All Fall Down (29 page)

T
he next morning, the doorbell awakened Melanie. She climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb Casey, who had crawled in with her sometime during the night.

The bell pealed again and scowling, Melanie slipped into her robe and hurried to answer it.

To her surprise, Pete Harrison and Roger Stemmons stood on her front porch. In their dark glasses and matching suits they looked like characters out of a bad TV show. She stared at them, blinking in confusion. “Pete? Roger? What are you doing here?”

“Melanie, we need you down at headquarters for questioning.”

“Questioning?” She shook her head in an effort to clear it. “What time is it?”

Roger glance at his watch. “Eight-ten.”
A.M.? On a Sunday?
She moved her gaze between the two. “You need me now?”

“Afraid so,” Pete murmured. “There's been an attempt on your ex-husband's life.”

That woke her up. “Stan? Someone tried to kill—”

“Tried to poison him.”

“Luckily, they botched the job.”

“Mommy?”

She swung around. Casey stood in the doorway, clutching his stuffed rabbit to his chest, eyes wide and frightened. She crossed to him and scooped him up. “It's okay, sweetie. Mommy has to go to work.” She glanced back at the detectives. “Come on in. It's going to take a couple minutes, I have to get dressed and call the sitter.”

It wasn't until twenty minutes later, when she was sitting in the back of the cruiser, the noncommunicative Harrison and Stemmons in the front seat, that Melanie realized what was happening—they wanted to question
her
in connection with the attempt on Stan's life.

It seemed impossible to her. A ridiculous mistake. A nightmarish joke played by someone with a sick sense of humor.

Melanie told them so as soon as they would listen. “You're barking up the wrong tree if you think I had anything to do with this.”

“Your ex-husband was suing you for custody of your son,” Pete murmured. “Seems like a motive to me.”

They sat in the same interrogation room they had only days before, facing each other across the same bare table, the video recorder trained on her face. Who was watching her performance, judging her every word and movement? she wondered. Connor? Her chief? A representative from the D.A.'s office? Just how serious was this?

“No.” She leaned forward, desperate for the investigators to believe her. “We'd come to an understand
ing. We'd agreed to a compromise, for the good of Casey.”

“Not according to your ex-husband,” Pete countered.

“He tells us you've been stalking him,” Roger chimed in. “He's seen you from his office window, hanging around outside, in the building's parking garage. A neighbor of his saw you lurking outside his home one night, the security guard at the neighborhood's front gate logged you in.”

“That's nonsense!”

“What does your ex-husband eat every morning for breakfast?”

Pete asked the question, and she shifted her attention to him, momentarily off balance by the change of subject. “He makes his own whole-grain granola cereal.”

“When you were married, how did you refer to this mixture?”

“I called it his leaves and twigs.” She made a sound of frustration and glanced at her watch, thinking of Casey. “Stan's a health nut. He runs six miles every morning and follows a low-fat, high-fiber regime. He has for years.”

“Does anyone else eat this cereal?”

“No one else could stomach it. Trust me, I tried.”

The investigators exchanged glances. Pete cleared his throat and continued. “At what time does your ex-husband arise every morning?”

“At 4:00 a.m. To run. Unless that's changed since we were married.”

“Would you describe him as a man driven by habit?”

“Yes.”

“As a man whose routine you could set your watch by?”

“Yes.”

Pete stood. He circled behind Melanie, forcing her to twist her neck to look at him. “At 4:00 a.m. this morning, as is his custom, your ex-husband arose, dressed for his workout and poured himself a bowl of his granola. He thought the mix looked a bit different than usual, the texture and color subtly altered, but shrugged off the observation. Until he began to feel ill during his run.”

Melanie brought a hand to her mouth, afraid of what was coming next, knowing where this story was leading.

“He circled back,” Pete murmured, “vomiting three times along the way, sweating profusely, becoming more disoriented with each passing moment. He thought he had the flu, then remembered his observation about the granola. He went to the pantry and sure enough, the mixture contained ingredients he didn't recognize. Ironically enough, bits of roots and leaves, finely chopped.

“Oh my God,” she murmured, a clammy sensation stealing over her. “What—”

“Oleander. Highly toxic. A favorite in fiction and movies.” He reached for his coffee.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Lucky. Wife drove him to the hospital, he had his
stomach pumped. Good thing he's observant. If he had put off his symptoms to the flu—”

“He'd be dead now,” Roger added. “Stone cold.”

Pete folded his hands on the table in front of him. “You have several oleander shrubs in your yard, don't you, Melanie?”

