“Did she say where she was going?”
“No.”
“Did she ever say anything that hinted at where we could find her?”
“She rarely spoke to me.”
“Okay, I think that’s enough for now. We’re going to take you to a hospital to have you checked out. Then we’ll want to debrief you after you’ve gotten a good sleep. Do you want to come back here or go somewhere else?”
“No, I’m okay staying here.”
“Do you want an officer to stay with you for a day or so?”
“I don’t think she’s coming back, but that would be okay, I’m still pretty scared.”
“You’re doing really well for someone who’s gone through what you just did. Is there anything else you need?”
“No, but can you tell me why she did this? Did she hurt somebody else?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Peter Ragland was in a great mood. Robin Lockwood may have won the battle at the bail hearing, but he’d win the war when they went to trial, now that he knew Maria Rodriguez was David Turner’s accomplice. The office had a brilliant techie who could trace money back to the year the first dollar was minted, and Ragland had assigned her to find out where the ten thousand dollars in Rodriguez’s account had originated. Once it was traced back to Turner, Rodriguez and the magician would be dead meat.
Ragland was imagining the look on Lockwood’s face when he told her that he’d figured out the identity of Turner’s accomplice, when Carrie Anders and Roger Dillon walked in.
“It’s not Turner,” Dillon said.
Ragland looked confused. “What’s not Turner?”
“He didn’t kill Chesterfield,” Anders said. “It was Nancy Porter, the magician’s assistant.”
“What are you talking about? Of course Turner is our killer, and Maria Rodriguez hid the inhaler. He paid her off.”
Dillon shook his head. “You remember the first time you prosecuted Chesterfield?”
“The Randall and Gentry cases.”
Dillon nodded. “Sophie Randall had a daughter, Jane, who was five when Randall died. She’s in her twenties now, and she’s trying to kill everyone who was responsible for her mother’s murder and the dismissal of Chesterfield’s murder charge.”
Ragland looked skeptical. “How did you come to this amazing conclusion?”
“We didn’t. Robin Lockwood figured it out.”
Ragland laughed. “Of course she did. And I suppose she can prove her wild theory.”
“It’s more than a theory now. We just came from Renee Chambers’s house—”
“Renee Chambers?”
“Chambers was supposed to be Chesterfield’s third assistant. Jane Randall kept her captive in her apartment. She forced Chambers to tell her agent that she had to go home because of a family emergency, and to say that she knew another magician’s assistant named Nancy Porter who could fill in. Randall has been living in Chambers’s place and keeping her captive. Randall’s fingerprints are all over the duplex, and Chambers can ID her as the person who kidnapped her.”
Ragland stared at the detectives. “You’re telling me that Turner and Rodriguez are innocent?”
“It looks that way,” Dillon said.
“What about the ten thousand dollars?”
“I think we’ll find it came from Randall,” Anders said.