A Cold Day in Hell Read online

  “Girls, go upstairs to your room,” Lauren told them. If she thought she looked bad, he looked ten times worse. Stitches dotted across his forehead. His nose was swollen and sitting at an odd angle. From where she was standing it looked like he was missing a tooth.

  “What happened to your face, Joe?” Lindsey asked. She was almost five by then, terrified at the sight of the two damaged adults in front of her.

  “I fell into a door,” he said flatly.

  The same lie I tell, she thought studying his face. Do I look this bad? Is this how everyone sees me?

  Then he added, “Go on upstairs so me and your mommy can talk.”

  For the first time, Lauren felt scared for her life. Scared of Joe and mad at Earl for making things worse. Her mouth turned to sand as she found herself melting up against the kitchen sink, trying to remember if she left the paring knife in it.

  “You see what your partner did to me?” Barely speaking in a whisper, he was inching toward her, clenching and unclenching his fist. His face was twisted up in a snarl of rage. Shrinking back away from him, she tried to make herself small. She heard the engagement ring on her finger hit the sink with a dull clink.

  Like a cell door closing on a prisoner with a life sentence.

  In that second, the fear left her.

  “Good,” she spat.

  “Good? You think this is good?” He was closer now, raising his voice.

  She slipped the engagement ring off her finger, held it out, and let it drop to the floor. “Good.”

  “You really messed up now.” He bent down and snatched the ring. “I think your partner just did me a favor. If you think I’ll ever take you back, you better be on your hands and knees begging me.”

  He waited.

  Her voice shook with rage. “Get out of my house.”

  “What?” Now he was a little shocked. He was the one who was wronged and she was throwing him out? This could not stand. She’d pay for that line of thought, dearly.

  “Get out of my house.” She dipped her hand into the sink and closed it around the knife handle. “Before I call the police and have your ass arrested.”

  He laughed at her for that one. This was getting comical. “If I walk out that door, I’m never coming back.”

  She looked at him, really looked at him, the black eye, the cuts and bruises, and thought of her two daughters upstairs. “Good.”

  The only time she flinched was when he threw the key at her.

  When she told Earl the next day at work that they’d broken up he looked at her black eye and simply said, “Good.”

  After that night, Joe spent the next six months groveling, saying he’d get help, sending her flowers, driving by her house. She ignored it all. It was hard at first, but she knew she could never go back. She also knew she would never depend on someone else to defend her again.

  She and Earl stayed partners until she made detective and never spoke of it again.

  Joe left the department for Garden Valley later that year. They had run into each other from time to time over the years, but she always managed to keep a good distance from him. There was something very wrong deep in his core that told her if he could get away with it, he’d really hurt her. As she stood next to her car trying to stop the bleeding and contain her anger, she silently vowed he’d never get the chance to put a hand on her again.

  8

  “What happened to you?” Violanti asked as Lauren slid into the seat across from him. They chose to meet the night of the arraignment at one of those cheesy chain restaurants with rusty license plates and old movie star posters hanging everywhere. They were seated in the Marilyn Monroe booth, with a huge black-and-white likeness looming over them blowing a kiss.

  The old lie came back so easily. “I walked into a door.”

  “My ass. What happened?”

  She could tell he wasn’t going to let it go. Plunking her folders down on the table, she said as calmly as she could, “Me and Joe Wheeler have some history together. I was engaged to him a long time ago. We had a run-in out in the back parking lot after you left this morning.”

  “A run-in? You mean he hit you? That bastard hit you?”

  “Easy, Counselor. I’m a big girl. I can take care of it.”

  Violanti’s face turned crimson. “I’ll have his badge, Riley. I’ll carry it around in my pocket like a lucky coin … ”

  “No.” She held up one hand. “It’s over. The best revenge I can get is blowing his case out of the water. My lip will heal.”

  He paused. “You sure?”

  “Let’s get something straight. I’m not a damsel in distress. Joe Wheeler will never get the chance to put his hands on me again. Not if he wants to stay alive. Thank you for your concern, but our energy would be better spent on the matter at hand.”

  “Okay.” He waited for her to say something else, but she just looked at him, waiting. “Okay.” Letting the issue drop, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers. He flipped through them, separating them into piles in front of Lauren. “David punched out at four minutes after nine on the night of the murder. One of the night security guards saw him in the parking lot at around ten thirty going to his car.”

  “What does the medical examiner’s report say about time of death?”

  Violanti tossed a copy of the report to her. She read aloud, “It says she was in complete rigor when they showed up. Core body temperature unreliable due to the extreme heat in the car. He approximates time of death between eight to ten hours before she was found. Which tells us nothing.” She paged down farther. “Cause of death, ligature strangulation?” She looked up. “Was the ligature found?”

  Having anticipated her next question, he tossed a photo down in front of her.

  The picture showed Katherine Vine slumped forward, head caught between the steering column and the dash. Her hair partially obscured her face. Pooled on the seat next to her was a white scarf.

  “She was strangled with her own scarf?”

