Claire saw in his averted eyes that he was flat-out lying. He moved ever so slightly left to right, looking for escape. A thin line of sweat formed on his scalp.
“Yet he was writing his thesis on this case.” She continued to push. “He believed Chase Taverton was the intended victim, and my mother was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which pretty much throws the prosecution’s claim that it was a crime of passion out the window. Change the motive, and a whole world of suspects emerge.”
“I think you’re a desperate young woman trying to cling to the false hope that your father is innocent of two brutal murders.”
“Why are you lying?” Claire said, hackles raised. Collier went on the offensive when cornered; so did she. She tried to slow her heart rate, but she was angry.
“If you don’t leave, I will call for security.”
“I’m not stopping you from getting to class.” She glanced at her watch, mostly to prevent herself from decking him. “You’re already late.”
He glared at her, turned, and walked briskly to the lecture hall.
Claire went back to her Jeep and took several deep breaths to calm down. She rested her hot head on the steering wheel. Maybe she’d played him wrong. Maybe she should have gone in all honey and sweetness and asked if he had a copy of Oliver’s thesis, or his notes.
Collier would never have given them to her. If he was involved in Oliver’s disappearance, he had either hidden or destroyed everything Oliver had shared about the case. But why would a college professor be involved in hiding information about her father’s case? Why would he even care? Or maybe he was just a touchy, crabby guy. Had she misread his reactions to her questions?
Might Collier lie because he’d made a mistake in reviewing her dad’s case and his weak ego couldn’t handle it? There had to be something else, something more.
The key was finding out more than just who wanted Chase Taverton dead. Who had the means and the
Time was her problem. Fifteen years had passed since the murders. Memories faded. People moved or died. Criminals whom Taverton prosecuted might not even remember the man who put them away. Unless, of course, they had been involved in his murder.
Was Taverton involved in any gang- or mob-related prosecutions? Sacramento didn’t have a “mob” problem in the traditional way New York and Chicago and, to a lesser degree, nearby San Francisco did. But there was a powerful criminal Russian community in Sacramento and Stockton. But would they or any other petty criminal have set up such an elaborate frame?
She pulled out her father’s letter. Frank Lowe. She knew nothing about him except what her father said: that he was someone Chase Taverton had cut a deal with. How would Lowe be able to clear her father?
Was he dead, like Oliver?
She needed to see the evidence against her father. She was an investigator and while she didn’t investigate murder, she knew what was staged and what was real. Like Ben Holman’s arson. Obviously arson, staged to look like a theft.
Claire broke out in a sweat. Her father’s guilt made sense on the surface, but there were so many layers when Chase Taverton was added to the equation as more than her mother’s lover. There was a damn good chance that everyone had drawn the wrong conclusions. And Claire saw a new reality, one where she’d been deadly wrong.
Claire now saw flaws in the prosecution’s argument. Flaws that a good defense attorney should have exploited. Or was she seeing the flaws only because she
A criminal lawyer named Prescott had represented her father. She made a note to track him down and find out what, if anything, he knew or remembered from the trial, perhaps something that Claire had been too catatonic to notice at the time.
She had told the truth on the stand. The whole truth as she’d seen it. That alone may not have been enough to convict her father, but it had destroyed his life.
She would discover the truth about that terrible day no matter what it took. Once and for all, Claire had to know for certain that her father was guilty. . or innocent.
SIXTEEN
Mitch had only worked in the Sacramento regional FBI office for two years, but until now he hadn’t had reason to observe an autopsy at the county coroner’s office. Generally, the FBI simply reviewed the reports if they were involved. But Mitch wanted to be hands-on. Steve came along.
Deputy Clarkston greeted Mitch and Steve when they arrived. “Thanks for letting us come,” Steve said diplomatically.
Clarkston shrugged. “You did the heavy lifting yesterday. If you want to watch the autopsy, fine by me. My boss said whatever you need, to help. But we’re working the case, just so you know.”
“Good,” Steve said when Mitch wanted to argue. “We’ll give you whatever help you need, but it’s all yours.”
Clarkston relaxed and opened the door to the observation room.
The small room was cramped for three broad-shouldered cops. They stood, pushing the two chairs to the corners. A television high in one corner was blank. Mitch flicked a switch and static ensued.
Clarkston tapped on the window and caught the attention of a young forensic pathologist. He turned on the mic. “Can we get a visual here? And we will need two copies of the tape.”
She nodded and switched on the camera above the body.
The pathologists all wore face masks, gowns, gloves, and booties, but that was the extent of their protective clothing. The three of them in the room were all women.
Mitch wanted to tell Steve what he’d learned from Claire’s computer, but the information had been obtained illegally. Meg would have a meltdown: She was a stickler for constitutional law. You don’t bend the rules-any of them.
Mitch glanced at the dead body. They would have confirmation within the hour-the dental records from his hometown dentist had been overnighted and the chief pathologist was off right now comparing the corpse’s dental X-rays to those of Maddox.
Just last night he’d promised Steve that he would keep nothing from him, nothing that could jeopardize the capture of Thomas O’Brien. But what did he know now, really? Claire had done a few Google searches on the principals of the case. What did that tell them? It wasn’t illegal for Claire to look into her father’s case.
But Mitch knew there was more to it than that.
The external exam now over, the internal exam was beginning. The senior pathologist made the first incision.
Maddox’s body was pale, the skin having dissolved. The body was a lumpy mass of human Jell-O. Because it had been in fresh, cold water, putrefaction had slowed, but bacteria had still done severe damage. If Maddox had drowned, there was no way to prove it. Only through external investigation-accident site, damage to the car, mental state of the victim prior to disappearance-could they determine it had been an accident rather than murder. A bullet would be nice, Mitch thought, but there had been no obvious wounds on the body when they’d bagged him underwater yesterday.
And looking at the body now, Mitch couldn’t see anything obvious. There were no visible wounds that would indicate cause of death. No bullet or knife wounds. But with the skin slippage and advanced putrefaction, obvious wounds might be unnoticeable.
Mitch watched in silence as the pathologists removed and weighed organs that no longer had the color and shape they should have. How they knew what section was the heart and what was the lungs, he didn’t know.
When the senior pathologist removed the brain, she said, “Now this is interesting.”
