Chapter Twenty-Nine
Massey’s body went rigid and then sagged against the back of his car.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Massey?” Dominguez asked.
“I’m getting ready to move.”
Carlucci looked around him into the back of the SUV, which was packed full of stuff. “Mr. Massey, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tara Weber. You have the right to remain silent—”
“I didn’t kill her! I loved her! I’d never hurt her.”
“You have the right to an attorney.” As she recited his rights, Carlucci cuffed him and turned him over to the Patrol officers. “Take him in and get him booked.”
He blanched when he saw Sam.
“We meet again, Mr. Massey.”
“I want my lawyer!”
“Call his lawyer and have the ME on duty get a DNA sample,” Sam said to the Patrol officers who hauled him away while hoping he wasn’t the baby’s father. She checked to make sure Massey’s car and townhouse were locked before returning to her car. “That was awesome. Very well done, ladies.”
“Sometimes this job is fun,” Carlucci said.
“The Patrol officers told me they’ve got the assistant and they’re bringing her in,” Dominguez said.
“Outstanding. Totally worth losing a night of sleep to watch this go down.”
“You’re a little giddy, Lieutenant,” Carlucci said.
“Yes, I am. We needed a win, and these arrests take care of a rather massive problem for me at home, too.”
“Ah yes, a pesky little problem called the potential resignation of the president.”
Had she ever noticed before that Carlucci shared her snarky sense of humor? “Exactly. With these arrests, we’ll hopefully be able to show that while Nelson committed adultery at the worst possible time, that was as far as it went.”
“What’s the plan for interrogation?” Dominguez asked.
“We’re going to get Delany to tell us how it went down in exchange for the possibility of leniency.” Sam put through a call to Malone. “Wake up.”
“I’m awake.” He sounded anything but.
“We’ve made arrests in the Weber case.”
“Talk to me.”
Sam ran through the connections Green, Carlucci and Dominguez had made between Bryce and Delany. “They put all the pieces together and did some fine work tonight.”
“That’s excellent.”
“Put in a call to Faith Miller, if you would, and let her know we’ll have them in interrogation within the hour.”
“I’ll make the call and be in shortly.”
“Thanks, Cap.”
“Tell the ladies I said great job.”
“Will do.” Sam slapped her new phone closed, loving the extra loud cracking sound it made when the two halves came together. It was even better than the old one. That, too, made her giddy. “The Captain says job well done.”
“We share the credit with the day team,” Dominguez said. “We picked up where they left off.”
“Take the credit where you can get it. You did good work.”
“Thank you, LT,” Dominguez said. “It feels good to get justice for her—and her son.”
“Justice is always a good feeling.”
“Have you heard anything new about Stahl’s trial?” Carlucci asked.
“Just that it’s with the jury.” Sam shrugged. “Out of my hands.” It rankled her that the jury was taking so long to arrive at what should be a slam dunk conviction.
“There’s no way they won’t convict him,” Dominguez said. “He was caught red-handed.”
“That’s my feeling as well, but you never know.” She thought about Dr. Trulo warning her to be prepared to not get the outcome she deserved and expected, but she couldn’t go there. She couldn’t conceive of that possibility.
At HQ, they were forced to cool their heels for more than an hour waiting for Massey and Russo to be processed and delivered to interrogation rooms. Then they had to wait for Massey’s attorney to arrive.
Once all the players were in place, Sam briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Faith Miller, who wore yoga pants and running shoes for the middle-of-the-night mission, as well as Captain Malone and Chief Farnsworth, who’d never gone home.
“What’s the plan?” Malone asked.
“We’re going to talk to Delany first. If we’re right about this theory, she’ll be the one to tell us.”
“Agreed,” Faith said. “I heard she’s been hysterical since the cops showed up at her door.”
Sam was glad to hear that. If the woman was hysterical, Sam could only hope it was because Delany knew she was fucked. “Let’s get this done. Dominguez, Carlucci, you’re with me.”
She loved that the two detectives exchanged glances, seeming shocked to be invited to join her in the room. In the future, she vowed to spend more time with them so they’d know how much she valued their contributions.
