Double Jeopardy (Entangled Select) (3 page)

Josh hated with a vengeance to have someone tell him there was a good chance he might be wrong. He hated losing, and he hated it even more when he couldn’t argue with such good logic. “I didn’t realize forensic pathologists had such a grasp of the letter of the law. Wait, don’t tell me”—he held up a hand—“you also have a law degree, but for the time being you’re playing with the medical part, right?”

“It’s a good thing you’re a classic monster-film buff. Otherwise, I’d deck you for that. When you work in forensics, you become used to sometimes discovering surprise information that can blow open a case previously considered open-and-shut.”

She lifted her legs off the desk and leaned forward. “Yes, I can see you didn’t want to hear that. Too bad, Counselor, because if this case goes to court, I will be stating my qualified medical opinion that there is no way on earth Cal Streeter could have raped Sally Warner. I don’t say it just for the hell of it, either.”

He also leaned forward. “Tell me something, Doc. Since you didn’t get to meet the man until he was dead, how do you know what he could and couldn’t do when he was alive? Who says all men who’ve been castrated can’t get it up? Maybe he ate a few dozen oysters beforehand.”

Lauren got to her feet and braced her hands on her desk as she leaned across the cluttered surface until her face was close to his. The faint scent of formaldehyde, disinfectant, varied chemicals, and other odors he didn’t want to think about perfumed her skin. He fought the urge to sneeze.

“Let’s conduct an experiment, Counselor. Purely for the sake of research, of course,” she said, in a sultry voice that hit him below the belt. “We’ll start the evening out with a special cocktail I’ve whipped up just for you. I’ll pump you so full of downers you’ll be a virtual zombie. Then, I’ll seat you in a very comfortable chair where you can watch me stand in front of you while I slowly strip off my clothing in accompaniment to some bluesy jazz. Then I’ll slip into a black sheer nightgown and walk over and curl up in your lap. There will be a backdrop of several rows of scented candles to add to the mood.”

She slowly ran her tongue across her lower lip. Her physician’s half easily noticed Josh’s heightened respiration and color. Good; she was definitely getting to him. “Now,” her lips formed a sexy O, “let’s see if you can get an erection and do what your brain is screaming for you to do before you go insane.”

For one moment, Josh was convinced his heart had stopped. The mental image of Lauren wearing a sheer nightgown was more than enough to perform a tap dance on his libido. He coughed to clear his throat. “Don’t worry, Doc, all I have to do is look at you and a hard-on is the least of my worries.”

She dipped her head in indication of his fast reply.

“Very good, Counselor. You’re hoping I’m going to be curious enough to check out the condition of your crotch. Isn’t it a good thing I have such wonderful willpower? You know, I hate to sound smug, but this is a time when I know I’m right.”

“You were the one to bring up the subject of erections, not me.” Josh flicked a corner of the report with his fingers. “So the bottom line is you’re convinced Cal Streeter couldn’t have raped Sally Warner.”

“Not only am I now convinced, but if you’d fully read the report, you’d have noted that the blood type found in the semen retrieved from Sally Warner was O positive, and Cal Streeter is A negative. According to the doctor who examined her at the hospital, only one blood type’s semen was found in her. And it obviously wasn’t Streeter’s.” She held up her hands. “But then, I’m only the coroner, not a member of the bar. The rest is up to you and your investigators.”

Josh mentally called himself every name in the book. “So it’s up to my investigators to find out why Cal was shot.”

“You’re the prosecutor.”

“Glad you’re finally admitting it.’’ He shook his head. “Doc, it’s been interesting.” He held out his hand.

“Glad to know you’re man enough to admit when you’re wrong.” She allowed him to clasp her hand.

For a moment they stared at each other as if unsure where to go next.

“You use a unique kind of air freshener down here,” Josh commented, for lack of anything else to say.

Lauren shrugged. “You stick around these smells long enough, you don’t notice them. I’ve been used to it since medical school. No matter where we were on campus, people only had to take one good whiff and they knew they were near medical students.”

“I’m glad that wasn’t something I had to worry about.” He picked up the report and moved toward the door. He stopped just before he reached it. “You’ve got quite a voice, Doc. The kind that some would say should be registered as a lethal weapon. You know, I bet you could make a fortune in the phone sex racket. Hell, I’d even call up and pay to let you talk dirty to me.” With that he sketched a salute and left.

Lauren blinked, stunned by the abrupt change in conversation. She dropped back in her chair and laughed.

