Burning Proof Page 6

  He had to be right, she thought. The PD had been her second home for so many years. It was family she was going back to. That alone should smooth out the wrinkle in her gut.

  As Abby drove to the station, she thought of Ethan and his unwavering vision about his place in the world and wondered about her own faltering vision.

  “Sometimes I fear that homicide work will destroy you.”

  Unease swirling inside, part of her feared Ethan was right. The image of the angry, grief-stricken father was seared in her mind. She wanted to pay her respects at the funeral, but the rest of her knew that her presence would be inflammatory. She’d heard that several civil rights attorneys were pressuring Clayton’s wife to sue her and the department for wrongful death.

  Althea’s angry lash out echoed in Abby’s mind verbatim: “How could you take his life protecting that monster?”

  He was only a grieving father trying to make things right for his daughter.

  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”

  Abby jerked as that phrase went through her head. She’d not been able to read her Bible all week and was certain it had been a while since she read Leviticus. If the verse was from that book. She wasn’t certain. It was a random thought from a mind that seemed only able to generate randomness right now.

  At the heart of her distress was the knowledge that she could have been Clayton. She could have rushed forward to take the law into her own hands.

  Worst of all, she still could, if more information came to light regarding her parents’ murders. She’d begun to wonder if everyone was right and she was wrong, if her obsession with finding her parents’ killers had defined her, consumed her, limited her vision.

  Protesters were lined up in front of the station as she drove toward the parking lot. She made no effort to read the signs they waved nor to try to understand what they were chanting. It seemed automatic these days that protesters would spring up after a police shooting. Abby knew in her head that the shooting was in policy. The festering pain she felt was that she couldn’t get the head knowledge to soak down into her soul. It was as if her heart beat with a protest of its own: You were wrong. There should have been another way.

  Abby worked hard to block the indecision and the heart hurt from her mind as she rode the elevator up to her floor.

  “Good morning,” Bill greeted her when she entered the office. “You’re just in time. We got a call.”

  Abby gritted her teeth. Before Clayton, getting a callout the minute she stepped into the office would have jolted her with anticipation. Right now all she felt was dread. Getting back on the horse.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Looks like a double murder in East Long Beach, just occurred. Suspect in custody on scene.”

  She deposited her personal car keys, gathered her crime scene kit, and followed Roper out to the parking lot.

  Roper stopped her at the door.

  “Are you up for this?” His concerned gaze touched her, and razor-thin emotions threatened to slice through. He was a good partner. He deserved a good partner, someone who was firing on all cylinders.

  Swallowing, she said, “I’m fine. A little tired, but fine.”

  He accepted that with a nod and they left the office.

  “You’re quiet this morning,” Roper commented as he merged with 710 freeway traffic, a déjà vu moment of Ethan’s observation yesterday morning.

  “I have a lot on my mind. Ethan left today for a mini mission trip.”

  “Is he still asking you to quit and go with him?”

  She felt him turn her way, but she kept her gaze out the window. “Not so stridently. It was nice to have him around after . . .”

  “I can understand that. If I can do anything for you, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask. My wife would love to have you over for dinner sometime.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that offer.”

  He stayed quiet after that and Abby was grateful. Talking seemed to stir up emotions she needed to tamp down. And working to stay in control made her lose what slim bit of concentration she could muster. She watched the city go by as Bill took the 405 freeway transition and then exited onto Palo Verde in East Long Beach. The address they parked in front of a few minutes later was close to the freeway and not that far from another address in East Long Beach. Luke Murphy lived about a mile away, closer to the college.

  Thoughts of Luke were the only ones that didn’t seem random. While Ethan had been great the last week, Luke understood all of her, especially her past. He saw through the shields she put up. He was like that one strong, tall tower you could run to in order to be sheltered from the storm.

  What would he see now? she wondered. For some reason the man could read her like a book and she’d stopped being bothered by it. It did, however, bother her that thinking of him tweaked her emotions and sparked a longing in the pit of her soul.

  Abby rubbed her forehead for a second before bracing herself and then pushing the car door open. Right now she and her partner owed their attention to this call. I stand for the dead. Even a murder with an obvious suspect on scene needed careful investigation, clearly compiled facts that could be presented in court and ensure conviction of the guilty. Her concentration must be on working this case, not on the shooting a week ago and certainly not on a man who wasn’t likely to be in her life for any reason now that the case that connected them was essentially closed.

  The house was a typical one-story East Long Beach home, with a neatly kept lawn and a short driveway with two cars parked in front of the garage. The entire lot was surrounded by yellow police tape, and curious neighbors gathered in clumps on the perimeter.

  The uniformed sergeant on scene stepped up to greet them. “This looks cut-and-dried,” he said, shaking his head. “You can thank me for making your life easy today.”

  “How’s that?” Bill asked.

  “The wife gave me a spontaneous statement and confessed.” He held up a digital recorder. “I have it on tape. I tape everything these days. Anyway, she caught hubby with his girlfriend and administered her own form of justice.” He made a gun with his thumb and forefinger. “Boom, boom.”

  “Where’s she at?”

