Midnight Lies: The Wildefire Series (6 page)

“He’ll never hear it from me. Now, tell me what you know.”

She released a silent, relieved sigh when he said, “We figure she knew the murderer.
No evidence of forced entry.”

Puzzled, she looked up at him. “But she might have answered the door to anyone. In
a neighborhood like this, you don’t expect a killer to come to your door.”

“Maybe so, but I doubt she would have answered the door to just anyone in what she
was wearing.” Murphy shrugged. “We figure she knew him well.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A sexy nightgown.”

“How sexy?”

“She was practically naked.”

Had Charlene been expecting someone other than Quinn? One of her lovers? Or had she
worn the gown hoping to entice her ex-husband? If she had been expecting someone else,
why would she have invited Quinn over?

“What else?”

“Preliminary report from the ME says she was stabbed thirteen times. Carotid artery
was nicked, so she didn’t bleed out immediately but it didn’t take long. Blood spatter
wasn’t that bad, so the artery was probably one of his last jabs.”

A crime of passion. She had seen it happen before. Her own mother had been stabbed
repeatedly like that. And her mild-mannered, charming father had done the deed. She
shoved that thought aside. It had no bearing on this case. None at all.

However, that kind of overkill did reinforce the thinking that Charlene had known
her murderer. Anger like that was intimate … very personal.

“What about the murder weapon?”

“Kitchen knife. Found about a yard from her body. Killer must’ve thrown it down when
he finished. Unfortunately he wiped it clean before he threw it down.”

“Was the knife from the victim’s kitchen?”

“Yeah, looks like it. There’s one missing out of the case on the counter.”

“Anything stolen from the house?”

“Not that we can tell. Doesn’t look like anything has been disturbed.” He paused and
then added, “Well, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A laptop computer in the master bedroom. Looks like it was thrown against the wall.”

She nodded absently. Their tech people would check it for emails and anything incriminating,
including fingerprints.

“Oh, and that necklace Braddock wanted. It’s not there, either.”

Yes, the necklace. The one Quinn hadn’t mentioned to her. Why hadn’t he told her about
it? All he’d said was that Charlene had called and asked him to come over.

“Anyone see anything?”

“Found just one person so far. Lives next door. Said she saw Braddock cross the street
and go into the house. When she looked out again, our guys were already on the scene.

“Neighbors on the right side were still asleep, the one
diagonally across the street on the left was awake but didn’t look out until she saw
the police stop in front of the house. Neighbors in the gray brick house directly
across the street would’ve had the best shot at seeing straight into her door. Unfortunately
they’re not there. According to the other neighbors, they left for vacation two days
ago.”

“How’d the on-scene officers get here so fast?”

“Had a couple of break-ins over the last few weeks. The Neighborhood Watch asked for
some daily drive-throughs. Kid’s a rookie cop.” He looked down at his notes. “Name’s
Mike Kindred. Said he saw the front door open and stopped to investigate. Found Braddock
standing over the victim’s body.”

Despite the ninety-degree temperature, chills swept up Samantha’s spine. The image
of Quinn covered in blood, standing over the body of his dead ex-wife, was something
she was glad she hadn’t seen for herself. Her imagination was more than enough to
turn her stomach.

“Is Kindred still here?”

Murphy shook his head. “Left about an hour ago.”

She jerked her head toward the house. “Okay if I go in and look around?”

He considered her for several seconds, then said, “Yeah, most everyone’s gone.”

“Thanks, Murph.”

Giving her a quick, kind smile, he turned to walk away. Unable to stay out of it,
she called out, “He didn’t do it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She knew he wouldn’t be moved by her words, but she couldn’t resist making sure he
knew she believed in Quinn. She ignored the whispers of doubt that continued to reverberate
in her head.

Quinn stood beneath the hot blast of the shower and scrubbed himself raw. A physician
sickened by blood would be funny if it weren’t so damn stupid. Blood in the hospital
didn’t bother him, because he knew what to do and what to expect. Even when there
were complications, events were within his control.

