State's Evidence: A Beverly Mendoza Legal Thriller (6 page)

Stone wasn’t convinced. By the same token he
couldn’t rule it out either. “I can understand your concern, Mr.
Murray, but the fact is, your wife hasn’t even been missing for
twenty-four hours. Technically, that makes her not really missing.
Does your wife
always
come straight home from work?”

Chuck regarded the question like it was
incomprehensible. “Adrienne likes to jog sometimes after work,” he
admitted, as if just remembering this. “There’s a park across from
her office where she runs.”

“And that park would be?”

“Belle Park.”

Stone wrote this down, familiar with the
area. “Do you know if she was planning to jog after work last
night?”

Chuck paused. “We never talked about it,” he
claimed.

“So then she could have gone jogging?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose. Adrienne keeps
some running clothes and shoes in her car to change into at
work.”

“I see.” Stone looked across his desk,
thoughts running through his mind.

Chuck picked up on it, eyes widening. “So you
think Adrienne went running and someone attacked her?”

“Not really sure what to think at this
point,” Stone responded candidly. He wondered if the man was being
straight with him across the board on his wife’s disappearance. Or
was there more to this that he wasn’t sharing? “I’ll look into this
and see what I can find out. I’ll need a recent photograph of your
wife, where she works, daily schedule, type of car she drives and
license plate number. And also
your
address and phone
number.”

“No problem.” Chuck removed the wallet from
his back pocket and pulled out a photograph, sliding it across the
desk. “It was taken in June at a company picnic. I have larger
pictures of her at home if you want them.”

“This will do for now.” Stone studied the
photo of the two of them. Adrienne Murray was a pretty lady:
blonde, blue-eyed, slender. She looked to be in her late twenties,
early thirties. The type of lady one might never want to let go
of.

And it was that very thought that troubled
Stone most at this point of the investigation. He had been around
long enough to know that many men could not bear the thought of
losing their wife to another man—or a woman. It wasn’t uncommon to
see men commit murder to hang onto the wife
forever
in their
own warped minds.

But it was still too soon to know if this
missing woman had fallen prey to foul play. Or if she had simply
left her husband, even if just for a night. Stone didn’t rule out
that Murray could well return home to find his wife waiting for him
with some kind of explanation as to her whereabouts for more than
fourteen hours.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Detective Joe O’Dell stood at the door of
Judge Sheldon Crawford’s house. He glanced at the unmarked sedan on
the street, where a detective sat, assigned to protect the judge’s
wife, Maxine Crawford 24/7. The order was expected to stay in
effect for as long as her attacker and husband’s killer remained at
large.

It had been two days since the crime occurred
and O’Dell looked forward to finally being able to talk to the only
living witness, having been rebuffed in his attempts to interview
her during her hospital stay. He understood that Maxine Crawford
was still in the grieving process and recovering from her own
victimization, but some things could not wait any longer. He had a
job to do and he intended to do it, even if he had been ordered to
take it easy on the lady.

O’Dell rang the doorbell. He thought of the
other night at the hospital and Grant Nunez almost defending her
honor, as if Maxine Crawford were his lover. Even that didn’t seem
totally absurd, in spite of Nunez’s apparent thing going on with
Beverly Mendoza, as reported through the grapevine. Maxine Crawford
was obviously a good deal younger than her late husband and, by
most accounts including his, a good-looking lady. Perhaps Nunez had
more than a legal interest in the widow’s health and welfare.

The intriguing possibilities ran through
O’Dell’s mind for a moment or two before the door opened. Maxine
Crawford stood barefoot on the other side, wearing a full-length
lavender chenille robe and a towel wrapped around her hair. Her
face was free of makeup, but showed little sign of the ordeal she’d
been put through, save for a slight ruddiness on the right cheek of
her light brown face.

Obviously she still had a lot to deal with,
the detective mused, feeling a trifle guilty he had to intrude upon
her at this time.

