Burning Proof (6 page)

“YOU’VE BEEN AWFULLY QUIET
this morning.” Ethan reached across the car and gripped Abby’s hand. They were on their way to lunch after the service.

“Just thinking.”

“I saw the headline too.”

She turned to look at him, but he had his eyes on the road.

“What makes you think that’s what’s on my mind?”

He gave a half shrug. “I know you. I think the situation with Governor Rollins still bothers you. It’s unresolved.”

“Of course it still bothers me.” She sighed. No, it wasn’t the main thing right now, but she had no energy to change the subject. Ethan was generally right on about the present, but he never did truly understand her past. They’d more or less grown up together; Abby met him shortly after she’d moved to live with her aunt in Oregon when she was ten. He was in a youth group her aunt oversaw. Ethan never understood what losing her parents at six and spending four years in the custody of social services had done to her. Even years later, after she’d become a cop and he moved to Long Beach to work with a local
church and they’d actually kindled a relationship, her past was a door he didn’t want opened. When he’d proposed to her, he’d also asked her to stop looking into her parents’ case. “There are so many unanswered questions. Do you really want a man like Rollins representing the state at a national level?”

Ethan squeezed her hand. “I won’t vote for him. But you know as well as I do that there is no proof connecting him to anything illegal. The only people who’ve claimed to know what happened that day are dead, and what they each had to say could be construed as completely self-serving.”

He turned at the parking lot for River’s End, which was packed. It was a beautiful Sunday, still warm for October. She could see kite surfers soaring in the distance and a line of people waiting to be seated at the restaurant.

For a second she bit her tongue. It was true. Gavin Kent and George Sanders both claimed to know what happened the day her parents were murdered, and after saying so, they both died by their own hands.
Self-serving, selfish liars,
screamed in Abby’s head and made her want to stomp her feet and chastise Ethan for reminding her. But that would solve nothing, and Ethan was not the enemy. He just didn’t understand her like he thought he did.

“I won’t vote for him either, but that’s not what’s bugging me today. I’m still thinking about Clayton Joiner.” She opened the car door and got out, feeling claustrophobic, closed in. She wrapped her arms around herself as a cool ocean breeze hit. It felt good in spite of the shiver it prompted.

Ethan didn’t say anything after that, and Abby was thankful. She was certain she had to work this out herself.

He held his hand out and she took it. She did love the solid
reliability in Ethan right now. No matter what the problems were that had prompted them to postpone the wedding, Abby could never say that Ethan was not there for her when she needed him.

“I wish you would take some more time off,” Ethan said as he settled onto the couch. They’d come back to Abby’s with a DVD to watch
 
—one she picked out, an old movie:
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
.

Abby sighed and sat next to him. Bandit joined them a second later, sitting on Abby’s lap. “I’m ready to get back to work. You know I hate hanging around here doing nothing when there are cases on my desk.” She hoped he didn’t hear the indecision in her voice.
It’s just butterflies,
she thought.
I am ready.

“I don’t think anyone would hold it against you if you took a few more days off.” He pressed Play. “I’m set to be in Butte Falls for that church project I told you about. I want to be sure you’re okay before I leave.”

“Ethan, I’ll be fine,” she said more stridently than she meant to. Sitting up, she turned to look at him while the opening credits played on the TV screen. “I’m sorry; that was harsh. I love how you’ve been there for me lately, but I don’t need a keeper. I need to feel useful.”

He smiled, but not before she saw irritation flit across his brow. “I like taking care of you. Sometimes I fear that homicide work will destroy you. I’ve told you that before.” He reached out and put his hand over hers. “Maybe this shooting is highlighting a door marked Exit.”

He moved his hand to her lips, stifling the protest there.
“I’ll be leaving in the morning and be out of your hair. All I ask is that after I go, you seriously consider the possibility, okay?”

Abby held his gaze, seeing the warmth and concern there. Before the shooting, what he’d just said would have had her back up and her anger simmering. But right now she was walking a tightrope of emotion about returning to work and she couldn’t spare a thread to lash out at him.

Besides, what if he was right?

She gripped his hand, kissed it, and then said, “Okay, fair enough.” She returned to his side and snuggled close as Eddie’s father filled the screen, and she let herself get lost in a funny, heartwarming window into romance in the 1960s.

BLOOD.

