Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Jamie

“ D etective Del Rey? Do you have a minute?” Officer Dumont said as he poked his head around my open office door.

Generally speaking, it was accepted that if I was working from my office rather than the incident room, I didn’t want to be disturbed, but for Officer Dumont to come here like this, it was obviously something important. I felt my stomach stirring a little. Maybe this was the breakthrough we were all desperately waiting for.

“Sure. Come on in,” I said.

Officer Dumont came into my office. He held a folded-up newspaper in his hand, which he began to unfold as he sat down opposite me .

“We have a problem,” he said.

So much for this being a breakthrough. Another problem was the last thing we needed. I kind of wished I’d said I was too busy to talk to him, but that wouldn’t have made the problem go away. In fact, it might have escalated it, and I was still hoping it would be a small problem, one we could nip in the bud quickly. Officer Dumont nodded down at the newspaper and my eyes went to the front-page headline and photo. My heart sank. This wasn’t a small problem and it wasn’t going to just go away.

“Fuck,” I said under my breath.

The headline on the front page of the newspaper Officer Dumont and I were looking at somewhat sickly screamed Killers Left at Large as Police Botch Murder Investigation . I would hardly say we were botching it. We just had so little to work with. And it wasn’t like there was some lunatic killer on the loose and any of the public’s lives were in danger. This was just sensationalism, nothing more and nothing less. It still presented a huge problem for me, though. Not so much the accusation—no one of any importance really cared what hacks at tabloid newspapers thought—but what came next after the shock value headline created a problem.

Beneath the headline was the main problem. It was a huge photo of William and Carlotta Alden. This was the last thing I needed. Now the case had gone public, the chief would be breathing down my neck and the press would be hounding the Aldens. All that would do would be to make them close ranks and make the investigation even harder.

“Have you read the article?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s pretty brutal,” Officer Dumont replied. “It just goes on and on about how there are only two possible suspects and we can’t even decide which of them is the killer. There’s also an exposé on William and Candy’s affair, and of course, there’s rampant speculation about which of the couple had the strongest motive to kill Candy.”

“Great. Just great,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” Officer Dumont said.

“What for? Did you talk to the press?” I said, knowing full well that he hadn’t.

Officer Dumont shook his head quickly. “No, of course not,” he said with a frown.

“Then you have nothing to be sorry for. I try not to shoot the messenger around here, Officer. Do me a favor and try to find out where the leak is coming from. It has to be someone in the precinct. There’s no way either of the Aldens would talk to the press like this, and they certainly would have provided a better photo if they had. And no one else would have known so much about the case.”

“I’m on it,” Officer Dumont said.

He jumped up and left my office as my cellphone started to ring. It was a toss-up in my mind about whether it would be the coroner’s office whose call I was still waiting for or whether it would be the chief if he had already seen the headlines, because if one rag was running that bullshit story, then chances were that they all were. And if they weren’t then I could guarantee they would be tomorrow.

I frowned when I looked at my cellphone’s screen. It was a number I didn’t recognize. It must be one of the Aldens, having seen the day’s papers. It was always fun trying to calm down a suspect when a story leaked like this. No matter what I said to them, they would never believe I was as pissed off as they were about it.

“Detective Del Rey,” I said, taking the call but wishing I could ignore it.

“You knew all along, didn’t you?” a voice said.

I frowned. The voice was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It definitely didn’t belong to either of the Aldens. And I had no idea what the voice was talking about. What had I known all along?

“Excuse me?” I said.

Maybe it was a wrong number and they had just launched into their accusation without listening to my name as I took the call.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Detective. I sat there and poured my heart out to you about the monster who corrupted my daughter, and you pretended like you didn’t know what I was talking about. Well, there’s no denying it now, is there? It’s all right here in black and white.”

It hit me immediately who it was then. Morrie Xavier, Candy’s father. And of course I knew what he was talking about. The affair he knew Candy had been having and how he’d somehow figured that we should arrest William for Candy’s murder based solely on the affair.

