January's Betrayal (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  January’s Betrayal

  A Larry Macklin Mystery–Book 3

  By

  A. E. Howe

  The specter of corruption has hovered over the Adams County Sheriff’s Office for months. Criminal investigator Larry Macklin is convinced he’s identified a mole for drug dealers within the department, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to prove it.

  Larry’s attention is diverted when a recently released suspect in a series of rapes is shot and killed in the act of raping and murdering a woman… or so it seems. But the more Larry digs into the case, the more it becomes clear that the incident is part of a larger conspiracy—one that could have a devastating effect on his father’s career as sheriff.

  Larry is desperate to find the real killer and to protect the reputation of the sheriff’s office, but it just might lead him to make the biggest mistake of his career.

  Books in the Larry Macklin Mystery Series:

  November’s Past (Book 1)

  December’s Secrets (Book 2)

  January’s Betrayal (Book 3)

  February’s Regrets (Book 4)

  March’s Luck (Book 5)

  More coming soon!

  Join the mailing list to be notified of new releases by this author.

  Dedication

  For Daisy, the petite tabby cat who is the inspiration for Ivy.

  In order to preserve her cushy life, she has dedicated herself to supervising my writing efforts. She’s convinced that I would not be

  able to write a single word without her help.

  Who knows, maybe she’s right!

  Copyright © 2016 by A. E. Howe

  All rights reserved.

  www.aehowe.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Additional Books in the Series

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  It was after midnight and cold. The first thing I saw when I pulled up behind the shopping center didn’t make me feel better. Held back by crime scene tape were two news vans and my dad’s pickup truck. As an investigator, the last things you want at your crime scene are reporters and the sheriff. And when the sheriff is also your father, you’re doubly screwed.

  On the other side of the tape, two of our patrol cars were parked at odd angles, all their lights on and illuminating the bodies of a man and a woman. As I parked my unmarked car, the crime scene van pulled up next to me. Shantel Williams and Marcus Brown, two of our best techs, got out and greeted me.

  “None of this is good,” Shantel said, carrying her box of equipment.

  “I was told Nichols shot a suspect?”

  “Not the half of it. He shot Ayers.”

  “Jeffrey Ayers, the suspect in the rapes?”

  “That’s what Marti in dispatch said,” Marcus responded.

  As we approached the scene, I could see my father staring at the bodies from a distance. He heard us coming and held up the crime scene tape so that Marcus and Shantel could go under. They set their boxes down and started removing their cameras.

  Dad pulled me aside. Behind him, the news crews were already testing their lights and microphones.

  “This is going to go political fast,” he said, his voice low and ominous.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “That’s what we’re going to have to figure out. Look, I know you’re on call tonight, but I’m going to need to assign another investigator as the lead.”

  “Because of Ayers?”

  Jeffrey Ayers had been our chief suspect in a series of rapes. But as we dug deeper, the evidence pointed away from him and two days ago Dad had announced that Ayers was no longer considered a suspect.

  Dad nodded to the news vans. “Press is already on top of the story. I have to be above this. If Ayers raped and killed this woman then I’m in big trouble. It’s not going to help if it looks like I put my son in charge of the investigation. Perception is going to be almost as important as the reality.”

  “I understand.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t want you involved. This coming on the heels of what you told me about Matt…” He shrugged. “I’m not feeling very comfortable. You know Matt would have been my second choice.”

  Dad seemed to have aged ten years in the last month. Before Christmas I’d stumbled upon a situation suggesting that Matt Greene, one of the best investigators in our department and a horse’s ass, was also a dirty cop.

  A gust of wind from the north sent a chill through me. “What do you want me to do?” I asked quietly.

  “I called Pete in. I’m going to give him the lead. He works well with Sam in internal. Sam’s going to be handling the use-of-force report on Nichols.”

  “And since Pete and I work as partners most of the time…”

  “It will seem natural that you’re close to the case. Of course, Matt will still have to be involved a bit since he took the lead in the second rape.”

  “What a mess,” I said, shaking my head.

  Another car pulled up next to the crime scene van and Pete Henley’s large bulk emerged. He looked around for a minute before he spotted us and came over. In his mid-forties and a little over three hundred pounds, with a wife and two teenage daughters that were the center of his world, Pete’s easygoing nature fooled a lot of people. But he was a natural investigator and the best shot in the department.

  In Adams County, Pete was the man with his ear to the ground. He knew everybody in our small, rural north Florida county. For most families, he could tell you their history going back for as many generations as they’d lived here. He was also well tuned into local politics, so he didn’t need to have the pitfalls of the current situation spelled out for him.

  Dad told Pete he was the lead investigator and filled him in on what little information he had.

