Rite of Wrongs (13 page)

T
WENTY
-F
IVE

Thursday, 10:00 a.m.

Miriam was nearly late to work the next morning. She wanted to blame girls’ night out for her cotton-ball head, but she’d only had the one drink with Nikki, needing to be sober for what lay ahead. Considering how that had gone, she probably should’ve ordered an entire pitcher of margaritas and downed them all by herself.

No, the thick exhaustion she couldn’t find her way out of was lack of sleep, pure and simple, though this time the cause wasn’t nightmares as much as guilt.

A whole lot of guilt.

Augie was right. She hadn’t extracted herself from anything.

If not for him, she’d be dead.

That domestic-violence call five years ago had taken them to a cottage in Victory Landing, an older neighborhood where
F
OR
S
ALE
signs were rarely seen. Miriam knew this to be true because she’d tried to buy there when she’d first moved to Union Park.

The couple involved were fighting over custody of their four-year-old twins. A boy and a girl. The father had given the mother the house, the house’s contents, the Land Rover, the Great Pyrenees. All he wanted was joint custody. But he was a high-functioning schizophrenic, and she wasn’t having it, no matter the expert testimony as to his fitness his attorneys had produced.

When Miriam and Augie arrived, they found the wife alone in the kitchen. She’d told them the children were sleeping, that her husband had left through the kitchen door after she’d called the police. The responding officers corroborated her story.

All of them had been wrong.

While the woman had been seeing to the twins and waiting for law enforcement, her husband had sneaked in the way he’d left. Miriam had done a quick walk-through of the house once she and Augie arrived. She’d done a cursory check of the spare bedroom’s closet.

She hadn’t been thorough enough. Then again, she’d had no reason to know about the door in the back behind a rack of winter coats that opened into a gun vault.

She and Augie had been getting ready to leave when the man entered the kitchen with a shotgun. Augie had moved to protect the man’s wife while Miriam had tried to talk him down. The man had turned the weapon toward Miriam. He’d pulled the trigger too soon. The shot had hit the ceiling.

Augie had killed him while he’d tried to rack another round.

That was hard to live with. How close she’d come to losing her life because she’d spent more time clearing the room with the sleeping kids than the one where their father had hidden.

She didn’t regret seeing to their safety, but it was tough facing the fact that Augie had taken a man’s life to save hers. Augie, who’d told her on the way to the first of hundreds of calls they’d responded to while partnered, that he was determined to retire without firing a shot.

He’d hated carrying a gun. His reserve went to his moral fiber. Of course, he would use his weapon if he had to, but he was proud that he never had.

And he was right. She hadn’t apologized. Then again, she hadn’t seen him—or searched him out—to do so. His silence when he’d walked out of the ER had made it clear they were done. Going after him would’ve opened the wound he’d let heal the only way he knew how.

Filling a Styrofoam coffee cup from the cold-water dispenser, she started back to her desk. She needed to go through the most recent notes she’d made and get back on track. Yesterday’s unexpected assignment from Judah had thrown her schedule for a loop, and she—

“Rome!”

Crap.
She turned toward her boss’s office. “Yes, sir?”

He didn’t look up but kept rifling through the stack of papers in front of him. “You get a chance yet to talk to Treece?”

She nodded. “I saw him last night at Saint Mark’s.”

Judah grunted, setting the papers aside to lean back in his chair. “I keep meaning to get by for a service. I’d like to see him in action one of these days.”

He’d had eighteen hundred or so since Augie had left the force. It obviously wasn’t a bucket-list item. For her, either. She’d timed her arrival at the church with the departure of the congregants, slipping into the pew as most were walking out.

She just hadn’t counted on whatever meeting had kept Augie late.

She should’ve figured a better way to approach him, because the man in front of her was not going to be happy. “He said no.”

“No?” Judah frowned, his forehead an accordion of wrinkles. “You explained to him what we’re facing?”

“He didn’t give me a chance.” Their whole conversation . . . God, could anything have gone more wrong? It was like both of them had been waiting five years to strike out, to toss blame like monkeys tossing shit. “He said he couldn’t help.”

His frown deepened. “He decided that without knowing what you’d come for?”

“He’s not interested.” She shrugged, picturing Augie standing in front of her using a Bible as a weapon to keep her at a distance. “What can I say?”

