The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) (28 page)

Chapter 32

The chief was sitting on
the edge of my desk. “Good job, Karen. Ryan.” He smiled.

“You heard we got the little prick?”

“I watched the last few minutes from my office.”

“You see any grounds for appeal?”

“No, it looked clean. The public defender was
there the whole time and gave him good advice. I think we’re good.”

“Excellent,” I said.

“I was talking to Larry Klein. He wanted to get a
better understanding of the relationship among the three: the two students and
Krista. He wants to be sure we have all the charges ready in case we need to
use them.”

“Sure. Makes sense. He want to talk to us?”

“I said I’d ask you.”

Ryan hurried and got a chair for the chief, who
sat down between our two desks.

“Have we got a good story on how the video got
uploaded to the porn site?” the chief said.

“Problem is,” I said, “we got three good stories.”

“Martin Hunt is lying,” Ryan said. “He said Krista
did it; she was branching out into new revenue streams. He swore he had nothing
to do with it, which is enough reason for me to think he did.”

The chief turned to me. “What’s wrong with Krista
getting into porn?”

“She might be getting into porn,” I said. “And
maybe she gave the video to her pimp, who did it. But I don’t think she even
has a computer or knows how to use one.”

“It wouldn’t be Virginia Rinaldi?”

“We thought about that, Chief,” Ryan said. “We
know she didn’t upload it from any of her computers. We do know she liked to
look at lesbian porn, and possible she got some kind of thrill seeing Krista
online, but it’s hard to imagine she’d like seeing Krista and Abby together.”

“The main reason it isn’t Virginia,” I said, “is
that she’s spent her whole career fighting sexual exploitation of women. And
that’s exactly what that is: a bunch of
pervy
men
running a porn site that makes money off women screwing. She might look at
porn, but she isn’t gonna help make it.”

The chief stood. “Well, if Abby’s able to speak,
try to get her to tell you what she knows. And interview Krista again. We need
to understand why Martin tried to kill Abby. What did she have on him that
we’re not getting? Did she know he killed Virginia? Did they do it together?
Let’s try to nail down the motivations a little better.”

“We’ll get right on it, Chief. We’re going to talk
to Krista now, and we’ll see if Abby is able to talk yet.”

“Great. Good job. Congratulations.”

After the chief left, I said to Ryan, “Any reason
not to tell Krista she can go home?”

Ryan thought for a second. “I don’t see why not.”
He paused a second, then opened his notebook. “Yesterday morning, when we
interviewed her, she said she didn’t know who the video guy was.”

“That was the interview when she identified Martin
Hunt as one of the rapists, right?”

“Yup. After we told her about what ‘Bye, Bye
Virginia’ meant.”

“She’s the kind of girl, her first instinct with
cops is to lie or not give anything up. I say we just act like it was Martin,
and she’ll correct us if we’re wrong. What do you think?”

“That’s good. Want to call her now?”

“Yeah, dial her for me, would
ya
?”

Ryan dialed her. I picked up and hit the lit
button on my desk phone.

“Hello.”

“Elena, Detective Seagate. I’m calling to tell you
you
can go home now.”

“It’s all over?”

“Your part of it’s over. We arrested Martin Hunt,
from the fraternity. He tried to kill Abby Demarest.”

“She dead?”

“No, she’s alive. We hope she’s gonna be okay. But
Martin Hunt is gonna go to jail for a long time.”

“For rape?”

“For the moment, it’s just for trying to kill
Abby. The way it works, we can have you come into police headquarters and make
a statement about what Martin and the others did at the fraternity party. If
the prosecutor thinks we can use that information to bring additional charges
against Martin, we’ll do that. Not today, though.”

“So I go home now?”

“Yeah, but before you go, we want to ask you a
couple of questions about that video.”

“We already talk about that.”

“I know, but my boss wants to get a couple of
things straight. We can do it right now on the phone. You don’t have to come in
to headquarters.”

She sighed. “Ask.”

“After Martin shot the video of you and Abby, did
he give you the memory card?”

“I don’t know what is memory card.”

“A plastic thing inside the camera where the video
is stored.”

“No give me anything. Abby give me five-hundred
dollars, and I go.”

“Just to be clear, you didn’t put the video on the
Internet.”

