Price of Innocence Read online

  “Stay behind the coffee table,” she ordered.

  He nodded again.

  They’d done this before. Her setting the limits, him sticking to them.

  There’d be plenty to process. From here, he could see the living room and, partly visible through connecting archways, a smaller room past it with an antique desk, with more dead plants. Then, beyond that, lit up like the inside of a snow globe, a tiny glass-enclosed porch extending into a patio, where the plants were not dead. Yet. Winter would be gunning for them soon enough.

  A privacy fence separated the brick patio from the neighbor next door and the alley behind. The side of a garage formed the third wall. Flower beds lined the entire area, with breaks only for the lockable gate to the alley and the doors to the garage and back door.

  Drawing his gaze to close range, he considered a layer of debris littering the living room. Contents of drawers and shelves spilled across each other, mixing richly colored paisley napkins with a broken ivory candle, two playing cards, a book with a brick mansion on its cover and another with a plain red leather binding, resting on the edges of fanned pages.

  Gaps showed.

  Gaps where a TV, other electronics might have been expected to sit. And smaller gaps. He wondered if this victim had boasted the sort of silver and antique collections he’d seen in houses in this part of Fairlington.

  Not wanton destruction. All tied to searching for or removing items. Saleable items.

  Beneath the debris, the room presented the kind of place anybody could like. Nothing fussy. Straight-lined beige sofa with plenty of cushions. An ottoman for your feet and a coffee table for a drink. Bookshelves filled with books, not doodads. An oil painting over the brick fireplace, where most people might put a portrait. Instead, this edged toward abstract, though even he could tell it showed trees arching over a river without it looking like a photograph. It gave him the impression of a breeze moving through the trees. Pretty good for a painting.

  He stepped over an upside-down tray that appeared to have been displaced from the ottoman.

  Without going any deeper into the room, a framed photograph, askew on an eye-level shelf, drew his attention.

  A group photo. By a river, with trees arching over it—

  His gaze snapped back to above the fireplace mantel.

  —like the painting. Close enough to be the same place.

  A place important to the owner of photograph and painting.

  The painting bought because of the resemblance or because it was the same place?

  Possibly the other way around — the photo taken at that spot because it was so close to the painting.

  He focused on the photograph. Squinting a bit to bring it into sharper focus, both because of the distance and the angle.

  A hard thwump in his chest felt as if someone punched him.

  On the right side of the group in the photo, a little apart, yet still looking more relaxed and at ease than usual, stood Maggie Frye.

  Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Margaret Frye.

  Mags.

  The most tenacious prosecutor in Fairlington County. The one he and Landis worked with most. The one he respected most. One of the rare people he’d call a friend.

  The fiercely private person who’d guarded her past.

  And the last person on this earth who needed any more tragedy and grief in her life.

  Staring at the photo that included Maggie Frye, memories surfaced. Ones he thought were long settled. He swore.

  A litany of curses. Long and vehement. He was aware of heads turning toward him, the woman by the window, more techs in the hallway, the group around the body, but he didn’t stop. And he didn’t move.

  “What is it?” Landis asked, now beside him.

  Belichek pointed.

  “The photo? What about—? Is that…? Maggie?” Landis leaned toward the photo, also without going farther into the room. “It is. It’s Mags. What the—?”

  Belichek swung around on Schmidt, still trailing Landis. “Who lives here? The name.”

  “Chandler— No. Chancellor. Sorry. It’s Chancellor.”

  “Jamison Chancellor.” Belichek heard the heaviness in his own voice, failure the anchor dragging it down. Felt the stillness as everyone watched him. “Founder of the Sunshine Foundation. The one everybody said was creating something good out of the murder of her aunt years back. Vivian Frye — her aunt, and Maggie’s.”

  A murmur rose now. Maggie? Maggie Frye? From the CA’s office?

  No sense holding on to that secret any longer. Maggie’s past was going to be out there for everybody to paw over now.

  But he said the words only to Landis.

  “Our victim is Maggie’s cousin.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ford Belichek hung up from the worst phone call he’d ever made.

  And there was tough competition. A lot of tough competition.

  He stared out the windshield of his vehicle, back in the dark, where he’d retreated for privacy for the call.

  He’d made sure the uniform he’d sent to pick up Maggie was already outside her townhouse before he called.

  He figured they had twenty, maybe thirty minutes before Maggie got here, but only because the uniform would be driving. Maggie behind the wheel, and it would be fifteen, tops.

  He needed every second to start trying to get answers to the tough questions she would ask.

  Instead, he found a phone number he’d tracked down a while back but hadn’t had cause to use before.

  “Hello.” The voice sounded a damned sight more alert than most people when they were called in the middle of the night. Made sense, since the guy had been some hot shot Army special ops type.

  “Carson? J.D. Carson?”

  “Yes.”

  Not who’s calling? Or any of that stuff. Another sign he had more than a passing familiarity with being called for business in the middle of the night.

  “This is Detective Ford Belichek of the Fairlington County Police Department. You know Maggie Frye.

