Page 6 of Say Nothing
"The point of entry and exit from the yard?"Derek asked."Footprints?Car tracks?"
"Again, we don't have anything yet," the detective admitted.
Derek rubbed his forehead.
Alison stopped flicking through the album and went back a couple of pages.
"Hey, come and take a look at this," she said to Derek.
The picture showed three people, with the deceased being the person on the left.She was significantly younger, perhaps six or seven years younger, and looked full of life, especially in comparison to her current state.
"Is that?"Derek asked.
"Yeah, Calvin Reynolds," Alison confirmed, mapping the person on the right of the photo.
"And the guy in the middle with his arm around Margaret?"Derek asked.
"He has to be her ex," Alison said."Which means she knew Calvin before testifying against him, and so did the ex."
"So, Calvin has someone on the outside who knows Margaret and might know her security system well, someone she might let willingly into her home or give her alarm codes to.Someone we need to talk to immediately."
"Exactly," Alison said."We have someone with a grudge to bear, who is able to gain access to her house.He could be our killer, and we need to find him now.
CHAPTER THREE
"I remember it now," Alison said."Franklin Howard, Margaret’s ex-husband and Calvin’s cousin.They didn't just know each other, they were family."
"So, Calvin is betrayed by Alison, Franklin takes that personally, and they hatch a plan together?"Derek asked.
"That’s how it looks on the surface, but we need to dig into Franklin and find him.If he killed Margaret, he might have skipped town already or be in the process of doing so."
They were back in the CBI offices, a place they had worked together on two previous cases.Those two cases had led to the capture of two separate killers, and Alison wouldn’t mind adding a third to that list.
She shared Derek’s desk for now as they started their preliminary investigation, and would move to her own space once they branched off.For now, it was beneficial to be close so they could share what they had on Franklin and Calvin.Alison had her notes from the trial where she’d coached Margaret, and Derek was looking into Franklin’s background.
The office wasn’t small, and the desk was a regular size, but with both of them spread out over it, there wasn’t a lot of space left.Derek had a large green potted plant five feet tall in the corner, and took great pride in how infrequently he had to water it.Filing cabinets filled one sidewall and bookshelves filled the other.The door was left open to make the room feel more spacious and allow the air to circulate.The downside of that was that the noise from the bullpen, where multiple CBI agents worked multiple cases.
Still, there was something invigorating about being in that environment for Alison.They were all working separately toward a common goal: to remove criminals from society.
"What does it say about them in your notes?"Derek asked.
"I wrote down that Calvin was her husband’s cousin, and I would have been mindful of that when I was coaching her.It’s hard enough to coach someone to testify against a violent offender with the risk of them going free and seeking retribution, but it’s quite another when you’re testifying against family."
"I can't imagine," Derek said."She must have been terrified."
"I don't remember the exact case well, but she would have been.She was at a bar with Calvin and Franklin when Calvin assaulted one of the patrons with a club he carried with him.No one knew how it started, but Calvin sure as heck finished it.He put the guy in the hospital for three months and then a couple of years of rehabilitation.The guy he assaulted was clean as a whistle.Calvin, not so much.He had a lengthy record, which went against him at the trial.It was a pretty open and shut case, and Margaret was not the only witness that night, but she’s the one who must have hurt the most."
"Alright, so Calvin assaults a guy in the bar where he’s drinking with Margaret and Franklin.We can assume Margaret and Franklin were still together at that point?"
"Let me see.I just pulled up the record of their divorce."Alison took a second to peruse the document and the trial records."Okay, so they divorced six months after Calvin was imprisoned.That suggests that proceedings were initiated before that, possibly around the time of the trial.Who knows how long they'd been having problems?"
"Could it have come to a head around the time of the trial?"Derek asked."Margaret testifies against his cousin, and it’s the last straw in the relationship?"
"Possibly," Alison said."It certainly wouldn’t have helped.I’d like to know what sort of relationship Franklin and Calvin had.If they were close, he would have been hurt by it.If not, then maybe he believes Calvin got what he deserved."
"Hold on," Derek said."Detective Moore is calling."He picked up the phone."Hello….All right…Yeah, send it all over…Yeah, thanks very much….Okay, bye."
Derek hung up the phone and said to Alison, "Maybe it was Margaret who wanted to leave, and it wasn’t to do with the testimony after all."