“I don’t have computer. Don’t know how to use
computer.”

“And you didn’t hear Abby and Martin talking about
putting the video on the Internet?”

“I take money and go.”

“All right, Elena. Thanks very much. Go home, now,
okay?”

Elena hung up.

“Rude woman,” I said.

Ryan smiled. “Okay, so we’re in agreement that
Martin Hunt ran the camera.”

“True.”

“And that Krista didn’t upload it to the porn
site?”

“That one’s a little less certain, but that’s how
I see it. Abby and Martin made the video, so it makes sense he’s not gonna hand
the video to Krista.”

“Whatever Abby and Martin were up to,” Ryan said,
“Krista was labor, not management, right? Now the question is, Why did Abby
tell us she didn’t know the videographer? Why did she try to pin it all on
Krista?”

“Because she’s embarrassed. It’s her first lesbian
episode, and she wants a video of it. She’s done straight videos, but not les
ones. Martin turns around and uploads it without her knowledge or
permission—and her life turns to shit. So she spins it so it’s the whore doing
all the skanky shit. I could see that.”

“Want to see if we can talk to her?”

I nodded, and he phoned the hospital. They told
Ryan the doctors said she is tired but appears to be coherent. We could have
five minutes.

Ryan and I rushed out and drove to the hospital.
Her room was on the fourth floor. I walked up to the officer sitting outside
her door. It was a young guy named
Durvitz
.

I nodded to him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Detective.” He looked at his watch.
“Almost two hours of nothing.”

“Don’t sell nothing short.”

We walked into Abby’s room. She had her bed set so
she was half-lying, half-sitting. She was thumbing through a
People
.

She looked up at me and Ryan. She looked a little
pale, but most people wouldn’t be able to see she almost bit it this afternoon.
“Detectives.” A smile came over her face.

“Hey, Abby,” I said. “Remember us? Karen Seagate?
Ryan Miner?”

“I do,” she said. “I do.”

“So your brain’s still working?”

“As much as it used to.” She rolled her eyes, then
addressed Ryan. “The nurses told me you pulled me out of the water?”

“I did.” Ryan offered an uncomfortable smile.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“No big deal. Part of the job. I’m glad to see
you’re doing okay.”

She leaned forward. “Any way you can get me out of
here? I keep telling them I’m okay. This place creeps me out.”

“Sorry.” Ryan shook his head, but he looked
relieved to not be talking about his bravery. “I’m sure it’s just a precaution.
They’ll spring you as soon as they can.”

“Abby,” I said, “the docs want you to rest. They
said we could only have a few minutes with you. We want to tell you where we
are, okay?”

“Yeah, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“First, Detective Miner and I witnessed Martin
Hunt pulling you out of your car, beating you up, and throwing you into the
reservoir. He’s admitted doing that, and he’s gonna do some jail time for
that.”

She nodded her head. Her expression was solemn. “I
feel kind of bad about that, in a way, you know? Because this is really going
to screw up his life. But what he did? I don’t even remember hitting the water.
If it wasn’t for …” She eyes began to shine with tears, and she pointed to
finger at Ryan. “I’d be dead.”

“And we spoke with Dean Dawson at the university.
They’re going to work with you—whatever it takes. If you want to stay at CMSU,
they’ll help you with accommodations and everything. If you want to transfer to
another university, they’ll help with that, too.”

Abby Demarest began to break down now. “I can’t
believe what happened to Jennifer.”

I walked over to her bedside and put my hand on
her shoulder. “That wasn’t you did that. It wasn’t your fault.” She gripped my
hand. “The fire marshal is gonna find whoever did it. They will.”

“God, I hope so. This has been such a nightmare.”
She wept for a long moment. “How can all this shit happen? I’m sorry, I
shouldn’t use that language.”

Ryan smiled. “It’s okay. Some cops use that word,
too.”

“Professor Rinaldi, dead. Jennifer, dead.” Her
eyes widened. “Me, almost dead.”

“Well,” I said, “the hardest part is behind you
now. Your job is to rest.”

“I know. I know.” She tried to put on a smile.
“Everybody tells me that.”

“We’ll check in with you, okay, Abby? I mean, when
you get out?”

