Laurel Heights 3 Read online

  “I don’t need—”

  “Audrey,” Will’s firm tone stilled the denial on her lips. “A doctor should check you over and,” he glanced at her nightgown, “we have to collect evidence.”

  Scott wouldn’t have thought it was possible for Audrey Petersen to pale any more than she already had, but she surprised him as she was reminded of what her long belted sweater hid from her son. If she had any fight left in her, it quickly dissipated, and she nodded her acquiescence.

  Scott stood up and walked over to Lieberman, lowering his voice so only he could hear. “Make sure they don’t see anything they shouldn’t.”

  “Like what?” Lieberman replied, confused.

  “Like their husband and father being rolled out of here in a body bag,” Scott said through gritted teeth. Noah’s eyes flooded with guilt and he hung his head as though he were expecting Scott to ball him out. He wasn’t going to. Scott sighed heavily. He’d been a young detective once and, while Noah’s crush wasn’t going to garner him any special treatment, he had no desire to embarrass the kid in the middle of a crime scene. “Get them to the hospital asap. Forensics are going to be here for a while.” He gave him what he hoped was an encouraging nod. “Good work.” Noah blushed at the remark and for the briefest of moments, his gaze flitted to Scott’s lips. Aww crap! Scott turned and quickly followed Will from the room. He may have no desire to embarrass Noah, but he had even less interest in fighting him off.

  Out in the hall, Will headed straight to the front door, but Scott paused at the foot of the stairs. He gazed at the smears of blood on the wall, a frown creasing his brow. Why stab him before he gets to the safe?

  “Scott?” He turned to see Will beside him, a puzzled look on his face. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Scott replied, his frown deepening. Something wasn’t right. Something other than the blood on the walls and the dead body in the other room? He brushed aside the sarcasm of his subconscious and shook his head. Something niggled at the base of his skull, a thought he didn’t want to give voice to, a thought that he wished he hadn’t had. This was one time he hoped he wasn’t right—but he had a horrible feeling he was.

  Chapter two

  Will parked the car and turned off the engine. It had been a quiet drive back to the station. But then it was just after midnight, so he hadn’t been expecting much traffic. Scott hadn’t said a word. Not that Will minded, he’d been lost in his own thoughts, too. He’d paid extra for a late night dancing lesson, because he knew Scott would definitely not get out of the car in broad daylight, and had planned to spend his Saturday evening attempting to convince Scott there was no such thing as two left feet. As frustrating as he knew that was going to be, a difficult Scott would have been preferable to interviewing a little boy with his dead father twenty feet away. He pushed his fingers through his hair and scratched at his scalp, puffing out his cheeks as he let go of a heavy sigh.

  “You okay?”

  Will nodded as he turned his head to look at Scott. “Yeah, you?”

  “Mm,” Scott’s response was non-committal. “Let’s go upstairs and get started.”

  Will was well versed with that no-nonsense, let’s get to it, tone. Scott was already picking over every detail of the case in his mind, had already made a mental promise to the victim and his family that he would find out who did this, and wouldn’t stop until he did. Will knew Scott better than Scott knew himself.

  “Ok—” Will didn’t even have time to finish the word before Scott was out of the car and on his way to the elevator that would take them up to their department. By the time Will had scrambled out and locked the car, Scott was in the elevator, and Will barely made it inside before the doors closed behind him. “Okay.” Will turned to face Scott as the elevator clanked and ground its way up to the third floor. “Talk to me.”

  “No sign of forced entry. So, did he disable the alarm?” The doors opened and Scott headed off down the hall, Will hot on his heels, still talking. “Which means he would need to know the make and model he’s dealing with, which means he would need prior knowledge of the property.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “If that’s the angle we’re going with, he’s a professional, he’s not some bumbling first-timer. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows what he’s looking for. Which brings us to the next question, what is he looking for? It obviously wasn’t in the safe, because he wouldn’t have chanced killing the victim before he opened it. But the wife said he was yelling about the safe.” Scott pushed open the double doors to homicide and strode purposefully to his desk. “And…,” he added as he sat down.

