A Midnight Clear Read online

  “I’m upstairs. On the second floor. Second hallway on the right, or maybe left. I don’t know. It’s a restroom. Justine Sanchez knows where it is.” I was whispering for some reason, as if I didn’t want the man on the floor to hear.

  A chill ran through me as I realized that I might not be alone after all. What if I’d interrupted the murder? What if the killer was hiding in the stall?

  Common sense dictated I turn around and get the heck out of the bathroom, but I didn’t want to leave the crime scene unattended. Plus I still must have been in shock, because instead of going with my common sense, I walked forward and nudged open the stall door with the edge of my purse.

  Whew. Empty. I looked up to make sure the killer wasn’t hanging like Spiderman on the ceiling tiles—which he thankfully wasn’t.

  “What? Are you locked in?” Judge Beck laughed. “Do you need me to come get you out or make excuses to the security guards and our hosts about why you’re upstairs in the office areas?”

  “No, there’s a dead man in the bathroom.” I was still whispering as I backed toward the door.

  He made a startled noise. “Dead? Overdose? Heart attack? Did you call 911? Are you doing CPR?”

  “No. Someone killed him. There’s blood everywhere, and I’m sure he’s dead by now.” The investigative side of my brain started to kick in and I looked around. “I don’t see a murder weapon anywhere. I don’t remember seeing blood in the hallway either but the killer must be covered in blood. Call 911 for me and I’ll wait here to make sure the murderer doesn’t come back and try to tamper with the body or the evidence. Oh, and after you call, look around and see if anyone has blood splatter on them.”

  I doubted it. The killer would have either fled, or if they were employed here, they might have gone into their office to hide, or maybe to change out of the bloody clothing. I seemed to recall a lawyer friend telling me once that he always kept a change of clothes in his office in case he pulled an all-nighter and needed to refresh for the morning without taking the time to go home.

  Judge Beck told whoever was standing next to him to call 911, then to “Go get Sullivan and tell him someone’s died in the second-floor bathroom.” I wondered for a moment why he wasn’t calling himself, then realized that he didn’t want to disconnect our call.

  “I’m on my way,” he said to me.

  Judging from the other sounds over the phone, he seemed to be pushing people out of the way. I heard him say something to the security guards in his authoritative judge-voice, then the sounds of his footsteps on the stairs. I opened the door and peeked out to see him rounding the corner, slowing to a brisk walk as he saw that I was physically fine.

  “Be careful,” I warned him as he reached the door. “It’s not a huge bathroom, and there’s a lot of blood. I’m trying to stay out of it.”

  He squeezed in beside me, his eyes widening. “That is a lot of blood.”

  “But you didn’t see any in the hallway though, did you? I’d expect if I bludgeoned someone to death—and I’m assuming here, it could have been a knife but not a gun because I think we would have heard that even over the party and the music. Anyway, the killer should have blood on him. There should have been blood drops in the hallway, right? Or bloody footprints?”

  Judge Beck drew in a deep breath. “Kay, you’re a very unusual woman, you know that?”

  “Yes, I do. Now, about the blood…?”

  He shook his head and let out a soft laugh. “I’m not a homicide detective, but as a circuit court judge who has seen plenty of evidence during murder trials, I’d say there should be trace evidence in the hallway. The murderer may have taken his shoes off and wrapped them in something, or been stupid enough to throw them in the trash, but I’m sure he left prints or a drop or two of blood on the doorway, the door handle, or in the hallway.”

  I felt guilty as I looked behind me at the door. “I grabbed that door handle.”

  “I’m fairly certain no one will mistake you for the murderer,” Judge Beck commented drily.

  “In a white silk dress? Hardly. I’m more worried that I may have smudged the only decent fingerprints of the murderer.”

  There was a sound of a gruff male voice ordering someone to keep the others back. The door opened, nearly flattening the judge and me, and in barged an elderly, wire-thin, bald man in a tux.

  The man immediately shouted an expletive, then sent an apologetic glance my way before turning to the judge.

