The Common Thread (20 page)

And he really, really hated that so many murders happened late at night and forced him to leave the comfort of his bed and lose the sleep his body loved. Billy Wallace had been shot at ten in the evening, nearly twelve hours earlier, and Phil hadn’t stopped running since he’d answered the call. He’d spent a few hours at the scene, talking to witnesses and waiting for the coroner to remove the body. He’d barely had a chance to begin digging into the victim’s background when he’d had to rush over to the hospital and figure out that fiasco. He’d have that officer’s badge if he could, just to make a point.

After heading back to his office, he’d had a chance to read about the victim and his common-law wife, Katie Finan, and had issued the alert for her before heading to the autopsy. He was there when the call came in that Katie Finan had been apprehended, and he’d rushed downtown, eager to talk to the woman.

According to the autopsy, Wallace would have died from either of the two bullets in his upper chest. The second, large-caliber round was literally overkill. The upper bullet ripped apart his aorta just as it exited the heart. The lower one entered the heart on the front side and exited on the back, then collapsed the lung. Death was instantaneous.

Wallace’s bloody body had been found on the first floor of the small house, in the living room near the front entrance. The pattern of blood splattered there indicated that was the site of the shooting. He fell where he was shot, collapsing into the fetal position, with his legs bent, on his left side.

They hadn’t found any bullets on the first floor but had retrieved two from Billy’s corpse. They’d also pulled a bullet from the window frame of the bedroom one floor above, and another one had presumably shattered the window. At first light, officers at the scene had uncovered a few more. All seemed to be from the same large-caliber weapon. They’d recovered casings from the hall, the stairs, the bedroom, and the alley beside the house.

Witnesses, a total of seven of them, reported seeing a dark-colored SUV parked in the alley next to Wallace’s apartment. They also reported seeing Katie Finan, or a woman resembling her, sitting on the roof over the first-floor porch when the first shots were fired. Three women saw Katie jump from the roof a minute later. One man reported seeing a man and a woman jump from the roof, but that witness couldn’t remember who’d gone first in the bizarre game of follow-the-leader. The other witnesses had jumped for cover when the shooting started outside the house and couldn’t offer any other information.

Some of the officers at the scene and neighbors outside speculated that Katie was the shooter. Phil already knew, without a doubt, that she was not. The evidence at the scene and the witness accounts told him that. If Finan had shot Wallace upstairs and missed, then chased him downstairs and killed him in the living room, why would she return to the bedroom and jump from the roof? She’d have fled through the front door, just a few feet away.

And why would she leave her kids in the house with their dead father’s body there for them to discover? Everything he’d learned about her in the hours since she’d fled that house told him that Katie Finan lived for her children. Her criminal record—devoid of entry since her daughter’s birth—clearly reflected that. Her neighbors described her as a doting mother. And of course, there was the incident at the hospital. If that didn’t prove just how much she cared for her children, nothing did.

No, Finan wasn’t the shooter. That meant the driver of the SUV had pulled the trigger. And Katie Finan knew who he was. He’d shot at her, too. If Phil could find her, she could finger the killer, and he could wrap up the case and get some sleep.

It seemed too good to be true when he’d heard that Finan had been picked up on Kelly Drive. But he’d rushed right over to Twenty-first Street, eager to question the woman. He’d missed her soliloquy to the two-way mirror but watched it on video several times before going into the room to question her.

From the moment he heard her speak, Phil was concerned that they’d picked up the wrong suspect. The woman they brought in looked a lot like Finan, but he was willing to bet they sounded nothing alike. The woman in custody spoke well, eloquently and with proper English. He’d be surprised if a woman living in Finan’s neighborhood and with a drug dealer like Billy Wallace even knew the meaning of the word
expedite
. She wore expensive sunglasses and running sneakers, too, but that didn’t persuade him one way or the other. They typically found expensive items like that in drug houses. But the way this suspect wore them—her entire demeanor, in fact—bespoke a confidence he rarely witnessed in this setting. This woman wasn’t afraid and wasn’t in the least bit intimidated by her surroundings. She was just biding her time, awaiting her release, and that wasn’t at all what he’d have expected from Katie Finan. Katie had much to fear and even more to lose if their meeting didn’t go her way, yet the woman talking into the mirror was more annoyed than afraid.

