Chasing Suspect Three (9 page)

“And you two will do rather well, when the
judgment is satisfied. No more than you deserve. I know you think I
helped you somehow with Judge Allen’s decision, but I didn’t
interfere. You won fair and square.”

“I’m certain your influence was quite subtle.
Thank you, Mel. What’s up with Moran? He saw me and didn’t scream
or anything.”

“He won’t bother you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you bother back. He knows something
would come right back at him.”

“Just another man underestimating a
woman.”

“You make him nervous. He’s preoccupied with
politics and finally has his chance to run for the U.S. House. All
thanks to the publicity and the credit you let him take from the
big Bichadel Corporation affair. Now he’s afraid you’re going to
change your mind and expose him by telling everyone the emperor has
no clothes.”

“Indeed, the emperor has no clothes. Moran
couldn’t get a conviction on Jack the Ripper if he confessed. I’ve
no reason to rattle his cage at the moment. Maybe I’ll think of
something.”

“You understand you’re on your own with this
John Larena murder,” Shapiro said. “I’m sorry we’re facing each
other. I’m not on your side in this. I represent the citizens of
the state, and I’m going to be rough on you and your client.” He
leaned back and smiled. “Even though you secretly adore me, you may
not like me so much when this is over.”

She turned in the chair as she noticed his
attention was focused behind her. Sergeant Eddy Jaworski was
standing in the doorway holding up some papers. He was the lead
detective on the Larena murder case. She supposed he and the ASA
had plenty to discuss. Shapiro motioned him in.

“You’re busy, I’ll come back. Oh, it’s
Sandy.” Jaworski greeted her warmly, “I didn’t recognize you from
the back with the pony tail. You look different. Usually your hair
is swished around all over the place.”

“I’m letting it grow out.”

“I’m doing that too.”

“No, you just need a haircut,” Shapiro
said.

“Okay, enough on the hair,” she said.

“We have to catch up, Sandy. Too bad you
never drink with cops.”

“I’ll have a beer with you anytime, Eddy.”
Having a beer with Eddy meant just having a beer, nothing more. He
was about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs, and that was fine
with her. She assumed he was happily married; she’d never gotten
passed the superficial level with him. Maybe she should. He seemed
a very real person and had always been straight with her. They had
a lot of easy-going professional contact in the past; however, this
would be the first time they took sides against each other.

“Glad you came over, Sandy,” Shapiro began.
“We’ve something for you. Obviously, we think your client plugged
her husband. Although it’s not legally necessary for us to provide
a motive, we always throw in a couple. The jurors so dearly love
it.”

Never too early to start defending her
client, she thought. “I’d be surprised if you find a solid motive
for Margo killing him. The separation was quite amicable. In fact,
I don’t believe this is a case of domestic violence at all.”

“You mean if you ignore the fact her husband
shot at her at the Community Center. That would anger many
wives.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t angry, I said she’s
not guilty. Mel, I’m going to make a guess here that you can’t
prove it was John who shot at her. I agree she should be angry with
someone, except it might be someone else.”

“But later she didn’t shoot someone else.”
Shapiro chuckled.

“I’ve got a question for you,” she said. “As
I recall, the police report on the condo shooting states police
found a shell casing. What caliber was it?”

“Can I discuss this with her?” Jaworski
looked at Shapiro who shrugged. “The vic was shot twice. We found
the casings from a .45 caliber handgun.”

“You see, that gives you guys a problem, a
.45 caliber pistol weighs more than my client.”

“I admit it’s a heavy weapon, nevertheless
she could handle it.”

“Do you admit it’s not the murder weapon of
choice for a woman? I’m going to bring a fully loaded .45 into the
courtroom along with a sack of potatoes, which weighs about the
same, and pass it around to the jury. They can decide if a .45
caliber cannon would be the weapon of choice for sweet little Margo
Larena.”

