Keep Reading for an Excerpt
from KJ Erickson’s Next Mystery

THE LAST WITNESS

Available in Hardcover
from St. Martin’s Minotaur!

 

 

 

 

No one except police had actually seen the crime-scene photos.

But everyone saw the scene in their mind’s eye. Down to the most finite detail. An image that rose from rumors, bits of published fact, tabloid covers glimpsed at supermarket checkouts, and from the unrelenting speculation and gossipmongering of lawyers who spent more time on cable TV talk shows than in courtrooms.

The image was remarkably accurate.

The woman’s body lying flat, facedown, on a gleaming hardwood floor.

Her long red hair was fanned out around her head, her head turned sideways in profile.

Her left arm lay at her side, twisted back so the palm turned up. The right arm, was extended, elbow bent, fingers spread open, palm down. Her slim bare legs were splayed, one knee raised, as if to climb a step. One shoe, off at the heel, clung to her toes. The other foot was bare, its shoe lying at the photo’s margin.

What everyone imagined remembering was the blood, shocking red against the white of her dress. A red pool spreading out from under her body.

Her footprints across the floor.

She’d been running in her own blood! You could tell by looking at the streaked footprints that she’d been running. You could see the dark stains on the sole of her shoeless foot.

 

 

What her father remembered about seeing his daughter’s body was not the blood. Her father’s mind could not associate the blood with his daughter’s body. Could not accept what it would mean if the blood were his daughter’s.

What her father remembered about seeing his daughter’s body was two things.

First, that the person who had been his daughter was not part of the body lying on the floor. This was comforting, just as not accepting that the blood was his daughter’s blood was comforting.

The other thing he remembered was the large bruise on the body’s left arm. In such a scene a bruise was perhaps the least shocking evidence of brutality.

But not to her father. To her father, the bruise brought him at warp speed from denial to reality. Because the bruise was old, gone green and yellow with age. Like other bruises the father had seen on his daughter’s body.

Bruises he had seen countless times since his daughter, Terri DuCain Jackman, had married Tayron Jackman.

 

 

“The mistake we made,” she said, “was that none of us understood evil.”

Grace DuCain’s face looked weathered under the harsh, fluorescent lights of Hennepin County Medical Center’s surgical waiting room. Royce Olsen had known Grace for almost thirty years. She was well named. “Grace” described her character as well as her physical beauty. He’d never—not even in some pretty tough times—seen the serenity of her face disturbed.

But today her face looked ravaged. Her life, as she’d known it, had been destroyed in the space of hours. Her daughter—her only child—murdered. Her husband—unwell before the murder, shocked by his daughter’s violent death—undergoing emergency surgery to save his life.

Almost as if talking to herself, she said, “Neither Duke nor I could imagine anything worse than what Terri suffered in the six years she’d been married to T-Jack. It was beyond our imagination—not just that he’d have his wife, the mother of his only child, murdered—but that he’d make us, in effect—accomplices to her murder.”

She turned to face him. “Now, when I think about the agreement, it’s so clear. If only we had understood evil, we would have known when we saw the agreement. It never was what T-Jack represented it to be. It was a step-by-step plan to provide T-Jack with an alibi for Terri’s murder. He even made certain Duke would be the one to find Terri’s body. Don’t tell me he didn’t know what that would do to Duke.

“As much as anything, what haunts me is that if we had understood evil, what happened could have been stopped.”

Royce Olsen reached out, putting his hand on her arm. “This is my fault, Grace. I should have recognized that all the quirky stipulations in the agreement meant T-Jack had some sort of scheme in mind. Both you and Duke were worried about what he was up to. I was the one who said ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’ I was the one who didn’t understand evil.”

Grace shook her head. “You operated in good faith, Royce. You never did know T-Jack the way we did. We should have known he was capable of something like this. It’s just that what he’s done was beyond our imagination. All of our imaginations.”

She placed her hand on top of his, and for a moment the old Grace emerged. She even managed a smile. “Never send a corporate attorney to do a criminal attorney’s job. We thought the agreement was about money. We should have hired one of those vampires who represent murderers. The sort of fellows you see barreling down the freeway, talking on their cell phones, driving one of those big SUVs that are ten feet higher than anything else on the road. I bet they understand evil.”

