life. He held his forefinger to his lips.
“We can’t tell anyone how she died,” he said. And there he was, protecting her once more.
“I can keep a secret, Dad,” Lainie said, the tears flowing. Tori nodded.
“I can, too.” Dex reached out for the girls and pulled them close against his chest. Lainie started to cry, feeling her tears absorbed by the lightly starched cotton of his laundered and pressed shirt. Only one of the girls knew the true depth of the secret, a secret she’d never tell. Their mother’s death was classified by the coroner’s office as “accidental,” but those closest to her knew that ruling was a gift that allowed her survivors to carry on without the specter of a suicide and the implications such deaths frequently bring to those left behind. Vonnie had taken a fistful of pills for depression and anxiety and went to sleep. No one saw her take them, but when her stomach was pumped the night she slipped into a coma, the doctors recovered more than ten that had not yet dissolved. It was a party mix of pills for a party that never took place. Vonnie did not leave a note. She merely said “good night” and went down the hallway to bed. As she had when the family cat had died, Tori seemed to hold up better than her sister or father. She cried when there was someone there to see it—if the person was the type to pass judgment on her emotions. One time she told Lainie that “tears are for the weak or those who pretend to be so that others won’t judge them.” It was easy for Lainie to know which category Tori fell into. She was that consistent. Lainie, on the other hand, could barely get over the very idea their mother was gone. Her own depression sent her farther and farther down a path that sometimes made her question her own stability. I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to end up like her, she thought. Of course, she wouldn’t. Unlike her mother, Lainie was a survivor. Both O’Neal twins were. Just in very different ways.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tacoma
Darius Fulton lawyered up lickety-split, which certainly was no surprise to anyone. He protested that what made him look most guilty was nothing more than an error in judgment, not a clue to his culpability or complicity in a crime. He’d never once harmed anyone. Plus, he said there was no proof. Because there couldn’t be. Oh, really, Detective Kaminski thought as he prepared for a meeting between the person of interest and his lawyer. The crime lab determined that the partial print on the murder weapon matched a latent one recovered from the Dasani water bottle that Kaminski carried from the interview room with a Bic pen inserted into its neck after the meeting in which Darius Fulton confessed his indiscretion with Tori Connelly. It was true, as Darius insisted; all of that could easily be explained. It was his gun. His fingerprints should be on it. But an e-mail to the police department’s community web page sent by an anonymous tipster had changed things. There was something else suggesting that Fulton had done more than covet his neighbor’s wife. The e-mail came in from a Kinko’s rent-by-the-hour PC, and plainly indicated that Fulton was obsessed with Tori.
“Get his computer,” the tipster wrote.
“You’ll see.” Later that afternoon, Darius’s lawyer, Maddie Crane, a glossy-haired woman with an expressionless Botoxed face and a penchant for seeking out the red RECORD light of a TV camera, made a succinct statement to the media in the lobby of her Tacoma law firm offices.
“Yes, my client had a relationship with the deceased’s wife. We don’t deny that. But that’s the sum of his involvement here.” A young man from KING-TV in Seattle was the only one to get a question out before she ended the press conference.
“Wasn’t he stalking her? Didn’t he bombard her with phone calls and e-mails?” Ms. Botox’s fluttering eyelids were her only indicator of a reaction. She almost bent the folds of her face, but the ’tox had done its job.
“Statement over,” she said curtly. The KING reporter winked at a newsroom associate, a woman he’d been flirting with for six weeks.
“See what I mean,” she said.
“It’s all about the tips.”
“You going to tell me how you knew?” the young reporter asked. He put his hand on her shoulder, a touch that sent a chill down her spine and reminded her why her father hadn’t wanted her to go into TV in the first place.
“Nope. Just a call. Just knowing the right people.” In actuality, he, too, had received an anonymous e- mail.
Eddie Kaminski and four uniformed officers served a search warrant on Darius Fulton’s residence. His computers—a desktop and a laptop—were confiscated, as was a stack of DVDs and CD-ROMs. Among the electronic equipment was a video cam feed that emanated from the Connelly home across the street. The camera had been placed behind a Thomas Kinkade painting.
“Guy was a major stalker,” a cop told Kaminski.
“A regular Steve Jobs with all this electronic surveillance crap. Probably has an app on his iPhone that allowed him to keep an eye on her no matter where he was.”
“Sick, twisted piece of crap.” Kaminski nodded.
“Yeah. He’s as good as going down for this.” Kaminski recovered another item tucked into the cushions of the sofa—a black ski mask.
“Looky here at what I’ve found,” the detective said, holding it up with the tip of a pen. Forensic specialist Cal Herzog grinned at the discovery.
“Boom! This guy’s done,” he said.
The camera used to feed images from the Connelly place to Darius Fulton’s residence was a wireless model manufactured by Lorex. Eddie Kaminski told the lab guys that he’d chase down the model number with the idea of determining just where it had been purchased. None of the credit card receipts thus far indicated that Darius had purchased a unit. Stalkers are more paranoid than their victims, he thought as he scrolled through the database display of suppliers on his computer. A box of pizza with congealed cheese and pepperoni beckoned from the corner of his desk, but Eddie Kaminski was working as hard on his case as he was on his waistline. I will not eat another bite, because it is too damn wet outside to go running. The model number in question was sold in only Best Buy and Radio Shack, which ordinarily would be good news for a detective trying to determine who had purchased the camera. However, the fact that their Internet sites also sold the cameras made it a lot harder to determine their point of sale. Any thought of heading over to the Tacoma Mall and presenting a photo display of cops and a suspected killer was dashed. It was possible that the cam was purchased online, but the techs examining Darius Fulton’s computer had revealed no such transactions. In fact, apart from the e-mails they’d easily discovered at the first examination, there was nothing else to tie the neighbor to his victims.
In his pristine lab on the second floor, Cal Herzog cataloged the ski mask recovered from the Fulton residence. It was black with three holes for the eyes and mouth. REI manufactured the item of wool poly-blend yarn. It was of the type that could be purchased online or at any of the recreational company’s retail stores. As he worked through the process of examining the mask, two things were remarkable and Cal made note of both of them. First, he noted that there were absolutely no biologicals around the mouth or eyeholes. No saliva as would be expected. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities—he’d once examined a woman’s blouse on a rape case that was clean as a shirt off the rack at Macy’s. Blood from both Alex and Tori Connelly was found, though a greater amount of her blood was present than his. Of the three hairs recovered, two had intact follicles, making them candidates for nuclear DNA testing. One was too damaged, but the other was in good shape. The third hair was shorter, darker, and without the benefit of a follicle. It would require the more comprehensive mitochondrial DNA testing. Later, when the tests were complete, only one person’s name was on the report: Darius Fulton. The third hair? Unknown .
Tori’s words resonated in his ear. Tori knew that the right delivery ensured the prize—no matter what it was that she was after.
“Use cash for everything, babe. I’ll make sure you have the money. Never, ever use a debit card.”
“Only people over forty carry cash now,” he said.
“Yes. Only an old fool would carry money in his wallet. Plastic is so much cleaner.” He played the
