Justification for Murder (3 page)

“M
ove it, asshole!” Sheila screamed at a septuagenarian taking too long to go through the four-way stop. She stepped on the accelerator a little too hard. The wheels screeched over the asphalt, damp from the night’s rain. Her fingers never stopped scratching her left breast.

I got to stop this itching.
She clenched her teeth. Pink nails left crimson marks on the skin, even though she scratched over the silk blouse.

Sheila steered with one hand through the quaint Willow Glen neighborhood while blurting insults to every person who slowed her down. In less than five minutes she pulled into her driveway, but she didn’t open the garage door. She jumped out of the car, leaving her coat and purse behind.

There were sweat spots under her armpits, and the front of her blouse was fuzzy with a peach-like texture where she’d rubbed the silk. The peacock color of the blouse had lost its shine. Her nails continued scratching, but now her fingers were moving the breast mass from side to side, as if that would help calm the prickling.

She pulled her shirt open, ripping the buttons loose, and lifted the lacy, black bra. Streaks of blood had formed below the skin.

“What the hell’s this?” she asked, looking down at her breast in the mirror. “Why won’t you stop itching?”

Sheila opened the right cupboard under the sink and rummaged around. Nothing. She searched the left one but couldn’t find what she was looking for. She saw a tube of topical ointment. She picked it up and stared at it. The word “itching” screamed at her as if it were bold and flashing. She squeezed half a tube in her hand and spread the cream over her breast. The momentary relief felt glorious. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. A few seconds later, the itching started again.

With her free hand she pulled her auburn hair back, twisted and tied it into a loose knot, unwilling to stop scratching with the other.

She looked around, her eyes darting from the sink to the mirror to the towel hanger, trying to figure out if there was anything that would help her stop the itching. The sweat now stained her entire blouse. She pulled open the shower curtains so hard that one of the rings came loose from the bar.

“Ah, yes,” she said. Her brow relaxed briefly. “This should work.”

She grabbed the large tortoiseshell comb and began to scratch her breast with it, harder with each stroke, pushing past the raw nipple.

“Please, stop,” Sheila begged, gritting her teeth. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

She descended the stairs, tripping on the last step and falling onto the floor. She got up, kicked her shoes loose and headed toward the kitchen, knowing what would finally help ease the itching much better than the comb.

Mocha walls covered the spacious living room. The timid morning sun entered through the east-side windows. She passed a large, dark dining table and headed straight to the state-of-the-art kitchen island. She circled around it and grabbed the Henckels stainless steel barbecue fork. The comb fell to the floor, but Sheila didn’t hear it clink against the Spanish tile. All she could think about was the feel of the cold metal on her distressed skin.

“Ahh,” she said, but the cool metal became less cold with every pass. The tips left red pathways as they moved over the dermis into the flesh, and blood started dripping down her ribs and stomach, soaking the waist of her herringbone pants. Sheila leaned against the marble countertop and rolled her eyes backwards, as if she were having an orgasm.

With the help of both hands, the fork continued to move, faster at first, deeper. Sheila’s knees became weak and she slid, sitting down on the floor, without losing a stroke. Blood spurted out with each heartbeat, staining her slacks, overflowing to the floor. Small strips of flesh and fat hung from the open wound. She didn’t feel pain, only the burning itching that wouldn’t go away. She continued rubbing, digging. The fork punctured her lung and her hands slowed down until they didn’t move anymore.

D
etective Lynch’s desk was covered with files. When he moved to Silicon Valley from Seattle, he had expected the technology age to have reached the government agencies. It hadn’t. He was happy to see that at least nobody used typewriters anymore, but many of his coworkers still pecked at their keyboards.

“Hey, Lynch, I heard you let the perp escape last night,” Detective Sorensen said, passing by his desk too fast for his bulky frame.

Darcy ignored him, pretending to concentrate on the report he had to write about the incident but hadn’t started yet.

“Seriously, dude, what happened? He sneaked out by moving past your bad eye?”

“Fuck you,” Darcy murmured, not looking up. “Don’t you have some parking tickets to write?”

