“Detective Holman asked me if Mr. Forester had been here all day,” she said casually.
Dave had come to notify Bryan Forester of his wife’s death, but Ali had no doubt the man had been in Dave’s sights as a possible perpetrator from the moment Morgan’s homicide had been reported, and Dave had already started the process of tracing Bryan’s movements.
Leland returned the heavy tray to the table. “I seem to recall he did arrive a little later than usual,” he said thoughtfully. “Most of the time he’s here early enough to park at the top of the driveway. Today I noticed that his truck was down near the bottom of the hill.”
Ali nodded. “Did he seem upset to you?” she asked.
Leland frowned. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I believe Mr. Forester did appear to be slightly out of sorts. He spent a good part of the day talking on his phone.”
“Did he happen to mention any kind of difficulty at home?” Ali asked.
Leland gave her a wry smile. “That’s not the kind of thing one would mention to the hired help,” he said quietly. “It’s just not done. It’s getting quite cool out here,” he added. “Would you like me to light the heater?”
They had stationed a propane-fueled outdoor heater near the picnic table so the guys could have their morning coffee without freezing their butts off.
“That’s all right,” Ali said. “I think I’ll head home.”
“By the way,” he reminded her, “it is Monday. Your evening to cook, I believe. Would you like me to come by and throw something together for you?”
Ali looked at this remarkably caring man.
“Thanks for keeping me on track,” Ali said. “You’ve done more than enough for today. I’ll handle dinner.”
“Very well,” Leland said. “Will we see you in the morning?”
“If the work crew is coming, I’m coming,” Ali told him.
But as Ali pulled out of the driveway, she wasn’t thinking about getting her job done. She was thinking about two little girls, Morgan Forester’s daughters, who would have to grow up without their mother.
Poor babies, Ali said to herself. Those poor babies.
CHAPTER 2
Peter Winter left the car parked along the road half a mile away from the house and walked the rest of the way, knowing that his surgical booties would leave behind no discernible prints. Concealed behind Bryan Forester’s workshop, he watched as Morgan loaded the girls into the car to take them to catch the bus. There was a chance that she might not come straight back, but he knew that Monday mornings were when she usually caught up on paperwork.
Walking up onto the porch, he settled into the swing to wait for Morgan to return. He didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later, she was back. She caught sight of him sitting there as soon as she got out of the car and greeted him with a radiant smile.
“James!” she exclaimed. “What a wonderful surprise. I didn’t expect to see you until Wednesday. Why didn’t you tell me you were stopping by today?”
It astonished Peter to think that Morgan was actually glad to see him. Naturally, he hadn’t said a word to her about what she’d done wrong-that she’d crossed some invisible line and signed her own death warrant in the process. She came toward him with a pathetically happy smile, seemingly without noticing his out-of-place scrubs. Or the fully loaded syringe he had slipped into his pocket. Smiling back, he stepped off the porch and went to meet her.
James O’Conner was the name Morgan Forester knew Peter Winter by, and that was the name she had asked for when she had called in to the “work” number she had managed to lift from his cell phone. Of course, no one in the ER knew anyone named James O’Conner. In actual fact, James O’Conner didn’t exist. Had never existed.
“Somebody wanted to trade at the last minute,” Peter told her. “So here I am.”
She fell into his arms willingly, happily, and was still kissing him when he retrieved the syringe from his pocket and plunged the needle into the flesh at the base of her neck.
“What was that?” she demanded, struggling and trying to push away from him as the painful needle point pierced her skin. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Once the syringe was empty, he dropped it. She was still trying to escape him, but he grabbed her with both arms and held her fast. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay at all. The Versed did its work well. When she sagged helpless in his arms, he half carried and half dragged her limp body up onto the porch and settled it in the swing. Then he went back and retrieved his syringe. He couldn’t afford to leave that behind. Syringes came with identifiable serial numbers that could all too easily lead back to him.
He didn’t bother undressing Morgan, as he had his other kills. He knew the cops would be examining every aspect of the crime scene. Mixing up the details would make it more difficult for investigating officers to match this incident with any of his others. From a practical standpoint, if he wanted the cops to focus on Morgan’s husband, he needed to downplay any sexual connections. Anger had to be paramount.
Physics had never been Peter’s strong suit. Using the hammer with Morgan already in the swing didn’t work all that well-not as well as he’d wanted. Each blow to her head sent both the swing and his target flying away from him, blunting the killing power. As a consequence, it took longer than he had expected. Once it was over, he did three things. He carefully set the bloodied hammer aside; he wanted to preserve as much blood evidence as possible. He dropped a little blood onto his hanky and put that in a baggy to keep it moist. That was what he hoped would seal Bryan Forester’s fate. Next he removed Morgan’s showy wedding band and the accompanying engagement ring with its three-carat rock. He slipped the wedding set onto his key ring along with all the others. Finally, he took his photo montage.
Once the scene was set, he made his way back to the rental car. Still in the underbrush, he slipped off the booties and then walked up to the rental car, which was sitting undisturbed where he’d left it. He had planned to put the bloodied hammer on some newspapers he’d left in the trunk for that purpose. Hearing a rapidly approaching vehicle, however, he was forced to ditch the hammer in a hurry, putting it down on the passenger-side floorboard before dashing around to the driver’s side. He managed to start the car and drive away before the approaching utility truck caught up with him.
After that, it took a while to track down Bryan Forester’s pickup truck. Peter had the addresses of Forester’s several construction sites, and he found the Dodge Ram pickup at the one on Manzanita Hills Road. The problem was there were several ongoing construction projects in the neighborhood, which resulted in far more street and foot traffic than Peter had anticipated. He made several futile trips past the truck. In the early afternoon, he got a clear shot at the bed of Bryan Forester’s pickup. The hammer needed to be visible but not obvious. He put it in the corner beside the rider’s door, a spot Bryan was unlikely to look at as he got in and out of his truck. And then, for good measure, he left a smear of blood from the hanky there as well.
Peter was hungry by then, but he didn’t dare stop to eat. He didn’t want to do anything that would call attention to his face in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead, he headed back to Phoenix. To his dismay, he found that there had been a serious rollover semi accident on I-17 on one of the steep downgrades between Cordes Junction and Black Canyon City. DPS had been forced to shut down the highway completely for over an hour while they cleared the roadway of debris, which included several tons of rolled roofing and countless scattered bundles of shingles. By the time he managed to drop off the car and retrieve his own from the short-term lot, he was almost late for his shift at work. He would have been late if he hadn’t called his friend Brad Whitman who had been willing to punch in for him.