  Will pulled out his chair and sat down at his own desk, opposite Scott’s, his mind whirring. “And?”

  “If he’d been casing the joint, he’d have known about the kid. Why didn’t he look for him? Christopher could have come out at any time, ruined everything. Why didn’t he at the very least secure him?”

  “Because there was no robbery.” Will sighed heavily as he leaned back in the chair and folded his hands behind his head. “Because the killer was in the house the whole time, and she knew Christopher would hide until she called for him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly,” Scott repeated.

  “Okay, let’s start with door to door, see if any nosey neighbors spotted anyone suspicious over the last few weeks,” Will began, holding up his hand when Scott opened his mouth to interrupt. “Just, to rule out the robbery theory. Then we need to get a full background of their marriage. I’ll call in the first responders, find out what knots were used and whether she could have tied them herself. And,” he drew out the word and Scott reacted in the exact way he’d expected to.

  “I know,” Scott huffed, like a petulant child. “I’ll call the coroner’s office and tell them to put a rush on the autopsy.”

  Will fought the urge to give him the finger as Scott snatched up the phone to make good on his announcement. Thankfully, he was successful because Scott would not have been impressed by the gesture. Will adored Scott but, on occasion, his pigheadedness made Will want to shake him until his teeth rattled in his skull. Most of those occasions had occurred in the last three months—right around the time that Kimberly Stein started at the coroner’s office.

  Not that Will could blame him. Seeing your high school sweetheart for the first time in years was awkward enough, but when your high school sweetheart still wants to break your face for breaking her heart, the situation skips over awkward and jumps straight to big steaming pile of crap.

  Then again, Will couldn’t blame her either. He’d only ever had one girlfriend, Sara Moran, whom he’d dated for precisely three weeks when she told him he was gay. When he’d asked her how she knew, she’d replied without missing a beat, “We’ve been going out for three weeks and every time you touch my boob, you look like you’re gonna throw-up.” Their relationship—he air-quoted the word in his head—had ended amicably with Sara trying to set him up with her cousin, David. Scott and Kimberly, however, had their first date when they were fifteen and were together for two years before Scott realized he spent more time looking at her brother’s ass than hers.

  Will sighed heavily. For all his blustering and denials, he knew why Scott was so defensive. The guilt he felt for hurting Kimberly was something he’d locked away in a box, deep down inside, but now? Now that box had been blown wide open and he didn’t know how to deal. But he was going to have to. That was the thing about working homicide, the dead and the coroner went hand in hand. Scott couldn’t avoid her forever, no matter how hard he tried.

  “And you can tell her that this is a homicide investigation and we need the autopsy done now!” Scott yelled into the handset. “Not when she has five minutes between manicures… what? Okay, 10.00 a.m. tomorrow. We’ll be there.”

  Will rolled his eyes as Scott slammed the phone down. They’re like Tom and fucking Jerry! She lays the bait and he pounces on it! “Everything sorted?” he said sa
rcastically.

  “Yes,” Scott hissed back. Will shook his head as Scott grabbed a pencil and snapped it in half.

  “Feel better?”

  “Who were the first responders again?” Scott asked, totally ignoring the question. “Kowalski and?”

  “Davis.” Will picked up his phone and dialed dispatch. “Hey Judy, this is Will Harrison, badge number 732, could you put a call out for Officers Kowalski and Davis and ask them to come on up to homicide as soon as they can? Thanks.” He replaced the handset and leaned back in his chair. “So,” he smothered a yawn. “She stabs him in the bedroom, he makes it down the stairs, she goes after him, delivers the killing blow, races back upstairs, ties herself to the headboard, calls the boy to get the phone, then just waits for the cavalry?” He sighed heavily. “Why?”

  “Not a clue.” Scott scratched at his goatee.

  “If it was her,” Will said. “Why would she involve the kid?”

  “Make her story more credible? I don’t know.” Scott frowned. “What bothers me is the desk.”

  “The desk?”

