At Close Range Page 9

  “Are we ready to say the professor’s the true target now?” Ric asked. “Way back in February, the killer or killers couldn’t even know this girl would be living here.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking James Ayers is the true target,” Dani said. “But, again, why? What’s the motive? Even if we assume he was having an affair with this woman back when they worked together in New Mexico, it seems a little late for revenge, don’t you think?” She looked at Ric, who was staring at the board as if some new clue would magically appear. “You still think it’s reasonable the wife is behind all this?”

  “I liked that theory at first, but . . .” Ric looked at her. “I’m liking it less now.”

  “Especially given the money situation,” Sean added. “The wife’s loaded and he’s not. Guy doesn’t even have a life insurance policy. What does she stand to gain from killing him?”

  “Besides getting rid of a cheating husband?” Dani asked.

  “Yeah, but she claims she didn’t know he was having an affair.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Dani said. “I mean, the night of the murder, she was asleep at home when you showed up to notify her of her husband’s death, right?” She looked at Ric.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So, if her husband was due home for dinner, but he still wasn’t home by one in the morning, you’d think she’d be out looking for him or at least calling around,” Dani said. “I know I would.”

  “Unless she’d already figured out he was with his girlfriend,” Sean said.

  “That’s right.” Dani nodded. “Plus, she lied to me when I interviewed her. She said she never met Tessa Lovett, but Oliver Junger says he saw them talking together at the university.”

  “So you think she did know about the affair,” Ric stated.

  “Hell, yes. Women know.” Dani looked at the board. “What she might not have known was that this woman followed her husband here all the way from New Mexico. She seemed genuinely surprised about that.”

  “Okay, then, where are we?” Sean asked. “Who else besides the wife is pissed off enough to want this guy’s dick shot off?”

  “Maybe no one,” Dani said.

  Sean and Ric turned to look at her.

  “I mean, maybe no one’s pissed off at him. Maybe it’s just supposed to look that way. Yes, this man was shot in the groin while he was with his mistress. And, yes, the woman was chased down and shot in the back. We’ve been reading those facts as signs this was a crime of passion, but maybe that’s a ruse.”

  “Like the gun thing,” Ric said.

  “Exactly.” Dani eased closer to the board and studied the timeline. “The killer didn’t do this in the heat of anger. He’s cold and calculating.”

  “He secured the murder weapon months in advance,” Ric said.

  “And he secured a fall guy, Scott Black,” she added. “And then he waited, probably observing and tracking James’s routines until he found just the right moment for the kill.”

  Sean shook his head.

  “What?” Dani asked.

  “A lot of assumptions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this phantom shooter at the firing range, for one.”

  Dani laughed. “How is he a phantom? We have him on videotape.”

  “No, you have some guy walking up to a counter on videotape. And you have Scott Black claiming he was asked to fire that guy’s gun that day. So, what? We can’t even be sure that gun is the actual murder weapon.”

  “Scott said—”

  “That’s exactly my point!” Sean stood up. “Christ, Dani. Be objective for once. He said it’s the same gun, but so what? What do you expect him to say? He’s being looked at for murder.”

  Dani clenched her teeth and stared at the crime-scene photos, trying not to get defensive. She knew Scott hadn’t done this. So she’d taken everything he’d told her at face value. But that wasn’t her job. Her job was to be skeptical.

  Her job was to be a cop.

  “I mean, how can Black even remember all this in such detail?” Sean asked. “We’re talking about some guy he had a conversation with five months ago. I hardly remember the guy who took my coffee order this morning.”

  Scott remembered because he had amazing snapshot memory. It was a survival skill he’d developed during sniper training. He’d told Dani about memory drills in which his instructor would spread random objects out on a table covered by a tarp. The tarp would come off, and Scott would have thirty seconds to memorize every detail before the objects disappeared again and he’d have to draw a picture. Scott’s observation skills were honed razor sharp, so it wasn’t surprising to Dani that he could recall a long-ago encounter so vividly. But she couldn’t say that here. She had to be objective.

  Sean was watching her defiantly, waiting for her to leap to Scott’s defense.

  “Okay, you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “We need to nail down this theory before we eliminate Scott Black as a suspect.”

  “Which means nailing down who the hell this guy is in the video,” Ric said.

  “Right.” She pulled a notepad from the pocket of her jacket. “We have a physical description but not a name. The range doesn’t keep a customer database or even a sign-in log.”

  “Unbelievable,” Sean said. “I have a harder time getting into my nephew’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

  “It’s totally believable,” Ric said. “These are Second Amendment people. You can bet your ass they’re not fans of databases and registries for gun owners.”

  “Okay, whatever.” Dani was getting impatient. “We have a physical description based on Scott’s account and we have the security footage. No footage of the parking lot, unfortunately, so we don’t have a vehicle.”

  Ric’s phone buzzed and he quickly pulled it from his pocket. By his calm reaction, Dani could tell it wasn’t Mia.

  “I need to take this,” he said, and stepped outside the room.