She worked to control the fear that shot through her. “So do about fifty percent of the home owners in the Charlotte area. Probably in the entire Southeast. We're not talking about a rare plant.”

“But fifty percent of the home owners in the Charlotte area don't have a compelling reason to want Stan May dead. You do.”

She made a sound of shock. “This is crazy.” She moved her gaze between the two. “You don't seriously believe I tried to kill my ex-husband?”

“Why wouldn't we? You know the stats, Melanie. In fifty-seven percent of all murders, the victim was acquainted with his killer. In seventeen percent of those, the victim and killer were related. That's a big percentage for a small pool of suspects.”

A queasy sensation settled in the pit of her gut, the kind she used to get at the carnival when she was a kid. “How about the fact that I'm a police officer? That I took an oath to uphold the law, not break it. Or how about the fact that you're talking about my son's father here? Why would I deprive him of one of the two most important people in his life?”

“Why don't you tell us?”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“It's your right under the law, of course.”

She studied them, considering her options, then shook her head. “Go on. For the moment.”

“Speaking of facts,” Pete murmured, “here's one I think you'll find interesting. Did you know that the body's reaction to oleander poisoning mirrors that of digitalis poisoning? Or that the treatments for both are very similar?”

She frowned. “I don't understand what you're saying.”

“Don't you find that an odd coincidence, Melanie? After all, your father died of digitalis poisoning. So did the first Dark Angel victim you brought to our attention.”

The detective's words, their meaning and implications, plowed into her. She reeled from them, from the truth she could no longer deny.

Her father. The Dark Angel. Boyd. Now Stan.

Ashley.

“Melanie?” he prodded, leaning earnestly toward her. “Don't you find that a little too strange a coincidence?”

She met his gaze. She hated to do this, it felt like the ultimate betrayal of a person she loved and had always tried to protect. But she had no other choice. Ashley needed help. She had to be stopped.

“Yes, I do.”

Roger expelled his breath in a soft whoosh and Pete sent him a warning glance. “Go on, Melanie. Tell us everything.”

She took a deep breath and began. “These things have only just come to my attention. I haven't said anything to anyone, not even Connor Parks, even
though we've been working together on the Dark Angel case. I couldn't say anything, not until I knew for sure.”

She looked down at her hands, clenched tightly in her lap, then back up at Pete. “My sister Ashley's been acting strangely for some time. I've been concerned, naturally, but I wasn't frightened over it until recently.”

Voice shaking, she detailed the conversations they'd had, the things her sister had said about the Dark Angel and justice, how Ashley had alluded to having helped her sisters, about the message she'd left two evenings before. And, finally, the conclusion she had been forced to come to after considering all of the above.

When she had finished, Pete leaned back, expression disbelieving. “You're fingering your sister as the Dark Angel?”

A lump formed in her throat. “I don't want to. I love my sister. But if she's done these things, she has to be stopped.”

Roger snorted with disgust. “Trying to shift the blame away from yourself and onto your own sister? That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard.”

Pete agreed. “Just tell us the truth.”

“I am! That is the truth.” She tipped her face toward the ceiling a moment, collecting her thoughts. “She fits the profile perfectly. Her background, age, education level. Her rapidly deteriorating ability to maintain an aura of normalcy in her life. Additionally, as a drug rep, she has access to information on drug interactions, toxicities and treatments. Her territory's
the Carolinas, giving her ample opportunity to meet the women she sees herself as helping. It all adds up.”

Pete didn't blink. “It all adds up with you, too, Melanie. You fit the profile—your age, profession, education, the abuse in your background. Your history with men. You had motive and opportunity.”

She did fit the profile. Why hadn't she considered that before?

“Your ex-husband saw you, Melanie. He recognized
you.
Explain that.”

“Ashley and I look alike, so much so that we're often taken for one another. We're not identical twins…but from the circumstances you described, he could have easily mistaken her for me.”

“You were wearing your uniform.”

She drew back, stunned. “My uniform?”

“Your Whistlestop PD uniform. Which is probably how you convinced the guard to let you into your ex's neighborhood. Want to take a stab at explaining that?”

She shook her head, thoughts a confusing jumble. Ashley had wanted to set her up, but why?

“Want to change your story?” Roger asked. “There's no way out now, you did it and we know it.”

Melanie looked directly at the video camera. Connor was behind that glass, she knew that now. Judging her every word and gesture. Was he in on this? He knew her so well, did he honestly think she could do this? That she could possibly be the Dark Angel?