“Just remember, I wouldn’t come cheap,” she called after him.

…

It was late before Josh was able to get away from his office. He shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other as he made his way out to the parking lot.

“You look tired.” A tall, red-haired woman started walking next to him.

“Probably because I am,” he admitted. “How’s it going for you, Mitzi? Is Steve still obeying the restraining order we filed?”

She nodded. “So far. Brian said he thought he saw him lingering outside the schoolyard a few days ago. He went to find a teacher and by the time one came out, whoever it had been was gone. I talked to his teachers and they’re keeping a close eye out, just in case.”

Josh patted her shoulder. A product of an abusive home life where his father believed he had to use his fists to keep his family in line, Josh grew up determined to do what he could to make sure no woman would have to endure the kind of hell his mother had. When Mitzi Harper, one of the clerks in the Public Defender’s office, had been beaten up by her soon-to-be ex-husband and had tearfully begged to find a way to be free of him, he’d guided her through the process of pressing charges against the man and filed a restraining order to keep him away from her and their children. Since then, he’d received two dozen peanut butter cookies, his favorite, every Friday from the grateful woman. He never dreaded seeing the cookies the way he dreaded seeing the flowers.

“Don’t ever hesitate to call me if there’s a problem,” he advised, standing by her small VW Bug while she bent down to unlock her door.

Her smile was filled with warm affection. “I will, Josh. Thanks.”

He stood there, waiting, until she drove away before heading to his own car.

By the time he walked into his house, he decided he wanted a cold beer. Jamming the small pile of mail in his mouth to free his hands, he pulled a bottle of Beck’s from the refrigerator. Dispensing with a glass, he drank deeply from the bottle as he headed for his office. The blinking red light on his landline phone indicated he had a voicemail. He punched in his code to retrieve the message.

“Hello, lover.” The woman’s husky whisper sent chills through him instead of warmth. “I saw you at Judge Collins’s retirement party a couple nights ago. That navy-and-gray tie you wore was quite a surprise, since it’s well known you hate ties. But the real surprise was seeing you talking to that forensics specialist, Dr. Hunter. Funny, I didn’t think you’d go for a woman who fondles dead men all day long. Especially since you’ve been screwing Carol for the last few months. Although I have heard she’s far from a cold fish in bed. But I doubt she’s better than me.”

Josh’s fingers hovered over the keypad, ready to delete the message as the voice taunted him. He thought about just turning it off, but he knew that wouldn’t shut her out of his mind. He set the bottle down as he forced himself to keep listening to the deadly whisper.

“Oh, that’s right. The lively Carol dumped you, didn’t she? I wonder if it had anything to do with the flowers you sent her. She always liked unique things, so you’d think she’d appreciate the black roses. Unless she was a tad upset because you didn’t go to her celebration party. I wouldn’t worry; she only wanted to show you off to everyone. She wanted everyone to see how lucky she was to have the assistant district attorney in her bed. Don’t worry, lover. She was a viper. You wouldn’t have been happy with her for much longer, anyway.”

Her whisper turned coarse. “Do us both a favor, lover. Don’t get any ideas about replacing that bitch Carol with the new doctor of the dead. Pretty Lauren might not end up as lucky as the others. I can’t allow you to hurt me anymore with all your affairs, lover. You’re all mine, no one else’s. Don’t you understand? I did everything for you!”

As the rage in her voice escalated, so did Josh’s tension.

He hit the
off
button and opened a nearby drawer, pulling out a small recorder. With distaste he replayed the message, this time recording it. He dropped the small cassette in an envelope and wrote across the front while punching out a phone number.

“This is Josh Brandon. Is Sergeant Peterson still around?” He sipped his beer while waiting.

“Peterson.”

“Kevin, I’ve got another tape for our private collection.”

“Your secret admirer strikes again, huh?”

Josh wasn’t amused by his friend’s black humor.

“Considering the number of murders committed because of fatal attractions, you’ll understand why I’m not all that flattered. Do you want to swing by the house tonight and pick it up, or I can drop it off tomorrow?”

“Is it like the others?”

“Pretty much. This time she talks about what happened with Carol.” He quickly filled the man in on Carol’s phone call that day. “She’s also saying next time could be worse.” He finished his beer, so furious he stopped short of throwing the bottle against the wall. “I can’t believe there still aren’t any clues about her identity. She knows everything there is to know about me and we know shit about her!”

