Redemption

Chapter 3

The Richardses’ home. The scene of the crime thirteen years ago.

It was down a rutted crushed-gravel road. Two houses on the left and two on the right, with the Richardses’ now-dilapidated dwelling smack at the end of the cul-de-sac on an acre lot of dead grass crammed with fat, overgrown bushes.

It had been lonely and creepy back then, and it was more so over a decade later.

They pulled to a stop in front of the house and climbed out of Decker’s car. Lancaster shivered slightly, and it was not entirely due to the coolness of the night.

“Hasn’t changed all that much,” said Decker.

“Well, the family that was living here fixed it up some before they left. It needed it. Mostly on the interior. Paint and carpet, things like that. The place had been abandoned for a long time. Nobody wanted to live here after what happened.”

“You’d think a banker would have lived in something nicer.”

“He was a loan officer. They make squat, especially in a town like this. And this house is a lot bigger than mine, Decker, with a lot more land.”

They walked up to the front porch of the home. Decker tried the door.

“Locked.”

“Well, why don’t you unlock it?” said Lancaster.

“Are you giving me permission to break and enter?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. And it’s not like we’re screwing up a crime scene.”

Decker broke the side glass, reached through, and unlocked the door. He switched on his Maglite and led her inside.

“Do you remember?” said Lancaster. “That’s a rhetorical question, of course.”

Decker didn’t appear to be listening. In his mind’s eye, he was a recently minted homicide investigator after riding a beat for ten years and then working robbery, burglary, and drugs for several years as a detective. He and Lancaster had been called to the Richardses’ house after the report of a disturbance and the discovery of bodies inside by the first responders. This being their maiden homicide investigation, neither wanted to screw it up.

As a rookie uniformed cop, Lancaster had worn no makeup, as though to make herself less conspicuously female. She was the only woman on the entire force who didn’t sit behind a desk and type or go make coffee for the guys. The only one authorized to carry a gun, arrest people, and read them their rights. And to take their lives if it was absolutely necessary.

She hadn’t taken up her smoking habit yet. That would come when she began working as a detective with Decker, and spent more and more of her time with dead bodies and trying to catch the killers who had violently snatched away those lives. She was also heavier back then. But it was a healthy weight. Lancaster had gained the rep of a calm, methodical cop who went into every situation with three or four different plans on how to manage it. Nothing rattled her. As a beat cop she’d earned numerous commendations for how she handled herself. And everyone had come out of those situations alive. She’d conducted herself the same way while working as a detective.

Decker, on the other hand, had a reputation as the quirkiest son of a bitch who’d ever worn the Burlington police uniform. Yet no one could deny his vast potential in law enforcement. And that potential had been fully realized when he became a detective and partnered with Mary Lancaster. They’d never failed to solve a case to which they’d been assigned. It was a record of which any other police department, large or small, would have been envious.

They had known each other previously, having come up in the same rookie class, but hadn’t had much interaction professionally until they exchanged their uniforms for the civilian clothes of a detective.

Now Decker went step by step in his memory from that night as Lancaster watched him from a corner of the living room.

“Cops were radioed in about a disturbance here. Call came in at nine-thirty-five. Two squad cars arrived in five minutes. They entered the house a minute later after checking the perimeter. The front door was unlocked.”

He moved over to another part of the room.

“Vic number one, David Katz, was found here,” he said, pointing to a spot at the doorway into the kitchen. “Age thirty-five. Two taps. First gunshot to the left temple. Second to the back of the head. Instant death with either shot.” He pointed to another spot right next to the door. “Beer bottle found here. His prints on it. Didn’t break, but the beer was all over the floor.”

“Katz owned a local restaurant, the American Grill,” added Lancaster. “He was over here visiting.”

“And no evidence that he could have been the target,” stated Decker.

“None,” confirmed Lancaster. “Wrong place, wrong time. Like Ron Goldman in the O. J. Simpson case. Really shitty luck on his part.”

They moved into the kitchen. It was all dirty linoleum, scarred cabinets, and a rust-stained sink.

