No Remorse Read online

  “Keep me posted. Oh, and the medical examiner said Effridge was killed sometime on Friday. You’ll love this little tidbit -- the maggots were the key to how long he’d been there,” Sarge said. “Did he tell you?”

  I felt the saliva flood my mouth. I felt like I was going to yack. Fucking maggots, jeez! I nodded my head.

  His mouth twisted into a sinister grin, then he laughed hard. “Toughen up, kid. Your face is as green as fresh sod.”

  I went back in and let Mrs. Dupree know she could go. Once the newly widowed woman left the room, we gathered her water bottle and had it sent to the lab so we could get DNA for future comparisons, if needed.

  Chapter 5

  After a good night’s sleep, the next person on my list to talk with was Jonathan Calhoun, Carlotta’s son.

  It didn’t take too long to convince him it was in his best interests to come in and give a statement after we told him we had already talked to his mother. He seemed more upset by that fact than anything.

  Jones and I were talking about how we wanted to approach this guy. Jones had suggested just getting him to talk and see what he had to say, but if he slipped and insinuated he could have possibly done it, begin to put the pressure on. We both resumed the paperwork on our desks while we waited for Calhoun to come in.

  Calhoun arrived at the station at noon, just as he promised he would. I liked that. I really didn’t want to chase this guy down, especially if he had nothing to hide; like he claimed.

  “I’m looking for Detective Oliver.” He wasn’t a friendly sort of guy. Prompt, and abrasive. Can’t win them all, I guess.

  “I’m Oliver.” I rose from my seat and walked over. I extended my hand to him, but he looked at it like I was a leper covered in oozing sores. Haughty fucks made me sick, and this guy was getting under my skin already. “We’re going to go into room number two.” I pointed at the door. He looked at me over his shoulder like he was sizing me up. He must have stood around five-foot-ten or so and was thinly-built, like a runner. He didn’t compare to my six-foot-five. Hesitantly, he put his feet to work and walked over to the door.

  I tapped Jones’ shoulder to let him know it was time to get this interview underway. He appeared to have been deep in thought as he stared at his monitor. He jumped at my touch, and nodded his acknowledgement. He stood up, grabbed a notepad and pen, and followed me into the room.

  No sooner did we get in the room than Calhoun spun on his heels to face us both and started blathering. “Look, fellas, we can make this really simple, short, and sweet. I have nothing to say, nothing to talk about.”

  “It’s your right not to talk to us, but you aren’t under arrest. We aren’t charging you with anything. We’re just trying to get some information on your stepfather so we have a better idea where to look or who to investigate further.”

  “He was no stepfather to me and I’d appreciate if you never use that reference again,” he spat angrily. “I’ll tell you this much, Effridge was a louse. He got what he had coming to him. He treated my mother horribly. She didn’t deserve any of the shenanigans he pulled with her.”

  “As I told you on the phone, we did have a lengthy discussion with your mother yesterday. We just really want to hear your story today. Will you talk to us? It’s all unofficial.” I pulled the recording device from my pocket and set it on the table.

  “Are you going to record this?”

  “I am. We take notes, but the recordings work better to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Is that okay with you?”

  “Yeah, fine. Let’s just get this over with quickly; I don’t have all day.”

  I gestured for him to take a seat, the same seat his mother occupied the day before.

  “Can I get you anything before we begin? A bottle of water?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you.” He tugged at his sleeves, pulling them farther down his slender arms. He raised his eyes to meet mine. “Where do you want me to begin? What exactly do you want me to tell you?”

  “Let’s begin with the elephant in the room,” I said.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “How old is your mother, Mr. Calhoun?”

  “She’s sixty. I don’t see the relevance in that question.”

  “And Effridge, how old was he?” He pulled his lips tight before I had the name completely out of my mouth. I could tell he hated this man.

  “That prick was thirty-five.”

