A Cold Day in Hell Page 18

  Except, it seemed, his first wife.

  As Lauren and Reese exited their vehicles, the cops converged on them, and they split into two groups.

  “Don’t hit the back door right away,” Lauren reminded Reese’s crew. “Arlene said he has crap piled in front of it. We’ll try to navigate around it and let you in.”

  As if giving a preview of what they’d find inside, the front lawn was littered with ancient lawn mowers and broken shopping carts. Steering her own group of four up the front walkway, Lauren saw Reese’s group snake around the garbage in the yard to the back of the property. At least three rusted-out cars were parked in the driveway, end to end. Their parts and pieces were scattered next to them or piled on wooden pallets. Random car doors were stacked against the garage. There was a small lag as both clusters waited for the other to be in position.

  Trying to avoid the holes in the rotted wood porch, Lauren situated herself across from Jim Daniels, a powerhouse of a cop, who held the ram. He stood about six-four and was nothing but muscle. Looking at him holding the heavy ram, the random thought went through her head that he might work out at Vine’s Gym.

  When Lauren calculated everyone had time to get in place, she gave a nod to Jim. Taking his cue, he boomed, “Police! Search warrant!” His voice was thunderous as the ram hit the door, shattering the lock and raining pieces of dry, rotted wood down on them. It seemed to implode in on itself, crumbling into an opening. With guns drawn they entered the house.

  They weren’t alone.

  Standing naked in the middle of the filthy living room with a shotgun pointed at his chin was Freddie Stenz. Beer cans littered the carpet around him. Newspapers were stacked from the floor to the ceiling along the walls. Cockroaches darted in and out of the breaks in the garbage, sent into a panic at being disturbed.

  Hands wrapped around the stock, finger on the trigger, Freddie’s white, doughy, middle-aged body shook violently.

  All five cops stopped dead in their tracks.

  “Don’t come in another step,” Freddie warned.

  Lauren held out a hand in a calming gesture, “Listen, Fred. Let’s just relax, all right? There’s no need for this, okay?”

  “I knew when she left me yesterday,” he blubbered, the gun bouncing up and down. “I knew she’d tell. I’ve been waiting here since she left. I knew you’d come. I killed my wife for her, to prove it to her that I loved her. I did it for her.” His body was wracked with sobs, tears running down his face, splashing onto his hairy chest.

  “She loves you too.” Lauren scrambled for words to buy time. Her heart was pounding under her vest. “She wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Listen, we can work this out, really. Just put the gun down.”

  “Where’s Arlene?”

  “She’s somewhere safe. Somewhere close. Just put the gun down, then we can talk. You and me. We can work this out.”

  “Can I talk to her?” he asked hopefully.

  “We’ll see, okay? Let these guys go outside and call some people—”

  Just then, the sound of a boot kicking in the back door rang out through the house.

  “What the hell is that?” he screamed, whipping his head around, trying to locate the source of the noise.

  “It’s just my partner,” Lauren explained quickly, trying to calm him back down. “We didn’t let him in the back and he’s kicking in the door. Don’t look at him, look at me. He doesn’t know what’s happening.”

  “Stop it! Stop him! Stop!” he screamed.

  From behind, the sound of a door splintering filled the room.

  “Stay back, Reese! Stand down!” Lauren screamed. But they couldn’t hear her. The sound of their boots pounding up the hallway caused a wild look in Freddie’s eye as he turned and saw the other cops charging in. That second was all it took.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Reese stopped up short, blood spatter hitting him full in the face. Freddie’s body slumped down like a sack of wet cement.

  “Ahhh, no, no, no!” Reese yelled, dropping his gun and trying furiously to wipe his face with both hands. One of the cops he was with bent over and threw up all over the floor.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Kevin came bounding up the front steps. He took one look at the scene before him, his bow tie poking out from his too-tight vest, and went right back out. He had just effectively removed himself from the crime scene.

  Suddenly, Lauren had ten pairs of eyes on her, including the lieutenants’. Everyone was looking to her for the next move. She holstered her gun but kept her hand on the grip to stop it from shaking. The other she buried in her pocket.

  She took a deep breath to keep it together. “Call the Homicide office, get evidence, and photography. I want this scene taped off.” She started giving the various officers tasks. “No one gets in this house but the people already here. We still have a search warrant to serve. Reese, go clean yourself up and check the attic. I’ll wait for the ME’s office … ”

  Just like the cockroaches they had disturbed, the police began to scramble around the garbage and the headless body, careful not to look at the wall where most of the brain matter had hit, intent on doing their assigned task.

  Lauren watched as a blood-spattered Reese found the filthy little bathroom off the kitchen. For the first time ever, she had nothing she could say to him.

  55

  Reese filled the sink with brown water and tried to scrub the gore off him, only partially succeeding. He grasped both sides of the stained porcelain and steadied himself. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, his ears ringing from the shotgun blast. I’m wearing this guy’s brain, he thought and fought back the bile that immediately rose in his throat.

