It's Murder, My Son (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (8 page)

Mac asked Travis, “Did anything you saw this afternoon inspire you?”

“Inspire?”

“For the book you’re working on?”

“Oh, that.” Travis chuckled while caressing his wife’s shoulder. “I’m sure the head the dog dragged in will get quite a reaction from my publisher, especially when it turns out to be the killer’s head.”

“I wouldn’t write that chapter yet,” Mac said. “David and I found the rest of the body.”

Travis’s brilliant grin dropped. “What? No one told me that.”

Ben interrupted, “What are you talking about? What head? What dog? What body? What happened?”

“Gnarly brought home some dead guy’s head,” Archie explained.

“It’s got to be Lee Dorcas,” Travis said. “He lost his marbles, killed Katrina, and then offed himself.”

“When did you find his body? Where was it?” Ben demanded to know. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“Because Mac and I only found the body in the Spencer Mine a few hours ago,” David said.

“It’s hard to arrest a dead body,” Travis chuckled. “Dorcas was crazy.”

“Was it Lee Dorcas?” Ben asked David. “I thought his lawyer and the police in DC cleared him of any wrongdoing.”

“We don’t have an ID on the body yet.”

“When you get it call me.” Ben took his wife’s arm.

Catherine said, “Oh, this is just like old times when Robin was alive.” After another round of assertions that Mac looked exactly like he did in his mother’s books, the couple made their way to the lobby.

Travis peered down at David. “Don’t you think you’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be?”

“When did you graduate from the police academy?”

“Every single one of my books has made all of the bestsellers’ lists because I’ve researched hundreds of murder cases,” Travis said. “It’s simple, especially when the murder victim tells us herself. Katrina told you, and me, and Sophia—last year right over there in the lounge—a crazy ex-client named Lee Dorcas was harassing her. He killed her husband right in front of her and got away with it. The police couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do anything to help her. He’d been terrorizing her for over a year and she knew that it was only a matter of time before he’d kill her. Don’t you remember that?”

David argued, “The evidence says differently.”

“And the evidence never lies,” Mac finished.

Travis turned to him. “You don’t know how things work around here.”

“Tell me,” replied Mac.

“Chief Roy Phillips is looking for a reason to fire David. Lee Dorcas told her that he was going to kill her. Now she’s dead. We have a murder victim—”

“Two,” Mac corrected him.

Travis glared at him.

“Are you forgetting Niles Holt?”

“Two,” Travis said.

“Maybe three,” Mac pointed out.

Travis’s dark eyes narrowed.

Mac said, “There was a bullet hole in that head. That makes it a homicide. The death needs to be investigated to determine if the gunshot was self-inflicted or not. That’s SOP.”

“SOP?”

“Standard operating procedure,” David said.

“It seems to me,” Mac said, “David is not making this more difficult than it needs to be. Chief Roy Phillips is making it much easier than it really is.”

“Very well.” Travis stood up tall. “Take my advice, Dave. Keep your nose out of this case. Write your speeding tickets, stay out of Phillips’s way, and pick up your pay check.”

“Let’s go, Travis.” Sophia’s dark brown eyes had glazed over during their conversation. She was there to be seen and that wasn’t happening to her satisfaction.

Travis hissed at David, “Think about it, bud.”

Sophia tugged on her husband’s arm until he led her outside to the deck where they disappeared down the steps in the direction of the garden.

Neither of them noticed Travis’s secretary’s eyes following them when they left. Once they were out of sight, Betsy gestured to the bartender for another glass of wine before making another note in her scratchpad.

Chapter Four

Mac hadn’t noticed that his mother’s office equipment consisted only of an old laptop and printer until after he received a copy of Katrina Singleton’s case file from prosecutor Ben Fleming.

So, he went in search of Robin’s assistant.

The guest cottage was a cozy cabin with a great room that featured an enormous stone fireplace and a writer’s loft. French doors opened on to a patio with a picture view of the lake. Built-in bookcases crammed with books, including every one of Robin Spencer’s books, took up one whole wall.

Robin Spencer’s books weren’t the only signed first editions Archie owned. During her years of working as the mystery writer’s assistant, she had become friends with some of the most famous authors in the country. Another wall was a who’s who photo gallery of novelists and other celebrities.

With every inch of bookshelf space filled, Archie stacked other books on the hardwood floor. The rest of the flat surfaces in the cottage held research files. The editor had converted the larger of the two bedrooms into an office with a desktop computer, laptop, printer, scanner, fax, and a wide assortment of other equipment, including cameras, recorders, and every technical toy a girl could want.

After scanning the photographs in the case file, Archie pulled up a chair to study the pictures on Mac’s laptop. He could feel her breath on his neck. “What do you see?” She rested her chin on his shoulder to peer at the image on the screen.

