Deadly Judgment (Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series Book 5) Read online

  “Another judge was killed,” he announced.

  My jaw dropped. “When? What happened?”

  He raked both hands through his dark hair, a clear sign he was frustrated. “Warren Nakamura. I don’t know much about him. He lives down in Bow Mar. District Four took the case. Apparently, the judge didn’t show up for work this morning and a squad car was dispatched to his house for a welfare check. They knocked and didn’t get an answer. The front door was locked, but they went around the house and got in. A back door was unlocked. They found the judge in his den, sitting on a couch, a single shot in the head. No gun was found at the scene, so it looks like murder.”

  “Any family? A wife, kids?”

  He shook his head. “He’s a widower, lives alone.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s almost noon. No one put together that this is the second judge in two days?”

  He threw up his hands to stop me. “They’ve been busy with the crime scene. When someone realized that another judge had been murdered the day before, they called here, and I’ve been on the phone ever since. I knew you’d gone to the prison, and I was about to call you when you came back. I want you to oversee the whole thing, both investigations. I need you to work with Detective Jerry Hernandez, he’s in charge of the Nakamura investigation. Hernandez is still out at the Nakamura’s house. He’ll be there for a while, so I told him you’d get down there and he can give you the details.” He tore a piece of paper off a notepad and handed it to me. “There’s the judge’s address.”

  I thought about the name, Nakamura. It was not a judge that I had heard of. “Two separate killers, or one who went after both men?”

  He picked up a glass paperweight. “Why target judges? What did they do? Are other judges going to be scared? What do we do about that?” He put the paperweight down, ran a hand over his face, and let out a big sigh. “Follett is already on me about this whole thing. One murdered judge puts a good deal of heat on us. Now you have two …” He stared at me. “We need to find out fast if these two deaths are connected. And find the killer, or killers.” He ran a hand through his hair again. “The news organizations are going to have a field day with this.”

  I stood up and went to the door. He called my name and I turned around. “Don’t let me down.”

  “I won’t, sir,” I said.

  Judge Warren Nakamura lived in Bow Mar, a post-World War II development at the edge of Denver’s 155-square-mile county. I drove down Sheridan, then meandered on wide streets to a brick prairie-style house with a long drive. Tall evergreen trees dominated the front yard. Two cars were parked on the street in front of the house. Across from Nakamura’s house were two news vans. I got out and reporters from both stations walked up to me.

  “Detective,” Deborah North from Channel 7 shoved a microphone toward me. “What can you tell us about Judge Nakamura?” She looked exactly as we’ve come to expect “newswomen” to look: shoulder-length blond hair, mascara accentuating big eyes, and full lips, which were pressed into a determined line as she looked at me for an answer.

  They’d already figured out he’d died, I thought. “No comment.”

  Deborah tried to get in front of me, and I slammed my car door and sidestepped her. The other reporter, a tall man with dark hair, called out to me, but I ignored him as well and walked up the sidewalk to Nakamura’s front door, where a uniform was waiting.

  “I’m Detective Spillman. I’m here to see Detective Hernandez.”

  He saw the badge clipped to my waistband, and he nodded. “I was told to expect you,” he said. “They’re down the hall to the right.”

  I put booties over my shoes, and he logged me in. I glanced around the porch and up at the eaves. I didn’t see any security cameras. Two rocking chairs sat to the right of the door. I frowned and walked into a spacious foyer. The floor plan was open, with a kitchen to the left, a dining area through an archway, and beyond that, glass doors that led to the back yard. A three-panel red screen with cranes hung on a nearby wall, and a small rock fountain sat by the door, the bubbling of the water over the rocks the only sound in the area. To the right was an open office, with a desk and bookshelves sparsely decorated with a few hardbacks and two large black vases. I stood for a second, then heard voices down a hallway, and I went that direction. I passed a powder room, and another hallway, then walked around a corner to a large room with a huge stone fireplace in the corner. Across from windows that looked out on the back yard was a brown leather couch. Two men stood near it, one short and stocky, the other taller and thin. They turned when they saw me.

