At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(29)

Whitney’s lawyer took a breath and leaned forward like he was about to say something in protest, but the sight of the beaten bodies of the two young women seemed to give him pause. Maclean thought she detected a flicker of revulsion in the lawyer’s face. He folded his hands as he considered what to say, squeezing them so tightly that Maclean noticed his tendons were tensed and his knuckles were white.

“And besides the fact that Rachel Friesen and Alana Carmichael were both murdered,” continued Maclean, “do you know the one other thing these girls had in common? You.”

Maclean felt her phone buzzing. She was going to ignore it but then saw Verraday’s name on the call display. She had intended to return his earlier message, but things had been moving along too quickly with the investigation. However, she felt that the crime scene photos of the two murdered women were just the thing to leave Whitney and his lawyer stewing over for a few minutes so decided to take the call.

“I’ll be back in two,” she said to the uniformed officer.

She stepped out into the hall. Gazing through the two-way mirror, she saw a concerned expression on the lawyer’s face and the suspect himself looking uncharacteristically flustered. She smiled to herself. She would enjoy making Whitney squirm.

“Hey Verraday. Good news. We’ve brought the owner of the shop in for questioning. His name is Whitney. He confessed to having made payments to both Alana and Rachel. He seems pretty rattled. I’m letting him and his lawyer chew on the crime scene photos for a couple of minutes. Then I’m moving in for the kill. I’m going to push him for a full confession.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” replied Verraday.

“What do you mean? I’ve got his ass nailed to the wall.”

“Whitney’s not the killer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve checked him out. He doesn’t fit the profile. I know there’s a commercial relationship between them, but there’s no way it was ever intimate.”

“With all due respect, James, this guy may not fit some academic ‘profile’ of a killer, but Whitney’s walking like a duck and quacking like a duck. It makes my skin crawl just to breathe the same air as him. And there’s another connection. He paid the exact same amount to both Alana and Rachel: five hundred dollars. I doubt they were both selling him their grandparents’ silverware.”

“I agree. He’s involved with them, but it’s not sexual. Whitney is gay. There are about a zillion pictures of him online with young men, and I’m pretty sure they’re not discussing taxidermy. My guess is that he hired Rachel and Alana to have sex, but not with him. Maybe with his clients.”

“Listen, James, I appreciate your help. But you didn’t see Whitney’s face when I laid those photos down on the table in front of him. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Yes, because now he’s afraid the Seattle PD will start shaking down his clients. You think of that?”

“No, but that’s an excellent idea. I’ll remind him of that as soon as I go back into the interrogation room. You know, I respect what you do with your profiling. I really do. But sometimes it’s just good old-fashioned police legwork that gets the job done. And this is one of those times. This guy is a total creep. I’ve got my man.”

“I’m sure Fowler thought the same thing.”

“I am nothing like Fowler,” Maclean shot back. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to the interrogation room before my interview cools down. Trust me, I’ve got this under control. I’ll be in touch when everything’s wrapped up.”

“Wait, no—”

Maclean ended the call and reentered the interrogation room, where Whitney and his lawyer were huddling together, whispering something. She felt her cell phone vibrating again.

Jesus, you’re stubborn, she thought, then clicked the deny button to send Verraday to voice mail. She strode across to the table and stood over Whitney, taking some private pleasure out of the way her physical proximity seemed to irritate his lawyer.

“Okay, where were we?” she asked.

“Let’s see,” said Whitney, pantomiming someone earnestly searching their memory. “Oh, yes, I remember now. You were becoming tedious.”

She felt the heat rising in her cheeks and fought an urge to slap Whitney hard enough to rattle his fillings. Instead she leaned in just inches from his face, intentionally close enough that he could feel the heat of her breath on his skin, the way he had done it to her in his shop.

“Listen to me, you little turd, if you think I’m tedious now, just wait till we’ve been here for ten hours and I’ve asked you the same questions twenty-seven times just because I’m getting paid overtime for this and you’re not.”

Whitney flinched. It was small pleasures like this that helped make up for the many frustrations of being a detective and dealing with scumbags.

As she was savoring Whitney’s discomfort, her phone began vibrating once more. Verraday again. She felt her anger rising hot within her, pissed off now at both Verraday and Whitney. She turned her phone off completely. In the five seconds it took Maclean to deal with the distraction of her phone, Whitney’s lawyer had recovered enough to mount a counterattack.

“Detective Maclean, you’re attempting to intimidate my client. I must ask that you keep your distance.”