  “The backyard. We decided to wait and see if you wanted to talk to her here while she’s cooperating. We can transport instead if you wish.”

  Bill looked at Abby. She knew he wanted her thoughts. The stickiest part of interviewing suspects was getting past the Miranda rights. They needed to be read—Abby had no problem with that—but the hope was always that the suspect would waive their rights and talk. So the timing was the thing. Patrol officers knew never to try to conduct an interview and read Miranda rights if there was any chance the suspect would invoke them and ask for a lawyer. Once a lawyer was requested, there was no interview—period. In general, patrol officers left the advising and the interviewing to the detectives. What the sergeant got on tape, a spontaneous statement, was a gift and admissible in court.

  But the question now was, should they advise her of her rights and get a statement while she was talking or risk the possibility that riding to the station in the back of a black-and-white and then sitting in a sterile interview room might make her shut up?

  The decision would normally be an easy one for Abby, but she stammered. “Uh, let’s . . . let’s see what we have here. Where are the victims?”

  Bill nodded slowly and Abby wondered if he’d disagree.

  “Lead the way, Sergeant.”

  As the officer led them into the house, Abby immediately noticed the cold air. Since the October weather had been warm, it was no surprise the AC was on, but it was downright frigid in the house.

  “Why so cold?” she asked.

  “The AC was on its lowest setting. I don’t know why. We turned it off, but the place hasn’t warmed up yet.”

  She and Bill followed the sergeant as he led them through the house to a bedroom. There, a man and a woman lay on th
e bed, the woman on her back, the man on his stomach. There was an unmistakable odor of blood, a smell that hit hard as she stepped through the bedroom door. As she moved into the room, she could see that both had multiple gunshot wounds to the head and face.

  Anger—raw rage—had pulled the trigger here. The blood was fresh, the spatter still moving down the walls in spots.

  Abby would have studied the scene, absorbing what it had to tell her. Spatter itself could speak volumes. But it wasn’t this crime scene that spoke to her. She rubbed her hands together.

  “He murdered my baby!”

  The voice was so loud in her head, she turned, only to jerk back quickly, hoping the guys hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t. Their concentration was where it should be—on the victims. Abby followed their gazes.

  It looked cut-and-dried, if the suspect had already confessed, she thought as perspiration broke out on her lip in spite of the cool air in the room.

  “Who called 911?” she asked, looking at the two bodies but seeing Clayton Joiner bleeding on the lawn.

  “Our suspect. She said there’d been a shooting. When I got here, she led me to the room and said—” the sergeant hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked toward the bed—“‘The woman doesn’t live here; the man does. I shot them both.’ I asked her for the gun. It was on the table in the kitchen; she’d put it down to call 911. I didn’t ask her anything else. I just had the beat guys take her out to the patio, and I called you.”

  “I noticed the suitcase in the entryway. Hers?” Bill asked, and Abby wondered how she missed that.

  “She told dispatch she’d arrived home this morning from a weekend conference.”

  “She gets home and immediately shoots two people?” Abby hugged her shoulders as the frigid air cut through her thin blouse, battling the hot flash lingering in her system.

  “That’s a 10-4.”

  “No one should bury their ten-year-old daughter,” Joiner had muttered while Abby tried to stop the bleeding and they waited for paramedics.

  “She’s outside?” Abby asked, wanting to shake the flashbacks away.

  “Yep.” He handed Abby a field information card with the woman’s name and information.

  “The gun?” Bill asked. “What was it and where is it now?”

  “It’s been made safe and placed in an evidence bag. It’s a 9mm. She emptied a fifteen-round clip.”

  “I’ll go talk to her,” Abby said to Bill, gripping the card tight, willing all of her concentration to the present, not on what happened a week ago.

  “I’ll take you to her,” the sergeant said and he showed her to the yard. Welcome warm air hit as soon as she stepped out through the sliding door.

  A petite blonde woman sat at a patio table staring at the fence. She wore what looked to Abby to be an expensive gray wool suit, immaculately creased pants, a pale-orange blouse. A matching gray jacket was thrown over another chair. Carla Boston was mostly neat and clean, but for the reddish-brown spots here and there on her nice clothes. Hands cuffed behind her were like the answer to a “one of these things doesn’t belong” riddle. Her legs were crossed and on her feet were a pair of high heels. Considering how many times she’d fired the gun at the two people in the bedroom, she was lucky that was all the blood that got on her. Abby was more concerned with her emotional state.

  “Mrs. Boston?”

  The woman turned.

  “I’m Detective Hart. I’ll be investigating this . . . situation.”

  Boston looked at her and nodded. The patrol sergeant was right. She’d shed no tears over this, at least not recently.

  Clayton Joiner looked as though he’d cried every day of the last two months.

  “Interesting thing to call it—a situation. But then it was an interesting scene to come home to.” There was the hint of an accent in the woman’s voice. Abby couldn’t place it other than to guess it was from somewhere back east.

  She sat down at the table and turned on her own digital recorder and advised the woman of her rights.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll talk.” Impatience, resignation, frustration all bled through her tone. “I don’t care anymore. I thought he was cheating; I just didn’t know with who. Or is it whom?” She couldn’t raise her hand, so she kind of hiked a shoulder and wiggled her head.