  “You Spillman?” the taller one asked.

  I moved into the room and smiled. “Hernandez?”

  “Yeah.” He extended a hand. “You’re lead on the McCleary case?”

  I nodded. “Yes, it’s fresh, barely twenty-four hours old.”

  I reached out a hand to the other man.

  “Ian Packer,” he said. “Everybody calls me Pack.” His voice was nasally, his eyes close-set. He was probably about my age – late thirties – and I figured Hernandez was closer to sixty, his hair graying, wrinkles around his eyes and face.

  “You have lead on this one, too.” There was no animosity in Hernandez’s tone.

  “Right,” I said.

  Hernandez glanced at the couch. “Yeah, we got the call on this one, and we’ve been processing the scene, and then it was Pack who asked about another judge being killed. That’s when we thought we better follow up on that.”

  I looked around the room. “It sure looks suspicious, like the two could be connected, doesn’t it?”

  The walls were a soft gray, and a neutral-toned couch and love seat, with deep-dish wooden coffee and end tables furnished the room. A newspaper lay open on the coffee table, a half-full cup of coffee next to it, but what was noteworthy was the blood spatter on the couch. I gestured at it. “Tell me what you found.”

  “The judge was facing the windows,” Hernandez said. He moved to the couch. “It looks like the killer stood to the judge’s left, pointed at him, and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the judge’s left temple and exited the right. We recovered the bullet over there.” He pointed to a hole in the arm of the couch. “It was a 9-millimeter. A bit of a mess on the couch.”

  I walked to the end of the couch, bent down, and looked at the small hole.

  “CSI will do forensics on the bullet. We haven’t found a gun in the house.” He tapped his temple. “The entry wound was star-shaped, so the killer was close to Nakamura when he shot him. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see any kind of pattern on the skin.”

  I nodded, then pointed at the newspaper. “I thought everyone got their news online.”

  Pack smiled. “I think the older generation still likes a physical paper. I know my dad does.”

  I straightened up and looked back to the windows. The blinds were drawn.

  “Did any neighbors hear anything?” I asked.

  Both men shook their heads.

  “We still got people canvassing the neighborhood,” Hernandez said. “But so far, nobody saw or heard anything unusual either last night or this morning. There were no signs of forced entry, and the CSI team collected a lot of hair, a few cloth fibers, and some dirt near the front door. They’ve got several fingerprints to analyze as well. We’ll have the vic’s prints for sure, but we’ll see what else comes up.” He twisted his nose, almost sneezed, and cleared his throat. “When the squad car arrived to do a welfare check, the front door was locked. They rang the bell a few times and knocked, and when they didn’t get an answer, they walked around to the side of the house and looked in windows.” He pointed over his shoulder toward glass sliding doors off the dining area. “They came around the back of the house, and those doors were unlocked. Our best guess is the killer came in and out that way. He probably sneaked around to the front of the house, and no one saw him leave.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Nobody saw a suspicious car?”

  “Not so far
,” Pack said. “A neighbor two doors down has video surveillance, but our guy watched it and was unable to see anything in front of the judge’s house. Cameras were too far away.”

  “That’s disappointing.” I frowned. “The judge doesn’t have any security cameras? I didn’t see any around the front porch.”

  They both shook their heads. “No, not a thing.”

  “The daughter showed up shortly after the squad car got here,” Hernandez said. “She hadn’t talked to her dad in a couple of days, and she didn’t know of anything unusual going on.”

  I frowned, then looked out the windows again. The back yard was landscaped as a Japanese garden, with pathways winding around trees and shrubs sculpted to look like birds and turtles, an arched bridge over a small pond, and two stone lanterns near a sitting area with patio furniture. “There aren’t fences around here. The killer could have sneaked through another yard, where he had a car parked on another street, then left the same way. We should check with neighbors behind his house as well.”