Sorensen faked a laugh on his way to the kitchen. Everybody else pretended to work, but Darcy knew they were thinking the same thing.

He finished his coffee in one gulp and stretched. Sleeping only three hours never did him any good. He went to refill his cup, passing Sorensen on the way, and headed toward the boss’s office.

“You have a sec?” he asked after knocking on Captain Virago’s doorframe. He knew it would have been better to show her a finished report, but he didn’t feel the literary inspiration necessary to write it.

The woman looked up over her narrow reading glasses and removed the tip of the pen from her lips. “Sure.” Her tone was more annoyed than inviting, but he decided to ignore it. She claimed to have an open-door policy, but she always seemed irritated when you took her up on it.

Darcy sat on one of the chairs across her desk and tasted his fresh coffee. He grimaced when the flavor hit his mouth. He missed the coffee from Seattle. He placed his elbows on the armrests, but the right one slipped. He was glad he was holding the coffee in the other hand. He took another sip.

After a few seconds of silence, Captain Virago looked up again, sighed and put the pen on of the pile of papers.

“What’s up?”

He sipped one more time, just to make a point. When he knew he had her full attention, he said, “You know I moved here because I wanted to do simple stuff, right?”

She stared. Not a single muscle in her face moved.

“I wanted to come to a warm place where an extra hand could be useful, but where there wasn’t too much excitement going on.”

“You should’ve moved to Europe, then.”

“The point is,” he said, ignoring her, “that you need to assign the Meadows case to somebody else.”

“No can do.” She shook her head violently.

Darcy thought she was overdoing it on purpose.

“There’s something going on there. The worst thing is, I actually believe that she has no clue why somebody’s trying to kill her.”

“You checked the boyfriend’s uncle angle?”

“I’m on it, but it’s a stretch.”

She looked down at the pile of files and picked her pen back up. Then, before she got back to work, she looked at him and said, “Lynch, if you wanted to retire by the beach, why did you come to work under my command?”

“Captain, I’m telling you, somebody’s trying to kill this woman, and I’m not the man to figure out who or why. If you don’t put somebody else on this case, she’s going to die.” Before she could protest, he added, “And your stats will go up.”

Her eyes narrowed, but it was hard to feel the venom through eyes the color of honey. He managed to slip out of the office just in time to hear the pen hit the door as he closed it behind him.

T
he alarm went off, but Saffron was already awake. She’d checked the visiting hours of the hospital before going to bed and wanted to be there as soon as she’d be allowed in. Her entire body ached with the stale adrenaline from the accident. After the fastest shower Saffron had ever taken, she dressed and headed to the hospital with her hair still wet.

She browsed through email while traffic moved at less than five miles per hour. There were several emails from Vincent, her boss, and over a hundred others she’d have to go through as soon as she got to the office, if she decided to go.

The visitor parking was full. She had to go around a few times before a spot opened. The hospital, however, was not as crowded as she had expected from the lack of parking spaces. A few nurses and doctors dotted the hallways, speaking in low voices as if they didn’t want to wake the ill. Her heels clicked on the floor and she cringed with every step, swearing to wear flats the next time. The door of Room 305 was open, but before she got all the way inside, she stopped, almost too fast. An older Indian man was sitting by Ranjan, just where she’d been the night before. He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and watery.

“Hello.” She wished she hadn’t come. “I’m Saffron Meadows.” She wished Ranjan had told her uncle about them. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I know who you are.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised, almost hopeful. She extended her hand. He never took it.

“How’s he doing?” she asked, shoving her hand inside her jeans pocket.

“He’s resting.”

She took a few steps to get closer to the bed, dragging her feet so the heels wouldn’t click.

“He’ll wake up soon,” Saffron said, reaching for Ranjan’s foot.

“He already did,” the old man said, but his voice was bitter.

“He has?”

She wanted to rush to Ranjan, hug him, hold him, kiss him and make him wake up in her arms. But before she could move, Manoj Balasubramanian said, “You need to leave now, Ms. Meadows. He needs to be with his family.”

