Heinous (13 page)

Jess smiled. The Bureau and Chief Black were in for a surprise. “We’ll rendezvous at your location, Sergeant. We can discuss that issue then.” Jess ended the call and put her phone away.

Buddy was busy snapping pics of some of the old photographs with his cell.

“Do you mind if I borrow these for a while? I’ll have copies made.” Jess needed more time with the photos. She wanted to show them to Lily.

“Keep them,” Wanda said. “They really belong to you and Lil.”

“Thank you.” Jess couldn’t think of anything else to add. She supposed there was plenty that needed to be said at some point.

When Buddy had finished, Jess accepted the shoebox of photos and moved toward the door. “I appreciate your help. If you think of anything else, please let me know.”

Wanda shuffled along behind her. “I will.” She smiled at Buddy. “I’m glad I got to see you again, Mr. Corlew.”

“Buddy,” he insisted. “You feel free to call me anytime as well, Ms. Newsom.”

Hayes was out of his car and headed toward Jess before she was down the steps. He’d opted to stay outside to make some calls. Jess hoped she would eventually find her way past being suspicious of his motives. Since the business in Scottsboro when he’d followed her and Lori as if they weren’t capable of getting the job done or taking care of themselves, she hadn’t been able to see him in the same light.

“Chief Black is trying to reach you.” Hayes waved his cell. “He said he’d called yours twice already.”

“I was in a meeting,” Jess said. “Did you tell him that?”

“I did. He wants to meet with you as soon as you’re available.”

“In that case, how about next week?” Jess turned to Buddy. “Harper located where Henshaw has been staying. I’ll let you know if we find anything useful.”

“I’m going to see Amanda.” Buddy shrugged. “See what she’ll tell me.”

Jess gave him a skeptical look. Gant had refused her access last night. “I doubt they’ll let you see her.”

Buddy grinned. “You forget I have friends in all sorts of places, kid. Getting in won’t be a problem.”

“I’d like to know why she lied to me about the dark-haired man.” She had told Buddy about her visit with Maddie.

“I’ll be asking her that one for sure.”

“I expect a phone call immediately after you’ve spoken with her,” Jess ordered.

“You’re the boss.”

Her cell started that confounded racket again as she watched Buddy drive away.
Gina
. Jess’s pulse bounced into a faster rhythm. “Tell me you have something new?”

Pause. “I take it Dan hasn’t reached you.”

Jess started moving toward Hayes’s car. Harper was waiting. “About?”

“Meredith Dority was found dead in her mother’s home this morning. My sources say it looks like a homicide.”

Oh God. “Thanks, Gina. I should call Dan.”

I didn’t know
. Jess thought of the look of horror on Dority’s face last night as she’d uttered those words.

Dan’s phone went straight to voicemail. Hearing his voice in the recorded greeting made Jess want to cry.

This nightmare just kept expanding and escalating.

Birmingham Police Department, 11:00 a.m.

“Good morning, Tara.” Dan smiled at his receptionist who was busy with a call. She glanced up at him but the return smile was slow in coming.

He’d been MIA all morning. The decision was a confident move for a man on the verge of losing his job. Dan had enough personal leave time and vacation days saved up to take the next three months off with pay, a couple of hours was nothing. Anyone who needed to reach him knew how.

“Good morning, Chief.” Shelia, his secretary, offered him a handful of messages as he reached her desk.

He’d called his secretary half an hour ago to say he was on his way in. He’d missed a call from Jess while he was on the line with Shelia. He’d tried to call her back but he’d gotten her voicemail.

“Let’s hope it stays one,” Dan replied as he accepted the messages. “Would you get Chief Harris on the line for me, please?”

“Chief Black is waiting in your office.” Shelia winced. “I told him you were on your way in.”

“That’s fine,” Dan assured her. “I’ll call Chief Harris after Chief Black and I are finished.” Shelia and Tara were worried about him as well as their jobs. This was a difficult situation for all of them. “Thanks, Shelia.”

At his door, Dan hesitated a moment. He’d supported this city for two decades, dedicated to the goal of making Birmingham a better place. None of that mattered to men like Pratt. Dan had stopped taking the mayor’s suggestions on how to run the BPD and suddenly he was the enemy. There had been friction for a couple of years, but the real trouble had started more recently. The mayor might take this position from him, but he couldn’t change what Dan had done for the city.

Whatever happened, Jess and the baby were his top priorities now.