  Reese knew he still had to serve the warrant, to do his job. He had to suck it up, pick the pieces of skull out of his hair one by one, and get back to business. Slowly, the dizziness evaporated. He could hear Lauren’s voice in the living room giving instructions. Looking in the ancient mirror over the sink, he could still see a spray of blood across his nose and cheek. Holding his breath, he splashed more of the dirty water on his face. I saw worse in the Gulf, he reminded himself, wiping a grimy towel over his face. Coward. Frigging murdering coward.

  Dropping the bloodstained towel to the floor, he walked out of the bathroom. All around him cops were rushing back and forth, following Lauren’s orders. The original plan popped in his head; she’d search the downstairs, he’d take the attic. Without going back into the living room, he doubled back and found the stairs. He had to be professional. He had to be thorough. And he had to keep it together in front of the other cops.

  Methodically, he started his search at the top of the attic stairs, pulling on latex gloves from his pocket, careful not to touch anything.

  “You need some help, Reese?” one of the patrol guys offered from below.

  “No, thanks. I got this.” He pulled himself all the way up, shining his mini Maglite around the unfinished attic. More boxes, trash, and debris littered the cramped space. “I got this.”

  Choking back the dust, he checked out the ceiling. Wedged in the rafters were more boxes, skis, an old artificial Christmas tree with silver tinsel dripping from it. The discards of Stenz’s entire life.

  At ten thirty that night, clothes still dotted in Fredrick Stenz’s body fluids, Reese found a bloody knife wrapped in plastic, up in the rafters at the very back of the attic. Freddie had placed his items on the beam carefully, in a neat row. Even though they were hidden from sight if you were floor level, the display was in full view once Reese was eye level, standing on a rickety metal kitchen chair. Like maybe Stenz came up there once in a while to look at his trophies.

  The blood was so old it was black. Covered in dust and mouse droppings, next to the wrapped knife, a wedding ring sat in a black velvet jeweler’s box. In a handy zippered bag, Reese found a list of how t
o clean up a crime scene. Also, tucked into the yellowing plastic, was a copy of the life insurance policy Freddie had on Martha Stenz, spotted with his wife’s blood.

  Complete with a perfect black fingerprint.

  Reese called out to the police photographer to come up to the attic to document his find. As he set up his equipment Reese looked over the entire stash.

  Freddie didn’t even have the decency to wash up, Reese thought as he pointed to the policy with his gloved hand for the camera, before he looked to see how much he was getting. He bagged the document after the photographer snapped a photo.

  Case closed.

  56

  Carl Church didn’t know what to do about the Stenz case. As he sat in his large, open office he considered the possibilities. Unlike Violanti’s, the DA’s office was sparsely furnished and bare walled. He wanted no distractions. The previous district attorney had had a monstrously dark, paneled, old-world cave lined with legal books and hung with antique world maps. When people came to see Carl Church, he wanted them focused solely on him. He had county workers rip the paneling out and put in the four stark, white walls. The only decoration was a brass stand in one corner, sporting the American and Marine Corps flags.

  He had the perfect opportunity to publicly humiliate Lauren Riley for Fredrick Stenz’s suicide. Sloppy police work, he could say. On the other hand, she had gotten a confession out of Stenz before he pulled the trigger, and found the corroborating evidence to clear the case once and for all. All from schmoozing the second wife, who had refused to talk to the police in the past.

  Two perfectly sound ways of looking at the outcome of the Vampire Slaying case.

  Church had the cell phone in his hand on vibrate. The calls had been coming in since last night from the media, and his voice mail was full. He had to make a statement one way or the other, and he had to do it soon. This was what the press considered a juicy case. Love, sex, the ultimate betrayal, a catchy killer name. They’d be eating this up until the Vine case came to trial.

  The Stenz case could influence prospective jurors in the Vine case. Husband with a new lover offs his wife. That hit a little too close to home in favor of the defense. If Church made hay out of this, it would only draw attention to the cheating spouse who’d do anything to get rid of his wife. Violanti would love to quote him during summations.

  Carl Church rushed into nothing. He would bide his time and pick his moments. Lauren did everything right at that scene and he certainly didn’t want to make her look like a sacrificial lamb when it came time for trial. No, he’d hold off. Winning the case against David Spencer would open up a new door for him; then he could close Lauren Riley’s.

  He picked up his landline and had his secretary get a hold of his number-two man, Samuel Washington. Washington would give the press conference. He was good at talking a lot and saying very little. Low key, he stressed, we are still looking into the incident. Too soon to comment. All the forensic evidence has not fully been processed and submitted for our office’s review, and so on.

  Lauren Riley’s greatest asset was that she’d always been lucky. She’d always managed to come out on top. But all things come to an end, eventually.

  57

  Lauren put on a strong face in the wake of the Stenz suicide, but when she got home, she scrubbed herself raw in the shower. She didn’t like to win at any cost. The coward had killed his wife and now he made a victim out of Lauren because she couldn’t stop him from pulling the trigger. Reese had left the scene with the same drained look on his face. There was no victory in a suicide. Just more blood and death and brain hanging off the ceiling.

