CHAPTER TWENTY

 

 

I had to admit that the mind-numbing task of placing our order and waiting for it to be prepared was preferable to being cooped up in that suffocating office any longer. I got a text as the barista handed me our food and drinks, so I hurried to set them down on a nearby table. The text was from Rachel’s number: I hear you haven’t been doing what I asked tonight. We need to have a chat. Check your partner’s email.

Going numb all over, I snapped my head up to glance around the room. How did Justin Fox know we had pushed aside his dad’s case to track down Rachel’s last known whereabouts? Was he watching us?

Baxter approached me, his expression guarded. “What’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet.”

Wordlessly, I turned my phone’s screen so he could read the text.

The color drained out of his face, too, as he made a visual sweep of the room. One hand at the ready on his gun, he put his other hand on the small of my back and ushered me into the office again. Once we were inside, he commandeered the landline phone on the desk to call dispatch for backup, at the same time taking out his phone and opening up his email folder.

My head spun as he spoke, only catching bits and pieces of him calling for officers to secure the coffeehouse and scour the parking lot for Justin Fox, then calling for a trace on the last text that came into my phone as well as for information on the email that had just come to him.

When he was finished, he held his phone out between us so I could see the email he’d been sent. It was like the last one, only containing a video attachment. He hit the play button, and Justin Fox’s face filled the screen, like the other video.

Justin said, “I see that the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department has been busy this evening—and you’ve even invited the FBI to the party. On the news, some cocky special agent said the whole department and the local FBI field office were working tirelessly to bring me to justice, plus they were pooling their resources and bringing in former specialists to work on another angle that could get your sweet Rachel released from my clutches.”

Justin frowned, and his eyes took on an evil glint. My mouth went dry.

He continued, “Tell me, Detective Baxter and Professor Matthews, did I stutter when I told you that I wanted you two specifically to solve my mother’s case all by yourselves? Did you not understand that I meant for you to do it on your own? You know as well as I do that some of your friends at the department do nothing but stand in your way and screw things up, and I didn’t want you to waste any of your precious time dealing with their incompetence. Plus, having those useless old people helping out on my mother’s case is asinine. No cop is going to admit they made a mistake, even all those years ago. They are a liability to you. They made up lies about my dad then, and they’ll do it again to save face.”

Baxter paused the video. “So the Fed went on TV and spilled our entire plan? What the hell was he thinking?”

I wiped both hands down my face. “I don’t know, but Justin Fox is pissed now. He didn’t take the risk to send us a video only to give us a talking-to. He’s changing the game. Go.”

Baxter pressed play, and the video started again.

Justin said, “I figure you’ve ruined around five hours of your investigation by working with those other schmucks. So, to show you how serious I am that I want this done right, I’m going to take five hours away from you. Your seventy-two-hour window just became sixty-seven hours. Disobey me again…”

He panned the camera over to Rachel, who was in the same position as before in the same cattle stall. As the camera came near her, her eyes widened. She began to shake her head furiously and make strangled noises, an expression of sheer terror on her face.

I tensed, and Baxter laid a hand on my shoulder.

A red-hot fire poker appeared on the screen. The poker and the camera moved closer to Rachel. Tears began pouring down her cheeks as Justin’s voice continued, “And your sister will pay for it. I was going to go with ‘a foot for a foot’ with this one, so as not to break the sequence, but I might consider skipping the foot and going straight for ‘a burn for a burn’ if you two don’t do what I ask. Remember, you only have until noon on Sunday. If I were you, I’d get to work.”

Right as the poker was about to touch the bare skin of Rachel’s arm, the video cut off.

I let out an anguished cry. “If he so much as harms on hair on her head, I will kill him with my bare hands.” Turning to Baxter, I asked, “You don’t think he hurt her, do you?”

He squeezed my shoulder. “No, I don’t. He’s all about spectacle and getting in your head. If he were going to hurt your sister, he’d make you watch. I’m sure of it.”

