Framed Page 4

  Jess nodded and was on her feet, heading toward the kitchen. “Enough said.”

  Kyle followed her. “What are you working on?”

  “The transcript for the Roger Drane murder trial. Very interesting stuff.”

  “Do you often transcribe murder trials?”

  “I’ve done a few,” she said, a note of caution entering her voice again as she filled a glass with chilled water from a bottle in the refrigerator. “Most of my work is a little more mundane.”

  “But you do quite a few criminal hearings?”

  “I’m not sure what ‘quite a few’ means, but I’d say the majority of my work involves civil hearings, not criminal.”

  Still, Kyle mused, she’d probably gleaned quite a lot of knowledge about police procedure, and how murderers and other criminals tripped themselves up.

  She’d reclaimed her throne in the living room, and Kyle had downed almost all his water, before the conversation resumed.

  “Did you borrow some stain remover from Mrs. Tanglemeyer earlier this week?”

  Jess appeared startled at first, then wary. “Yes, I did. Terry cut himself shaving and bled on his shirt—I already told you that, didn’t I?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “The spot wouldn’t come out the first time I washed sit.”

  “Were you in the habit of doing Terry’s laundry?” Kyle asked, trying to mask the incredulity in his voice.

  Jess sat up straighter. “Terry didn’t even know how to operate the washing machine,” she said. “He usually sent everything out to be cleaned, but I offered to do the shirt so the stain wouldn’t set. In fact...yes, of course.” A triumphant smile lit up her face. “The shirt’s probably still in the basement where I keep the washer and dryer. Livvy’s stain remover didn’t work very well, so I left the shirt down there, thinking I’d have another go at it. Would you like to see it?”

  “That might be helpful. It was a small stain, you say?”

  She stood and led the way into the kitchen and through the basement door with a confident swing in her hips. “About the size of a quarter, I guess. Small, but very noticeable. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to wear the shirt again unless the stain disappeared.”

  Jess’s basement was clean, tidy and well lit. A clothes rack stood by the old-model laundry machines, where several shirts—women’s shirts, from what Kyle could tell—hung. Jess flipped through the hangers, then put her hands on her hips and looked around the basement. Perplexed, she opened the washer and dryer, which were both empty.

  “Now, that’s odd,” she said. “I guess Terry took the shirt with him.”

  “I thought he didn’t take anything with him.”

  “He didn’t, but—”

  “If he were only going to take one shirt, why would he take the one with a stain?”

  Jess shrugged. “I don’t know where the damn shirt is.” Now she was really frustrated. That’s where Kyle liked his suspects, he thought with little satisfaction. There was no denying now that Jess was a suspect, at least in his mind.

  “Is this Livvy’s stain remover?” Kyle asked, picking up a plastic bottle from a nearby shelf. It was empty.

  “I intended to buy her a new bottle,” Jess said, folding her arms across her breasts.

  When they returned to the living room, Kyle switched to a different line of questioning. “When Terry left Monday night—did you see the cab?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you happen to remember which company it was?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t actually see the vehicle that clearly, but I saw the lights pull up in the driveway, and the driver honked.”

  “Was it a long honk?”

  Jess shook her head. “No, just a tap on the horn, the way cabbies do.”

  Kyle felt undeniably relieved that at last something Jess had said was corroborated by another witness. Mrs. Stubbs had described the horn she’d heard Monday night the same way Jess had—as a short, single honk. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean he could ease up on his questions.

  “Jess, would you describe your relationship with Terry as a calm one?”

  Jess closed her eyes, and her porcelain face tightened with tension. For a moment, Kyle regretted his adversarial role with her. An image flashed into his mind. He saw himself rubbing Jess’s shoulders, smoothing his hands along her neck, her jaw, her cheeks, easing away the tightness. The mental picture was downright erotic, and Kyle quickly turned away to look out the window until his thoughts were under control.

