The Chilling Spree (16 page)

“Noon?”

I nodded.

“Shit.  Nothing’s ever easy, is
it?  We were all together at noon yesterday.  We were
talking the logistics of this two date set with the techs.”

“When did the meeting start and end?”

“Eleven.  We finished by about
one-thirty.”  Madden gripped my hand.  “I just gave the
son of a bitch an alibi, didn’t I?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.  “At least for
the time being.  Mr. Madden, would you be willing to talk to
Johnny Orion and tell him what you just told me – officially, on
the record?”

“Of course I would!  Christ, when Theo
finds out that Kyle is… shit.  We’ll cooperate in any way you
want, you have my word.”

I started wondering if Kyle, aka Kylie, was
the deep dark family secret that Underwood insinuated was the bit
of information that Madden would do anything to keep hidden. 
Suddenly, the straightforward hate crime seemed a little murkier
than it had a few hours ago.

 I sucked in a deep breath and felt the
need to utter a silent prayer to the universe that Johnny would let
me speak without going ballistic that I spent any time alone
talking to Underwood and Madden. 
Please let the
information I unearthed override his insane jealousy.

Crevan held one arm out over the elevator
door and waited for my snail’s pace to cross the threshold. 
“Calm down, Helen.  You act like you’re facing the
gallows.”

“It would be helpful if I could get you to
promise not to tell him anything that’s gonna make him go
ballistic.”

“Oh, like this upcoming dinner date you made
with a notorious womanizer?”

“I highly doubt that will happen now that
Madden knows it was his nephew who was murdered yesterday. And for
the record, I never agreed to have dinner with him, Crevan.”

“We’ll see I guess. And for the record, you
never turned Madden down either.”

The elevator chimed at the penthouse level
of La Pierre Tower.  Johnny was waiting in the
vestibule.  His eyes raked over me suspiciously.

“Oh for God’s sake!”  I yanked the
collar of my blouse away from my neck.  “I wasn’t even
mauled.  Happy now?”

The corners of his lips twitched, in humor I
hoped, but something in my gut told me he was not amused, nor was
he amenable to trusting my word alone.

“Honest, Johnny.  Nobody was
inappropriate,” Crevan said.  “Helen learned something
important when she talked to Madden tonight.”

“What?” he spoke directly to me. 

I conveyed the substance of my conversation
with our locally grown rock star, as well as what Underwood had
hinted about some deep dark secret Madden was hiding from the world
and his belief that he would go to great lengths to keep it a
secret.

“Including murder?” Johnny asked.

“He seemed genuinely shocked when I showed
him the photograph of his nephew.”

“Right,” Johnny muttered.  “Then again,
if he’s play acting, he’d appear surprised enough.”

“I can’t imagine that his nephew would
engage in sexual activity with a family member, Johnny.  And
with Underwood’s history, he’s looking more like the prime suspect
than anybody else.  We already know he lied about performing
the sound check on Scott’s equipment before the concert.  He
said he found the speaker in working order at three in the
afternoon, but Maya put the time of death around noon.”

“Tell him the rest,” Crevan said.

“What else?”

“Well,” teeth clamped down on my lower lip,
“Madden sort of supplied an alibi for all of the band members and
techs,” I said.  “They had some sort of meeting from eleven to
about one-thirty Sunday afternoon.”

“Have we verified that with other
witnesses?”

“Yeah, unfortunately, everyone we talked to
Sunday night before they had time to get their stories straight
gave the same timeline for Sunday that Madden did tonight.  Of
course at the time, we were focusing on an entirely different
window for when the murder was committed which made Underwood
appear less ironclad with his alibi.  We haven’t been able to
track down these girls he allegedly met.”

“What did their full day look like, Crevan?”
I asked.

“The trucks rolled into Darkwater around
seven in the morning. Roadies unloaded the trucks and did the basic
setup which was finished in time for the morning to early afternoon
powwow.  Nobody has a clear memory of Underwood doing his
sound check, or not doing it for that matter.”

“Scott said that he’s pretty infamous for
neglecting to do his job,” I said.

