Allison Brennan - Killing Fear

Will stood and grabbed her hands, forced her to look at him. She blinked back the tears. “It is not your fault, Robin. Glenn is a sociopath. If he didn’t fixate on you, he would have fixated on someone else. What we have to deal with now are the facts.”

“All right.” She sat back down, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

Will remained standing. She bit back her fear, her face a mask of calmness when Will knew she was petrified. She thought she was weak? He didn’t know many civilians who could keep it together in the face of an evil like Theodore Glenn. It was so hard not to touch Robin, but right now they needed information.

“The night Anna died, there was a message on my cell phone,” Will began. “It was a page from your apartment.”

Robin’s brows furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.

“I thought it was you calling. I didn’t call back because I was only a few minutes away, so I came by. I was going to go up to the apartment, but I saw the bar lights still on and I remembered that you had been working that night.”

Hans asked, “Did you think it was odd that she paged you with her home number?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t really think anything about it, or if I did it was that she must have accidentally put in her home number, or thought she’d be home in a few minutes. I don’t know, I really don’t remember what I thought at the time. But I went into RJ’s, and that’s where I found Robin.”

“Anna was murdered at about the time that Will arrived at the bar,” Hans said. “Give or take fifteen minutes. She may have been dead when he got the page, or she may have been killed after he arrived at the bar.”

“Theodore told Trinity that he was watching us in the bar. He could have killed her, then came down and watched-” Robin stopped, her face pale.

“I know this is hard for you, Robin,” Will said. “But it’s important that you think back to that night and try to remember everything that happened.”

“I gave my statement seven years ago,” she said.

Hans nodded. “In your statement you said you closed up the bar, walked across the street to your apartment, and found Anna dead in the living room.”

“That’s true.”

Will sat next to Robin. “I made a huge mistake seven years ago. When you didn’t put in your statement that we had been together in the bar, I should have. I should have said something.”

“That’s not relevant to anything,” she said.

“No, except it wasn’t the complete truth. I omitted the truth.”

“Had you been totally honest, would that have saved Anna?”

“No,” Will said.

Hans spoke up. “What we know for certain is that Glenn was in the bar during the same time you and Will were in the bar. When could he have gotten in?”

“I thought you were watching him,” Robin said. “After Jessica-”

Will nodded. “We were. I had a patrol on him. He slipped out, again. He lived in a beach house. We had someone on each entrance. What we didn’t have covered were his upstairs windows. He could have climbed onto the roof, then scrambled down. He has experience rock climbing; scaling a house would be nothing to him.”

“In the trial you said something about that,” Robin said. “That impressions had been found on the north side of the house or something.”

“Exactly, that was our theory. And it gave reasonable doubt that he was in the house all night. No one saw him there, no one spoke to him. And even though we had men on the house, the evidence that he’d scaled down from the roof, out of sight, proved he could have left undetected.”

Hans said, “Robin, how long were you alone in the bar?”

“It was a weeknight, we closed at midnight, locked the door.” She paused. “There were three regulars still there, but they just finished their drinks and chatted while RJ and I cleaned up.”

“Who let them out?”

“I don’t remember. It could have been either of us. Probably RJ.”

“Why wasn’t RJ there when Will arrived?”

“He was tired. He had heart problems and was on medication. He’d been talking about selling out. In fact, he later sold to me. After Brandi was killed RJ lost his drive. He was already old, but he suddenly got older. I told him to go home, I would stock up and finish. He didn’t want to, but-I promised him I’d be okay. He left about one. Will came in shortly after that.”

“Did you see Theodore Glenn at all that night?”

She shook her head. “RJ banned him. He wasn’t allowed on the property.”

“Could he have snuck in?”

“I don’t see how. We had a bouncer, and-” She paused. “The bouncer left after the last dance. That’s eleven on weeknights.”

“So there was an hour when he could have snuck in,” Will said. An hour where Glenn could have killed Robin.

“I don’t see-” She swallowed. “Yeah, he would have known our routine. But-I don’t see where he’d have been.”

“What about in the dressing room?” Will said. “If the shows were over, would there have been any reason for you or RJ to go back there?”

Slowly, Robin shook her head. “The last two girls left at eleven thirty that night. Together. Safety in numbers and all that.”

“Why did you let RJ leave you there alone?” Will asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I never seriously thought Theodore would hurt me. He was targeting women who slept with him. I never did. I didn’t feel he was a personal threat to me. I was scared, but not that kind of scared. I don’t know!”

“When did you turn on the alarm?” Hans asked.

“When I left.”

“So he left before that,” Hans said.

“I–I guess. It was on motion detectors, so if someone were inside the alarm would have gone off.”

“Could he have had the code?”

“I doubt it,” Robin said. “RJ changed it monthly and every time an employee left.”

Will said, “We checked the logs per routine and it was untouched after Robin locked up at one fifty-two that morning.”

“See?” Robin said. “He saw Will and me, then went over to kill Anna.”

“But everyone thought Anna was out of town,” Will said. “You said so yourself-she told everyone at the club.”

“Then-he went there to kill me and she was there.” Robin swallowed.

“I don’t think so,” Hans said. “Whoever killed Anna had time to restrain her, cut her, and position her body.” He paused. “After reviewing the crime scene, the killer must have spent at least fifteen minutes there, and that’s rushing it. If Glenn killed her before midnight-before he could have slipped into the club-the time of death would be completely different. And while time of death is not wholly accurate, when we have the body that quickly we can narrow it down better. If he killed her after watching you and Will-the time of death would have proven that. As it was, death was fixed at between one and one thirty a.m. Will received the page at twelve fifty-five. He told me he arrived at the club at one-oh-five or so. You both left at one fifty. Since Glenn knows information about that time period, he couldn’t have killed Anna. He wouldn’t have had enough time. Not considering what was done to the body.”

Hans looked from Will to Robin. “The million dollar question is, who called Will from your apartment? Anna-or her killer?”

Will squeezed Robin’s hands. “I see where you’re coming from, Hans. I can’t believe I overlooked that back then.”

“You didn’t. You assumed Robin called you.”

“But I didn’t ask her. If I had, we could have figured this out seven years ago.”

“But the conclusion would have been the same,” Hans reminded him. “The evidence points to Glenn.”