  “At times Terry and I had arguments. Sometimes he just blew up for no reason, and I couldn’t help but respond. But that was before we broke up. After I made the decision to break off with him and asked him to leave, things calmed down. We tolerated each other, barely spoke. It was a relief, really.” She opened her eyes and stared at him, challenging him to dispute her.

  “Hey, Jess!” Lynn called from upstairs.

  Jess looked relieved at the interruption. “What is it?” she called back.

  “Can I pick out the shower curtain to replace the one that’s missing? I don’t like this starfish one in my bathroom.”

  Kyle’s senses went on the alert. “You’re missing a shower curtain?”

  “Mmm, yes, another little mystery.”

  “From which bathroom?”

  “Terry’s.” Abruptly her eyes narrowed. “For heaven’s sake, why are you asking questions about shower curtains and stain remover? What possible impact could things like that make on Terry’s disappearance?”

  Did he have to spell it out? Couldn’t she put two and two together? The crime he envisioned was brutal and cold-blooded, but simple enough. And if it had taken place, Jess was probably the one who’d done it.

  “Ms. Robinson, I’d like to take you downtown for questioning,” he said as indifferently as he dared. “And I think it would be a good idea if you called a lawyer.”

  Chapter 3

  The “interview room” was gray and featureless, unless one counted the obscene graffiti some previous “witness” had scratched onto the wall. Jess sat primly with her hands folded on the table in front of her, as she had for the past three hours while Kyle Branson had questioned her.

  Questioned? That was too mild a description of what that flaming jerk had been putting her through.

  “How many times are you going to ask me the same questions?” she asked, her voice cracking from the strain.

  “Until I’m satisfied,” Kyle replied, studying his nails. He hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t physically intimidated her. But the relentless pounding of the same subjects was getting to Jess just the same. And his sheer physical presence was intimidating enough.

  “Maybe it’s time to break out the hot lights and rubber hoses,” Jess said, amazed that she could manage even feeble humor.

  The stern uniformed officer stationed at the door almost smiled, and Branson threw her a scathing look.

  Jess had waived her right to have an attorney present—foolishly, it seemed now. God, what had she been thinking? She was well acquainted with the legal system. To ask for a lawyer would have made her look as if she had something to hide, and she didn’t. Having a lawyer sitting beside her would have put her in the class of “suspect,” which was somewhere she’d never intended to be.

  She’d made the decision back when Branson had been halfway friendly. He’d somehow managed to convey, without using the actual words, that she didn’t really need a lawyer despite his earlier warning, that this was routine questioning. Anyway, the only lawyers she knew were friends of Terry’s.

  She was about to change her mind. The interrogation—and that was the only word for it now—had gotten increasingly aggressive. Branson had confused her so thoroughly that she couldn’t help misspeaking, correcting herself, clarifying and then reclarifying in a way that sounded guilty even to her.

  There was no denying now that she was a murder suspect.

  “I asked you a question, Ms. Robinson,” Kyle said, annoyingly
polite. “Would you like me to repeat it?”

  “No, I heard you fine the first time. But I’m choosing my words very carefully, since you seem to have a habit of twisting everything I say. Terry came downstairs last Saturday with a light blue Polo shirt in his hand and holding a Kleenex to his chin. He said he’d cut himself shaving and stained his shirt, and because it was a favorite shirt and he didn’t trust the laundry, would I get the stain out for him? I said okay, no problem, since I was doing laundry that morning, anyway. But I was out of the prewash stuff I usually use, so I ran down to Livvy’s to borrow something. She asked what for, and I told her.”

  “But the stain didn’t come out?”

  “No. I thought I might try bleaching it later. I put it on a hanger and hung it on the rack.”

  “Bleaching it?” he repeated. “A blue shirt?”

  She sighed. He was doing it again, making her feel foolish. “Light blue. The label didn’t say not to bleach. It might have worked.”

  “Was it that important to you, to get the stain out?”