“Ouch!” The knife clattered down on the counter as Molly brought her finger to her mouth, the coppery taste of blood hijacking her thoughts, taking them back to another time and place, a time when the knife was at her throat, held by an evil man, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Ahh.” She turned on the kitchen faucet and plunged her finger under the water, watching blood from the cut run down the drain.

She’d worked so hard not to go back to that place, the place the traffic accident had sent her. Tearing off a paper towel, she wrapped it around the cut, hoping that would stanch the blood flow. Squeezing the finger, she stared at her wrists and remembered the cuts there.

Suddenly she was back in the trunk. It was dark. Her wrists burned and bled, and she couldn’t get free. When she finally ripped the bonds that held her wrists apart, blood from the cuts on her wrists ran down her hands. And when she scrambled out
of the trunk, the blood dripped down her legs and splattered on the dirt as she ran for her life.

She smacked her uninjured hand on her thigh three times, forcing herself back to the present, her kitchen, safety. For a second, the scars were back; her wrists were cut and scabby and painful. Molly pulled her arms to her chest to stop the sobs. They racked her body, burned her throat, and she slid down the front of the dishwasher and sat on the floor, leveled and destroyed by memories that would not release her.

MONDAY MORNING,
as Abby fed Bandit, she was still unsettled about the prospect of going back to work. Ethan had left for Butte Falls at 5:30 a.m. They’d exchanged texts, and he promised to call once he arrived in Oregon. She already found herself missing him but was relieved when there had been no further mention of her return to work. If Ethan had suggested one more time that she take another week off, she might have lost it. She’d convinced the psychologist she was ready to return and he’d agreed. Were they both wrong?

“Should I call him again?” she wondered, pausing to look into the mirror at bloodshot eyes.

Woody had called Sunday evening, after Ethan left, to see how Abby was doing regarding the shooting. He was the only person she’d almost shared her complete indecision with. She danced around the fact that the thought of going back to work made her sick to her stomach.

For Woody’s part he seemed to sense something because he’d said,
“It’ll do you good to get back into harness, to get back to doing
what you do best
 
—fighting to give a voice to the dead. It’s like getting back on the horse after he throws you, something you need to do.”

He had to be right, she thought. The PD had been her second home for so many years. It was family she was going back to. That alone should smooth out the wrinkle in her gut.

As Abby drove to the station, she thought of Ethan and his unwavering vision about his place in the world and wondered about her own faltering vision.

“Sometimes I fear that homicide work will destroy you.”

Unease swirling inside, part of her feared Ethan was right. The image of the angry, grief-stricken father was seared in her mind. She wanted to pay her respects at the funeral, but the rest of her knew that her presence would be inflammatory. She’d heard that several civil rights attorneys were pressuring Clayton’s wife to sue her and the department for wrongful death.

Althea’s angry lash out echoed in Abby’s mind verbatim:
“How could you take his life protecting that monster?”

He was only a grieving father trying to make things right for his daughter.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”

Abby jerked as that phrase went through her head. She’d not been able to read her Bible all week and was certain it had been a while since she read Leviticus. If the verse was from that book. She wasn’t certain. It was a random thought from a mind that seemed only able to generate randomness right now.

At the heart of her distress was the knowledge that she could have been Clayton. She could have rushed forward to take the law into her own hands.

Worst of all, she still could, if more information came to light regarding her parents’ murders. She’d begun to wonder
if everyone was right and she was wrong, if her obsession with finding her parents’ killers had defined her, consumed her, limited her vision.

Protesters were lined up in front of the station as she drove toward the parking lot. She made no effort to read the signs they waved nor to try to understand what they were chanting. It seemed automatic these days that protesters would spring up after a police shooting. Abby knew in her head that the shooting was in policy. The festering pain she felt was that she couldn’t get the head knowledge to soak down into her soul. It was as if her heart beat with a protest of its own:
You were wrong. There should have been another way.

Abby worked hard to block the indecision and the heart hurt from her mind as she rode the elevator up to her floor.

“Good morning,” Bill greeted her when she entered the office. “You’re just in time. We got a call.”

Abby gritted her teeth. Before Clayton, getting a callout the minute she stepped into the office would have jolted her with anticipation. Right now all she felt was dread. Getting back on the horse.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Looks like a double murder in East Long Beach, just occurred. Suspect in custody on scene.”

