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Chapter 18
Alvarez stood and stretched, using her desk chair for support. She hadn’t been to the gym for the better part of a week, nor had she had time for her usual daily run. That would have to change as all of her muscles were tight and her brain was clogged with dozens of questions about the murdered women. Fortunately, the other active cases had been closed.
Ralph Haskins had taken his life. He’d left a good-bye note blaming his mother for his depression and his wife for their bankruptcy. The position of his Magnum as it had fallen from his hand as he’d collapsed after putting a bullet in his brain, and the fact that gunshot residue was all over his hands, had made the case pretty cut and dried. End of story.
She raised an arm over her head and stretched as if she were reaching for the overhead light fixture. Then she did the same with her other arm before rotating her neck and finally, leaning over from her hips, allowing her arms to fall free.
The latest domestic abuse accusation in a long series had been dropped. Again. Jimbo Amstead’s wife, Gail, had changed her mind for the fourth time in half as many years. Though the DA wanted to prosecute the bastard for “slapping the bitch around” as he’d told a friend, bragging after a few too many at the Black Horse Saloon, that good ol’ boy refused to testify, said he’d probably been mistaken, heard wrong in the loud bar. Besides, he’d been drunk at the time. Since Gail Amstead refused to speak ill of her husband, even though she was recovering from her sixth black eye in three years, the DA was powerless to prosecute. Gail swore she’d been mistaken about the fight and had run into a door once again.
“You know how many times I’ve ‘run into a door’ in my lifetime?” Pescoli had asked Alvarez when they’d heard the decision. “Exactly zero.” She’d slid her partner a look. “How about you?”
“The same.”
“So in our combined seventy plus years, not one door and yet Gail, who’s not quite fifty, has done it three times that she’s reported. In the last couple years or so. Either she’s a damn klutz, or lives in a house with attacking woodwork, or . . . she’s a liar and lives with a bastard who beats the shit out of her. Take your pick.”
Alvarez’s mouth had been a thin line. She had so wanted to nail Jimbo to the wall. Big, with a swagger and yellowed teeth from too many years of chewing tobacco, the guy leered at every woman he passed, then beat the one woman who had agreed to be his wife.
Alvarez would have loved to see him wearing a prison suit for the rest of his life.
She finished stretching, checked her e-mail and concentrated on the most pressing case, that of the homicide victims who had been strangled, then mutilated. The autopsy on Calypso Pope had been given top priority, and damn if she hadn’t died the same way Sheree Cantnor had. Strangled, then tossed into a body of water, though it seemed Sheree had been strangled somewhere else, probably snagged while walking home for lunch or dinner, and left in the creek that wound through the O’Halleran property. They had come up with no further evidence after the one shoe. Odd that. What had happened to the other?
She was about to walk to Pescoli’s office when Joelle, clicking briskly down the hall, showed a middle-aged woman into the room. In one arm, the woman clutched her purse so close against her body it seemed as if she expected it to be snatched out of her arms right there in the station. The fingers of her other hand were curled around the upper arm of a pimply-faced boy of about fourteen. Grasping his arm so tightly as to crush the fabric of his ski jacket in her iron grip, she looked as if she could spit nails.
“Detective Alvarez?” Joelle said, silver crosses swinging from her earlobes. “This is Mrs. Bender and her son, Lars. They would like to speak to you if you have the time.”
“Lars Bender?” Alvarez said, recognizing the name of the kid who’d located Calypso Pope’s purse on the rocks below Grizzly Falls. As Joelle made her way out of the tight office, Alvarez asked the boy, “You found the purse belonging to Ms. Pope?”
Scrawny in his oversized jacket, the kid didn’t meet her eyes but gave a short nod.
“Answer her. Where are your manners?” his mother asked impatiently. “I’m Elaine, by the way,” she said, extending her hand across the desk, then retrieving it quickly.
“Please, have a seat.” Alvarez settled back into her chair as mother and son sat down across from her.
“Lars has something to tell you.” The severity of Elaine’s expression was matched by the harsh lines of her haircut, which probably was supposed to bring a youthful hipness to dull brown locks that were beginning to gray. Stick-straight, her hair was whacked sharply at the point of her chin. Straight cut bangs ended nearly an inch above round owlish glasses that only emphasized th
e sharp angles of a face that looked as if it was fixed in a perpetual state of being perturbed.
“What is it, Lars?” Alvarez asked.
“Go on. Tell her!” Elaine said as she dug into the prized purse and came out with a ziplock bag holding a cell phone.
“I found it,” the boy said.
“Where?” the mother prodded, handing the bag over to Alvarez as if it might burn her fingers. “Where did you find it, Lars?”
“In the bag,” the kid mumbled, looking down at his hands.
“The purse we turned in earlier, the one from that woman who was killed,” Elaine explained in clipped words. “That’s the bag he was talking about. I didn’t find anything else, but he found it and went through it first and he kept that phone.” She jabbed a long, accusing finger at the smartphone. “He was going to sell it or something. Lars is acting out, you know. Because his dad and I split up, like it was my fault.” Lips pursed even further, she added, “Jeff, that’s his father, had an affair. Wants to marry this . . . this woman. Met her in the church where he’s a part-time youth minister. It’s no wonder that Lars is on the wrong path.”
She sent a pointed look to her son. “What kind of an example is that? A youth minister!” She let out a shaky breath and shivered, her severely chopped hair shaking in her rage. “I don’t know if Lars took anything else. He says not. But he came up with a new video game this morning,” She flung her son another condemning glare. “How’d you pay for that, huh?”
He shrugged.
“Answer me, Lars!”
“Money from Christmas!” he spat out. “From Dad! Geez.”
Mrs. Bender rolled her eyes and looked across the desk to Alvarez as if silently saying, Do you see what I have to deal with?
