Murder One (44 page)

He reached for the glass door, but the office interior was dark, and he knew before he pulled on the door it would be locked.

Rowe blew into his cupped hands and turned 360 degrees, considering the buildings. Melting snow had matted his hair. Flakes stuck to the shoulders of his suit jacket. After a few moments he seemed to pick up something, like a dog to a scent, and began to jog with a pronounced limp through the complex, considering the buildings.

The address Jenkins had provided for Lori Andrews turned out to be one of the buildings abutting the lake. Rowe removed his gun, put it in his left hand, and flexed the cold from his right hand and fingers. He held the gun straight down at his side as they approached Andrews’s unit. He had called for backup on the drive, but with the
snow and traffic his backup was likely also fighting both the traffic and the elements. Rowe didn’t seem inclined to wait. The cold had reddened his cheeks. When he spoke, his breath marked the air. “You wait here.”

“Not a chance.” Sloane blew into his own hands.

“That’s right. I’m not taking a chance of getting you killed.”

“We’re wasting time, Detective, and we may not have time to waste. Plus, we’re both freezing out here.”

Rowe grunted, in obvious pain, but moved to the edge of the door to a ground-floor unit. He reached out and banged on the wood. “Seattle Police, Ms. Andrews. Open the door.”

Sloane heard sounds inside, but no one came to the door.

Rowe reached out and banged again. “Seattle Police, Ms. Andrews. Open the door.”

When he still got no response, Rowe stepped out and thrust his black wingtip against the lock. The door flexed but did not give. Rowe kicked again, and the door flung inward but Rowe collapsed, grimacing in pain. “Shit. My hip.” Sloane entered to the left of the door frame then swung around a wall into a living area. The television was on. A wedge of light marked the carpet from a porch light above a back door to the unit, which was ajar.

Sloane pulled open the door and cautiously looked out. Footprints marked the snow-covered porch. Sloane remembered Kaylee Wright’s testimony about a continuous line and followed what appeared to be a set of prints.

With the snow now above his ankles, his feet became so numb they stung. He used a hand to shield his face from the swirling flakes and turned the corner of the building. A man hurried away, slipping and sliding as he approached the well-lit parking lot.

Sloane shouted, “Oberman!”

Felix Oberman looked over his shoulder but trudged on.

“Dr. Oberman. Stop.”

Oberman stumbled and fell. Sloane closed ground. When Oberman tried to get up, his legs came out from under him and he collapsed in the snow. Sloane stopped just short of the man. “Dr. Oberman, stop.”

When Oberman turned, he pointed the revolver at Sloane. “You don’t understand.” The snow had coated his hair and clung to his beard. Beads of water spotted his glasses, but Sloane could still see the tears.

“I do understand,” Sloane said.

Oberman shook his head. Face red, he struggled to catch his breath. “No. I tried . . . I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Sloane kept his hands raised. “I understand,” he said. “You still love her. I know that. I know you love her.”

The wall-length collage had only confirmed what Sloane deduced from their initial meeting, when the doctor snapped, “Hate has nothing to do with this.” Though he clearly had serious issues with his ex-wife, Oberman’s obsession with her had never ended.

“I wanted to stop her. I wanted to keep her from doing it.”

“I know,” Sloane said. “Just put the gun down.”

“She said she had the gun. She said she was going to kill him. I just wanted to stop her. But then the alarm went off and the company called and . . .”

His words choked in his throat.

“Drop it, Oberman. Drop the weapon,” Rowe shouted as he limped forward, clearly in pain. Gun extended, Rowe assumed a shooter’s stance.

“Hang on,” Sloane yelled.

“Drop it, Oberman.”

“You don’t understand,” Oberman said.

“Calm down. Everyone calm down,” Sloane shouted.

“Drop the gun, Oberman.”

“I tried to warn you.”

“Felix,” Sloane said, drawing Oberman’s attention. “Please. Put down the gun. Put it down.”

THIRTY

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S
loane stared through the plate-glass window at the pathetic figure slumped in a chair in the interrogation room. Oberman’s beard lay flat against his chest, gaze fixed on the floor. Andrews was currently seated in the soft interrogation room next door with Crosswhite.