“What can I say, she’s one smart lady,” Kevin admitted. “She uses a different burner cell phone every time she calls. Investigation shows the phones are always paid for with cash in drugstores. She manages to never leave any fingerprints in your house, and no matter how many times you’ve changed the locks and beefed up security, she’s always been able to waltz right in. Every order of flowers she’s sent out has been paid in cash, and no one can agree on what she looks like, so that tells us she’s using disguises. So far, the description reads a tall or short redhead or blond with gray or blue eyes who wears glasses or not. One said she had a thick Southern accent; another said she sounded European, but he couldn’t even guess from what country.

“How can we catch someone who’s doing such a good job at hiding her identity? Stalkers usually don’t care if you know who they are because they believe their love for you is pure. She’s not fitting any of the usual patterns, as if she knows what we’ll look for and changes at the last second. This is one smart bitch, Josh. She’s not going to make it easy for us, because she’s having too much fun playing games.”

Josh looked over his mail, grateful nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“I wonder why she doesn’t talk to me directly. It’s always done through the phone, where she disguises her voice, or through the mail. And nothing that can be traced.”

The detective easily read his frustration. “Yeah, I’m not too happy about all this, either. Tell you what, I’ll pick the tape up tonight on my way home. That way, I can get it over to the lab first thing in the morning and see if we can get anything this time.”

“You really believe that?”

“No, but hell, I’m one of those optimistic types.”

“Probably a good thing someone is,” Josh muttered, after he hung the phone up.

Chapter Three

“Good morning, Doc. I thought I’d make your day by letting you know that I’m a man who’s only too happy to admit when he’s wrong. And I’m ready to pay up.”

Lauren shifted the phone receiver to her other ear as she worked to contain her smile at the sound of Josh’s voice. It wasn’t easy when she had to gaze at the surly expression of the young woman barely out of her teens Lauren had the misfortune to call her secretary. She stood in front of Lauren with a handful of papers scrunched against her hip as she rudely tapped her foot against the tile floor. Lauren wasn’t sure which was worse—her toe-tapping echoing on the linoleum, the frizz of blond hair that haloed her anorectic features and heavily made-up eyes, or her jaw snapping that damn gum Lauren would love to claw out of her fuchsia-glossed mouth.

“Don’t tell me that Ms. Warner decided she may have made a mistake about poor old Cal after all,” she said smoothly, holding out her hand to her secretary. The crumpled papers were rudely slapped in her outstretched palm.

“Something tells me you’re not alone.”

“That’s correct.” She winced as she read the reports and found a number of misspelled words and not one of them more than a few letters long. She picked up her pen and circled the words. “How about I go over that report to refresh my memory and get back to you later?”

“I’ll be here for another ten minutes.” He hung up without saying good-bye.

Lauren looked up. “Sophie, the computer program you use has a spell-check program. If you don’t care to use that, I’m sure there’s more than one dictionary you can find online.”
As long as you stay off Twitter and Facebook.

The young woman shrugged as she reflectively scratched her neck where she sported a relatively new tattoo. “I guess so.”

She handed the papers back. “Then I suggest you either call up the computer’s spell-check program, or use a dictionary and check out the words I circled.”

Sophie’s jaw dropped as she stared at the inked circles. “Hey, I worked a long time typing that report up and there was nothing wrong with it.”

Lauren ignored the younger woman’s accusations. “To begin with, elbow doesn’t have the letter
a
in it, femur doesn’t have an
h
, and penis only has one
e
.”
Which I thought even you would
know
, she thought to herself. “From now on, if you’re unsure of the spelling, look it up first. In fact, even if you think you know how it’s spelled, look it up. I will not have any reports leaving this department with misspelled words or bad grammar. And I’m talking about words you should have learned to spell in the second grade.”

Sophie snatched the report from her hand and stalked out of the office.

Lauren rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. She looked through her Rolodex until she found Josh’s number.

“This is Dr. Hunter, returning Mr. Brandon’s call,” she told the woman who sounded like his watchdog. She didn’t have to wait long.

“Hey, Doc,” his gravelly voice rumbled in her ear. She tried to ignore the tingling sensation that went along with it by silently reminding herself the opposite sex was set almost near the bottom of her list. “Did I catch you in the middle of one of your infamous openings?”

“While there are people I wouldn’t mind slitting open from stem to stern, and I truly don’t care if they’re dead at the time, I instead had the great pleasure of giving my secretary a spelling lesson.”