Shapiro leaned forward on his desk. “Fine,
you want something better? As you know, we confiscated your
client’s cell phone, when we arrested her. We dumped all the calls
to see who she’s been calling and who called her. It so happens,
she received a text from her victim-husband a half-hour after the
Community Center shooting. Eddy, can you decipher all that text
message shorthand and read it to her?”

Jaworski searched a file folder for a minute,
and then cleared his throat.
“I missed you tonight, but you
might as well start squirming now because I’m really going to nail
you next time.”

It took a minute for her to digest it.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if Margo had mentioned receiving that
text? Wouldn’t it have been nice if she hadn’t just been blindsided
by Shapiro? She recovered quickly. “Did her phone indicate she had
in fact read the text?” She was grasping at anything.

“I’m not revealing the prosecution’s case to
you.”

“Well, you’re the one who brought up this big
important text message.”

“All right, her phone shows the message had
been read and saved.”

“Are you certain the text came from John’s
phone?” she thought she’d give that angle a try. It must have been
good, because it stopped them.

They gave themselves away by hesitating and
exchanging looks. “We’re still verifying the source. It looks like
it came from his phone.”

“It looks like? I’d love to hear you tell a
jury that it
looks like
it came from John’s phone. You
haven’t been able to locate his phone, now have you?”

Shapiro didn’t answer.

Jaworski changed the subject. “I’d like to
interview your client. You could be present of course.”

“Darn, I’m sure you would have enjoyed it.
Margo Larena is such a wonderfully nice woman.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Shapiro said.
“Then, as you no doubt expected, I’ll proceed directly to the grand
jury. I’ll send you a formal notice. You can change your mind about
any of this, you know.”

“You’re not really sticking with first degree
on this?”

“Hello. We have her leaving the scene at the
time of the murder.”

“Correction, you merely have unreliable
witnesses seeing what they thought might be her, in what might be
her car, leave in the dark of night at an uncertain time, which
possibly was even hours
before
the murder. And, assuming
they are capable of recognizing her car in the dark, are they
certain it wasn’t because she had lived there for a number of
years, and they were used to seeing it parked around there?” She
bit her lip and stopped there. She didn’t want to make a big point
of suggesting Margo wasn’t driving. She didn’t want the police
looking for Richie just yet. She wondered just how much they did
know.

“That’s cute,” he said. “In any case, you’re
moving too fast. Our investigation is not complete. Jaworski just
finished interrogating his sister.”

She tried not to show any reaction to the
mention of the victim’s sister. That would be Claudia Mertens.
Interviewing her could just be routine to learn of her brother’s
actions, associates, friends, and enemies. Usually the police go
out to interview such family members. Shapiro had used the word
‘interrogate’ that to her meant they had brought Claudia down to
the police station. What was their special interest in her?

“First let me get your client indicted,”
Shapiro continued. “Then you can begin tearing my case apart in an
effort to plea-bargain. Do you intend to let her testify at the
Grand Jury?”

“I don’t think it would be in her best
interests. Although, she’d almost certainly make a good
impression.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Shapiro pushed
back from his desk, stood, and smiled at her. “This is your first
murder defense, and you may think you’re off to a fine start. Yet,
you have no idea how much difficult work you have ahead of you,
Counselor. You’re in the big leagues now.”

S
andy left Shapiro’s
office with the name, Claudia Mertens, flashing in her mind.
Shapiro had let slip that Detective Jaworski had just questioned
her, and it seemed more than routine talking to the sister of the
deceased. Now she was wondering if the police thought Claudia had
some special connection to her brother’s murder. She intended to
question Claudia anyway, and had the address from Margo.

After checking her phone for missed calls,
she found Margo’s address and the one given for Claudia. She’d
check out Margo’s place first.

The small apartment building was a dingy
affair on the wrong side of the tracks, as they say. The type of
housing you take temporarily, when you first hit town with empty
pockets, or get kicked out of your house. Margo would have had a
much more desirable lifestyle, if she had swallowed her pride and
suffered the embarrassment of continuing to live with a cheating
husband in their Florida condo. Nevertheless, Sandy would have also
moved out under the same circumstances. So, she not only didn’t
blame Margo, she applauded her.