She didn’t have to add, Not a lawyer like you, Royce, who drives a Volvo station wagon and whose life motto is “Caution is the better part of courage.”

“It would make me feel better if you’d cry,” he said. “Then I could pretend to be the strong one.”

“I’m not going to cry, Royce,” she said, her face set in carefully controlled anger. “Not until we’ve proven T-Jack is responsible for what’s happened. If I cry, he’s beaten me. And I’m not going to let him beat me. He’s taken more than I had to give. I’m not giving another inch to that man.”

The surgeon was in the room for moments before they noticed him. That he hesitated in interrupting them said everything that had to be said.

“Mrs. DuCain?”

She caught her breath. Knowing what was to come didn’t make the fact of her husband’s death any easier.

 

 

“How would you like one last hot case?”

Marshall “Mars” Bahr looked up from the boxes he’d been sorting in the bowels of Minneapolis City Hall. His partner, Nettie Frisch, was standing on the other side of the wire mesh walls of his storage locker.

“Why’d you come all the way down here? I’ve got my cell phone …”

“Because,” Nettie said, “you need to be out of here now. I’ve arranged for a squad to take you to a crime scene. And I brought your sports coat. You’re going to need it for this visit. One step down from black-tie-only.”

Nettie walked with Mars to the motor pool, briefing him on what she knew. A body had been found at the Lake of the Isles home of Tayron and Terri Jackman. Terri Jackman’s father had been at the scene and had suffered some sort of medical emergency. Duke DuCain was en route to Hennepin County Medical Center via ambulance—or for all Nettie knew, he might already be at the hospital.

A murder that involved Duke DuCain and Tayron Jackman definitely qualified as a hot case. DuCain ranked higher on Forbes’s big bucks list than any other Minnesotan. Tayron—T-Jack—Jackman, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ star point guard—had been identified by more respondents in a recent Star-Tribune poll than either of the state’s two U.S. senators.

As Mars ducked into the waiting squad, he said to Nettie, “Get hold of Danny Borg. He’ll probably be batting cleanup on this one when we make the move to the BCA’s Cold Case Unit next month. He’s only got two more weeks on patrol at the downtown command before he gets his promotion. Might as well get his investigator’s feet wet sooner rather than later. And call the Medical Examiner’s Office. See if Doc D can handle this case.”

Nettie gave Mars a patient smile as she shut the car door behind him. Through the window she said, “Doc D went out five minutes ago. And Danny’s already on the scene. He was in his squad when I called to tell him you’d want him involved. Heard him hit the siren before I hung up.”

 

 

It’s not more than two miles from downtown Minneapolis to the Lake of the Isles. But there’s no direct route. Having a gutsy squad car driver who was willing to ignore traffic rules helped. They roared down Third, avoiding Fifth, which was torn up with construction for a light-rail transit route. They caught the tail end of a green light on Hennepin, making an illegal left turn into the bus lane, against one-way traffic on Hennepin. The driver looked to the right before making the turn, catching the clock tower on the Federal Reserve Bank two blocks down. He hissed in frustration.

“Shit,” he said, “it’s almost four-thirty. We’re gonna be bumping rush hour … .” He looked down at the dashboard’s digital clock. It was not quite four o’clock. “Damn Fed clock,” he muttered. “It’s never right. Can you tell me why they’d put a clock on top of a building when it’s never right?”

Mars shook his head. “It’s an architectural duh? They got to the top and couldn’t figure out what else to do.”

The squad’s flasher and siren parted the traffic coming toward them on Hennepin. As they crossed the intersection of Hennepin and Sixth, Mars looked to his right. The Target Center was a block west, the arena’s graceless bulk fully exposed by a vacant square block cleared for future development. It looked like the backside of an elephant squatting to take a dump.

The sight of the arena usually set Mars’s teeth on edge. Today, looking at the arena, what he thought about was the possibility that the man who brought tens of thousands of people to the Target Center during the NBA season might, at this moment, be lying dead in his Lake of the Isles home.

Mars’s cell phone rang. As if responding to his thoughts, Nettie said, “I just got a call from Danny Borg. The vic is Terri DuCain Jackman. Her father found her body—but like I said, he’s been taken to the hospital …”

“Where’s T-Jack?”

