Rising Darkness (3 page)

“Ok, have you had anybody who might want to get back at you recently?” Andrews asked.

“Me? Not any more than usual,” Joe replied.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, Detective in my line of work you are bound to make some enemies. There are people who feel you are taking their deals away and there are others who feel that you don’t deserve to be more successful than them. It happens. But no one that I think would want to murder my wife to get back at me.”

“Ok. You can never rule out what might set off a disturbed mind. I’ve seen people get murdered for something as simple as a fast food worker putting tomatoes on a burger when the customer asked for none. So whatever you might think is irrational and trivial, might be the ultimate justification for murder to a psychotic.”

“Jesus, really? Well, I can’t really say of anything that I can think of that might have given someone reason to do this, but again judging by that logic I can think of about fifty people. Hell if someone is that nuts then you could never predict who might be about to go off the deep end and do something like this.”

Joe rubbed his eyes. They were sore and tired. He’d had a busy day and the emotion of everything that was happening right now in front of him was really starting to break him down. He just wanted to go away somewhere far away from everything. But he wanted his wife with him. He wanted his wife to comfort him. He wanted to kiss her one last time and tell her how much he loved her.

The tears that he had been strong enough to hold back so far began to erupt and roll out of the corner of his eyes. He was not sure how much longer he could keep it together.

“I just can’t believe she is gone. I keep thinking of what she might have gone through. How scared she would have been and how much it must have hurt.“ Joe broke down and began to sob in his hands. It was too much. He tried to will these thoughts out of his head, but every thought he had was about her.

“Mr. Payton I have the name of an excellent grief counselor that I’d like you to speak with. We refer people to her all the time and she is really excellent at what she does,” Anderson said as he handed Joe a business card.

This small gesture was a great minute distraction for Joe as he studied the subtleties of the card. The name read Sara Dekker, PhD.

Joe had avoided speaking to a grief counselor after Tori died, but he really wished he had. It had been total hell going through it without the aid of someone. He was raising a daughter and doing his best to put on a face each day that said he had it all together and he was in control. That was the bullet proof syndrome he often displayed to colleagues and business associates. It had worked, or so he thought, but even today he realized that he had never really moved past it.

He made up his mind he was going to talk to Sara Dekker.

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

A forensics tech signaled to Andrews that she needed to speak with him. He excused himself and moved a few feet away. Joe could still overhear the conversation between the two of them.

“You find any DNA or prints at all?” Andrews asked.

“No prints. We haven’t found any foreign hair fibers or anything either. I’m saying there probably isn’t any real evidence here. We aren’t sure yet what kind of weapon exactly was used or any of the other details yet. It will take a few days in the lab to determine that.”

Andrews thanked the tech and returned to where he had left Joe a few seconds earlier.

“So, no evidence, huh?” Joe asked.

Andrews seemed surprised that Joe had overheard. He tried to play it cool, but Joe saw right through him.

“Well, nothing obvious yet. But don’t be disheartened. After a few days in the lab we will probably come up with something. The truth is, it is very difficult to do this to someone without leaving traces of yourself all over them. I’m sure we will come up with something.”

“Thanks for acting for my sake detective, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I know that if a case is not solved within forty-eight hours then the likelihood of it being solved is almost nil.”

Andrews sighed heavily. He looked at his partner Don Stone as if admitting defeat.

“We will find something if there is something there to find, and we will never stop looking.”

Joe was surprised that they were being so nice to him when he knew they had to be thinking of him as the primary suspect. He had to get prepared and get prepared in a hurry. He decided right then that he had to call his lawyer Alex Denton.

“Wow, I can’t believe it man. I just saw her three damn days ago.”

Alex Denton sipped his drink and relaxed back on the couch in Joe’s living room. Joe realized how strange it felt having drinks and talking with his old friend when they were really just mere feet away from where his wife had been murdered the day before.

He sighed deeply and stared outside the opened patio doors that led to the large deck that overlooked a big swimming pool. The house felt strange and empty since this had all happened. It was impossible for him to sleep there. He had tried the first night to sleep in his bed and when that had proved disastrous he had moved to the couch in his home office, but that wasn’t working either. He had eventually started spending a lot of his nights at the apartment he kept in the city in case he ever felt like foregoing the drive home.

“Yea, but you see why I called you,” Joe said.

“Well, yea. I understand why you called me. But do they really seem interested in you as the suspect?”

“They didn’t act like it and they didn’t come out and say it, but I know enough about how cops think. They are going to be gunning for me when that medical examination turns up no evidence. They don’t like for high profile murders to go unsolved, and they especially don’t like for the public to think that a high profile person killed someone and aren’t being put away for it. I’m scared, Alex.”

“I know how you feel. But you have to stop jumping to conclusions. Even if they do suspect you they won’t find a shred of evidence to tie you to the crime. You are innocent so that is impossible.”

“I know, but I’m freaked out anyway. I’m afraid they might just discover something. Anything that would tie me to a crime I didn’t commit.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. My imagination’s running wild.”

“Well, that is your first problem. If you let your imagination get too much hold of you then if the cops do hint at you then it will drive you up into a nervous wreck. That will make you look guiltier than anything. So stop that.”

Joe had to smile. Alex and he had been best friends since college and Alex had been his foremost legal consultant on many of the deals he had put together over the years. The guy also happened to be an amazing litigator, even if he had never really tried a murder case before. Joe trusted him more with his life than anyone else in that courtroom, if it came to that.

“I just miss her so much. I wish that people could see how torn up I am. I would never have hurt my sweet Tracy,” Joe said. He sat down and tried to relax for a moment, but he was just too wound up. He had been ever since the cops left.