With renewed purpose, he opened the door and strode into his office. Harold Black stood behind Dan’s desk gazing out his window.

“Like the view?” Dan dropped his briefcase on his desk and waited for the other man to get out of the way.

Harold moved around to the front of the desk and settled into one of the chairs. “I was surprised to find you weren’t in your office this morning.”

Dan lowered into his chair. “I had personal business. Do you want my secretary to start forwarding you my calendar?”

Harold heaved a sigh. “No need for the hostility, Dan.”

Somehow, hostility seemed fitting at the moment. “What is it you want, Harold?”

Harold propped his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers. “Let’s start with your whereabouts this morning. According to the officer on Chief Harris’s surveillance detail today, you departed the apartment the two of you share around eight. Did you have breakfast with someone?”

Fury shot through Dan. “Whatever it is you have to say, I suggest you move right to the point. I have some catching up to do.”

“Meredith Dority is dead, Dan. Murdered.”

The fury died instantly. Though their marriage had been a mistake for both of them, they had parted on good terms. Meredith was—had been—a good person, a caring person with whom he’d had a lot in common. After the divorce, they had remained friends, until now.

How could she be dead?

“This morning? What happened?” Dan braced for the painful details.

“You may or may not be aware, but her mother fell and broke her hip three weeks ago. That’s the reason Meredith took a leave of absence from her position in Montgomery. She’s been helping her mother.”

Dan shook his head. “I had no idea.” He hadn’t heard from Meredith in a long while before last week. They were both busy people, time slipped away.

“Her mother was asleep in her bedroom,” Harold explained. “The doorbell woke her. She, of course, requires assistance getting in and out of bed so leaving her room was impossible. She did, however, hear the confrontation. The visitor and Meredith exchanged heated words. Mrs. Dority heard their raised voices, the slamming of the door, and then her daughter crying.”

Dan felt ill. “I—”

Harold held up a hand for Dan to wait. “No more than three or four minutes later there was another, quieter discussion. The next thing Mrs. Dority heard was a struggle and then nothing.”

Dan couldn’t speak for a moment. His entire being ached for the pain Meredith had suffered and for the agony her mother endured not being able to help daughter. “How...?” He couldn’t bear to say the rest.

“She was strangled.”

Jesus Christ. Who would do this? “Was this a robbery?” The elderly were far too often targets. Under normal circumstances, Mrs. Dority would have been home alone.

Harold stared at him for a long moment before answering. “Nothing from the home was taken.”

“Why the hell wasn’t I notified? Whatever happens tomorrow or the day after that doesn’t matter. Right now,” Dan banged his fist against the desk, “I am still the chief of police. Why didn’t you call me about this?”

He had never required that his division chiefs keep him abreast of their activities day by day as long as he was kept up to date within a reasonable timeframe. He didn’t need blow-by-blow accounts. He trusted the people he placed at the highest levels within the department, but this was different. He should have been informed of Meredith’s death.

“Dan.” Harold’s face was grave now. “Mrs. Dority recognized the intruder’s voice.”

Comprehension hit Dan square in the chest.

“She said the man she heard arguing with her daughter was
you
.” Harold held up both hands when Dan would have butted in. “Before you say anything, I need to advise you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can—”

“I know my rights, by God! Yes, I stopped by to see Meredith this morning.” Dan worked at relaxing his tense muscles.
Meredith was dead
. Jesus Christ. He couldn’t believe Pratt would have anything to do with this. Spears maybe, but why? “Yes, we argued.” What had he been thinking?

“Was she expecting you?”

Dan shook his head. “Jess ran into her last night and Meredith said something that leads me to believe she was being coerced into the accusations she made.”

“What did she say to Chief Harris?”

“I guess she overheard Jess sharing our future plans with Sylvia and Gina.” Dan refused to share the news about the baby with Harold. “Meredith seemed distraught and said something to the effect that she didn’t know. Her companion, a male Jess didn’t recognize, urged Meredith not to say more. Meredith and I hadn’t spoken since she went public with these ludicrous allegations. I felt it was time we cleared the air.”

Harold shifted in his chair. “Are you certain you don’t want to call your attorney before we discuss this any further?”

“Are you officially questioning me?”

Harold rubbed at his temple. “Let’s call this a pre-interview.”

Dan closed his eyes and shook his head.
Unbelievable
.