  “Yeah.” Scott scratched his goatee again, a sure sign to Will that he was thinking. “If you were trying to make it look like a home invasion gone bad, why not open the safe? He’s dead, she had all the time in the world. What was in the desk? What was he hiding from her?” Scott pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up. “Coffee?”

  “Yeah, strong,” Will replied. “I think we’re going to need to be extra caffeinated for thi—”

  “Harrison, Turner! My office, now!”

  Will flinched as the shout rent the air. He’d heard that tone too many times not to know their captain was a little upset. “What’s up with him?” he mumbled to Scott as they strode across the room to his office. “And what’s he doing here this late?”

  “Kelly asked for a transfer,” Scott replied quietly. “He texted me earlier.”

  “Aw, shit.”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  Glenn Hall waited until Scott had closed the door behind them before he snapped out, “What’ve we got?”

  “You okay, Glenn?” Will asked hesitantly. He knew he was taking a big risk in voicing the question, but the friend half of his brain had let it out before the professional half had even considered joining the proceedings. The cold glare he received had his sphincter loosening a little, not that he’d ever admit it.

  “I’m sorry,” Glenn Hall replied conversationally, which made it even more terrifying. “Did I miss the memo on cuddle up to your captain day?”

  Will swallowed hard, sure it was loud enough for the entire floor to hear, although the door was closed. “M-m-memo?”

  “The one that said we were on a first name basis during business hours!” Hall said, his voice rising on every word until the last one was loud enough to make even Scott flinch. “I repeat, what’ve we got?” His tone had returned to its normal gruffness, but the warning had been given and received.

  Will cleared his throat and quickly gave Hall a rundown of what they knew so far. “Banker, Tristan Petersen, stabbed by an intruder. Wife, Audrey Petersen, was tied to the headboard. Son, Christopher Petersen, hid in his closet as instructed by his parents, didn’t see anything.”

  “What was taken?”

  “Nothing,” Scott interjected. “The vic was stabbed upstairs then forced downstairs to the study where the safe is situated. Nothing was taken from the safe because the vic was dead before he could open it.” He frowned. “Although the desk had been rifled through.”

  “Anything taken from there?”

  Scott shrugged. “No way of knowing until we interview the wife again.”

  “Gut feelings?” Hall looked at Will.

  “She did it.”

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah, she did it.”

  “What’s her motive?”

  “No idea,” Will said, shaking his head.

  Hall’s nod was convivial, so Will flinched yet again when the older man yelled, “Well, go and find out!”

  Will opened his mouth to reply but didn’t get the chance because Scott grabbed his arm and hustled him out of the room. “Hey,” he complained as Scott closed the door behind him. “Shouldn’t we talk to him?”

  “No, we should not.” Scott ushered Will back to their desks.

  “But he’s our friend,” Will pointed out.

  “Not right now he’s not,” Scott replied. “He’s our boss.”

  “He’s in pain.” Will sat down. He could only imagine what Glenn was going through.

  “Exactly.” Scott tapped on the keyboard to his pc. “And now is not the time to poke the very pissed off bear.”

  Will leaned back in his chair and gazed across the room to Hall’s office, where he could see him hunched over a pile of paperwork on his desk. “Why would Kelly put in for a transfer now? Things were going so well.”

  “Let’s just say someone wasn’t quite ready to open the closet door.”

  “So, he’s just going to throw away the best thing—?”

  “Detective Harrison?”

  Will turned in the direction of his name and looked blankly at the two uniformed officers standing beside his desk. “Yes?”

  The taller of the two men blushed furiously. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled. “You, um, dispatch said you wanted to see us?”

  “Yes, yes!” Will could have kicked himself. So caught up in his friend’s love life, he’d forgotten his request for the first responders to attend. “Kowalski and Davis, isn’t it?” They nodded and Will smiled as he stood up. “If you wouldn’t mind accompanying Detective Turner and me to an interview room, we’d like to clear up a few things about the crime scene.”

