At four o’clock Monday morning, the phone rang, and he answered it groggily.
“Crosby? Sargeant Crocker, Broeder police department. Got someone here who wants to talk to you.”
There was a soft rustle as the phone was passed from one person to another.
“Hey, Detective, Perry Jelinik, remember me?”
“Sure.” Evan pulled himself up onto one elbow and tried to stifle a yawn. “I busted you for possession two years ago.”
“And four years before that.”
“You get picked up more recently by someone else, Jelinik?”
“Yeah, actually, I was.” There was a pause. “I was wondering if you could help me out with that. Talk to the arresting officer or the D.A. for me or something.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, I hear you’re looking for an address…”
19
After two solid days of reviewing police reports to prepare a profile for a D.A. in Florida, Annie was almost happy to be going back into the office again. She felt as if she’d been in solitary confinement since she arrived home on Saturday morning. She was trying to recall when she had ever welcomed a Monday quite as much when she heard her fax beeping to signal that something was being sent to her machine.
She went into her office and leaned over the desk to pull the sheet of paper from the incoming tray and was surprised to see a copy of Melissa Lowery’s autopsy report.
Annie scanned it quickly, skipping over the sections she deemed inconsequential to cause of death (“… the liver has been removed and upon examination is found to weigh…”) and going straight to the chase.
Cause of death: Exsanguination due to gunshot wound to the chest.
Melissa had been shot and left to bleed to death.
Not something Annie was looking forward to sharing with Grady.
She was still wondering how to handle that when the phone rang.
“Dr. McCall?”
“Yes.”
“Sheriff Brody.”
“Oh, Sheriff. I was just about to call you to thank you for faxing the autopsy report on Melissa Lowery.”
“Told you I would do so. Glad I caught you on your home phone. Your cell phone wasn’t picking up.”
She searched her purse and found the cell at the bottom. She’d turned it off the night before after she spoke with Evan because the battery was running down, the charger was in the car, and she hadn’t felt like going out in the rain to get it.
“So now that we know for certain she did not die a natural death,” he was saying, “you have any thoughts on that?”
“Not just yet.”
“I was just wondering if maybe your reason for coming all the way out here to see her might have something to do with her being murdered.”
“Sheriff, with all due respect, at this time I cannot discuss the reason for my visit.” Annie bit her bottom lip, wishing she’d been able to talk to John before she had to have this conversation with Sheriff Brody. “I’m not trying to be evasive, and I apologize if it sounds as if I am, but my visit had to do with an FBI investigation, and I really can’t discuss that with anyone at this time. Please keep in mind that my position with the Bureau is primarily as a profiler. I try to stay out of the bureaucratic aspects. I can give you the name of the special agent in charge to whom I report, if you’d like to give him a call.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Brody didn’t sound at all surprised to hear that he wouldn’t be getting information from Annie.
She gave him John Mancini’s office number, knowing John would be out of the office for another few days. Having called John on Saturday to bring him up to date on Grady Shields’ involvement with Melissa, and Melissa’s involvement in Dylan’s case, Annie knew John would want to avoid Sheriff Brody for as long as possible.
“Just a few other questions for you, Dr. McCall.”
“I’ll answer what I can, Sheriff.”
“Any thoughts on why an unemployed former FBI agent might have a few hundred thousand dollars stashed away?” Before she could respond, he added, “Ms. Lowery had a savings account with a little over six hundred thousand dollars in it.”
“Wow.”
“That was pretty much my reaction. Lot of money just sitting there, can’t help but wonder where it came from. And this is after some substantial outlays of cash. Seems Ms. Lowery paid cash for that spread she was living on, only eleven acres, not much out here, but still…” He cleared his throat. “Paid cash for that new SUV, cash for a bunch of new furniture. Any idea how she could have done all that?”
“No. None.” Annie hated lying, but now wasn’t the time to tell Brody about the nameless someone who had given Melissa what Grady had described as a lot of cash in exchange for her resignation from the Bureau and her disappearance. “Maybe she had some family money.”
“Her father was a bus driver and her mother retired with a twenty-five-year pin from the local school district. They have no idea where the money came from.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff, I just can’t help you.”
“You wouldn’t have any thoughts on who this gentleman friend might have been?”
“No, sorry. Did you ask her parents if they knew who she was involved with?”
“They said they thought she had someone special in her life, but she didn’t talk about it. You think that’s strange, not to talk to your mother about your boyfriend?”
“Since my mother died before I was old enough to have boyfriends, I wouldn’t know.”
“Sorry about that, Dr. McCall.”
“And a lot of women just don’t discuss their personal lives, especially if it’s not a serious relationship, you know?”
“Maybe.” He sighed heavily. Annie could tell he was frustrated, that he knew she had information that could help him, but he’d apparently dealt with the Bureau in the past. He didn’t push, and that made her feel that perhaps he’d pushed before and gotten nowhere.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said. “I spoke with the locksmith in town. He said Mariana Gray had come in one day about seven months ago and asked for all new locks, doors and windows. He thought it was unusual at the time-nobody out here locks up like that, there just has never been a cause for it in the past. That could change, in light of this murder. Anyway, the locksmith said he went out to her house, and she had him double-dead-bolt all the doors and put locks on every one of the windows. Said he never saw anyone so worried about her house being broken into.”
“Well, she did live around D.C. for several years. We have our share of crime out east, you know. Maybe her place here was broken into, maybe she’d been the victim of a crime in the past and it made her skittish.”