  “It was a challenge, okay? Maybe I like laundry challenges. Maybe it fulfills me to remove stains. Jeez, next you’ll be saying I wanted to earn back Teny’s love by getting his shirt clean! But even that wouldn’t satisfy you. Next you’d ask, ‘Were you distracted that day? Too distracted to clean the shirt properly, because the sight of all that blood got you thinking, right? Thinking about killing your ex-boyfriend!’”

  Branson said nothing. He appeared a bit surprised by her outburst. She’d been completely docile until now.

  “Am I right?” she demanded, coming out of her chair and leaning across the table toward him. “Isn’t that what you would say?”

  Her words echoed hollowly in the barren room. Only then did she realize how loudly she’d been speaking.

  Slowly the detective rose from his chair and leaned toward her. The expression on his face frightened her, and she shrank back.

  “Were you distracted?” he asked softly. “Did the blood make you think about killing your ex-boyfriend?”

  The questions sounded much more menacing coming from him. She remembered another man who had spoken to her that way, softly, not with violence but with so much power. Seconds later she’d been fighting for her life.

  Face-to-face with Branson now, she felt beads of sweat break out on her forehead, even though the room was chilly. Her palms dampened against the smooth wooden tabletop. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she had to resist the urge to gasp for air.

  “Would you answer me, please?” he said.

  Her knees failed her, and she sank back into her chair. “No,” she whispered, wincing as she waited for his reaction.

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  Her voice was no stronger when she repeated herself. She cleared her throat. “I won’t answer any more questions without an attorney.”

  “Now you’re asking for an attorney? Was it something I said?”

  She wanted to retort. His sarcasm made her want to hit something. But her throat locked up and her eyes misted over, and her whole face flushed hot. Damn, she was going to cry.

  “I...know...my...rights,” she managed to choke out. Her eyes overflowed, and she hid her face in her hands, utterly mortified.

  They were both silent for many long seconds. Then Branson came around the table and sat in the chair next to hers. He leaned down, trying to see her face. “Look, Ms. Robinson...Jess... I know this is hard for you. And I’m sorry I have to be so tough on you.” He cast a cautious glance at the policewoman, as if he was worried that she would catch him being nice. But the uniformed officer was staring into space, appearing neutral once more.

  “I don’t enjoy all these questions,” he continued, “believe me. I’m just doing my job.”

  She wanted to tell him to get another job, then, one that would allow him to be human instead of some lowly subspecies. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t fooled one bit by his phony sympathy. She knew this routine, had seen it in dozens of court transcripts. She wanted to tell him to go straight to hell. She’d asked for an attorney. The game was over, unless he wanted to take some high-powered flak for violating her rights.

  But she couldn’t get the words out.

  “Do you want a glass of water?” he asked, all traces of sarcasm having vanished.

  “I told you what I want,” she mumbled through her hands.

  He sighed. “All right, I’ll get you a lawyer. It’ll take some time—”

  She raised her head and looked at him, knowing her face was wretchedly tearstained, her makeup smeared. Why she should care about that, she didn’t understand. “I’ll get my own lawyer, thank you.” She sniffed loudly.

  “All right, then,” he said, sounding resigned. “You have until tomorrow morning.”

  “I can go?”

  “You’re not under arrest at this point.”

  She could tell by the tone of his voice that he wished she were. “Do you really think I did something awful to Terry?”

  He studied her for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  He seemed about to say something else when someone knocked. Branson nodded to the uniformed officer, and she opened the door.

  A man in his midtwenties swaggered in and dumped a pile of small plastic bags onto the table. “Looky what I got,” he said, casting an expectant glance at Jess. “A key chain, engraved with the initials TR. A gold chain, fourteen karat. And a man’s wallet with some interesting ID.”

  “Those are Terry’s,” Jess said, forgetting her own misery for a moment as the implications of these discoveries sank in. “Oh my God, you found him? Is he...is he dead?”