Letting out a pent up breath, I croaked out, “What are we going to do now? Without help, we’re never going to have time to get through all the case information and interviews and—”

Baxter shook his head. “We’re not going to do this without help.”

“But he said—”

“I know what he said. But the only reason he knew we had help was because of the press conference Agent Manetti called. We muzzle Manetti and pare our team down to a handful of people who can keep a lid on this. There’s no way Justin Fox is going to find out about it. I know it’s not in keeping with his rules, but I think it’s important that we don’t go this alone. Do you trust me?”

That was a loaded question where the two of us were concerned. But in this situation, I knew that Baxter would do anything and everything in his power to make sure Rachel got out of this alive. I had no doubt that Rachel’s safety was his number one concern.

“Yes.”

***

After several deputies arrived, Baxter gave them directions to secure the coffeehouse and surrounding area. Then he and I headed back to the station.

“Do you feel like picking up where we left off on those old domestic disturbance files?” he asked as we sped back to Noblesville. The snow that had fallen this morning was already beginning to melt, which enabled us to move more quickly.

“Sure,” I said, happy to have something to distract myself from my anxiety over our new deadline. I got out the files and flipped to the sixth police report filed on the Fox family. “A week after the bondage incident, it looks like Jayne and Frank made an unannounced welfare check to follow up. Leann was home, but no sign of her husband. The son was there, but once Jayne and Frank started interviewing Leann, he holed up in his room.” I read, “ ‘Female subject seemed nervous and was perspiring during the interview. Even though outside temperatures were unseasonably high and there was no air conditioning in the home, the subject was wearing a thick turtleneck and long pants. When asked about her attire, subject ignored the question and gave no answer. When asked to push up her sleeves so detectives could note whether her prior injuries had healed, she refused.’ ”

“Dressed for winter, sweating like a whore in church, and refusing to roll up her sleeves? I bet you fifty bucks that woman was black and blue underneath her clothes.”

“That’s what Jayne and Frank thought, too, according to the notes. But you can’t force a wife to rat out her husband.” I turned to the next report. “Seventh and final incident report before the murder. This one occurred at the beginning of June, about a month after the welfare check. Leann’s friend, Mariella Vasquez, made the call. She said Samuel wouldn’t let Leann leave the house with her. Jayne and Frank went out, but like so many of the other domestic disturbance calls from that house, by the time they got there, all was well. Mariella Vasquez recanted her statement and said it was a big misunderstanding.”

Baxter shook his head. “Did they check the friend for injuries?”

“It says in Jayne’s notes that the friend seemed scared and looked like she’d been crying, but no amount of coercing could get her to say anything against Samuel.”

Sighing, he said, “I don’t get why Justin Fox is so convinced of his father’s innocence. If your dad is a worthless excuse for a human being, don’t you know it? Even if you’re only ten years old…you know, right?”

“From my experience, yes. It doesn’t take long to figure that kind of thing out.”

He glanced over at me uncomfortably. “When did you know?”

“I was three, I think. I have two memories of my father. One of him slapping the crap out of me for no apparent reason and another of him driving away and never looking back.” I looked at him. “Judging from the way you turned out, I bet your dad was father of the year.”

Smiling to himself, he replied, “Yeah. I have to admit, my dad is the best.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Have you taken a look at the report from the murder yet? I want to know if anything stands out to you now that you’ve processed most of the evidence.”

“Not yet. I read the autopsy all the way through, but that’s as far as I got.”

“Speaking of the autopsy, I got an email from Dr. Berg saying everything seems to be in order with it. No oversights as far as he can tell.”

“Good.” I took out the file from the murder investigation and found the police report, which I began reading to myself. “The murder occurred only a couple of weeks after that last incident. Wow. If Leann Fox had only said something against her husband one time… Who knows? She could still be alive today.” I kept reading on down the page. “It says the neighbor who took Leann to the ER for the broken wrist heard arguing in the backyard but for some reason didn’t feel the need to call it in. A while later, the kid came knocking on his door, begging for help. When the neighbor went over and found Leann dead, he called nine-one-one.” I skimmed over the description of the scene, which I was already familiar with thanks to the graphic photos posted in the conference room at the station. “There was no forced entry and there were no suspicious vehicles reported in the area.”