  “Good idea,” Hernandez said.

  I turned back to them. “Did the coroner set a time of death?”

  “Most likely this morning,” Pack said. “He based that on rigor mortis, and the blood spatter. But he said he wants the guy on the slab and then he’ll try to make a better estimation.”

  I looked to the couch and thought for a minute. “So the judge gets up, goes out for his paper, and comes in here to read it. Sometime after that, a killer gets into the house and shoots him.”

  “That sounds about right,” Hernandez said.

  “What can you tell me about the judge?” I asked.

  Hernandez donned cheaters and read from a small notepad. “Warren Nakamura. Fifty-eight years old, a widower. A neighbor said his wife died about three years ago. Cancer. They have two grown daughters, one lives here, the other in San Francisco. She’s on her way back now. I talked to Kelsey, the older daughter who lives here. She works from home. She was nice, shocked, of course. I got some family background from her. Her great-grandparents were interned at a camp in southeast Colorado during World War II, that the family history was important to her father, and it affected him. He was keen to take care of his family, to make sure his parents were comfortable in their old age. I guess they lived here until they passed several years ago. She didn’t know of anybody who’d want her father dead.

  “According to the neighbors, Nakamura has lived alone since his wife died, and he stayed to himself. They’d see him outside gardening in the summer, mowing the lawn, trimming the bushes. He liked the yardwork. He was quiet, and nobody had any problems with him.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What about his court cases? Any issues there?”

  Hernandez shook his head. “I sent a team to the district courthouse. CSI is checking his office, and I’ve got detectives interviewing his staff. They’ll also see about any issues with recent court trials, but so far, nothing. He hasn’t been on an active trial in a week, so he’s had meetings, research, that kind of thing. When he didn’t show up for work today, his admin assistant called his cell and texted him, and when she still didn’t get an answer, she got hold of the police. That’s when they called for a welfare check. So far, nobody at the courthouse heard Nakamura say anything about any problems, or concerns with any neighbors or friends.”

  Pack blew out a long breath. “Yeah, we’re not coming up with anything.”

  Hernandez studied me. “What about Judge McCleary? What do you have there?”

  “He may have had an issue with his last trial,” I said. I updated them on everything that I had so far. I ended with, “I was looking into Felix Robinson’s sister when I got the call about this.”

  “Robinson,” Hernandez repeated the name. “Pack, tell the team at the courthouse to ask if there’s any connection to Robinson, if anyone heard Nakamura talk about him. We also need to check phone records, texts, and emails to see if Nakamura had any contact with Robinson.”

  “Or with McCleary,” I said. “Oh, did you find any threatening notes, either here or at Nakamura’s office?”

  Hernandez shook his head. “Not so far.”

  I glanced at Pack. “Make sure the team at the courthouse looks through Nakamura’s office thoroughly. If he received any threatening notes, I want to know about them.”

  Pack nodded. “Right.”

  “I’ll double-check with everyone to see whether McCleary and Nakamura knew each other,” Hernandez said.

  “Same killer?” Pack speculated.

  “That’s what I want to know.” I began to pace, thinking. “We have different MOs. A killer somehow gets into each victim’s house without forced entry, but one judge is tied up and his head bashed in. The other is sitting on his couch and is shot. At both crime scenes, no one saw or heard a thing, nor is there much in the way of forensic evidence.”

  “Not so far,” Pack tacked on.

  Hernandez shrugged. “One killer with a different MO each time, or two separate killers?”

  “Good question.” I stopped pacing and looked at Pack.

  “Oh, the courthouse.” He nodded and hurried out of the room.

  “Do you have a warrant for Nakamura’s phone records and electronics yet?” I asked Hernandez.

  He nodded. “Yeah, we just got that. We’ll start poring over that to see what we find.”

  “Check if Felix Robinson or his sister Olivia Hartnell contacted Nakamura.” I pulled Victor Marko’s business card from my pocket. “And this guy.”