When he’d walked into the room to meet her, his suspicions were confirmed. The woman had an attitude, and gumption, but not the kind grown on the streets. She was just simply obnoxious, a spoiled brat, in his opinion. Used to having her way, but undeniably intelligent and articulate.

From that point, it was just a matter of time before she produced the proof of identity that won her freedom. He’d enjoyed their banter, matching barbs with her and of course talking about a part of the state he’d come to love. He and his wife had purchased a vacation home in the Poconos at Big Bass Lake, and they visited the mountains every chance they got. From the way she spoke, and the glimmer in her eyes, Dr. Coussart clearly loved that part of the commonwealth as much as he did.

So, his trip downtown had been for naught. And he wasn’t happy. First of all, he still didn’t have a suspect behind bars. And second, unless he found Katie before the killer did, he’d have another murder to solve.

Phil picked up his pen and applied it to the statement Nicole Coussart had signed, leaving his own signature below hers. Then he picked up the copy of Nicole’s driver’s license and studied it again. She certainly did resemble Katie. Then he noted with amusement that the doctor’s thirtieth birthday was the next day. He was surprised she hadn’t threatened to sue him for ruining her birthday festivities.

He opened the file on the Wallace murder, ready to put the information on Nicole into the back, in the section where the irreverent paperwork was filed. When he did, Katie Finan’s profile slipped out. He picked it up and shook his head at the similarities between the two women. Even though the much-younger woman had pink hair and a nose ring, it was easy to understand how the patrolmen had confused them and accidentally hauled in the doctor.

He glanced at the information on Katie Finan, taking it in, wondering what his next move would be, and saw something that made him stop. He reread the information to be sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him and then pulled the copy of Nicole’s driver’s license to recheck it.

“Whoa!” he whispered as he read the information below Katie’s picture for the third time. She was also twenty-nine years old. And, like Nicole Coussart, she would turn thirty the next day.

Nic’s presentation, and the subsequent minutes of the afternoon that followed (one hundred and sixty-five of them, at last count), had flown quickly by as Nic allowed herself the secret pleasure of daydreaming about her afternoon plans. Attempting to concentrate on conference topics had been futile as her thoughts wandered back to Rae, and so she’d left the conference early and headed home.

During the ride back to her apartment after her encounter at the police station, Rae had suggested that they spend a few hours before dinner at the Barnes. Nic was so excited about the prospect, and about seeing Rae again, she wasn’t sure how she was able to focus on her presentation. She had though, and done well, but as soon as the opportunity presented itself, she bolted.

This was the birthday present she’d asked of Louis, the one thing she’d really wanted to do. How could she refuse the invitation? At the same time, it felt strange to be going to the Barnes with Rae, whom she barely knew. Stranger still to be looking forward to it. A bit of mystery lingered, too. The tickets had to be acquired well in advance, yet somehow Rae had managed to find a pair.

She told herself she was repaying a kindness, doing a favor for Louis’s neighbor, who because of the abrasive nature of her personality most assuredly suffered from the lack of friendly companionship. And during the first moments after Nic’s presentation, when she’d finished accepting the back pats and congratulations of friends and strangers, she believed that. As the minutes passed, though, she found herself thinking not so much of a particular Renoir she wished to see and more about what she would be wearing when she saw it.

Nic could easily have dismissed this thought as meaningless because she usually paid considerable attention to her appearance, applying gallons of toxic products to keep her hair perky and shiny, and spending a small fortune on her wardrobe. She would expertly apply her makeup, and then add the necessary pieces of jewelry to complement her outfit, without crossing the line into obnoxious. If she’d been going to the Barnes with Louis, as she’d planned and hoped, she would have devoted an equal allotment of time to the task. No, that wasn’t unusual.

When she began wondering what Rae would wear, though, Nic had to face the fact that there was more to her mood, and to the lightness in her step, than a simple trip to an art museum. She was looking forward to seeing Rae.

