Fool Me Once(80)

“What do you think? Murder.”

“Based on?”

“How did you end up here tonight?”

“I told you already.”

“You’d learned that the victim was missing from his wife, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then you got a tip from a mystery source to check this storage shed.”

“Right.”

“Who was the mystery source?”

“It was anonymous.”

“By phone?” Curly asked.

“Yes.”

“Home phone or mobile?”

“Home.”

“We’re going to check your call records.”

“You do that. But for now, it’s late.” She started to stand. “So if that’s all for tonight—”

“Hold up.”

Maya recognized the voice and cursed under her breath.

NYPD detective Roger Kierce walked toward them with his caveman swagger, his arms jutting out from his squat body.

“Who are you?” Curly asked.

Kierce flashed his badge and gave his name. “I’m investigating the shooting death of Joe Burkett, Ms. Stern’s husband. Do you guys have a cause of death here?”

Curly looked warily at Maya for a moment. “Maybe we should talk alone?”

“Looked like a slit throat,” Maya said. They both looked at her. “Hey, I really have to go. I’m trying to save us all time.”

Kierce made a face and looked back toward Curly.

“There is what appears to be a knife wound at the throat,” Curly said, “but we don’t know more than that yet. The county medical examiner will give us her findings in the morning.”

Kierce pulled up the chair next to Maya, twirled it so the back was in the front, and then made a big production of sitting/straddling it. Maya watched him, wondering about what Caroline had said about Kierce taking payoffs from the Burketts. Was it true? She doubted it, but true or false, raising it at this juncture seemed an unwise move.

“I could call my attorney right now,” Maya said. “We both know you guys don’t have enough to hold me.”

“We appreciate your cooperation in this matter,” Kierce said without an iota of sincerity, “but before you go . . . Well, I think we’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

He was waiting for her to bite.

“What have we”—she emphasized the word—“been looking at wrong, Detective?”

Kierce put his hands on the top of the chair back. “You keep stumbling over dead bodies, don’t you?”

Eddie’s words: “Death follows you, Maya . . .”

“First your husband. Now this private investigator.”

He gave her a smile.

“Are you trying to make a point, Detective Kierce?”

“I’m just saying. First, you’re with your husband in the park. He ends up dead. Then you come searching for God knows what. Tom Douglass ends up dead. What’s the common denominator in all this?”

“Let me guess,” Maya said. “Me?”

Kierce shrugged. “You can’t help but notice that.”

“No, you can’t. So what’s your theory, Detective? Did I kill them both?”

Kierce shrugged again. “You tell me.”

Maya put up her hands in mock surrender. “Yeah, you got me. I guess I, what, killed Tom Douglass weeks ago judging by the condition of the body. Then I jammed his corpse into that storage bin, got clean away with it apparently, still went to his wife looking for him for some odd reason, and then—help me here, Kierce—I came back to reveal the body and implicate myself?”

He just sat there.

“And yes, I see the obvious connection between this and my husband. I guess I’m stupid enough to stick around murder scenes because that’s a great way to get away with it, right? Oh, and in the case of Joe, I even—wow, I’m good—somehow tracked down the gun someone used to kill my sister, even though I wasn’t even in the country when she was murdered, and used it on him. That about right, Detective Kierce? Did I leave anything out?”

Kierce said nothing.

“And while you’re trying to prove I committed two . . . Or, wait, did I kill my sister too? No, you told me already I couldn’t have done that one because you know I was serving our country overseas . . . But while you’re proving all of this, maybe we could also take a look at your relationship to the Burkett family.”

That got Kierce’s attention. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” Maya rose and started toward the exit. “Look, you guys waste time any way you want. I’m going to pick up my daughter.”


*

They’d impounded her car.

“You got a warrant already?” Maya asked.

Curly handed it to her.

“Fast,” she said.

Curly shrugged.

Kierce said, “I’ll give you a ride.”

“No, thanks.”

Maya paged a taxi from her smartphone. It arrived in ten minutes. When she got back to her house, she grabbed the other car—Joe’s car—and headed to Claire and Eddie’s house.

Eddie was at the front door before she reached it. “So?”