“Victim number two, Donald Richards — everyone called him Don. Forty-four. Bank loan officer. Single GSW through the heart and fell here. Again, dead when he dropped.”

Lancaster nodded. “He knew Katz because the bank had previously approved a loan to Katz for the American Grill project.”

Decker walked back out into the living room and eyed the stairs leading up to the second floor.

“Now the last two vics.”

They climbed the stairs until they reached the second-floor landing.

“These two bedrooms.” He indicated two doors across from each other. He pushed open the door on the left side and went in. Lancaster followed.

“Victim number three,” said Decker. “Abigail ‘Abby’ Richards. Age twelve.”

“She was strangled. Found on the bed. Ligature marks showed that some sort of rope was used. Killer took it with him.”

“Her death wasn’t instantaneous,” Decker pointed out.

“No. But she fought hard.”

“And got Meryl Hawkins’s DNA under her fingernails,” Decker said pointedly. “So, in a way, she beat him.”

Decker moved past her out of the room, across the hall and into the bedroom there. Lancaster followed.

Decker paced over to a point against the wall and said, “Victim number four. Frankie Richards. Age fourteen. Just started at Burlington High School. Found on the floor right here. Single GSW to the heart.”

“We found some drug paraphernalia and enough cash hidden in his room to suggest that he wasn’t just a user but a dealer. But we could never tie any of that to the murders. We tracked down the man supplying him, it was Karl Stevens. He was a small fry. There was no way that was the motivation to kill four people. And Stevens had an ironclad alibi.”

Decker nodded. “Okay, we were called in at ten-twenty-one. We came by car and arrived here fourteen minutes later.”

He leaned against the wall and glanced out the window that overlooked the street. “Four neighboring homes. Two were occupied that night. No one in those houses saw or heard anything. Killer came and left unseen, unheard.”

“But then you found something when we went through the house that changed all that.”

Decker led her back down the stairs and into the living room. “A thumbprint on that wall switch plate along with a blood trace from Katz.”

“And the perp’s skin, blood, and resultant DNA under Abby’s fingernails. In the struggle with her attacker.”

“He’s strangling her with a ligature and she grips his arms to make him stop and the material gets transferred. Anybody who’s ever watched an episode of CSI knows that.”

Lancaster’s hand flicked to her pocket and she pulled out her pack of smokes.

Decker eyed this movement as she lit up. “You cashing in on tomorrow’s allotment?”

“It’s getting close enough to midnight. And I’m stressed. So excuse the hell out of me.” She flicked ash on the floor. “Hawkins’s prints were in the database because the company he had worked for previously did some defense contracting. They fingerprinted and ran a background check on everyone who worked there. When the print matched Hawkins in the database, we executed the search warrant on his house.”

Decker took up the story. “Based on the print, he was arrested and brought to the station, where a cheek swab was taken. The DNA on it matched the DNA found under Abby’s fingernails. And he had no alibi for that entire night. And during the search of his home they found a forty-five-caliber pistol hidden in a box behind a wall in his closet. The ballistics match was spot on, so it was without a doubt the murder weapon. He said it wasn’t his and he didn’t know how it got there. He said he didn’t even know about that secret space. We traced the pistol. It had been stolen from a gun shop about two years before. Serial numbers filed off. Probably used in a string of crimes since that time. And then it ended up in Hawkins’s closet.” He glanced at his old partner. “Which raises the question of why you think we might have gotten it wrong. Looks rock solid to me.”

Lancaster rolled the lit cigarette between her fingers. “I keep coming back to a dying guy taking the time to come here to clear his name. He has to know the odds are stacked against him. Why waste what little time he has left?”

“Well, what else does he have to do?” countered Decker. “I’m not saying he came to this house to murder four people. Hawkins probably picked this house to commit a lesser crime of burglary and it snowballed from there. You know that happens, Mary. Criminals lose it when they’re under stress.”

“But you know his motive for the crime,” said Lancaster. “That came out in the trial. Without really admitting his guilt, the defense tried to score some sympathetic points on that. It might have been why he didn’t get the death penalty.”

