Murder Under Cover

Chapter 3

Swearing ripely, Derek dragged me out the door and pushed me back into the chair next to Robin. Then he shoved my head between my knees to keep me from passing out altogether. I knew he did it lovingly.

“Oh, no,” Robin cried as she grabbed hold of my hand. “What did you see in there?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I said when I could breathe again, then waved away her concern over my idiocy. “I’m okay.”

“Why in God’s name did you go inside?” Derek demanded as he paced back and forth in front of my chair.

I sucked in one big gulp of air and sat up. “I didn’t go inside,” I insisted weakly. “I had no intention of doing so. I looked inside. Big difference. I was just trying to get your attention.”

“Well, you got it,” he said, scowling.

“I’m sorry,” I said, humiliated by my weakness. “I was just worried the police would find you and arrest you or something.”

He gritted his teeth, then drew a heavy breath. “Thank you, love. That was very thoughtful. Unnecessary, but thoughtful.”

“I know. Sorry.”

He nodded and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. His jaw was clenched but he said nothing more. He didn’t have to. We’d both seen something awful inside Robin’s apartment.

SFPD Detective Inspector Janice Lee stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked up, and shook her head. “Wainwright, we’ve simply got to stop meeting like this.”

“You’re telling me,” I said as I stood up to greet her. Janice Lee had been assigned to the first murder investigation I’d been involved in, when my old bookbinding mentor, Abraham Karastovsky, was killed. Then just last month, she’d investigated Layla Fontaine’s murder at the Bay Area Book Arts Center. I’d been working at BABA at the time of the killing and was able to give Lee some help with the suspects. So we were like old friends, only not so much.

“How are you, Inspector?” I asked, shaking her hand.

“Can’t complain. Nobody listens,” she said with a shrug. Her voice wasn’t as husky as usual, and I took that as a good sign that she’d managed to break her smoking habit. She’d gained a few more pounds, and with her exotic Asian-American features and long, shiny black hair, she looked prettier than ever. I could learn to hate her if I didn’t respect her so much.

“Hello, Inspector Lee,” Derek said cordially.

“Always a pleasure, Commander Stone,” she said, her tone a bit lighter. I suppose she had a soft spot for Derek-along with every other woman on the planet.

Four uniformed officers climbed the stairs in Inspector Lee’s wake. With eight people standing around, the normally spacious landing was starting to feel claustrophobic.

Derek passed Robin’s house key to Inspector Lee, then asked, “Will Inspector Jaglom be joining you?”

“Yeah, he should be here any minute. Why?”

Derek smiled. “Just curious. You two work well together.”

“Yes, we do,” she said, casting a wary glance his way. “Once we’ve seen what’s going on inside the apartment, I’ll have my uniforms canvass the neighborhood and watch things here until the ME and the lab folks arrive.”

He nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said with just a touch of sarcasm. “What’s going on, Commander? Have you already been inside the premises?”

“Yes,” he said succinctly.

“Care to share your thoughts?”

“Of course.” He lowered his voice. “Body’s in the master bedroom. Blood has been tracked throughout, especially in the bedroom and attached bath. It’s a bloody mess, you’ll pardon the expression. Walls, sheets, hardwood floors. Victim was shot once in the head, once in the chest. Death appears to have been instantaneous. Ms. Tully was asleep in bed with the victim when he was shot.”

“Good to know,” she said, sliding a curious glance at Robin, who noticed her looking and shrank back into her chair.

Inspector Lee turned back to Derek. “Thanks for the info.”

I figured a rundown like that from a civilian would normally grate on her, but coming from Derek, Lee took it well. She was no fool, and Derek was no run-of-the-mill witness. As a former Royal Navy commander who’d gone on to work for Britain’s MI6 before starting his own private security company, he knew what he was doing, to say the least.

But with his brief recap of the crime scene, I could feel my eyes goggling as my brain painted some really gross mental images. There went my stomach again.

Derek noticed and swore under his breath.

Lee turned and looked at me with interest. “How you holding up, Wainwright?”

“Not well, thanks.” Seriously, with as many times as I’d landed in the middle of a murder scene, you’d think I’d be getting better at handling the sight of blood.

“Did you go inside the apartment with Commander Stone?”

“Not exactly.” I stood on unsteady legs, grabbed hold of the landing rail, and took deep breaths. It was getting bad when even the mere thought of blood made my stomach clench.

“Then what, exactly?” Inspector Lee asked, tapping the toe of her shoe against the wood floor.

I turned. “I just poked my head inside for a second or two.”

“Yeah, sometimes that’s all it takes,” she said philosophically. “Guess you got an eyeful.”

“Guess I did.”

With an evil chuckle, Inspector Lee turned from me to Derek. “Since you’ve been inside, we’ll need a print of your shoes for comparison. Probably be a good idea if you took them off right now.”