“The DuCain’s attorney talked with Danny before the attorney went down to HCMC to be with Mrs. DuCain while her husband is in surgery. The attorney, the DuCains, and T-Jack were in DuCain’s office all afternoon. T-Jack was in the office with the DuCains’ attorney when DuCain found his daughter’s body. But the attorney is saying T-Jack is responsible … .”

“This isn’t making a lot of sense.”

“Making sense of stuff like this is your job.”

“Our job, Nettie. Where’s T-Jack now?”

“Danny said T-Jack arrived at the house a few minutes ago. They’ve got a couple uniforms with him.”

 

 

They went through downtown Minneapolis on Hennepin until it became two-way, headed up the hill that ran between Loring Park and the Walker Art Center, then swung right on Franklin Avenue, taking Franklin to the east side of Lake of the Isles.

A squad car speeding down Hennepin Avenue, flashers rotating, siren howling, was another day at the office. A rocketing squad car on Lake of the Isles Parkway was something else. Joggers, in-line skaters, mothers pushing strollers and buggies—all stopped cold and stared. By the time the squad rounded the north end of the lake, changing direction to the west side of the parkway, people were coming out of their houses to stare. Canoeists stopped paddling. A yellow Lab, his chin lifted as if to bay at the moon, howled in reply to the siren. Even the Canadian geese that plagued the lake’s perfection took note.

They were within two blocks of the Jackman house when traffic stopped, cars lined up as far ahead as they could see.

“I can go on the grass,” the driver said, looking doubtful. There were just too many pedestrians around to make that a reasonable option.

Mars shook his head, getting out of the car. “I’ll hoof it from here. Why don’t you call in and get some traffic-control guys out here. There must be a crowd in front of the Jackman house.”

Slinging his sports coat over his shoulder, Mars started off at a slow jog. The day had started cool, but by late afternoon the temperature must have been in the upper 80s; the jog was hard work. As he rounded a curve in the road, he saw the ambulance, a couple of squads, and a crowd on both sides of the road. Mars pushed his way through the crowd, ducking under the crime-scene tape, and started up the steps to the Jackman house.

Mars had investigated his share of gang- and drug-related deaths. Those scenes looked more or less alike. A young man lying dead on the street or on a mattress in an apartment. A run-down apartment complex built around a decaying swimming pool or a trailer park.

The common denominator at all those scenes was disorder. Not from the violence of the murder, but from the way people involved in certain kinds of murder lived their lives. You knew as soon as you walked into one of those murder scenes that this was a place where death had been waiting to happen. Old carpets that hadn’t been vacuumed in years. Unflushed toilets. Clothes lying all over. Unwashed dishes. Take-out food in various stages of decay. More Hardee’s wrappers than McDonald’s.

Six years ago, when a special unit had been set up in Homicide to handle high-profile murders, Mars had been assigned as a special detective to head the unit. Right away it became obvious that there were two differences between the high-profile cases and what he’d seen with drugs and gangs.

First, drugs and gangs were mostly handguns, stabbings, and beatings. In a high-profile case, you’d see everything from poisonings, to rifles, to strangulation. And second, there was a lot more variety in the murder scenes.

Mars climbed the massive stone steps leading up to Tayron Jackman’s house. It was a murder scene that defied the possibility that something bad could happen. The broad steps—maybe a couple dozen from the street to the front door—were lined with planted urns. The steep lawn was terraced and perfectly cut. Around the base of the house, pruned shrubs alternated with rosebushes.

There were more planted urns on the mosaic-tiled floor under the roofed porch. Mars stood for a few moments in the porch shadows before going in through the wrought-iron front door. He turned, looking back toward Lake of the Isles. As idyllic a view as could be found in any American city within two miles of the city’s urban center. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the lake was mirror smooth.

Nothing that prepared you for what was just beyond the front door.

 

 

Danny Borg and Dr. Denton D. Mont, chief medical examiner for Hennepin County, were already in the kitchen, as was Terri DuCain Jackman’s body. Along with lots of blood, lots of trauma to the body, lots of evidence that Terri had known she was in trouble, had fought hard, and had tried to escape.

