Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

And it wasn’t going to be good.

When Laurie got closer, police barricades kept the public away. Laurie did not know any of the Cincinnati cops, so all she could do was stand there with the neighbors and other onlookers. Rumors were abounding, but one thing was certain: it was Jana Mitchell’s house.

The prevailing view, at least among the neighbors, was that Jana was murdered. When Laurie saw the coroner’s van, she had no doubt that it was true.

Laurie went to her hotel and turned on the local news. It was one of the lead stories. During a home invasion, a woman was killed in the robbery. They were not giving out a name, pending notification of next of kin, but reporters on the scene were talking with Jana Mitchell’s house as a backdrop.

Laurie called Andy and told him what had happened. She asked him to call Corey and convey the news. She ended the call quickly; she did not feel like talking. She wanted to feel and deal with the full weight of what she had done.

This all started because Corey felt guilty about Lisa Yates; he felt that since he hadn’t helped her enough the night of the domestic violence call, it led to her eventual murder. It had a certain logic to it, but Laurie had never felt his guilt was justified, even though he felt it sincerely. Nothing he could have done could have saved her all that time later.

But this situation was different. Anyone could draw a straight line from Laurie’s call to Jana to her death. The fear Laurie detected was real, and it was proven to be thoroughly and horribly justified. Laurie was going to have to live with this for a long time.

Jana Mitchell was alive and well before Laurie entered her life. Twenty-four hours later she was the victim of a brutal murder.

But how did her killers find out about Laurie? Had Jana told them, whether intentionally or inadvertently? Why would she do that? On the surface it didn’t make sense; if Jana was so guarded that she wouldn’t talk to Laurie, why would she open up to someone else? Was it someone she trusted, but clearly should not have?

Had someone known that Laurie was traveling to Cincinnati to talk to Jana? How could they know that? Was Laurie being followed? Laurie doubted this theory; it seemed far more likely that the leak, if there was one, was from Jana’s side.

The bottom line was that Jana must have known something crucial to solving the Lisa Yates murder, and crucial to helping Corey’s case.

Whatever she knew died with her.

CARLOS called Musgrove on his way back to New Jersey.

He had flown to Cincinnati that morning; it was necessary to fly in so as to get his work done before the woman arrived. Obviously he had used a fake identification; he had plenty of those.

He was going to drive home, so as to make his steps harder to trace. It wasn’t his idea; he considered it unnecessary and overly cautious. But he did as he was told. Those instructions included using a different fake ID when he rented a car and when he stopped for the night at a hotel, midway in the ten-hour drive that night.

“Everything went as planned, boss,” Carlos said.

“I’ve seen the news coverage. I trust you made no mistakes?”

“No. I made it look like a home-invasion robbery, as we discussed.”

“That may fool the police. It will not fool our adversaries.”

Carlos waited for his boss to continue. He might hang up, or he might give Carlos further instructions. Carlos had reported in, so basically had nothing else to say. The boss was not much for chitchatting.

Musgrove was trying to deal with the implications of what he had just said to Carlos. The home invasion would not in fact fool the people that they were up against.

Carlos had made the original mistake of framing the ex-cop, Douglas, and they were still paying the price for it. Had Carlos not done that, Douglas and the others would have backed off by now. But because Douglas was facing murder charges, they would never back off.

Musgrove and his team had considered killing Douglas. If they did so, obviously his colleagues would no longer need to prove him innocent; the legal system would have no reason to go after a dead man.

There was always the chance that those colleagues, the lawyer and his coinvestigators, would continue the hunt, trying to avenge Douglas’s death. But Musgrove felt they would likely do so with less energy and tenaciousness. If he was wrong about that, then they would pay the price as well.

Eliminating Douglas might well cause the police to reopen their investigation into Gerald Kline’s murder, although they could take the easy way out and believe that the real killer, Douglas, was now dead. Either way, they had nothing to go on, and they would soon drop it and move on to other things.

Case closed.

It was a big decision, but Musgrove was ultimately a logical person, and the correct strategy was fairly clear. He would discuss it with his team, but knew that they would agree. They were even more ruthless than he was.

“Kill Douglas,” he told Carlos. “But plan it carefully and do not fail.”

“I know exactly how Laurie must feel,” I say.

It’s almost midnight and I’m still trying to come to grips with what happened in Cincinnati. Andy didn’t have much information when he called beyond that Jana Mitchell had been murdered, and that Laurie would be heading home in the morning.

Dani was at a work event and got home at about eleven. I told her what happened, and we’ve been talking about it for almost an hour. Mostly I’m talking and she’s listening.

“Telling her that she is not responsible won’t help,” I say. “It didn’t help when they told me I wasn’t responsible for Lisa Yates, and the truth is that there is much more of a cause and effect here. But where