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Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

I check my desk for what’s been added since I was here last, piles of autopsy reports, death certificates and lab reports awaiting my review and initialing. The stack of cardboard slide folders next to my microscope wasn’t there earlier, and I won’t get to any of it today.

I begin shuffling through telephone messages from funeral homes, attorneys, forensic scientists. I’m not surprised to discover that Ryder Briley is demanding I discuss the autopsy. He wants his daughter’s body released immediately so that he can put my baby to rest, my secretary quotes on a pink message slip.

Blaise Fruge is the investigator in the case, and she’s been trying to get hold of me. Before doing anything else, I check on the weather, opening a window shade. The parking lot is bright, my bland brick building surrounded by a palisade of tall metal privacy fencing that casts long shadows.

The blue sky is streaked with wispy clouds, the storm front Marino continues harping about a dark band on the distant horizon. As I watch employees heading out on lunch breaks, I notice a large white SUV has pulled off the street, parked in a blind spot for our surveillance cameras. The driver is positioned to watch who comes and goes through our parking lot’s security gate.

Only someone familiar with the building would know the location of the cameras unless it’s luck. I’m reminded of arriving at the Brileys’ house late yesterday afternoon. Fabian and I were carrying in our gear as the police searched the huge garage, the doors retracted. I noticed the expensive vehicles inside, including a white Cadillac Escalade SUV parked between a Ferrari and a Bentley.

Picking up my binoculars, I can see the Cadillac badge on the grille of the white SUV across from my building. I recognize the angry middle-aged man behind the wheel. Ryder Briley has on sunglasses and a golf shirt, wearing his baseball cap backwards. His hefty gold watch and diamond pinky ring shine in the sunlight as he flicks a cigarette butt out the white Escalade’s open window while harassing Shannon over the phone.

I train the binoculars on Piper Briley in the passenger seat drinking a tall boy beer, her long blond hair in a ponytail. Her pretty face is frozen with no expression as it was yesterday, the result of Botox injections, I assume. Braless and big breasted, she has on a hot pink tube top, and through the stretchy fabric I can see the shapes of nipple rings.

Holding up her phone, she’s filming state employees driving in and out, her diamond jewelry flashing in the bright midday sun. Then my own phone is ringing, Investigator Blaise Fruge trying to reach me on FaceTime, and I answer.

“I just came upstairs to my office and was going to call you before I head out the door. But you beat me to it,” I say to her. “I’m holding on to Luna Briley a few more days and pending her manner of death for now as we continue to investigate.”

“Her parents are already causing huge trouble, and I wanted you to hear it straight from me,” she says, her face stern on my phone’s display.

I can see that she’s parked somewhere in her unmarked SUV, her eyes masked by mirrored Ray-Ban sunglasses similar to what Marino wears. Like him she’s obsessed with the gym and taking all sorts of dietary supplements. She looks buff in jeans and a polo shirt, her typical uniform now that the weather is warmer.

“Ryder Briley has been calling the chief’s office, internal affairs, also the city manager and the mayor,” Fruge says on FaceTime, clamping her phone into the holder on the dash. “He’s bragging about all the super-lawyers he has working for him, throwing his weight around, threatening to own the police, the medical examiner and the city of Alexandria.”

“He keeps calling my office haranguing Shannon. And right now, he and his wife are parked across from my building,” I say to Fruge as she picks up a large drink from Burger King. “Plus, we’ve been getting weird phone calls. Harassment, in other words. I can’t swear it’s the Brileys. But it could be.”

“They’re claiming that Fabian was threatening them inside their house. Basically, they’re lying through their teeth about all of us,” Fruge replies between sips on a straw.

“I won’t allow them to intimidate my staff or anyone else, including me,” I tell her while glancing at the white Escalade out my office window.

“Easier said than done.” Paper crackles as she opens a fast-food bag. “You got any idea all the stuff he owns? Hotels, office and apartment buildings, amusement parks, airport hangars. Plus, all kinds of companies, and huge homes all over. He’s as rich as God and has a network of high-level people who will do what he wants,” she says, and I’m aware of his reputation.

When Roxane Dare ran for governor, Ryder Briley was her opponent’s biggest contributor. After she won, he’s continued to speak out about her viciously and publicly in TV commercials. He’s known for starring in his own political ads for whoever he’s backing, typically depicting himself hunting big game in Africa or landing his helicopter on the rooftop of a building he owns.

