been assigned the investigation because of a conflict of interest since the primary suspect was a Sacramento Police Officer.
Again, she realized that she should talk to Bill. He’d been with the sheriff’s department for thirty-two years. He’d know far more about her father’s case and the subsequent investigation.
Also in the box were four unmarked photos, which made Claire think they hadn’t actually been used in trial. They were snapshots, and that in and of itself was odd. Where were the crime scene photographs? There should have been hundreds of them. If the murders occurred now, there might simply be a disk of photos, but fifteen years ago they were still using film and archiving the hard-copy photos.
The photos were in color, and though faded, were still disturbing.
Her mother and Taverton were in a deadly embrace. Blood was everywhere, just like Claire remembered. The blood had seeped from the gun wounds, but there was no battle, no fight, no movement of the dying. Death was as instantaneous as you could get. If she had either the coroner’s report or the crime scene report, she’d know how far away the killer had been when he fired and from what angle. But those reports were also missing.
She looked at the next photo and gasped. She stared into the dead eyes of her mother. Her face had been obscured in the first photo, but this was taken from another angle.
She’d always been closer to her father than her mother. Growing up, she had not understood why. She and her mother argued about everything. Claire blamed herself. She’d been an obstinate kid. A brat. And when her mother was dead, she could no longer tell her that, even with everything they fought over, Claire loved her. They may never have been friends, but Claire loved her nonetheless.
And because she knew, even at fourteen, that she’d been so wrong about her mother. The good and the bad.
Waves of agony washed over Claire. “I’m sorry, Mom. I really did love you.”
Maybe if Claire had been more open to listening to Oliver Maddox, he would have shared with her his theory. If she had just given him half a chance, she could have been working this for the last four months. Oliver might not have died.
Maybe she would have.
The facts jumped around in her brain. The killer must have known what Oliver had found, and feared exposure. But maybe Oliver didn’t realize the importance of what he had, otherwise why wouldn’t he have gone to the police? Oliver had been murdered-she was certain of it, no matter that Dave told her last night that his car crash into the Sacramento River could have been an accident.
She needed the coroner’s reports. Both for her mother and Chase Taverton, and for Oliver Maddox. Fortunately, she knew the supervising forensic pathologist at the morgue.
Mitch and Steve walked into the Davis Police Department at 10:30 Thursday morning after finishing up with the autopsy and working out jurisdictional evidence issues with the sheriff’s department. The flash drive was already on its way to the FBI’s computer forensics laboratory in Menlo Park, less than three hours away. They figured the best way to preserve any information that had been saved on the chip within the submerged stomach of Oliver Maddox was to have the best computer minds in the Bureau work it.
Detective Theo Barker introduced himself to the Feds. “I made you a copy when you called earlier,” he said.
“Thanks,” Mitch said and glanced through the report. Standard missing persons-the girlfriend called it in three days after she last saw Maddox, which was approximately noon on Sunday, January 20 when she left him, alone, at his town house on F Street. A neighbor reported seeing the white Explorer pull out of the driveway at dusk-which put his departure roughly at 5:30 p.m. That was the last reported sighting of Oliver Maddox.
There were interviews with the girlfriend, his advisor, classmates, neighbors, and his grandmother who lived in the Midwest. Nothing unusual, but Mitch would need to read it in more depth.
“Sorry to hear he’s dead,” Barker said, “but that’s what I suspected. Young college student like that without financial or female problems doesn’t just walk off. But what is the interest of the FBI? Your people don’t investigate routine traffic fatalities.”
“The cause of death is possible homicide,” Steve said.
“The FBI doesn’t usually investigate routine homicides, either.”
“We’re working with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department,” Steve said. “Maddox was a person of interest related to one of the fugitives from San Quentin.”
“Think a convict killed him? I hadn’t heard of any in this area.”
“No, he was dead before the earthquake,” Mitch interjected.
“By the way, there’s a private investigator interested in the file. A real looker.”
Mitch knew it was Claire, but asked anyway. “Do you have her name?”
Barker slid over a business card. “I didn’t know Rogan-Caruso would take such a small case, but live and learn.”
Mitch picked up the card. CLAIRE O’BRIEN, LICENSED INVESTIGATOR. Steve glanced at him without expression. “Thanks,” Mitch said. “Appreciate the help.”
They left the police station and drove over to the university. Steve asked, “How did she find out Maddox was missing?”
“Maybe she knows he’s dead,” Mitch said. “She has a lot of friends on the force.”
“She’s walking into the gray area,” Steve warned.
“I know.”
Steve’s cell rang and while he talked, Mitch ran through last night. Claire was definitely more on edge than she’d been in the recent past, but he couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that made him suspect she had been in communication with her father. Yet it looked as if she’d taken on her father’s cause.
Steve hung up. “That was Meg. Five days ago O’Brien was possibly spotted in Redding.”
“Five days? Why’d it take so long for us to get the call?”
“The Shasta County Sheriff’s Department took that long to pull the tapes and look at them. They didn’t give a lot of credence to the sighting. It was a truck driver at a diner off the interstate. But they reviewed the tapes and think it might be O’Brien. A deputy is driving down with the tapes, should be here early afternoon.”
“If it was O’Brien, that means he’s in town by now.”
“You’re thinking something,” Steve said.
“There was a sticky note on Claire’s computer with her name printed on it. It wasn’t her handwriting. I couldn’t find anything that looked like it that came from O’Brien, but she did searches on Maddox and Collier.” He glanced at his watch. “She left at seven this morning. Collier’s first class was at eight. What if she went to talk to him?”
“About Maddox? Why?”
“To see if he knew what Maddox knew about her father. Maddox thought O’Brien was innocent. I know for a fact that Claire gave Maddox no credence-believe me, she believes her father is guilty.”
“To clear her father?”
“To decide whether he’s telling the truth.”
“Fuck,” Steve muttered. “I put the fear of God in that woman, why is she screwing around with her future like this? She knows she could be charged as an accessory.”
“She blames herself for the murders, but if her father is innocent, she’d blame herself for not standing by him,” Mitch said.
“She told you that?”
“Not in so many words, but she did talk about the murders last night.”
Steve glanced at him. “And she left at seven in the morning? You slept with her, didn’t you?”
“I don’t see-”
“Dammit, Mitch, what are you thinking?”
