Credible Threat, page 28
Kyle paused a moment before he answered. “Thanks, Emmy,” he said finally. “Better to know this sooner than later.”
Hanging up, he immediately called the jail and spoke to the deputy in charge. “I’ve got a guy named Jack Stoneman in your lockup,” he said. “There’s a better than fifty-fifty chance he’s not our guy. I need to talk to him, but he’s lawyered up. See if you can find a phone number, preferably a cell, for his attorney of record.”
Five minutes later, with the number in hand, Kyle Lasko phoned Gavin James. “My name’s Detective Kyle Lasko with Phoenix PD,” he said when the man answered. “I understand you’re Jack Stoneman’s attorney of record.”
“That’s correct,” Gavin replied.
“I need you to contact your client,” Kyle said before the attorney could comment further. “It has come to my attention that there are problems with some of our evidence—specifically with the shoes Mr. Stoneman was wearing at the time of his arrest. We originally thought they matched prints taken from the crime scene. We’ve now learned that the prints come from a different pair of shoes. Based on that I believe someone may be trying to set your client up.”
“As in frame him?”
“Yes,” Kyle replied. “I’m on my way to the jail right now. I need to speak to Mr. Stoneman to find out how he came to be in possession of the shoes he was wearing, and I can’t speak to him without your presence.”
“How soon will you be at the jail?”
“Twenty minutes, give or take.”
“Fair enough,” the attorney answered. “I’ll meet you there.”
When Kyle arrived at the jail, the interview rooms were exceptionally busy. “What’s going on?”
“Shooting up in North Phoenix,” the deputy told him. “Some poor guy got shot to death in his bed, and his wife has gone missing.”
Kyle shook his head, grateful this new case had been handed off to someone else while he dealt with this one.
It turned out that Gavin James had arrived faster than Kyle had. Both he and his client were already waiting in an interview room. Not bothering with any niceties, Kyle turned on the recording equipment and cut straight to the chase. “Mr. Stoneman, where did you get the pair of Skechers you were wearing at the time of your arrest?”
“My Skechers?” Stoneman repeated, looking questioningly at his attorney without answering.
“Tell him about the latte lady,” Gavin urged.
“What latte lady?” Kyle asked.
“When I’m up on Lincoln Drive, this nice lady stops by most days and gives me stuff,” Stoneman answered. “Often it’s a latte, but the other day she gave me a latte and a pair of shoes. It’s the first time I’ve had new shoes in years.”
“What does this lady look like?”
“She’s older,” Stoneman answered with a shrug. “I’d say somewhere in her sixties or maybe seventies. She’s most likely a cancer patient, because she usually wears one of those bright pink scarves when she’s out walking. But she’s friendly, like she really cares about people.”
“Do you know her name or where she lives?”
“No idea. I only see her when she walks by.”
“Is this woman an Anglo?” Kyle asked. “Or Hispanic, maybe?”
“Anglo for sure.”
“How old?”
“Like I said, it’s hard to tell with women—fifties, sixties, or seventies. I’m not good at guessing women’s ages.”
“What color hair?”
“No idea,” Stoneman answered. “I’ve never seen her hair—only her scarves.”
“Did she happen to be carrying a bag when you saw her?”
“A bag?” Jack shook his head. “Not that I remember.”
“What about those lattes she brought you?” Lasko asked. “Where do they come from?”
“Most of the time they’re from Starbucks,” Stoneman responded at once. “That’s what the cups generally say, but I don’t have any idea which one she uses.”
“What kind of latte?”
“I think the one she brought me the other day is called pumpkin something—pumpkin pie or maybe pumpkin spice—in honor of Halloween. Come to think of it, she brought me the same flavor two days in a row—the day before Halloween and Halloween itself.”
“Does she stop by at any special time?”
“Usually sometime around noon, a little before or a little after.”