  Dani looked at Sean. “We have a date and time, though. We could try gas stations in the area, see if maybe he stopped to fuel up or get a snack on the way to or from the range that morning. Those places definitely record vehicles coming and going.”

  “Sounds like a long shot.”

  “Try it anyway.”

  “What about you?” Sean asked.

  “I’m still stuck on motive. If the professor is the true target, we need to find out who had a reason to want him dead. I keep coming back to his workplace. If this isn’t a love triangle, then maybe the motive has to do with whatever they’re doing there. We need to find out more about what they’re working on.”

  “Wasn’t Ric going to talk to someone there?” Sean asked. “That guy who hired him down from New Mexico?”

  “Mike Kreznik. And he hired both victims, not just James.”

  Ric walked back into the room. The expression on his face made Dani’s stomach tighten.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That was the university. I’ve been leaving messages for Kreznik, and he hasn’t gotten back to me. Turns out he’s dead.”

  “He . . . what?” Dani gaped at Ric.

  “Killed in a house fire. I was at the crime scene, too. I watched them cart him out of there on a damn gurney. Had no idea it was him.” Ric sank into a chair and ran a hand through his hair.

  “A house fire,” she stated, still not believing it.

  “Damn, what are the odds?” Sean looked from Dani to Ric. “Arson or accidental?”

  “They’re still investigating.” Ric gave Dani a dark look. “But my money’s on arson.”

  • • •

  Dani pulled into the Delphi Center parking lot and scanned the vehicles. No gunmetal-gray Dodge pickup, but she hadn’t expected one. Scott was on leave, possibly unpaid leave, until this case could be sorted out, and who knew when that would happen? With each passing hour, her investigation seemed to be getting more complicated.

  Dani pulled into a space at the edge of the lot and
spotted the person she’d come to see tromping through the woods, trailed by a bedraggled group of students. Dani met them at the lab’s back door, where they piled their shovels and spades into a long, flat tray.

  Kelsey didn’t look surprised to see her, so she’d obviously listened to Dani’s phone message. The auburn-haired anthropologist turned to her students, who were swilling water from bottles and canteens.

  “Group A, you’re on cleanup,” Kelsey said. “Hose down the equipment and spread everything out to dry. Group B, get the bone bins into Lab Three. We’ll be examining them next class.”

  The students swung into motion, sorting through gear and pulling out hoses.

  “Hi,” Kelsey greeted Dani. Her cheeks were pink, and clearly she’d spent most of the day in the sun. “You’re here about Mike Kreznik.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your class.”

  “We’re finished. Come on.” She motioned for Dani to follow her, then took out an ID badge and swiped her way into the building.

  Dani walked alongside her down a cold, dim corridor past a row of windows. Beyond the glass she saw rows of stainless steel tables—empty, thank goodness—and long black counters topped with microscopes and other high-tech equipment she couldn’t identify.

  Kelsey ushered her into an office and nodded at a chair. “Have a seat. I just need to wash up.”

  Dani took a plastic chair opposite Kelsey’s desk. Dani had been in here once before. It was just as messy as Dani remembered, but Kelsey had added to her collection of bone-themed memorabilia, including a skull-shaped coffee mug.

  Kelsey whisked back into the room with a pair of water bottles. “Drink?”

  “Thanks, I’m fine.”

  “Hot out there.” Kelsey pulled off her baseball cap and tossed it aside as she sat down. “So, the remains have already been released to the family, I’m afraid. I can’t actually show you the body.”

  “Not a problem,” Dani said with relief. She was still squeamish from the autopsies. “I’m mostly interested in your conclusions.”

  Kelsey tapped at her computer keyboard and pulled up a report. “Well, as you know, they don’t call me in to do a postmortem unless it’s bad.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Skeletons, floaters, fire vics—those are my typical cases.” She turned to the computer screen and brought up an X-ray image of a skull. “The body was burned beyond recognition and no jewelry was recovered. I used dental records to make a positive ID. Did you talk to Clarke County Fire and Rescue?”

  “That’s why I’m here. Based on their preliminary findings, they don’t think it’s arson. They’re leaning toward an accidental fire, with the point of origin being a hot-water heater with a faulty pilot. At least, they were thinking that until I told them about the connection to the other two murder victims.”

  Kelsey’s brow furrowed. “What connection?”

  “Kreznik worked at the university in the same department as the two people who were recently murdered at Woodlake Park.”

  “The biology professor and his girlfriend.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wow.” Kelsey looked at her screen. “I wasn’t aware of that.” She sighed. “But it doesn’t change my findings. I discovered no indication of premortem injury. That includes bone trauma, lead wipe—”

  “Lead wipe?”

  “Tiny metallic deposits left behind when a bullet passes through bone. Furthermore, fire investigators recovered no bullets or shell casings at the scene.”

  “But can you always tell if there was foul play?” Dani asked. “I mean, what if he was strangled or smothered before the fire, for example? You might not necessarily be able to tell from the bones, right?”

