“Why don’t you come up to my room?” Kay said. They walked toward the elevator and it opened immediately after she pushed the button. The ride to the eighth floor was quiet as detective Chanello was tired and detective Mangino was waiting for his lead.
Kay got her key out and opened the door. “Why don’t you sit on the bed, and I’ll sit here.” She sat down on the only chair in the room.
“I may have some information about Melanie’s murder, and possibly Mr. Massey being a suspect because of his son, Jay. I talked to Mrs. Baker a few days ago". The detectives just looked at each other in shock. They had just spent all day at Maureen’s house cleaning up her crime scene and now they find out that Kay knew her. The daughter in law of Mr. Massey knows Maureen?
“Why don’t you tell us what she had to say,” said Kate?
“Jay goes to the school where I teach. He came by a couple of mornings ago to say hi before class and I was talking to Maureen. When she saw him, she remembered an episode that had happened the previous semester.” Kay explained the whole story to the detectives.
“When was the last time you saw Maureen?”
“It was last week at school.”
“You haven’t talked to her since at a grocery store or over the phone?”
“No."
"Why don’t you tell us why you decided to tell us today about this episode?”
“I knew that Mr. Massey killed that girl when I read that first story in the paper that the police went over to his house for questioning. When I saw that second story that the girl had called Child Protective Services, I got scared out of my mind. The story was in the papers just a day or two after Maureen told me about her experience with Jay. There are two things you need to know about Mr. Massey; he loves his son more than anything and he hates women. If a woman tried to take his son, I know he would kill over it.”
“Why does he hate women?”
“Because his wife cheated on him with some Ivy League attorney,Mr. Sorenstein.”
Mangino took a deep swallow to clear the lump in her throat.
Chanello spoke up, “He was murdered a long time ago.”
“And why do you think he was murdered, detective,” asked Kay?
Jim stood up and walked toward the window. It was dark outside with a few flickers of light coming from the street below.
“He was murdered because he had sex with Mr. Massey’s wife, not because he refused to take the case of some thug.”
Kate Mangino said, “Excuse me,” and walked to the bathroom.
Jim thought she looked teary eyed and knew it had been a long day for her.
“What are you going to do detective,” asked Kay?
Jim was zoned out and walked over to the bathroom to listen for crying from detective Mangino. Today she had seen a horrible murder scene, and it was the worst one Chanello had ever seen. He couldn’t fathom how it affected Kate Mangino? And then there was the young girl. He still couldn’t believe anyone could do that to a child.
He knocked on the door, “Are you alright?”
The door opened and Kate quickly walked past him while teary eyed, “I’m fine.”
Kay Massey didn’t realize what was happening. “What are you going to do detective,” she asked again?
“I am going to continue to solve Melanie and Maureen’s murders, and I am going to reopen the book on Mr. Sorenstein’s murder.”
Kay told them that she had confronted Mr. Massey over what Maureen had said about her conversation with Jay last year. They asked how he responded when accused, and she recalled that he very calmly said he didn’t know what she was talking about.
The detectives decided to leave. Kay got up to walk them to the door. Detective Mangino gave Kay a hug while he shook her hand.
“We’ll have a 24-hour team of police officers escorting you wherever you want to go. They’ll protect you.”
The detectives got in the car and drove out of the hotel parking lot. It was lightly drizzling and there were only a few cars on the road during the late hour. At first detective Chanello was quiet while Mangino was looking at him, waiting for him to say something.
“You know, I am confused as hell. We think Donny has to be the murderer. We have a motive, witnesses heard him say he would kill her, he runs from the police. Then, this lead turns to Mr. Massey.”
“A weak lead at best,” injects his partner.
“Maybe, it’s a weak lead. The reason it might be weak, is that a boy saying outrageous things about women, or to women, doesn’t seem like much of a motive. Then Maureen turns up dead, but this crime is more heinous. It looks like there was sexual assault, which is a very different crime than killing an ex-girlfriend or killing someone to keep them from talking.”
“Besides, Donny is in jail. So, either Mr. Massey killed both or Donny killed Melanie and Mr. Massey killed Maureen.”
“Or Marco?”
Detective Chanello pulled into an empty parking lot of a local Food Lion and parked the car.