“What do you want me to do, Dan?” Harold held out his arms in a helpless gesture. “I have no choice. Someone has to do this. If you’d rather I call in someone else, that’s what I’ll do.”

Dan nodded. “You’re right. Let’s just do this. I arrived at her mother’s home around eight-thirty this morning. I never made it past the open doorway. Meredith wouldn’t invite me in. She said she couldn’t. I asked why and she wouldn’t say.”

“Did you sense Meredith was afraid of you in any way?”

“Of course not! She kept looking toward the street as if she were afraid someone would see me there.”

“When she asked you to leave, did you?”

Dan shook his head. “No. I demanded to know why she’d fabricated these stories about me. She kept repeating that
she had no choice
,
she had no choice
. I tried reasoning with her. I offered her police protection. She wouldn’t tell me anything. She continued to demand that I leave. She said she couldn’t be seen talking to me.”

“So she thought someone was watching her?”

“That was my impression.”

Harold scrubbed his jaw. “Dan, you must understand how this looks.”

“In retrospect going there was a bad idea. Frankly, I’m dumbfounded, Harold. I can’t understand why she did this or who would want to hurt her.” He exhaled a frustrated breath. “How’s her mother?”

“Devastated, as you can imagine.”

“I can’t have her thinking I did this.”

“A neighbor saw your rental car leaving the residence within the timeframe the ME believes the murder occurred.”

Holy hell. “Did anyone see who came to the house after me? Meredith was alive when I walked away from her door.”

Harold shook his head. “This is bad, Dan. Worse than the business with Allen. The fact that her mother heard you argue with Meredith and then leave only to allegedly return a few minutes later may show premeditation. It’s one thing to kill someone in the heat of the moment. It’s another one entirely to walk away even for a few minutes and come back to do the deed. You know this as well as I do. The DA will argue that you had sufficient time to calm down before you returned to kill Meredith. That’s premeditated murder, Dan.”

“I didn’t go back, Harold.” Fury pounded at Dan again. “I left.”

“I, of all people, know you didn’t do this. The question is can we prove it?”

“Someone had to see something besides my rental car.”

“And if they did, we will find them,” Harold assured him. “Right now, there are two things we must do. We have to rule you out based on physical evidence and we have to prove someone else was close enough to swoop in and murder her in the nick of time to frame you.”

The whole scenario sounded contrived, yet Dan knew it was true.

“Do what you have to do to rule me out, Harold. I never touched her and she never touched me. She struggled with her attacker, there had to be some sort of evidence exchange.”

Harold nodded. “Let’s hope that’s the case. I’ll have a tech come up and take samples for comparison. Meanwhile, I would suggest you call your attorney. The man can’t defend you if you don’t keep him informed.”

“I want to talk to Mrs. Dority.” Dan needed her to know he didn’t do this.

“Stay away from her for now. Anything you do or say will only send the wrong message.”

The intercom buzzed. “Chief,” Shelia said, “I’m sorry to interrupt but your mother is on line one. She says it’s very important that she speak with you.”

Harold stood. “Go ahead. I’ll wait outside for the tech to arrive.”

“Stay. I don’t want anyone suggesting I did away with evidence while you weren’t looking.”

Harold gave an acknowledging nod as Dan thanked his secretary. He picked up the receiver and pushed the blinking light. “Mom, is everything all right?”

“No, Dan, it absolutely is not. You must talk to your father as soon as possible.”

Dan knew from the sound of her voice that nothing too troubling had actually happened. “What’s going on with Dad?”

“He refuses to schedule his checkup. You know how important it is that he sees his doctor regularly. With us both worried sick about you, it’s crucial that he go. That heart attack almost killed him. I don’t want a repeat performance.”

“You’re right. I’ll come by after work today and speak to him.”

“You’re the only one he listens to,” Katherine said, her voice quavering a bit.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get him in for his checkup. You have my word.”

“Thank you, son. I’m counting on you.”

Dan gave his mother one last reassurance before ending the call. Katherine had a reputation for overreacting, but this time he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Everything all right?”

“I don’t know, Harold. I just don’t know,” Dan confessed. When the news about Meredith hit the media, his parents were going to be devastated.

A knock on his office door signaled the tech had arrived.

“You’re sure about this?” Harold asked once more.

“I have nothing to hide.” Dan had truth on his side. He hadn’t touched Meredith. She was very much alive and in tears when she slammed the door in his face.

And Dan still had no idea why she’d set out to help ruin him.