“Ah, yes, Sophie. You might as well pack it in where she’s concerned. She can spell. She just likes to make people think she can type a hundred words a minute instead of twenty. Some of us have turned reading reports she’s typed into a game to figure out what the words really are. I have to admit, she keeps us on our toes. Being a city employee, along with having the prestige of being the mayor’s favorite niece, who dropped out of college a year ago because she didn’t think she could handle the heavy load of two classes, makes her just perfect. Thanks to those qualifications, she’s impossible to fire.”

“And to think I was the lucky one. Now, as to you paying off your debt—I gather you’re not going to pout if I gloat?” She buffed her nails against her shirtfront in an “I am so great” attitude. Even if Josh couldn’t see her doing it, it made her feel better.

“Doc, you can gloat all you want. Turns out Sally has a nasty habit of bringing guys home and then rolling them. The guys never filed charges because they were too embarrassed. Except Cal forgot to tell her that he had trouble getting it up, or maybe he hoped she would wave some magic wand and help him get a hard-on. Anyway, she got pissed when he couldn’t come through with the hot and heavy sex she expected and called him a few choice names. When he got up to leave, she shot him. Her lawyer says PMS made Sally go off the wall. I can imagine all that will come out in court. So to speak.,” he chuckled.

“I guess no one told her a good vitamin regimen could easily take care of that monthly problem. Since I won the bet, I get to choose the restaurant.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

Lauren laughed. She was already looking forward to spending an evening with him. “That hurt-little-boy routine went out of style a long time ago, Counselor. Besides, McDonald’s doesn’t carry the type of cuisine I enjoy when someone else is picking up the check. I intend to break the bank, big boy. I understand Rothschild’s has excellent food. Tomorrow night at seven?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Good. And Counselor,” her breathy voice didn’t match the wicked grin on her face, “I have a very large appetite.” She replaced the phone receiver on Josh’s sputters before she burst into laughter.

Sophie appeared in the doorway. “I can’t find
asphyxiation
,” she announced, holding up the dictionary.

Lauren resisted that violent urge to again snatch the gum out of her mouth. She reminded herself to be grateful the woman didn’t blow bubbles. “I’m sure it’s in there under
a-s-p-h
.”

Sophie blinked. “
P-h
? I thought it was an
s-f
.”

“Perhaps if you viewed a few posts, you could figure out how to spell the words.”

The girl blanched and quickly recovered. “You can’t force me to do that. Besides, that kind of thing is disgusting.”

“I can’t? You’d be surprised what I can do when I put my mind to it, Sophie.” Her soft voice held a core of steel. “I will not have this department held up to ridicule just because you don’t want to learn your job. You might also want to remember that the people doing that so-called ‘disgusting’ thing helps pay your salary.”

With a quivering lower lip and dramatic sniff, Sophie abruptly left.

Lauren looked at the clock. It was barely 10 a.m
. and she already felt as if she’d put in a full day.

“My next trick will be to pull the wings off several flies,” she announced to the air.

…

The prospect of dining with Lauren the next evening flew out the window when Ginnie told Josh that Kevin was on line three.

“
Nada
, buddy,” the detective told him, when he asked if there were any clues.

“Shit!” Josh slammed his hand against the desktop. “How can there be not one hint of a screw up on her part? She hasn’t left anything close to a clue. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you look at it one way,” Kevin suggested. “This lady knows everything there is to know about you. She gets in your house as easily as if she has a key to the front door, and we already know you didn’t give any keys out when you moved in and you’ve even changed the locks. She goes through your things, leaves you home-cooked meals on nights you work late, cleans house, even does your laundry, sends you flowers when you win a case, and includes cute little gifts. Hell, she even baked you a fucking birthday cake! This is not your run-of-the-mill fatal-attraction-type broad. This is a lady who has more than a few screws loose, and I hate to think what would happen if those screws decided to fall out.”

“Trying to figure her out is your problem! So why don’t you find out what’s going on and spell it out for me instead of playing these same damn games she likes to play,” he ordered.

“Fine. Ten-to-one the lady is someone you see pretty much on a daily basis. This is a person who knows you almost as well as you know yourself. She’s someone who has access to your schedule. She’s obviously jealous of any sign of you having a relationship, and she doesn’t mind using some pretty nasty little methods to terrorize the women you’ve dated. Her methods are also turning more vicious, and I’ll be honest, that scares the shit out of me because the day could come she changes direction for her nasty games.”