Decker nodded. “His wife was terminal. He needed money for her pain meds. He’d been laid off from his job and lost his insurance. His grown daughter had a drug problem and he was trying to get her into rehab. Again. So he stole credit cards, jewelry, a laptop computer, a DVD player, a small TV, some watches, and other miscellaneous things from this house and the vics. It all fits. His motivation might have been pure, but how he went about it sure as hell wasn’t.”

“But none of those items ever turned up. Not at his house. Not in some pawnshop. So he never realized any money from it.”

Decker said, “But he had money in his pocket when he was arrested. We could never prove it was from fencing the stolen goods, and he might well have been scared to try to move it after the murders. That’s what the prosecutor postulated at trial, although, reading the jury, it seemed to me that they thought the money he had was from selling the stuff. It’s just a cleaner conclusion.”

“But none of the neighbors saw a car drive up or leave other than David Katz’s,” retorted Lancaster.

“You know it was storming like hell that night, Mary. Raining buckets. You could barely see anything. And if Hawkins didn’t have his car lights on, maybe no one would have noticed it.”

“But no one heard it?” said Lancaster.

“Again, the noise of the storm. But I see you really have doubts about the case now.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just saying that I believe it deserves a second look.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Despite your words, I can tell that you’re at least intrigued.” She paused and took another puff of her smoke. “And then there’s the matter of Susan Richards.”

“The wife. Left around five that day, ran some errands, attended a PTA meeting, and then had drinks and dinner with a couple of friends. All verified. She got home at eleven. When she found us here and learned what had happened, she became hysterical.”

“You had to hold her down or I think she would have tried to hurt herself.”

“Not exactly the actions of a guilty person. And there was only a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on Don Richards, from his job at the bank.”

“I’ve known people who have killed for a lot less. And so do you.”

Decker said, “So let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Where else? To see Meryl Hawkins.”

As they pulled to a stop in front of the Residence Inn, Decker had a moment of déjà vu. He had lived here for a while after being evicted from the home where he found his family murdered. The place hadn’t changed much. It had been crappy to begin with. Now it was just crappier still. He was surprised it was still standing.

They walked inside, and Decker looked to his left, where the small dining area was located. He had used that as his unofficial office when meeting potential clients who wanted to hire him as a private detective. He had come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Yet it could have easily gone the other way. He could have eaten himself into a stroke and died inside a cardboard box in a Walmart parking lot, which had briefly been his home before he’d moved to the “fancier” Residence Inn.

When she stepped out into the lobby Decker didn’t look surprised.

Jamison nodded at Lancaster and said to Decker after reading his features, “I guess you expected me to turn up here?”

“I didn’t not expect it,” he replied. “I showed you the paper with this address on it.”

“I looked up the basic facts of the murder online,” she said. “Seemed pretty ironclad.”

“We were just discussing that,” said Lancaster. “But maybe the iron is rusty.” She eyed the badge riding on Jamison’s hip. “Hear you’re the real deal FBI agent now. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Seemed the logical next step, if only to manage Decker a little better.”

“Good luck on that. I was never able to, despite my badge.”

“He’s in room fourteen,” interjected Decker. “Up the stairs.”

They trudged single file up to the second floor and halfway down the hall to the door. Decker knocked. And knocked again.

“Mr. Hawkins? It’s Amos Decker.”

No sound came from inside the room.

“Maybe he went out,” said Jamison.

“Where would he go?” asked Decker.

“Let me check something,” said Lancaster. She hurried back down the stairs. A minute later she was back.

“The front desk clerk said he came in about two hours ago and hasn’t left.”

Decker knocked harder. “Mr. Hawkins? You okay?” He looked at the other two. “Maybe he’s in distress.”

“Maybe he died,” said Lancaster. “The guy’s terminal.”

“He might have just passed out,” suggested Jamison. “Or overdosed. He told us he was taking street drugs for the pain. They can be unpredictable.”

Decker tried the door. It was locked. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed once, then again. It bent under his considerable weight and then popped open.

They entered the room and looked around.

Sitting up in a chair across from the bed was Hawkins.

He was clearly dead.

But the cancer hadn’t taken him.

The bullet wound in the center of the man’s forehead had done the trick quite effectively.