  “That’s a pretty big age difference, wouldn’t you say? Twenty-five years’ difference to be exact. How did you feel about that?” My line of questioning was intended to find out how deeply his anger toward Effridge ran.

  “I hated it! I hated him, too. I thought Effridge was using my mother. He was with her for whatever he could get from her.”

  I pounced on him. “And that made you want to kill him, didn’t it?” I asked.

  Calhoun shoved his chair back as he stood. He hovered over Jones and me as we sat in our chairs, unaffected by him, and watched him huff in air and poke out his chest. “I may have wanted him dead, but I didn’t kill the fucking guy!” he said.

  “Please, Mr. Calhoun, have a seat,” Jones said calmly as he shrugged his shoulders. “Forgive my partner. He’s new.” Jones bumped my knee with his and signaled with his glance for me not to get bent out of shape by his comments. “We just want to try to understand who could have possibly killed your stepfather … I mean, Professor Effridge.”

  “Yeah, my bad. Let me ask another question; if I may.” I took a breath while I waited for him to protest. When he didn’t, I continued. “Effridge, he couldn’t get everything he wanted from your mother, right?”

  “No. No, he couldn’t.” His eyes shifted from looking at me to staring off into a corner opposite where he sat. I got the feeling there was possibly something Calhoun was hiding. His breathing was not even. Or maybe he was still pissed off that I’d asked him about killing Effridge.

  “So, Mr. Calhoun, now that we have addressed the age difference, tell us a little about your relationship with Effridge while he was just dating your mother. Did you despise him then?” I asked.

  “Indeed, I did. I just thought Mother would come to her senses and move on from him. I had no idea she was falling in love with the schmuck.” He didn’t have many favorable adjectives to describe Effridge. I chuckled inside, concentrating desperately to keep a smile from appearing on my face.

  “When Effridge proposed to your mother, or, let me rephrase that, when you found out the two of them were planning to marry, how did you react?”

  “I was enraged. I felt like he was preying on my mother and knew he had hit pay dirt. When he and Mother met, she was fifty and he was twenty-five. Tell me, Detectives, what good reason would a twenty-five-year-old man get involved with a fifty-year-old woman other than financial security? And she had fallen madly head-over-heels in love with that buffoon. He wasn’t more than a child himself.”

  “Did you feel threatened by him?”

  “That moron? Not one bit,” he spat out. “He was just a couple years older than me. I was so disappointed in Mother. It would have been different if he were forty or forty-five. But twenty-five? It was ridiculous to me. I told her exactly how I felt about the whole situation. She ignored me and, in her mind, had reconciled that I just needed time to come around.”

  “Did you ever ‘come around’?”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  “How mad did it make you? Those two being a couple?”

  “I was livid! I could have killed him for poisoning her mind.” His words abruptly stopped and his hand flew up to his mouth. Slowly he slid his fingers down until his hand rested on the table. “I didn’t kill him, though. But I’d like to shake the hand of and buy a beer for the person who did.”

  Jones jotted down a few notes in the notepad. I looked over and noticed he was tallying the adjectives used. Prick, schmuck, user, moron, and buffoon. The words on the page tickled me. But this guy had more to tell. Th
e feeling I got from his mother paled in comparison to the feeling that was radiating off of him.

  “Are we almost done here?”

  “No, Mr. Calhoun. Not quite. I have a few more questions for you.”

  “For Christ’s sake, please hurry up. I have somewhere to be.”

  Chapter 6

  “Please, Mr. Calhoun. Please, have a seat. We shouldn’t be too much longer.” He kept standing. His impatience was annoying the hell out of me. “I promise.”

  With a loud drawn-out sigh, he sat. But he kept his gaze fixed on me the entire time. I never came out of my chair despite his mini-tantrum. I didn’t need to stand and hover over him. He was a smart man. He knew I could dominate him if I chose to. I needed things to remain calm, though, because I needed answers.

  Jones flipped the page in the notepad so he had a blank sheet of paper.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you a bottle of water?” I asked.