She nodded, then turned to Ryan. “I have to say it
one more time, Detective. Thank you. Thank you.”

Ryan blushed. “It’s fine. Forget it.”

“I mean, not only for saving my life, but
everything you two have done. You arrested Martin, and you arrested Krista,
right?”

I spoke. “Little later this afternoon. We’re still
working out some legal details.”

“I feel like such an asshole about that.”

“Some time I’ll tell you about a few of the things
I’ve done.” I forced a smile.

“I still feel something for her, even though she
killed Virginia. I should have known better than to get involved with her.”

“It happens,” I said. “Don’t blame yourself too
much.”

“Even after she told me about it.”

“When did she tell you that?” I said.

“That night, in bed.”

“Yeah, what did she say?”

“She admitted she did it. It was just what Dean
Dawson told me: Professor Rinaldi caught her stealing. She threw her out, was
going to press charges.”

“We might want to come talk with you a little more
about that some time. But try to put it out of your mind. Just concentrate on
getting stronger, okay?”

She wiped away her tears and smiled. “Thank you,
both of you.”

Ryan and I walked silently out of the hospital and
across the parking lot. We got in the Charger. I turned over the engine and
lowered the windows a crack.

Ryan buckled his seatbelt. “Abby seems to have a
little problem with telling the truth.”

“I noticed that.” I hit Cool and Fan to get some
of the warm air out of the cruiser.

“Figured it out?”

I smiled. “I think so.”

Chapter 33

The screen on my phone said
Rawlings Fire Department. I picked up.

“Detective Seagate, this is John Hynde, Fire
Department. You got a second?”

“Sure. What do you need?” I turned off the engine
and hit Speaker on my phone.

“I wanted to check something with you. It’s about
the arson. The state fire marshal’s investigating team got in touch. You said
this woman Abby Demarest had moved out of the apartment on Wednesday, is that
correct?”

I turned to Ryan. He said, “No later than
Wednesday.”

“Did you hear that?” I said into the phone.

“Yeah, I did. Here’s the thing. We’ve got an
eyewitness, a retired guy walks his dog around the development all the time. He
says he saw Abby Demarest parking her car in her spot on Thursday evening, a
little before the arson attack. He went over to her—you know, to chat—and she
told him she was in a hurry and couldn’t talk right then.”

“Maybe this guy had his dates wrong?”

“He and his wife were out of town Sunday through
early Thursday. He picked up his dog from the vet midday on Thursday.”

“Well, maybe Abby just popped in to get something,
and the arson happened later that evening. Just a coincidence?”

“Could be. I’ll note it. Just wanted to make sure
I had the dates right on when she’d left the apartment. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem, Chief.”

I ended the call and looked at Ryan. “If Abby
torched her own apartment, maybe she uploaded the video.”

Ryan sat there, his eyes closed, as if he didn’t
want to follow this line of reasoning. He opened his eyes slowly, then shook
his head in disbelief. “Help me understand why she would do that.”

“She wanted to get into porn—”

“Why?”

“She’s bored? It sounds exciting? Bad self-image?
Needs money? I don’t know. She was proud of the job she did screwing Krista,
she wanted everyone to see? Does it matter?”

He looked at me. “I’d like to think it does.”

“Let’s put the motive aside for a minute and just
see where the theory goes. One reason or another, she does the video with
Krista and decides to put it online. Then all the harassment starts.”

“If she’s orchestrating the whole thing, maybe
there wasn’t any harassment,” Ryan said. “She did it all herself.”

“That would take some expertise, wouldn’t it? I
mean, to send yourself texts and emails and shit like that?”

Ryan scratched at his chin. “Maybe Martin Hunt was
in on it. Between the two of them, they could borrow phones and computers and
send all kinds of threats to her.”

“Or she got some real threats. Idiots like that
Richard Albright guy. She sees the threats coming in, the word spreads around
campus that there’s this student in a lesbian porn video, and she decides to
amp it up a little.”

“So she torches her own apartment?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Why not?”

“Did she mean to kill her roommate?”

“If she’s a total psycho, yeah. It makes for a
much bigger story.”

“I can’t believe she would do that.” He shook his
head. “No matter how screwy she is, she wouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s involuntary man, voluntary man, or murder,”
I said. “We don’t have enough facts.”