  He flipped another picture to her, an autopsy photo. The once beautiful Katherine Vine was laid out naked on a metal table. Violanti put the next picture down: it was a closeup of her head and neck. A gloved hand pointed to a faint line that ran around her throat.

  “It says here her hyoid bone wasn’t broken,” Lauren pointed out on the report. “She was choked slowly. Maybe as a sexual thing. I’ve seen it before, people who get off on being choked. Autoerotic asphyxiation. Did David say she wanted that?”

  “No, but I didn’t ask specifically. I don’t know that he would volunteer that up.”

  “It’s no time for modesty now.”

  Violanti nodded. “I get that. But he’s still just a kid. He’ll admit to the straight-up sex, but maybe not the kink in front of you.”

  “Still,” she said, musing over the autopsy photo, “I’ve seen rapists use this as a means of control. They choke the victim out and bring them back, but sometimes they go too far and kill their victims.”

  “I think that’s beyond David.”

  “It’s defense against murder two. If he accidentally strangled her during rough sex, it’s only manslaughter.”

  “Riley,” Violanti said slowly so there was no mistake, “David didn’t do this. I’m not looking to make a deal. I’m looking to find out what really happened. Let’s not jump to conclusions until we have all the evidence.”

  She sat back. “Okay. Fair enough. What do we know about the victim?”

  “Not enough. I need you to find out everything you can about her.” Now he slid an envelope to her. “Here’s your check and a copy of your retainer signed by David and me. Time to start earning your pay.”

  She tucked the envelope in her jacket without opening it. “As it turns out, I may have an inside man on that.”

  9

  Lauren would’ve lit a cigare
tte, if she still smoked.

  Mark turned over. “I was surprised to hear from you tonight.”

  She had given up that habit shortly after meeting him. For some reason, after all these years, she craved one now. Lauren had dropped by his law office to talk to him. Just to talk. She caught Mark right before he would have left the office for the day. She had stood poised in the doorway for a second, hand lingering on the knob, absorbing the pictures of his second wife and son. Mark had put them up in the same places where hers had been. A decade and a lifetime ago, she chided herself. Then she shook it off and closed the door behind her.

  “Lauren?” he had asked curiously, getting up from his desk. She made it halfway across the carpeted floor. Lauren barely had time to respond before he was all over her. She had been the one to suggest the hotel room. Mark had sprung for the penthouse suite after they found themselves bent over his desk, half naked. The desk was hurting her ass.

  “An ex-wife can’t call her ex-husband? I figured you’d be working late.”

  “You know I always take your calls, but we usually don’t end up in a hotel room.”

  She smiled. “Are you sorry?”

  He propped himself up on his elbow. “No. Just curious. I’ve been trying to get you in bed again for the last ten years.”

  “You’re married,” she reminded him. You used to be married to me, she wanted to add, but you couldn’t keep it in your pants.

  His eyes slid away. “So what changed tonight?”

  “I need some information.”

  He groaned and rolled away from her. “I should’ve known this was too good to be true.”

  “Don’t get all indignant on me. Remember who cheated on whom.”

  “Ughh. I don’t need this.” Hopping out of the bed, he pulled his pants on. Mark Hathaway was a year younger than Lauren, and he still had the ability to make her weak in the knees when he kissed her. She wanted to reach across the cover and play with his perfectly styled black hair, thick and wavy. She held back but let her eyes wander over his body, maintained by daily visits to the gym; her eyes fell on the birthmark on his shoulder. She used to kiss that mark when they were being playful. He’d spin around and kiss the freckles on her nose. She shook her head slightly. That was a long time ago.

  When she was a little girl, she imagined Prince Charming would ride up on a white horse in his suit of armor. Instead, he pulled into her life in a white Lexus and an Armani wardrobe. Sleeping with him again reminded her of everything she’d lost. Truth be told, this case had been the perfect excuse for her to give in to him. She’d be lying if she said she still didn’t think about him, still didn’t want him. She had put Mark on a pedestal a long time ago and never took him off.

  “Come on, you owe me,” she teased, grabbing his arm and pulling him back toward the bed.

  “I still love you, Lauren. Isn’t that enough? I bought a house for you and the girls. I offer myself to you on a regular basis. And when you finally give in, it turns out you’re using me?” His indignation was laughable, considering he was still married to the woman who had taken him away from her. She tried to focus.

  “I’m not asking for confidential information. I just remember you mentioning you and your wife were friends of the Vines.”

  He shook his head. “I tell you I love you and you switch into business mode.”

  “It hurts less.”

  He sat back down on the edge of the bed and sighed. “Katherine and Tony? Yeah, we ran in the same circles. Katherine and my wife were friends. I never really liked Tony, too much of a loudmouth for me. No class. Katherine and Amanda were both involved with the same charities. Throwing fundraisers and all that crap.”

  “What was their marriage like?”

  “Are you kidding me? Why do you want to know?”

  Lauren pulled the covers up around her and sat up against the headboard. “I’m doing some background investigating for the defense.”