  “Right.” He made a note of the name and number.

  I stared at the couch. “I would wonder if these two murders are connected, but on the surface, I don’t see how.”

  He shook his head. “We’ve got a lot of digging to do, don’t we?”

  I nodded.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I want to check the rest of Nakamura’s house,” I said.

  “Sure.” Hernandez waved his pen around. “We’ve looked around, but help yourself.”

  He and I walked through the house. It was tastefully decorated in an Asian style, all clean lines and no clutter, and had a peaceful aura about it. I searched for any kind of note similar to what McCleary had received, but came up empty. I was in Nakamura’s bedroom when a uniformed officer came into the room. I glanced at him, then pointed at the bed.

  “It’s made.”

  The officer raised eyebrows, not sure what to say. Hernandez nodded. “Either he didn’t sleep in it last night, meaning he was already dead, or he made it this morning before the killer got to him.”

  The uniform looked around and cleared his throat. His face pinched as he took on an official-looking manner. His nameplate read “Yoder.”

  “Sir,” he said to Hernandez. Then he gave me a polite nod. “I’ve been canvassing the neighborhood, and I think you should talk to the next-door neighbor. He’s waiting outside.”

  Hernandez arched an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

  “He has an interesting story about the victim,” Yoder said.

  Hernandez tipped his head at me. I shrugged.

  “I think we’re finished here,” I said.

  Yoder headed out the door. Hernandez motioned for me to follow him. We went outside, and I saw that the news vans and reporters had finally left. Standing near the front porch, with hands in his jeans pockets, was a stocky man with the bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen and course yellow hair. I judged him to be in his sixties, with wide-set dark eyes, and a wizened face. When he saw two detectives emerge from the house, he glanced around nervously.

  Hernandez stepped off the porch and approached him. “I’m Detective Hernandez. This is Detective Spillman.”

  “I’m Ed Renfro.” Ed’s T-shirt was untucked, and his Teva sandals exposed his bare feet to the chilly air.

  I let Hernandez conduct the interview and stood back to listen. Yoder hung back as well to listen and make sure Ed’s story didn’t change. The neighborhood was quiet, but a dull hum of traffic from n
earby busier streets filtered in.

  “You live next door to the judge?” Hernandez began.

  Renfro nodded. “For about fifteen years. He is … was … a good neighbor. And we really liked his wife, too. Lilly was a tiny woman,” he held up a hand to indicate her height, “and she was quiet until you got to know her. But she was quite nice, and she and my wife got along fine. Lilly even taught my wife some Japanese cooking.” His eyes momentarily went foggy as he recalled that. “Yes, we sure do miss her.” He swiped at his eyes and looked toward the front door. “And now Warren’s gone, too. I can’t believe he was killed.”

  “I’m sure it came as a shock to hear that,” Hernandez said, his manner sympathetic.

  “I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” Ed said, shaking his head.

  “Were you home last night?” Hernandez prompted him.

  Ed looked to me, then back to Hernandez. “My wife and I were home all evening. I’m newly retired, and I’m enjoying just spending some time around the house. Anyway,” he waved a hand in the air, then stuffed his hand back in his pocket. “We went out to dinner around 5:30, and we were back home by seven. We watched a little TV, and then I read for the rest of the evening.”

  Hernandez pointed to the tall evergreen trees in the front yard. “They kind of block your view of the judge’s house, don’t they?”

  Ed squinted at the trees. “Yeah, but I wasn’t watching over here anyway. Our family room is at the back of the house, on the other side, so when we’re in that room, we wouldn’t have seen anything anyway. And then I went downstairs to my office in the basement to read.” He shrugged. “When I heard about Warren a while ago, I called my wife at work to see if she saw or heard anything last night, and she didn’t. We watched the ten o’clock news, and then we went to bed.”

  Hernandez frowned. “You didn’t happen to glance out the windows on this side of the house, or in front, didn’t see anybody walking around? Anything like that?”