The kitchen was huge—maybe thirty feet by forty feet. But the murder scene itself was relatively small. The area of visible violence was about six by twelve feet. Everything that surrounded the violence was ordered, immaculate, untouched. In a lot of ways, the order that surrounded the chaos made the murder scene that much more horrific.

Mars walked a semicircle around Terri Jackman’s body, not taking his eyes from her as he walked. Some vics retained their essential character in death. Others, whatever it was that made them who they were was gone with the last heartbeat. Without having seen her in life, Mars would have guessed that the body before him was a husk of the real thing. Some vics just looked empty, hollow. Terri DuCain Jackman was one of those.

Mars, Danny, and Doc D reconnoitered in a pantry off the kitchen. Danny spoke in a hushed voice. Tayron Jackman was with cops in the front of the house, but Danny wasn’t taking anything for granted. He never did.

“Here’s the deal. The DuCains’ attorney told me T-Jack was in a conference room with him at DuCain Industries from one o’clock until he got the call about Terri. T-Jack was there to sign a divorce agreement. Twice during the meeting—and this was something T-Jack had asked for—Terri was contacted by conference call. And Doc says …” Danny nodded at Doc D.

“Based on what Danny told me, I think we’re gonna be able to come up with a pretty tight time of death. Mostly, my physical tests are just going to support the facts of the case. I’d say—based on the facts and what I’ve done so far—she died no more than an hour before the time her father found her body. I did a rectal at three fifty-five and her temp was ninety-seven point two. Let’s assume her temp was something above ninety-eight point six, what with the struggle and all—maybe ninety-nine plus when she died. The house thermostat’s reading seventy. At that ambient temp, she’s gonna lose a couple degrees every hour—so the ninety-seven point two is consistent with her being dead for less than an hour at three fifty-five. I’ll check her liver temp when I get her downtown, but with the rectal and the fact that her jaw is just tightening up now, I think this is gonna be one of those cases where time of death will be a known factor. Right now, I’m inclined to call it at, say, between two fifty-five and three-fifteen. Just bear in mind that the precision comes from your case facts. All I’m saying is that my physical findings don’t contradict those facts.”

Mars said, “Lying like she is, what have we got on lividity?”

“Not much,” Doc said. “I used my index finger on her arm—and there was a bit of compression. But she’s pretty well bled out from her neck wound, so PML isn’t gonna be all that reliable.”

Mars turned back to Danny. “I’m not getting this,” Mars said. “T-Jack is out at DuCain Industries and Terri DuCain’s father is here within minutes of his daughter’s murder?”

“I don’t have all the details, yet,” Danny said, looking embarrassed. “It was hard. Mr. and Mrs. DuCain are here, their daughter is dead in the kitchen, then Mr. DuCain collapses. Mr. Olsen—Royce Olsen, I think his name was—gets here after that, T-Jack after him; and I want to get a couple uniforms on T-Jack … .”

Mars held up a hand. “It’s okay. You did fine. I’m just saying that we need to follow up on who was where when. And why. You said T-Jack was signing a divorce agreement. Do we know how much he saves, now that Terri’s dead?”

Danny gave Mars a cynical smile. “That’s not how it worked. From the little bit the lawyer said before he went down to HCMC, the DuCains were buying their daughter back from T-Jack. For a hundred million bucks. The agreement was signed—probably minutes before Terri Jackman was murdered. And the agreement is irrevocable. T-Jack gets the money, and DuCain doesn’t get what he paid for. Sweet deal, if you’re T-Jack.”

“Might not matter much,” Doc said. “I got a look at Duke DuCain before the ambulance took him. Not at all clear to me that DuCain is going to be around much longer. Wouldn’t be around now if the EMT who came out wasn’t Alex Gage. Gage can bring back the dead.”

“There are a number of guys Gage brought back that I could live without,” Mars said.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Doc said.

“I’m just saying the Lord should be a lot more careful about who he gives and who he takes away,” Mars said. He motioned Doc and Danny back toward the kitchen. “Let’s do a walk-through of the scene.”