Kyle Lasko digested that information for a moment or so. “All right, Mr. Stoneman. I believe that the evidence we have now is insufficient for us to hold you any longer. You’re free to go. Sorry for the inconvenience. Once you’ve been released and your property, other than the shoes, has been returned, I’ll have an officer drive you back to your residence.”
“That won’t be necessary, Detective Lasko,” Gavin assured him. “I’ll be glad to give my client a ride home.”
Kyle stood up and held the door open while a dazed and disbelieving Jack Stoneman stepped through it into the corridor.
“One more thing,” Kyle said as he passed.
“What’s that?”
“Would it be possible for you to stop by the department tomorrow morning and do a composite sketch of your latte lady?”
“Sure thing,” Jack agreed at once. “I’ll be glad to, but isn’t tomorrow morning Father Andrew’s funeral?”
Kyle nodded.
“Eleven a.m.,” Gavin put in. “Why?”
“Father Andrew was always kind to me,” Jack explained. “I’d like to attend his funeral and show my respects, but I’ll be glad to come by the department after that.”
“I can send someone to pick you up,” Detective Lasko offered.
“Don’t bother,” Jack said. “As long as they return my bus pass, I can get wherever I need to go.”
Kyle didn’t walk back to his car when he left the jail—he sprinted, calling home as he ran. “It’s going to be a late night,” he told his wife, Michelle, when she answered. “I just picked up a hot lead, so don’t wait up.”
Because of the earlier shooting, by the time Kyle made it back to Major Crimes, pickings were pretty thin, but he grabbed the people who were available, gave them a list of all the Starbucks locations in Phoenix proper, and sent them out canvassing, looking for customers who had purchased pumpkin-flavored lattes late in the morning hours of October 30 and October 31. Night-shift clerks most likely wouldn’t have any firsthand knowledge, but they might be able to access relevant cash-register records and surveillance-video footage.
It was Kyle Lasko’s fondest hope that somewhere out in latte land he’d find the woman who’d brought Jack Stoneman all those flavored iced drinks. If someone had tried to frame Stoneman for the murder of Father Andrew O’Toole, Kyle Lasko was pretty sure the so-called latte lady had something to do with it.
|CHAPTER 50|
Following an afternoon of incredibly luxurious spa treatments, Rachel finally returned to her room. She watched TV for a time, checking the local channels for any updates on the Lincoln Drive incident. The only mention was a brief announcement about Father O’Toole’s upcoming funeral, at which Archbishop Francis Gillespie was expected to officiate. Smiling in satisfaction, Rachel switched off the television and got ready to go to dinner.
While at the spa, she’d had her makeup professionally applied, so all she needed to do was slip into her newly purchased duds—the stylish pantsuit along with that pair of Tory Burch heels. Once she topped her new outfit off with the wig she’d brought along, Rachel’s transformation was complete.
Examining the results in the mirror, she was surprised. She looked like her old self—like the Rachel she’d been long ago, before David’s untimely death had robbed her life of all meaning. Now her search for vengeance had given her back a sense of purpose, and in a way it had given her back her looks as well. Not only did she look younger, she felt younger.
She called for her car and then walked out to the valet stand to collect it. Years before, she and Rich had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary at Vincent on Camelback, and she’d decided earlier in the day that was the restaurant where she would dine tonight.
Just after five thirty, she eased into the almost empty parking lot and handed her car keys over to the valet. Inside, she was greeted by a smiling woman at the hostess station.
“Do you have a reservation this evening?”
“No, I don’t,” Rachel said. “I was hoping maybe you could squeeze me in. My husband and I came here for an anniversary dinner years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. My husband passed away recently. I came here on a whim, hoping to have a private remembrance of him.”
The smile on the hostess’s face vanished. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she murmured. “We’re pretty full tonight, but let me see what I can do.”
As the hostess walked away, Rachel marveled at how easy it had become to tell plausible lies. What would the hostess think if she knew exactly how recently Rich had passed away?
