The Root of Murder Page 4

  Cell phone in hand, Kathleen Davis emerged from the study. Even though it was her day off, she was neatly dressed in slacks and a crisp clean sweater. Not a strand of her dark hair was out of place. “I think your father left his phone some place. I’m not getting any answer.” She stopped when she saw Joshua Thornton in her living room. “Josh?” Her eyes landed on Cameron. “Is this an official visit?”

  “Kathleen, I’m so sorry …” Joshua said.

  Kathleen’s face contorted. Her phone dropped to the floor. She covered her face with her hands.

  “What’s wrong with Grandma?” With his wide-eyed childish curiosity about the visitors, Luke had reemerged into the room.

  A quick glance from Cameron set Tracy into action. “Hey, Luke, how about if you show me your room?”

  Seconds later, they were gone.

  Heather took her mother into her arms.

  After introducing Tony, they sat in the living room, in which photos of the Davis family adorned the fireplace mantel and end tables. Cameron picked up a portrait of Kathleen with a slightly pudgy man with a round face. He had dark hair with gray patches at the temple. Based on the straight line between the silver and the dark hair, Cameron surmised the coloring was not natural.

  “How did it happen?” Kathleen asked.

  “Are you sure it was my father?” Heather stared down at her hands, in which she clutched her cell phone. “This has to be a mistake.”

  “They confirmed his identity by his fingerprints,” Cameron said. “I’m afraid they’re certain.”

  “How?” Heather’s voice shook. “Where did they find him? How did he die?”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Cameron placed the picture back in its place. “We’re investigating his death as a homicide.”

  “When was he killed?” Heather asked. “Did he suffer?”

  “It happened sometime last evening,” Cameron said. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

  “Yesterday morning,” Kathleen said. “He’s been in Seattle on business. He was flying out yesterday. I expected him home last night.”

  “But he didn’t come home,” Tony said. “And you—”

  “John travels a lot,” Kathleen said. “Two or three times a month. Half the time his flights get cancelled and he has to reschedule. It’s nothing for him to not come home when he says he’ll be home.”

  “But you were trying to call him just now when we got here,” Joshua said.

  “Because he usually calls to let me know.” Kathleen glanced at the phone on the floor. Joshua picked it up and handed it to her. “He’s had trouble keeping track of his phone. So many times, he forgets his phone in a hotel or cab. Why, just a couple of weeks ago he lost his phone for a couple of days. He was on the verge of buying a new one when Heather found it.”

  “It’d fallen under the seat in his car,” Heather said.

  Cameron noticed Heather’s fingertips flying across the screen of her phone while they spoke. She concluded she was texting the news to her brothers. One would think this type of news was best delivered with a call rather than a text message. “When did you last speak to your father, Heather?”

  At the sound of her name, Heather jumped in her seat. “Excuse me?” She slipped the phone under her thigh.

  “When was the last time you spoke to your father?” Cameron asked.

  “I don’t quite remember.” Heather rubbed her forehead. “Sometime this week? Definitely, last weekend sometime. We always have dinner together on Sunday after Mass.”

  “Do you know who may have wanted—”

  “Derek Ellison,” Kathleen said forcibly. “He did it. He said he was going to kill us.”

  “In the courtroom after the judge awarded custody of Luke to Mom and Dad,” Heather said. “He went bonkers. Screaming that we weren’t going to live long enough to raise his son.”

  “It was our fault that Lindsay became an addict and killed herself,” Kathleen said. “It was our fault that Derek is so stoned that he can’t hold a job and take care of his son. Everything was our fault. So he was going to pay us back for taking his son away from him by—” She broke down.

  Heather took her mother into her arms.

  “Derek Ellison,” Cameron said. “Does anyone know where we can find him?”

  “I know.” Joshua took his cell phone out of his pocket. “But you’re not going without backup.”

  Tracy stayed at the Davis home to offer comfort to the grief-stricken family and take care of Luke until Kathleen’s two sons and their wives arrived.