  “Yes, please.” He rolled his eyes as he strained to remain civil.

  I stepped out of the room and returned with a bottle of water for each of us. I handed them out, then took my seat.

  “Tell me about Larissa, your mother’s secretary.” I encouraged him to continue talking, knowing this woman would certainly be another very sore subject with him.

  “You’ve talked to my mother so that means you know full well we were in a relationship and she was my fiancé. I’d proposed to her on our one-year anniversary. Six months before we broke up.”

  “Your mother referred to her as just a girlfriend, not your fiancé.” My comment yielded no reaction from him. “How was the break-up? Who initiated that?”

  “She did, and it was awful. Well, awful for me because I had no idea my fiancé was tramping around behind my back. I’m sure for her it was just peachy. I’m just happy her little affair came out before we were married. I’m still flabbergasted that the father of her child is that ... that ... asshole!” His nostrils flared and his fists were clenched tight as his arms tensed on the table. At that moment, watching him seethe, I could envision Effridge being strangled by those hands, had strangulation been the method of his demise. The anger he was trying to stifle was immense. Had Effridge died of asphyxiation, we’d have a new #1 suspect.

  Jones wrote a single word on the blank page – another adjective for the book.

  “What made you follow her after you two had broken up? Were you hoping to reconcile?” Jones asked.

  “God, no. I had no intention on reconciling once she made it perfectly clear she no longer wanted to be with me. I wanted to know who the father was. At the time, I didn’t know. I’d suspected it was him, but I needed proof. Not just for me, but for Mother. And for Larissa.”

  “Why for Larissa? She already knew who the father of her child was. Right?”

  “Because that wretched excuse for a man was cheating on her with McKenzie Sims.”

  “The model?” I asked.

  “Yes, her.” Calhoun raised an eyebrow. He began cracking his knuckles.

  “Okay, so let me make sure I’m following you here. You followed Larissa because you suspected Effridge was the father of her child. You did that to prove to your mother that her husband was cheating on her. But you also wanted proof to show Larissa … what exactly?” Jones asked. He and I both seemed to be on the same confused page regarding Calhoun’s illogical thought process.

  He took a deep breath before he began talking. “I had seen that snake Effridge with Sims a couple of times. There was no kissing or hand-holding in public, but it was the way she’d lean in toward him and laugh. She’d touch his arm. I kept asking myself why on earth would she be out with that joker if they weren’t a couple?”

  “So it really was nothing more than a hunch that he had been cheating on your mother and Larissa with Sims?” Jones questioned.

  “I knew he was! I just needed to catch them to prove it.”

  “What provoked you to lose control and blow his brains out?” I asked. It seemed like a good time to interject a little pressure.

  “I didn't fucking kill that waste of human flesh!” He slammed his fist onto the table. “I wish I had. I was at Mothers’ house that Friday morning talking to him, the same home she’d abandoned because of him. But I left him sitting at the table drinking his bargain-brand coffee. I guarantee you he was alive.”

  “Who do you think could have killed him?” Jones asked.

  “How should I know? He had at least four people who wanted him dead but, I’m telling you with no uncertainty, it wasn’t me.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us that might be helpful?” I asked.

  “Talk to Larissa and McKenzie. Maybe they can help you. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Do you think either one of them may have been let into the apartment after you left, or possibly had a key to your mother’s house?”

  “Mother wouldn’t have given a key to McKenzie, as she didn’t work with her in that type of capacity that would warrant it. Larissa definitely had a key when she worked for Mother. She ran errands for her. Personal and professional errands. Jesus, she betrayed my mother even more so than that ass-clown.”

  “I think we have everything we need today, Mr. Calhoun. Thank you. We may be in touch if we think of any other questions.”

  “Yeah, you do that. Just remember what I told you: as much as I wish I’d been the one, it wasn’t me who took that nitwit’s life.”