Outside interrogation room two, Sam took a moment to summon her mojo and prepare to sew this thing up for Tara and her family.
She burst into the room, enjoying the way Delany jolted and looked at her with startled doe eyes gone wide with fright. Good. She ought to be afraid. Sam didn’t recognize the young, female attorney sitting with Delany.
“Detective Carlucci, please record this interview.”
Carlucci recited the date, time and the names of the people present.
“My client hasn’t done anything wrong,” the lawyer said.
Sam ignored the attorney and spoke directly to Delany. “Are you willing to answer our questions?”
“Yes!”
“How long have you been communicating with Mr. Massey separate of Ms. Weber?”
Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting that. She glanced at the attorney and then at Sam. “I, um, for a while now.”
“Please describe your relationship with him.”
“We… He… He paid me to tell him what she was doing.”
“Did you tell him she was pregnant?”
Delany shook her head. “She said it was very, very important that no one know about the baby. She wouldn’t tell me why, but she wore larger clothes and kept it hidden from everyone. I didn’t tell Bryce about the baby.”
“But you told him everything else?”
Delany nodded.
“Use your words.”
“Yes.”
“And what would Tara have said if she’d known this?”
“She would’ve murdered me. The last thing she wanted was for him to know what she was doing. She was very bitter about him after she saw him last winter. She never would say what happened between them, but she was through with him.”
“If that was the case, why’d you betray her?”
“I needed the money, and I was worried about her. She went a little nuts after they broke up, and I was afraid something would happen to her.”
“On the day she was murdered, did you let Bryce into her home?”
“You don’t have to answer that, Delany,” the attorney said.
“I… I want to. Yes, I let him in, but he made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone. He said he needed to talk to her about the baby, because he thought it might be his, and he needed to know. She wasn’t returning his calls or texts, and he said if the baby was his, he had a right to know that.”
“Had you told him that she planned to come home that day?”
Delany looked down at the table, seeming ashamed.
Good, she should be. Sam felt sick over the way Tara had been betrayed by someone she’d trusted.
“Yes, I’d told him that.”
“So you let him in and then what?”
“I left like he asked me to.”
“I’m trying to understand, as a woman, how another woman sets up her female employer to be ambushed by an ex in her own home. How does that happen?”
“I’m sorry!” Delany broke down into sobs. “I had no idea he’d hurt her! He told me he loved her and wanted to keep her safe always. If I’d known he was going to do this…” She shook her head.
“How long after you left did you return to her place?”
“A couple of hours. Her mother called me and asked me to check on her when they couldn’t reach her. The baby, he was due to be fed and they were wondering when she’d be back to their house.” Delany wiped away tears.
“Did you know right away what was wrong?”
“No! I told you! It never occurred to me that he’d hurt her. He said he wanted to talk to her.”
“Tell me again what happened when you returned.”
“I let myself in and called for her. When she didn’t answer, I went into her room and found her on the bed.”
“And did you immediately know that Mr. Massey had killed her?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Why didn’t you tell us that the first time we talked?” Sam wanted to throttle her for wasting so much of their time. That was also a crime, in her opinion.
“Because I was afraid of what would happen to me!”
“You understand that you subjected Tara to a nightmare before he killed her, right? He forced her to remove her clothing and lie on the bed where he attacked her.”
“I’m so sorry.” Delany’s sobs sounded like hiccups. “I loved Tara. I never would’ve hurt her.”
“Yet you betrayed her by working for Bryce and then by letting him into her home, where he was able to ambush her.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” As another possibility occurred to her, Sam leaned in. “Were you sleeping with him?”
The attorney pounced. “Don’t answer that, Delany.”
Sam stared down the younger woman until she broke.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“For how long?”
“More than a year.”
“Did he tell you he was also fucking one of the receptionists he works with? A woman named Ashley?”
Delany’s face went blank with shock.
“Didn’t think so.” Sam pushed a yellow pad and pen across the table to her.
“Write it down. Every detail, from the second he first made contact with you until you let him into her place the day she was murdered. Don’t leave anything out.