We sat there in the car for a minute.

“We need to talk to the chief,” I said. I didn’t
want to get a second reprimand today for failing to play well with others.

“But we need a plan to propose to him,” Ryan said.

“There’s only one person who’s gonna know whether
she did it.”

“Martin Hunt.”

“How do we get him to tell us?”

Ryan said, “If he tried to kill Abby, that’s
because she’s the only one who knows what he did, which was kill Virginia
Rinaldi. He eliminates Abby, nobody can finger him for the murder, right?”

“Right.”

“So if we tell Martin that we’re going to charge
him with the Rinaldi murder—and we are going to do that—the bond between him
and Abby is broken,” Ryan said. “There’s no reason for him to protect her
anymore.”

I said, “Any reason not to tell him we’re gonna
charge him with the murder?”

“Not as long as we have the signed confession on
the felony assault on Abby.”

“Okay, let’s run it by the chief.”

We drove back to headquarters and brought the
chief up to speed, everything from Abby’s telling us the bullshit story we made
up about how Krista killed Virginia to the fire chief telling us Abby was seen
near her apartment right before the arson. It took him a few minutes to think
through this theory of the case. Then he asked us for a plan. We told him our
idea about interviewing Martin Hunt. The chief didn’t see any downside to
telling Martin he was going to be charged with the Rinaldi murder. “Go ahead and
talk to him,” the chief said. “He’s in Holding.”

We called Holding and got an officer to bring
Martin Hunt up to Interview 1. We sat in the interview room and waited a couple
of minutes for him to be escorted up. When he entered the room, I was shocked. Even
though there wasn’t anything different about him—he hadn’t been roughed up or
anything, and he was still wearing his own clothes—now he looked broken. His
eyes had that hollow look you see all the time on guys on the inside. Sitting
on the concrete bench in Holding, he had time to think, and he realized that
his whole life had just turned to shit.

“We need to talk to you, Martin. Sit down.”

He did, then he looked at me without saying
anything.

“We want you to help us understand what happened
with Abby and Krista and Virginia Rinaldi.” I paused, waiting for him to tell
me he would or he wouldn’t or how I could go fuck myself. But he didn’t say
anything.

Finally, he spoke. “Why should I help you?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do?”

He held my gaze.

“Because you want us to call the prosecutor and
tell him you’re cooperating?”

“Change the felony to a misdemeanor.”

“That’s not gonna happen, Martin. Since you bring
it up, I think I should tell you you’re gonna be charged with another crime.”

“What’s that? The prostitution thing?” It came out
as a sneer.

“Murder. Virginia Rinaldi.”

“If you had any evidence linking me to that, you’d
have arrested me a long time ago.”

“Remember an hour ago, when they did the cheek
swab in Booking? You’re now officially a felony offender, and we can take the
DNA of an offender.”

“So?”

“When you beat up Virginia Rinaldi, you remember
her scratching you? Three fingernails.”

He looked at me, expressionless.

“If you pulled down the neck of your T-shirt, on
the right side …” I pointed.

He didn’t move.

“I bet we’d see three marks on your neck.”

He didn’t move.

“Don’t
wanna
do that?
That’s okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna match your DNA to the DNA
of some tissue samples under her fingernails. If they don’t match, you do the time
for the assault on Abby. If they do match, we add the murder charge.”

His shoulders slumped and his eyes closed. His
head started to shake a little bit, almost imperceptibly, then sank onto his
chest.

“You okay, Martin?”

Slowly he raised his chin and opened his eyes. But
he was silent.

“So, if it turns out the DNA matches, you’re
looking at the needle. If the prosecutor says you cooperated, you might be able
to take that off the table.”

“I want to talk to the lawyer.”

I nodded. “Okay. How about I call him now? Or do
you need to see him in person?”

“Phone.”

Ryan pulled out his phone, called the public
defender, and asked if he could give Martin Hunt a minute on the phone.
Macmillan said yes. Ryan said to Martin, “Want us to leave?”

“I don’t give a shit what you do.”

Ryan handed Martin his phone. Martin explained the
situation, then listened for about thirty seconds. Then he ended the call and
handed Ryan back his phone. “I want that in writing.”

