Adverse Possession Read online

“Of course he was,” Mendoza growled. “But unless you saw him well enough to make a positive identification, we can’t prove it. We know he wasn’t at home. I sat outside his apartment for hours, waiting for him to get there. But we can’t prove where he was. And he isn’t telling us.”

  “What about the money? The insurance?”

  “Circumstantial,” Grimaldi said. “Suggestive, but not illegal. And he can prove that he didn’t kill Mr. Wright.”

  “So he could get away with it?”

  They both shrugged. “We can charge him with conspiracy,” Mendoza said. “But any halfway decent defense attorney could get him off. There just isn’t any proof. He’s covered his tracks very well. And now that Terry Dixon’s dead, he’ll dump it all on her. And probably get away with it, since she isn’t alive to tell a different story.”

  We’d all been so busy talking that none of us had been paying attention to Rafe. Or maybe Grimaldi had been. She’d been less involved in the conversation than Mendoza or I. She might have realized what he wanted. Mendoza didn’t. When the door shut, Mendoza turned to it, and it took a second for him to put the pieces together.

  “What the hell—!”

  But by then it was too late. The door into the interrogation room had opened. Instead of going after Rafe, Mendoza turned to the mirror, just as Grimaldi and I did.

  Rafe stepped into the room behind the mirror and closed the door quietly behind him. Stacy watched him a little warily—he could obviously tell it wasn’t Mendoza coming back, and he could also see that the newcomer was both bigger and more muscular—but it wasn’t until Rafe turned around that he recognized him. I was pleased to see his throat move when he swallowed, and I don’t think it was the coffee.

  “Morning,” Rafe said.

  It should have sounded friendly, but didn’t.

  Stacy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, he watched as Rafe came closer. And closer.

  Instead of sitting on the other side of the table, the way Mendoza had done, Rafe scooted his hip up on the table on Stacy’s side, so close that they were almost touching. Crowding Stacy. And then he folded his arms over his chest.

  He had his back to us, but he was wearing a short sleeved T-shirt, and I know what his arms look like. Muscles moved, a lot of them. The sleeves of the shirt strained across his biceps, and the snake tattoo curling around one arm probably stretched and winked.

  Stacy watched, fascinated and more than a little wary. “You must work out a lot,” he said. And although he was probably going for nonchalant and flirtatious, it came out choked instead.

  Grimaldi made a sort of choking noise, too. Even Mendoza snorted.

  Rafe didn’t dignify the remark with a response. “You know who I am?” he asked instead, his voice sort of scary bland.

  Stacy hesitated. I’m sure he remembered meeting Rafe before—my husband isn’t the kind of guy you forget—but it sounded like something of a rhetorical question, so Stacy may have thought it safer not to respond.

  “I’m the guy whose house you broke into last night.”

  Stacy swallowed. Audibly.

  “The house where my wife lives. My pregnant wife.”

  One thing about Rafe: he’s a scary guy. You can tell he’s been places and seen things most of us haven’t. That he’s done things most of us haven’t, too. And the quieter he gets, the more scary he is.

  He was very quiet now. So quiet that those of us in the other room had to strain to hear him. Although I’m sure Stacy had no such problem. Just as I was sure he was ready to pee his pants at any moment.

  He moistened his lips. “What are you doing here? You’re not a cop. Are you?”

  Rafe shook his head. “The detective had to step out. I thought I’d step in. So we could have a talk.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” Stacy said.

  Rafe nodded. “That’s good. ‘Cause I don’t wanna hear about how you wasn’t there and I musta made a mistake.”

  Stacy opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “You brought a gun into my house. Where my wife was sleeping. Alone, ‘cause I was out trying to keep two gangs from killing each other.”

  Stacy didn’t even attempt to speak this time.

  “Your friend’s dead,” Rafe told him. “My wife pushed her down the stairs and broke her neck.”

  I winced. He made it sound like I’d done it on purpose, and I hadn’t.