My day was just getting better and better. I found myself wishing I were still in Amsterdam. Even being at home in bed would do.

“Mr. Xavier, please calm down,” I said. “As I told you yesterday, having an affair with someone is not a crime. We can’t arrest anyone for that.”

“Fine. So arrest him for killing my daughter then. Him and that no-good wife of his. She’s covering for him, Detective. You mark my words.”

I sighed and ran my hands over my face.

“Mr. Xavier, again, we can’t just arrest people with no evidence that they’ve done anything wrong, and your assertions have no evidence to back them up.”

“Oh, come on, Detective. Even the so-called journalist at the rag knows it was one of those two who killed my girl. Just arrest both of them. One of them killed her and the other one lied about what happened. Surely, that’s a crime in itself,” Morrie went on, his voice loud enough to make my ears ring.

My cellphone beeped. I pulled it away from my ear and glanced at the screen. There was a call waiting. It was the coroner. I really needed to get Morrie off the line and take that call. Of course, that was easier said than done.

“Mr. Xavier, please stop shouting,” I said. “Of course it’s a crime to lie to the police and cover up a murder. But until we find evidence to prove who killed your daughter and who did the lying, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t just charge them both for murder and hope it sticks. It’s a sure-fire way to get them both acquitted and then no one pays for your daughter’s death.”

“I’ve told you before, Detective. If you’re not willing to deal with this, then I will,” Morrie said as I put the cellphone back to my ear. “I have a good mind to go over there and talk to this bastard myself. I’ll get a confession out of him. You mark my words, I will.”

“I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear that,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Xavier, I have an important call waiting regarding your daughter’s case. I assure you that you will be the first to know when we find out who did this. And we will find out.”

“Yeah. You’d better,” Morrie snapped, and then he ended the call.

I sighed again. The man was grieving, and I was trying my best to keep my patience with him, but he wasn’t a nice man and he was making my life more difficult with his constant interruptions. He couldn’t seem to work out that for every minute of my time he wasted, it was a minute I wasn’t able to work on the case.

I didn’t really think he would turn up at the Aldens’ place. He had to know that wouldn’t help anything and would more likely than not end up in his own arrest.

I tried to put Morrie out of my mind. I went to my call log and hit Call beside the missed call from Dr. Karloff’s office.

Please give me something I can use. Anything , I thought to myself as I listened to the call connect. It rang a few times and then Sharon picked up.

“Coroner’s office, Sharon speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hey, Sharon. It’s Jamie Del Rey. I just missed a call from Dr. Karloff,” I said. “I was waiting for some test results from the lab. Any chance you have the results for me?”

“Hi, Detective. I don’t have the results here. Dr. Karloff must have them himself. Can I just pop you on hold for a second while I see if he’s free?”

“Sure,” I replied, but I was too late.

The hold music was already playing as I answered her. I had to admire Sharon’s style, how she made it sound like there was a choice about being put on hold but didn’t actually wait to hear the person moaning, if that’s what they were going to do. I didn’t have to wait long before Sharon came back on the line .

“Dr. Karloff is free, Detective. I’ll pass you through now,” she said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

I heard a couple of clicking sounds on the line and then Dr. Karloff’s voice filled my ear.

“Hey, Jamie. How’s things?”

“They’ve been better,” I replied honestly. “Please tell me you have something for me.”

“I do. The results of the DNA test are back. There’s a ninety-eight percent chance that William Alden is the father of Candy Xavier’s baby.”

“Well, that’s something,” I said.

The way this case was going, I had half-expected the DNA not to be a match, or at best to be inconclusive, but ninety-eight percent was pretty conclusive.

“Can you email me the report?” I said.

“I’m doing it as we speak,” Dr. Karloff said.

“Great, thanks,” I said.

“Right. All sent. Let me know if you need anything else, okay?” Dr. Karloff said.

“I will. Thanks again,” I said.

