3

Jude

Back in the office after the long Fourth of July weekend, Jude started a pot of coffee and grabbed the Webster case. Before the holiday break, they'd decided the murder of mother and bank loan officer Jessi Webster would be the next case to investigate.

Jude didn't know all that much about the circumstances of the case and figured getting into the office early would give him the perfect opportunity to familiarize himself with the evidence and the reasons why this case went cold seven years ago.

Flipping to the crime scene photos, Jude saw a woman lying face up on the tiled kitchen floor. There was no blood at the scene, but the cause of death became apparent when Jude flipped to the next picture, showing the victim from the chest up. Four ugly dark bruises marred the skin on the left side of her neck, with one lone mark on the right. The marks were in the shape of a human hand. Jessi Webster had been strangled to death.

Moving on to the autopsy, Jude viewed photos of petechial hemorrhaging in the victim's eyes, another telltale sign of strangulation. Other photos showed bruises in various stages of healing on her upper arms, as if someone had grabbed and perhaps shaken her, and others over her ribs and upper thighs, which might be from angry fists. Was her husband abusing her long before her murder?

Jude scribbled down notes to himself, things he wanted to check over as he read the transcripts of the four interviews with Tony Webster. Over the course of those chats with police, Tony had revealed he'd been having an affair with a nineteen-year-old woman named Aimee, who was thirty-one years his junior. A quick check on Google revealed that he and Aimee had gotten married two years after the murder, when the case had gone ice-cold. The happy couple had a five-year-old daughter named Hope, who'd been born a few months shy of their one-year anniversary.

Typing Tony's name into the database revealed that the man hadn't been issued so much as a speeding ticket since his wife's murder. There were no ER trips for the new Mrs. Webster, and Tony had become enraged when the original detectives had asked about Jessi's bruises, which only made police more convinced that the husband was their man. Even with his dramatic outbursts, no arrest had been made in the case.

What Jude found interesting in the interviews was Tony's assertion that Jessi had her own secrets. Secrets that could have gotten her killed. She'd been a member of the Salem School Board and was a mortgage officer with the First Salem Bank. Tony stated multiple times that the Websters' house had been egged on several occasions in the months leading up to the murder and that Jessi had gotten death threats delivered by mail to her office and their home. Tony did not have any of these threats to share with police.

Curiouser and curiouser.

"Hey, Jude," Ronan said, walking into the office. He was dressed in dark dress pants and a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt patterned with parrots and bananas.

"Hey, Magnum." Jude rolled his eyes. "Where the hell did you get that ugly shirt?"

"It was a present from my husband."

"I see Ten's been shopping at Ugly Shirts 'R Us again." Fitzgibbon snorted from the doorway.

"If we were on vacation at the beach, you'd both love this shirt and be begging me to tell you where I got it so you could get your own." Ronan wore a defiant look.

"Over my dead body," Fitz said.

"Ditto!" Jude crowed. "I wouldn't wear that shirt if I were freezing to death and it was the only thing between me and death."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your commentary on my fashion choices will never hurt me." Ronan shot Jude a so-there look and headed for the coffeepot.

"How far have you gotten on the Webster case file?" Fitz asked, taking his usual seat across from Jude.

"I've been through the crime scene photos, the autopsy report, and the interviews with the husband." Jude sighed. "With all those bruises on her limbs and torso, it seems pretty open-and-shut that the husband did this, but he was never arrested."

"The reason I chose this case was because life has gone back to normal for Tony Webster. He's got a new wife and a baby. I'm not saying that he's guilty, but he's settled, secure in his knowledge that he's basically in the clear."

Jude knew the man had gotten comfortable, but Tony's time in the lap of luxury was rapidly drawing to a close. He'd make sure the murdering thug was behind bars with enough evidence to see him rot there.

"The other thing that caught my attention was that people would have moved on from the squabbles of the school committee and would have gotten over being turned down for a mortgage seven years ago. Folks might be more willing to speak with us and might feel a bit more empathy for the victim than they had years ago."

Jude mulled over Ronan's thoughts. "Remember that dick last year who thought Cope should be removed from the PTA because he married a man?"

Ronan nodded. "He was part of that same group of parents who tried to come for Ten when he was involved with the Christmas Pageant."