The gun Oberman had pointed at Sloane was a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. Rowe ran the serial number through Data and learned within minutes that the gun was registered to Barclay Reid. After several tense moments, Oberman had let the gun slip from his hand into the snow. When he did, Rowe wasted no time flipping him facedown and handcuffing him. He and Sloane found Lori Andrews hiding in her apartment bedroom, saying Oberman had surprised her. After obtaining a search warrant, Rowe went through Andrews’s apartment and found a pair of size-seven Nike AS 300 athletic shoes.

Rowe pushed open the door and entered the darkened room. “I don’t think he’s going to say anything.” He sat, pulled a bottle of Ibuprofen from his jacket, and popped two pills into his mouth, chewing them.

“He never asked for an attorney?” Cerrabone asked.

Rowe shook his head, grimacing at the aftertaste. “Hasn’t said a word.” He looked to Sloane. “What did he say to you?”

Sloane shook his head. It didn’t matter what Oberman had said. “He said he took the gun to stop her.”

Cerrabone looked at his watch. “I have a meeting,” he said, sounding none too happy about it. The brass band would be gathering again. It would be another long night. “I’ll call you later, he said to Sloane. “I suspect we’ll have something to discuss in the morning.”

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Barclay threw her arms around Sloane’s neck, holding him tight. “Thank God you’re all right.” Sloane had called her from the Justice Center to explain what had happened. She pulled him inside, started to turn the deadbolt, stopped. “I’m not even going to lock it.” She shook her head. “I feel liberated. For the first time since Leenie’s death, I feel safe. Are you okay? You must be freezing. Let me get you a drink.”

“I’m fine.”

“I can’t believe this.” She moved to the living room. “It’s like a bad dream, a nightmare that won’t end . . . only it has. It’s over. It’s finally over.” Reid pulled the bottle of Scotch from the liquor cabinet, taking it into the kitchen. “What did he say? What did he tell the police?”

“He hasn’t said anything. Not a word.”

She pulled a glass from a cabinet and opened the freezer. Sloane heard the clink of ice cubes dropping in the glass. “And the transvestite? Has he said anything?”

“She,” Sloane said.

She stopped the Scotch in midpour. “What?”

“Andrew Lorin is now Lori Andrews. Has been for ten years.”

“Whatever. What did she say?”

“She denies any involvement. She has no idea how your shoes ended up in her closet.”

Reid scoffed. “And I suppose Felix has no idea how the gun ended up in his hand.” She handed him the Scotch.

“Left hand,” Sloane said.

She took her drink into the living room. Sloane followed.

“Oberman is left-handed,” he said.

“You’re right, he is. I’d forgotten.”

“Lori Andrews is also left-handed.” Sloane took a sip of Scotch, feeling it warm his throat and radiate across his chest. The evidence fit with Barry Dilliard’s and Kaylee Wright’s testimony that the shooter’s stance indicated someone left-handed. “How’s your headache?”

“What? . . . Oh, it’s fine. I just needed a couple hours of sleep.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Sloane said.

Her brow furrowed. “You feel sorry for him? That man has put me through hell.”

He moved to the sliding-glass door and watched the snow continue to blanket the streets and sidewalks, piling on the edge of the wooden fence and street lamp crossbars. “He still loves you after all these years, after everything. He still loves you.”

“He’s obsessed. There’s a huge difference between love and obsession, especially when obsessive love becomes obsessive hate.”

Sloane faced her. “That’s why he went to your house that day—to get the gun. He didn’t want you to do it. He didn’t want you to kill Vasiliev. It was his way of protecting you.”

“He said that?”

Sloane took another drink. “That’s what he said. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Knew he would what?”

“You knew he was obsessed with you; that was the power you held over him.”

She crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”

He put the glass on the dining room table. “That’s why you went to the symphony that night . . . to tell him you still had the gun and you were going to blow Vasiliev’s head off.”

“What? I never said that.”