  “Depends. In about a third of manual strangulation cases, we see a broken hyoid bone. That was actually one of the bones that remained intact with this victim. However, if someone put a pillow over his face? Or poisoned him to death and then set his house on fire? You’re right, we wouldn’t see evidence of that from the bones. And the remaining soft tissue was severely damaged in this case.”

  “The fire chief said it looked like he died in his bed.”

  “Correct. The lack of bone trauma, coupled with a lack of suspicious evidence at the scene, such as accelerants, et cetera, led them to believe this was an accidental fire, not arson. Your investigation will prompt them to reconsider that, I’m guessing.”

  Dani’s phone buzzed and she checked the number. Ric. “Sorry. You mind?”

  “Not at all.” Kelsey gestured to the nearby door. “Take it in the lab, if you like.”

  Dani got up and stepped into the adjacent laboratory. She glanced around nervously, but the steel tables were empty, free of any decaying bones or rotting corpses.

  Dani answered the call. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Where are you?” Ric asked, his tone urgent.

  “At the Delphi Center interviewing Kelsey Quinn, who autopsied Kreznik. She’s got nothing to indicate anything other than accidental death. Fire investigators are saying there’s no sign of foul play.”

  “Yeah, don’t be so sure. I’m at the university. Just finished talking to Dr. Oliver Junger.”

  “The man I interviewed yesterday.”

  “Hell of a nice guy,” Ric quipped.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Listen, I got a link between Ayers and Kreznik, beyond the fact that they work in the same department. Junger tells me his boss Kreznik has been a biology professor here for three years. Before that he worked at a place called Trinity University.”

  “There’s an original name.”

  “No kidding. But guess where this Trinity University is located.”

  A chill went down Dani’s spine. “Don’t tell me it’s in New Mexico.”

  “Just outside Albuquerque, same school where Tessa and James used to work. And that’s not all. We’ve got something interesting on the cell phone records. Both Tessa and James placed multiple calls to the same phone number at Trinity the week before they were murdered.”

  Dani stared at the shiny metal table in front of her, her thoughts racing a mile a minute.

  “Dani? You there?”

  “Yeah. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking this case is getting weirder by the minute. All three of them come from the same place and turn up dead in the same week.” Ric paused. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking it may be time for a field trip.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Scott pulled up to Dani’s house and parked. He shouldn’t be here. He was still a suspect, and just the sight of his truck outside her place might get her in trouble. He wanted to talk to her, even though what he needed to do was leave her alone.

  But he couldn’t. He’d never been able to.

  Scott walked up to her door and knocked. She didn’t answer and he knocked again, harder this time. She was definitely home. Her truck was in the driveway and he could hear the TV going inside—news, from the sound of it.

  Finally the door swung open. Once again, she was in yoga pants with her feet bare. Instead of a loose-fitting T-shirt, tonight she had on a skimpy black top that clung to her body.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  She stepped back to let him in, then cast a cautious look up and down the street before closing the door. He thought she was worried about someone seeing him, but then she flipped the bolt.

  His gaze narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She led him into the kitchen and went to the fridge to pull out a frozen lasagna. “You eaten yet?”

  “I’m good.” He leaned back against her counter and looked around. Piles of mail were stacked on one end of the breakfast table. On the other end sat a purse, a phone charger, and Dani’s favorite leather jacket. A small roll-on suitcase stood beside the back door.

  “You going somewhere?”

  “What? No.”

  She was lying ag
ain, but he didn’t know why. She slid her dinner into the oven and set the timer.

  “That’d be faster in the microwave.”

  “Yeah, but it’s better in the oven.” She grabbed a bottle of water from the counter and took a swig, watching him with a wary look in her eyes. “What brings you here?”

  “Bryce Maxwell.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Retired army guy I told you about. He was at the range with me that day your suspect showed up.”

  At the word “suspect” her brow furrowed.

  “I tracked him down and talked to him, and he remembers the interaction.” Scott pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and slid it across the counter toward her. “Here’s his contact info so you can follow up.”

  She didn’t even glance at the paper. “Follow up? On your interview?”

  “That’s right.”

  She stepped closer, and Scott tried not to look at her breasts in that shirt. “You’re not investigating this case. The police are.”

  “You sure?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I can’t talk to you about this. You should know that. You shouldn’t be dropping by my house in the middle of the investigation.”

  For a moment they stared at each other. She looked frustrated, and he took some sort of perverse pleasure in that. He was frustrated, too. About a lot of things.

  “And anyway, you can’t just go around interviewing people.”

  “Oh, yeah? Last I checked it’s a free country.”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Scott! You’re interfering with a homicide investigation and I won’t stand for it!”

  He stared down at her. He was almost a foot taller and probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds. It was ridiculous the way she glared up at him with that challenge in her eyes. Did she think she could arrest him? Take him down? He’d have her disarmed and underneath him in about two seconds. Just the thought of it sent a shot of lust through him.

  He eased closer, but she stood her ground.

  “Stay away from my case,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  “How about you guys try figuring out who murdered two people so I can clear my name and get back to work?”