“Mr. Balasubramanian—”

“Miss Meadows, please,” he said, pointing to the door with his open hand.

Ranjan stirred just as Saffron was fighting the urge to challenge the man. She got closer and put both hands on the cold metal bar at the end of the bed. Dr. Balasubramanian saw it and twitched but quickly turned to his nephew and grabbed his hand.

“How are you, Ranjan?”

“I have a really bad headache.” He smiled at his own bad joke. “We were in an accident, right?” he asked, looking at Saffron.

“Yes.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other a couple times. She didn’t know how much his uncle knew, or how much he blamed her for.

“When am I getting out of here?” he asked no one in particular.

“I talked to the doctor,” Dr. Balasubramanian said. “You had a concussion and they want to monitor you for another twenty-four hours or so, but the MRI didn’t come up with anything to worry us about.” His Indian accent was more noticeable the more he spoke.

Ranjan looked at Saffron. His eyes were sweet, but his face offered an apology. She looked down, knowing exactly what he was asking her to do.

T
here were no prints on the car. Nobody had observed anybody suspicious, and although many had seen plenty of men dressed in black around the stolen-car owner’s neighborhood, most were either going to, or leaving, their homes. Darcy had gone back to Highway 17, now open to traffic, to try to find something, anything, CSU might have missed. But that was just wishful thinking. He knew there was nothing there that would break the case.

Before returning to the office, he decided to pay a visit to Ranjan’s uncle. He was a professor of applied economics at Stanford. He called the university department, and a nice elderly voice told him that Professor Balasubramanian was at the hospital, visiting his nephew.

Darcy turned around and backtracked a couple miles toward Good Samaritan Hospital. This way, he would be able to talk to Ranjan and his uncle at the same time. He found parking right away and walked straight to the room. At least this time he knew where he was going.

He wondered if Saffron would be there. She seemed very eager to be with her boyfriend, even after the fight. But when he arrived, he only found two men engaged in a lively conversation about economic bubbles.

“Hello, I’m Detective Lynch, with the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office,” he said, focusing his attention on Ranjan. “I would like to ask you a few questions about what you remember from last night.”

“Can’t this wait?” The older man turned toward him, squaring his shoulders.

“Mr…?” Lynch asked, even though he knew who he was.

“Dr. Manoj Balasubramanian. I’m Ranjan’s uncle.”

“Nice to meet you.” Lynch extended his hand. The man took it, but his grip was weak. “As you can understand, we’re trying to figure out what happened. We don’t think this was an accident.”

The old man’s face showed surprise. It looked genuine. “You think somebody tried to hurt Ranjan?”

“Or Miss Meadows.”

Dr. Balasubramanian winced. Lynch asked Ranjan to tell him what he remembered, and his account was very close to Saffron’s, except he was already unconscious when the man came to take Saffron out of the car and wasn’t able to provide any description of the perp.

“Do you have any idea why anybody would want to run you off the road?”

“No. No idea.”

“Can you think of any?” Lynch now asked Dr. Balasubramanian.

“Me? No, of course not. But who knows what that woman may be involved in.”

“Uncle, please,” Ranjan said, his voice more tired than exasperated.

“Why would you say that?” Lynch pushed.

“Detective, please excuse my uncle. He doesn’t mean anything by it.” Ranjan shook his head but stopped almost immediately.

“I would like to hear what he has to say,” Lynch said to Ranjan without breaking eye contact with the older man.

“I am sorry, Detective. I didn’t really mean anything by it. I do not know that woman.”

“You don’t know her or you don’t like her?”

The doctor in applied economics thought for a few seconds, probably weighing his possible answers. Finally, he said, “Both, Detective. I met her this morning for the first time in my life, but I do not like her, nor do we wish her to be involved with my nephew in any way outside of work.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Ranjan’s family. We have better plans for him.”

“How far would you go to ensure that Miss Meadows is out of Ranjan’s life?” Lynch asked.

“Whoa, what are you implying?” Ranjan interrupted.

“I’m not implying anything. I’m simply asking your uncle a question.” Lynch kept his eyes on the PhD.