The woman returned a few minutes later with a sympathetic smile on her face. “I believe we’ll be able to accommodate you. This way, please.”
The hostess led Rachel to a quiet corner table that had been swiftly reset from a table for two to a table for one. The waiter arrived the moment the hostess departed. After he delivered her vodka tonic, she took her time studying the menu before choosing the duck tamale appetizer, followed by spinach salad. She settled on the lobster with pesto pasta as her entrée. For dessert she chose a raspberry soufflé.
Throughout Rachel’s suitably delicious and sumptuous meal, the waiter hovered discreetly in the background, making small talk and doing his best to ensure she felt at ease. Clearly the hostess had passed on the word that this wasn’t exactly a celebratory meal. When the server brought her check, it turned out the soufflé had been on the house. Rachel paid the bill from her roll of cash and gave both the waiter and the valet ridiculously large tips.
After exiting the restaurant parking lot, Rachel turned left and then left again onto North Fortieth, where she immediately pulled into a driveway and parked in the first available spot. Hauling the bag of electronics out of the trunk, she left the parking lot, crossed the street without benefit of a crosswalk, and then walked north to the bridge across the Arizona Canal. She strolled onto the bridge itself, dragging the loaded Rollaboard behind her. Then, during a brief break in traffic in both directions, she dropped the bag into the water. As she watched it sink out of sight, Rachel smiled, knowing that electronics and water don’t exactly mix.
With her mission accomplished, Rachel hurried back to the car, noticing as she did so that her new shoes weren’t as comfortable as she’d hoped they’d be. Back in her room, she undressed, slipped on the hotel robe, and laid out her clothing for the next morning. A little before nine, she switched on the TV in time for the early news. The lead-in promo was all about officers from Phoenix PD investigating the homicide of a man who had apparently been shot to death in his bed at a home in North Phoenix.
Rachel was utterly stunned. Before the newscast itself had even started, she already knew that someone must have discovered Rich’s body. This was a disaster. She hadn’t expected his body to be found so soon. By now the cops probably knew that Rachel herself was among the missing and might even have issued an APB for her and for her vehicle.
When she checked into the hotel, she’d had to show her ID in addition to using her Visa. Both were in her own name. If the cops were actively looking for her, what were the odds they’d find her before she had a chance to go to the funeral and do what needed to be done? Obviously she had to revise her plans. If the cops were looking for her Mercedes, maybe the best place for it to be was out of sight in the parking lot at the Phoenician, far from the prying eyes of passing patrol officers and traffic cameras.
She had planned on driving to the funeral in the morning, but now the playing field had changed. She would need to be up and out of the hotel bright and early, before anyone at the front desk saw a local news report and realized she was staying there. As for driving herself to Father O’Toole’s funeral? That was no longer an option. She would have to find some other means of getting there.
Rachel sat for a long time trying to calm herself and searching for a feasible alternative. Eventually one came to mind, one that would send the cops looking in the wrong direction. She got up at once, dressed, packed her things, and then called down to the front desk.
“My father has been involved in a serious traffic accident down in Tucson and is currently undergoing surgery,” Rachel told the clerk. “I won’t be able to spend the night after all. Please close out my account and have my car brought around.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” the clerk said. “Will you need a copy of your folio, or should I e-mail it to you?”
Paying the bill would be someone else’s problem. “Go ahead and e-mail it,” Rachel said. “That will be fine.”
At the valet stand, just to underscore her intentions, she asked the attendant for directions for the fastest route to Tucson. He obliged, of course, but Rachel barely listened. She already knew exactly where she was going.
Not daring to show her face at the front desk of another hotel, she would spend the night sleeping in her car, and the best place to abandon a vehicle would be in one of the several parking structures at Sky Harbor, where it might be days before someone would find it.
En route to the airport, she stopped off at a Safeway. Inside, she went straight to the front of the store, where from a display of Cardinals gear she picked out three oversize sweatshirts, several scarves, and two plush blankets. She left the store after paying for all the merchandise in cash.
If this stuff was good enough to keep football fans warm at nighttime games, they would be good enough keep her toasty that night.
At the airport Rachel circled the Terminal Three garage until she found a vacant spot between two hulking vehicles—a Chevrolet Suburban on one side and a Dodge Ram pickup truck on the other. Once she was parked, she donned her several layers of clothing and wrapped herself in blankets. Then, after leaning her seat back as far as it would go, Rachel closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.
She would have to be up and out early in the morning, and she’d need to be on her toes.
|CHAPTER 51|
Kyle Lasko was at the computer in his cubicle trying to make some headway on reports when a call came in from one of his surveillance guys that changed everything.
“Hey, boss,” Bill Wagner told him. “Are you sitting down?”
“I am. What’s up?”
“We got a line on the lady with the beach bag. Surveillance video caught her exiting and entering a vehicle—an older-model Mercedes SEL—located in the parking lot of an office complex on Lincoln, half a mile away from our crime scene. She arrived at six thirty and left at seven forty-eight.”
“Timeline fits perfectly,” Kyle said. “Did you get a license?”
“Not from the parking lot, but we got it off a traffic camera a ways east of there at Camelback and Fortieth. The plate leads back to Rachel and Richard Higgins on Menadota Drive in Phoenix. There’s a problem with that, however.”
“What kind of problem?”
“There was a shooting at the Higgins residence earlier today—a homicide. The dead vic is Richard Higgins. His wife, Rachel, is MIA. She could be the doer, or she could be a second victim. Jury is still out on that.”
“Who’s lead?” Kyle asked.
“That would be Detective Horner.”
“Got it,” Kyle said. “I’ll give him a call.”
Seconds later Kyle was on the phone with Mason Horner. “I think our two homicides just crossed paths,” Kyle told the other detective. “Someone driving a Mercedes SEL registered to Rachel and Richard Higgins was observed at the scene of a shooting on Lincoln Drive on Tuesday night.”
“The one involving the archbishop?”
“That’s the one.”
“Holy moly,” Horner said. “I’m here at the Higgins residence waiting for a search warrant. Care to join me?”
“Give me the address,” Kyle answered. “I’ll be there, Johnny-on-the-spot.”
And he was. The exterior of the house on Menadota Drive was the usual crime-scene circus—lights, camera, action. Kyle found Detective Horner sitting quietly in his vehicle, smoking an illicit cigarette.
“What’s going on?” Kyle asked as he slipped into the passenger seat.
“Victim’s name is Richard Higgins. The ME’s already come and gone. Next-door neighbor found the guy shot dead in his bed with a pillow covering his head. The neighbor was worried because the guy hadn’t put his garbage cans out this morning.”
“No sign of a struggle inside the home?”
“Nope, and no defensive wounds either. I think the poor guy was sound asleep when she plugged him.”
Kyle noted the automatic assumption that the wife was the doer, but he didn’t comment on that. “How long ago did it happen?” he asked.
“Probably sometime overnight last night, maybe right around one when 911 fielded a shots-fired call from Menadota Drive. Uniforms investigated but couldn’t find the source. By the time first responders arrived today, rigor was already going away, so he died more than twelve hours earlier.”
“Decomp?” Kyle asked.
“Mixed bag,” Horner said. “Somebody tried to slow decomposition by turning the thermostat down to sixty-five degrees.”
“And you’re pretty sure the shooter is the wife?”
“Who else?” Horner replied. “And that’s why we’re not touching anything inside that house without a warrant in hand.”
The paperwork arrived twenty minutes later. Walking into the house, Kyle was struck by how neat and clean it was. Nothing was out of place. Nothing was disturbed. It wasn’t until they reached the room where the body had been found that things were different. Unlike the rest of the house, the dead man’s bedroom was in shambles. Dirty clothes and trash littered the floor, and the air was thick with the odor of unwashed bedding.
