was absent. She was granite.
“Em, this isn’t a social call.”
“I figured.”
“We’ve got a problem with Tricia Wilson.”
“Is she all right?”
“Far from it. One of our DAs noticed a couple of inconsistencies in her depos and did a little more digging. Sent the kid down to Portland. Good thing I did.”
Emily could feel the blood drain from her face. “I’m not going to like this one bit, am I?”
Camille shook her head. “About as much as a kick to the stomach. That’s how I felt.”
“Go ahead, Camille. Start kicking.”
Camille allowed a wary smile across her face. She wasn’t there to beat up Emily. Emily had done her job— and the DA’s office had done its job. The two worked together with the single purpose of making a case that would convince a jury.
“She and Mitch divorced, all right. But not because he beat her up. At least, not that we can tell. Patty or Tricia or whatever she called herself back then had more than likely bilked the Portland dealership out of two hundred thousand dollars. She was the pretty wife and the sticky-fingered head of accounting.”
“Charged?”
“Nope. It never got that far. Mitch’s father must have wanted to kill the girl, but instead they kept it out of the papers and kicked her to the curb, oh-so-quietly.”
“What about the abuse? The photos? The threats?”
“Made it up as far as I can tell. One of her old coworkers—you know the type, the woman who worked alongside the nitwit boss’s wife and wanted him for herself—she said the photos were fabricated. She used Max Factor and a Polaroid. I guess when it became clear that she was caught, she wanted a little insurance that she didn’t go down in flames.”
“Hence the photos.”
“Right. My guess is she never got over the fact that she’d been caught and didn’t get to extort the Crawfords for all they were worth.”
Emily sighed. “So coming forward must have been about payback.”
“That’s my take. She had those photos. Saw the Mandy story on TV and went for it.”
“Wonder why the defense didn’t bring this up? Why wouldn’t Mitch go to the media and blast one of his chief accusers? “
“Good question. I would have. But my guess is that Cary was looking for his Perry Mason moment. All lawyers do.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“My assistant had no luck with her, but for some reason, she said she’d talk to you. She’s working for a telemarketing company east of Seattle. Here’s the address.” She handed Emily a slip of paper.
Chapter Forty-eight
It was 9 P.M. when Chris Collier showed up on Emily’s doorstep. She’d called him earlier in the day to share her worry that despite Mitch Crawford’s arrest, something didn’t feel right.
“How on earth did you get here so fast?” she asked, letting him in and embracing him in the foyer. “I’m going over to Seattle tomorrow.”
“Timing is everything,” he said, a broad smile on his face. “Caught a flight from Spokane and, voila, here I am.” He set the rental car keys on the console by the door, next to her purse.
Chris followed Emily into the dining room where she had placed a box of case file folders. He took a chair and noticed the wine on the table. “Are you buying that by the case to boost the local economy?”
Emily smiled at his mention of the local vintner. “Maybe. I don’t know. I like it. Help yourself.”
Chris poured a glass and topped off Emily’s.
“I thought wine made you sleepy,” she said.
“Are you kidding? I drank about a gallon of coffee between the plane and drive up here. I’ll be wired until tomorrow.”
She smiled. “Good, because we have a lot to do.”
“All right. Let’s go over what you’ve got.”
“We have a pregnant woman murdered and dumped outside of town.’
“Cause of death?”
“Strangled.”
“Hands? Ligature?”
“We think hands. The body was in pretty good shape, but enough decomp around the fleshy parts of the neck to make it impossible to tell for sure. There were some marks, but Dr. Wilhelm thinks they were fingerprints.”
He sipped his wine. “OK. That’s the signature of a killer who likely knew his victim. It’s very, very hard to strangle someone. It takes some real effort and unless you’re coming from behind with a cord or something, you’re facing the victim until their lights go out.”
“Exactly. Must be a cold son-of-a-bitch to do that.”
Chris nodded. “That’s right. Especially to a pregnant woman. So taking that into consideration, we’re in agreement that the victim was likely known by her killer.”
“Yes. And the perp is probably a male or, if not, the strongest woman in Cherrystone.”
“That would be
“I have all that in the Crawford Murder Book,” she said. “Let me get it.”
He watched as she opened the big black binder. “No offense to you and Camille Hazelton, but your Murder Book is part of the problem. We’re not looking at the evidence, but at what we think about it. You know? We have to look at each piece of evidence anew. OK?”
Emily didn’t like the idea and her face showed it. There were reams of documents to go through and the hour was getting late.
“OK,” she said, “no shortcuts. But I want to remind you that we have to give the defense notice about Tricia Wilson’s perjured deposition by five p.m. tomorrow. Camille is doing us, I mean
“Then we better get going. What’s next, the DNA?”
Emily pulled up the lab work sent over by Dr. Wilhelm on the DNA swabbed from Mitch Crawford, and the victims, Mandy and Chrissy. The ME had attached a note written in his own handwriting, oddly legible for a doctor.
“There is absolutely no chance that this full-term female fetus was fathered by Mitch Crawford. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“I love his medical terminology,” Chris said.
Emily set down the file. “He’s a legend for about a million reasons.”
Chris wrote down on the paper:
“Look at it this way: Either Mitch killed Mandy because he caught her cheating, which I’d say is the best bet. Or the baby’s father killed her, for what reason, I don’t know.”
Emily could see the plausibility in either scenario. “We figured that. The big problem for us is that we’ve never been able to find out who fathered the baby.”
