“Captain Thompson mentioned you found something of interest inside the house. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not familiar with your line of work. What exactly does a foreclosure crew do?”
“We’re the guys who come in after people walk away from their homes,” Ken explained as he stepped back to retrieve what appeared to be a grocery bag near the front door. “We clean out any personal belongings, handle basic repairs, make the place presentable enough for the bank to auction off. We were clearing out the attic and found this.”
Kinsley went to reach for the bag and then realized she hadn’t brought any gloves with her. Alex was always prepared for these things, his pockets practically a mobile evidence kit, and she wasn’t used to working cases without him.
“Were the contents found in this bag?”
“No, ma’am,” Ken replied, keeping the plastic grocery bag extended in midair. “I grabbed this from my truck. Leroy was the one who found all these tapes, though. He was up in the attic fixing the insulation when he noticed the tape recorder behind a false wall. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”
Kinsley took the bag, surprised by its weight. She parted the handles, peered inside, and found herself staring at a device she hadn’t encountered in a very long time, either. The tape recorder's dark plastic was covered in a thick layer of dust, resembling a relic from another era. Along with the device were numerous cassette tapes, and she noticed with curiosity that some were miniature rather than the standard size that the machine would play back.
“Twenty-seven in total, if you can believe it. Some labeled, some not.” Ken grimaced slightly and gave a small shrug that carried the weight of an apology. “We weren’t sure what we were dealing with, so some of the guys and I listened to a tape that was already inside the recorder. We had to clean out the battery case, but a set of new batteries got it working. We’re all pretty much in agreement that the person threatening Iris’s life was her brother. He was going on and on about how he’d kill her if she ever dared record him without his permission. It sounded likehe broke something in the room, too. So maybe that Tatlock guy they arrested all those years ago was telling the truth, and he didn’t actually kill Iris Bell.”
Kinsley kept her opinion to herself. They’d not only handled the evidence, but they had also tampered with it. Plus, speculation from a foreclosure crew wasn’t evidence, and a heated argument between siblings didn’t prove murder, no matter how ugly the language. Still, the recordings were worth hearing firsthand.
“How many of you handled the tapes and the recorder?”
“Leroy, Teddy, and me,” Ken admitted after giving it some thought. He paused, then tacked on one more name. “Oh, and Dot, my wife. She stopped by yesterday after I texted her about what we found with the new batteries. Curiosity, you understand.”
Kinsley resisted the urge to groan. Four sets of fingerprints on potential evidence in a decades-old case weren’t ideal, but it was far from the worst chain-of-custody situation she’d encountered. She had no choice but to make the request.
“Mr. Pfeifer, I’m going to need fingerprints from everyone on your crew who handled these items, including your wife,” Kinsley advised as she gripped the top of the bag closed. “It’s standard procedure for the chain of custody.”
“Of course,” Ken agreed with a nod. “Whatever helps you out. Are you ready to go inside?”
Since Kinsley had already decided against entering the residence at this time, she shook her head. The murder had happened over thirty years ago, and the Bells hadn’t lived here in years. The house had been through at least one additional owner and was now being gutted by a foreclosure crew. Whatever trace evidence might have once existed within those walls was long gone. What she wanted was to sit down with the tapes andlisten to each of them before deciding whether to reopen the investigation.
“That won’t be necessary,” Kinsley replied as she extended her arm. She shook his hand firmly to bring their meeting to an end. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Mr. Pfeifer. We’ll listen to the tapes and go from there.”
Kinsley descended the porch steps and started back down the flagstone path. As she approached the sidewalk, she noticed two women in matching workout gear power-walking along the street, their arms pumping with exaggerated purpose. Their pace slowed noticeably as they caught sight of her, and one whispered something to the other with the kind of urgent sideways glance that told Kinsley everything she needed to know about how quickly this visit would make the rounds.
Fallbrook’s gossip network was already in full swing. Since she hadn’t worn a blazer, her badge and service weapon were clearly visible on her hip, and it would only be a matter of time before the captain’s phone started ringing with inquiries about why a detective had been spotted leaving the Bell mansion.
Kinsley walked around the front of her Jeep, ignoring their curious gazes, and settled in behind the steering wheel. She carefully placed the plastic grocery bag containing the recorder and tapes on the passenger seat, treating it with more care than its casual packaging deserved. She would drop everything off at the forensics lab for processing for prints and preservation, which would delay her ability to sort through the recordings. But the lab work was necessary, and she’d learned long ago that cutting corners on evidence handling was the fastest way to lose a case before it ever reached a courtroom.
She was grateful, if she was being honest with herself, to have something immediate to occupy her thoughts. The alternative was a slow spiral into the kind of worry that circled endlesslywithout resolution, always returning to the same question she couldn’t answer.
Who had the resources, the equipment, and the motive to haul an entire vehicle, with a body locked in its trunk, up from the murky bottom of Terrapin Lake? And more importantly, what did they plan to do with what they’d found?
The Bell case was a diversion, and she welcomed it wholeheartedly. But it was also real work that needed doing, a thirty-year-old wrong that might finally get a second glance because a foreclosure crew had stumbled onto a box of dusty cassette tapes. If there was even a chance that the wrong person had gone to prison for Iris Bell’s death, Kinsley owed it to the truth to find out. She’d taken an oath to pursue justice, and the fact that she’d recently broken that oath in spectacular fashion didn’t mean she could stop trying to honor it now.
She started the engine, pulled away from the curb to complete a U-turn in the middle of the street, and left the Bell mansion shrinking in her rearview mirror. The two women were still staring at her from the sidewalk, their power walk apparently on hold until her Jeep was out of sight. She resisted the urge to wave. She had tapes to process and a cold case to evaluate. Anything was preferable to the anxiety of harboring a secret so profound that she feared it might consume her.
6
Kinsley Aspen
July
Friday, 10:53 am
Kinsley took a step back from the whiteboard, her shoulders stiff from the past hour of writing and organizing. Names, dates, and fragments of information were spread across the smooth white surface in her somewhat neat handwriting, connected by arrows and question marks that created a web of possibilities surrounding the Bell case. At the top, written in block letters and circled twice, was the central question she kept returning to.
Was Grant Tatlock guilty of murder?
Had he truly pushed Iris Bell down a flight of stairs in a fit of anger? A jury found the prosecutor’s argument sufficient to return a guilty verdict.
She rolled the marker between her palms, the plastic warm against her skin as she surveyed her handiwork. Behind her, the familiar sounds of the bullpen had all but become white noise.Phones ringing, keyboards clicking, the occasional murmur of conversation drifting across the room.
