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Julia arrived at the Thompson house after eight. Ken often went to bed early because his meds made him sleepy. Julia was counting on this when she rang the bell. She wanted privacy when she spoke to Wendy.
Wendy came to the door. Her smile was hesitant. “Julia? You all right?”
“Is Ken awake?”
Wendy glanced quickly behind her as if there were a problem. “No, he’s asleep for the night.”
“Good, I want to talk to you about my father.”
“Look, whatever Ken told you about a note is also news to me. I can’t help you with that.”
“It’s not about the note.” When she dealt with suspects or witnesses in her professional life, she’d never had trouble asking the hard questions, but she did now. She liked Wendy. Remembered all the times she’d seen her while growing up and how nice the woman had been to her.
“Can we go to the front porch in case Ken wakes?” Julia said.
Wendy stepped out onto the porch. “Now you’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry. That’s not my intent. I found this old video,” she said, pulling her phone from her pocket. “It’s my seventh birthday. You and Ken were there.”
“I remember that party. Such a fun afternoon. It was a lifetime ago.”
Julia had taped the video on her phone. She played it for Wendy. “Have a look.”
The now-gray-haired woman with a sick husband was transported back to a more joyful time. Julia closely watched Wendy’s expression grow strained as the tape played.
“Wendy,” Julia said, accepting her phone back. “I couldn’t help but notice how close you were to Jim.”
“He was Ken’s partner. Makes sense we’d be close.”
“Being a cop has developed an innate radar in me. I can tell when there’s more to the story.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the way you touched his arm and his reaction. You two shared a secret.”
Wendy pushed back her bangs with the back of her hand. “You’re reading too much into an old video.”
“I don’t think so.” She glanced at the screen and hit “Play.” Again the scene of Wendy touching Jim’s arm, him flinching and glancing around, played. “He’s afraid you two will be seen together by his coworkers, his wife, his daughter. He’s worried they’ll see something.”
“I’ve been married to a homicide cop for twenty-five years. I know a fishing expedition when I see one.”
“I watched that tape a dozen times since my aunt gave it to me an hour ago, and as much as I wanted to find another explanation, I can’t.”
Wendy rubbed her forearm. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Did Ken know? Would his reaction to this video be the same as mine?”
Her lips thinned into a grim line. “Do not bring Ken into this. It wouldn’t be fair given his state.”
“My aunt suspected Jim was sleeping around again and that’s why Mom left him. Some think he was sleeping with Rita Gallagher or Rene Tanner. You never denied you were having an affair with him.”
Her brows knotted. “You misunderstand.”
“How do I have it wrong?”
“Jim loved your mother, and he adored you. He never would have hurt you.”
“I don’t think his intention was to hurt my mother or me. He’d been on his own so much while he was doing his undercover work, and he got lonely. Mom accepted what happened between them while they were apart, but when he joined homicide she had dreams of a conventional marriage. But old habits for Jim must have died hard. And he still worked long hours, often side by side with you.”
Her face paled. “You have it all wrong.”
“It must have been painful for you when he died. I can see that you cared for him.”
Tears glistened in Wendy’s eyes. “Julia, you need to let the past stay buried. There’s no good that will come from it.”
“My intent is not to hurt anyone. You worked in close quarters with my father. What happened then?”
She tipped her chin up. “I was good at what I did.”
Julia pressed. “You worked side by side with him for months. Long hours. You fell in love and slept with him.”
She jabbed a finger at Julia. “I didn’t sleep with him.”
“But you did love him,” she said softly.
“Yes. I loved him. But not how you think. We didn’t sleep together.”
“Did you love Jim enough to destroy forensic evidence linking him to the murders? You worked in the lab then.”
“What?”
“There were whispers for years that Jim was the Hangman. It was the reason he supposedly shot and killed himself. But no one could prove it because the DNA samples from the three murder scenes had been compromised due to improper storage.”
Wendy drew in a breath. “What are you saying?”
“Did you destroy evidence to protect Jim?”
“Jim wasn’t the Hangman,” she said. “Anyone who knew him knew that.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because I’m not answering that question.”
“What were you trying to tell Jim that day? Did you tell him what you found at one of the crime scenes? Did you tell him that you loved him?”
“No!”
“It wasn’t idle chatter, Wendy. What was it?”
She clenched her fingers. “I told him Rita was trouble. I was at Bil
ly’s to see Amy when I caught Rita coming out of your aunt’s office at the bar. I confronted her. She said she was using the phone, but she was lying. I told her to stay away from Jim.”
“What did she do?”
“She laughed in my face. Said she could make Jim do whatever she wanted.”
“If Rita had a hold on Jim, what did she expect from him?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Men didn’t see her as the manipulator she could be. What you saw in that tape was me telling Jim to watch his back with her.”
“Her autopsy revealed she was pregnant. Maybe this was all about the baby.”
Wendy frowned. “I didn’t know about the baby.”
Rita had been nearly twenty weeks along and had hidden her pregnancy. Julia didn’t speak, sensing Wendy had more to tell.
Wendy rubbed her hand over the back of her neck. “Rita knew Jim and Amy were struggling. They’d never really had a traditional marriage, and they were discovering it was harder than they thought to live a normal life. Rita wanted Jim to herself. She was fun and so exciting. And she was good at twisting him around her finger. He was such a fool. There were times I thought she took the job at Billy’s just to be close to Jim.”
“Did he remember her from his undercover days?”
“With a body like that, do you think any man would have forgotten her?”
So Rita had intentionally come back into Jim’s life? “Rita told all her friends she had a boyfriend named Jack. Is that true?” Julia asked.
“If Jack was actually real, I never saw him.” She touched her fingers to her temple. “When Ken told me Jim was dead, Rita was the first person I thought of.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t like hearing no. I could picture her losing her temper. Ken went to look for her, but she had vanished.”
“So who killed her?”
Julia stood on the street in front of the house where Rita Gallagher’s body had been found a week ago. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung across a rotting wooden front door. The floor-to-ceiling windows by the door had been broken by the fire department and were now boarded up with plywood. Several signs planted across the front lawn warned that this house was an active crime scene and not to be entered.