“Tell you what, Martin,” I said. “We’ll call the
prosecutor right now and ask him if he’s willing to put it in writing. If he
says yes, you talk to us. You see the recording system is off, right? We have
no official record for anything you tell us now. We can’t use it against you.
Then, when the prosecutor’s office prepares the statement about dropping the
lethal injection, you sign it and we get you to write up what you tell us now.
That’s the best I can do. If you don’t work with us now, we’ll type your DNA
anyway and match it to the sample under the professor’s fingernails. The clock
is running. If we make the match before you decide to talk to us, there’s no
deal. You didn’t cooperate, and you face lethal injection. If you talk to us
now, we’ll work with the prosecutor.”

Martin spoke to Ryan. “Call the prosecutor now.”

“Good,” I said. “Ryan, call Larry’s office.” He
did it and handed me the phone. I hit Speaker. I had to talk to a few people
before Larry Klein got on.

“Larry, Seagate. I’m with an offender named Martin
Hunt, who has signed off on a felony assault a little earlier today. It’s
related to the Virginia Rinaldi case. We anticipate charging him with that
murder, and we want him to help us with a related case: the arson. I told him
you’d file for life without parole rather than death if he cooperates.”

“Is his testimony going to be dispositive in the
arson case?”

I turned to Ryan, who nodded. “Yeah.”

“Tell him yes.”

“Thanks, Larry.” I ended the call and turned to
Martin. “Okay?”

Martin Hunt nodded.

“Did you kill Virginia Rinaldi?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“She threatened to get me and Abby kicked out of
the university. We did the final assignment together.”

“What was the project?”

“The video with Krista. We were going to write it
up, first person. Two students in this porn class actually doing some porn with
a sex worker. We thought it was a cool idea. Nobody had done it before.”

“How did Professor Rinaldi respond?”

“She got really pissed off. Said it was unethical.
She was going to get us disciplined.”

“And Abby agreed with you that you needed to kill
Professor Rinaldi?”

“That wasn’t how it happened. Neither of us
decided
to do it. I went over to her
place. I kept trying to make contact with her, but she wouldn’t get back to me.
I offered to do anything she wanted to make this go away. I was scheduled to
graduate. But she wouldn’t discuss it anymore.”

“How did she end up dead?”

“I don’t fully remember it. She scratched me
really hard. I must’ve lost my temper. I hit her. And I knew then that if she
lived, I’d be in big trouble.”

“Abby wasn’t there when this happened?”

“No.”

“Tell us how Abby responded when she learned
Professor Rinaldi was gonna try to get her kicked out, too.”

“Abby thought Professor Rinaldi went
batshit
because Krista was in the video. Apparently, she
really had a hard-on for Krista.” He shook his head in disbelief at that idea.
“Abby told me she didn’t want to have anything to do with threatening Professor
Rinaldi. If she got kicked out of the university because of the assignment,
well, that was the price she had to pay for not checking with the professor
first—before we made the video.”

“How did Abby get from that attitude to torching
her own place?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she thought this was the way
to get some publicity, get into porn. Maybe she just got off on all the attention.
I have no fucking idea what’s going on in that bitch’s head.”

“But she knew you’d been trying to get Professor
Rinaldi to change her mind about the assignment, right?”

“Yeah, she knew. But like I said, I wasn’t
planning to hurt the professor. I had absolutely no intention of killing her.”

“Did you tell Abby you’d killed Virginia Rinaldi?”

“I guess she assumed I killed her. I never told
her that.”

“And you assumed she had torched her own
apartment.”

“No, I knew it.”

“How did you know it?”

“She told me. After she found out her roommate got
killed in the fire. She was all broken up about that.”

“She didn’t know the roommate was in the
apartment, is that correct?”

“She didn’t know. It was an accident.”

“Next thing, you get a call from Abby saying she
wants to meet to discuss how Krista’s gonna be arrested for killing Virginia
Rinaldi.”

“I didn’t know
how
you decided Krista did it, but I wasn’t going to ask any questions.”

“Why did you try to kill Abby?”

“Abby is stupid. I assumed you’d figure out she
torched her own apartment. Then, when you confronted her on it, she’d fold and
tell you I’d killed the professor.”

“Funny thing, Martin. She didn’t fold. But you
just did.”