As promised, the apartment door key was
resting in plain sight, on top of the door molding in the hall.
Once inside, she closed the door behind her and yelled out the
usual, “Anybody home?” She didn’t want to be surprised in a
secluded apartment by Margo’s oversexed boyfriend.

The apartment was decorated in early nothing.
An unremarkable two-room affair with a tiny kitchen nook at the far
end, plus a separate bedroom and bath. Even so, it beat a studio.
Sandy could easily live in such an arrangement, provided she could
scrap all the Walmart stuff.

And it was warm. The weather was humid and
the window air conditioner in the living room was off. She walked
on through to the bedroom. The dresser drawers were in disarray,
and the bed was stripped to the mattress. She remembered the police
had arrived with an arrest warrant for Margo. They search but never
clean up. Not their problem.

She couldn’t resist the urge to nose around
in someone else’s place. Margo’s medicine cabinet was boring with
no occult devices or exotic prescriptions. The small bedroom closet
held no dead bodies and only women’s clothing. Clothes were pushed
to one end and two dresses had spilled to the floor still on
hangers. One was a nice little black dress. She shook them off and
hung them both back up. No evidence of any male in the apartment.
No stray man’s sock under the bed or second toothbrush in the
bathroom. Richie Grant must travel light; or he’d been there and
removed his stuff; or the police took it all for evidence.

As she was leaving, she remembered Margo
telling her that when the police arrested her they might not have
noticed her key ring with a key to John’s condo. She was pleased to
find it there in a brown clay dish on the bookcase shelf just where
Margo said it would be. She tossed it in her briefcase. She didn’t
expect things to go as smoothly at her next stop.

She wasn’t eager to meet and question Claudia
about the murder. She hadn’t experienced such reluctance since her
first assignment years ago as a novice field investigator in
Philadelphia. Normally, she delighted in confronting good people,
bad people, or other people who might give her a piece of the
puzzle du jour. On her investigative job in Philly, a day getting
her clothes dirty was common, even getting them torn wasn’t unheard
of. Door slams in her face were common. And if she wasn’t thrown
out of at least one place during the day, she wasn’t working very
hard.

Who was she kidding? Her reluctance to knock
on Claudia’s door just might have something to do with the
possibility that she and Chip were paired up in the scorching diary
drama.

Claudia’s apartment was a long drive farther
up Holly Avenue and into a quite acceptable old neighborhood where
palm trees paraded down both sides of the street and mature oak
trees were in abundance. Her building appeared to be a large
residence converted into four apartments. The exterior was in good
repair and smartly painted white with dark blue accents.

Near the front door, a small brass-framed
index indicated, C. Mertens Apt 1B. She found the street door
locked. Just as well, she wanted to look around a little anyway
before announcing herself. Or, perhaps she was just delaying facing
the former girlfriend. She drove around the block and almost missed
the shaded entrance to an alley running up behind the apartments.
She parked, walked over, and tried the rear door. Unlocked.

Just as she opened the back door, a thin man
wearing a brown leather jacket stormed out knocking her back out of
the doorway. She needed to hold on to the door to steady herself
and keep from falling backward. She turned to watch him run across
the alley, leap into a late-model silver Buick, and speed away. The
green and white Florida plate was all she caught. The name that
came to mind was Richie Grant.

As she turned back, a short man maybe late
twenties with overgrown red hair was in the doorway, also watching
the man run away. “That guy with you?”

She shook her head, and stated the obvious,
“In a hurry I guess.”

“Did you get a load of his creepy face?”

“It happened too fast. But I loved the brown
jacket. I know a
Versace
jacket when I see one.”

“Should I call the police?”

“Are you a tenant here?”

“I’m not a tenant. I own the place.” His eyes
flicked over her, checking her out from her feet on up. He held out
his hand, “Hi, I’m Billy.”