Let Justice Descend. Lisa Black
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ever shot anything more than rhetoric at each other, the streets would run red and we’d have all the overtime we could handle.”
Just then, one of Maggie’s paper bags started ringing. She had put Diane Cragin’s purse and briefcase into paper bags and left them in the foyer to get them out of the elements, and now the victim’s cell phone rang. No song or cutesy voice, only an insistent beep beep beep like a kitchen timer.
It stopped by the time Maggie pulled on latex gloves and retrieved it from the purse, holding it up for the detectives to see. The screen read “Kelly” with a thumbnail of a young woman with chopped black hair. Automatic screen alerts told them that she had already called twice that morning, at 7:15 and 8:10. It was now coming up on nine a.m. and Kelly had grown impatient, hanging up and then immediately calling a fourth time.
They let this call go to voice mail as well and kept moving through the house. The kitchen had butcher block counters, antique linoleum flooring, and not much food in the fridge among the cans of Red Bull and Mountain Dew. “She likes caffeine,” Maggie commented.
Riley peeked at the shelves. “That stuff will kill you even without two-twenty.”
A modern laundry room at the back of the house had no clothes in the washer or dryer and a door leading to a sort of alley without a yard or a parking space. The back door had both a chain and a deadbolt, both fastened from the inside. Nearby steps led to a cellar with a dirt floor and a set of folding chairs, covered in dust. Aside from that and a number of cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations, it did not appear to be used for anything. Maggie did not think the killer had found the metal grate in the victim’s cellar. Nothing similar to it seemed to be around, nor were there any rectangular-shaped gaps in the dust.
They made their way to the second floor.
“I’m guessing she’s not married,” Maggie said. No one had mentioned family, and she saw no sign of male clothing in the small bedroom.
“Don’t know, actually,” Riley said. “She has two kids, grown now. I only know that because according to Green, they’re both the big corporate types who walk over the little guys she’s supposed to be working for.”
Her paperwork might be messy, but the woman took good care of her clothes. Each item either hung in the closet or sat folded in a drawer, with a few pieces resting in a plastic laundry basket. Cosmetics and creams covered half of the bathroom counter, with two empty coffee cups and a box of tissues on the other side. Maggie had the impression that Diane Cragin spent most of her time in Washington; her local possessions seemed sparse and impersonal. Drawers and cabinets held only aspirin, decongestant, and an expired bottle of lisinopril, 10 mg.
“What’s that for?” Jack asked, crowding into the tiny bathroom with her. His proximity didn’t unsettle her as much as it used to, despite knowing how many criminals he had murdered without benefit of due process.
Perhaps how many, she corrected herself. She probably didn’t know about them all. Jack had been a little fuzzy on details, but then, she hadn’t pressed. The more she knew, the less she could justify her complicity in her own mind.
Best not to ask. Best to focus on the task at hand. And he had abandoned that habit now . . . or so he said.
She told him, “High blood pressure. A mild dose, and high blood pressure doesn’t mean you have a weak heart. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think it would make her any easier to kill—with electricity, I mean.”
Riley poked his head into the small bathroom. “Anything interesting?”
“BP meds and aspirin,” she said.
“No cocaine? What kind of a senator was she?”
“This whole house feels empty to me. Of course, it’s not that big.”
“She played that up—not living high on the taxpayer’s hogs—but Green says it’s because she spent as little time here as possible,” Riley said. “I guess they rank our representatives every year for how much time they spend with their own constituents, and she’d always be near the bottom.”
“You pay pretty close attention—” Maggie began as she opened a tall, narrow cabinet and promptly forgot what she’d been about to say. Because instead of bath towels and shampoo, she now stared at a tall, narrow safe. “Okay, now we got something a little more interesting.”
Both detectives crowded against her to see—not that they could help it; the room had only about ten square feet of floor space, and the open cabinet door blocked the entryway.
The safe might have been custom built to fit the cabinet, as it cleared the six-by-three-foot interior by millimeters. The logo read PATRIOT SAFE COMPANY, and though it had an oversized combination dial and a heavy handle, it seemed much too shiny to have come with the house.
“That is interesting,” Riley said.
“Nothing strange about having a safe, though,” Jack said. “There’s no one here most of the time. Anyone could look up her schedule online and know the house would be empty.”
His partner said, “But in the bathroom? Why not behind the picture of some ancestor in the living room like it’s supposed to be?”
“Did you watch a lot of Scooby-Doo when you were a kid?” Maggie asked.
“Why do you think I became a cop? Besides, what’s she got to keep in a safe? There’s barely any personal property around. I doubt we’ll find her mother’s pearls on the top shelf.”
Jack ignored these asides. “The search warrant covers this, right?”
“Don’t touch it!” Maggie said. “Let me process for prints first . . . though I doubt I’ll get anything. Why people make safes with a textured finish when that’s the one place you’re really going to want a fingerprint to show—” she grumbled, but the men had already turned away. Raised voices could be heard outside, and Riley crossed the bedroom to look out the window.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
Riley turned to say, “I think it’s Kelly.”
* * *
Kelly Henessey turned out to be a slender woman in her late twenties in carefully conservative slacks; athletic shoes carefully designed to look like dress shoes; and short, swingy hair carefully designed to look as if it had been cut with a pair of garden shears. “I’m Diane’s chief of staff. I handle her schedule, delegate the tasks she needs done, do research, fend off lobbyists, and issue press releases. Basically every single thing she does in a day, I either start it or finish it.” She paused in her agitated pacing along the flagstones—the detectives weren’t ready to let her into the house, even though the killer most likely never went inside and they weren’t sure what clues they were even looking for, anyway. But Kelly Henessey didn’t seem to care or even notice the dead leaves crunching under her feet. “I’m sorry, that sounds really egotistical. I don’t mean that I was, like, the power behind the throne or anything . . . Basically I’m a secretary-slash-gofer, but that’s what I’m supposed to be, and it was well worth it to work with Diane. I’m learning everything from her. Learned.” She paused long enough to face them, her eyes blank and uncomprehending. “Is she really dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” Riley said.
Jack studied the woman, blocking the front door and keeping a close eye on her travels. He didn’t want her near where the wires had been, though all the evidence had been removed and Maggie had done all she could with the screen door. They had left Maggie upstairs, working on the safe, but he doubted she would find anything. The entire house had been locked up tight, so if Diane Cragin had been killed for the contents of her safe, and if those contents had since been removed, it had been done by someone who had access to the house, had the combination to the safe, and knew exactly what they were looking for.
Perhaps someone, he thought, like Kelly Henessey. He watched her eyes to see if they would flicker to the outlet, the kegerator, the stoop where the metal plate had lain.