"Exactly," Jude agreed. "We know from firsthand experience how local politics and disagreements can spiral out of control into something larger and uglier." Thankfully, Jude had listened to Cope when he'd said to stop engaging with the dickfaces trying to hurt their family. Cope had seen how easily Jude could be pushed to the edge when his family was involved, and Jude hadn't liked that look one bit. "Do we know what the issue was with Jessi Webster and the school committee?"

"Yeah." Fitz nodded. "The issue was money in the budget. There wasn't enough to fund football and the arts. You know, music lessons, art supplies, and the salaries to pay the teachers and aides. Three members wanted to put the money toward the arts, while the other three members wanted it to go to football. Jessi Webster was the deciding vote."

"Tale as old as time," Ronan muttered. "How did she vote?"

"For the arts," Fitz said, sounding puzzled. "She had two nephews on the football team, which made the other members think she was going to vote with them, but when the final vote was tallied, she'd gone the other way. According to the police report, a fight broke out between some of the parents, while others charged at Jessi Webster. Witnesses claim they heard Jessi shouting, ‘Let me explain!' but she never had the chance. She was murdered in her kitchen four hours later."

"Huh," Ronan muttered to himself. "Did the husband have any idea why his wife voted the way she did?"

"No one ever asked him," Jude said. "All of the interrogations and interviews Tony went through were aimed at getting him to confess that he'd killed his wife. Whenever he tried to insist that his wife had been threatened at work and at home, the detectives would steer the discussion back to Tony being the one who killed her."

"I hate stubborn detectives like that." Ronan shook his head. "People who are unwilling to entertain the possibility that someone else could have committed the crime. While they were being horses' asses, the real killer got away with the crime."

"For now," Fitzgibbon said with a smirk. "We're going into this case with our eyes wide open and are going to look at every possible angle and interview everyone who had anything to do with Jessi and Tony. In fact, I spoke with him this morning on my way into the office. We've got an appointment to see him and his wife, Aimee, at ten."

"Shit, wouldn't it have been better to just show up and surprise him with the information that his wife's case had been reopened?" Ronan wore a disappointed look.

"I told him that I had questions about Jessi's acquaintances. I figured that if he thinks we've moved on from him as a suspect, then he'll be more willing to tell us anything we want to know. I want him to feel even more relaxed with the fact that he's not under suspicion where we are concerned."

Jude approved of Fitzgibbon's plan. "I'll spend the rest of the morning familiarizing myself with the case." He wanted to be as prepared as possible. Memories changed as time passed. Something Tony might not have thought was important at the time of the murder could be the one clue they needed to solve the case now.

"By the way," Fitzgibbon said. "Aurora is wildly in love with her new unicorn. You didn't have to do that, you know. It wasn't your fault the girls incorrectly assumed what you had planned on the Fourth of July."

"I know. To be honest, it was fun being out with the girls. Shows me what I've got to look forward to with Lizbet as she gets older. Right now, all she does is run around and screech like Godzilla, but I have a feeling once she starts talking in registers that humans, as well as dogs, can hear, she's going to be unstoppable, especially where Mothra is concerned."

Fitzgibbon snorted. "Cope sent me the cutest pic of Aurora chowing down on the watermelon. Her cheeks were bulging like a chipmunk, and her eyes were determined. She's never had so much fun getting dirty before." He sniffled and cleared his throat.

"She's come a long way, Fitz, thanks to all the love and support you and Jace give her."

"It's not just us. It's all of you. Aurora has this big, crazy family that would do anything for her. She knows she can count on you to always be there for her."

It meant the world for Fitz to say these words. Jude had always loved Aurora, and Everly, for that matter, but sometimes he wasn't sure that love shone through as clearly as he wanted it to. He was a grumpy son of a bitch at times, and his bark was bigger than his bite, but he couldn't love Aurora more if she were his daughter. "I learned the hard way that the moral of the story is to always have unicorns on hand no matter the situation."

"Good plan." Fitz reached for his copy of the Webster case file and flipped it open.

Turning his mind back to the case, Jude mentally reviewed the interviews with Tony Webster. He wished they'd been recorded so he'd be able to see the man's body language while he was being asked questions. Was he fidgety? Did he break eye contact or not make it at all?

You could tell a lot about a potential suspect by the way they held themselves and the way they reacted to what was being asked of them. Jude was going to watch Tony Webster like a hawk, and hopefully, the man would spill a previously unknown detail that would help convict his murdering ass.