  “You’re damn lucky I wasn’t there, ‘cause I woulda done a lot worse. And if I ever meet you outside this place,” he glance around took in the interrogation room, and beyond it, police headquarters and all the cops who would stand ready to save Stacy from him, “I will.”

  Somehow, Stacy managed to find his voice again. “You can’t do that! You’ll go to prison!”

  “Prison don’t scare me,” Rafe told him. “I’ve already done time. I damn near killed the bastard who hurt my mama when I was eighteen.”

  And much more recently, he’d killed someone who tried to hurt me, although he hadn’t gone to prison for it. I wondered if it would help or hurt to tell Stacy that.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. Stacy made a noise that sounded like, “Urk.”

  “You might should consider it,” Rafe told him, “since, if you walk outta here, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “I think that’s probably my cue,” Mendoza said with a nod to Grimaldi and me. “Excuse me.”

  He headed back into the hallway. A second later, he opened the door into the interrogation room and stepped through the opening. “Sorry about that—”

  He stopped when he saw Rafe, as if he hadn’t expected to see him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Rafe uncoiled himself from the top of the table, smoothly and unhurriedly. “Just talking to your suspect here.”

  Mendoza looked from him to Stacy and back, as if to make sure that Stacy was unharmed by the exchange. “Are you all right, Mr. Kelleher?”

  Stacy nodded, although he looked a little green.

  “Did he touch you?”

  Stacy hesitated, and I could see him weighing the possibility of claiming police brutality. Or brutality while in police custody. But Rafe really hadn’t touched him, and in the end he must have decided not to take the chance. “No.”

  Mendoza nodded. “Get out of here,” he told Rafe, who sauntered toward the door.

  “Don’t forget what we talked about,” he told Stacy over his shoulder.

  Stacy gulped.

  A few seconds later he was back with Grimaldi and me again.

  “Nicely done,” she told him. “I think you made him wet himself.”

  I added, “That was scary. You sounded like you were ready to kill him.”

  A little of that black rage lingered in his eyes still, but it was fading. He didn’t smile, though. “If I ever meet that guy in a place where there are no witnesses, he ain’t walking away.” He clenched his hands into fists. “He came into my house with a gun. My house. Where my wife was. With a gun!”

  “He deserves to pay for that,” Grimaldi nodded. “Now let’s see what happens.”

  She turned toward the two-way mirror. I put my hand on Rafe’s arm, and felt hard-as-granite muscles against my fingers. It took several moments before he relaxed, but eventually he let his breath out in a sigh, and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I was scared outta my mind,” he murmured into my hair. “When Tammy called and told me you’d called her, and that somebody was in the house with you, I was scared shitless. Now I want him dead.”

  “You can’t kill him,” I answered. “I appreciate the thought, but I want him to go to prison. For a long time. Not just for breaking into our house and scaring you,” and me, “but for what he did to Aislynn and Kylie, and for Virgil Wright, and for Marcus Jefferson, even though I’d never even heard of the guy until today. Terry is dead. You’ll have to be satisfied with that. Stacy needs to pay another way.”

  He didn’t answer, but he t
urned us both toward the mirror so we could watch what went on in the interrogation room. He kept his arms around me, though, his hands protectively covering the baby inside my belly.

  Mendoza was still insincerely apologizing for Rafe, and twisting the knife a little with each word. “Sorry about that. He wasn’t supposed to come in here. But he tends to go where he wants.”

  “He’s crazy!” Stacy said with a shiver. “He said he’d kill me!”

  Mendoza took his seat on the other side of the table again, with his back to us. “Nice of him to give you advance warning.”

  Stacy stared at him. “Are you kidding? You’re the police, aren’t you? Are you just going to sit there and let him threaten me like that?”

  “There’s nothing much I can do about it,” Mendoza said, “is there? It’s your word against his. Of course, if he lays a hand on you, I can arrest him for assault.”