  Meanwhile, Joshua contacted Sheriff Curt Sawyer to meet them near Derek Ellison’s dilapidated trailer tucked far back into the deep woods in Lawrenceville. They pulled onto a dirt road near Little Blue Run Lake and climbed out to wait for the sheriff and one of his deputies.

  Little Blue Run Lake had once been a brilliantly blue man-made lake into which the power company had disposed of billions of gallons of coal waste. As a result, several residents in the areas had lost their homes after it had become a high-risk health hazard.

  “This guy must be messed up in the head to willingly live here.” Tony gestured at the dried up lakebed on the other side of the dead trees along the roadside.

  “Must be suicidal,” Cameron said. “Maybe he doesn’t have to guts to do the deed himself, so he’s hoping to get cancer—have the power company do it for him.”

  “What do you know about this guy?” Tony asked. “I mean, calling out the sheriff to go with you—”

  “We’re not in Pennsylvania anymore,” Cameron said. “When we crossed that state line over there,”—she pointed in the general direction of the state line two miles away—“we left our jurisdiction. As a courtesy, we need to contact the Hancock County sheriff before going around questioning his citizens. He does the same when he comes over to our neck of the woods.”

  “I’m sure sleeping with their prosecutor helps keep things cordial, too.”

  Cameron laughed. “Doesn’t hurt.”

  Two Hancock County sheriff’s cruisers turned onto the side road and parked behind Tony’s cruiser. Sheriff Curt Sawyer lowered the driver’s side window of the first cruiser. Cameron recognized the deputy in the second cruiser as Hunter Gardner, her stepson-in-law. Joshua climbed out of her vehicle to join them.

  “What’d Derek do now?” Curt asked Cameron after she had introduced Tony.

  “John Davis was found in a hayfield in Hookstown last night,” Cameron said. “Someone dumped his body and set fire to it.”

  “Cause of death was stabbing,” Tony said. “Thirty-two times. Crime of passion.”

  “John Davis and his wife took Derek’s son away from him,” Joshua said.

  “And he’s been pretty passionate about wanting revenge on them,” Sheriff Sawyer said. “When was Davis killed?”

  “Sometime last evening,” Cameron said. “Kathleen says he flew out from Seattle yesterday morning. So he would have gotten in last night. His body was found shortly after midnight.”

  “Less than a half hour from the airport,” Tony said.

  “All we want to do is talk to Derek,” Cameron said. “Find out where he was. If he has an alibi.”

  “Good luck with that,” the sheriff said. “His brain is so pickled that he can’t remember where he was an hour ago, let alone yesterday.” He hung out the window and gestured at Hunter. “I’ll go in first. Gardner, you bring up the rear.”

  Hunter shot them a thumbs up sign and backed up to make room for them to pull out onto the road.

  In Cameron’s cruiser, Joshua reached under her seat and extracted one of her back up weapons. “Mind if I borrow this?”

  “What’s mine is yours, my love.”

  “Keep your weapon ready. Derek has some serious anger issues.”

  “Tell me about the kid Derek had stabbed i
n school,” Cameron said.

  “A friend of theirs,” Joshua said while tucking the gun under his coat, into the back waistband of his pants. “Nice kid. Supposedly, he had disrespected a female friend of Derek’s. He wasn’t even supposed to be at the school. He had dropped out the year before. He snuck onto campus and hid in the boys’ locker room. They went in after baseball practice and he knifed the boy. If Murphy hadn’t been there, he would have killed him.”

  Following the sheriff, Cameron turned left onto a dirt road that took them deep into the woods. Beer bottles, boxes, and plastic bags littered the roadside. The road ended at what appeared to be a junk yard. Rusted cars rested on cement blocks. There were numerous piles of garbage bags scattered around the lot. Off to one side was an old trailer. A cement block stairway led up to the door.