She deposited her personal car keys, gathered her crime scene kit, and followed Roper out to the parking lot.

Roper stopped her at the door.

“Are you up for this?” His concerned gaze touched her, and razor-thin emotions threatened to slice through. He was a good partner. He deserved a good partner, someone who was firing on all cylinders.

Swallowing, she said, “I’m fine. A little tired, but fine.”

He accepted that with a nod and they left the office.

“You’re quiet this morning,” Roper commented as he merged with 710 freeway traffic, a déjà vu moment of Ethan’s observation yesterday morning.

“I have a lot on my mind. Ethan left today for a mini mission trip.”

“Is he still asking you to quit and go with him?”

She felt him turn her way, but she kept her gaze out the window. “Not so stridently. It was nice to have him around after . . .”

“I can understand that. If I can do anything for you, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask. My wife would love to have you over for dinner sometime.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that offer.”

He stayed quiet after that and Abby was grateful. Talking seemed to stir up emotions she needed to tamp down. And working to stay in control made her lose what slim bit of concentration she could muster. She watched the city go by as Bill took the 405 freeway transition and then exited onto Palo Verde in East Long Beach. The address they parked in front of a few minutes later was close to the freeway and not that far from another address in East Long Beach. Luke Murphy lived about a mile away, closer to the college.

Thoughts of Luke were the only ones that didn’t seem random. While Ethan had been great the last week, Luke understood all of her, especially her past. He saw through the shields she put up. He was like that one strong, tall tower you could run to in order to be sheltered from the storm.

What would he see now? she wondered. For some reason the
man could read her like a book and she’d stopped being bothered by it. It did, however, bother her that thinking of him tweaked her emotions and sparked a longing in the pit of her soul.

Abby rubbed her forehead for a second before bracing herself and then pushing the car door open. Right now she and her partner owed their attention to this call.
I stand for the dead.
Even a murder with an obvious suspect on scene needed careful investigation, clearly compiled facts that could be presented in court and ensure conviction of the guilty. Her concentration must be on working this case, not on the shooting a week ago and certainly not on a man who wasn’t likely to be in her life for any reason now that the case that connected them was essentially closed.

The house was a typical one-story East Long Beach home, with a neatly kept lawn and a short driveway with two cars parked in front of the garage. The entire lot was surrounded by yellow police tape, and curious neighbors gathered in clumps on the perimeter.

The uniformed sergeant on scene stepped up to greet them. “This looks cut-and-dried,” he said, shaking his head. “You can thank me for making your life easy today.”

“How’s that?” Bill asked.

“The wife gave me a spontaneous statement and confessed.” He held up a digital recorder. “I have it on tape. I tape everything these days. Anyway, she caught hubby with his girlfriend and administered her own form of justice.” He made a gun with his thumb and forefinger. “Boom, boom.”

“Where’s she at?”

“The backyard. We decided to wait and see if you wanted to talk to her here while she’s cooperating. We can transport instead if you wish.”

Bill looked at Abby. She knew he wanted her thoughts. The stickiest part of interviewing suspects was getting past the Miranda rights. They needed to be read
 
—Abby had no problem with that
 
—but the hope was always that the suspect would waive their rights and talk. So the timing was the thing. Patrol officers knew never to try to conduct an interview and read Miranda rights if there was any chance the suspect would invoke them and ask for a lawyer. Once a lawyer was requested, there was no interview
 
—period. In general, patrol officers left the advising and the interviewing to the detectives. What the sergeant got on tape, a spontaneous statement, was a gift and admissible in court.

But the question now was, should they advise her of her rights and get a statement while she was talking or risk the possibility that riding to the station in the back of a black-and-white and then sitting in a sterile interview room might make her shut up?

The decision would normally be an easy one for Abby, but she stammered. “Uh, let’s . . . let’s see what we have here. Where are the victims?”

Bill nodded slowly and Abby wondered if he’d disagree.

“Lead the way, Sergeant.”

As the officer led them into the house, Abby immediately noticed the cold air. Since the October weather had been warm, it was no surprise the AC was on, but it was downright frigid in the house.

“Why so cold?” she asked.

“The AC was on its lowest setting. I don’t know why. We turned it off, but the place hasn’t warmed up yet.”

