The Next Accident
Elizabeth Quincy’s elite town house was not hard to find. Rainie simply drove into Society Hill and followed the garish display of flashing lights. A white medical examiner’s van was illegally parked up on the sidewalk. A cluster of three police cruisers represented the ground troops. One older unmarked sedan would be the pair of homicide detectives; they’d had the decency to also park up on the sidewalk, trying to leave enough room for traffic to squeeze by on the narrow lane. Three larger, dark sedans, however, lined up as a single clog in the space the detectives had tried to leave. They would be the feds. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians, Rainie thought immediately, and wondered how Quincy was faring.
She parked a block back and walked up as the sky was just beginning to lighten with the first tinge of dawn. Half a dozen neighbors hovered in overpriced doorways, wearing silk dressing robes and Burberry overcoats and gazing at Rainie cautiously as she passed. The neighbors looked scared. The tall, narrow town houses sat shoulder to shoulder, and for all their impression of discreet wealth, they weren’t that different from one long apartment complex. Now, a very bad thing had happened down the hall, and not all the money in the world could put enough distance between that and them.
Rainie arrived at Bethie’s residence. Inside the hastily roped off perimeter, a young officer was guarding the scene, sipping coffee from Wawa’s and yawning every two or three seconds. Rainie flashed her PI’s license.
“Nope,” he said.
“I’m working for FBI Agent Pierce Quincy,” she countered.
“And I’m working for Mayor John F. Street. Fuck off.”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” She arched a brow, then dropped her voice to deadly serious. “Hey rookie, go inside. Find Supervisory Special Agent Quincy and tell him Lorraine Conner is here.”
“Why?”
“Because I work with him, because he personally called me to this scene, and because you don’t want to start your day getting your ass kicked by a girl.”
“Like I’m going to start my day taking orders from one—”
“Officer.”
Both Rainie and the young officer jerked their attention to the open doorway. Of all people, Special Agent Glenda Rodman stood there, wearing the same stark gray suit from the day before, except as she’d also been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, her dark hair was a bit more mussed around her face. Rainie thought the hairstyle was kinder, but mostly she was mortified at being caught in yet another losing battle.
“Special Agent Quincy has requested Ms. Conner’s presence,” Glenda informed the officer. “Do allow her in, and don’t mind what she says. I understand that she’s not a morning person.”
“Oh, I like mornings just fine. It’s people I can’t stand.”
“If you will follow me . . .”
Officer I’m-in-Charge grudgingly raised the police tape. In turn, Rainie flashed him a gloating smile, then immediately blanked her features before entering the scene. She had no sooner followed Special Agent Rodman into the foyer, when she was assaulted with the stench of blood.
She recoiled, caught herself, and for a moment, simply had to stand her ground. Special Agent Rodman had stopped as well. Her expression was patient, perhaps even kind. At that moment, Rainie understood just how bad it was going to get.
Blood was everywhere. Streaked across ecru-colored walls, splattered onto oil canvases, pooled on parquet floors and century-old silk carpets. In the foyer, the table had been toppled, the phone yanked out of its socket, and the answering machine dashed against a massive gold-framed mirror. Shards of glass riddled the floor, and the sweet smell of alcohol mingled with bodily fluids.
Jesus, Rainie thought. She couldn’t get beyond that. Jesus.
Special Agent Rodman was moving. She led Rainie into the dining room, where crime-scene technicians were now dusting a gleaming cherrywood table for prints, while another pair of officers were rolling up the oriental rug to be shipped to the lab. Glenda paused again. She was providing a tour of the scene, Rainie realized. Giving discreet but effective highlights of events.
It would appear that the attack started in the foyer. Given the spray pattern, the weapon was maybe a knife or blunt object. Elizabeth is ambushed. Elizabeth fights back. Elizabeth runs into the dining room. A gilded French lamp. Rainie saw it ripped out of the wall and flung across the room. The base bore a small round mark of blood and hair. His? Hers? She supposed it depended on who grabbed the lamp first. More spray patterns on the far wall. Someone had taken another solid hit, probably Elizabeth.