“And Mr. Shitshow had no better alibi than he was passed out drunk inside the house during the whole thing. I’m telling you—he did it,” Baxter said, frowning again.

I shook my head. “Don’t you think someone who’d made sure to cover his ass for several instances of assault would have come up with an iron-clad alibi if he had in fact killed his wife? Probably one of the major reasons he got arrested is that he couldn’t prove he was unconscious at her time of death. He’d coerced people before to lie to the cops for him. What’s one more time, especially when it really mattered? I say Leann Fox knew her killer, but it wasn’t her husband.”

I continued to peruse the police report the rest of the way to the station, but nothing else jumped out at me as out of the ordinary. Baxter seemed to be deep in thought.

Once we were heading into the station, I said, “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

He stopped in the hallway and faced me. “That last video from Justin Fox. All this time, I’ve thought his ‘eye for an eye’ bullshit was referring to a passage from Deuteronomy about the type of punishment that should be dealt to someone who gives false testimony, which is what I assumed he was alluding to in all of his weird poems. The FBI crypto guys thought that as well. But the Deuteronomy passage stops with ‘foot for foot.’ No mention of ‘burn for burn,’ which he referenced tonight. There’s another passage, though, that’s similar…found in Exodus, I think. After ‘foot for foot,’ it keeps going with burn for burn, bruise for bruise, and wound for wound.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Someone’s been to Sunday school.”

“Worse. Nine years of Catholic school.”

I nodded. “Ah. Now I get the whole straight-shooter thing. It was beat into you at a young age.”

He held out his hands toward me. “Many nuns have broken many rulers over these knuckles.”

Chuckling, I asked, “So why does it matter which Bible passage he’s using?”

“It’s about the context. The Deuteronomy passage, like I said, is about punishment for lying at a trial. The Exodus passage, however, is about punishing someone who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe Justin Fox doesn’t either.”

“Or maybe his mother was pregnant when she was killed and the Bible passage is right on the nose.”

My jaw dropped. “Holy shit, Baxter. That’s an excellent theory. What better way to get rid of an unwanted baby than to pop its mom?”

He made a face. “I think there are better ways than that.”

“I’m saying that men have been known to freak out over impending fatherhood and literally shoot the messenger. For women in rocky relationships, announcing a pregnancy can be a dangerous event. So are we thinking that Samuel Fox didn’t want another kid?”

“My money’s on that it wasn’t his kid.”

“Ouch. That’s definitely possible. But if she’d had sex with her lover and then blindsided the guy with a surprise pregnancy, that might have caused him to get violent with her.”

“Even worse, let’s say she’d had sex with her lover, told him she was pregnant, and he was happy about the news. What if he wanted her to leave her husband for him? If Leann Fox told her husband she was pregnant by another man and that she was leaving him, I’d say that’s an even more violent scenario.”

I blew out a breath. “True. The problem is, I don’t recall the autopsy report saying she was pregnant, so we may not have a leg to stand on.”

“You’re right—it didn’t. But unless the coroner knew she was pregnant or that the detectives thought a pregnancy factored into the murder, she wouldn’t have been tested. If it was early on in the pregnancy, the baby wouldn’t have been noticeable during a physical exam. In that situation, presence of a baby would have to be determined by a blood test.”

“How do you know so much about babies?”

His cheeks flushed. “I don’t. I’ve been to way too many autopsies.”

I thought for a moment. “If Samuel Fox had known that his wife was pregnant by another man, wouldn’t his lawyer have tried to use that at trial to introduce the possibility of another killer? That fact alone could have bought him a heap of reasonable doubt.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read all the way through the court transcripts yet.”

“I think that’s our next step. If Leann Fox was in fact pregnant, my money is squarely on her baby daddy.”

“I have something I need to do first.”

“What’s that?”

“Ream Manetti’s ass for showing our hand.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Oh, this I’ve got to see.”