She and Bill followed the sergeant as he led them through
the house to a bedroom. There, a man and a woman lay on the bed, the woman on her back, the man on his stomach. There was an unmistakable odor of blood, a smell that hit hard as she stepped through the bedroom door. As she moved into the room, she could see that both had multiple gunshot wounds to the head and face.

Anger
 
—raw rage
 
—had pulled the trigger here. The blood was fresh, the spatter still moving down the walls in spots.

Abby would have studied the scene, absorbing what it had to tell her. Spatter itself could speak volumes. But it wasn’t this crime scene that spoke to her. She rubbed her hands together.

“He murdered my baby!”

The voice was so loud in her head, she turned, only to jerk back quickly, hoping the guys hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t. Their concentration was where it should be
 
—on the victims. Abby followed their gazes.

It
looked
cut-and-dried, if the suspect had already confessed, she thought as perspiration broke out on her lip in spite of the cool air in the room.

“Who called 911?” she asked, looking at the two bodies but seeing Clayton Joiner bleeding on the lawn.

“Our suspect. She said there’d been a shooting. When I got here, she led me to the room and said
 
—” the sergeant hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked toward the bed
 
—“‘The woman doesn’t live here; the man does. I shot them both.’ I asked her for the gun. It was on the table in the kitchen; she’d put it down to call 911. I didn’t ask her anything else. I just had the beat guys take her out to the patio, and I called you.”

“I noticed the suitcase in the entryway. Hers?” Bill asked, and Abby wondered how she missed that.

“She told dispatch she’d arrived home this morning from a weekend conference.”

“She gets home and immediately shoots two people?” Abby hugged her shoulders as the frigid air cut through her thin blouse, battling the hot flash lingering in her system.

“That’s a 10-4.”

“No one should bury their ten-year-old daughter,”
Joiner had muttered while Abby tried to stop the bleeding and they waited for paramedics.

“She’s outside?” Abby asked, wanting to shake the flashbacks away.

“Yep.” He handed Abby a field information card with the woman’s name and information.

“The gun?” Bill asked. “What was it and where is it now?”

“It’s been made safe and placed in an evidence bag. It’s a 9mm. She emptied a fifteen-round clip.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” Abby said to Bill, gripping the card tight, willing all of her concentration to the present, not on what happened a week ago.

“I’ll take you to her,” the sergeant said and he showed her to the yard. Welcome warm air hit as soon as she stepped out through the sliding door.

A petite blonde woman sat at a patio table staring at the fence. She wore what looked to Abby to be an expensive gray wool suit, immaculately creased pants, a pale-orange blouse. A matching gray jacket was thrown over another chair. Carla Boston was mostly neat and clean, but for the reddish-brown spots here and there on her nice clothes. Hands cuffed behind her were like the answer to a “one of these things doesn’t belong” riddle. Her legs were crossed and on her feet were a pair of high
heels. Considering how many times she’d fired the gun at the two people in the bedroom, she was lucky that was all the blood that got on her. Abby was more concerned with her emotional state.

“Mrs. Boston?”

The woman turned.

“I’m Detective Hart. I’ll be investigating this . . . situation.”

Boston looked at her and nodded. The patrol sergeant was right. She’d shed no tears over this, at least not recently.

Clayton Joiner looked as though he’d cried every day of the last two months.

“Interesting thing to call it
 
—a situation. But then it was an interesting scene to come home to.” There was the hint of an accent in the woman’s voice. Abby couldn’t place it other than to guess it was from somewhere back east.

She sat down at the table and turned on her own digital recorder and advised the woman of her rights.

“Yes, yes, I’ll talk.” Impatience, resignation, frustration all bled through her tone. “I don’t care anymore. I thought he was cheating; I just didn’t know with who. Or is it
whom
?” She couldn’t raise her hand, so she kind of hiked a shoulder and wiggled her head.

“I came home and caught him with her, of all people. My best friend! He always told me he thought she was frumpy.” She spit the last word out. “I snapped. That was his gun I used. I emptied the thing. At least I think I did.”

She glared at Abby, her eyes a cauldron of anger and hate, but her voice cold and empty.

“They deserved it. They were cheaters and I killed them. It’s my revenge and it’s as sweet as a bowl of honey.” She stomped
one of her high-heeled shoes on the ground, making a sharp click. “I don’t regret it.”