AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good to know,” I said. “We ordered pizza tonight.”
She shrugged and said, “Eh, I’ll suffer through it. Anyway, the victim is ready for you to autopsy and the tissue evidence is in the fridge. He sure was a mess.”
“Understatement of the year,” I said.
Jack’s office was one of my favorite rooms in the house. It was as big as the living room and was complete with a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows that had automated privacy screens when we were working on sensitive information. The furniture in front of the fireplace was cozy and masculine and a great place to curl up with a book. And the other half of the room was all business with a large conference table and Jack’s desk. But my favorite part of the room was the computer wall. The two corner walls connected and looked like a floor-to-ceiling whiteboard, but it was really a computer. Jack could run everything on it from his laptop or iPad, and it could run multiple functions at a time. Carver had designed it for us. But if it started talking back to me like Magnolia or Mackenzie we were going to have problems.
Doug sat in one of the black leather chairs at the conference table and set up Mackenzie, while Jack pulled up the information that had already been put into the police database.
Jack started by putting up the information on our two victims. David Sowers’ face went up on-screen—first his DMV photo followed by the crime scene photo. He looked like a man who always got what he wanted. Even his driver’s license picture oozed with intimidation and malice.
“I prefer the death picture,” Lily said candidly. “That guy gives me the creeps. If I saw him walking toward me I’d run in the other direction.”
“That’s good,” Doug said. “’Cause if he was walking toward you he’d be a zombie.”
Everyone chuckled and then Jack put up Bobby Pickering’s photos—first alive then after death. I found myself staring at the image of the crime scene I’d just left. The digital image on-screen couldn’t capture what it had really been like. There was no face to visually identify Pickering, but it was the absence of blood spatter that kept me from being able to tear my eyes away from the photo. You could see where each of us had been standing because there was no blood in those spaces.
“First victim is David Sowers,” Jack said. “He’s got licenses to practice law in both Virginia and DC. He’s got a shady past with a vehicular homicide that he was never charged for, he’s got a thousand-dollar-a-day coke habit, and he likes underage girls. No military service or anything on the surface of his records that indicated he was affiliated with the military in any way. He and his current wife have lived in King George County since just after they married twelve years ago. I’ve got copies of his financials in this folder.”
Martinez’s brow arched suspiciously. “How’d you get those?”
Jack just smiled and kept talking. “On the surface, there’s nothing unusual in his financials. He’s got a healthy and diverse portfolio. But then you start peeling back the layers and you get to the shell companies, who own properties all over the world, with a high majority in Ukraine and Malaysia, but these shell companies own a nice slice of the globe. Boarding houses most likely for their criminal activity. Succession plan states that remaining board members will split control of Sowers’ shares.”
“Who are the remaining board members?” Cole asked.
“Great question,” Jack said. “Their names are hidden behind other shell companies. It’s a tangled web that would even take Mackenzie some time to unravel.”
“Challenge accepted,” Mackenzie said. “I’m good at unraveling things. Sometimes when I’m watching the news I get curious and start poking around. Did you know that Anderson Cooper’s underpants are hand sewn and every pair has his initials stitched in them?”
“You Carver boys would be in so much trouble if anyone really knows what you have in your possession,” Cole said. “No wonder the FBI is sitting out in the street.”
“No biggie,” Doug said. “They’re both playing games on their phones, and the lady agent is having an affair and texting her boyfriend and her husband. I keep waiting to see if she accidentally mixes them up.”
“Lord have mercy,” Jack said, dropping his head and massaging the back of his neck. “Sometimes I’m amazed we all haven’t gone to prison.”
“Hey, we’re the good guys,” Martinez said. “Our methods are just a little unorthodox. Sometimes information just falls into our laps from an anonymous source. And what about the guy from today? Thanks for sending me to the alley, by the way. I really liked the shoes I was wearing. I would’ve had to throw them out.”
“So sensitive,” Lily said, slapping him lightly on the shoulder.
“Bobby Pickering,” Jack said. “Who is thirty years younger than Sowers, has an exemplary military record with several commendations and was part of an elite special ops unit. He has no family ties to King George County but somehow landed here anyway. He works days at a construction company and weekends as a valet for extra cash. He basically has nothing in common with Sowers except that they were in the same location on a random Friday night.
“His name hasn’t been mentioned in any of Sowers’ client files,” Cole said. “They’d wiped a lot of the computer files from the office, so IT didn’t find anything mentioning Pickering, and it’ll take time to go through the paper files. The tech guys have Pickering’s phone and are looking for any numbers or contacts in Sowers’ circle.”
“Things on a computer are never really erased,” Doug said. “If you’ll bring me what was confiscated I can pull up any deleted files and see if there’s a connection.”
Cole looked at Jack and Jack nodded his permission.
“Whatever you and Mackenzie can pull out we’ll be glad for it,” Jack said, hitting another button on his computer. Images of Kateryna and Nia were placed on the board next.
“You know,” I said thoughtfully. “Both of those women would certainly have a motive for killing Sowers.”
Jack agreed. “Doug, let’s do a deep background on both women. Check phone records, bank accounts. Let’s see if they’ve ever had any contact. They’re both victims, but maybe they got tired of being victims and decided to work together.”
“Can’t say I’d blame them if they did do it,” Lily said.
“Which is why you’re not a cop,” Cole said, good-naturedly, squeezing her shoulders from behind.
The doorbell rang and Doug loped out of his chair and ran into the hallway, sliding on the wood floor and rebounding off the wall before answering the front door.
