Defensive Wounds (28 page)

“Or maybe the guy killed her.”

“Or maybe,” Theresa agreed, snitching another one of the now-sufficiently-cooled puffs and popping it into her mouth, only to realize that it had
not
sufficiently cooled.

Perhaps Dennis Britton had killed his wife, put her in the passenger seat of her own car, then driven to the parking lot of a business involved in one of her cases, a business he lived only a mile from and whose terrain he might be familiar with. He moved her to the driver's seat, turned out the lights to lessen the chance of discovery, pushed it over the edge, and hoped it would float away down the river, decomposing the body until no clues remained. Then he simply walked home. Not a perfect murder, perhaps, but near enough as made no difference.

Or perhaps Theresa simply wanted to believe that.

“So what did you do with this file?” her mother asked.

“I put it back in the cabinet. Powell's right—if there was any way to prove that Dennis Britton killed his wife, the cops would have. Everybody hates lawyers, as Sonia keeps reminding me.”

“Especially you.”

“Do not.” Theresa frowned. What had she just told Neil Kelly about mothers and daughters?

Mothers and daughters …

“Where
is
Rachael anyway?”

“She went on a date.” Agnes took a spatula to finish up the pan.

Theresa felt a prickling along her scalp, like the first tiny tremors that herald an earthquake to come. “What?”

“She came over, said she didn't need dinner because that boy from work was picking her up.”

“William.”

“Yes, William. He must have pulled into your drive, because I didn't see him. She looked cute, though, wearing that purple top you gave her at Christmas. I asked where they were going, but I don't think she heard me, she rushed off so fast—What's the matter?”

Don't panic,
Theresa told herself.
Don't scream. And don't worry your mother.
“Nothing, I just remembered something I have to do for work.”

Her mother nodded but had too many working instincts to be entirely convinced. Mothers and daughters … “I think she really likes this one.”

“So do I.”

Frank had visited the Office of the Public Defender perhaps three times in his fifteen-year career as a police officer. Depositions—where attorneys could question witnesses on the record but without the damper of a judge or jury—were taken in the neutral territory of the court reporters' offices, and there would be no other reason for Frank to hang out around defense lawyers. It wasn't like they were friends. Though with one or two exceptions, he felt the same way about prosecutors. Lawyers lived in a specific, contained universe, where nothing mattered except their own strategies. Frank preferred to leave them to it.

In fact, the last time he'd set foot inside PD, they'd still been in the threadbare building on Prospect. He had to use Google to find the new place, a scant four hundred feet from the police department. It looked about the same, a weary collection of hallways without any particular decor. Newer paint, that was all.

Frank and Angela had already spoken with the Ritz-Carlton's disgruntled former employee, a general manager who, though he wouldn't admit it, had been let go for following the maids around too closely and too consistently for it to be considered a quality-control effort. He now worked at a convenience store and did not feel any more gruntled toward the Ritz-Carlton but had, they learned, been in Chicago for a grandmother's birthday on the night Marie Corrigan was killed.

So now the two cops perched in surprisingly comfortable chairs across from Maryann Mercer, who'd been Bruce Raffel's supervisor during that attorney's time at the PD. Maryann had been working the system longer than Frank had been with the police department, yet she still managed to have a sense of humor. She had her graying hair pulled back in a thick ponytail and wore sandals with socks under her tailored slacks. As with most law grads, she had applied to both the prosecutor's office and the PD and gone with whichever one offered a job first. But most newly minted lawyers used the PD as a way station, a stepping-stone to a private firm; the ones who didn't were either very ambitious, very unambitious, or true believers (or, as in Frank's parlance, crazy). Maryann fell into the third category.

“Did you keep in touch?” Angela now asked her. “With Bruce? Or Marie?”

“Saw them around, said hi while passing through the corridors of power. I wouldn't call it keeping in touch. They shook the dust of this place off their feet as soon as they had an offer and never looked back.”

“They got along when they worked here?”

“Like a house afire. Symbiotic. They thought alike,” she added, then pondered her own words for a moment. “No, not alike, kind of complementary. You probably weren't fond of Bruce”—she looked at them for confirmation, received uniform nods—“but he was smart. A lot smarter than he seemed. Innovative. And Marie—she was plenty smart, don't get me wrong, but she had the charm, the personal connection. She had that mischievous quality, that ability—I mean aside from being gorgeous—to make you like her even when she was slicing your heart out. Put them together and they were unstoppable. They would pretty much only work with each other after a while. Formed a sort of unofficial partnership, pooled their cases.”

“Was that a problem? Office-wise?” Angela asked.

“Are you kidding? They cleared cases right and left. I should complain about that?”

“But their relationship was personal as well?”

Maryann Mercer laughed. “Did they screw each other? Like rabbits. On their respective desks, even, to hear the cleaning staff tell it. Might as well. You're only young once.”

“Any bondage involved?”

“Wouldn't know, wouldn't have asked.”

“The rest of your staff didn't mind the drama?”

Maryann laughed again, the amusement utterly genuine. “What is this, grade school? Two APDs getting it on is not drama. I have a hearing tomorrow over whether a mentally ill ten-year-old who stabbed his mom to death is going to prison or Northwood Regional. I'd almost rather it be prison. At least he'd have a scheduled release date. So a little sex among the children is not considered drama. No one cared. Well, except for Bruce's wife. Poor thing.”

“What happened to her?”