  “I’m on it,” Pete said with reluctance. He turned and walked over to the crime scene tape, lifting it up, and awkwardly slipped under it.

  “Go on,” Dad said to me, looking over at the news crews who were done shooting background footage of the scene and were heading toward us. I avoided making eye contact with the reporters as I hurried under the tape.

  The bodies were located at the back of a small shopping center. The woman’s body was half hidden behind a dumpster near a loading dock. Five feet away was the man’s body, curled up and face down on the pavement. I never would have recognized him as Ayers. Marcus and Shantel were methodically taking pictures from different angles.

  “Do we know her name?” Pete asked Deputy Julio Ortiz, who was standing well back from the bodies.

  “She is… was Angie Maitland. I went to school with her.”


  Julio was about five years younger than me, twenty-five maybe. Around the sheriff’s office he was always hanging out with the clowns, the guys that razzed each other, came up with silly practical jokes and challenged each other to weightlifting or running contests. There were no jokes tonight, though, his voice sad and dismayed. In a small county like ours, you realized pretty early that the car wreck you responded to or the domestic disturbance call you answered might involve someone you knew. It made a hard job harder. And was one of the reasons I’d rather have been doing something else.

  “Has her family been informed?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Pete pulled out his radio and checked with dispatch. No one had contacted the family. “Would you to do it?” Pete asked Julio.

  “Sure,” Julio nodded, turning away to get the address from dispatch.

  “What about Ayers?” I asked Pete.

  “We’d better do it. We’ll go over after we talk with Nichols.”

  Pete watched Marcus and Shantel work for another couple of minutes. “Hold up, guys,” he said when they both lowered their cameras for a moment.

  Pete turned and shouted to the other deputies standing around, “Turn off all the headlights for a couple minutes!” It took a second for everyone to process what he’d said, but slowly two of them went to the cars and turned off the lights.

  “Take some pictures,” he told the vague shadows of Marcus and Shantel.

  It was very dark behind the store with the headlights off. Streetlights glowed in the distance, but that just seemed to amplify the darkness near the loading dock.

  After a minute Pete shouted, “Nichols, turn on your lights!” The headlights of a car parked fifty feet away came on, illuminating the bodies while casting stark shadows against the back wall of the building. Pete asked Marcus and Shantel for a few more pictures, then finally shouted for everyone to turn the lights back on.

  “Let’s go talk with Nichols,” he said to me.

  I followed him over to where Deputy Isaac Nichols leaned against his patrol car. First thing I noticed was that his holster was empty.

  “They already bagged it,” he said when he saw us looking at his holster.

  “Don’t think you have much to worry about,” Pete responded.

  “I know it’s standard procedure, just like the suspension. Still hard to take,” Nichols said mournfully. “I just wished I’d gotten here in time to save her. I damn sure don’t regret shooting him.”

  Pete held up his hand. “Careful what you say. Breathe deep.” I could see Nichols was still shaking from the adrenaline dump his system had received.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I’m not going to give my formal statement for a couple days.”

  This was the advice we all received during our training. Memory is notoriously unreliable right after a traumatic event, and actually becomes more accurate a couple days later. If you make a detailed statement right after a shooting, you’re probably going to regret it. There will be details that don’t fit and that you know to be wrong, but if you change your story then the damage is done and you risk being grilled by attorneys on both sides of the aisle during a trial.

  “I don’t want details right now. Just give me the rough outline of what went down,” Pete requested.

  “When I drove back here, I heard a scream and I saw the guy on top of the woman. I didn’t know who he was. I got out and told him to get up. He didn’t. I ran over toward them and all of a sudden he turned and came at me. I saw a knife in his hand. Pulled my gun and fired twice.” There was a tremor in Nichols’s voice. His hands twisted and kneaded each other. “I never thought I’d be the guy that had to shoot someone.”

  “Why’d you drive back here?” Pete asked the question that had been upper-most in my mind.

  “My field training officer showed me this spot. I’ve caught prostitutes, people doing drugs… Once I caught some guy that was dumping a couple purses he’d stolen.” All of that could be checked easily.

  Pete patted him on the back. “We’ll get this cleared up. HR will set you up with someone to talk to.”

  “I don’t know,” Nichols said, answering some question that only he heard. “It’s been a crazy night.”

  Pete and I walked away, not talking until we were out of his hearing. “They found a knife?” Pete asked me.

  “I got here just a few minutes before you did. I didn’t see one, but maybe it’s under the body. Let’s go find out.”

  As we walked back toward the bodies, I saw Dad standing under a floodlight as he was interviewed by one of the news crews from Tallahassee. His voice was loud and deep. “I take full responsibility for any decision made by my office.”

