The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (11 page)

Chief Murtaugh nodded, made a note on his pad, and
shifted in his chair. “How’s the case going?”

“We don’t have the lab work or forensics yet. But
we’ve identified the woman living with the vic. She’s a local prostitute. We’re
gonna try to locate her this morning.”

He looked puzzled. “You figure out the
relationship between the two?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Pimp who runs her is
named Christopher James Barrow.” I paused to see if the chief knew the guy, but
he shook his head no. “Maybe they had a falling out and she was trying to lay
low.”

“I’ll work on this Richard Albright and get back
to you, okay?”

“Great.” Ryan and I stood. “Thanks.”

We headed out of the chief’s office and back to
our desks in the bullpen.

Ryan said, “That call to check out Virginia’s
house? It could have been Krista. She’d have a burner.”

“So would a stoner neighbor wondering why the
lights were on all night.” I paused. “Let’s see if Richard Albright is in the
system.”

Ryan nodded and went online. He tapped away for a
few seconds.

“Albright done any sinning in Montana?” I said.

Ryan looked up at me and smiled. “You know, Karen,
we’re all sinners.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that, and I’m at the front of
the line. But if you go around telling everyone you’re a sinner, you’re
bragging. What you should do, when you get caught, or you figure out you’re
screwing someone over—just stop doing it. Try to fix the damage and think about
how you can avoid doing it again. Then shut up about it.”

“That’s a very orthodox Christian position.”

I looked at him. “You making fun of me?”

“Not at all. You just explained it perfectly. When
you said Albright was bragging, you nailed it. Do you know the official term
for the sin he’s committing now?”

“Being an asshole?”

“Pride. The
sinniest
of
the sins.”

“So a guy who says he’s a reformed sinner isn’t
all that reformed.”

“Have you considered a career in the church?” He
offered me one of his big smiles.

I pointed to his computer screen. “Isn’t it a sin
to waste time?”

“It’s called sloth.”

But I did appreciate what Ryan was doing. He’s
aware I’m a spiritual moron, so he slides in an encouraging word when he can.

“So, is Richard Albright clean?”

“In Montana.”

“All right, let’s go talk to Krista.” I pointed to
the file we got from Vice sitting on his desk. “You got her number?”

“You want to tell her we’re coming?”

“Just give me her number.” I fished in my leather
bag and pulled out my cell as Ryan wrote it on a slip of paper.

I dialed it. Someone picked up, didn’t say
anything. “Good morning, ma’am. I’m with Pioneer Alarm, and we’re looking for
fifty customers just like yourself—” She hung up.

I looked at Ryan.
“Krista
would be happy to talk with us.”

Chapter 12

I pulled my detective’s shield
from my bag and hung it around my neck. I rapped on the door to Krista’s
apartment. It was a low-end two-story stucco development down by the Rawlings
River. The first-floor tenants had ugly little cement patios, mostly cluttered
with small barbeque grills, tables with mismatched lawn chairs, and plastic
tricycles. Basket-weave wooden fences separated one patio from the next. Up on
the second floor, tenants had tiny crap-crammed balconies.

There was no response. I rapped again. This time I
felt the vibration from a woman about Krista’s size approaching the door.

“Who is it?” the woman’s voice said from inside.
She had some kind of eastern European accent. The last two words came out
together: “Who
ist
?”

“Rawlings Police Department, Ms. Moranu. Open the door,
please.”

“What you want?”

“Open the door, please.” I held my shield up so
she could see it through the peephole.

The deadbolt opened, then the door—just a few
inches. She left the chain attached.

“Ms. Moranu, my name is Detective Seagate. This is
my partner, Detective Miner. We need to talk to you a few minutes. Open the
door, please.”

She removed the chain and opened the door warily.
Her face was puffy with sleep, her red hair disheveled. She was frowning. “What
you want?”

“Can we come in?”

She stepped back. All she had on over her thin
frame were a dark T-shirt, no bra, and a pair of cutoff grey sweatpants. Ryan
and I walked into a standard cheapo apartment, the kind that goes for six-fifty
plus utilities. Nothing on the walls. Plastic blinds on the small windows. A
ratty cloth couch and matching soft chair. A TV stand with a widescreen and a
set of low-end speakers. Off to one side was a small kitchen with old white
appliances and a small round dining table, big enough for two. Off to the other
was the hall to the bedroom and the bath.

This was obviously not her place of business.

“We’re going to need a few minutes.” I used a
stern voice. “You want to sit down?”

She moved to the soft chair and sat, crossing her
legs. Above her ankle was a small purple tattoo of a heart. She brushed her
hair back behind her ears. Without invitation, Ryan and I walked over to the
couch and sat.

“I assume you’re aware that Virginia Rinaldi is
dead. She died late Monday night.”

“Don’t know who she is.”

I paused. Over the years I’ve learned that
cop-allergic people—thieves, hookers, wife-beaters, addicts—can take a while to
dial in to the situation, particularly if they just woke up. It doesn’t mean
they’re going to be a pain in the ass for the whole interview, and it doesn’t
mean you need to confront them about it. Sometimes, it saves time to just keep
going.

