Allison Brennan - See No Evil

Crystal Montgomery didn’t care about her daughter, and Emily had almost given up caring about that sad fact. But she couldn’t. She sometimes wondered if she’d ever really had a mom. Maybe the memories of them walking on the beach, playing with Barbies, making cookies was all a dream. Those good times seemed so far in the past that Emily wasn’t sure if she’d made up some of the details to get herself through the nights when her mother wasn’t home. To get through the days when Victor was.

Thirteen months and she would legally be able to walk out the door and live on her own. Her trust fund would be hers. She would no longer be dependent on her mother and Victor.

Thirteen months. She prayed she survived that long. It wasn’t that she was worried about Victor killing her. She feared her own hand.

She closed the large, overhead garage door with the remote and walked to the side door that led to a covered walk. Their house was huge, far bigger than the three of them needed, but Crystal and Victor entertained, and that meant they needed a big house with huge rooms to fill with people as phony as they.

It struck her as sad that when her dad had been alive the house hadn’t seemed as big and scary, even though she’d been smaller. And there’d only been the three of them then, too. But with her dad, everything was a game. They raced Matchbox cars down the long marble halls, played hide-and-seek in the maze of rooms, slid down the banister of the great center staircase.

The fun died with her dad.

Emily entered the house through the secondary entrance, the one Victor ordered the hired help to use. None of the outside doors used a key. That would be common. Emily typed in the security code on the keypad next to the door and the lock sprung. The atmosphere was cool, in both temperature and aesthetics. Her mother had the downstairs professionally redecorated every two years. Last year, she wanted the feeling of the ocean, everything in blues and greens. The sound system piped in canned ocean waves whenever her mother was home.

No music, no mother.

She waited for the intercom’s grating buzz, every cell in her body on alert. Victor was home, his Jaguar was in the garage. Of course he was home, it was Wednesday. Her mother was gone, the housekeeping staff had the night off, and Emily had to be home. Every day by six p.m. by order of the court.

Damn curfew. Damn the police. Damn the whole fucking system.

And damn her for being so stupid. Vandalizing the courthouse. What had she been thinking? Of course, she hadn’t been. Just like when she’d run away. All emotions, no plan. Emily couldn’t see anything beyond her anger. And she was paying for it now. Maybe she deserved it.

The intercom didn’t beep, her stepdad didn’t summon her to his office. She slipped off her sandals to tread soundlessly across the marble floors. Slowly, she walked down the long, wide hall to the center foyer, waiting for the telltale click of the intercom and Judge Montgomery’s deep and disgusting voice.

Emily, please come to my office.

Nothing. Silence.

Maybe he was on the phone. Maybe he hadn’t been watching the security system and was unaware she’d come home. Maybe he’d hung himself. She could only hope.

She started up the grand staircase, her heart racing. As Emily ascended, she began to run. Free. She was free. She’d lock herself in her room, because he didn’t dare come after her in there. It was always his office, his desk. His domain.

She closed and locked the door behind her, grinning. She leaped onto her bed and jumped up and down like a little kid. Then she went into her bathroom and started the water in her bathtub. Hot, with bubbles.

She wasn’t supposed to drink. In addition to being underage, it was a term of her plea bargain last year since she’d been intoxicated when she’d vandalized the courthouse. But she had a flask of dark rum hidden in her dresser, which she refilled periodically from Victor’s bar.

She had to have something to wash the foul taste of him out of her mouth and mind.

Now she drank in celebration. Locked in her room. Alone. At peace.

Downstairs, Victor Montgomery sat in his desk chair, dead, his bloody body horribly mutilated.

A murder, as well as a possible attempted suicide.

Detective Will Hooper was working the case alone. His partner, Carina Kincaid, was on a well-deserved vacation with her fiance, but he missed having her here to bounce around ideas and theories. They made a good team.

But murder doesn’t take a vacation.

He arrived at the crime scene at the same time as the crime lab director, Dr. Jim Gage. The high-profile crime brought out the big guns in the department.

The murder vic was a judge, Victor Montgomery, which meant that right away they had politics and brass in the middle of the case. As soon as the press got wind of it, they’d be slithering all over the crime scene. But for now it was only the responding officers, Gage and his two techs, and Will.

A female teen, Emily Montgomery, had been taken to the hospital, an apparent attempted suicide. Will didn’t want to make any assumptions, though she’d obviously been drinking-a lot-and the responding officers found a half-empty bottle of Xanax. Her stomach would be pumped and the doctor would formally determine whether she had, in fact, tried to kill herself.

The fact that Judge Montgomery had just sentenced Herman Santos-the closest thing San Diego had to a Mafia don-to death by lethal injection for his role in a three-year-old execution-style murder of two cops also couldn’t be overlooked.

“Why didn’t we know about the girl when the nine-one-one call came in?” Gage asked Will as they met outside on the circular driveway at the base of the wide front stairs that led to large double doors, now open and guarded by two uniformed officers. Though late, the evening was warm enough to leave his jacket in the car.

“The wife found her husband’s body when she returned from a meeting. She ran to the neighbors to call and never said anything about her daughter. Diaz found the girl upstairs when he did a walk-through.” Will motioned for Diaz to approach. “Good to have you on the job.”

Officer Diaz gave a half smile. “Two days back and I feel human again.” Last month he’d been shot in the line of duty in a gang initiation stunt, but made it through and recently received medical clearance for duty.

“What happened with the girl?” Gage asked, glancing at an upstairs window.

Diaz checked his notes, cleared his throat. “We arrived on scene at ten-fourteen, nine minutes after the nine-one-one call came in. We checked the perimeter, attempted entry, but the door was secure. Mrs. Crystal Montgomery then approached from her neighbor’s house”-he gestured north-“and let us in with her security code. She remained in the living room while we inspected the ground floor and verified the deceased.” He looked up, a little pale. “It wasn’t pretty.”

Gage motioned for him to continue. Will and Gage certainly weren’t expecting a pretty crime scene.

Diaz said, “We asked if anyone else was home and she then told us her sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily, was supposed to be home.”

Will interrupted. “What was Mrs. Montgomery’s demeanor when she informed you of her daughter’s presence?”

“It was an afterthought.”

Her daughter, an afterthought. “Go on.”

“We called in the homicide and searched the house. Knocked on her bedroom door, which was locked, and when there was no answer we broke in. She was lying next to her bed in a robe, unconscious. We ascertained that she was alive, called for an ambulance, monitored her vitals. Weak. The room smelled of alcohol and we found an empty pint flask in the bathroom next to the bathtub. The tub was wet, there were damp towels, and a bottle of some prescription medication on the floor.”