“That’s easy,” he said and went back to his paperwork. “You can say you’ll try again.”

She took a deep breath, knowing it was a waste of time to argue. Then she argued, anyway, because repeating the errand meant she was a fool. “Boss—”

“Don’t give me any lip, Rome,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Your degree may get you inside people’s heads, but Treece’s gets him into their souls. I want to know about these Scriptures. What’s the biblical context? What do they mean?”

Ask her, it was pretty obvious: Somebody had mommy and daddy issues. Then again, Augie might be more help than she wanted to admit. He’d been a hands-on expert on dysfunctional families, after all. She wondered if he still was.

If his new vocation had changed anything on the home front—

“Rome?”

“Yes, boss. Sir. I’m on it.” Though she didn’t know why he didn’t just call Augie himself.

He pointed at her with his pencil. “Today, Rome. Bring me back a yes.”

“I’m not a miracle worker, sir.”

“Do it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and turned toward her desk, thinking another visit to Augie wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Whatever she’d had with him was done. Last night proved that.

Last night had proved a lot of things. That forty-five was an amazing age for a man. He’d looked so good.
So
good. There were a few new gray strands at his temples, but his dark hair was still thick, and he wore the collar well.

That didn’t surprise her. He’d always looked good in black.

What did surprise her was how he didn’t seem to have missed her at all. And how she’d missed him so much twelve hours later, her heart still hadn’t stopped its crazy-mad beat.

T
WENTY
-S
IX

Thursday, 10:20 a.m.

Once at her desk, Miriam opened her traveler’s notebook to look at the bullet points left unresolved. She hadn’t had a spare minute since she and Melvin had responded to the call at the Dickeys’ trailer two days ago, so she reached for the phone to dial animal control.

She’d planned to check in with them Tuesday afternoon, but almost as soon as she and her partner had returned to the station, they’d gotten the call from Dorothy Lacey’s caretaker.

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

After leaving her request and her contact information, she called the number she’d been given by Edward Lacey’s assistant and explained to the event coordinator for the sales meetings he’d attended that she needed to make sure he did indeed attend. The woman took her info and promised to get back to her.

That done, she logged into the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunication System to do a background check on Gina Gardner. Melvin had been looking into the three foster children with no last names. As soon as she was done here, she’d see what he’d found.

Then, she’d go talk to Augie again.

Ballard interrupted her before she reached the TLETS password field. “I’ve got something here you’re going to want to see.”

“What’s that?” she asked as he rolled his chair into the aisle, then onto her floor mat. He spread out the folder he’d brought with him on her desk. It contained a printout of Franklin Weeks’s personal checking account as well as that of the Paisley Cricket.

“Remember me telling you what a couple of the kids waiting tables at the bistro said? That rumor had it the place was in trouble financially? Some of them were already dealing with having their hours cut. Others had left for new jobs.”

Ballard had been the one to visit the bistro after leaving the Weeks crime scene while Miriam had talked to Alejandro at the station. “Alex mentioned that, too. When we talked here. But he didn’t seem particularly concerned.”

“And with good reason, I’m guessing. Look at this deposit,” he said, jabbing a finger at an amount credited in April to Franklin’s account.

A fairly hefty amount. She looked up at Ballard, then glanced at Melvin who’d joined them from his cube. “Forty thousand dollars?”

Ballard gave her a sharp nod. “Now, look at the memo section on the slip,” he said, showing her the enlarged version, handwritten as fewer and fewer banking transactions were.

“For TPC from GG.” Adrenaline smacked hard. Man, she loved it when puzzle pieces clicked. “TPC is obviously the Paisley Cricket.”

“And the GG has got to be Gina Gardner,” Melvin said.

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Ballard sorted through the papers and found the sheet with the front and the back of the canceled check. “Did you ask the boyfriend if he or Frank knew the Gardners?”

Miriam nodded. “He said the name didn’t ring a bell.” There was no phone number on the check and the address was in Union Park, but it did not belong to the doctor. More curious than that, however, was the name on the account.

“Now,” Ballard said, swiveling in his chair and looking from Miriam to Melvin and back, “who the hell is Sameen Shahidi?”

“I may have been late to this party,” Melvin said, leaning a hand on the back of Miriam’s chair. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that name somewhere in the case file.”