Bloody footprints on the oak parquet floor. Rainie and Glenda followed them into the Spanish-style kitchen, where a large butcher’s block of knives had been overturned on the tiled counter. The smaller knives, paring knives, steak knives, had been knocked on the floor as someone—again him, her, who got here first?—reached frantically for the butcher blades. It had not gone well. More blood, smeared along the vast expanse of deep blue tiles, a larger print on the floor.
Rainie could see it now. Quiet, refined Elizabeth Quincy attacked, wounded, already dizzy from terror and blood loss, racing into the kitchen. Knowing she was overpowered and outmaneuvered. Desperate to even the odds. Then seeing her collection of knives. And making a desperate gamble.
Poor, poor, Elizabeth. Knives were always a bad choice for a woman. Blades required skill, strength, and reach, attributes better suited to a man. It was one of those things police officers got to analyze in case studies. Women who ran into the kitchen for a knife, almost always had it used on them instead. Bethie should have gone after a cast iron skillet. Something big and heavy that could punish an opponent without a great deal of accuracy.
Had she realized that as he caught her at the end of the counter? Had she considered her other options as she went down on the hardwoods, her bloody fingers scrabbling at the cupboard handles, desperate for support?
On the floor was a clear imprint of her hip and her thigh as she’d fallen on her side. But somehow she’d managed to fight him off, because the blood trail kept going. She had been tough. Or he simply hadn’t wanted it to end.
“It’s trickier in here,” Special Agent Rodman murmured. “Follow the tape.”
For the first time, Rainie noticed the masking tape forming a thin, zig-zagging line through the debris field. Smart, she decided, having once worked a large, complicated crime scene herself. By the time all was said and done, dozens of people would have walked through this house, searching for evidence and providing their individual areas of expertise. It would take weeks to sort it all out, and months to write it all up. Best to try and corral the intrusion from the very start, versus trying to sort out all the sources of contamination later, as she had needed to do.
Rainie tiptoed along the masking tape, following it into the hallway, where the burgundy runner carried wet splotches and the walls bore a cacophony of bloody handprints. The prints ran the length of the tight, claustrophobic space, an obscene version of sponge painting. Jesus, Rainie thought again.
“We think he did this postmortem,” Glenda said.
“But the palm prints are too small to be his.”
“They’re not his.”
“Quincy walked through all this?” Rainie asked sharply.
“Many times. At his own request.”
They came to the master bedroom. Rainie didn’t look at the bed right away. The ME and his assistant were standing over there and she did not want to see what they were studying that had already caused the assistant to turn an unnatural shade of green. She looked at the perimeter first. More shattered mirrors. Two lamps ripped from the wall. Another phone jerked from a nightstand. Pillows had been gutted, strewing feathers across the deep-pile rug. Perfume bottles had been shattered, leaving the horrible, cloying scent of flowers in a blood-ravaged room.
“Somebody had to have heard something,” Rainie said, her voice no longer quite sounding like her own. “How could all of this go on without someone calling the police???
?
“The previous owner was a concert pianist,” Glenda said. “When he had the town house redone twenty years ago, he soundproofed the walls so he wouldn’t disturb his neighbors.”
“Who . . . who finally called the police?”
“Quincy.”
“He was here?”
“He claims he drove here shortly after midnight, when he still couldn’t reach his ex-wife by phone. He was worried about her safety, so he took a ride.”
“He claims?” Rainie didn’t like that phrase. “He claims?”
Special Agent Rodman wouldn’t meet her gaze anymore. “There is a stained-glass window broken in the master bathroom,” she murmured. “One theory is that the UNSUB broke into the house earlier in the evening, and surprised Mrs. Quincy when she came home.”
“One theory?”
“This house is equipped with a state-of-the-art alarm system. It never went off.”
“Was it armed?”
“We are working with the security company now to determine that information. They should be able to provide us with a record of the system’s most recent activity.”
