Judas Kiss (15 page)

“We'll be sure to contact Dr. Walberg this morning as well. It seems, Mr. Wolff, that your wife was doing a few things outside the scope of your knowledge. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us before we tear your life apart? Because trust me, the more you lie, the worse this gets. There's nothing I can do to help you if you keep lying to me. If you tell me the truth, I'll be able to fight for you. But if you're being dishonest with me, I won't give you a second chance. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Todd looked her in the eye and nodded. “I'm not lying.”

“The hotel you supposedly stayed in doesn't have any record of you over the weekend.”

Todd looked wild-eyed at his lawyer. Rose put his hand down on the table. “We're done here, Lieutenant. Charge him, or we're leaving.”

Taylor let a silence settle on the room before she answered. “All right. You guys sit tight. I'll have one of our crime scene techs come take the DNA sample, and then I'm going to go talk with Dr. Walberg. Make yourselves comfortable. I'll be back.”

She and Fitz rose and left the two men behind.

“Wow,” Fitz said. “Nice bombshells.”

“He's changing his story. Let's give them some time, see if he changes it again.”

They split in the hallway, Fitz to go handle the DNA collection, Taylor to talk with Corinne's doctor. Taylor went back to the homicide offices. Marcus was sitting at her desk, the phone to his ear. She dropped in the guest chair opposite him and waited. He was muttering into the phone, writing rapidly on a sheet of paper. After a few moments, he thanked whoever he'd been talking to so intently and hung up. He gazed at Taylor for a brief second, then handed her a sheet of paper.

“We need to arrest Todd Wolff.”

T
aylor read the sheet Marcus handed her twice, chewing on her lower lip. Damn. Marcus was right. She needed to arrest Todd Wolff. Suspects lie about the stupidest things, and Wolff had been telling some whoppers. But not enough to push her over the edge into believing without a doubt that he'd actually killed Corinne. But this was evidence that she could use for an arrest warrant.

“Who found this?” Taylor asked.

“Tim Davis. He just faxed the report to us a few minutes ago. I called him to double-check his findings. He's back at the Wolff residence right now, combing through the house again. He said he'd call immediately if anything else popped up.”

Taylor read through the report a third time, focusing on the line Marcus had highlighted in pink.

Well, wasn't that just the shit. Corinne's blood in her husband's truck. They would need to do further testing to prove that it was actually Corinne's blood, and there was always the chance that the blood was old, unrelated to the murder. But that would be awfully convenient. On its face, this was enough to both secure a warrant, and to convene the grand jury and to seek a true bill indicting Todd. The first step in any solid investigation, physical evidence collection, so often cut through the bullshit the criminals were spewing.

“What do you want to do?” Marcus asked, leaning back in her chair. He looked good behind her desk, she'd give him that.

Taylor drummed her fingers along the edge of frayed wood. She rarely saw this side of her desk anymore, though she'd spent years in this very chair, reporting facts to her superiors. The wood was splitting in two areas, the new damage most likely from a chair being scraped along the edge of the desk. She fingered the gashes. She liked the change; this old perspective made her feel like she was back in the trenches.

“Well, we already have Todd here. Fitz is setting him up for a DNA test. We'll have to ask the lab to do a quick blood typing on the sample, make sure Todd isn't A positive, then we can get the warrant prepared. Julia Page will be able to convene the grand jury session once we've got the blood type established. I need to do some follow-up on the drug found in Corinne's system. You say Tim is still at the house?”

“Yes. He was going to fine-tooth everything again, just to be absolutely sure he hasn't missed anything before we release the scene.”

The phone on Taylor's desk rang, and Marcus read off the caller ID to her.

“Well, speak of the devil. This is Tim Davis calling you right now. Here.” He picked up the phone receiver and handed it to Taylor.

“Lieutenant Jackson,” she said into the phone.

“Hi, Lieutenant. This is Tim Davis. I'm at the Wolff crime scene, and I've got something I think you need to see.”

“Marcus just gave me your report on the biological evidence you've found in the husband's truck. Is there more of the same in the house that we missed?”

“Oh, no ma'am, I've collected every bit of biological evidence that is relevant to this case. I've gone through the house several times, on my hands and knees in the appropriate sections. I've got all of that. This is something…well, you just need to see it for yourself, ma'am. It's in the basement, ma'am.”

Tim wasn't a fly-by-night kind of guy. If he felt that strongly that Taylor needed to attend him at the scene, that's what she was going to do.

“I'm on my way, Tim. Hang tight.” She hung up, stood and stretched.

“Okay, Marcus, do me a favor. I need you to call this Dr. Katie Walberg while I go out to the Wolff house. See if you can get me in to see her, today. I'll talk to you in a bit.”

 

Taylor grabbed an unmarked Impala and headed toward West Nashville. She crossed the Woodland Street Bridge and took the highway. It would be faster that way. As she drove, the sun disappeared, roiling black clouds building on the horizon.

Traffic was light, a pre-rush-hour reprieve. Her cell phone rang and she answered. It was Marcus.

“I've got a couple of things for you. First off, I talked to Dr. Walberg. She couldn't stay on the line, she's in the middle of a delivery. She confirmed that Corinne Wolff was a patient, but can't release any of the records without a court order. She was real nice about it, just needed to cover her ass. I've put in the request. She said she'd call back after the delivery, as long as she knows the papers are in the works she's happy to talk to you.”

“Okay. I'll just plan to swing back by her office when I finish here.”