  Sheriff Curt Sawyer climbed out of his cruiser and pointed at a white truck marked with brown rust along the edges. “He’s home. That’s his truck.”

  “Wasn’t his license revoked after his fourth DUI?” Joshua asked.

  Sheriff Sawyer nodded his head. “My people have been watching and waiting to catch him driving to nail his butt.”

  Hunter pulled his cruiser up next to Cameron’s and climbed out. He took a position next to his open door, so that he could easily grab his rifle if need be.

  Cameron and Tony fell in step on either side of Sheriff Sawyer, a barrel-chested ex-marine, who still held onto his military bearing.

  Fearing that the prosecutor’s appearance would be too intimidating, Joshua opted to stand back with Cameron’s weapon in his hand. He stayed close enough to be able to render assistance.

  “You never should have accepted a plea deal when he stabbed Bryan,” Hunter said in a low voice. “He’d still be in jail and Heather’s father would still be alive.”

  Reminded that Hunter was yet another friend who had witnessed Derek’s attack on the teenager, Joshua bit his lip. It was not the time or place to defend his decisions from nine years earlier.

  Sheriff Sawyer ordered Cameron and Tony to wait at the bottom of the steps while he stood off to the side and pounded on the door. “Derek! Derek Ellison! It’s Sheriff Sawyer! Open up!”

  Cameron rested her hand on her service weapon—ready to pull it if things went sideways. She could hear Tony breathing hard behind her.

  Receiving no answer, Sheriff Sawyer pounded again on the door—hard. “I know you’re in there, Derek. Open up. We need to talk.”

  Again, there was silence.

  “He’s probably passed out,” Cameron said as they heard a thump. The wall next to her rocked from an impact inside the trailer.

  Sheriff Sawyer put out his hand to knock once again when the latch moved, and the door opened slightly.

  Cameron saw the bloody knife before she saw the arm holding it. “Knife!” She yanked her gun out of the holster and aimed it at the emaciated young man staggering out onto the steps. “Put down the knife now!”

  Sheriff Sawyer reached around the door to grab Derek by the back of the neck and force him down into his knees. “Drop the knife!”

  Still, Derek clung to the knife that was streaked in dried blood.

  Both Joshua and Hunter drew their weapons and aimed it at the young man whose withered frame was not unlike that of an elderly man. His face was gaunt. Across the driveway, Joshua could see that his eyes were hollow. The young man was so stoned that he had no idea what was happening.

  Joshua rushed forward. “Do what they say, Derek! Don’t make them shoot you! They’ll shoot you unless you drop the knife now!”

  “Drop the knife, Derek! Drop it now!” Cameron ran up the steps and aimed her gun at the side of his head.

  Derek held his hands up—the knife tight in his grasp. He lifted his eyes to see Joshua running up to him.

  “Derek, please! If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your mother! Please don’t do this to her!”

  Derek opened his hand. Cameron grasped the knife as it slid out of his grip.

  Sheriff Sawyer snapped the cuffs onto his wrists.

  “Derek Ellison,” Cameron said, “I’m taking you in for questioning in suspicion for the murder of John Davis.”

  Chapter Four

  Susan Livingston kicked her grief-stricken sobs up a notch in both pitch and energy.

  Cameron glanced over at Tony. Seeing no sign of him offering John Davis’s assistant a clean tissue, she went into the kitchen of the woman’s home, tore a paper towel off the roll on the counter, and returned to the living room to offer it to her.

  “Thank you,” Susan said before wiping her face and blowing her nose.

  When she offered the tissue back, Cameron declined. “Keep it.”

  “I just can’t believe anyone would want to murder John,” the pretty blonde said. “He was the kindest, gentlest man I—any of us at the office—have ever met.” She looked back and forth between the two detectives who had delivered the tragic news. “I’m not just saying that. It’s true. We all loved him.” She caught herself. “I don’t mean that as in romantic. John wasn’t like that. He was devoted to Kathleen and his kids and his grandson. He treated everyone with respect—especially women. Why—he is”—she hiccupped—“was—the only vice president who had a staff entirely made up of women. We got paid equally what the male assistants at the plant got paid. He made sure of that!” Once more, she broke down into inaudible crying.