  “I came home and caught him with her, of all people. My best friend! He always told me he thought she was frumpy.” She spit the last word out. “I snapped. That was his gun I used. I emptied the thing. At least I think I did.”

  She glared at Abby, her eyes a cauldron of anger and hate, but her voice cold and empty.

  “They deserved it. They were cheaters and I killed them. It’s my revenge and it’s as sweet as a bowl of honey.” She stomped one of her high-heeled shoes on the ground, making a sharp click. “I don’t regret it.”

  Abby had arrested gang members, a serial killer, a wife killer, and murderous thieves, but in all her career she’d never seen such vicious, naked hatred. It slapped at her, made her recoil.

  Clayton Joiner was consumed by grief.

  It took all of Abby’s strength not to get up and run from the backyard, but to stay and complete the statement for Boston. She couldn’t concentrate.

  Abby knew at that moment she needed to get away from work, from murder, until she could sort out the death of Clayton Joiner.

  She could miss something critical and let a guilty killer go free.

  There was too much of that going around already. She didn’t want to be responsible for more.

  “Dr. Collins called me.” Lieutenant Jacoby stood and looked Abby in the eye. “This is because of the shooting?”

  Abby bit her lip, wondering if answering truthfully would label her crazy and eventually get her shuttled to some boring job she’d hate.

  No matter what, even with the turmoil swirling inside, she had to be truthful. “I, uh, I think so. It’s weighing on me. I know I had no choice, but . . .”

  Jacoby watched her. There was no condemnation in his gaze. “I understand. I shot a guy once. He didn’t die, but it affected me, and the court case went on forever. Everybody is a Monday-morning quarterback.”

  She said nothing for a minute, relieved he got it at least on that level. When she’d told Bill, he’d understood immediately. “Take as much time as you need. I can handle our caseload right now. The one today is cake. You’ve been through a lot in the last few months.”

  Did she need to tell them how afraid she was that she would never be a cop again?

  “It’s really been a rough couple of months,” she admitted.

  Jacoby regarded her for a moment. “You’re right; it has been. I’ve signed off on it. File the paperwork with personnel. All I ask is that you keep the line of communication open with Collins. You’ll need to follow up with him before you return to work.”

  With that, Abby left the PD, her home away from home for twelve years. She thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t. She needed to get away from Joiner’s accusing face, needed to find some way to wipe the blood from her hands.

  CHAPTER

  -14-

  BUT DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?

  Molly walked slowly through the market, studying items on the shelf. She was in the cereal aisle. She stepped close, tapping boxes as she read their names, pretending to concentrate on the cereal, but always watching behind. Then furtively checking in front.

  They were watching and staring; she knew it.

  “She’s the one.”

  The woman with the baby—was it really a baby?

  The man stocking shelves.

  The old lady in the motorized cart.

  Molly felt their eyes on her as if they were pelting her with BBs.

  “That’s the girl.”

  She hurried out of the cereal aisle for the dairy products, but that’s where a group of teens were staring—everyone was staring.

  She turned on her heel and broke into a jog, breath cut off by all the sharp eyes, pounding, suffocating her.


  Shoving the bag boy out of her way and ignoring his protest, she fled, hitting her full stride as the doors whooshed open and she was outside.

  “She made it all up.”

  More eyes. She wanted to scream.

  She turned left and sprinted, trying to get away from the eyes, but there was the cross. The evangelical church on the other side of the market, with a large cross in the front.

  God’s house.

  This was all God’s fault!

  God let Molly down in the worst way.

  Because of God she was crazy, and now the cross accused her.

  Molly’s head felt as if it would explode. She stopped and brought both hands to her head, ripping tufts of hair out of both sides.

  She screamed and cut right, into the street, away from the cross and in front of the car she never saw coming.

  CHAPTER

  -15-

  “SORRY, BUT THINGS are bottled up right now.” FBI Agent Todd Orson sat across from Luke and Woody in a small coffee shop in East Long Beach. “The federal government rarely moves quickly.”

  “What’s the holdup?” Luke asked. He was anxious to start the new job working with Orson, and disappointment bit deep.

  “Politics, that’s all. One of the sponsors of the squad has some legal issues to deal with. The situation has shelved the squad for the time being. I’m hoping all will be cleared up by November.”

  “Fine with me,” Woody said. “It’s a kick working with Luke here. We step into the most interesting cases.”

  Orson chuckled. “Yep, Bullet filled me in. Watch out for those spry old fugitives.”

  Luke took the ribbing in stride. “I have no dearth of work to do, but after all the interviews and tests we’ve taken for the cold case squad, I was really hoping to get started.”

  “I know. I do have something for you.” Orson paused.

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “I hesitate to give this to you because I’ll be in DC and I’m not certain I’ll be able to help much. But this woman who writes a crime blog for the high desert has contacted me. I know her because her husband was a Marine. He got home from Afghanistan only to be killed by an irate boyfriend two days later in Lancaster when he intervened in a domestic dispute.”