  “No one said there was all this blood. I thought someone OD’d or had a heart attack. Who is it?”

  “No idea. And I’m not about to turn him over to see,” Judge Beck replied. “Kay, this is Charles Sullivan, one of the partners here at SMS&C. Charlie, this is my guest Kay Carrera. She’s the one that found the body.”

  Charlie Sullivan had squatted down and angled himself sideways as he looked at the body. With a grimace and a glance at the floor, he dropped to his hands and knees, lowering his face to within a few inches of the marble.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Carerra. Well, it would be nice to meet you under any other circumstances. Not to be rude or anything, but why were you up here?”

  I felt as if I’d been caught smoking in the bathroom in high school—the off-limits bathroom in the teachers’ lounge.

  “There was a line downstairs and one of the other guests told me about the restroom.” I sent Judge Beck an apologetic wince. “And the elevator behind the stairs.”

  Charlie made a “harrumph” noise. “Next year we’re gonna put locks on this door and rat traps in the hallway. And I’ll spring for a few porta potties. No one but employees are supposed to be up here.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I squirmed a bit, wondering if this was going to get me blacklisted from future events, or if my behavior would harm the judge’s reputation somehow. I doubted it, given that he’d called the partner of a major law firm by a nickname.

  Charlie stood and eyed the sink to wash his hands, obviously trying to decide if washing his hands would compromise the crime scene. “Not that I want anybody stumbling across this kind of thing, but I’m actually grateful, Ms. Carrera. This is an upper-level employee floor and there was a good chance no one would have found this guy until Monday morning.”

  That was a horrible thought. Surely someone would have noticed him missing and realized that he was last seen at the party here? I was assuming he was a guest due to the fancy attire, but I guess he might have been a burglar trying to look like he fit in.

  I frowned at the thought. “Any idea why he might have been up here? Or whoever did him in? I doubt someone killed him for using an off-limits bathroom.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Maybe he was doing someone’s wife, or screwed another lawyer over, or lost a case defending a drug lord.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “A drug lord would lure someone to an upstairs bathroom to kill him with nearly a hundred lawyers and judges plus the lieutenant governor and security guards one floor below? Why not just do a drive-by at his office? Or when he was out shopping?”

  “Maybe he was drunk and hit his head on the marble when he passed out. Heck if I know. The police’ll figure it out.”

  I glanced over at Judge Beck, appalled that a senior partner in a major law firm was so blasé about a bloody crime scene in an office bathroom.

  “I doubt he came up here because the men’s line was too long,” Judge Beck chimed in. “I was in and out with only two people ahead of me. There had to be a reason for him to come up here, and it wasn’t to use the bathroom.”

  Well, there were a lot of reasons someone might want privacy in a quiet, out-of-the-way bathroom. Maybe the man had an intestinal emergency and didn’t want everyone at the party commenting on how some guy blew up the bathroom with toxic waste. Maybe he’d imbibed too much and wanted to throw up the excess alcohol without others listening in. Maybe he was shy, or needed to empty a colostomy bag. But none of those things were a precursor to winding up dead on the floor with blood soaking into th
e marble.

  Perhaps Charlie was right. This could have been a tryst gone wrong. Or someone with a grudge followed the man up here and stabbed him before he could empty his colostomy bag in private. Hopefully the detective that was assigned to this case would quickly get to the bottom of it, because as heartless as it sounded standing here ten feet away from a man who’d most likely died by violent means, I was curious.

  I was pretty sure curiosity had never killed any cat. It certainly hadn’t killed Taco to date, and I doubted it would kill me. At least I hoped it didn’t wind up killing me. I’d had a few close brushes over the last year, and this might be a good time in my life to think about taking it easy and letting the cops do their jobs.

  Or not.

  We heard what sounded like an army of booted footsteps, along with the clank of what I assumed was a stretcher. Judge Beck looked down the hallway and stepped out to hold the door open.