“Waddled in here nine months pregnant, and I had to stall her with a glass of water so Bruce and Marie could get their clothes back on. Figured she'd dump him right then and there, but no, had the baby. I heard she had another one after that before she finally gave up on him. One thing you have to say about Bruce, he was crazy about those boys. No angle there. One hundred percent gaga. About the mother, not so much. Of course, men are all like that. They think loving their children makes up for everything else they do. Loving a kid is easy. Raising them, that's a whole 'nother stretch of badly maintained road.”

“Who left the office first?” Frank asked, ignoring the social commentary. They had already checked Bruce's ex-wife, now happily remarried and working as a paralegal for a tax firm. The woman had motive to kill both Bruce and Marie, but between her job, her husband, two boys and now a girl, soccer practice, and a vet appointment, she seemed to be fairly well spoken for during the time periods in question.

Maryann rubbed the back of her neck. “Bruce, I'm pretty sure.”

“Why?”

“Job offer. More money.”

“Was Marie angry?”

“She wasn't happy, but it had to happen. They were too young and poor to open their own office, and it'd be hard to find a firm to take both of them at once. Don't think it bothered them much. They were just starting out, world's their oyster. Plenty of time to move and settle and move again. Didn't realize how rare it is to find someone you can really work with.”

“What about Dennis Britton?” Angela asked.

Maryann slowed down, but not by much. “Huh. Dennis. Yeah, he was in the mix here, too.”

“He mix with Marie?”

“Dunno. Maybe. Like I said, only young once.”

“Any conflicts between him and Bruce?”

“Not that I recall. Both alpha males with a capital A, so after they circle awhile, they're either going to hunt as a pack or leave blood on the snow.”

“Which was it?”

“Stains on the industrial-grade carpeting. Remember when that guy robbed that guy of yours at the Shell station on Ontario?”

Frank nodded. Barely out of his teens but armed with a Desert Eagle, a young man had made a very questionable choice of victim. Not only did his target have six inches and nearly a hundred pounds on him, he also happened to be an off-duty detective. The young robber panicked upon hearing this and pulled the trigger, winging the cop and shattering the windshield of his own getaway vehicle. From there, matters did not improve, at least not for him.

“Guy was screwed six ways from Sunday, and I didn't know what to do for him. Most of our clients are a bit challenged in the education department, but this guy didn't have the brains to shuck a peanut before eating it.”

“Exactly the sort of citizen we want running around town robbing people with a loaded .44.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maryann said. “Bruce had already done a police who-shot-first thing, so he let me know he would be a good one to handle it. But I gave it to Dennis, figuring he needed the experience. Guy got twenty years. Bruce harped on Dennis right after the sentencing, and the two of them turned into Tasmanian devils. Me and another APD had to tear them apart, and Dennis had to redecorate his office. I didn't do that again.”

“Get in the middle of a fight?”

“Assign cases based on the attorney's needs instead of the client's. Every case is different and unpredictable, yes, but the guy would be out by now if I'd assigned his case to Bruce. I'm pretty sure of that.”

“And that would be so much better for all concerned,” Frank said. “Britton got plenty of experience in the long run anyway. He's got a police shooting trial going right now.”

“I know.
Now
I wouldn't have any qualms. He's going to make you work for it,” she warned.

“Not worried,” Frank assured her, then realized he had fallen into the attorney's staccato style of talking. “Is there anything else you can tell us about Bruce, Marie, and Dennis Britton?”

Maryann's face stilled. “Only that they were strong, smart people. Whoever killed Marie and Bruce has killed the people who would have helped him when he gets caught.”

“Thanks for assuming that's going to happen.”

A smile more like a grimace. “That's what we try to tell our clients here. Crime doesn't pay. Everyone, eventually, gets caught.”

“Do they listen?” Angela asked.

“If they did,” Maryann said, “we'd both be out of a job.”

Don't panic.

Theresa repeated these words to herself as she paced in circles around her kitchen floor.
Don't panic. Just because your daughter is missing, last seen with an almost-convicted rapist and murderer.

I should have told her. I should have told her immediately, given her notice to Karla, taken her home, and hired an armed guard. Instead I had to give him the benefit of the doubt, try to wait out her interest. Rachael is halfway through a horrible death because I tried to be PC.

If she's not already dead.

Unwanted images flashed quickly, but not quickly enough. A sweet necking session grows too insistent. Rachael hesitates, begins to protest, maybe not even that seriously but enough to set off the rage. First a slap, then a punch, marring her precious child's face—

Enough.

She pulled out the white pages. There were only two Rosedales listed. One didn't answer—who would
not
have an answering machine in this day and age?—and the other connected to a teenage boy who didn't know a William. Theresa persisted until the poor kid rattled off the names of everyone in his family: Denise, Alex, Shane, Misty, and himself, Michael. Trying to help, he came up with a cousin named William, but that boy's last name wasn't Rosedale and he lived in New Mexico. He seemed about to move on to ancestors in the old country before Theresa regained enough presence of mind to thank him and hang up. Besides, anyone who'd been through what the Rosedales had been through would almost certainly have an unlisted phone number. Hell,
Theresa
had an unlisted phone number.

Not that they deserved any sympathy for what they'd been through. Their own fault for raising such a monster.

Political correctness had obviously been shown the door.

She tried Rachael's cell and got only that intensely annoying
“The party you are trying to reach”
message, because, of course, her battery had died and she hadn't taken the time to recharge it before rushing off with the means of her own destruction. Cell phones came with GPS these days, but it didn't work if the phone was off, and Rachael's phone probably didn't have that feature, because it was a cheap little prepaid number that they'd decided on after a few months of astronomical bills.