“So one theory is that a stranger broke in and ambushed her. The second would be that the attacker was someone she knew and trusted.” Rainie could no longer contain herself. “You’re looking at Quincy, aren’t you? Goddammit, you suspect him!”
“No, I don’t!” Special Agent Rodman spoke up in a low hush. Her gaze darted toward the ME, then she quickly bent closer. “Listen to me, Ms. Conner. It is not in my nature to share information about a case. And it is certainly not in my nature to needlessly provide details to some out-of-state pseudo-cop. But it would appear that you and Special Agent Quincy are friends, and he’s going to need friends. We—meaning the Bureau—are behind him right now. Personally, I have spent all day listening to various sexual sadists leave not-very-subtle messages on his answering machine. We understand that there is more to this situation than meets the eye. We cannot, however, say the same for the locals.”
“You’re the feds, pull rank!”
“Can’t.”
“Bullshit!”
“Honey, there’s this thing called law. Look it up sometime.”
Rainie scowled. “Where is he? Can I talk to him?”
“Detectives willing, you can try.”
“I want to see him.”
“Then follow me.”
Glenda headed back toward the hallway. Passing through the doorway, Rainie made the mistake this time of looking at the bed. She could not quite contain the gasp that rose up in her throat.
Glenda glanced at her grimly. She said once more, “Quincy needs friends.”
Two plainclothes detectives had Quincy sequestered off in the one room that appeared spared in the attack. At any other time, Rainie might have laughed at the incongruous sight. This room had obviously been one of the girls’, the walls papered in a soft yellow with tiny pink and lilac flowers, the twin bed covered in a matching comforter, and the canopy top draped with yards of dreamy white gauze. A white wicker makeup table sat against one wall, topped by an oval mirror and still bearing small photos marking a young girl’s major passages in life—leaping in cheerleading practice, arms wrapped around a best friend, attending the prom. A dried corsage hung from a ribbon on the mirror, and a collection of brightly colored stuffed animals sat on the dresser top.
The room offered only a dainty, lilac-covered wicker bench, now occupied by one burly detective whose chin was nearly resting upon his knees. The other detective stood, while Quincy sat on the gauze-draped bed with a ruffled yellow pillow tucked against his thigh. The Gestapo does Laura Ashley, Rainie thought, and wished the sight of Quincy’s pale, tightly shuttered face didn’t twist her heart painfully in her chest.
“What time did you say you arrived again?” the seated detective was asking. He had a single fierce, bushy brow that overshadowed his eyes—Cro-Magnon man in a cheap gray suit.
“A little after midnight. I did not glance at my watch.”
“The neighbor, Mrs. Betty Wilson, claims she saw the victim return home with a man fitting your description shortly after ten P.M.”
“I was not here at ten P.M. As I’ve stated already, I did not arrive here until after midnight.”
“Where were you at ten?”
“By definition, Detective, I was in my car at ten P.M., driving here, so I could arrive after twelve.”
“Got any witnesses to that?”
“I drove here alone.”
“What about toll receipts?”
“I never asked for any receipts. At the time, I didn’t realize that I would need an alibi.”
The two detectives exchanged glances. Victim’s ex-husband appears evasive and unnecessarily hostile. Let’s get the thumbscrews and brass knuckles.
Rainie figured now was a good time to interrupt. “Detectives,” she said quietly.
Three pairs of eyes swung toward her. The two detectives scowled, obviously assuming she was a lawyer—who else would turn up at this time of night/morning? Quincy, on the other hand, registered no reaction at all. He had obviously seen his ex-wife’s remains on her feather-strewn bed. After that, any further emotion would be superfluous.
“Who the hell are you?” Cro-Magnon did the honors.
“Who do you think? Name is Conner, Lorraine Conner.”
She held out her hand authoritatively, and with the long-suffering sigh policemen reserve just for lawyers, Cro-Magnon conceded to shake her hand—with a crushing grip. “Detective Kincaid,” he muttered. Rainie turned to his partner, a slightly built man with intense blue eyes. “Albright,” he supplied and shook her hand as well while giving her a more appraising assessment. Rainie pegged him as the brains behind the operation. Cro-Magnon rattled the beehive. Smaller, less threatening guy took excellent notes.
