“Did Rhonda Tyler want to do that? Is that why she left?” asked Michelle.
“I already told the police all this. Is there some reason I got to tell you too?”
“No reason at all,” said King.
“Good, ’cause I got enough on my mind without worrying why some gal got herself killed.”
“I doubt she intended that to happen,” said Michelle.
“Honey,” said Lulu, “I been in this business long enough and seen enough that nothing—and I mean nothing—would surprise me anymore.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” said King.
As they drove off, Lulu watched them and then went inside the trailer.
Michelle eyed her movements in the side mirror. “She says she didn’t really know the woman, and yet she was able to ID her off an artist’s composite sketch, and she knew about the crotch tattoo? Come on, I’d call that a little inconsistent.”
“Could be,” said King.
“And while Junior may be too dumb to know what to do with bearer bonds and jewelry, I think his wife is plenty sharp enough to sell that stuff and make some decent returns.”
“If that turns out to be correct, our client is guilty.”
Michelle shrugged. “Those are the breaks sometimes. What next?”
“We track down who installed those secret drawers in the Battles’ closets. We check out the alibis of Junior’s friends, and we fill in Harry on what we’ve done so far.”
“And we wait for the next murder to happen,” added Michelle, sighing.
CHAPTER
22
DIANE HINSON LEFT HER
downtown law firm as she nearly always did, at seven in the evening. She climbed into her late-model Chrysler Sebring and drove off. She picked up some carry-out dinner at a local restaurant, drove to her gated community, waved to the elderly guard inside—who carried no weapon and could have been easily overpowered by a couple of husky twelve-year-olds—and proceeded to her townhouse situated at the end of a pipestem street.
Things had been going well for Hinson this year. A newly minted partner at Goodrich, Browder and Knight, Wrightsburg’s second largest law firm, she’d finally met a man she thought might be the one, a six-foot-three accountant four years her junior who liked to white-water raft and could beat her occasionally on the tennis court. She felt that any day he might pop the question, and her answer would be an immediate yes. She’d also brought a new client into the firm with billings well into the six figures that would add significantly to her personal income. She was thinking of moving into a single-family house. To do so with a ring on her finger and a husband to grow old with would be a dream come true for the thirty-three-year-old lawyer.
She parked her car in her garage and went inside. She placed her dinner in the microwave, changed into her running clothes and headed out. Three miles and a little over twenty minutes later she arrived back a little sweaty but barely short of breath. A decent middle-distance runner in college and dedicated amateur tennis player, she’d kept in excellent shape over the years.
She showered, ate her meal, caught a TV show she’d been looking forward to seeing, and received a phone call from her accountant beau, who was in Houston on a corporate audit. After some breathy promises of truly memorable sex once he returned home, she hung up, watched the late news, noted it was nearly midnight and turned off the TV. She stripped down to her panties in the bathroom, pulled on a long T-shirt she kept hanging on the door there and headed to bed.
She sensed the presence behind her, but before she could scream, the gloved hand closed around her neck, cutting off her wind and with it her voice. A very strong arm encircled her body, pinning both her limbs to her sides. Stunned, Hinson found herself being shoved facedown on the floor, unable to move or scream as a gag was placed in her mouth and her hands bound behind her with telephone cord.
As a criminal lawyer she’d defended accused rapists, getting some men off who should have gone to jail. She’d considered those professional victories. Lying facedown on the floor with a crushing weight on top of her, she steeled herself to be raped. With suffocating dread she knew that at any moment her underwear would be pulled down and the humiliating and painful violation would commence. Nauseous with fear, she told herself not to resist, let him have his way, and possibly she would survive this. She hadn’t seen his face. She couldn’t possibly identify him. He would have no reason to kill her. “Please,” she tried to say through the gag, “don’t hurt me.”
Her plea went unheeded.
The knife plunged into her back, grazed the left side of her heart, was pulled free and plunged in again, tearing a two-inch gash in her left lung and slicing into her aorta on the way out. By the time it was over, a dozen wounds mottled her back. However, Diane Hinson was dead by the fourth.
The man in the black hood bent over her, careful not to step in the pool of blood forming on the carpet, and turned Hinson over on her back. He lifted her T-shirt, took a Sharpie pen from his pocket and drew a symbol on her flat belly. He made the same symbol on the wall behind her bed. He drew it large, since he didn’t want anyone to miss it. The police could be such imbeciles.
He went back to the body and carefully unhooked the woman’s anklet, the one he’d admired in the shopping mall parking lot, and placed it in his pocket.
He left the knife by the dead woman’s side; it couldn’t lead back to him. He’d pulled it from her kitchen drawer when he’d entered the house earlier. He’d been hidden behind the bushes in the darkness next to her garage door waiting for her to come home. When she opened the garage, he waited until she had gotten out of the car and gone inside. Most people closed the garage door on their way inside the house using the remote button near the door leading into the house. She’d never seen him slip inside.
He untied her hands and wedged her arm against a partially opened bureau drawer. He’d observed at the shopping mall that she wore a watch, so he hadn’t bothered to bring one. He set the watch hands to where he wanted them and pulled out the stem, freezing it at that number on the dial. He said no prayer over the body. Yet he did mumble something about this being a lesson to keep one’s ATM receipts.