“God only knows who all he’s got in his back pocket.” Fruge unwraps a Whopper, and what I wouldn’t give for one, my mouth watering. “The Brileys are a blight on society, and I swear to God I’m going to make sure they get what they deserve.”

Fruge’s not much better than Fabian when it comes to overheating and seeking vengeance. She didn’t disguise her feelings while interviewing the Brileys in a great room that reminded me of a ski lodge. They sat on a cowhide-upholstered sofa surrounded by hunting trophies. A gazelle. An elk. A bobcat. An African buffalo. A wildebeest.

Exotic birds were mounted on plaques. An elephant’s foot had been turned into a wastepaper basket. The floor was arranged with rugs made from the skins of bears, zebras, giraffes, and I found myself stepping around them whenever I walked past.

“Did you find anything that makes you think Luna did this to herself or even could have?” Fruge asks as I spray distilled water on my orchids and other potted plants. “What? She unlocked the pistol herself. She chambered a round?”

“I don’t believe that’s what happened.” I return the spray bottle to a bookcase crammed with medical and legal tomes, many of them old editions filled with my notes.

“As tiny and frail as she was?” Fruge continues talking and eating as we FaceTime. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was three years old. Not seven.”

“She was small for her age, thirty-one pounds and barely three feet tall,” I reply as my outrage quietly churns inside. “I’m guessing from chronic malnourishment, her body a road map of abuse.”

“And here they are parading as saints. Giving money to this cause and the next, having photo ops with kids at every opportunity,” Fruge says. “Total fucking hypocrites.”

“The oldest story. Especially in cases of domestic abuse,” I reply.

“They have to pay.”

“If proven guilty, I expect they will.”

“What else can you tell me?” Fruge slurps on her drink.

“X-rays show multiple healed fractures of her extremities, including a spiral fracture of the shaft of her left humerus consistent with her left arm being violently twisted.”

“Jesus. I’m so going to nail them.” She takes another bite of her burger.

“Scars on her buttocks, back and arms look like cigarette burns,” I continue. “She also has obvious bruises on her head that are days old. And possibly ones from around the time of death, the vague marks on her neck and shoulders that I pointed out to you at the scene. I’ll know more later.”

“People like that make me want to believe in hell.” Fruge’s face twitches with fury.

“Well, I certainly believe in it, and that it’s here on earth.” I walk back and forth in front of the window with the open shade, keeping tabs on the white Escalade without being obvious.

“Question is how to build an airtight case.” She dips a French fry in ketchup as I try not to think about how hungry I am. “Now that you’ve done the autopsy, what can you tell about the shooting itself? Can we prove Luna couldn’t have done it?”

I reply that the gunshot wound to the upper left forehead is atypical for self-inflicted. The .22 caliber hollow-point bullet ripped a wide wound channel through the brain’s frontal and temporal lobes, lodging in the cerebellum at the back of the skull.

“The trajectory was angled downward, and we’ll see what else the labs can tell us,” I add.

“Consistent with the father shooting her while she was in bed watching TV, which is what I think the asshole did,” Fruge says.

“Possibly.” I envision the bedroom decorated with a Barbie doll theme, pinkly perfect and for show like everything else.

I didn’t notice a single stuffed animal or family photograph, no books or crayons, nothing that might make you think the parents gave a damn. It crossed my mind that Luna was no different from the antique dolls imprisoned in glass display boxes on high shelves inside her bedroom. Their unblinking eyes seemed to follow me as I moved about examining the body.

“It sounds like they were abusing the hell out her forever and nobody knew,” Fruge says in a stone-cold tone, squeezing more ketchup out of a packet. “They’re important and rich with a special-needs child who supposedly was afraid to leave the house. She supposedly got severely agitated around other people. That’s how the parents described her to anyone who would listen.”

As we continue FaceTiming, I’m watching the white Escalade speed away, the Brileys gone, but for how long? I don’t need them casing my building or having someone else do it. The security here is far better than it was when I took this job four years ago. But that’s not saying a whole lot under the best of circumstances.

My officers can’t carry firearms or make arrests. I can’t afford more than one on duty per shift, and have to depend on my police friends in times like this.

“I would appreciate a few units patrolling my headquarters until this blows over if you can manage it,” I’m saying to Fruge. “I’ve got more than one reason to worry about Ryder Briley.”

“Something else going on with him I don’t know about?”

“One of his properties is involved in a case I’m about to respond to near the West Virginia border,” I reply. “That’s as much as I can say right now.”

“And you’re thinking the cases might be related?” She rewraps what’s left of her Whopper.

“At the moment I have no idea what to think.”

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