A Matter of Trust

Chapter 15





Charlie had gone to Colleen Miller’s house so many times in the past three days that his car could probably drive itself there. Now the drive passed in a blur as he ground his teeth over Mia Quinn. She was a real piece of work. Some goody-two-shoes who had probably never had a single piece of Colleen’s candy, not after considering the nine calories or whatever it might cost her. He was sure she ironed her jeans and never, ever did a rolling stop at an otherwise empty four-way intersection, the way Charlie was doing right now.

He pulled up behind Mia just as she was getting out of her big SUV that badly needed a wash. And for a moment, before she realized he was there, Charlie saw Mia’s face when it wasn’t animated by anger. Instead, it was naked, vulnerable, contorted by loss upon loss.

Maybe Charlie should give her the benefit of the doubt. First of all, she had been close to Colleen, and Colleen had good taste in people. And second, and more important, what he had told her back at the office was true. They had to work together if they wanted to solve Colleen’s murder.

When Mia turned to face him, she had her professional mask firmly back in place. He gave her a nod.

The crime-scene tape was gone, but the signs of the murder and its aftermath were everywhere. The ground still bore the boot impressions of the techs. The window through which Colleen had been shot was boarded up with plywood. All the windowsills were covered with black fingerprint powder. The frame for the front door was smudged gray.

Mia rapped on the door. A second later it was answered by a tall girl with short hair that was most definitely violet.

Charlie had never met Violet before, but in some ways her face was now as familiar to him as any minor movie star’s. Searching Colleen’s home and office, he’d seen hundreds of snapshots documenting Violet’s first twenty years on earth, from sleeping infant to graduating high school senior. But none of them had shown her with purple hair.

“Oh, Violet!” Mia reached out for the girl, but Violet stepped back and crossed her arms.

“Mia.” Her tone was cool. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m actually working on your mom’s case.” She turned to him. “Along with Charlie. Violet, this is Charlie Carlson, the homicide detective. Charlie, this is Violet.”

He put out his hand, but she stared at him without moving.

“So does that mean you’re a cop?” A single small gold hoop pierced Violet’s left nostril. Tasteful, if you could consider those things tasteful. Charlie wasn’t sure he ever would, which made him feel old.

He let his hand fall by his side. “I’m with the Seattle Police Department.”

She sucked in her breath and then put her hands on his chest and shoved him. Charlie was too startled to resist. Besides, he had enough weight on her that he didn’t budge.

“Violet!” Mia said in a scandalized voice.

“I thought the jerk who killed her was the one who left everything a mess, but they told me it was actually you guys! The cops! So first my mom was murdered, and then the cops went and trashed everything.” Her hands were fisted, her breathing ragged.

Charlie had made sure his team put things back, at least more or less. So clothes had gone back into drawers, but probably not folded. Papers had gone back into the filing cabinets, or at least been left in a neat pile. Charlie wasn’t like some detectives, who would just toss drawers and leave stuff lying out, not just for suspects but even for victims. But the truth was that even conscientious investigators weren’t expected to clean up after themselves. That was the victim’s—or their survivors’—responsibility.

Still, Charlie felt oddly ashamed. “I’m sorry. We do the best we can.” And it wasn’t as if they had found anything that shed light on the murder. No scraps of paper with mysterious notations, no answering machine messages from cryptic callers. He had even gone through Colleen’s key ring, looking for a strange key that might open a powerful secret: a safety deposit box, a PO box, a secret lover’s apartment. But every key had fit into a known lock.

“Violet, I don’t think I’ve seen you since this summer,” Mia said brightly, trying to press the restart button on the conversation. “I can’t get over your hair.” She reached out to ruffle the bottom edge of it.

With a grimace Violet stepped back. “I figured I had to live up to the stupid hippie name Mom gave me. As soon as I got back to school I dyed it.”

Mia and Charlie exchanged glances, then followed her into the living room with its worn but beautiful oriental carpet in shades of red, royal blue, and gold. Charlie and Mia took a seat on the red velvet couch, while Violet sat on a brown leather Morris chair and hugged her knees to her chest. It was a strange feeling to be back in a room you had only recently searched. Charlie knew what was on the bookcase, on the shelves, in the drawers.

“So who did it?” Violet demanded. “Who killed my mom?”

“We’re working on a number of angles that involve her work as a prosecutor,” Charlie said. “But we could use your help figuring out more about your mom’s personal life.”

She snorted. “So you’re saying you have no idea?”

“Violet!” Mia said.

Charlie took a deep breath. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying we are pursuing a number of leads. And we need your help. To start with, when was the last time you saw your mother, talked to her, e-mailed her, texted her . . .”

Mia shot him a look. It was a question you would ask a suspect, and she had already informed him that there was no way Violet could be one. But she had also said Violet was a sweet, quiet girl, so her judgment was suspect. And it was possible, if Violet had driven very fast, that she could have driven up to Seattle, shot her mom, and arrived back in Olympia in time to be notified by the campus police about her mother’s murder.

Still, this crime felt oddly impersonal. People who killed family members usually acted out of an outsized anger that had built up for years. An anger that didn’t dissipate until the victim had been nearly obliterated—stabbed dozens of times or beaten past all recognition. But here death had come through a single shot. There had been no overkill. And no shame afterward, no need to cover the victim’s face with a rug or sheet. A pane of glass had separated the killer from the victim, both in reality and symbolically. This felt like an execution, carried out by someone who came away with clean hands and experienced no guilt at the sight of Colleen sprawled on her old vinyl LPs, gargling her own blood.