  In no time at all the bathroom was filled with police. The three paramedics in fire department uniforms took one look at the scene and turned it over to the cops. I knew from casual chats with Miles over scones and muffins that dispatch always sent someone from fire and rescue, just in case the caller was wrong and the dead person was not, in fact, dead. But once they’d confirmed there was no need for them, they left. Evidently paramedics’ and EMTs’ job duties ended when a person was actually dead on the scene, and at that point the police and the coroner’s, or M.E.’s office took over.

  The police had come well-prepared. One placed little numbered placards around and took photos while another shooed us out of the bathroom and started prepping to take statements. Three uniformed officers hung outside the room with another man in casual clothes, and an aggravated woman who looked like she’d just come from a holiday party of her own. I positioned myself so I could see into the bathroom between the two officers, trying to listen in.

  Done with the pictures, the plainclothes officer ushered the fancy-dress woman forward. She took a pair of booties, gloves, and what looked like a plastic rain poncho from a uniformed cop then slipped them on before heading into the room. I watched her feeling a whole lot of sympathy. She must be the poor woman from the M.E.’s office that had gotten yanked out of a formal function to attend a crime scene.

  I waved off the woman taking statements and sent her to Charlie Sullivan, hoping he had enough to keep her occupied while I watched. Moving to get a better view, I saw the woman in her plastic poncho survey the scene, bending down to floor-view as Charlie had done. Then she stood and conferred with the uniformed officer who’d been taking photos before walking gingerly into the blood pool with her bootied shoes.

  When she turned the body over, I caught my breath. Around his neck, instead of the plain black bow tie the other men were wearing with their tuxes, was one embellished with striped candy canes edged in shiny gold.

  It was Rhett Reynolds. Judge Rhett Reynolds. I leaned closer into the doorway to better see his face, and confirmed it. Even with all the blood and the horrible head wound I recognized the man. I reached out a hand to Judge Beck’s sleeve, suddenly, and probably irrationally, worried for his safety.

  A judge, murdered. So much for all that security downstairs.

  Looks like he was hit with a blunt object to the left temple. I wasn’t sure if I knew that from my journalist past, my current detective job, or because I’d played a lot of Clue as a kid and had watched more than my fair share of television mysteries. Either way, I couldn’t tell if the blow marring his head had been enough to kill the man, but I was assuming so. What weapon had the murderer used? And where was it? Surely the killer wasn’t walking around a law firm in blood-covered clothing with a tire iron or something in his hand.

  “Are there any other entrances to the building?” I overheard a police officer ask Charlie.

  The lawyer nodded. “There’s a service entrance around back that comes in the basement floor. It’s locked and alarmed—at least it’s supposed to be. There’s a service elevator there as well for moving desks and files to the offices, but it requires a key to operate. Because of the high-profile guests we have two guards back there watching that entrance.”

  “Any access to this floor beyond the staircase from the atrium, the elevator from the atrium, and the service elevator?” the officer asked, scribbling furiously into a pad of paper.

  Charlie pursed his lips in thought. “We’ve got two sets of fire stairs at the east and the west ends of the building, but to get to those someone would need to either come in the service entrance or use the atrium.”

  Two officers went off with Charlie, no doubt to look at the fire stairs as well as the service elevator and entrance. The medical examiner called out a body temperature of ninety-eight degrees. A hand touched my arm, pulling my attention from the crime scene and to a female officer who smiled apologetically at me. “Mrs. Carrera? You were the one who discovered the body? I’d like to take your preliminary statement while it’s all still fresh in your mind.”

  I let go of Judge Beck’s sleeve, unaware that I’d still been holding it. That’s when I noticed him regarding me, his brow furrowed with concern.

  “Are you all right, Kay? Do you want me to come with you?”

  I wasn’t sure how “right” I was at the moment, but I forced a smile and shook my head. “I’ll be okay. I’m sure they’ll want your statement as well. Meet you downstairs when they’re all done with us?”