I want to know every time you saw him, banged him, reported to him about her. ”
With shaking hands, Delany took the pen from Sam.
“Wh-what’s going to happen to me?”
“You’ll be charged with accessory to murder.”
Her face went blank with shock. “I didn’t kill anyone! I had no idea he was going to do that to her!”
“You let him in and didn’t warn her he was there. This is on you.”
“No!”
“If you help them nail him, they might go easier on you.” The attorney glanced at Sam for confirmation.
“That depends entirely on what kind of help your client gives us.” Sam got up and left the room with Dominguez and Carlucci in tow.
“You were awesome in there, LT,” Carlucci said when the door closed behind them.
“What she said,” Malone commented when he came out of the observation room with Miller and Farnsworth.
Sam sagged against the cinder block wall. “I feel sick as a woman for what she allowed to happen to Tara.”
“Unimaginable,” Dominguez said.
“What’s the plan with Massey?” the chief asked.
“I’m going to let him stew for a bit while I wait to see what Delany gives me. We need the DNA results. I’d like to know ASAP if he’s the baby’s father.”
“I’ll see what I can do to exert some additional pressure,” Farnsworth said. Requests from him tended to get top priority with the lab.
“You ought to go home and get some sleep,” Malone said. “We can pick it up at seven.”
Sam checked her watch. That would give her five hours. She’d take it. To her detectives, she said, “Excellent work tonight. Feel free to come back for the fireworks in the morning.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Carlucci said.
“Before you leave, ask Patrol to take Mr. Massey to a cell downstairs until we’re ready to talk to him, and stay on Delany.”
“Will do.”
While pumped about closing the case, Sam was horrified by what’d happened to Tara. In the morning, she’d report the outcome to Tara’s parents.
“And with that, I’m out for now.”
Sam was back at HQ at six forty-five, having slept fitfully for a couple of hours. With adrenaline and dread pumping through her system, it’d been hard to sleep. The adrenaline came from nailing a killer, the dread from having to detail their daughter’s death to Tara’s parents.
“Massey is raising a ruckus downstairs,” Malone said. “He’s demanding to be told why he’s in custody.”
“Have we gotten a report back on whether his prints match the ones on Tara’s neck yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Until we have that, he’s on ice. I want this locked and loaded before we square off with him.”
“Does it matter if he’s the baby’s father?” Carlucci asked.
“It may go to motive, that she withheld that information from him and he found out about the baby at the same time everyone else did,” Sam said. “But that’s a detail we can confirm later. I want the prints to be his before we confront him.”
“They’re his,” Freddie said when he joined them holding a printout he handed to Sam.
Sam scanned the report. “Got you, you motherfucker. Have him brought upstairs, please.”
Freddie turned to see to her order. “I’m on it.”
Sam went into her office to review the reports on the case, going through the details methodically, preparing to nail the son of a bitch who’d taken Tara’s life.
Freddie returned twenty minutes later. “He’s in interrogation one. A real pleasant sort of guy.”
“I missed this at the beginning of this case.”
“No, you didn’t. He had an airtight alibi and had been broken up with her for more than a year. It never occurred to me either that it was him.”
“Still, I feel like I missed it.”
“If you did, I did, too.”
Sam rose, grabbed the file with everything about the case and headed for the door. “Carlucci, Dominguez, let’s sew this up.” She lowered her voice so only Freddie could hear her. “They’ve earned this.”
“No worries.”
She appreciated that he understood there were times when she had to give others a chance to shine. It was never lost on her that being her partner wasn’t the easiest job, but he always rose to the challenge and for that she was eternally grateful to him.
With the two detectives in tow, she headed for the interrogation room where a uniformed Patrol officer stood watch outside the door.
These were the moments she lived for, confronting murderers with the irrefutable proof of their guilt.
She thought of Tara, of the baby she’d yearned for and finally had, only to be taken from him two short weeks after his birth.
The only thing she could do for Tara—and her son—was to make sure that the man who’d killed her never again walked free.
With that goal in mind, she burst into the room, taking the two men inside by surprise.