawyers simply didn’t know how to function outside the office. The job was all they had. The job was really all they knew how to do. It was their social sphere, comfort zone, and native habitat.

He could have ended up this way. Were it not for that tragic event those many years ago, he could be one of these people grinding away. He’d be senior associate, junior partner age now, had he stuck with it, and he was set at a large firm not unlike the one he was now standing in. Maybe he’d have realized it on his own and escaped without the deaths of Peter and Thomas. He hoped he would have.

There was so much more to life than constant work.

Mac was once again realizing that truth as his week was coming to a frustrating end.

The week started so promisingly on Tuesday, with the developments at the crime scene. However, when Mac transitioned to the law firm on Wednesday, the momentum came to a screeching halt. He’d worked the case for three days, almost around the clock, and had found little to nothing that seemed helpful to Meredith’s defense, not one lead that pointed to someone other than Meredith.