  This “Yes” came just as strong, but still triggered So, the guy’s human after all in Belichek’s head.

  “She’s okay,” he said, because he wasn’t a sadist. Then, because he was a realist, he added, “Physically.”

  “What the—?”

  “Listen. I don’t usually— I know some of what happened up there in the mountains, in Bedhurst. You and Maggie. And I’m saying you should get down here to Fairlington. Fast. Her cousin’s been found dead. Looks like murder.” Looks like? Hell. Hard to make this anything other than murder. “She knows. She’s on the way to the scene. Maggie needs … a friend. Support.”

  And he wasn’t going to be able to be either.

  Not and investigate her cousin’s murder at the same time.

  His own reactions? … Those would come later.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The smell in the house might have been what bothered him the most when Maggie arrived, not twenty minutes after he’d called her.

  Not the smell itself. He’d encountered that enough. So had she. Not enough to ignore it, if you ever could, but enough to work through it. What bothered him was Maggie smelling that smell. And knowing it had come from the remains of her cousin reaching the state they were in now.

  She’d given no sign of noticing it.

  She’d given no sign of anything.

  Unless you knew her really well. And then you saw that under the tough, intelligent, dogged Maggie Frye everyone knew, she was crumbling. Shreds of heart and bone disintegrating before his eyes.

  She certainly hadn’t stepped on their toes — his and Landis’ — or on the toes of any of the crime scene techs.

  That had some of the old hands exchanging glances. It was totally unlike her.

  She had not given a single order to add one more shot, pick up one more piece of evidence. Maybe because, watching her from the corners of their eyes, everyone had already gotten every shot, every piece of evidence.


  But other than a few gruff, Sorry, Maggies, no one said anything about her connection to this crime.

  “Maggie,” Belichek said to her, hands in his pockets, head down as if contemplating the tall baseboard that ran around every room, even in this small office where they stood. “What’s with this?”

  “With … this?” She sounded groggy.

  “Your cousin. Living here.”

  “Oh. Owning this house.” Her face seemed to crack, but not into a recognizable smile or a sob, and the pieces remained out of sync, not sure which direction to go. “Jamie inherited it from a great-aunt on her mother’s side. Along with the money to run it.”

  “That’s how she funded starting the Sunshine Foundation?” Landis asked.

  The foundation was renowned for practical aid to families, admirable finances, and its youthful founder.

  The cracks in her face deepened. “No. She hadn’t inherited when she founded Sunshine. She wasn’t even in high school when she started it. Earned money with all kinds of fund-raisers, including damned bake sales, if you can believe it. Also marching into businesses, soliciting funds. Didn’t know what hit them. By the time she was out of college and had this place, she’d put the Sunshine Foundation on the map.”

  “Why was she found here like this? Why didn’t somebody notice? Had to be weeks.”

  Landis cut him a look, surely remembering the uniforms reporting neighbors said she was supposed to be on some trip. Belichek wanted to hear from Maggie — if she knew, what she knew.

  She loved her cousin. He didn’t doubt that. But best to know from the start how tuned in she’d been to her cousin’s life.

  He suspected not very, considering how much Mags worked and how good she was at stiff-arming people from getting close.

  At least she had been that way.

  She’d been different since she came back from a case in Bedhurst in the western part of Virginia. Not cuddly — hell, she was still Mags. But different.

  “She left — she was supposed to leave Labor Day weekend to spend a month at a cabin in Pennsylvania, somewhere along the border with western Maryland. Final push to finish another book. She’d done this before with three previous books. You know about her books?”

  He nodded, Landis grunted acknowledgment of the books acclaimed for a straightforward, unpretentious approach to becoming a better person, making a better world.

  People loved reading her books. As far as Belichek could tell, none of those people actually changed.

  Jamison Chancellor didn’t ask for much — just to have everyone be happy, just to change human beings.

  Had she died for that goal? Or something a lot less esoteric?

  Maggie continued. “Said she needed to shake free of the daily running of the foundation to finish.”

  “When was she supposed to leave, get back?”

  “I don’t know precisely. She might have told me. I don’t know. Her parents, our other cousin, the foundation, they’ll all know.”

  The words came flat, but Belichek knew. He thought Landis did, too.

  She blamed herself for not knowing those details.

  Then, she said something more. “They wouldn’t be surprised not hearing from her. Any of them, all of them. When she does these stints, she cuts herself off. No phone, no Internet, nothing. I don’t believe anyone even knows where this cabin is precisely. I don’t. But we need to find out. Check it. Be sure she hadn’t been there and come back. Pin down the timeline.”

  So there was still their Maggie inside.

  “We will.”

  Except the body wouldn’t be in this state if Jamie Chancellor had come back recently.

  Nobody could blame Maggie for not incorporating that bit of detail into her thinking, even as they all noted how different it was from her usual every-detail-sharp focus.

  One question from Landis and she spelled out the basics they needed.