“You know, LT, I can do that for you. There's no need for you to be running around doing all the legwork on this case. That is why they gave you the title, you know.”

She grinned. Marcus always knew just the right thing to say. “I know you can, Marcus, and I appreciate the offer. It feels good to be out and about, you know?”

“I know. Management definitely puts a crimp in your style. No worries, LT. I'll handle the warrant and let them know you're coming in, then I'll get back to your mystery man from last night. I haven't found anything yet, but I'm early into it. This Wolff stuff derailed my morning. I'll let you know. Now, there's something else. About the rabbit.”

“Oh yeah. Tim can go do it later.”

“He sent Keri McGee. She just called me. There's no rabbit.”

“Of course there is. I saw it. I put a flowerpot over him. Did she go to the right house?”

“Yeah, she did. The flowerpot is on the side of your house, and the rabbit was gone. Maybe one of your neighbors cleaned it up thinking they were helping?”

Taylor thought about that. A logical explanation. So why was the hair on the back of her neck standing on end?

“You're probably right, Marcus. I'm sure that's the deal. I'll ask around when I get home. The folks next door have a couple of dogs, they were probably making a ruckus, smelling something dead. Tell Keri thanks for trying for me.”

They hung up. Taylor took the Charlotte Avenue exit and cut through Hillwood into the Wolffs' neighborhood. She pulled into the cul-de-sac and parked behind Tim's Metro Crime Scene truck.

Tim was sitting on the front porch swing, unmoving, his back so straight that it didn't make contact with the seat back. He hopped to his feet as soon as Taylor exited her vehicle.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself. Sorry to drag you back out here, but you need to see this in person before I start disassembling.”

“Disassembling what, Tim? Now that I'm here, clue me in.”

He blushed and looked away, eyes cutting to the right. Oh, good grief. Old-fashioned Southern men, they actually believed in respecting women. Her curiosity won out over teasing him. “Fine. Just show me if you're too embarrassed to talk about it.”

He nodded once, then whipped around and headed into the house. Taylor followed. He went directly to the basement stairs, headed down without a word. The air smelled cool and musty, similar to the day before. When they reached the bottom, Taylor saw Tim's light rigging set up, the five-hundred-watt beam pointing to a spot on the wall.

He was talking again, his words jerking out of his mouth rapid fire. “I was moving some of the boxes, looking for anything I might have missed. A box fell off the stack here.” He pointed to a cardboard bankers' box, the contents spilled on the concrete floor. Plastic jewel cases, the kind that house music compact discs, were spread across the floor, the flash of the silver contents catching the light from the stairwell.

“Were they bootlegging CDs? Let me guess, there's cartons of cigarettes too. The Wolffs are working for Al-Qaeda.” Taylor threw Tim a smile to let him know she was kidding. Poor boy was so serious all the time.

“It's worse than that, LT.” Tim walked around the spilled box and went to the back wall, the one that was painted. He knocked on the cement. Instead of making no noise, a sharp clang rang out. Raising an eyebrow at Taylor, he pushed. The entire wall swung away, opening into a dark gap.

“A secret chamber. Cool.”

Tim just shrugged in answer and disappeared into the wall. Taylor followed him. The air changed in this room, there was no must, no humidity. It smelled of Clorox.

Tim hit the lights, and Taylor sucked in her breath. Her first impression was medieval torture chamber. The second was film studio. Tim stayed quiet, giving her a moment to process. There was a double bed in the center of the twelve-by-twenty-four-foot space made up with white sheets and a white down comforter. Fluffy pillows completed the ensemble. To the right was a peg board, filled from top to bottom with various…well, the only thing she could think to call them was
accessories
. Sex toys, whips, a dominatrix hood and rubber merry widow, gag balls, dildos, vibrators. It was a veritable sex store, all tucked neatly away in the basement of the suburban family home. Taylor had seen plenty of these accoutrements on various crime scenes. What she hadn't seen was a sex chamber equipped with two professional video cameras, a boom, four different mikes and strategically placed lights.

“They're making pornography?” Tim asked, the tremor in his voice belying his normally staid demeanor. Tim was horrifically discomfited, that much was evident. A good churchgoing man, he wouldn't be a big fan of the Wolffs' sideline.

Taylor walked around the space, looking. “Good assumption. One of them was, at least. It's certainly possible that Todd was running the show and Corinne didn't know, or vice versa. But I doubt that. Something this elaborate, it would be hard to hide from your spouse. I'd like to look at the boxes out there again.”

She left the room, made her way back to the boxes. She started to reach for one, then stopped. “Tim, have you printed this stuff yet?”

“No, ma'am. I just backed out and called you.”

“Are they labeled?”

“Only with dates. They go back a few years.”

Taylor sighed. “Well, we're gonna have to process this entire setup. I'll poke at a couple of these discs, see if I can find anything recent.” She looked around the basement one more time. “I daresay you'll find both Todd and Corinne's prints down here. I want to know if you find anyone else's.”

Taylor picked through the CDs with a pencil, selected a few at random with dates that ranged from 2005-2008, waited for Tim to print their jewel cases, then took the contents with her and started for Baptist Hospital. Tim had called in backup; it was going to take all afternoon to process the sin den, as Taylor had named the Wolffs' playroom.

In the meantime, she still needed to speak with Corinne's doctor.

What in the name of hell was Todd Wolff doing with a mini movie studio in the basement of his house? And just how many more secrets could there be, hidden behind the façade of the Wolffs' perfect life?