On the battlefield, he’d had no control. Explosives and roadside bombs were impossible
to predict. He had survived by focusing totally on his job. Without that fierce concentration,
he wouldn’t have come back alive.

That hard-earned control was slowly slipping away. He had no idea who had killed Charlene.
And based on what had happened at the police station, he was apparently the only suspect.

A dark, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t something that came along often,
but when it did, he took notice. This was the way he’d always felt right before some
major shit went down.

Hell, what could happen next? He was already a suspect in the murder of his ex-wife.
And his girlfriend wasn’t sure he was innocent. Wasn’t that enough?

Turning off the water, Quinn grabbed the towel from the rack and dried off quickly.
It was going on nine o’clock. Would he hear from Sam?

All day long, he’d blocked out everything but the here
and now. The focus that had seen him through two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan
and made him a successful physician had seen him through the day. But now, with Charlene’s
blood finally washed away and the horror of the day growing dimmer, the ache in his
chest grew.

He had known he and Sam were keeping secrets from each other. They’d gone from instantaneous
attraction to burning up the sheets. With their busy schedules, most of their spare
time was spent in bed. They were good at sharing their bodies but not much else.

And to be fair, what he knew about Sam was probably a whole lot more than what she
knew about him. He knew she had grown up in Alabama and was one of identical triplets.
Her sister Savannah was an assistant district attorney in Nashville, and her sister
Sabrina was a private investigator in Tallahassee. He knew her parents were dead and
that her grandfather had raised the sisters. She loved sappy love stories, had a caring
heart, and her smile could make his toes curl. And just the sound of her silky voice
could turn him on.

He slid into a pair of jeans, slung the towel around his neck, and padded to the kitchen.
It had just occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten a damn thing all day. Maybe that
was where his feeling of impending doom came from. As he threw together an omelet,
he thought about the things he’d never told Sam. Would he ever have the chance now?
Hell, maybe it was best she didn’t know what kind of screwed-up background he’d come
from.

Turning away from the stove, Quinn was unsurprised to find her standing at the entrance
to the kitchen. Dressed in khakis and a sleeveless white shirt, she looked clean,
pure, and so damn beautiful the ache in his chest grew. A small part of him that still
believed in a future for them had been sure she would come.

He raised the plate he held in his hands. “The omelet is big enough for two.”

Sam’s smile wasn’t as bright as usual, but at least she had one. “Thanks. My cold
Pop-Tart from twelve hours ago has worn off.”

He grabbed two forks from the silverware drawer, sliced the omelet, and slid half
of it onto another plate. He turned and asked, “Orange juice or milk?”

A slender hand touched her stomach as she grimaced. “Better go for the milk.”

She had a nervous stomach—something he had learned the first night they’d slept together.
Whenever she was nervous or upset, her stomach went south.

He poured her a large glass of milk and an orange juice for himself. They sat at the
bar together, silent. Normally they would be talking about their day, telling each
other about an amusing or interesting event. There was none of that tonight.

Quinn quickly demolished his meal, the nourishment giving him a temporary sense of
well-being. At least now he felt as if he could carry on a halfway decent conversation.

“How did the trial go this morning?”

She jumped as though startled. “What?”

He’d been so focused on eating, he hadn’t noticed that Samantha had only taken a couple
of bites of her omelet.

“You need to eat, sweetheart.”

She flinched at the endearment and he felt the kick all the way down to his soul.
Trying to ignore the hurt, he repeated, “Eat up and tell me how the trial went.”

He watched her take another bite, noticing she chewed slowly as if she were having
trouble swallowing.

“The trial … it was …” She shrugged. “It was the same as usual. The judge kept allowing
the defense to take wild liberties.”

“Think it’ll go on much longer?”

“I don’t know.” She swung around to look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were
going to see Charlene to get a necklace back?”

This wasn’t the time to tell her what he had wanted to do with the necklace. Now,
as far as he was concerned, it could go in the trash. The damn thing would always
have the taint of death attached to it.