  Patting the executive assistant on the back, Cameron waited for her to compose herself. She looked over at Tony, whose face was filled with boredom. He checked the screen on his phone.

  There were other places he’d rather be—as he made abundantly clear upon discovering that Cameron had made an appointment to meet with John Davis’s assistant after processing Derek at the jail.

  “We got the guy,” Tony objected. “He had the murder weapon on him.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Cameron said. “We’ll know after forensics examines the knife. They’re also going to examine Derek, his clothes, and trailer for further evidence. Until we have the results of all that, we have to make sure there aren’t any lose ends. There’s a lot we don’t know.”

  “Like what?” Tony almost rolled his eyes at her—until he remembered that she was his boss.

  She ticked off on her fingers. “Confirmation that the knife Derek had was the murder weapon. If so, where did it come from. Find the primary crime scene. We also need to find Davis’s vehicle and examine it for physical evidence and clues to cement the prosecution’s case. That’s just a start.” She jerked her chin toward the squad room door. “I’m driving.”

  Susan Livingston was an attractive middle-aged woman who lived in a single-family home in a neat subdivision. Upon hearing the news, she collapsed onto the sofa and wailed. It was a slow interview with several pauses to allow her to collect herself.

  While Cameron offered comfort, Tony shifted in a chair across from them like a child with ants in his pants.

  “Well, considering—” Cameron cleared her throat. “Someone obviously didn’t love John since they killed him.”

  Susan’s eyes lit up. “Maybe it was—” She covered her mouth with a gasp.

  “Who did you just think of?”

  Susan stared at her with wide tear-filled eyes. “But it couldn’t be her.”

  “Her who?”

  “Bea. But it couldn’t possibly—”

  Cameron was already writing down the name. “What’s her last name?”

  Instead of answering, Susan continued to stare at Cameron with her hand over her mouth.

  “If she’s innocent, then nothing bad will happen to her. If she did it, then we need to find that out, too. What’s her last name, Susan?”

  “Miller,” she said grudgingly.

  “Who is Bea Miller and why would you think of her?”

  �
��She’s a fruitcake,” Susan said. “She was a clerk in accounting. She’s like in her fifties and divorced three times. Almost two years ago, she put in for an opening for administrative assistant in our office. John hired someone else with more experience, and Bea slapped him with a sexual harassment claim. Of course, legal investigated and found that she had accused two other men in the last fifteen years of sexual harassment. Plus, on three separate occasions, she’d filed police reports accusing men of sexual assault. In every case the incidents were unfounded.”

  “The woman who cried rape.” Cameron frowned.

  “It was all he said, she said. Bea said the harassment happened during the interview. Of course, with John’s long sterling reputation with the plant, and her checkered past, no one believed her. Word got around and she quit. She found a crackpot lawyer to represent her in a million-dollar lawsuit. The men she had accused volunteered to testify for the defense, and the judge laughed her out of the courtroom before the case even got to trial. Four months ago, her house was foreclosed on. On that day, she showed up here at the plant and attacked John in the parking lot. Security was called in and John had her arrested for assault.”

  “When’s her trial?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan said with a shrug of her shoulders. “But it wasn’t long after that that the threatening phone calls started. John got a restraining order against her, but the calls kept on coming. He blocked her calls, but then she’d change her phone number and kept on calling him.”

  “Sounds like I need to look this Bea Miller up,” Cameron said. “Do you know where she is now?”

  “I hear she’s renting a trailer someplace.”

  “I’ll find her,” Cameron said. “Susan, when was the last time you spoke to Mr. Davis?”

  “Yesterday afternoon before leaving work,” Susan said while wiping her nose.

  “How did he seem? Did he sound nervous or upset or worried about anything?”