  Names, addresses, relationships, work and romantic history. She acknowledged gaps in the romantic history. What she told them was accurate, but there might be guys she hadn’t known about. Everything presented logically, organized — perfect for their purposes, except it took the guts right out of her.

  Then she stood, silent and still, watching the techs some, but mostly staring.

  Nobody suggested she get out of there.

  Not until one of the uniforms assigned to the door came up to Belichek apologetically and said in a low voice, “There’s a guy insisting we let you know he’s here. Won’t take no for an answer. Name of Carson.”

  “Check him in as far as the front steps.”

  Then Belichek went to Maggie.

  “Time for you to go, Mags.”

  She blinked. It didn’t change the dullness in her eyes. “I’m not getting in anybody’s way.”

  “No, you’re not. Still, time for you to go.”

  “If I leave…”

  “It’s going to be just as real if you stay. C’mon.”

  He gestured her to go ahead of him. The fact that she did with no more protest confirmed what he’d thought.

  Landis fell in behind him. “She can’t drive.”

  “She won’t,” he told his partner.

  Outside, Maggie slipped off the coverings and checked out automatically.

  “I’ll leave you all to it. I know you’ll do everything you can to find out who did this, and I’ll tell her—” She swallowed. “—family exactly that.”

  She went down the stairs.

  They remained at the top.

  She half turned back toward them, to say something more, Belichek thought. Then a figure stepped from the shadow cast by a police vehicle and moved toward her. She stilled.

  The man looked better than in photos a few years old Belichek looked up. More settled. Solid.

  Getting out from under a murder charge could do that for a man.

  J.D. Carson didn’t put his arms around her, which would have been the absolute wrong thing to do for Maggie. He didn’t touch her at all.

  He said, “C’mon, Maggie. I’m driving.”

  “I have to tell her parents. They’re down in Fredericksburg.”

  Landis had already dispatched a pair of officers to the parents’ house an hour away with orders to wait for Maggie, but to go in with her, to catch those first, uncensored reactions. Just in case.

  “Then that’s where I’m driving.”

  After a long moment of staring at Carson, Maggie said, “Okay.”

  As he turned to head back into the darkness with her, Carson met Belichek’s look and gave a single, short nod of acknowledgment.

  Landis elbowed his back. “Your doing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The guy from Bedhurst?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  They stood there for another fifteen seconds.

  “C’mon,” Landis said.

  * * * *

  Before they entered the house, a male voice called, “Are you the officer in charge?”

  It didn’t come from the scattering of spectators in front of them, but from their left. They both turned.

  A man stood on the steps of the house next door.

  “Sir?” Belichek stepped half in front of Landis.

  His partner didn’t need a second invitation. He went into the house.

  “It’s a tragedy. Young woman like that.” The man didn’t sound particularly broken up. But some people didn’t.

  “It is.”

  He shifted his head, as if trying to see into the house, though it was impossible from his angle. “When will the house be released?”

  “That decision’s well above my pay grade.”

  “Going to be caught up in bureaucracy, is it?”

  “Less bureaucracy, more a murder investigation.”

  The man expelled a sharp breath out his nose. Impatient, scoffing. “Shame. As I said, a real shame a young woman like that.”

  The right words, even the tone was right. But that bre
ath…

  Incongruity always caught Belichek. When words said one thing, actions another, lies often caught in the cracks. Lies that revealed truth.

  “You knew the household, then?”

  “Household?” he repeated sharply. “You make it sound like there were others. It was only her on the deed.”

  “Is that so? Have you given your statement, sir?”

  “I don’t have anything to say for a statement. Don’t know a thing. Wasn’t here. Don’t know—”

  “With your familiarity with the household—” He emphasized it. “—we want to be sure to get your statement. Officer Schmidt?”

  The young uniform had been about to follow Landis inside, but came immediately to Belichek’s side. “If you’ll get this gentleman’s statement with as much information about the neighborhood as possible?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I just wanted to know—”

  “If you’ll come down here, sir,” Schmidt told the neighbor. “Or we can go inside your house and—”

  “No, no. I’m coming down.”

  Belichek went inside, feeling good about Schmidt’s career prospects.

  Landis came up to him. “Interesting?”

  “Odd.”

  He nodded, knowing Belichek’s distinctions. “Now? Or later?”

  “Later.”

  Then they got back to work.

  Examining the proof of the worst failure of Ford Belichek’s life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The accumulation of information and observation was a talisman of sorts.

  Protecting Belichek against horror, against smell, against pity, against guilt, against the burn chewing on his stomach and spitting bile into his throat. His mind and motor skills followed a familiar path over the next hours, collecting views of unique scenery.

  Finally, with the crime scene crew working toward wrap-up, the neighbors questioned, the body mercifully dispatched, the TV lights and cameras long departed, the sky in the direction of the Potomac River pearled gray, Belichek and Landis sat on stairs to the second floor to drink tepid coffee.

  “First question,” Landis said, beginning a routine they’d developed at the start of their partnership to help shift mental gears from the first gathering of information — any information, all information — to the beginning of sorting and assessing. “Why wasn’t she found until now?”