Was she schizophrenic or what? The night before she’d thought slow torture too good a punishment for her, and she hadn’t even been accused of any crime other than stealing Louis’s attention. In her fury, Nic had been able to amass a half-dozen other charges, all of them equally offensive. The evening before, she’d have been happy to never see Rae again, and she was sure Rae’s feelings didn’t differ significantly from her own. Yet with the sunshine of a new day, and the peculiar situation in which Nic found herself, Rae was able to come to the rescue, revealing a new and much more appealing side that Nic couldn’t so easily discount. Last night, the posturing and opinions had been overwhelming; this morning they’d been comforting and reassuring. Even though she’d never needed protection in her uneventful upper-class existence, Nic suddenly found the idea of a strong protector erotically appealing.

Even if said protector was on the bottom of the growth chart.

She was usually so decisive. What the hell was wrong with her? Her first impressions usually stuck—and even if she found out later that she’d been wrong, she had no reason to apologize or make amends. She’d simply move on. Not this time, though. Now, she was ready to forget the entire list of Rae’s crimes and start over.

This, because the woman looked sexy as hell in a suit? Maybe she should consult the medical textbooks again. Perhaps medication would be helpful for her, after all.

Slipping her earring back through the dangling gold post in her ear, Nic hurried to the door as she heard the much anticipated bell ring. She was finally ready. As she passed the mirror she noted with approval the image that greeted her and smiled at herself as she raced by. She’d skipped out of the conference early for this trip, and she still found herself rushing. She’d showered, changed her outfit twice, and reapplied her makeup, all without cause, because she’d looked perfectly great before. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said aloud as she reached for the door, then stopped with her hand on the knob.

Ready for what? How would she label this time with Rae? It was one thing to spend time with her, but did she want to call it a date? And what would Rae have to say about it? While she knew the evening before had been intended to put the two of them together in one of Louis’s lab beakers, to see if a chemical reaction resulted, the mixture had caused a messy explosion. Rae might not want anything to do with her. This afternoon at the museum with dinner to follow could simply be an attempt at friendship, nothing more.

She frowned. Not only was she confused about what she wanted from this trip to the museum, she was frustrated by the knowledge that it might be Rae’s call to make, not hers.

Nic opened the door to the woman of the hour and couldn’t help appreciating the sight. Rae, too, had changed clothes, and this was the best look of the three Nic had seen so far. She didn’t like the tough girl she’d met the night before, and although the lawyer in the suit she’d met earlier in the day was quite attractive, this casual Rae was outstanding. A bright-purple button-up over a black T-shirt was tucked into knee-length black pants. On her feet was a pair of funky black leather shoes, a hybrid between sneakers and loafers. “You look great!” she said before she realized her thoughts had morphed into words.

Rae’s smile, and the twinkle in her black eyes, made Nic forget the slip of her tongue. She modestly appraised Nic, who wore a miniskirt and lightweight sweater, and returned the compliment.

“Our tickets are for three to three thirty, so we should make it with a few minutes to spare,” Rae commented as they rode the elevator down to the lobby. They debated a taxi, but because they weren’t completely sure of their dinner plans, Rae agreed to drive. Nic didn’t mind conceding that control. She despised driving in the city.

As they left her apartment together, Nic couldn’t hold back her smile and felt idiotic as she grinned broadly. But art was her first love, and if she hadn’t grown up in a household with two doctors who talked shop nonstop, she’d have chosen a much less practical but satisfying career in art. She lacked the talent to make a living by painting, but she would have loved to do art restoration. Repairing damaged masterpieces at a large museum like the Barnes would qualify as her dream job.

She’d been to the Barnes before, as a medical student, when it was housed in the suburbs in the mansion built for the doctor’s sizable collection. The new museum reproduced the rooms and displays Dr. Barnes had so painstakingly arranged, and she found that in itself amazing. Not to mention the Picassos, Cezannes, Renoirs, and van Goghs. That she was having this experience because of the woman she’d wanted to kill just a day before was equally amazing.