  Judge Beck nodded and I turned to follow the officer down the hall and to the elevator. This was going to be a daunting task for them. Unless they found evidence that the guards out back had been negligent or overpowered and the service door had been used, they’d need to consider everyone here attending the party as a potential suspect. If the murderer was at the party, someone may have seen him or her sneaking up the stairs under the rope, or perhaps taking the back elevator.

  I glanced over the edge of the railing, counting. Five officers down there were slowly working their way around a very curious group of lawyers and judges. A few glanced up at me and I quickly stepped back, nearly running into the officer I was following.

  “We’ve gotten approval to use the first-floor offices behind the atrium,” she said as she pushed the down button for the elevator.

  “The insurance company offices?” Or were they CPA offices? I couldn’t remember what Judge Beck had said.

  “I’m not sure. Someone at the station called and arranged it.”

  That made sense. They could hardly stuff nearly a hundred high-profile people in formal dress into a bus and haul us all down to the station for questioning, and they would be considering the atrium and the SMS&C floors to be part of the crime scene.

  I accompanied the woman into the elevator, then around the edges of the atrium to where another officer was standing by a double glass door. He let us in, and we went into one of the open offices.

  “I’m Officer Perkins,” the woman told me, as she shut the door and sat across from me. With a smile she pulled a note pad and pen out of her pocket as well as a small recorder. Clicking the recorder on, she stated her name, the date and time, and asked for me to state my name for the record.

  “Kay Carrera,” I told her. Then I recited my address and my phone number as she wrote.

  “Can you tell me what lead to you finding the deceased?” She smiled again, and I wondered if they included “reassuring witnesses” in police academy training.

  I told her about the lines downstairs for the ladies’ room, that Justine Sanchez had clued me in on the bathroom upstairs and the elevator, then I told her exactly what I’d observed walking to and entering the restroom where I’d found the bloody body.

  I left out the part about the ghost. He’d remained upstairs hovering over the body, but this wasn’t my first time discovering a murder victim, and I had a strong feeling that ghost was going to be following me home—then following me around until I brought his killer to justice.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I winced, reali
zing that Officer Perkins had been asking me a question.

  She frowned. “How many people at the party know about this upstairs bathroom?”

  I shrugged. “Well, the lawyers who work here probably know about it as well as people who might have visited the lawyers working on the second floor. Beyond that, I don’t know. The big question is why Judge Reynolds was up there. The line for the men’s was pretty short. So I’m assuming he had a specific reason for going upstairs. Maybe someone followed him. Or maybe someone went up with him for a private conversation or a tryst, although why they’d want to do that in a restroom, I don’t know.”

  Officer Perkins had blinked in surprise midway through my speech. “You knew the decedent? I mean, you recognized him?”

  “I don’t know him very well, but I did recognize him even if I hadn’t noticed his holiday-themed bowtie. I only met Judge Reynolds tonight. Although I spoke with his daughter a bit, I didn’t speak directly with him that I recall. But I did recognize him as the deceased man on the bathroom floor.”

  I don’t know why I held back the bit about my conversation with Irene O’Donnell. Given our conversation, I’d think her to be a suspect, but in spite of that, I was pretty sure she hadn’t killed Judge Reynolds. She did have motive. As an employee here, she most likely knew the existence of the second-floor bathroom. But she had been drunk off her butt and certainly not in any position to sneak upstairs or to the elevator unnoticed. Then there was the pesky matter of the weapon. Until I knew what it was, I couldn’t definitively rule Irene out, but she didn’t seem the premeditated type, and I couldn’t see her getting the upper hand against a sober Judge Reynolds in a fight, even if she’d managed to lug a baseball bat or tire iron through the party and upstairs unnoticed.

  Actually no one would have been able to. What could have been the murder weapon? My mind immediately drifted to all sorts of odd items that might fit the bill. A marble rolling pin that had been used as a restroom decoration? A metal bat that an employee had left lying in the hallway from Friday softball practice in the middle of December? A music stand from the string quartet? Surely they would have noticed one missing after their short break.