  Chapter 7

  Jones and I watched Calhoun practically run out of the room. We both sat there and just looked at each other, and we both began to laugh. It really wasn’t funny, but it was funny.

  “So, what do you think? We’ve met with mother and son now,” I asked Jones.

  “I really can’t make heads or tails of this circus so far.”

  “Did you get a feeling toward either one that they were hiding something, or lying, or maybe even should be bumped up on the suspect list?”

  “I swear to you, I got a funny vibe from Calhoun, but it wasn’t one of those ‘he did it’ vibes. The guy seems shady, really shady. But a murderer? I don’t know. I can’t say yes, and yet I can’t rule him out completely,” Jones said.

  “I feel the same way about him. He hated Effridge, that’s for sure. He made no attempt to cover up how much he disliked him.” I tapped my fingertips on the desk. “What about his mother?”

  “If she killed her husband, I’d be shocked. She was hurt by what he did, but you would think if she were going to kill him she would have done it a while back. Why would she wait until now?”

  “Good question. I have a hard time seeing her pulling the trigger to put a slug in the guy’s twisted, cheating brain,” I said.

  Jones rubbed his hand across his forehead, then our eyes locked. “Let’s just think about the possible scenario a little differently. Maybe we’re looking at this from the wrong angle. What if our sweet little Carlotta was getting ready to leave Friday morning, but Effridge wasn’t at home? Instead, while she was in the kitchen getting that morning cup of joe, in he strolls with Larissa on his breath. He walks in, they argue, she pulls a gun, and lets him have it,” Jones said.

  We just looked at each other with blank expressions on our faces. I couldn’t believe Jones had concocted such an insane story.

  “Um, no.” I laughed, and Jones joined in.

  “You’re right; it was pretty far-fetched.”

  “You think? Come on, we have to go dig up some information, then make a couple phone calls to convince these other two women to come in and talk to us. Hopefully one of them can give us something we can use.”

  We spent the better part of the morning with our eyes glued to the computer monitors, trying to see what we could find on our two remaining interviewees. They weren’t very lively types. Either of them.

  Larissa was no more than a typical girl-next-door type who happened to be the daughter of a surgeon. Her mother had passed away a few years back. Daddy seemed to check out with nothing g
laring in his history. Not even a slap on the wrist.

  How respectable.

  Larissa had a couple of misdemeanors, but nothing she served any time for. Public intoxication while in college … typical. Trespassing – probably happened while she was drunk. A month of probation for each charge and nothing else. Those charges hardly seemed like she was ready to make the jump to the big time and commit murder.

  I leaned back in my chair, placed my hands behind my head, and kicked my feet up onto my desk. It seemed like Jones and I really had our work cut out for us. We began the investigation with one suspect, the victim’s wife. Then, after our conversation with her, we had two more names. We talked to Calhoun and managed to add a new name to our collection of suspects.

  My eyes closed as I mulled over our lack of information. And just like that I sat up, my feet hitting the floor hard. Jones looked as if he were going blind or falling asleep staring into his computer.

  “Come on, let’s go see what the lab has to say.”

  He stood from his chair, grabbed his badge and we walked out of the small area we had been sharing.

  *****

  We walked through the doors of the lab, in search of Skip.

  “Ah, my friends in blue. I just tried to call you at your desks,” he called from across the room. “I was just getting ready to try your cell phones. You saved me the trouble.”

  “What do you have for us, Skip, my man?” Jones asked.

  “I can’t say you’ll be terribly happy with what I have so far, but let’s go over what our not so talkative friend, Mr. Effridge, had to tell me.”

  We followed Skip over to the meat locker in the wall. After scanning down a column of three doors, he chose the middle one. He yanked the handle and pulled the cold metal slab out, with our victim completely covered. He unzipped the body bag, then peeled it back to uncover his head and torso.

  “Let’s start with the head,” Skip said. He pointed at the cleaned-up bullet hole in Effridge’s skull before shoving his hands into his pockets. “That little wound in particular.”