  Dad could irritate the crap out of me, but I’d never doubted his integrity or dedication to his job. After my mother died, Dad was lost without her, so I’d encouraged him to run for sheriff as a way to redirect his attention. He’d been a deputy for half his life and I knew there was no one in the county who could do a better job. Being sheriff saved him and did a lot to improve the lives of the people of Adams County.

  I noticed the coroner’s van had been added to the growing number of random vehicles arranged like vultures flocking to fresh roadkill. Marcus and Shantel were standing back, filming the body of Jeffrey Ayers as Dr. Darzi examined it. I was surprised to see him. Normally, his participation was limited to the actual autopsy. Dad must have called him personally. With an officer’s career and Dad’s reelection in the balance, it was vital that the investigation be above reproach.

  Ayers’s body was probed, measured and handled with detached professionalism, leaving no doubt that he was now more a piece of evidence than a person.

  “Little help,” Dr. Darzi said to no one in particular. Marcus went over and gave him a hand turning the body onto its side. Sure enough, there was a six-inch-long folding knife, blade out, lying underneath. Darzi examined the corpse’s back. “Looks like one of the bullets went through him. The other probably broke up or is lodged against a bone or in an organ.” We would have to look for the bullet that went through the body.

  Shantel and Marcus moved in and emptied Ayers’s pockets, bagging and tagging everything. Finally the body was lifted onto a gurney and moved to the coroner’s van. Darzi then went over and began the same process with the woman’s body.

  “At least they found a knife,” Pete said to me in a low voice. He hated the press and they were still hovering around, though they had enough respect for the victims to stay back and keep their cameras off the scene. The South had changed a lot, for both good and ill, but most of us still had some respect for the dead. It was a mix of superstition and awe brought on by being in the presence of the ultimate mystery.

  “But did Ayers kill the woman?” I asked Pete.

  “Not with a knife,” Dr. Darzi answered. “There are no cuts on the body. She appears, only appears, mind you, to have been strangled.” He probed around her neck and revealed a rope that had been pulled so tight that it was hidden under the flesh of her throat.

  “I can’t decide whether this is good or bad,” Pete said. “Looks good for Nichols and bad for the sheriff.” Pete looked around. “Where is Ayers’s car?”

  We went on a hunt for it and found it parked in front of the store. “That’s odd. It’s not parked in a space,” I said.

  “Not like anyone’s going to complain.” Pete indicated the empty lot. “Pretty strange he’d park out here and drag her around back.”

  “Maybe he saw her walking toward the back and followed her.”

  We both shrugged. This early in the investigation, there were just too many questions.

  We walked back to the scene and Pete told Shantel where the car was and that they’d need to process it tonight. It would be towed back to our small impound lot, a quarter acre of asphalt behind the sheriff’s office with a ten-foot fence topped by concertina wire.

  “Okay now, if you’re going to start telling us how to do everything, you
may as well have the B Team out here. You know you got the A Team, so let us do our thing.” Shantel was always ready to throw around the banter. That and the fact she and Marcus were the best forensics team in north Florida were the main reasons we all liked working with them.

  “I’d never think of telling you how to do your business,” Pete said with a smile.

  “You better not, big man, or you can get down here and crawl around on your hands and knees looking for God knows what,” Shantel said as she moved around the bodies with her headlamp focused six inches in front of her, looking for anything that might turn out to be important trace evidence.

  I turned to Pete. “We know how Ayers got here. It would help to know Angie Maitland’s movements.”

  “Let’s go tell Ayers’s family what’s happened. We’ve got time to figure out why Maitland was here,” Pete said, and we headed for his car.

  This was a different dynamic for us. Normally we’d split up and handle different tasks, then come back together and compare notes. But I think neither of us wanted to take the risk of missing something in a case this complicated. With ten months to go until the election, Dad’s main opponent, Charles Maxwell, Calhoun’s chief of police, was already campaigning heavily. He and Dad had never gotten along and Chief Maxwell was sure to use this case as ammunition.

  No one likes to do notifications. There are a dozen different ways they can play out and few of them are good. I’ve known deputies that were attacked by family members and others that couldn’t leave because they were afraid a friend or relative might hurt themselves.

  Jeffrey Ayers had been in his mid-thirties, but still lived at home with his mother. Not that surprising these days. Hers was a one-story ranch-style house in a middle-class neighborhood north of Calhoun. All the windows were dark when we pulled into the driveway. Looking at my watch, it was almost one-thirty. I closed my door carefully when I got out of the car, so as not to disturb everyone in the neighborhood. But as soon as the door clicked shut, one dog after another started barking. What can you do?

  Pete walked heavily up to the door and rang the bell. It took two more tries before the porch light came on and a voice from inside asked who we were. We produced names and badges, then the door was opened by a surprisingly young-looking woman. She didn’t look a day over fifty, even after being woken in the middle of the night.