“What else did
Scott
have to say,
detective?”

“Johnny –”

“How many suspects do you routinely call by
their first names?” he growled.

“Oh, I don’t know.  I seem to remember
calling you
Johnny
an awful lot when you were a
suspect.”

His eyes widened.  “A suspect of
what?”

“Never mind,” Crevan intervened quickly
before things got out of control.  “The point is, we have
everybody but the drivers alibied for the time of death.”

“I suppose we’re considering Winslow’s
determination infallible.”

“Is she fair game because she’s my friend,
or because she tells you what the evidence bears out instead of
what you want it to say?”

“Helen, that wasn’t fair,” Crevan
said.  “And Johnny, if Maya says the time of death was between
noon and two, that’s when it was.”

“What I keep coming back to is the
hemophilia,” I said.  “Kyle Goddard didn’t have enough
clotting factor in his blood on a good day.  If somebody had
an encounter with him, realized he was male and not female, stabbed
him and left the screwdriver in his body, I wonder what sort of
things could’ve impacted the scenario we uncovered.”

“Where are you going on this one, Doc?”

I shook my head.  “I’m not sure. 
I need to talk to Maya.”

“Because you have doubts about her
infallible time of death now?” Johnny asked.

I ignored the sarcasm – for the moment, at
least. “Somebody with access to the band’s equipment is involved in
this murder somehow.  We’ve already ruled out those with
backstage access.  None of them were around until well after
the time of death.”

“Right,” Johnny said.  “So then the
time of death has to be wrong?”

“I’m just trying to imagine what sort of
circumstances might slow decomposition while at the same time
preventing heat loss.”

“You think Goddard died before noon?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.  “That’s why I
need to talk to Maya.  If the time of death was later than
noon, then the body temp dropped faster than anticipated.  If
he died before noon, something maintained his body temp longer than
anticipated.  Crevan, what do we know about how this equipment
is stored during transportation?”

“It’s loaded in the back of trucks. 
Nothing special as far as I know.”

“So they don’t temperature control for the
equipment?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“The ambient temperature right now would
cool a body faster than normal.  Our humidity would make
decomposition occur at a faster rate.  If this victim didn’t
die around noon, you’d expect a dramatic enough physical finding to
indicate an accurate time,” I said.

“Call Winslow and get her take on this,”
Johnny said.

“It’s very late.”

“And I was under the impression that she
knows you well enough to understand that you’re going to call
whenever you need answers,” Johnny said.  “Which is it going
to be, detective?”

I shot a glare and pulled out my phone.

“Winslow.  Please tell me you don’t
have another dead body.”

“It’s Helen.”

“Oh, well in that case, this had better be
about dead bodies.  If you’re calling to vent –”

“All of our suspects have unbreakable alibis
for the time of death on Kyle Goddard.  Are you certain that
the time of death was earlier, around noon?”

I heard the joint in her jaw pop, and she
mumbled around it.  “Unless Goddard was stored in a very warm,
very dry area until the body could be disposed, no, I’m certain
that the time of death was accurate.”

“How warm and dry?”

“More than 12 hours had passed from the time
of death to when I checked the liver temperature, Helen, based on
the temperature and the anticipated loss of heat.  His body
was cold.  We would anticipate finding warmer temperatures up
to eight hours postmortem.”

“So if the time of death was later than
noon, but the body was exposed to colder temperatures, would that
account for inaccuracies in time of death based on
temperature?  We already know that livor mortis could be
affected by the hemophilia, right?”

“I suppose it’s possible, but if that’s the
case, aren’t you opening your suspect pool to a much larger sample,
and shouldn’t someone have seen this poor kid slumped over that
speaker box bleeding the blood pooled in his guts inside?”

“Yes,” I started pacing.  “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“I think we need a forensics team back over
at the amphitheater.  Nothing has been packed away.”

“Where you goin’ with this, Helen?”