  “No, we didn’t find him, Ms. Robinson,” the newcomer said. His mouth tightened, as if he were suppressing a smile.

  “Then where did you get those things?”

  The young man smirked. “We had a search warrant for your place and your car, remember?”

  Jess nodded. She’d surrendered her house and car keys without a whimper, figuring their search would yield nothing. “Those things were in my house?” she asked.

  “Under your mattress.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Kyle said under his breath. He turned once more to Jess. “Ms. Robinson, I’m afraid I spoke too soon. You’re under arrest.”

  In a monotone, Kyle read Jess her rights, even though he’d already Mirandized her before the interrogation. He walked her through the booking process—the fingerprinting, the mug shots. She looked frail and pallid, as if she might pass out any moment. More than once he had to stop himself from touching her, reflexivety offering her a supporting hand or a word of comfort.

  Good God, what was he thinking? The woman was a cold-blooded murderer, or so the evidence suggested. During the interrogation, he’d almost begun to believe she was telling the truth, that she didn’t know what had happened to Terry Rodin. She hadn’t acted guilty. Her answers to his questions remained maddeningly consistent, no matter how he flustered her.

  Damn his instincts, anyway. In this case, they were just flat wrong.

  As a guard led her away to a holding cell, where she would be incarcerated until her arraignment tomorrow, she gave Kyle one final, pleading look. Hell, what did she expect him to do for her? He was a cop, for God’s sake. He wasn’t in the business of helping murder suspects. He’d done nothing but antagonize her from the moment they met. Did she think he was going to suddenly come to her rescue?

  That was exactly what he was contemplating as he walked the case over to homicide. He could at least make sure she had a decent lawyer, that she was able to post bond.

  Ah, hell, he had to be out of his mind to let a pretty pair of brown eyes seduce him. Hadn’t he learned by now not to make assumptions about a woman because she was beautiful and refined? Hadn’t Buck, his former partner, learned that lesson the hard way?

  Kyle promised himself that once homicide had control of this case, he would put it out of his mind. He had other cases piling u
p on his desk.

  Lt. Jon Easley, in charge of homicide, assigned the case to Bill Clewis. Clewis would not have been Kyle’s first choice. The man was hard, utterly without compassion and a sloppy investigator to boot. He always looked for the easy answer, never went that extra mile.

  On the plus side, he was a helluva good interrogator. If anyone could make Jess Robinson crack, Clewis could. The thought made Kyle a little nauseated, and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for Jess, guilty or no. She was in for it.

  “Problem is,” Kyle said to Clewis once he’d gone over the case with him, “I’m not sure if the D.A. can make the murder charge stick when there’s no body.” He swung one leg back and forth from his perch on the edge of Clewis’s messy desk, trying to maintain an air of detachment.

  “It’s been done before,” Clewis pointed out, puffing out his chest and sucking in his gut. “Anyway, if there’s a body to be found, I’ll find it.”

  “There’s no murder weapon, either,” Kyle said. “The evidence team searched her house from top to bottom. They’re digging up the yard now.”

  “Did you do a trace metal test on her hands, to see if she’s held a gun recently?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Too much time has elapsed.”

  Clewis nodded in agreement. “’Course you’re right. Now, what’s this note about blood?”

  Kyle winced inwardly. He’d spoken with the evidence team who’d searched Jess’s place. They’d used luminol on the stain on her carpet, a chemical that detected the minutest traces of blood, even those that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

  “There’s a small spot on her upstairs carpet that turned out to be blood. Not only that, but the luminol showed traces all over Rodin’s sink and bathtub. At one time they were both awash with blood, and lots of it.”

  Clewis smiled unpleasantly. “Maybe a murder charge will stick. She could have taken the guy unawares, maybe when he was taking a bath. She offs him with a butcher knife, then wraps the body in the shower curtain, then the rug. She drags him to her car, drives to the river and dumps him. You checked her car?”