“Certainly,” he said.

She caught the eye of one of the cops and jerked her chin up. That was all it took for the officer to hurry downstairs to the squad car. He was back in less than a minute with an evidence envelope large enough to carry Derek’s shoes.

Finally, Lee turned to Robin. I was pleased to hear her use a gentler tone than she had with me or Derek as she said, “It’s Robin, right? We’ve met a few times.”

“Yes, hi.” Robin stood unsteadily and shook her hand. She tried to smile but it was a shaky effort. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“This your place?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. So what’s going to happen is, as soon as my partner arrives, he and I will go inside to look around. In the meantime, I’d like to get some preliminary information from you. I understand you’ve been through a bad time, so we’ll take it slow.”

“Thanks.”

“Now, I assume that since the commander and your good friend Ms. Wainwright are here, you called them first and they came over to keep you company.”

“No, I…” She glanced at Derek and me, and I noticed she looked as though she might fall over any second now. Lee seemed to notice the same thing.

“Let’s sit,” the inspector said as she maneuvered Robin down onto the director’s chair.

I watched Robin more carefully. I’d never seen my friend so wiped out before. It wasn’t just shock or grief. Her eyes were unfocused and she seemed unstable whenever she was standing. I was beginning to wonder if maybe she’d taken a sleeping pill or something. Was that why she’d slept through Alex’s death? But as Inspector Lee questioned her, she seemed to rally and was able to repeat the same story that she’d told us earlier, going into even greater detail than before.

As Robin finished, her upstairs neighbor Sharon, still wearing pajamas and a plaid bathrobe, opened her front door. She glanced around, her forehead lined with concern, until she spied Robin. “What’s going on out here?”

“Oh, Sharon, I’m sorry we disturbed you,” Robin said. “There’s been a… an accident in my apartment. The police are here to look into it.”

“An accident?” Sharon said, taking a step out onto the porch. “Are you all right?”

Robin waved her back as if she didn’t want her neighbor to get too close. “I’m okay.”

“Good morning, ma’am,” Inspector Lee said, standing up and pulling a business card from her pocket. “You live upstairs?”

“Yes.”

She handed Sharon the card. “We’ll need to ask you some questions in a little while. Will you be home all day today?”

“Yes, I’m off on Sundays.” She stared down at the card, then back at Lee. “You’re a homicide detective?”

“Yes,” Lee said. Before she could say anything else, she spied Inspector Jaglom strolling down the sidewalk.

“Nate,” Lee called, and waved. “Up here.”

He glanced up, saw me and Derek, and his eyebrows rose in mild disbelief. “What’s all this?”

I was grateful Inspector Lee didn’t shout something pithy like, If it’s Wainwright, it’s murder! Just because that little declaration was becoming uncomfortably true didn’t mean I wanted to hear the police stating it as fact. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them printing it up on bumper stickers one of these days.

As Jaglom walked toward Robin’s building, Lee turned to finish her conversation with Sharon. “As soon as one of my officers is free, he’ll come by and get some preliminary information from you.”

“Of course. I need to take a quick shower first. Then I’ll be available.”

“Appreciate it.”

Unsure what else to say or do, Sharon gave Robin another anxious look, then went back inside and closed the door.

“Commander, Brooklyn,” Inspector Jaglom said in greeting when he reached the top of the stairs. “This is quite a surprise.”

Was it a good thing or a bad thing that I was on a first-name basis with a homicide inspector?

“Good to see you, Inspector,” Derek said, shaking hands with Jaglom.

After introducing her partner to Robin, Inspector Lee said, “Ms. Tully, I’d appreciate it if you would remain on the premises for a while.”

“Sure.”

As Jaglom and Derek spoke with each other in hushed tones, Lee pulled two pairs of disposable rubber gloves from her bag. She handed one pair to her partner, cutting short the niceties. “Let’s do this, Nate. Watch where you’re stepping.”

“Lead on,” Jaglom said, and the two disappeared inside Robin’s flat.

Within forty-five minutes, the medical examiner and a number of crime lab people were crawling all over the property. Robin’s neighbor Sharon invited us to hang out at her place while the police combed through every inch of Robin’s home.

After one of the criminologists swabbed Robin’s bloodstained skin and hair, she was allowed to take a shower in Sharon’s bathroom. Nervous to be alone, Robin begged me to sit in the bathroom with her while she showered. We both relaxed a bit once she’d washed all the dried blood away.

Derek spoke to the police a while longer, then left to go back to my place to shower and dress for work. It was Sunday, but since he’d been gone all week, he’d arranged several meetings that couldn’t be canceled. Once he was gone, I dozed on Sharon’s couch.

