Web of Lies

CHAPTER 4 INVESTIGATION

CHAPTER 4

INVESTIGATIONAngelo turned to Marco at the police station, clicking on keys on the computer database. He squinted as his eyes peered at the screen. “Apparently, this isn’t the first time Marty’s cheated on his wife. There was a report a few years back about an altercation, but his lawyer friend quashed it.”

Marco shook his head. “One altercation does not a killer make, Angelo. But poor Jamie. It sounds like her parents’ marriage wasn’t ideal, if at all real.” He swivelled in his chair. “Any idea how he established contact with the victim? I mean, she was a runaway. So where did he meet with her?”

Angelo focused on his notes. “Apparently, she propositioned him in the street after he had a fight with his wife. We’ll have to interview her friends and any other family members. Her parents gave us the name of two close friends, but it’s unclear why she ran off.” He rummaged through stacks of papers on an in-tray. “I had their names here somewhere.” Marco’s lips pressed together as he sat back against his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. His face tightened as if he wanted to say something but remained tight-lipped. Angelo glanced in his direction. “What is it?”

Marco leaned forward and crossed his arms. “If we are working this case together, you need to be more organised. Your pile of chaos on your desk is making me seriously ill, Angelo. Find those damn names.”

Angelo continued to sort through his documents until he came across his notes. “Found them.” He chuckled. “It’s my organised mess and I work best in it.”

Marco grunted. “We’ll wait on forensics with the car. But something is puzzling me.”

Angelo leaned forward. “What is it?”

Marco flicked through a document. “I got the autopsy report here and having checked the missing person’s database we discovered the name of the girl from the hospital.” His eyes roamed the room briefly. “Her name was Janie Ruhan, and it states that whoever hit her with the blunt force object is most likely left-handed. But Marty is right-handed.”

Angelo took the document and scanned it. “He might have made it look that way, but there is still compelling evidence to take him to trial. I have known the rarest of criminal who used his non-dominant hand to deceive the police, and it worked for a while.”

Marco scoffed. “Hmm. No doubt the lawyer is attempting to quash his charge and will use the inconsistency in his argument. As he will no doubt try to suppress the s*x with a minor charge.” He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and stood up.

Angelo stared at the picture of a beautiful girl on Marco’s desk. He hadn’t noticed it until now. “So who is the attractive woman on your desk? Wife? Girlfriend?”

Marco’s eyes lit up like fireworks. “My fiancée, Bella. We’re planning to get married in about a year. I’m letting her handle all that. I am not the planning huge events type of person, but she is great at organising them.”

Angelo pushed down his envy. “Well, congratulations. Does she have a sister?”

Marco laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m afraid not. But her friend, Jamie’s close and single. You remember Jamie? Civilian in distress. Our criminal’s daughter. We’re supposed to question her mother’s friends and family.” Marco’s eye had a glint in it.

“Yes, I remember.” Angelo flashed back to an image of Jamie, who was short, approximately sixty kilograms in weight, brown eyes, and with short, red hair. Her hair looked soft and glossy, and he was curious about how it would feel to run his hands through it.

Pushing down these thoughts, he thought about how sorry he was for her father’s arrest. Who would want to wake up to find out their father had been charged with murder or child s*x offences? If only he wasn’t so affected by the cases he worked on. He wished he could offer her comfort, but it would be unprofessional of him. He could see she was putting on a brave front and had kept her emotions contained, which must have been her defence mechanism.

“Okay, then. Let’s go interview Janie Ruhan’s friends and family members.”

***

Angelo sat against the couch, watching a sports program while holding a plate of his mother’s lasagna in his hands. He took a bite of the pasta and the cheesy sauce dripped down his chin and fell back onto his plate. Wiping it off with a napkin, he took more bites, savouring the delicious flavours. His mother knew how to cook as an Italian-born immigrant. She worried about him because his job kept him busy, so she usually came over with dishes of meals he could freeze. His parents had a key so they could come inside whenever he was running late, which was usually the case, given his detective duties.

His mother would have a fit at the piles of clothing on the couch, and the build-up of dirty dishes in the sink and on his coffee table. At least his rug was clean after she had washed it, but his house needed dusting. Even the open windows with the Holland blinds up needed a good clean, with fingerprints and grime all around the edges.

He took a sip of his beer then proceeded to take his dirty dishes to the sink. He debated whether to wash them or not, as he had already loaded the sink with the last few days of dinner. Deciding to wash the dishes, his mind flicked back to Marty’s case. Something was off about this murder, and he wondered if Jamie was right. Could her father be innocent of the murder? There was no doubt he was guilty of sleeping with the girl, but there was something niggling in the back of Angelo’s mind about this case he couldn’t put his finger on. It would come to him in time. It always did.

The victim’s friends didn‘t offer much in the way of the investigation, and the parents couldn’t either. She was a young girl who wanted more freedom and had decided to prove to her parents that she could make it on her own. But the cost of doing so was more than her parents could bear. Their stricken faces and robotic movements made him sick to the stomach. Why had this poor girl been tortured to the point of which even her family struggled to recognise her? She had been stabbed multiple times, burned multiple times with a cigarette, sexually abused, and beaten with a blunt object.

Taking respite from the case, he washed the dishes, picked up his clothes, headed upstairs to his bedroom, and shoved them into his walk-in-robe. His bedroom was sparsely furnished, with a basic timber double bed, a tallboy, and a matching bedside cabinet on blue plush carpeting. Normally, he would leave messes lying around, but his mother was visiting him tomorrow, so he would make a small effort to have a liveable environment. No doubt she would be giving him more dinners to place in his freezer, and he would enjoy eating them.

He returned to his sports program in the living room and put his feet up. Jamie popped up in his head again. He couldn’t stay focused on the game. She was a beautiful stranger. He didn’t want to think about women, given that his last girlfriend had died of cancer. She had been the love of his life and he couldn’t see himself loving anyone ever again. It wasn’t worth the searing pain. If they weren’t signs that he’d be better off single, he didn’t know what were. No, he was better off focusing on his work, sport, and enjoying his mother’s cooking. Life was better and simpler that way.