I gave her a slightly pained expression to let her
know I’d pretend the lie was momentary confusion. “We have witnesses put you in
her house Monday night.”

“I wasn’t at her house. Don’t know who she is.”

I took a breath. “Fourteen people saw you there.”

“Not me.”

She wasn’t making it easy. “You were a guest
speaker at Virginia Rinaldi’s class about a month ago.” I leaned in toward her.
“What were you doing at her house Monday night?”

“Not me.”

Ryan stood up and took a few steps in her
direction. “Ms. Moranu, you’re wasting our time. You know how this works. We’re
trying to understand what happened to Virginia Rinaldi. Now, the fact that
we’re here means we know you two knew each other. You understand me so far?”

Krista just sat there, a blank look on her face,
gazing off in the distance over Ryan’s shoulder.

“We start the investigation by talking to the
victim’s associates,” he said. “We ask some simple questions, see if the
associate will tell us the truth. How do we know if you’re lying? Easy: We
already know the answers to the questions. That’s a hint.” He moved a little
bit closer to Krista, but she did not look at him. “We realize you’re a little
scared, you don’t trust us. But since you haven’t been honest with us yet, we
don’t trust you, either. And here’s the important point. If we don’t trust you,
we’re going to look more closely at you. We’ll go harder on the prostitution,
your residency status. We can follow up on all of it. That I can promise you.”

Slowly, she turned her head and looked at him. She
nodded slightly. I didn’t know exactly what the gesture meant, but at least it
was something.

“Let’s start the conversation over.” Ryan spoke in
a low voice that I hadn’t heard him use before. He moved closer to her now. She
could have reached out and touched his belt. I couldn’t tell whether he was
really angry at her for wasting our time or was just playing bad cop. He’s
quite a talented performer.

Ryan turned suddenly and came back to the couch.
He sat down. “Ms. Moranu, you’re aware that Virginia Rinaldi is dead, right?”

“Saw the television.”

“Thank you. Now, what were you doing at Virginia
Rinaldi’s house Monday night, around eight-thirty?”

“Guest speaker.”

He shook his head. “Remember what I just said
about lying to us? What were you doing at Virginia Rinaldi’s house Monday
night, around eight-thirty?

“Fight with Virginia, leave the house.”

“All right, good.” He nodded. “Now, what did you
fight about?”

“Don’t remember.”

“I thought we’d come to an understanding. I’m
going to ask you one more time: What did you fight about?”

“Still don’t remember.”

Ryan showed a hint of a smile. I could tell he
liked her spirit. She returned the small smile, then raised her chin a bit. She
had guessed—correctly—that he didn’t know the answer to this question. She had
won the point.

“What was your relationship with Virginia
Rinaldi?”

“Lawyer.”

Ryan shook his head sadly. “Ms. Moranu, you’re not
under arrest. You don’t ask for a lawyer. We’re just trying to understand what
happened at Virginia Rinaldi’s house.”

Ryan was walking right up to the line. Although he
wasn’t exactly saying that she can’t ask for a lawyer because she wasn’t under
arrest, he wanted her to interpret it that way. Fact is, you can refuse to talk
to a cop whenever you want. You don’t have to be under arrest. And you can talk
to an attorney anytime you want. All you have to do is pick up a phone and call
one.

She raised a finger to her mouth and bit at the
nail. She seemed to believe Ryan’s line.

Ryan softened his tone. “We know you didn’t hurt
her.”

She exhaled slowly. Her shoulders appeared to
relax.

“Let me ask that question again. What was your
relationship with Virginia Rinaldi?”

“I don’t understand question.”

Ryan frowned and shook his head. “You realize
we’ve been to her house. We’ve gone over it, room-by-room. You know that, don’t
you? If there’s something in her house that we can identify as yours—you know,
something with your DNA on it, like a hairbrush or a toothbrush or a strand of
hair on a blouse—and we can match it to your DNA, any jury in the state will
know what your relationship with Virginia Rinaldi was. You do understand that,
don’t you?”

This definitely wasn’t true. We had her
fingerprints from her prostitution arrests, but we didn’t have her DNA because
she was never convicted of a felony. And we couldn’t grab her DNA now. But she
probably didn’t know this, either.

Krista turned her head and began to gaze over
Ryan’s shoulder again. She had decided she wasn’t going to cooperate anymore.

“What was your relationship with Virginia
Rinaldi?”

She wouldn’t look at him. “I stayed at her house
sometimes.”

At that moment I knew Krista wasn’t living with
Virginia to hide from her pimp, Christopher James Barlow. Maybe he was looking
for Virginia Rinaldi, found her, and killed her. Maybe Krista and Barlow killed
her together. But the way she said it—“I stayed at her house sometimes”—told me
she was living there because she wanted to. She had some kind of intimate
relationship with Virginia.

Krista wasn’t thinking about playing us. And she
wasn’t thinking about how we might find some evidence showing she had killed
Virginia. She was uncomfortable about her relationship with Virginia. And I
knew Ryan’s line of questioning wasn’t going to get us any more information.