“Where are we?” Rainie asked, plopping down on the bed as if she had every right to be here. In the doorway, Special Agent Rodman wore a small smile.
“Trying to establish an alibi—”
“Are you saying that an FBI agent is a suspect?” Rainie gave smaller, less threatening guy an imperious stare.
“He is the ex-husband.”
Rainie turned to Quincy. “How long have you been divorced?”
“Eight years.”
“Do you have any current legal proceedings against your ex-wife?”
“No.”
“Do you stand to gain any money upon her death?”
“No.”
Rainie turned back to the detectives. “Is it just me, or is there a total lack of motive here?”
“Is it true that you purchased a red Audi TT coupe two weeks ago in New York?” Detective Albright asked Quincy.
“No,” Rainie answered for him.
“Counselor, we have a record of the vehicle’s registration, bearing the agent’s name.”
“Fraudulent purchase. A man posing as Supervisory Special Agent Quincy made that purchase, as the FBI is already aware of and actively investigating. Isn’t that correct, Special Agent Rodman?”
“We are actively investigating,” Glenda provided dutifully from the doorway.
Rainie addressed the detectives once more. She took a page out of Quincy’s book, keeping her voice crisp and manner perfectly relentless. “Are you aware that someone is currently stalking Supervisory Special Agent Quincy? Are you aware that his personal telephone number has been made available to prisoners all across the country? In addition, someone has used his name to make a series of purchases”—slight lie, but it sounded better—“all of which is currently being investigated by reputable agents at the Bureau. Perhaps you should consider that before you proceed.”
“And are you aware,” Detective Albright replied in her same cadence, “that Agent Quincy has logged eight calls to his ex-wife’s house in the last twenty-four hours?”
“As he said, he was worried about her.”
“Why? They’ve been divorced eight years.”
 
; Oh, score one for the homicide detective.
“Elizabeth had asked me to run a background check.” Quincy spoke up quietly. Rainie wished he wouldn’t. He sounded too composed, too professional, like someone who had walked through such scenes hundreds of times and made his living by reviewing them hundreds more. She understood his detachment. She even heard the subtle, more dangerous thread of anger beneath his words, while noticing that his right hand was clenched too tightly on his lap and his left hand clutched the edge of the mattress as if he was trying to keep himself from spinning away. She wished she could touch him. She was afraid of how savage his reaction might be. So she merely sat behind him, pretending to be his lawyer so she could stay at his side, and wishing he’d trust her more, because his FBI composure was only going to sink him further with the local boys.
“However,” Quincy was continuing, “I could find no record of the name Bethie gave me. Coupled with the incidents going on in my own life, I grew concerned about who this person was and what he might do.”
“Name?”
“Tristan Shandling.”
“How did she meet Shandling?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did she meet him?”
“I don’t know.”
Detective Albright arched a brow. “So, let me get this straight. You’re conscientious enough to run a background check, but you didn’t ask your ex-wife any questions?”
“As you said, Detective, we’d been divorced eight years. Her personal life is not my business anymore.”
“Personal life? So you suspected he was a new love interest—”
“I didn’t say that,” Quincy interjected sharply. But it was too late. Detective Albright was already making fresh notes. And now, Rainie thought with a sigh, they had motive—the ever-classic, ever-popular, jealous ex.
“Detectives,” she said crisply. “While I’m sure we all have nothing better to do at five in the morning than continue this conversation, aren’t you missing the obvious?”
Detective Albright cocked his head and regarded her curiously. Cro-Magnon went with the more obvious, “Huh?”
“Look at this house. Look at this scene. There is blood everywhere; there are indications of a savage fight. Now behold Supervisory Special Agent Quincy: His suit is immaculate, his shoes are polished, and his hands and face don’t bear a single mark. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”