Ballard gave a grunt. “Yeah, I just can’t place it.”

Miriam knew it, too. She reached for her traveler’s notebook and flipped to the page of boxes left to be cleared. She turned the book around, holding up the sheet for Melvin and Ballard to see. “One of the nurses at Dr. Gardner’s clinic. Sameen Shahidi.”

“B-I-N-G-O,” Melvin said as he dragged his chair over.

A tingle set up along Miriam’s spine. “Last I checked, Ms. Shahidi had yet to return to work since Gina’s murder. Interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

Melvin settled into his seat and leaned back. “What do you know about her?”

“Not much of anything,” Ballard said, before Miriam looked at her partner.

“Ike and I interviewed the clinic staff the day after the murder. Sameen and another nurse were out. I stopped by later in the week and talked to the one, but Sameen still wasn’t there. I called again Monday morning, but no dice.”

“Okay, then.” Melvin rubbed his hands together. “I’ll start with the clinic. See if she’s made it in, and pay her a visit at home if not. All the info’s in the file, yes? Where to find her?”

Miriam nodded, saying, “Thanks, Ike,” as Ballard pushed his chair back to his desk. She turned to Melvin then. “Don’t mention the money. Just ask her about the doctor’s wife. If she’d seen anyone suspicious around the office. Find out where she’s been. That sort of thing.”

“And while I’m doing all this, where will you be?”

“I’ve got something to do for Judah. I’ll check in with you when I’m done playing errand girl. We’ll grab lunch and compare notes. I want to know what you’ve learned about the foster children, too.” His expression said she wasn’t going to like it. “Don’t tell me it’s that bad.”

He got to his feet and slipped on his suit coat. “Depends on whether or not you define nothing as bad.”

T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

Thursday, 12:50 p.m.

Miriam didn’t leave the station until long after Melvin was gone. The TLETS hadn’t given her anything on Gina Gardner, so while there, she’d checked on Franklin Weeks. She’d come up with the same result.

Either the victims had been better behaved as children than Edward had implied, or Dorothy had meted out any punishment they needed on her own terms. Somehow, and only knowing Dorothy now, Miriam didn’t have a bit of trouble believing that.

Animal control had returned her call while she’d been looking into her victims’ criminal backgrounds. A month ago they’d had a cluster of reports of small dogs gone missing in the Bend, but there’d been nothing on dead ones or mutilations. The missing ones hadn’t raised a red flag. They were used to animals disappearing out there. Some running off looking for attention. Others heading into the woods to hunt, and ending up as roadkill on Interstate 10.

And, yeah. They knew torture was a whole different thing.

That had Miriam checking crime stats in the area. Drug arrests there were higher than in the rest of Union Park, as were domestic-violence calls. She didn’t need a database to tell her that, either. But there was nothing ritualistic in any reports to explain the missing dogs.

Next, she pulled up Google Maps and typed in the Dickeys’ home address. She used that as a starting point, zooming out to look at the neighborhood as a whole. The streets were laid out haphazardly, having been cut across the prairie in the days before county planning.

She switched to satellite view, moving the map to the east. She zoomed close over the roofs of mobile homes, the tops of pickups and sheds and RVs. At the edge of the Bend was a convenience store that she knew had a cashier’s cage made of ballistic glass. Selling gas was its primary business. Even the aerial view showed a vehicle at every pump.

She scrolled down to the next major corner and found herself staring at the steeple of the First Baptist Church. She blinked, then blinked again. Hadn’t Edward Lacey said he attended there? Though Tri-County was closer? He’d said something else . . . she flipped back through the notes she’d taken in his office. There:
You get used to a place.

So the church was farther from where he lived now, but he was used to it? Did that mean he’d attended church in the Bend because that was where he’d grown up?

She tapped two fingers rapidly against her desktop. She needed to look at the county property records. She needed to see if the Lacey family had lived—

“You still here, Rome?”

Shit.
She looked up as Judah leaned a forearm against her cubicle wall. “Sorry, sir. I was following up—”

“Follow up after you see Augie again.” He stood there, unmoving, giving her no choice but to drop what she was doing and go.

“Yes, sir. On my way.” She got to her feet and grabbed her belongings, at the last second reaching for a sticky note and jotting the words
property records
so she wouldn’t forget.