CHAPTER 41 JERRY
JERRY
Serafina struggled to her feet and took a wobbly step toward the door. She was trying to escape? Well, she wasn’t doing a great job of it. Her knees gave way, and Dawson put those Navy SEAL reflexes to good use and caught her.
“Easy, easy,” he said as he dumped her back in the chair. “Just breathe, sweetheart.”
“Go away.”
“Her pulse has to be a hundred and fifty.”
Was she having a panic attack? Jez ran through the symptoms in her head and concluded that was the most likely scenario. Five years of law school, and the woman couldn’t handle a simple Q he denies that he raped her, and we note that the only other DNA evidence presented at trial related to a pubic hair found on Ruby’s sheets. No saliva, no blood, no fingernail scrapings. Do you have a copy of the surveillance video?”
“No, but I’ve watched it. Could anyone else have gotten into the house?
Unlikely, but not impossible. There were two blind spots.
” One by the tower because a bush Ruby planted had turned into a triffid, and another to the rear because the gazebo was in the way.
There had been no way to get in through the back because the basement window was painted shut, and the windows at the front had been secured from the inside when they found the body.
Could the culprit have climbed in through an open window and closed it behind them?
Possibly. However, that was only half the puzzle.
“But what they couldn’t do was leave the same way.
The windows were all latched from the inside, and they didn’t go out through a door.
We watched the footage for two and a half days straight.
Nobody but us came or went, and then the house was crawling with cops, crime scene techs, and every reporter in Virginia. ”
“We still want to see for ourselves.”
“Nolan, perhaps you could ask your wife for a copy?” Serafina suggested, and Jez snorted in surprise. How did she know about Alexa and Nolan? They’d been married for less than a month.
Brax answered for Nolan. “It’s cute that you think Alexa will do anything he says.”
And Nolan wasn’t happy. “She stays out of this.”
“Agreed. Levi was very clear on that. But he also told me she’d be the one who kept the video, and if she gives it to us, that would be easier than this situation dragging on for months through the legal system.”
Sure, Serafina could have it. The video would only show her what the rest of them already knew—that the call came from inside the house. Plus Echo could add a little extra something to the download link when she provided it. Fuck that guy in the Pac-Man shirt.
“After you’ve been to the police and made a statement about the orchid, I’ll get her to send it.”
“You’re bargaining over evidence?”
“You should be making the statement out of civic duty. It’s the Justice Project, remember?”
Serafina sighed. “I’ll go. But I want the video first.”
Nice try. “Statement first, then video.”
“Fine.”
“I’d like a copy too,” Ari said. “Ever since I heard about the case, I’ve been curious.”
“If you do start digging around, just be careful,” Serafina warned. Was that a veiled threat?
“Why do you say that?” Jez asked.
“Because Levi nearly got killed over this last month, and we think someone’s been tracking us. Or maybe that was you?”
Of course they’d been tracking Serafina, but Jez thought back to her first day in Richmond. She’d had that prickly feeling, the one that meant someone was watching. The sensation quickly faded, and she’d dismissed it as paranoia lingering from a tricky overseas job, but what if…?
“We haven’t touched Levi. How can you be sure it wasn’t a regular jailhouse bust-up?”
“Because the person who stabbed him said, ‘Your girlfriend is sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.’”
“Girlfriend?”
A turn of phrase? Or a Freudian slip?
“I guess ‘paralegal working with the lawyer who represents you’ was too much of a mouthful.”
“Who stabbed him? Did he see?”
“A couple of kids from the El Caminos. New guys. He’d only spoken to them a handful of times.”
“I see. And that’s why he sent the one-percenters to keep an eye on you?”
“He’s concerned for our safety.”
Either that, or he staged the incident, made up the “your girlfriend” story, and sent the Diamondback Devils to make sure the women were doing what he wanted them to.
“What’s Levi’s theory on this?” Ari asked. “You’ve obviously spent a lot of time talking with him. If he didn’t kill Ruby, what does he think happened?”
Serafina glanced at Holtz, but Holtz threw her into the fire with an encouraging smile. Even though Serafina was clearly out of her depth, Holtz still trusted her judgment. Curious.