  “Fat lot of good that will do,” Stacy said bitterly. “I’ll be dead. Or at least in the hospital with a lot of broken bones.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Mendoza soothed him. “If you weren’t at his house last night, you have nothing to worry about. I’m sure he won’t kill you without proof.”

  There was a pause.

  “OK,” Stacy said. “I was there, all right? But I swear it wasn’t my idea. Terry wanted to go. She had a gun, and she was talking crazy. I went with her to make sure nothing happened.”

  Rafe muttered something. Grimaldi nodded.

  “What?” I asked.

  She glanced at me. “It almost sounds reasonable. He’s good at spin.”

  Which was another way of saying that Stacy was a good liar, I assumed.

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t keep her from getting killed,” Mendoza said inside the interrogation room. “It would have helped to have her version of events, too.”

  Stacy bristled. “You don’t believe me? I’m confessing! I was there. I broke in. And I helped Terry set the fire at the other woman’s house. I tried to make sure that it didn’t burn anything down, but I helped her. I’m guilty.”

  “You want to go to jail?”

  “If you can get me transferred out of state,” Stacy said. “Somewhere like California. Away from here, where that... that... man can’t find me.”

  “Sure.” Mendoza’s voice was calm. “We can arrange that.”

  “Montana,” Grimaldi told me. “Or maybe Alaska.”

  “Or Mississippi. Where maybe they can find some proof that he and Terry killed Marcus Jefferson.”

  “After all this time, I don’t think that’ll be easy to do,” Grimaldi told me, “but we’ll let them know what we’ve learned. Maybe they can close their cold case, if nothing else.”

  “Confessing to breaking into my house and setting a bucket of rags on fire on Aislynn and Kylie’s porch won’t keep him locked up for long, will it?”

  Not like murder. If he’d confessed to murder, or even conspiracy to commit murder, they could really lock him up and throw away the key.

  “You’d be surprised,” Rafe told me. “Home invasion’s a felony. Carrying a gun during a burglary is a big deal. He just admitted he knew that Terry had one, so he can’t come back and say that he didn’t know about it. And since you’re two people, it’s twice the crime.”

  “I’m two people?”

  “You and the baby,” Grimaldi said. “The law is particular when it comes to violence against expectant mothers.”

  Ah. “Of course.”

  “He’ll be going away for a long time, just for this. We’ll keep digging, and see if we can make a case for conspiracy on any of the murders, but it may be that this is the best we can do.” She was watching through the mirror as she talked, instead of looking at me. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, turning my attention to what was going on in the interrogation room, as well. “Aislynn and Kylie are still together, and have their house, that they love. There’ll be no more anonymous letters. If Terry was the one who committed the murders, she’s paid for what she did. And he’ll be in prison, a state or more away. It’s all good.”

  Rafe grumbled something—probably along the lines of it not being good until Stacy was six feet under, where he’d put the victims we wouldn’t prove he’d planned to murder—but he didn’t say it out loud. I put my hand in his.

  “It’s enough.”

  He glanced down at me, but didn’t say anything. His hand tightened around mine, though, and the corners of his mouth turned up.

  Inside the interrogation room, Mendoza told Stacy to get to his feet and put his hands behind his back. We watched as Mendoza snapped a pair of handcuffs around Stacy’s wrists and led him toward the door.

  I yawned. It had been a long night, with not much sleep.

  “Tired?” Rafe asked.

  I nodded. “I could go back to bed.”

  “Funny you should say that. So could I.”

  Grimaldi rolled her eyes. “Get out of here,” she said. “Get a room.”

  Rafe grinned and pulled me toward the door. “You heard the detective. Let’s go home and to bed.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said, and followed him through the door and out.

  # # #

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  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jenna Bennett (Jennie Bentley) writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Savannah Martin real estate mysteries for her own gratification. She also writes a variety of romance for a change of pace. Originally from Norway, she has spent more than twenty five years in the US, and still hasn’t been able to kick her native accent.

  For more information, please visit Jenna’s website: www.JennaBennett.com