We said our goodbyes and I ended the call. I was already opening my email inbox as I ended the call, and I saw the email from Dr. Karloff immediately. I opened the report and hit Print and then I scanned through it. It showed exactly what Dr. Karloff had told me. There was no way William could deny this now. Surely, even someone as brazen as him wouldn’t try to wriggle out of this on a two-percent chance. And if he did, I had witnesses who could prove he was lying. At least about the affair, if not the pregnancy.

But I still didn’t know how this fit into the case because it still gave both William and Carlotta a potentially stronger motive for killing Candy, and by no stretch of the imagination did it pinpoint one or the other of them as the killer.

It did give me an excuse to go out to the Aldens’ place and talk to them, though. Which meant that I might be able to get lucky for once and get something out of one of them that I could use. And at least it felt like progress.

I went to the printer and collected the report and then put my jacket on and headed out. I had just reached my car when my cellphone rang again. I recognized the number straight away as Morrie’s. I ignored the call. It wasn’t helping either of us for me to keep wasting time listening to him ranting and raving. It made more sense for me to go and talk to William quickly. I turned the cellphone to silent and slipped it back into my pocket .

I drove across town, cursing the traffic although it wasn’t too heavy. I finally reached the Aldens’ place and went up to the front door. I knocked and waited, and William came to the door.

“Detective Del Rey,” he said with a sigh. “What can I do for you?”

“May I come in? I have something I need to talk to you about,” I said.

William stood back from the door and let me pass him. He seemed a little reluctant to let me in, but I wasn’t in any mood to pander to him. One of the residents of this house was guilty of causing Candy's death, either by murder or self-defense, and I was getting damned sick of going around in circles trying to work out which one of them it was.

William closed the front door and then led me through to the lounge.

“Carlotta is in her studio. Do you need her as well?”

I debated it for a moment and decided against involving Carlotta at this point. I figured William might be a little bit more forthcoming about the pregnancy if his wife wasn’t there to hear it. I shook my head. William sat down and gestured for me to do the same. He didn’t offer me any refreshments, but to be honest, I hadn’t been expecting him to .

“I just wanted to clarify something with you, Mr. Alden,” I said. “In your original statement, you said that you didn’t know Candy very well. And yet, the autopsy that was carried out on her showed that she was pregnant. DNA tests have shown that the baby was yours. Now how do you explain that?” I asked.

I kept my voice low and neutral, not wanting to make William feel like I was attacking him or judging him. He was much less likely to talk if he thought either of those things.

“This doesn’t put me in a great light, does it, Detective?” William said with a sigh.

I shook my head. There was no point in lying to him. Anyone could work out that being caught in a lie wasn’t exactly helping his case.

“The thing is, I wasn’t lying, Detective. Not really. I really didn’t know Candy all that well. I mean yes, we had sex, but surely, you’ve had sex with a woman you didn’t know very well at some point.”

“Sure,” I replied. “But none of those women have ever turned up dead in my front garden.”

William raised an eyebrow at my blunt statement. “Fair enough,” he said after a long pause. “I know I should have mentioned that we’d had sex at the beginning of this, but it just didn’t seem important. I mean, the sex wasn’t what killed her, was it? It wasn’t like it was that recent. We had a brief fling that ended weeks ago, and I thought the only thing that could come from telling you that was upsetting Carlotta needlessly and making Candy look like someone who was maybe a little too easy. Why ruin a girl’s reputation when she’s already dead?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I had to wonder if William really was na?ve enough to believe this good Samaritan bullshit himself or if he just thought I was stupid enough to buy it.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” I asked.

William shook his head. He didn’t look at me for a moment, and I got the distinct impression that he was lying.

“No. After I ended the affair, Candy became a bit of a nuisance, calling endlessly and hanging around the property. She seemed to think I was going to leave Carlotta and we could run off into the sunset together or something, but she never mentioned a baby to me.”

“I find that strange, don’t you? If Candy was so determined for you two to be together, then telling you she was pregnant would have been a good way to make you feel guilty for ending the affair, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess it is a little strange. But if you’re asking me why she didn’t tell me, I can’t help you, Detective. I have no idea what was going through her head. In my opinion, she was mentally unbalanced. Plus, there’s a chance she didn’t know about the pregnancy herself, right?”