Katrina wore a ruby red, floor-length robe. Her dark hair was fanned out behind her. Its shine matched the silkiness of her garment. A dark line marked the width of her throat. Her legs rested to the side, bent at the knees as if she had been practicing sit-ups before taking a break. Her arms lay askew where they had fallen after her last failed attempt to push away the object crushing her larynx.

“It’s what I don’t see.” Mac zoomed in on Katrina’s naked fingers. “Where’s her wedding ring?”

“Phillips will claim she took it off,” she said. “Her husband did have a mistress.”

“Either that or her killer took it as a souvenir.” He zoomed out on the picture to study the room. The only sign of a struggle was an overturned recliner. “Was there any sign of forced entry?”

“None,” Archie answered. “There wasn’t in any of the attacks. The security system was on when David found the body. This guy was like a magician, popping in and out of nowhere.”

“The woman was being terrorized but she remained here alone.” He shook his head. “This case is a mess of contradictions.” He moved the mouse in a circle to make the curser rotate around the picture. “If she took off her wedding ring, it would have been in her personal effects.”

“It was three carats.”

“Sounds like a three-carat motive for murder.”

“In all your years in homicide, did you ever see a case where a thief terrorized his victim for months before robbing and killing them?”

“No,” Mac said. “I’ve never seen a case like this one.”

*   *   *   *

“Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” Travis Turner startled David out of his thoughts about Katrina’s murder.

The officer had stopped at the coffee shop in McHenry for an egg sandwich before reporting for duty. He had become so absorbed in mentally replaying the months of incident reports in search of a missed clue that his sandwich had grown cold in the meantime.

Travis snapped him back to the present. “You looked like you were a thousand miles away,” he laughed while filling his coffee mug with a special blend.

“Kind of.” David sipped his lukewarm coffee.

“Hey, did the autopsy report for Pay Back come back from the ME yet?” Travis sat in a vacant chair across from him at the small bistro table.

“Should be on Phillips’s desk this morning.” David rose from his seat to warm his coffee with some fresh brew. “Why?”

“I’m wondering what he found.”

Before David could respond, a woman at a corner table gestured for Travis’s attention. Excitedly, she held forth a hardcover book with Travis’s image filling the back cover. “Are you really him?”

Travis’s face broke into a wide grin. “Yes, I am.”

While digging through her handbag, she hurried out of her seat. “Could you please autograph your book for me?” She extracted a pen from her bag and handed it to him.

David returned to his seat to finish his hot coffee and cold egg sandwich while the woman gushed over meeting a star while eating a muffin in little ol’ McHenry, Maryland. He saw that Travis seemed to have the ability to make his usually bright smile even more charming in the presence of his admiring public. By the time the fan left with the now valuable book clutched to her breast, the officer had finished his sandwich and was rolling up the wrapper.

Redirecting his attention to David, Travis stopped him from leaving. “What do you expect the ME to find?”

“ID for one. We got Lee Dorcas’s dental records. If it’s him, then we can close the disappearance case. But I doubt if the ME’s report can answer the real question. How was he able to terrorize Katrina for all those months without leaving any evidence for us to arrest him? How did he get in and out of the house without triggering the security system? I met the guy. He wasn’t smart but even with Katrina’s eyewitness statements, we could never get enough to arrest him.”

“And you think an ME report can tell you why and how Dorcas pulled it off?” Travis chuckled.

“It won’t give me all the answers, but enough to point me in the right direction.”

Travis sat so far back in his chair that the front legs lifted off the floor. “Listen, Dave. I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Drop it. She’s not worth it.”

“I can’t do that. I took an oath when I became a cop. My father taught me that that oath is worth everything. Our civilization depends on those taking it, keeping it.” He squinted at Travis. “Katrina was our friend. Don’t you remember? Back in high school? For a while there, it was me and her, and you and Yvonne. The four of us were so tight.”

“High school was a long time ago. A lot has happened since then.” Travis sighed. “I’ve seen how the world really is. It’s nothing like Spencer. There are a lot of sick people out there who target someone for no reason except for something that makes sense only in their warped minds. If you spend too much time trying to make sense out of it, you’ll only make yourself sick and get Phillips madder at you than he already is.” He took another sip of his coffee before dropping the chair back onto all four feet.

“I got the perp’s DNA off Gnarly,” David said. “If it doesn’t match with Lee Dorcas’s DNA, then that will prove he didn’t kill Katrina. Phillips won’t be able to close the case as a murder-suicide.”

Travis squinted at him. “Then Phillips will look like a fool and you’ll be out of a job.”

“That’s the risk I have to take,” David said. “Katrina was depending on me to save her. I failed her there. Now, she’s depending on me to catch her killer.”

*   *   *   *

Mac didn’t feel like Mickey Forsythe. He sucked in his breath and turned off Spencer Road, passing the No Thru Way sign to take the last leg of their run to a tall glass of orange juice, unless the Point’s petty thief had stolen the jug from his fridge. Seeing that they were heading home, Gnarly stepped up the pace to pull on his leash.