Three

Present day

Once again wearing her morgue attire, Zoe pushed through the door into the autopsy suite. She found the tech, who’d brought her the AED for Franklin, in the middle of the Humpty Dumpty process of putting the victim back together again. Sort of.

Doc looked up from the table where he packaged tissue and fluid samples for the lab. “How’s Franklin?”

“Breathing,” Zoe said. “Conscious and alert.”

“Good. I hate when I have to autopsy a friend.”

He said it with a healthy dose of snark, but Zoe winced at the mental picture of Franklin laid open for dissection. One of the hazards of working on the ambulance in a small community was arriving at an accident scene or medical emergency to find the victim was a friend or close acquaintance. Having someone she knew well come through the morgue was worse. Way worse. Case in point—Gina Wagner.

Zoe veered her focus from the woman being sewn up. “Do you know anything about Franklin’s wife?”

“Loretta? I never met her. They’ve been divorced a long time.”

“He asked me to call her. Said they’ve been back in touch recently.”

Doc grunted. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“Me too,” Zoe said more to herself than to him.

With his work completed, Doc removed the plastic splash shield he wore over his face. “I hope toxicology has better luck finding a cause of death than I did.”

“Do you have an educated guess?”

“I’m educated enough to not guess.”

Chastised, Zoe lowered her head.

He clipped her on the shoulder. “Seriously, I’m stumped. No sign of trauma or medical abnormality. There’s nothing to suggest drug use. Her tissues and organs appear perfectly healthy.”

“Except she’s dead.”

“There is that.” He strode toward the biohazard bins, stripping out of his protective garb as he went. “You know what to do regarding the paperwork.”

Zoe nodded. Cause of death: Undetermined pending toxicology. But first, she had to find Franklin’s phone.

Which turned out to be the easiest part of her day so far. He’d left it on his desk, plugged into the charger. She knew his PIN from the many times he’d had her make calls for him in recent weeks. Doc said the ex-wife’s name was Loretta, which made finding the number in his contacts list a breeze.

The voice that answered was anything but jovial. “What do you want now, Frank?”

Frank? For a moment Zoe feared she’d misdialed or picked up the wrong phone. She’d never heard anyone call him anything other than Franklin. “Um, is this Loretta?”

A pause. Apparently, Zoe wasn’t the only one confused by this call. “Who is this?”

“My name’s Zoe Chambers. I’m the chief deputy coroner. I work with—”

“He finally died, did he?”

Zoe wished she could see the woman’s face. Hoped there was more sadness in her eyes than in her tone. “No. But he asked me to call you and let you know he’s in the ER at Brunswick Hospital.”

“Oh.” Another long pause. “How serious is it?”

“His glucose levels dropped rapidly, throwing him into an irregular heart rhythm. I had to shock him, but he converted and is now receiving treatment in the Emergency Department. He should be fine once they stabilize him.”

“You shocked him?”

Not the question Zoe expected. “With an AED we keep nearby.”

“But you did. A deputy coroner. Not a doctor.”

Zoe wanted to ask what the hell this woman was getting at. “I’m also a paramedic.”

“Oh.”

Was it Zoe’s imagination or did Franklin’s ex sound disappointed?

“Okay then. Thanks for calling.”

“Wait. Should I say you’ll be in to see him?”

But the line had gone dead. And if Zoe was any judge, Franklin’s ex-wife would’ve been happier to hear that he was too.

  

A half dozen men and women in business suits entered the coffee shop and gathered at the counter, placing their orders.

Pete hoped they’d choose a table toward the front.

Baronick tapped notes from Pete’s narration into his phone. Looking up, he asked, “Any sign of the car being broken into?”

“No.”

“Security cameras?”

“None. The plaza’s owner installed them afterward.”

“Doesn’t help us any.”

“No, it does not.”

“What about the physical evidence at the scene?” Baronick asked. “According to what I read, there wasn’t much.”

“There were no casings. The parking lot was paved, so no footprints. All the fingerprints in the car belonged to either the victim or the husband.”

The detective watched the new arrivals. “If our one-armed man exists, he wore gloves. Or didn’t touch anything.”

“Stop with the one-armed man references. For starters, in the movie, he wasn’t a serial killer. And if a random murderer passed through my township and I missed a chance to nail him, it’s no laughing matter.”

Baronick raised an eyebrow. “You can’t seriously believe Landis’ theory.”

Did he?

With their coffees in hand, two of the business suits migrated toward the rear of the shop and placed their cups on a small table, leaving only one other between them and Pete and Baronick. The suits proceeded to drag chairs out of their way and moved that table to butt against theirs. At the same time, a group of laughing college kids entered.