  Kowalski, the taller one, paled and turned his hat nervously in his fingers. “The crime scene?” he asked, his gaze flitting between Will and Scott. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” Will assured him, giving Kowalski’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He felt for him. He’d been a young beat cop once upon a time. “Not at all. We just want to ask you a few questions. Get your perspective as first on scene.” He motioned to them to follow him. “Don’t worry, we don’t bite.”

  “Not unless you ask him, too.”

  Will ignored Scott’s comment and led the two men to an unoccupied interview room. Scott grinned widely as Will held the door open for Kowalski and the man inadvertently brushed against him, blushing a furious fuchsia as he did so. Will glared at Scott and closed the door behind him, taking a seat beside his far too amused partner.

  “So,” Scott said, his gaze flitting between the two men. “Can you go over everything that happened, from the moment you arrived at the property?”

  “Everything?” Davis asked, a confused frown creasing his brow.

  Scott nodded. “You know, where everybody was, what you did.”

  “Well,” Kowalski began. “We answered the call from dispatch, and it took us about six minutes to get to the loca—”

  “Woah there, hoss.” Scott held up his hand and Will nudged him under the table. “You’re not on the stand for Christ’s sake.”

  Hoss? “What my colleague is trying to say is,” Will interjected pointedly. “Relax, just tell us in your own words.” He shot a glare at Scott, who barely raised an eyebrow. Scott’s interview technique was sometimes a little bull-headed, which had a habit of making the interviewee clam up quicker than a, well, clam. “When you arrived at the property,” Will said, keeping his tone conversational. “How did you gain entry?”

  “The boy answered the door,” Davis replied.

  “Christopher opened the door?” Will couldn’t hide his surprise. “The door was closed?”

  “We figured the perp must have closed it behind him,” Kowalski said with a shrug.

  “At first the kid wouldn’t let us in,” Davis added. “We assured him we were police but he—”

  “Made you show him your badges?” Will didn’t need to look at Scott, he could hear the
smile in his voice.

  “Yeah.” It was Davis’ turn to be surprised. “How did you know that?”

  “I’m a detective,” Scott deadpanned.

  Will swallowed the snort that threatened to escape and hoped he’d managed to turn it into a convincing throat clearing. Thankfully, the two rookies appeared nonplussed, so he ignored the ill-disguised snort from Scott beside him and continued. “So, you’re inside, what do you see?”

  Kowalski frowned, obviously replaying the scene in his mind. “All the doors off the hall were closed,” he said, still turning his hat between his fingers. “It was quiet, real quiet, and I was thinking just how quiet it was when I saw the blood on the wall next to the stairs.”

  “What did you do then?” Will prompted.

  “I asked Christopher where his parents were. He said his mother was upstairs, but he didn’t know where his father was.” Kowalski glanced his partner. “Davis took the boy outside while I cleared the rooms downstairs, which is where I discovered the victim on the study floor.” Kowalski’s gaze dropped to the table and Will understood in a heartbeat.

  “Your first?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good job.” Kowalski looked at Scott, looking for cynicism, but Will knew he wouldn’t find any in Scott’s steady gaze. “Taking the kid outside,” he clarified. “Thinking on your feet. Impressive.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kowalski replied, blushing again. “I didn’t know what we were walking into and I didn’t want him to see anything.”

  “That was the right call,” Will said softly. “What happened then?” Will could tell that his first murder scene had taken a toll on Kowalski and he didn’t blame him. He still remembered his first. It wasn’t something that ever left you. Davis looked a little more blasé about the whole thing, which Will didn’t find appealing. Blasé led to a lack of compassion, and compassion was something you couldn’t do without in this job.

  “I left Davis with the boy and headed up the stairs, gun raised, identifying myself as I reached the landing. Mrs. Petersen called out from the bedroom and I asked her if she was okay, and when she confirmed she was, I indicated I had to check the other rooms before I could go to her.” His gaze flitted to Scott, obviously looking for affirmation that he’d done the right thing. “You know, in case the perpetrator was still in the house.” Scott nodded and Will saw Kowalski’s shoulders drop in relief at the reassurance.