Danny began. “No evidence that the doors or any of the windows have been messed with. There’s a gated drive that runs from the street to an underground garage at the rear of the house. The garage door opens on a remote control. Nothing out of order down there. Looks like she let in whoever did it through the front door. They’ve got a code-activated security system that was off when we got here. Whether it was off when the killer came or whether she keyed the code to let someone in—we can’t say yet. You probably noticed when you came in. Nothing’s disturbed anywhere but in here. So, whoever it was followed her into the kitchen. You’ve gotta guess she wouldn’t have let someone get this far into the house unless she trusted him, so we might be looking at someone she knew.”

Doc D walked closer to the body. His hands were jammed into his pants pockets. Without taking his right hand out of the pocket, he made a motion in the direction of Terri Jackman’s body, his eyes staring.

“See that hair thing-a-jig about four steps back from where she’s lying? What I’d guess happened is the perp took a knife from that block over on the counter, came up behind her and grabbed her by the hair, which would have been in a kind of ponytail, held by that hair thing. Then he jabs her real quick, just behind her left shoulder blade. At that point, she twists around, so she’s facing him. Holding on to her hair doesn’t give him much control in that position, so he probably pulled her head back and went for her neck.

“There are small drops of blood back here”—Doc pointed to the floor—“that are consistent with the first stab wound and withdrawal of the knife after that wound. The hair band falls off when she turns; you can see long strands of hair attached, and there’s hair on the floor. It’s the neck wound that killed her. You can see the large amount of blood on the floor, her footprints in the blood from that point, blood on the cupboard doors. Blood shot out a good three feet from where her neck was cut. Arteries will do that, of course, while the heart is pumping. Especially pumping hard, which it’s going to do if somebody’s coming after you with a knife.” Doc sighed. “Then, for good measure, he took down one of the pans that was hooked on that wrought-iron deal hanging from the ceiling. Whacked her good across the left side of her face with that. Le Creuset number eighteen. Cast iron, covered with enamel. Le Creuset puts a little die cut in the bottom of their pans with the name of the company and the number of the pan. I lifted her head some. Most of the bone structure on the left side of her face is pretty well gone—but I could see an imprint from the die cut on the skin.”

Doc motioned them toward a sink set in a center island counter. “Here’s what I find real perverse.”

Mars and Danny looked down in the sink. The sink was filled with water. The water looked pink and soapy. Bits of something floated on the surface. Beneath the film of soap were a knife and a black pan.

“The murder weapon and Le Creuset number eighteen. Stick your pinkies in the water, gentlemen,” Doc said.

Both Mars and Danny stepped forward, tipping fingers into the sink’s water.

“It’s warm,” Mars said.

“Probably boiling hot when the perp stuck the pan and knife in,” Doc said. “See that spigot to the right of the main faucet? One of those fancy deals that spits boiling water on demand. Damned insolent, leaving the weapons in the sink like that.”

“Does it strike anybody that this perp wanted to be sure we could fix the time of death?” Mars said. All three looked toward the front of the house, in T-Jack’s direction.

Mars stepped back, then walked slowly around the kitchen. In a far corner from the body, there was something red on the floor. Thinking at first that it might be more blood, he knelt down. It wasn’t blood. It was a cluster of rose petals.

“What’s this about?”

Danny said, “Flower petals. Don’t know why. I told the Crime Scene Unit guys to bag it.”

“They’re rose petals,” Mars said. “There are rosebushes at the front of the house.”

“I noticed,” Danny said. “I took one of the petals out to compare it to the flowers in front. The flowers out front, they’re coral and yellow, a real bright pink, and some whites. The petals on the floor are deep red. Beside, if somebody brought flowers in from outside, where are they? I looked in the trash, thinking Mrs. Jackman might have been throwing flowers out. Which would make sense, the petals falling off and all. No flowers in the trash.”

Mars nodded and continued his tour of the kitchen. From there he walked into the front hall. Danny was right. Everything was pristine. He went back to the kitchen, taking another look at the body, noticing a bruise on Terri Jackman’s arm.

“The bruise is old, wouldn’t you say?”

Doc nodded. “Looks like she got banged real hard with a blunt object. Maybe a week or so ago.”

Mars drew a deep breath. He needed to talk to T-Jack. He didn’t know everything he wanted to know before that conversation took place. But he couldn’t not talk to T-Jack now. Mars went back into the kitchen.

“I’m going to talk to T-Jack. Danny, why don’t you ride shotgun for me.”