“The trucks,” I said.  “What if our
victim was killed in one of the trailers where the equipment was
stored?  I already know that Fulk Underwood has a longstanding
reputation of doing his job poorly and at the last minute.  If
the killer knew that, it would’ve been an ideal location for a
clandestine meeting.”

“Plus, the killer could’ve let the vic bleed
out right there in the trailer without anyone noticing.”

“So what are we suggesting?” I asked. 
“That whoever killed Kyle Goddard might not be the same person that
hid his body in the trunk where it was found?”

“Or that the killer had time to transfer the
body and move the equipment into the amphitheater where it would be
discovered later.”

“That makes a leap that the killer wanted
him to be found, Maya.”

“In equipment that Underwood was responsible
for checking.”

I noticed Johnny and Crevan’s expressions
growing impatient with the half of the conversation they could
hear.  “I’ll let Orion know and he can use whichever forensic
team he wants scouring for more evidence.  As far as I know,
we still haven’t got a murder weapon.  We might find it along
the way.”

“Just out of curiosity, do we know what the
ambient temperature in Darkwater was Sunday afternoon?”

“Less than 40 degrees,” I said.  “We
had freezing rain in the afternoon.”

“That could certainly cool the body enough
to screw with my time of death estimate.  You do realize that
time of death is a best guess window scenario, Helen.”

“Of course.  I’m not saying that you
didn’t make the right call based on the information we had at the
time.  All of this makes me very curious though.  Someone
went to great lengths to implicate Mr. Underwood in all of
this.”

“Well, it sounds like the guy has a very
long line of enemies lined up around the corner and down the block,
possibly from sea to shining sea.”

“Yeah,” I said, one of whom was with me when
the crime was discovered and who couldn’t point a finger at
Underwood fast enough.  “Thanks for the help, Maya.  I’ll
be in touch.”

“At a decent hour please.  Ken and I
are old.  We need our sleep, you know.”

“Guess that means I should vote for the
state instead of Darkwater’s forensic team.”

“I would love you eternally if you did.”

Johnny had his phone poised, ready to dial
when I clicked off the call.  “So we’re searching the
transport vehicles to see if that’s where the actual murder took
place?”

I nodded.  “There’s no way, with a
later time of death, that Goddard could’ve been killed out in the
open at the amphitheater without someone being a witness,
Johnny.  Plus, considering the evidence Maya found of sexual
activity, it stands to reason that this meeting was
clandestine.”

He called OSI.

Crevan jerked his head in the direction of
Johnny’s office.  I followed.

“Are you guys gonna talk this other thing
out one of these days?”

“I tried to talk to him earlier tonight,
Crevan.  For some reason, he’s angry with me.  I can’t
help but believe that there’s more to this anger than my absence at
the hospital when he woke up.”

“Please don’t start blaming Tony again.”

I hadn’t even started thinking about the
things Briscoe might’ve said to incite Johnny’s extreme distrust of
me.  No, my mind went immediately to the law that Johnny had
severely bent in order to save me from further scrutiny from the
FBI.  Was he remembering more than he was willing to
admit?

“Talking about me behind my back?”  The
low rumble assaulted my left ear.

“Crevan is worried that we’re not trying to
resolve the problems between us,” I said.  “I told him that we
tried to talk through some of it earlier.”

“Huh,” Johnny grunted.  “Well, work
first has apparently been your motto for longer than we’ve known
you, so it’s probably best that we stick with that for the time
being.  Are you planning to come back and be present for the
second search?”

“Do you want me there?”

“I figured you’d be itching to get back to a
certain someone’s bedside, since it was so very hard to drag you
away in the first place.”

“Johnny, cut her some slack here.”

“Stay out of this, Crevan.  I’m still
not so sure I buy your reason for lack of interest in her too.”

“You’re being an ass,” Crevan said. 
“If you want her, talk.  Listen to her.  But don’t be so
goddamned hostile to everybody you think might have interest that
you can’t decide if you have or not.  It’s screwing up the
flow of work and our personal relationships.”

“You sure work fast,” Johnny muttered. 
“In a matter of months you’ve managed to sway even my closest
friend into being your ally.”