“I know man. Now, it will take a few days for the lab to come back with the results to see if there was any DNA or anything on the body,” Alex said.

“Yea, that is what the forensics people said the other day.”

“Right, now if after that you haven’t heard of anything then you should assume you are in the clear.”

“You think they will just let it go and stop considering me? I’m the husband; the husband is always the first person they suspect.”

“The husband is always the first person they suspect because ninety percent of the time the husband did it. But there is usually a mountain of evidence that points right to the guy; in this case it is nothing but a theory.”

Joe took a sip of his beer and tried to relax again. Alex was right; they could theorize all they wanted and hunt for any shred of evidence that they could use against him but at the end of the day he was innocent and there was nothing that could prove otherwise.

He realized all this, but he was going to be a nervous wreck until it blew over. In the meantime he had been busy as hell with notifying relatives and with setting up funeral arrangements. Kirstie had even said she was going to fly in to attend the funeral and to comfort him. She and Tracy had always had a good friendship and she knew that in the wake of her mother’s death Tracy had been good for him and made him happy. She had helped to heal a lot of wounds, and Kirstie had been so good with it all. He had expected her to blame him for trying to replace her mother, but that was not the case at all. He couldn’t wait to see his little girl.

And shocking was the fact that Elena said she was flying down as well. He and Elena barely spoke and to have her on her way down meant a lot. Maybe she had matured a bit at school and was finally realizing that he was not her enemy and that he was not responsible for what happened to her mom.

“So, how are you handling the media frenzy on this thing? You keeping your mouth shut and ignoring the television like the plague?” Alex asked.

“Yea, I’m doing my best, but you know the local news is all over the thing, trying to spark up as much controversy as they can.”

“Yea, those vultures have nothing better to do. That will never change.”

“I haven’t been thinking too much about them. I’m just thinking about who is walking around out there scot free when they murdered my wife a few days ago. That thought is driving me wild. It is dominating my every waking moment. I can’t let it go. If the cops don’t find who did it then I have to.”

Alex looked at Joe solemnly for a few seconds. Joe had seldom seen him look so serious. It was like he was shocked by what Joe had just said.

Finally he spoke. “You aren’t considering something crazy are you?”

“Like what?”

“Like rushing into something that could get you killed too.”

“What are you talking about? If they wanted to kill me then they could have done it by now,” Joe replied.

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about going Dirty Harry and trying to find the scumbag yourself.”

“Well, I’d be full of it if I told you that thought was not racing through my mind a lot.”

“That’s what I was talking about; you can’t do this. Let the cops do their job.”

“The cops? Man you know as well as I do that these cops don’t solve most murders they look into. It’s almost an epidemic.”

“That may be true, but they don’t need another murder to solve right now. Let it go. You are not a cop.”

“I got to do what I feel I have to do,” Joe said.

Alex finished his drink.

“I’ll see what I can find out about the evidence. Just wait until we see where things are heading before we do anything stupid,” Alex said.

“What do you mean we?”

“Well, if you do go rogue on this then I’m going with you.”

The jail cell was the emptiest and most hollow place that Joe had ever known. He had been placed in an isolated cell because of his wealth and celebrity status, but it was still the loneliest place he could ever imagine. It was hot but he felt cold all at the same time. The sweat that poured out of his skin felt like he was being wrapped up in a cold, wet towel and the air had been taken from his lungs to be rationed out a breathful per hour.

He could not wrap his mind around the fact that he was actually in jail. He never thought for real that he would see the inside of a cell. Since Tracy’s murder he had been trying to prepare himself for what would happen if he actually landed in jail, but it had been a stupid attempt. It was much worse than he could have dreamed of. Although, he wondered if it would have been better if he’d been just a regular prisoner and allowed to be in the general population. He knew that he would have been killed instantly since he was a somewhat famous millionaire who hobnobbed with celebrities and he was being held for trial for murdering his wife.

When the cops arrived at his doorstep to arrest him he thought they were joking at first, but he quickly realized that this was no joke and it was no dream. The reality hit home as they placed the cuffs on him and sat him in the back of the dark police car.

They had miraculously found evidence that placed him at the murder scene. It was like something out of a movie. Joe could not believe it. They had found some of his blood at the crime scene. He didn’t know how that was possible. It was ludicrous. He tried to explain this to them, but quickly realized how insane this was. There had to be a rational explanation of this.

It was his house. He bled occasionally from paper cuts and so forth. He imagined that a lot of people did. But the cops believe that this was enough evidence to hold him while they waited for more to place him at the crime scene to secure a conviction.

He had instantly called Alex, who was on his way down to bail him out. Luckily Joe was wealthy enough to buy his way out of trouble for a while and postpone it. That was a small favor he had to praise somebody for.

An hour later he was released and Alex was driving him home. The day was beautiful despite it all and he had to admit the warm sunshine felt heavenly compared to the hot, dank air in the jail. It was horrible in that place and Joe knew that he could not allow himself to go back. He had to find out who was responsible for this and make them pay.

“Someone must have found a way to get ahold of your blood and carefully place it at the crime scene. This is a setup job Joe. I can see it a mile away.”

“Why can’t the cops see it then? Why do they have it in for me?”

“Because it makes everything a nice open and shut case for them that way. That is all they are after. They want to make sure they can close this thing to increase their conviction rates.”

“It’s ludicrous. The murder occurred in my house to my wife. I’m sure there are microscopic fibers and DNA of me on her and her on me even after several days of showers. Married people and family members got to have that problem in this situation.”