“You wanted him to think you couldn’t help yourself. But you could. You knew exactly what you were saying and you knew what he would do.”

“Did he tell you this? He’s lying.”

“Then he wouldn’t have gone to your house to take the gun, would he?” The logic was so simple, he wondered how he could have missed it for so long. “If you hadn’t said it, he never would have set off the alarm. The security company would have never called.”

“He came on his own,” she said. “He planned this from the start. The two of them planned to frame me. He needed my gun to do that and he knew I owned it.”

“But he had no reason to believe you intended to kill Vasiliev until you told him.”

She threw up her hands, then pressed them together as if in prayer. “Have you gone crazy? What did he tell you to make you say these things to me?”

“He didn’t have to say anything. I told you, he held the gun with his left hand.”

“You’re not making any sense. So what if he’s left-handed? He didn’t even shoot the gun. Andrew Lorin shot it.”

“But the shooter shot with her right hand.”

She shook her head. “What? All of the evidence is that the shooter was left-handed. The tracker, Barry Dilliard . . . they all said it.” She approached. “What is this about?” He stepped back from her. “David, you’re starting to freak me out.”

“The shooter took a left-handed stance, but she wasn’t left-handed. That’s why the foot impressions show she stood there before she moved her right foot forward. She had to think about it. It didn’t come naturally.”

“It doesn’t change the evidence; the shooter still took a left-handed stance. The trajectory of the bullet confirms it.”

“Except Dilliard didn’t have a critical piece of evidence when he performed his analysis.”

“Which is what?”

“The door wasn’t closed when the shooter shot through it. It was open two to three inches, maybe to allow a breeze.”

“How the hell do you know that? There’s no evidence the door was open.”

“The only way Julio Cruz could have left a fingerprint on the sliding-glass-door handle would be because he touched the door. And the only reason he would have touched the door would have been to slide it open to go inside.”

“He didn’t say he went inside. Nobody said that.”

“Micheal Hurley did. Centac had a bug planted inside Vasiliev’s family room. In the rush to get out of there, neither Cruz nor Willins paid
attention to or remembered the door was open a few inches. When Cruz closed it flush with the jamb the bullet hole moved to the right, which lined the hole up damn near perfect if the shooter shot with her left hand. Only the shooter couldn’t have shot with her left hand, because her left hand was heavily bandaged to protect the stitches needed to close the cut from the glass she broke two days before.”

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Pendergrass held the door open as Jenkins, Alex, and Carolyn returned to gather their coats and purses. Sloane had called in updates about the amazing turn of events. After his final call from the Justice Center to tell them he was going to Barclay’s they walked across the street to have dinner and drinks at the Hilton.

It saddened Jenkins that Sloane was not with them to celebrate. He knew it was likely a precursor of things to come. Charlie and Alex had a personal connection with Tina and Jake. They did not share the same connection with Barclay Reid, and Charlie suspected his and Sloane’s relationship would weaken. On the other hand, he was happy for his friend, happy he and Alex had been wrong. They’d doubted Barclay, but only because they cared so much about Sloane and didn’t want to see him hurt. Sloane had endured so much pain in his life, so much angst. He didn’t need any more. Jenkins decided he would never tell Sloane they had looked into Reid’s alibis, and he would never again say he didn’t believe in coincidences. Barclay’s meeting Sloane had not been part of any elaborate plan. It had been, as Alex had said, a chance encounter, the kind that happens all the time—a meeting that leads to a date that leads to another, and before they know it, the couple is telling the story of how they met to their children. Jenkins hoped that was how it would be for Sloane and Barclay. He hoped she would give Sloane another lease on life, another chance to find happiness. Still, he would miss him.

Inside the office, Carolyn set to the task of shutting things down for the night. She and Pendergrass would need to be back early in
the morning. Sloane and Pendergrass would have to appear in court when Cerrabone formally dismissed the charges. Afterward, there would be a press conference. Jenkins wasn’t about to miss it for the world, but Alex had another, greater interest. She was headed home to Camano Island, and snow was not going to prevent this East Coast native from seeing her baby boy.