I shifted my position on the couch. It was my
signal to Ryan that I wanted to question her. “Elena.” I spoke softly. She
turned to me. “I want to talk to you about Christopher James Barlow.”

She held my gaze but said nothing.

“Your pimp.”

“I have no pimp. Only prostitute has pimp.”

“You’ve been arrested three times in Rawlings for
prostitution.”

“No conviction.”

“Elena.” I spoke slowly. “I want you to understand
what’s happening here. Because I think you might be very close to making a
serious mistake. We have fourteen witnesses say you had a fight with Virginia
upstairs, then stormed out of the house carrying a backpack. About an
hour-and-a-half later, Virginia Rinaldi is lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.
She didn’t slip and fall. She was murdered.”

I paused. Krista was looking at me intently,
trying not to show her pain. But her eyes were glistening with tears, and her
lower lip was trembling a little.

Homicide detectives see that a lot, from people who
loved the victims—and sometimes from people who killed them. It can be really
hard to tell the two apart.

“We know that the most likely killer was an
associate. A family member, a friend, a lover. So here’s where we are. You’re
uncomfortable talking about your relationship with Virginia. I get that. But
it’s obvious you cared about her. I can see that. Detective Miner can see that.
We need to figure out what happened after you left that night. It’s one of two
things: Either you came back to the house, and there was a fight, a physical
confrontation between you and Virginia, or someone else went over to her house
and killed her.

“You can refuse to talk to us, tell us you want a
lawyer, tell us you’re not a prostitute—you can say whatever you want. But all
that’s gonna do is confirm it was you killed her. Or … you can help us figure
out who did kill her.”

I paused. A tear slid down her cheek. She brushed
it away quickly with a finger.

“Now, Elena, are you going to talk to us about
Christopher James Barlow?”

“Why you think it was him?”

This caught me a little off guard. I expected her
to want to shift in that direction, not get defensive on his behalf. “We need
to talk to him. He’s a violent guy. He’s served a couple of stretches in
prison—not just for running girls like you. He has a history of violence. We
think it’s a good chance he did it or arranged to have it done.”

“Maybe one of the students.”

“Listen, Elena, whatever happened that night,
whatever Barlow said to you … if he threatened you, we can protect you. Did he
do this to Virginia to send you a message?”

“No message. It wasn’t Mr. Barlow.”

“Explain it to us, Elena. Tell us what happened.
Tell us how you know it wasn’t Mr. Barlow.” I sat there, leaning toward her, my
palms outstretched. “You owe it to Virginia to help us find whoever killed her.
How do you know it wasn’t Mr. Barlow? Who was it?”

She put her hands up over her face and lowered her
head. She began to cry. After a half-minute, she sat up. “No more talking to
you.”

“Don’t do this, Elena. Come down to headquarters
with us, tell us what happened. If it was a fight with Virginia and she fell by
accident … I don’t know. You two were upstairs, in the hall. Maybe she pushed
you, you pushed her back. It was an accident. There wouldn’t be any charges
against you. It was an accident. These things happen all the time. But your
best move is to tell us about it now.”

She picked at a fingernail and shook her head no.

“Elena, if it was Mr. Barlow … listen, we
understand why you’re afraid of him. If you tell us you saw him do it, we can
pick him up, have him in jail within the hour. He won’t be able to hurt you.
But if you won’t work with us, we need to tell our boss you’re uncooperative
and you have no alibi.” I stopped. “Tell us what it’s gonna be, Elena.”

“No more talking.”

“Elena Moranu, where did you go after you left
Virginia Rinaldi’s house Monday night around eight-thirty?”

She shook her head and studied her
cuticle.

“Can anybody vouch for you—where you were that
evening after eight-thirty? Did you meet up with a john, Elena?”

She did not speak. She did not raise her head.

“Elena Moranu, did you kill Virginia Rinaldi?

This time, she lifted her eyes. She shook her
head, just a little bit, then held my gaze. She wasn’t just telling me she
didn’t kill Virginia. She was telling me it was a stupid question, that it was
obvious she couldn’t have killed Virginia.

I waited a few beats, then looked at Ryan. I stood
up and turned toward the door. Ryan and I walked out of the apartment. A minute
later, we were at the cruiser.

“Shit.” I opened the door to the Charger. “I
thought she was gonna cooperate.”

“We gave her every opportunity. I think she’s just
too scared.”

“Of her pimp?”

“That’s right.” Ryan doesn’t get frustrated when
interviews don’t break the right way. To him, it’s all a part of the puzzle. He
tries to figure out what happened—and how to come at the suspect again.

“So, we know she was in a sexual relationship with
the victim.”

“Yes, we know that,” he said. “But we don’t know
anything else. The death could have been an accident. Or Elena killed her. Or
Elena and the pimp. Or just the pimp.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Until
we figure out the relationship between the two women, we’re spinning our
wheels.”

“Problem is,” I said, “Virginia can’t tell us, and
Elena won’t.”