  “You want me to help you get the kid off?”

  “I want you to help me figure out if he’s guilty. Come on, Mark. Have I ever asked for anything?”

  “No.” He frowned. “That’s what scares me.”

  “Just tell me what you know.”

  “I know that they’ve been together for a while. Since she was about eighteen, I think. It was quite the scandal at the time. He flaunted her around. He was forty and not quite divorced from his first wife. She got pregnant with the twins and a year later they got married. She was my wife’s age, thirty-two.”

  “So young and sweet.”

  “Don’t be catty. He was very controlling of her, which was one of the reasons I didn’t like Amanda to drag me around them. He’d get drunk and loud. She’d never say boo to him. Then Jennifer came into the picture.”

  Her ears pricked up at that. “Who’s Jennifer?”

  “Jennifer Jackson, the ex-tennis pro? She’s his new spokeswoman for his gyms. Swing into Vines? Come on, you never saw the commercial where the blonde is running around swinging her tennis racket?”

  “I must have missed that one.”

  “Katherine was convinced they were having an affair. He told her she was crazy. He sent her to a shrink. Amanda said she was on about five different medications. She thought Katherine was hooked on pills.”

  “Is this right from Katherine? Was she just paranoid? I mean, do you know that he was having an affair with Jennifer Jackson or is it just speculation?”

  “Not for sure, but all the signs were there. Between me and you, Katherine came and asked me if I knew any good divorce attorneys. I gave her the number of a friend of mine. He’s good. And she would’ve needed someone good. Jennifer Jackson is married to Phillip Dale, the heir to the Dale Automotive fortune. It would’ve been messy, costly, and embarrassing for everyone involved.”

  “Did she follow through? Did she call your friend?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that the last time she went out to lunch with my wife, she talked about a private investigator.”

  Jackpot, Lauren thought. “She hired a private investigator?”

  “Amanda said she did, but who it was I have no idea. I know she was sick about the whole thing. Katherine was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  Lauren began pulling her clothes together. “Thanks for the information, Mark.”

  “Hey.” He squinted at her. “What happened to your mouth?”

  Just noticing now? “Don’t worry about it.” She knew he wouldn’t.

  He touched her arm, running his hand down to her wrist. “Maybe we could make this a running date. Meet once a week, for old time’s sake.”

  Lauren picked up her bag, leaned over, and gave him a lingering kiss on the mouth, her stomach tying itself in knots. She said the exact opposite of what she felt. “I don’t think so. But it was nice.”

  “Come on, Lauren.” He was putting his shirt on, buttoning it up as fast as he could as she walked toward the exit.

  “One more thing, Mark.” She paused in front of the door.

  “Yeah?” he asked hopefully. With his hair in disarray and shirt untucked, he looked young and sweet. The way she chose to remember him. His eyes were the exact color of the sky before a storm, a deep, dark blue you could get lost in. She suppressed the urge to go back in.

  “Clear your messages often. We wouldn’t want your wife to find them. I’ll be in touch.”

  Lauren dug her cell phone out of her bag as she pulled away from the downtown hotel that was conveniently located across from Mark’s office building. For a fleeting second, she wondered if he had brought other women to that hotel, but shook it off. She could act like all this was just for information, let him believe that, but the fact was she had been just looking for an excuse to cave in and be with him. She had tried taking the high road for ten years, tried to move on. But she was lonely with
out the girls and she missed him, missed his smile and his laugh. Missed the way he used to make her coffee in the morning and missed the way he left his shoes at the foot of the bed. Her heart still belonged to him, no matter how hard she wished it was otherwise.

  A one-off, she thought. Just once. I’ll be busy with the extra case now, it won’t happen again. And now she sounded like a druggie. She dialed the phone.

  “Frank Violanti.” He sounded half asleep.

  “Violanti, I know it’s late, but I got a couple things.” She ran through the little nuggets of information her ex-husband had given her without offering up her source. She could hear him scratching it down with a pen in the background.

  “Good, this is excellent. I have a couple leads for you to follow up as well.”

  “I’m working tomorrow until six.”

  “Well, I’m going to need you to get out to talk to a couple of David’s co-workers. I’ll email you their names and addresses. I want you to talk to them tomorrow night. I need this done before the felony hearing. I don’t know who Lynn Ferro is going to call to the stand yet.”

  “I’d be willing to bet just Joe Wheeler and the security guard, but you never know.”

  “Exactly, you never know. Can I count on you to get it done?”

  “You got it. What’s a few more billable hours?”

  He laughed. “That’s always been my motto. I can’t say you aren’t earning your money already.”

  “Tonight’s interview was on me, no charge.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, taking in for half a second the messy hair, the wrinkled collar of her shirt. “Let’s just say someone else paid for it.”

  10

  Joe Wheeler sat at his desk, holding his cellphone in his left hand, waiting for it to vibrate. He was supposed to be going over the case file. Spread out before him were pictures, reports, and statements. He had to know it all for the felony hearing, backwards and forwards.