  She had days of paperwork ahead of her. She and Reese would have to bring in every single cop for a statement. They’d have to get a rush on the DNA from the knife at the lab. They’d have to get counseling for their star witness, who just about lost her mind when she found out old Freddie’d killed himself. Worse, Frank Violanti had been blowing up her phone, so she’d put it right to voice mail. Talking to the weasel would only make her feel worse.

  It wasn’t until the next day she realized she hadn’t thought of Mark once during the entire episode.

  Riley and Reese went about the aftermath professionally. There were no words of comfort or hugs. Maybe they would talk about it later, or the next week, or after they took the last statement. Maybe not. Lauren liked that she didn’t have to talk to Reese, that there was no pressing need to fill the silence with small talk. There was no elephant in the room for them. Just paperwork, and that was comfort enough. Somehow they both noticed a slight shift in their relationship. What was once equal had infinitesimally tilted to one side, throwing them off balance.

  When she saw Samuel Washington’s press conference that afternoon, she was relieved. She knew Church could have played it another way. Lauren also knew he wanted a fair fight. He wanted to beat her on the evidence and use his force of personality to persuade the jury that his side was the right side. And when he did, Lauren figured, that was when the other shoe would fall.

  As soon as he saw the press conference, Mark called. He wanted to come over and see her right away, but she held him off for a couple nights to decompress. Seeing Mark would make her feel worse, not better. She stalled him as long as she could, but he was in her bed by the end of the following week.

  He had come over right after work on Friday. They ordered a pizza and sat at her dining room table. She broke out the good china they had gotten as a wedding gift from his aunt Judy, wondering if he would notice. He didn’t.

  “Does your wife suspect anything yet?” she asked bluntly.

  “I think she does now,” he admitted. “She’s been looking at condos on the waterfront. I don’t know that I want my son living there, but I don’t want to start battling at this point in the game.”

  “Why wouldn’t she live in your house?” Lauren wanted to call it the estate but held her tongue.

  “I was willing to move to the waterfront and give her the house. Now she says she wants a change. She says the place we have is too big for just her and little Mark. She wants to be closer to downtown and the arts as well.”

  “She’s a patron of the arts now?”

  “She loves the galas and gallery openings and crap like that. At least she won’t have to drag me along with her anymore.”

  Lauren studied his face carefully. “You really are going to do this? Divorce your wife?”

  “What have I been telling you?” He took a bite out of his pizza. “Damn, this is hot,” he sputtered, cheese dripping down his chin.

  Later, after they made love, she thought of all the things men did to get and keep the women they wanted. Beat them. Buy them. Kill for them. She thought maybe it had very little to do with love or sex, but power. Power over their women. Mark had all the power in their relationship. He always had. After all that happened in light of the last few months, that didn’t bode well.

  “Hey, Mark.”

  He rolled over onto his side. He’d dozed off on the bed, arms outstretched over his head. “Yeah?” Rubbing his eyes, he half sat up.

  “I don’t think you should come over any more until she really leaves and you’ve broken up.”

  “What?” He was sitting straight up now. “Why?”

  “Because you’re a cheat and a liar. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I get that. You don’t want to be the bad guy. But you are the bad guy. If you really want to be with me, move out. When you do, call me and we’ll start all over from scratch.”

  “Are you kidding me? Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?”

  “Very carefully. Get your shit together and then we’ll talk. I don’t like being your sidepiece anymore. I deserve better than this. And your wife deserves better than this. I got my petty little revenge, I don’t have to twist the knife.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Get
your clothes on. I love you, but don’t come back until you’re ready to start over.”

  Lauren watched him get dressed and listened while he protested, but she wouldn’t be swayed. She walked him to the door but wouldn’t kiss him goodbye. “Don’t do anything rash and hurt your son. Make the transition easy, like you planned. Or stay, if that’s what you want.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” He pulled the door open.

  “Someday, Mark, you’ll thank me for this.”

  And then, like an old-fashioned vinyl record skipping back, he was gone.

  58

  The next Monday at work Reese noticed the change in her. “You break up with that guy?”

  “You can’t break up with a married man. But yes, I ended it. How very observant of you to notice.”

  She almost didn’t hear it, so softly said under his breath, but as Reese moved away from the file cabinet she caught the word tumbling from his mouth: “Good.”

  It didn’t feel good. Inside, she ached for Mark. Doing the right thing felt like crap. Especially with the trial coming up. Thankfully, Lindsey was coming home. That just about saved her sanity. Otherwise, she might have caved in to his phone calls. And his text messages. And his emails. She had to tough it out. Lauren had waited ten years for Mark to come around in her life again. She gave him ten years to give up his self-centered lifestyle. She knew people only changed if it benefited them somehow; if the change got them what they wanted. If Lauren was what he really wanted, then he had to show her. She had enough going on without having to wait for him to knock on her door or count the minutes before he left. She thought she could, she thought it wouldn’t matter. And it didn’t, not at first. Now she wanted all or nothing. It was time to see if he would call her bluff.