Josh didn’t like what he was hearing. “Are you thinking she could turn violent toward me?”

“That’s already happening. Look what she did to your clothes. She ripped them up so bad you had to buy a whole new wardrobe. I don’t know about you, but I see that as the action of a woman who doesn’t have all her marbles. Although, there was the time my wife deliberately backed the car over my favorite fishing rod and reel,” he reflected on a sad note.

“If she wants me that badly, you’d think she’d want to meet with me face-to-face and get it over with.”

“Just when we think we know a lot about stalkers, we turn around and learn something new,” Kevin pointed out. “Some prefer fantasy to reality. That way they don’t have to worry about rejection from their fantasy lover. They’ve set their victim on a pedestal. Made them seem larger than life. They want to worship them from afar because it’s safer that way. That’s why they creep into their houses when they’re not home to be around their things or hang out in their offices where they can memorize their schedules and study them like some school assignment.

“They also don’t want that person to have anyone else grow close to them, because if they do, those people will have to be gotten rid of. But that object of infatuation better not do anything that makes them less than perfect because they can be brought down, too. We both know what that means. And we have those where if they can’t have their idol, they’re going to make damn sure no one else does.”

Josh considered the stalking cases he’d prosecuted in the past and stories he read in the newspaper. Few ended happily. For a brief moment, his ex-wife came to mind. Would she do something like this? He couldn’t envision the cold-hearted and very proper Stephanie doing his dishes, but anything was possible nowadays. Although she’d be more prone to bring her maid along to handle the dirty work. “Yeah.”

“We’ve already increased the drive-bys in your neighborhood, but no one’s ever noticed anything out of the ordinary. A lot of the houses around here are set far back from the street to offer privacy, and a lot of women work outside the home now, so not that many people are home during the day. Do us both a favor and stay away from the opposite sex until we find out what’s going on. And especially, keep your pants zipped. The next lady in your life might end up with something a lot nastier than some undertaker delivering black roses.”

Josh felt the rage and frustration boiling inside. “I can’t put my life on hold because one person has decided to fixate on me for some unknown reason.”

“You can if you want to keep that life.”

…

It was always so easy to just walk in wherever she wanted to. As usual, the deadbolt hadn’t been secured, and the door lock was a joke. Obviously, she didn’t expect anyone to stop by when she wasn’t home.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” she called out, stepping into the kitchen.

She looked around. No dirty dishes in the sink, only a rinsed coffee cup left in the dish drainer next to a neatly folded red print towel. A Bekins box marked “china” stood against the wall. How easy it would be to drop the box a few times until she could only hear the sounds of broken dishes.

She found more packing boxes stacked in the center of the living room and family room. A cream-colored couch decorated with throw pillows in swirling shades of teal, purple, and hot pink was pushed up against a wall to make room for the boxes with a chair in the same fabric pushed up against a flat-screen television and stereo system housed in an entertainment system. She walked inside and examined the glass-topped coffee table that held only a couple medical journals.

“The woman has no sense of how to decorate.” she sneered, dismissing the room. She always believed in primary colors such as red and black. They gave a person a feeling of power.

She also checked out the in-home office, studying the personal computer. She thought about turning it on and seeing what secrets it held, then decided it could wait until another time. She knew she’d be back.

She continued down the hallway, pausing only to glance into a bathroom and what she guessed to be a guest bedroom with a queen-size bed and chest of drawers before she found the master bedroom.

“Bland,” she pronounced, studying the soft cream-colored walls as she walked into the room. She examined a small floral painting on the wall by the door. “Just like her.”

She ran her fingers across the top of the dresser, and then looked at them for signs of dust. She wore thin latex gloves to ensure she didn’t leave any prints behind, so she felt comfortable touching anything that caught her fancy. She enjoyed handling the things in front of her. She felt it gave her additional insight into the person that lived there.

And with that insight came power.

She moved into the large walk-in closet and surveyed the contents. She pulled out one dress and held it in front of her. She snarled when she noticed the size tag. She starved herself and exercised constantly to remain a size six, while this bitch was a two. Some things just weren’t fair. She carefully replaced the dress in the closet before she gave in to her inclination to rip it to shreds. This wasn’t the time to declare her presence.

She moved on to pull open dresser drawers, to study the delicate lingerie folded neatly between layers of tissue paper. Not a jumble of brightly colored clothing, like her drawers.