“Is that what it means, or could it be somebody entirely different. I still buy the Donny killed Melanie theory, but is Mr. Massey a rapist murderer?”
“The calls were about his child and he seems to reflect a hatred towards women.”
“I know, I guess. I think it is strange what his son said to Maureen, but it’s not like she found any bruises on him.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, even if they are only internal ones.”
He just looked at her with questioning eyes.
The next day, there was a somber mood at the police station. Detective Chanello told Mangino that Kay was threatening to leave town and Sonia Shriver was in a state of shock that the last two people who have called her office about Mr. Massey’s son are now dead.
“She is thinking about launching an investigation on her own, but I told her that she was wasting her time.”
“Why is that?” “I went over to Mr. Massey’s house this morning and he won’t say a word.”
“Yeah, but she could talk to his child. He is old enough to tell us important information.”
“That is a good idea. Do you want me to call her?”
“Yes, but we want to be there, and we want to be an integral part of the questions she asks Jay.”
Detective Mangino picked up the phone. She was depressing the buttons to Sonia Shriver’s office when Detective Chanello yelled.
“Wait a minute!” She looked up at him.
“Talk to her but see if she will go ahead with this idea.” Kate listened to what he had to say. She told him it was a good idea worth trying and proceeded to call Sonia.
“Hello.”
“Is this detective Chanello?”
“Yes, it is?”
“This is Dr. Sommerfeld at the Trauma Center. I have some good news for you.”
“What is it, Doctor?”
“We have found blood and a little bit of flesh on the teeth of Maureen Baker’s daughter. It may be her attacker’s. We have sent it to the lab for testing and we should know for sure in a couple of days. If you catch a suspect, a blood test will tell us if he is the killer.
“That is good news. How is our child?”
“She is improving. In a couple of days we’ll know for sure.”
“Keep up the good work, doc.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
Detective Chanello explained his conversation to his partner.
“So, she bit him?”
“I think we need to go talk to Mr. Massey. If we find bite marks on his hand, that will mean he did it and a blood test would prove it beyond all reasonable doubt. Donny didn’t do it since he was in jail. It must have been Mr. Massey.”
“Should we call, or should we just show up?”
“I think we should just drive to his house and have a little talk with him. We’ll tell him it’s not about the murder if he has someone else open the door. All we need to see is teeth marks on either of his wrists, and we’ll arrest him right there.”
The detective pulled up to his house. They walked to the door and rang the bell.
“Hello,” said a Spanish lady.
“I’m detective Chanello and this is detective Mangino. We are here to see Mr. Massey.”
“Hold on a minute,” she said. She shut the door and left the detectives standing there. After a couple of minutes she returned.
“He doesn’t want to talk to any detective. He already say all he has to say.”
“I’m sorry. We are here to apologize to Mr. Massey for the inconvenience we have caused him. We would just like to talk to him so that we can tell him we caught the murderer and he is free.”
“Hold on one minute please.” She shut the door again.
“Do you think that worked,” Chanello asked his partner?
“You are so full of shit,” she answered.
“Hello detectives. I am Mr. Allen, one of Mr. Massey’s attorneys. He is out of the country right now. I hear you have solved the murder.
“That’s right. Could you tell us what country he is in and how we can get a hold of him?”
“I am not sure. Can you tell me who it was?”
“We can’t. We haven’t picked him up yet and officially charged him. We are still looking for him. When do you expect Mr. Massey to return?”
“I don’t think it will be too long. Is the accused running or what?”
“No, he is traveling back down from northern California. We will probably have him in custody either tonight or tomorrow.”
“What country is he in,” Chanello asked again?
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Like I said, I am Mr. Massey’s attorney. Everything I know about him is privileged information.”
“His location is privileged?”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“So, you are not going to help us?”
“If you know who the murderer is, I don’t see why his whereabouts is so urgent?”
“You are right. Have a nice day.”
The detectives got in their car. “He is out of the country because he knows he is a suspect. He feels his hand throb and sees the little girl’s bite marks and knows we are looking for him.”
“How long before they heal?”
“I don’t know, a week or a month? Believe me, when he gets back in the country, they’ll be gone.”
“If we can get his blood sample, we can still match it to what was in her mouth. Do you think we have enough probable cause to get it?”