It hurt almost too much to bear.

She met the investigator's gaze evenly, vowing not
to show how shaken—how frightened—she was. “Are you prepared to charge me with a crime?”

“Not yet,” Pete admitted.

“Then I'm leaving.” She stood. “If you have any further questions, you'll need to contact my lawyer.”

C
onnor stood in front of the monitor, gazing at an image of the now-empty room. Behind him, Harrison and Stemmons held court with the room's other occupants—a representative from the D.A.'s office, Melanie's chief and the CMPD head homicide investigator, a lieutenant.

“I've worked with Melanie for three years now,” her chief was saying. “She's a good officer and a fine person. It's going to take a lot more than this to get me to believe she's a killer.”

The ADA agreed. “You're going to need a lot more than the speculative and circumstantial evidence you've got now before I'll agree to move forward.”

“We'll get it,” Pete responded. “We'll have a search warrant within the hour.”

“She held up well under questioning,” the CMPD lieutenant said. “In fact, Pete, you may have gone too far. She could skip town.”

“She's not going anywhere.” Roger glanced at Pete. “Her kid's here. Her sisters. Besides, she's cocky. She thinks she's going to get away with this.”

Connor turned. “What about her sister? Her story sounded plausible to me.”

“Both have alibis for the night of Donaldson's mur
der,” Pete informed her. “Plus, there's the matter of the uniform.”

Connor arched his eyebrows. “Yes, why don't we talk about the uniform. Why would she wear such an identifiable garment when the situation called for anonymity? She's not stupid.”

“He's got a point,” the ADA said.

“She's cocky. She doesn't think she's going to be caught. She figures the uniform gives her access to places street clothes wouldn't.”

“Like her ex's gated neighborhood,” the lieutenant interjected.

“Right.” Roger nodded. “Plus, nobody's going to think twice about seeing a cop hanging around. Regular citizens like seeing the police, makes them feel protected.”

Connor frowned, admitting silently that their points were valid. “I could give you the names of a half-dozen costume shops that rent authentic-looking police uniforms. And there's nothing that stands out about Whistlestop's that would make it uniquely recognizable.”

Connor wasn't sure which investigator looked more irritated, Harrison or Stemmons. Pete, as usual, spoke first. “Fact is, we've got a still-breathing witness who claims Melanie was stalking him. She publicly threatened Boyd Donaldson's life. And she has no alibi for either night.”

“There's not enough to charge her,” the ADA said, moving her gaze between the room's occupants. “But I think it's a convincing start.”

Connor shook his head. “I don't buy any of this. Melanie May is no murderer.”

“Hear, hear,” her chief echoed.

“Look at your profile, Parks. It was custom-made for her, down to her having been abused by her father and having a working knowledge of law enforcement.”

“Wait a minute,” Connor said. “Are you really implying that Melanie is the Dark Angel? She brought us the Angel. If she had killed all those men, why would she do that? It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.” Roger leaned toward him, expression jubilant. “There is no Dark Angel, Parks. Not really. Melanie created her as an elaborate smoke screen, a ‘known' killer on whom to blame the deaths of both her ex-husband and brother-in-law.

“Think about it, she wants to be rid of her ex-husband who's giving her grief. She wants to help her sister, whose husband is knocking her around. She gets an idea, and does a little research, digs up some more ‘victims.' Maybe she even builds the body count a bit, for credibility's sake. Thomas Weiss comes along. Somehow, by some accident, she learns about his allergy to bee venom. Jim McMillian has a heart condition, just like dear old dad. What's the difference? she thinks. They're nothing but abusive sons of bitches, just like her father was. Then, once she got everything in place, she went looking for someone who would believe her.”

“Enter you, Connor. She meets you at the Andersen crime scene. You're a profiler, you'd worked the BSU
at Quantico, this is your area of expertise. If she can convince you, she'll have it made.

Harrison paused; the room was so quiet Connor heard the movement of the second hand on the wall clock. He wanted to debunk the investigator's theory, but he couldn't. It was not only possible, it was ingenious.

“She only made one mistake,” Pete continued. “She staged the whole thing to point right at herself. She came to you, Parks. You created a profile of her.”

Melanie's chief muttered an oath under his breath. The ADA snapped her briefcase shut and stood. “Get the warrant,” she said.

“In the works already.” Pete shifted his gaze to Connor. “I'm sorry. I know you've grown close.”

“I'm still not convinced.”

“We'll know soon enough. If the search turns up something, we'll move forward. If not, we look elsewhere. Simple as that.”