He took out his I.D. “Mrs. Crawford, I’m
Detective O’Dell, Eagles Landing P.D., Homicide. I’m investigating
your husband’s death.”
And your survival in spite of the sexual
attack
. He paused for some reason while she kept her brown eyes
pinned on him as if they had nowhere else to go. “I tried to talk
to you at the hospital last night, but—”

“Come in, Detective.” She turned and walked
away.

O’Dell switched the book of mug shots he held
from one hand to the other and went inside, closing the pine door
behind him. The Tudor home was as impressive on the inside as out,
from what he could see, right down to the European furniture and
expensive artwork hanging on the living room walls. Certainly a
hell of a lot more than he could even dream of with his salary. Now
he knew why judges became judges. It meant easy street, if this was
any indication.

That was, until the master of the house ended
up with his brains blown out.

“Would you like some coffee, Detective?” his
host asked.

“That sounds good,” he responded, the aroma
drifting from the kitchen invigorating.

“Cream? Sugar?”

“Just sugar.”

While she disappeared, O’Dell visually
inspected the security. Or lack of.

According to their initial investigation,
there had been no sign of a forced break in. Meaning that the
attacker either had a key or was invited in. The latter seemed an
unlikely possibility, considering that the Crawfords were having
sex when the attack occurred. Unless, of course, the killer had
been invited in beforehand. But, noted O’Dell, the Mrs. had told
the police that no one was in the house except them when they
retired to their room.

At least not that she was aware of.

O’Dell ventured across the cork flooring over
to the security system on the wall off the foyer. Surprisingly it
was an older, cheaper model than some of the current high tech
systems that seemed made for a house like this. Which was odd,
considering everything else he’d seen looked to be as modern and
high priced as they came. There was evidence that the system had
been tampered with, causing the alarm to malfunction when it was
needed most.

Whoever went after the judge obviously
knew what the hell he was doing.
And did it without a hitch.
Except for the fact an eyewitness was inexplicably left behind.

Was this by omission? Had the perpetrator
somehow been scared off before he could finish the job he
started?

“Your coffee, Detective.”

O’Dell turned and saw Maxine Crawford
standing there. She held a tray with two cups of coffee. He lifted
one off the tray.

“Thank you.” He saw that she had removed the
towel from her head, leaving long, tar-colored individual braids
cascading freely across her shoulders.

“We can talk in here,” she said, and led him
back to the living room. She put the tray on a rectangular glass
coffee table and took a seat on a white leather couch.

O’Dell sat on the adjoining loveseat. Sipping
the coffee, he eyed the attractive new widow and began respectfully
with, “I want to say how sorry everyone is at the police department
about Judge Crawford’s death. He was a good man and a good judge
for law and order.” At least as far as anyone knew.

“Thank you. I appreciate that,” Maxine said
with genuine emotion, lifting her cup expertly. “Sheldon only tried
to do his best as a husband and criminal court judge. Why someone
would do this to him...and me...”

O’Dell almost wished he could comfort her in
some way. But what could he do or say to someone who had seen what
she had, and been sexually assaulted as well?

“We want to get the man who did this to Judge
Crawford—and
you
,” he stressed.

Maxine sipped the coffee. “I’ll do whatever I
can to help,” she said with a swallow. “It all happened so fast.
I’m just not sure—”

The judge’s murder didn’t happen fast enough,
since he had enough time to get out of bed before the gunman
finished him off. And from what O’Dell understood, the perpetrator
took his own sweet time in sexually assaulting the lady in more
ways than one.

“How about if we go over a description of the
perpetrator first?” O’Dell took out his notepad, glancing over the
information from her initial statement. “How old would you say the
assailant was?”

Maxine swallowed pensively. “Maybe in his
early thirties.”

“Race...ethnicity?”

“He was Hispanic, but not black.”

O’Dell looked at her. He was happy that it
wasn’t an African-American who had committed these violent crimes,
otherwise they would both be even more uncomfortable under the
circumstances.

“What about height and weight?”