“Let’s get out of here,” Pete said.

“My thoughts exactly.” Baronick uncrossed his legs and stood, scooping up his phone.

Outside, the gray early-February sky matched the color of the sidewalks and the buildings in Brunswick’s downtown area. Even the mounds of dirty snow from last week were the same shade. February, the longest and most monochrome month of the year in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Baronick pulled his collar up against the chilly breeze. “You didn’t say whether or not you believed the transient killer theory.”

“No. I don’t. Dustin Landis killed his wife.” Pete winced. He hadn’t wanted to taint Baronick’s findings with his own opinion. Then again, the detective had access to all the records and witness statements, not to mention a jury had already reached the same conclusion. Pete checked his watch. “I should get back to Vance Township.”

“Yeah. Duty calls. You can tell me the rest while we walk to our cars.”

Their cars weren’t parked that far away.

They crossed Main Street and climbed the stairs to the front entrance. Security waved them through, and they headed across the rotunda to the rear exit, reserved for law enforcement.

“Tell me about the gun.”

“Thirty-eight revolver. Registered to a man in Altoona and reported stolen over a year before. We found it in a plastic grocery bag, wrapped in black pants and a hoodie in a dumpster behind the office building where Landis worked. No one saw it placed there, and no security cams. Again.”

Baronick grunted. “Convenient. What about fingerprints?”

“The gun was wiped clean, but ballistics matched it to the bullet that killed Elizabeth. The lab was able to find traces of her blood on the clothes, consistent with the blowback you’d expect from shooting someone at close range.”

“Anything else link the clothes to Landis?”

“Landis’ size, and he admitted owning several pairs of black sweats, but they’d been washed. No DNA. However, we were able to lift a print from the plastic grocery bag. Definite match to Landis.”

“How’d he explain that?”

“His attorney claimed anyone could have taken it from his garbage can outside his house. No one on the jury bought it. That print was the final nail in Landis’ coffin.”

Baronick stopped as they reached the door leading to the secured parking lot and faced Pete. “You’ve confirmed everything I’ve already read in the reports. I want to know your thoughts about the case. About Landis. The stuff that doesn’t get put down on paper.”

Pete met his gaze. “I’ve told you enough. Frattini wants your fresh eyes on the case. I don’t want to taint your findings with my own personal take on Landis.”

Baronick bristled. “I’m a better cop than that. I can still reach my own conclusions even with your input.”

“I know that,” Pete said. “You’ve got the facts. Talk to Landis and decide for yourself. Afterward, come see me and we’ll compare notes.”

Baronick thought about it, nodded his agreement, and pushed through the door.

Pete followed him into a parking lot surrounded by walls and razor wire. At one time, it had separated the courthouse from the old jail, an archaic structure that now loomed empty. “While you interview Landis, I’ll swing by Franklin Marshall’s office and have a chat with him about Elizabeth’s postmortem.” Pete recalled that Marshall had been one of the chinks in Frattini’s armor during the trial.

Baronick chuckled. “You aren’t fooling me, Pete Adams. You’re going to Franklin’s office to see his new chief deputy coroner.”

Pete couldn’t argue with facts.

“How are the wedding plans coming? You’ve got less than two weeks left as a free man.”

“Zoe’s handling the wedding. She’ll tell me when to show up and where.” They’d agreed on a divide-and-conquer mentality. She and her mother tackled the wedding. He dealt with moving his stuff to her farm and getting his house ready to go on the market.

“Smart man.” Baronick headed for his unmarked black sedan. “We’ll sit down later and divvy up the rest of the witness list.”

Pete’s phone rang. He waved a confirmation at the detective. The words Imperatore & Associates came up on caller ID.

“Chief,” the familiar voice boomed in his ear when he answered. “This is Anthony Imperatore. I presume you’ve already spoken to the District Attorney about my client’s retrial.”

“I have.”

“Mr. Landis has asked me to contact you. He wishes to speak to you. The sooner, the better.”

Dustin Landis wanted to see him? “Detective Baronick is on his way over to talk to Mr. Landis. He’ll be handling that part of the investigation.”

“I’m afraid my client insists. He wishes to speak to you, Chief Adams. Of course, he’ll cooperate fully with any other law enforcement officers who need to question him—in my presence, of course—but you’re the one he wants to see now.”

Pete watched as Baronick backed his black sedan from its space. The last person he wanted to deal with was Dustin Landis. He’d heard everything the man had to say nine years ago. Time didn’t change facts. But Imperatore would hound Pete until he conceded. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He ended the call before the attorney could begin arguing for five and stepped into Baronick’s path with a raised hand.

The detective stopped and lowered his window. “What?”

“Change of plans.”