I ignored William’s question, although I knew he was right to ask it. Officer Stanford had called me earlier that morning to tell me there was nothing in Candy’s medical records to suggest that she had known she was pregnant. Officer Stanford had correctly pointed out that it didn’t actually mean she didn’t know. She could have done a home pregnancy test. But it did mean we had no evidence to say she knew.

“So, do you make it a habit to have flings with your interns, Mr. Alden?” I asked, changing the subject.

“No, I most certainly do not, Detective,” William snapped. “And I fail to see how that is relevant to this. It’s not illegal for two consenting adults to have sex.”

“You’re right, it isn’t,” I said. “But when one of those adults is—how did you put it again? Mentally unbalanced? Yes, that was it, wasn’t it? Then you have to wonder whether there was true informed consent.”

“She wasn’t mentally unbalanced then,” William said quickly.

“So you drove her to mental illness when you ended the relationship?” I said.

I knew I was antagonizing him, pushing him a little harder than I maybe should have without his lawyer present, but he was answering me of his own free will and he hadn’t asked for his lawyer to be here. The man just pushed my buttons. He continued to lie to me, and it pissed me off. It was like he thought this was some sort of game, that he failed to see Candy’s death as important enough for him to be concerned with it.

“It was hardly a relationship, Detective. It was just sex. Candy knew that going in, and it was only once the fling was over that she showed her true colors.”

I could see that William was starting to get agitated, aware that he was digging himself into a hole. If I could just push him a little bit harder, then maybe he would blurt out something really incriminating.

“By which point you just wanted to wash your hands of her?” I said. “Because she was becoming a nuisance.”

“Exactly,” William said. “I didn’t sign up for anything that made me responsible for her mental health issues, Detective.”

“No, of course not,” I said. “But I have to wonder how much of a nuisance she was to you and just how far you would go to make sure she was no longer causing problems for you.”

“I was willing to go as far as getting a restraining order against her. In fact, I planned on doing that the day she was found dead. Now unless there’s anything else, Detective, I really must go,” William said hurriedly.

He knew exactly what I was implying, and his reaction instantly raised my suspicions, but he wasn’t under arrest and he had every right to ask me to leave his home at this point. I could arrest him and force him to talk, but I knew I had nothing that would stick at this point, so I stood up and nodded to him.

“Of course, Mr. Alden. Thank you for your time,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.”

I headed back out of the house and to my car. I took my cellphone out of my pocket. I had three missed calls from Morrie Xavier and a missed call from the chief. I also had a voicemail. I listened to the voicemail first, thinking it would be from the chief. It wasn’t. It was from Morrie and it was more ranting and raving about why I didn’t just arrest William already. I thought for a moment and then called Officer Stanford.

“Are you busy?” I asked when she answered the call.

“No, I’m sitting with my feet up, painting my nails,” she said.

I gave a soft laugh.

“Okay, bad choice of words. Are you too busy to fit in an extra hour’s job?”

“I can make it work,” she said.

I explained the situation about Morrie Xavier. She already knew about the newspaper article and instantly put two and two together about why he suddenly thought we should just arrest someone. At this point, pretty much anyone, whether they were guilty or not.

“Basically, the man is a nuisance. He’s wasting time that could be dedicated to finding out who killed Candy. But at the same time, he’s grieving, and I think he just wants to feel heard. Can you grab a junior officer and go over there and just listen to his ranting for a while? Make him feel like you’re taking him seriously.”

“Sure,” she replied. “But I can’t guarantee I won’t end up giving him some tough love.”

“If you think it’ll work, go for it,” I said.

I debated calling the chief back. I already knew what he wanted. He wanted to cuss me out for the leak to the media and find out what I was doing about it. And of course, he wanted to put pressure on me to find out which of the Aldens killed Candy. I decided against calling him back and put my cellphone away and started the car.

I was heading back to the precinct anyway, and when I got there, that would be soon enough for the lecture.