At some point, Inspector Lee took Robin into Sharon’s kitchen to ask her a bunch of questions. After an hour or so, Lee went back downstairs and Robin curled up on Sharon’s recliner. She slept soundly, but not calmly as she tossed and turned and moaned every so often. Poor Sharon didn’t know what to do to help, and truthfully I didn’t either. We commiserated in her kitchen as she made a pot of soup. She said she always made soup when she was worried.

We’d been there for over three hours and I had thumbed through most of the magazines on the coffee table when Inspector Lee walked into Sharon’s apartment again. Robin was still stretched out in the chair, but I stood and watched the cop as she folded her arms tightly across her chest and flexed her neck muscles. I could tell something was up.

“I have to ask you to come downtown with me for further questioning, Ms. Tully.”

Robin blinked, then looked at me in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Wait.” I jumped up from the couch. “No. What for? She’s innocent. You can’t arrest her.”

Inspector Lee thrust her hand out in a gesture of understanding. “I’m not arresting her, Ms. Wainwright, only taking her in for further questioning.”

“That’s just one small step toward county,” I said, angry now. “This is unacceptable.”

“Calm down, Ms. Wainwright,” she said in a patient tone she probably used with lunatics.

“I won’t calm down. This is Robin we’re talking about. She’s a victim here.”

“Ms. Wainwright, please.”

I hated that she was calling me Ms. Wainwright, all formal and patronizing. It was not a good sign, and it didn’t bode well for Robin’s future. I was feeling all kinds of betrayal, because Inspector Lee should’ve been on our side. She and I were practically friends, we saw each other so often.

Okay, maybe not friends exactly. More like crime scene buddies. Why did she need to question Robin any further? Why wasn’t she out trying to find the murderer who’d killed Alex and ruined Robin’s life?

Meanwhile, Robin could barely move the recliner up to a sitting position.

“Look at her,” I said indignantly, pointing at Robin. “She can barely sit up. Oh, crap.” That was when it finally hit me with both barrels. I’d wondered earlier if maybe she’d taken a sleeping pill. It had been bothering me off and on for hours, but I kept getting distracted.

“Robin, did you take a sleeping pill last night?”

“Huh?” she said, taken aback. “No, I never use them. You know that. I hate the hangover. I’d rather just get up and work when I can’t sleep.”

“Why do you seem so groggy?”

She swiped her forehead and scratched her head. “I don’t know. I just can’t seem to snap out of it.”

I’d thought it was the trauma she’d been through, but that couldn’t be the only reason Robin had been so out of it all day. I whipped around to Inspector Lee. “Have you considered giving her a blood test? I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy drugged her last night.”

“If he drugged her, she wouldn’t remember having sex,” Lee pointed out. “That’s the point of Rohypnol, after all.”

“I know, I know,” I said, pacing the floor between Robin’s chair and Inspector Lee. “But maybe he drugged her after they had sex. And maybe it wasn’t Rohypnol. Maybe it was just some kind of strong sleeping pill.” I turned to Robin. “Did you have anything to eat or drink after… you know.”

“Sex, Wainwright,” Lee said. “They had sex. Jeez, don’t get all puritanical on me now.”

I shot her a dirty look, then went back to Robin. “After sex, did you have anything to eat or drink?”

Robin had been watching Inspector Lee and me go back and forth like a tennis match. Now she had to think for a moment. “Yeah, we shared the rest of a bottle of wine.”

“Oh.” My shoulders sagged in disappointment. “You shared it?”

“Yeah.” Her forehead creased in concentration. “He went into the kitchen and poured two glasses and brought them back to bed.”

“Aha.” I turned to Lee in triumph. “Some of these drugs stay in the system for only twenty-four hours, right? I want a blood test taken right now.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Lee asked, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “You don’t make demands of me.”

I usually enjoyed trading barbs and quips with Inspector Lee, but this wasn’t funny. This was Robin’s life we were talking about.

“No, I’m not a lawyer,” I said as my irritation escalated. “But I can get one over here faster than you can shout benzodiazepine. Just say the word.”

She folded her arms across her chest and tried to stare me down. I stared right back.

“Fine, Wainwright,” she said finally. “We’ll run a damn blood test.”

“Thank you,” I snapped.

“I was going to do it anyway.” She found her cell phone.

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

She gave me a sideways glance. “And miss the fun of watching you go all F. Lee Bailey on my ass? No way.”

I tried to channel my mother by concentrating on keeping my breaths even, my thoughts positive, my dosha aligned. But I was still riled. “I was beginning to think you were playing good cop, bad cop. Without the good cop.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I snorted politely. “You would.”

She chuckled. “I really like you, Wainwright.”

“Jeez,” Robin muttered. “I’d hate to see you with someone you don’t like.”