“Didn’t see the need to mention it to you. Wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Samantha bit the inside of her jaw, an old habit when she was upset. Quinn was holding
something back, she could tell. He was good at keeping his thoughts to himself, but
there’d been the slightest hesitation before he answered.

The crime scene had been like dozens she’d seen before. Nothing had stood out and
told her the identity of the killer. From what she could tell, nothing in the house,
other than the laptop, had been disturbed, and no items seemed to be missing. Whatever
anyone wanted to say about Charlene, no one would dispute that her house, inside and
out, was immaculate.

Charlene’s cellphone had been found on her dresser in her bedroom. The log of calls,
made and received, would be followed up on. If she had known her killer, were his
name and number on the phone? Of course, Quinn’s would be on there. Charlene had no
landline phones, so she would have called him on her cellphone. But other names would
be on there, too. One of them could be the murderer.

Nothing had struck her as unusual or strange when she was inside the house. It was
when she walked out the door to leave that her world had blown up. A neighbor who’d
talked to the police earlier decided she had remembered more and now wanted to chat
in earnest. Samantha had learned more in that five-minute conversation
with Marcie Ballou about Quinn and Charlene’s disastrous marriage than she had in
the months she had dated him. From Marcie’s overexcited chattering, she had discerned
that Quinn and Charlene’s marriage was acrimonious the entire time they lived in the
house together.

Why Marcie had opened up so completely was a mystery. Maybe it was because Samantha
was a woman. Or perhaps Marcie wasn’t a morning person, so when Murphy interviewed
her, she hadn’t been at her best. Maybe she’d been drinking, though there was no indication
that the woman wasn’t completely sober. For whatever reason, the instant she’d seen
Samantha, she’d called her over and information had gushed forth like a geyser.

Samantha stared down at her plate, not seeing the congealing omelet in front of her
as she remembered the disturbing conversation she’d had with Charlene’s neighbor.

“Yoo-hoo! Hello, are you with the police?”

Samantha had been headed to her car across the street but stopped abruptly and turned.
The woman, in her mid-sixties, was thin, with short, graying hair, and had a cigarette
hanging from her mouth like it was a favored appendage. She was dressed in Capri pants
and a summer top.

“Yes, I’m with the police. And you are …?”

“I’m Marcie Ballou. I live next door to the Braddocks. Or rather, I live next door
to Charlene. Well, I guess not anymore.” She laughed, the sound an abrasive mixture
of a little girl’s giggle and the croak of a frog.

“Did you know Charlene well?”

“About as well as you can know anyone these days, I guess. She wasn’t my best friend
by any means, but we exchanged words on occasion.”

“And did you see anyone this morning?”

“Well, like I told the police earlier, I was looking out my kitchen window around
eight this morning and saw
Quinn …” She grinned and added, “Dr. Braddock, that is.”

“Where did you see him?”

“He was parked across the street from Charlene’s house. I knew it was him immediately.
That car was all my husband talked about when Quinn—I mean Dr. Braddock—first bought
it.”

“What was he doing?”

“It was the strangest thing. When I looked out, he was just sitting in the car, staring
out the window.”

“At the house?”

“No. Just staring straight ahead.”

“How long would you say he sat there?”

“Well, he was already there when I looked out, but I guess he sat there for maybe
a couple of minutes more.”

“Was he talking on the phone, perhaps?”

“No, I could see him pretty clearly. He was just sitting there. I almost went out
and said something to him, but just when I was about to do that, he got out of the
car and I knew immediately I didn’t want to talk to him.”

“Why’s that?”

She shivered dramatically. “Because he looked furious. He marched across the street
like he was on some sort of mission and his face looked like a thundercloud.”

“Did you hear any arguing?”

“No, that’s the thing. I heard nothing. Then, a few minutes later, I looked out again
and saw a police car. Then, a little while after that, I looked out and there were
more police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck, too. It was like a television show.”