“I am a professor at Stanford. I’m not a stupid man, Detective. I can have an intelligent conversation with my nephew and make him understand his erroneous ways. I do not need to run anybody off the road, especially not with him in the car. That would be incredibly senseless.”

“Can you tell me what you were doing from ten to one in the morning last night?”

“I had a poker game with a group of professors. It is a monthly game, so you can check with them. I left a little past midnight. The game was in Palo Alto. So, as you can see, it would have been impossible for me to run Ranjan off the road close to Santa Cruz at the same time.”

“Thank you. That should be easy enough to verify. Can you give me the names of the people you were playing with yesterday?”

The professor gave him four names. Darcy wrote them down in his black notebook.

“Any large sums of money leaving your bank accounts lately?” he pushed.

“Detective,” Ranjan protested. “Seriously, my uncle didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Darcy ignored him and waited for Dr. Balasubramanian to respond. After a few more seconds of pregnant silence, he did.

“No. I will talk to my lawyer and give you access to my accounts if this is really necessary.”

“That would be greatly appreciated.” Darcy gave both men a business card and thanked them for their time. “I hope you recover soon,” he said, looking at Ranjan’s bump on the forehead, which was still dark purple.

About half an hour later he was back at the office, sitting at his desk. He’d been mulling over the conversation with Ranjan and his uncle during the drive. He’d check the alibi, but he was pretty sure the old man didn’t have anything to do with the case.

It’s not even my case
, he thought.
I don’t want it to be my case
.

Darcy turned the computer on, and Saffron’s picture from LinkedIn stared back at him. Her faint smile encouraged him to keep looking, to help her, even if it was only until somebody else could step in.

He’d run through her entire background, trying to figure out why somebody would want to kill her. There was nothing. She had graduated from Berkeley with a business degree ten years ago and had hopped companies in the Valley every few years. Facebook had a few pictures from past vacations and a couple with ex-boyfriends, but there was nothing there that indicated animosity from anybody in her life.

Lynch had also checked out Ranjan and was surprised to find he was five years younger than Saffron. He wondered if the uncle’s reticence toward her had more to do with her age than her race. Ranjan had come for college and lived with his uncle until he graduated. He hadn’t quite fulfilled his family’s expectations yet, as he had only managed to get his MS in computer science, not a doctorate. Besides two very typical profiles for the Valley, he came out as empty with LinkedIn and social media as he had with his search on ViCAP.

“It happened again,” Sorensen said, bringing him out of his daze.

“I swear I started a new pot of coffee when I took the last cup,” Jon said, the last intern they’d managed to get on board before the budget went dry for background checks.

“Not that, you idiot. We got another suicide.”

“The boob thing?”

Sorensen’s steel-blue eyes descended on Jon and stayed there until the young intern’s cheeks turned red with heat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Before he could finish his apology, Sorensen slapped his shoulder a little harder than needed. “Just remember this next time you have something clever to say about a case.” He said and walked to the hallway.

Darcy followed him. Anything was better than staring at a computer screen and not knowing how to proceed. “Are you investigating, then?”

Sorensen stopped in front of the vending machine and got a Red Bull. “We got three. Too many for a coincidence.”

Darcy filled his cup with black coffee and took a gulp, even though it was steaming. He squinted as he felt the hot liquid descend to his stomach. He didn’t say anything.

“How’s your hit-and-run-turned-attempted-murder going?”

“Nowhere. There seems to be absolutely no reason why somebody would want to kill this woman. Especially not bad enough to try on the highway and then again at her place.”

Sorensen shook his head. His blond locks swung back and forth. “Man, the world’s becoming a weird place.”

“You’re quite the existentialist,” the captain said, a few feet away. “In my office. We need to talk about this,” she said, tapping a set of files in her hand.

“You’re going to write me up for bringing some quality philosophy into the workplace?”

“Bring Jon too. We can use his help.”

“No, not Jon. He’s too green.”

“Sorensen, this is a suicide. There’s probably nothing to investigate.”

“Right. That’s why we’re going to your office.”

Sorensen looked back at Darcy. “I’ll trade you,” he said.