Maxine considered this before responding
with, “Short, maybe five-ten, and not overweight, but
muscular.”

O’Dell saw that her depiction of the person
pretty much corresponded to what she’d said before, which was a
good step in the right direction.

“I’ll let you look at some pictures,” he
said. “These are men who have been sent to prison by your husband
and, unfortunately, recently released. Maybe you’ll see someone who
looks familiar.”

He handed her the catalog of mug shots. Some
of the pictures were in fact of ex-cons who were never in
Crawford’s courtroom, but had a history of violent crimes,
including rape and sodomy.

Maxine gazed at the mug shots nervously,
though trying hard to keep her cool. She could feel the intensity
of the detective’s glare and, for an instant it was as though she
were being violated again. But she knew that he, like her, was
under a great deal of pressure to capture the man who murdered
Sheldon. She felt her attack in most people’s minds was, no doubt,
second nature.

Sheldon was in many ways the lucky one. He
had lived a reasonably long and distinguished life for the most
part, and she loved him for it. Even if he didn’t always live up to
his lofty image by some standards. But who could nowadays with all
the pressures and temptations?

Now Sheldon was gone and presumably at peace
somewhere.

Whereas for some unknown reason Maxine had
been spared death, forcing her to live with being brutally violated
and humiliated at gunpoint and facing the possibility of being
infected with HIV and any number of sexually transmitted diseases.
These were things she had been careful to protect herself from. Now
they could strike her at any time. Anywhere.

People would look at her funny. Judge her by
something that happened beyond her control.

Her life would never be the same again. That
man had seen to that.

Maxine wiped at tears that had formed at the
corners of her eyes and tried to focus on the photographs. Most
looked unfamiliar. Others looked like men she may have seen
before.

The face of the man who attacked her was
indelible in her mind, though he was somewhat of a blur at the
moment. Would she recognize him in mug shot pictures when his face
may have been younger, thinner, or wider? His hair a different
style? When she could not smell him? Feel him? Taste him?

She came to a picture that caused Maxine to
freeze. The thin, but well-defined facial structure and crooked
grin stared back at her, surrounded by short black hair. The eyes,
dark and foreboding, ogled her as if to say,
You recognize me,
don’t you, bitch?

O’Dell sensed that Maxine had found someone
she recognized. “Is that
him
?”

Her voice was barely audible when she said,
“Yes, I think so.”

O’Dell wondered if this was the break they
were looking for. “Take a good look at him,” he urged, recognizing
the temptation to pick out someone who bore even the slightest
resemblance to her attacker. “We need to be sure.”

Though all the men in the mug shots were
assholes of the lowest order as far as he was concerned, they
didn’t want to try and make a case against the wrong man. Not if it
meant the real bastard would still be free to kill and rape
again.

Maxine forced herself to remember the attack
and all its horror. She saw his face, as if it were close enough to
touch. Just as he made her do.

His eyes. His hair. His nose. His mouth. His
ethnicity. His terrifying presence.

The more she thought about it, the more
Maxine was certain it was
him
in the mug shot.

It had to be.

“That’s the one,” she uttered, trembling.

O’Dell lifted the book from her shaky hands.
He recognized the dickhead. He had been convicted of murder and was
released within the last month.

“You did a good job,” O’Dell said, impressed,
all things considered. For some reason, he hadn’t been overly
confident she would be able to pick out someone. Perhaps it was too
soon. Or she had been too traumatized to clearly see the person who
had done this to her. “We’ll get him,” he told her confidently.

They would go through this again, only with
the bastard in a lineup. That way, they would give the D.A.’s
office a bona fide suspect who wouldn’t be easily dismissed. And a
case that they wouldn’t be afraid to prosecute.

He had seen it all too many times. Cases
thrown out or rejected because of witness uncertainty or
inconsistencies about the suspect. Which then translated into a
prosecutor’s lack of enthusiasm and reluctance, leading to
criminals walking rather than doing hard time.