“Uh, the theory is evolving. Because of the dynamic in the house, he’s always assumed Justin was paid to murder Ruby, but at the time, he had no idea why.”
Ari began making notes the old-fashioned way, pen to paper. “So it’s the motive that’s evolving?”
“Exactly. To start with, he figured it was something to do with his work. Did you know his research partner was killed in a house fire soon after the trial?”
“August Groveland? Yes, we’re aware.”
“So, that was where we started. But we have more visibility over the circumstances of that crime now, and it doesn’t feel right.”
“By ‘visibility,’ you mean…”
“I mean we know who did it, and we have an idea why, but we’ve put that issue on the back burner while we deal with this one.”
“Justin isn’t motivated by money,” Brax said. “He still drives a twenty-year-old pickup, and he lived in the same duplex for a decade until it burned down.”
“Wait, it burned down?”
“Unrelated,” Jez said impatiently. Let’s not get sidetracked. “His neighbour was trying to burn leaves.”
“Out of all the property developers in Virginia, Justin has the worst margins,” Grey told her. “He’s obsessed with craftsmanship, and he gives half his profits to charity.”
“It’s not a terrible approach,” Brax added. “Because he has a reputation for quality, his developments sell out before they’re even completed, but he could make more money if he cut corners the way every other builder does. The point is, Justin isn’t going to murder anyone to make a quick buck.”
“That’s what Levi thought to start with, because he didn’t want to believe Justin was a psycho. But Ruby was killed in her own bed, and now Amie’s dead too…”
“…and Justin was looking for her from the moment he realised. He reported her disappearance to the police, he handed out flyers all over the neighbourhood, he hired Ari to help find her. Those are hardly the actions of a guilty man, and that’s before we get into the alibis.”
“So we’re back to the beginning.”
“And as I said, this began with Ruby,” Ari repeated. “That’s where we need to look.”
Did she think they hadn’t been around in circles over this a thousand times already?
Jez had been as shocked as anyone that one of her housemates had murdered Ruby, but the evidence didn’t allow any wiggle room.
If an outsider had been guilty, Jez would have hunted them to the ends of the earth and dug their grave herself.
“Maybe you’re right,” Serafina conceded, and there was a hesitation in her words… She knew more, something she wasn’t telling them.
Ari slid a business card across the table. “I’d like to stay in touch. We’re not the enemy, Serafina.”
Not yet, but they sure would be later when she found out what Spider, Sin, and Dice had been doing this afternoon.
“The jury’s still out on that.”
“Ruby was our friend,” Dawson said. “If you saw her lying there on the bed, you’d want the person who did it to pay.”
“Levi did see her, and that’s what he wants too.”
Ari closed her notepad. “Can you ask him a question for me?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Ask him if he was paying Amie Carlson to monitor Justin.”
“What? Why would you think that?”
“Because somebody was, and she told her roommate the money came from Levi’s father.”
“Levi doesn’t speak to his father anymore. But if you’ve been checking the phone and visitor logs, then you already know that.”
“A hundred bucks a month for seven years.”
“Seven years? Who would do that?”
“If we knew the answer, we wouldn’t be bickering in a conference room.”
That was a good place to leave the discussion.
They’d pushed a few buttons and sown a handful of seeds, and most importantly, they’d established that Justin had a solid alibi.
If the orchid had been on Ruby’s grave at eight thirty on Friday, then Justin hadn’t been ditching Amie’s body near Burr Hill.
Jez pushed back her seat, and Team Justin filed out, leaving Serafina and her boss with plenty of food for thought.
And Jez had some thinking to do as well. Levi had been a solid suspect. The evidence fit, and they’d all assumed he was off his head on whatever concoction of pills he’d swallowed that day. The video provided irrefutable evidence that there was no third party involved. Didn’t it?
Jez had struggled to trust her gut for years after the Blackstone House affair because of the way she’d misjudged Levi. If her instincts had failed so catastrophically, then how could she rely on them?
But what if she’d been right all along?
What if the evidence was wrong, and not her intuition?
Today, they’d beaten Serafina at her own game, but it wasn’t satisfaction Jez felt as she jogged down the stairs. It was a mix of fear and anger and guilt.
What if they’d fucked up?
What if they’d left an innocent man to rot in prison for a decade?
What if, what if, what if?