“In my mind we do, but who knows that a damn judge will say. Besides, we have our follow up plan.”
----------------------------------------
Sonia was sitting in her office in the dark. She was looking out the window, wondering if the rain would ever stop. There were cars slowly driving by with their headlights on and she wondered if they felt as lonely as she did. “Was I responsible for the deaths of those two women,” she kept asking herself?
Life seemed so empty. She got into this kind of work to help children because nothing made her more mad than abusive parents. When she was a little girl, she would go to church and hear about the one of the ten commandments in the Bible, which tells children to obey their parents.
But she found something that was missing there. Even very bad children could not break a parent’s soul. They could shame them publicly, but an abusive parent could destroy a child on the inside. The abuse could be physical or emotional. Scars can heal on the skin, but not on the heart. Hence, this is why she is in this line of work.
But taking children away from their parents can cause them harm as well. Once the vicious cycle of rejection has started, it is hard to stop, like a truck speeding down a mountain.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” She stood up because no one responded. “Who is it?” She pushed her chair back and was frozen with fear. “Who is it,” she yelled as she picked up the telephone and dialed 9-1-1!
“Hello.”
“This is Sonia Shriver at Child Protective Services. I am the only one here right now. At least I thought I was. Someone knocked at my door but isn’t answering when I ask who it is. Please send a police officer now.”
“We have your address. I’ll dispatch an officer right away.”
“Thank you.”
She got out her letter opener and was holding it like a weapon. It was the sharpest thing she could find. She slowly walked over to her office door and opened it. There was no one there. As she stepped out into the hall and began walking the panic gripped her. “Someone could be behind any of these doors,” she thought? Sonia walked past one door and then another, but she couldn’t take it any longer. She started running towards the staircase. As she reached for the handle someone opened it from the inside. She screamed.
“Sonia it’s me,” detective Chanello said, “Calm down.”
She was sobbing. “Did you see anyone?”
“No. Someone knocked on my door, but no one answered when I asked who was there?”
Detective Chanello walked up to each door in the hallway with his pistol drawn. As he slowly pushed the door open, he pointed his gun inside. Sonia was right behind him. They checked behind each door on the floor but found nothing.
“It could have been a prank or a cleaning person. Once they saw you in the office, they just kept walking on. A lot of them don’t speak very much English so maybe that’s why they didn’t say anything.”
“I hope you are right,” she said as she could feel her heart thumping. When she looked down at her blouse, she could see it pounding as well.
“How did you get here so fast,” she asked?
“I was on my way to see you.”
“Really? Let’s go back into my office and you can tell me what about? Is it about the plan Mangino told me about?”
“It’s along those lines. When she talked to you, we just wanted you to threaten that you would take his son, not actually do it. All that has changed now. Detective Mangino and I tried to go and talk to him today, but his lawyer says he is out of the country.”
Detective Chanello explained their visit to Mr. Massey. “Now we need to take his child immediately…”
Sonia interrupted, “because this will bring him back into the country and you can check his hand for bite marks?”
“Hopefully we can get a warrant from a judge to check his blood, in case the bite marks have disappeared.”
There was a knock on Sonia’s door. Detective Chanello pulled out his gun and immediately yelled, “Who’s there?”
“It’s Dr. Jones.”
“Come on in Jonathon,” she said. “It’s alright. We have a date.”
“What’s going on? Why do you have your gun out?”
Detective Chanello and Sonia just looked at each other. “I’ll tell you about it later,” she said.
“Are you ready to go?” asked Dr. Jones.
“Yeah. Let me turn my secretary’s computer off.” As she said it, she walked out the door.
It was only detective Chanello and Dr. Jones in the room
“Hey. I want to apologize for being such an ass at Mrs. Baker’s house. I know you got there as soon as you were finished with your previous case.”
“Don’t worry about it. We are all uptight with these murders.”
“That was probably the worst murder I had ever seen.”
“Me too.”
Sonia walked back in her office and asked Dr. Jones if he was ready. All three of them walked out of the building and began chatting about non work related stuff.
“When they arrived at Chanello’s car, Dr. Jones and Sonia told the detective goodbye.
They walked a few more parking spaces over to Dr. Jones’ car. As Sonia sat in the passenger seat she asked, “Can we get a late dinner? I want to take you back to my place first”