“My mom called on Saturday night but I was kind of busy, so we didn’t talk long. It was all her just wanting to know stuff about my life and all.” Violet pressed her lips together. “I’ve told her that nobody else I know talks to their mom that much.”

There. Charlie hadn’t imagined it. Her lower lip was trembling. This girl was all hot emotion. Although he had seen killers weep before.

Mia leaned forward. “Has your mom seemed upset about anything lately?”

A shrug. “I don’t think so.” Her face was very pale, making the smattering of freckles across her nose stand out.

“Has she talked about any case that bothered her?” Mia asked.

Violet shook her head. “Mom doesn’t ever talk about work. Maybe she didn’t think I was old enough.”

“Maybe she just didn’t want to worry you,” Mia said gently. “Maybe she was afraid it would make you think the world was a dark and scary place.”

“Isn’t it?” Violet said. “Someone just assassinated my mom.”

“Assassinated?” Charlie echoed.

“Maybe that’s not the right term.” Her mouth twisted. “But somebody must have killed her just for doing her job.”

“Aside from people she prosecuted, do you know if your mom had any enemies?” Charlie asked.

“Mom? No. My mom?” Violet smirked. “Mom just wanted people to be happy. She always had some stray she was taking care of. I’m not talking animals, I’m talking people. If someone at church looked lonely, she’d ask them home for dinner. I remember one Thanksgiving she invited this old man with no teeth. I had to sit across from him and watch him slurp oatmeal.” Violet shuddered, secure in her belief that such a fate could never befall her. “And when the lady across the street lost her job, Mom used to get Costco packs of mac and cheese and leave them on the porch for her and her two kids before they got evicted.” She straightened up and put her feet on the floor. “This neighborhood isn’t as safe as it was when I was a kid. There’s lots of empty houses now, because of the recession. People have had their cars prowled, and someone up the street said she saw a strange guy in her backyard. Do you think that might have something to do with what happened to Mom?”

Charlie and Mia exchanged a look. Car prowls were usually kids with too much freedom, trying door handles until they got lucky and could make off with meter change and a few CDs, maybe an MP3 player. But the idea of a stranger standing in a backyard in Colleen’s neighborhood gave Charlie pause.

What if Colleen’s death was the result of some unstable homeless guy’s whim—a brightly lit window, a figure walking past it, a voice telling him to pull the trigger? That kind of crime—motiveless, with no connection between the killer and the victim—was almost impossible to solve, unless the killer struck again and again.

It was also extremely rare.

“Break-ins, car prowls—those are crimes of opportunity,” Charlie said. “But I don’t see how a stranger would benefit from shooting your mom. And in my experience, people are murdered for reasons. Maybe not good reasons, but still reasons. Is there anyone your mom hasn’t gotten along with lately?”

“Yeah. My dad. But Dad would never, like, what, kill Mom?” Violet snorted to show how ridiculous the idea was.

“What have they been fighting about?” Mia asked. “I thought Colleen got along pretty well with Martin.”

“He and his wife adopted a baby this summer. Did Mom tell you that?”

Mia nodded.

“I guess they finally gave up on that in vitro. Which I don’t know why they didn’t before, because they are, like, old. And this baby of theirs—I’m old enough to be its mother. The whole thing must have cost a lot, because Dad started complaining when it came time to write the tuition check.” She turned to Charlie. “See, when they got divorced, my dad told my mom he would pay for my college. It’s not like I expect him to do everything. I work part-time, and my mom helps pay for my room and board. But even though it’s a public college, it still costs twenty thousand a year, and what I make isn’t enough to cover tuition and books and all those other things.”

Could that be a motive? But if Violet’s dad had wanted to stop paying his kid’s tuition, wouldn’t it have been a better solution, if far more cold-blooded, to kill the daughter rather than the mother?

“This term,” Violet continued, “Dad’s only paid part of the tuition. The last time I talked to him I could actually hear his wife in the background telling him what to say.”

“Your stepmother,” Charlie supplied.

Violet made a face. “I guess so, but I’ve never called her that. Gina’s only fourteen years older than me, but she likes to pretend it’s even less than that.”

“How about your mom’s other personal relationships?” Charlie asked. “Do you know if she was dating?”

When Violet nodded, Mia blinked. “Really?”

“Right before I went back to college, I went into her office. Her computer was open to that dating website, eHeartMatch, and some guy had sent her a flirty note. At first I couldn’t believe it. I mean, my mom? She’s over fifty.”

Charlie had the feeling that in Violet’s eyes he and Mia were both practically in the grave.

“Maybe she was worried about being lonely. I’d already made it clear to her that I wasn’t going to be coming home very much this year.” Violet set her jaw. “I told her that I have my own life now.” Her eyes told him that she heard the irony in her own words.

“We’re checking to see what forensics can get off her computer,” Charlie said. “You don’t remember this guy’s name, do you?”

“No. It was like a jokey name, you know, a screen name.” She took a deep breath. “Do you have to look at everything from my mom’s computer?”

“Why?” Charlie asked. Was there something Violet had written her mom that she was afraid they would find?

“Because it’s private. I mean, when my mom wrote all her e-mails, she didn’t imagine someone else reading them.”

The dead didn’t have any privacy. Maybe it was a good thing they were dead. “Think of us like doctors,” Charlie said. “We’ve seen it all before.”

Violet frowned. “That actually doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Thirty minutes later, having gained no real insights, Charlie and Mia left. As he opened his car door, Charlie had the sensation he was being watched. He froze and looked all around him. The street was deserted. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling.