The deepest kill, p.1
The Deepest Kill, page 1
Books by Lisa Black
The Deepest Kill
What Harms You
Red Flags
Every Kind of Wicked
Let Justice Descend
Suffer the Children
Perish
Unpunished
That Darkness
Close to the Bone
The Price of Innocence
Blunt Impact
Defensive Wounds
Trail of Blood
Evidence of Murder
Takeover
THE DEEPEST KILL
LISA BLACK
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Notes and Acknowledgments
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2024 by Lisa Black
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2023947407
The K and book logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-4965-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-4965-9
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: March 2024
ISBN: 978-1-4967-4967-3 (ebook)
To my (numerous) cousins
who made any day fun
Chapter 1
Wednesday
Day One
“He’s lying,” Rachael Davies said.
“What?” Ellie nearly spilled the cup of overly warm coffee she’d so carefully carted across the terrazzo. Her new boss, Dr. Davies, sat in the cafeteria, absently eating what looked like cold pasta primavera and watching the twenty-inch monitor perched on the counter next to the coffeemaker. They were two of only five people in the large room, built to hold the entire lunchtime crowd of a DC-area boy’s school but now utilized only when sessions of forensic training were being held. The last two had ended the week before. Until more started the following month, the cafeteria provided only coffee and use of a microwave. For anything more, the Locard staff were on their own.
The television monitor replayed the interview of Greg Anderson appealing for the return of his wife, Ashley. Ashley, four months pregnant, a white twenty-five-year-old, apparently went boating one day two weeks previously and disappeared. After one week, local fishermen found the empty boat bobbing in the Gulf. Though boating accidents were hardly unheard of in coastal areas, Ashley’s case stayed in the news—mostly because of her father.
Martin Post, the third-richest man in the United States. Genius of OakTree software and hardware design—there were few computers in the world that didn’t churn up cyberspace using his components. And now, a mere mile from his opulent Florida fortress, his only child had washed up on a beach among the seaweed and discarded water bottles.
On the screen, Greg Anderson pleaded for any information about his wife. “If anyone saw her, if anyone was on the water that day, please call the tip line and let us know. Ashley w—is the joy of my life. And that we were about to have our first baby—” He broke off and put a hand to his mouth, his eyes screwing up into tight knots, apparently overwhelmed.
“Totally lying,” Rachael said again.
Again Ellie’s gaze swung from her to the television and back again. “How do you know that?”
“First, he speaks of her in the past tense.”
“She is in the past tense.”
“Not then. That interview was shot on the day after she disappeared.” Her new boss tore open a bag of chips, chewed one with a thoughtful air, then set the bag down to position her hands with all five pairs of fingers touching. “Second, he held his hands like this.”
“Like he was praying.”
“Not exactly. The palms aren’t touching, the fingers aren’t interlaced. It’s called steepling, and is a huge indicator of confidence. One of the biggest.”
The gesture did seem familiar. “Like a supervillain in a movie.”
“And he’s sweating.”
“It’s Florida.”
“Even at this time of year?” Rachael said, and glanced through the windows where a Chesapeake Bay fall had already begun to bluster, ripping the dying leaves from the surrounding forest.
“At every time of year. Trust me on that.”
Ellie and the assistant dean of education had already been through much more than most coworkers, and in a short amount of time. This had made the two women intimately familiar in some ways and left them total strangers in others. Right now Ellie had no idea what her new boss might be thinking as Rachael waved a chip and said, “Exactly! Third, his facial muscles are all relaxed. His lips aren’t compressed, his eyes are wide—until he scrunches them up at the end, because on some level his body knows that his skin isn’t matching his words. He even tilts his head to one side, something you don’t do unless you’re relaxed and, well, happy. Usually, anyway . . . there are always exceptions.”
The news story moved to a new clip, and Rachael continued. “Here, the interview after her body washed up, he doesn’t seem so chipper. His chin is trembling, he’s pressing his lips together hard, he seems to pant when specifying on which beach the body was found. To be fair, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying about any part of it. It only tells me he’s worried.”
“Huh,” was Ellie’s less than eloquent comment. The TV coverage continued its recap of the saga with a clip of a news reporter in a motorboat. Ominous clouds gathered overhead as she described the water search after Ashley went missing. “You think he killed her? Or somehow drove her to suicide?”
Rachael crunched another chip. “Not necessarily. I just think he’s glad she’s gone.”
“Martin Post’s daughter? She was young, beautiful, filthy rich—”
“It’s a marriage, which means the dynamics are not always logical. And a lot depends on the prenup.”
“Wow. Can—can you teach me how to do that?”
Rachael laughed, heartily enough to be flattering. “Deception detection? Sure—sit in on my class next quarter. But you probably already know a lot of it, maybe had it in other training?”
Ellie shook her head. “I know how to interpret the crime scene, fingerprints, bullet casings, inanimate objects. Human beings remain a mystery.”
The Locard secretary materialized between them and the television set. “Phone call, Rachael.”
The assistant dean gave her a pleading look. “This is the first time I’ve sat down all day. Can you scribble a message?”
“I think you’d better take this one.”
Ellie watched as Rachael’s interest perked up along with her eyebrows. “Who is it?”
“He says he’s Martin Post.”
Chapter 2
The coast of southwest Florida did not care to be convenient, refusing to progress in one solid line of beach from Tampa to the Everglades. It dipped and swirled and created pockets of bays and lagoons and estuaries and mangrove paddies and marshes. There were miles of sandy beach, yes, but also miles where the pockmarked land declined to provide a consistent foundation.
Martin Post, Ellie could see, had gotten around that by sinking a fortune in concrete and making his own. His property formed, more or less, an island in a sea of undeveloped coast, surrounded by soupy bunches of mangrove trees and unstable shoals. This provided an effective but beautiful no-man’s-land between his family and the rest of the world. Paparazzi or corporate spies would have to wind through the marshy, bramble-like growth in a flat-bottomed john-boat, risking alligators, water moccasins, and exsanguination by mosquitos in order to reach even the border of his property. And then, Ellie noted as she approached the security shed, scale a twelve-foot wall equipped with cameras and topped with spikes.
Much easier to make an appointment.
Which, apparently, the fifteen or so news channel and print media vans parked along the street did not have. They had pulled to the side of the public thoroughfare rather than on to the Post property, burning gallon after gallon of fossil fuel to keep their air-conditioning running while they waited, waited, waited, for something to happen. Each occupant sat up like a meerkat sensing a tasty scorpion as she drove down the otherwise empty street, and poured from their doors with cameras running when she pulled into the drive. They started up the pavement after her, then paused, slowed, as if held back by an invisible forcefield of money and a possible trespass charge. No doubt the back of their rented sedan would be on the evening news, unless something more interesting happened before air time.
Ellie had peppered Rachael with questions during the flight down, questions she couldn’t answer as to why the third-richest man in the country wanted to talk to them about his daughter. Clearly the third-richest man in the country wanted to hire the Locard as forensic consultants on his daughter’s death—but what he expected them to do, neither could guess.
“It’s getting cloudy,” Rachael said.
“Rainy season.” Ellie had once lived there. She had once lived in a number of places, since her mother died when Ellie was four and her father had no interest in being a single parent. She lived with her grandmother until the age of nine, spending most summers with her mother’s cousins in Nevada. After the grandmother got sick, it was Aunt Rosalie’s until twelve, Uncle Terry and Aunt Katey in West Virginia until sixteen, then Uncle Paul and Aunt Joanna in Naples. College in California and vacations with her mother’s cousin Tommy and Valeria, recruited to the bureau in DC, and a now-ended marriage to fellow forensics expert Adam. So yes, she knew the local weather. “Florida has two seasons. It rains every day during the rainy season. And then one day it stops, and then it’s dry season.”
Rachael glanced at her as if she might be kidding. She was not.
The security guard at the gatehouse, politely dour, ignored the cameras one hundred feet away and asked them for ID. He took their Locard badges into his workstation, so well air-conditioned that condensation trickled down the open glass door, through which he kept an eye on them. His work space appeared to have enough electronic screens and equipment to operate the space station, an overstuffed couch, and a full kitchen. Nice that Martin Post provided pleasant working conditions, even for an apparent ex-WWF bodybuilder who looked as if he’d have been equally at ease chowing down an MRE in an Afghan desert.
She also noticed no less than three cameras aimed at them and their car, undoubtedly beaming their photos to the main house for confirmation that the two women were expected. Only one lane leading into the estate, and one to let a car back out. Not a drive designed to welcome a crowd and without a chance to dart around another vehicle while the gate lifted. The gate itself went far beyond a single wooden stick across the lane, made of thick stainless steel bars with only enough gap between each slat to allow Florida winds but not a human being. Of course, if Ellie had more money than the GDP of many first-world nations, she would consider security worth paying for too.
The guard gave her the go-ahead and she drove forward into the masses of greenery. She only knew a house existed at the end of the two-lane road by a glimpse of its uppermost floors over the tops of the mangroves. It took longer than she expected to get there, but at last the wild vines parted and a campus of concrete and glass appeared to spring up from the ground. The drive split into three directions with no indication of what might be where, so, true to form, she continued on the middle one.
Boxy, concrete garages sat on either side, more like an industrial park than a home. The door of one stood open with a lithe woman visible inside; she stood in front of a workbench holding a belt sander. “That’s the wife,” Rachael said.
Ellie stopped the car and they got out.
The woman was not alone. A man, also thirtyish and attractive with dark, perfectly cut hair and a slender form. But he wore a suit complete with tie while she had on a white tank top and crumpled khaki shorts that probably would cost Ellie a week’s salary.
The young man’s hand rested on the woman’s arm, gently, an almost pleading look on his face. “Are you sure you even want to do this?”
“It’s too late for that.”
He dropped his hand. “You’re right. It is.”
They both noticed the Locard women at the same time. Before they got close enough to greet, he added, to the woman, “Please get the time to me as soon as you can. I’ve got everyone’s schedule coordinated for that one narrow window, and if we miss that he’ll lose the opportunity to bid at all.”
“I understand.”
“And I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Tomas.”
Rachael’s shadow on the floor alerted the woman; she set the sander down and turned. The young man nodded to them as he left the garage, while the woman wiped her hands on her clothes and tried for a smile, starting with Rachael. “You’re Dr. Davies.” A statement, not a question. “And Dr. Carr. I’m Dani. I’m Martin’s wife.”
Ellie shook the hand offered, the firm fingers lightly coated with dust. “What are you building?”
It seemed a safe bet for a conversational gambit. Ellie had negotiated so many “news” in her life that a careful approach had become second nature. Stay quiet and polite, don’t tick anyone off, don’t choose allies too quickly. Get the lay of the land first. Keep a pleasant expression glued to your face at all times. Good advice for infiltrating unfamiliar families or second grade or world-class teaching institutes. Or the households of the ultra-rich.
“A bookshelf.” The woman’s smile deepened a millimeter or two, as if embarrassed. “The last thing we need, but this is how we cope with stress. Martin writes code, and I work with wood. Come this way, I’ll take you to him.”
Martin Post’s wife had ice-blue eyes under a shock of artfully cut blond hair that swished with each step, and stood about Ellie’s height but at least fifteen pounds lighter. Her skin, figure, nails, the arch of each eyebrow were all perfect, yet she didn’t seem to care that her stress-release hobby had left her with two deep scratches on her right forearm and an angry patch at her left wrist, perhaps where the sander had jumped its board. Or that she trailed sawdust from her bare feet as she guided them through a door to a cool interior corridor. She hadn’t said anything about being Ashley’s mother, which seemed likely only if she’d given birth at ten. Maybe fifteen.
They entered an elevator. When Martin Post had asked them to come “to the house,” Ellie had expected a mansion, a sprawling example of Million Dollar Listing with gold-plated faucets and a fountain in the curved drive. But perhaps “house” was only OakTree slang for “headquarters.” Even the elevator consisted of four blank steel walls.
Dani said nothing, so neither did they.
According to the indicator they had passed three levels when the doors split to reveal yet another cool corridor, but at least this one had artwork hung at uniform intervals. Dani moved forward and the two women followed.
The photos were of Martin Post, sometimes with Dani, sometimes with Ashley. They carried water bottles on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon or hiked in Machu Picchu with backpacks and walking sticks, all matted and framed to coordinate with the creamy taupe walls. This family, Ellie thought, values experiences more than gold-plated faucets. Good for them.
