Title: In Front of Your Eyes
Author: Sarah-Beth (memorysdaughter)
Rating: PG
Series: 12/?
Chapters 1-11 In Front of Your Eyes
A woman was in Devalos’ office when Allison arrived. Tall and blond, she spoke animatedly to the lawyer, waving her hands in the air. She didn’t look happy, though.
Devalos caught Allison’s eye and stood, hurrying toward the door. He threw it open. “Allison! Please, come in!”
He sounded almost desperate, as though he couldn’t have lasted another minute with the blond woman in his office. He grabbed Allison by the elbow. “Allison DuBois, this is Mireille Alexandre.”
“Do you work with Attorney Devalos?” the woman asked. Her blue eyes were wide and wild. “Because I have some very interesting information about Daniel Rakowsky.”
Allison tried to smile. “Oh?”
“Allison is a consultant who works in my office,” Devalos said. “Please, won’t you sit down?”
Mireille sat, but not without reluctance. Her feet tapped the floor and her hands gripped the chair’s arms. “Well, I simply must tell someone. And when I heard that they found his daughter… well, my goodness, I said to myself, I said, ‘Mireille, you’ve got to go over to the district attorney’s office and give him a piece of your mind!’ And so I drove over…”
“Yes, Ms. Alexandre,” Devalos interrupted. “What was your information about the Daniel Rakowsky case?”
“Well! I have it on good authority that Daniel Rakowsky has gone to Seattle.”
Allison and Devalos traded confused looks for a moment. Mireille leaned back, obviously pleased with herself.
Finally Allison said, “Why would he go to Seattle?”
“Well! Isn’t it obvious?”
After another long pause, Devalos said, “No, Ms. Alexandre, it’s not. We have no information that suggested Daniel Rakowsky had any connections to Seattle.”
The blond woman almost shot forward in her chair. “Then you obviously haven’t been talking to the right sources!”
She ticked off points on her fingers. “His son was born in Seattle. His first wife lives in Seattle.”
“Wait a minute,” Devalos said. “His first wife?”
“You didn’t know Danny was married before?” She looked astonished.
“No, we didn’t,” Devalos said.
“Well, it wasn’t a happy marriage. I’m not surprised he ran off with his second wife… and I’m not surprised she ran away from him.”
“How do you know he’s in Seattle?” Devalos asked.
“Where else would he go?”
“We think he’s still in Phoenix,” Allison said.
Devalos shot her a look; it was a theory that they had passed around the meeting table several times, but one that had not been publicized or even confirmed. But Allison could feel it in her bones, especially after meeting Rikki and discussing the girl’s dreams. Daniel Rakowsky was still in Phoenix.
“He’s researching a case,” Devalos said to Mireille.
“Yes, the case against Alistair Morales,” Mireille said. “He’s guilty.”
“Alistair Morales?” Devalos leaned back in his chair. “Well, that’s for the court to decide.”
Mireille scoffed. “Oh, please. Come on. There’s video of him killing that clerk.”
“Everything in the DMV is videotaped,” Devalos said. “And some of it is doubtlessly doctored.”
“Whose side are you on?” Mireille asked.
“I’m on the side of justice,” Devalos said. “And I’m on Daniel Rakowsky’s side.”
Lee Scanlon came to the door with a file folder in his hands. “Manuel, I have…”
He stopped short when he saw Mireille. “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t know you were in a meeting.”
“I was just leaving,” Mireille said. She stood and fairly floated out of the office, trailing some strong perfume like a scarf.
Lee watched her go, and it was only when Devalos cleared his throat that the detective turned back. “What’ve you got, Lee?” Devalos asked.
“I found Daniel Rakowsky’s wife in Baltimore,” Lee said. “Andrea Rakowsky. Well, now she’s Andrea Lavelle. She works at an advertising firm in Baltimore, lives with her husband and four children, and she’s been surrounded by witnesses the entire time. She doesn’t like to talk about her life here in Phoenix, and she hasn’t made any business trips for more than a year. She left Daniel Rakowsky more than seven years ago, and she claims she hasn’t talked to him since then.”
“What about her husband? Her new husband, I mean,” Allison said.
“He never met Daniel Rakowsky. And he’s a minister.”
“We’ve seen stranger things,” Devalos reminded Scanlon. “What else do you have?”
“Turns out Andrea Lavelle, nee Rakowsky, was Daniel’s second wife. I found his first wife.”
“Let me guess, she’s in Seattle,” Devalos said.
“What? No. Why would she be in Seattle?”
“That woman who was just in here, Mireille Alexandre, came to tell us that Daniel is in Seattle.”
“Wait a second. That was Mireille Alexandre?”
“Why? Do you know her?” Devalos asked.
“Mireille Alexandre is Daniel Rakowsky’s first wife.”
“I need to know more about the case Daniel Rakowsky was working on,” Allison said to Devalos when Scanlon had left. The detective was hot on the trail of Mireille Alexandre, who somehow had managed to enter and exit the office building without being on any security camera or encountering any security personnel.
“The Alistair Morales case,” Devalos said. “Well, where do you want me to start?”
Allison took a pad of paper and a pen from Devalos’ desk and sat back in her chair. “At the beginning, I guess.”
“Alistair Morales is a single, unemployed man who lives in the greater Phoenix area. In June of last year, it is alleged that Mr. Morales went into his local Department of Motor Vehicles office and fatally shot a clerk named Kathy Billings.”
“Billings?” Allison looked up. “Her last name was Billings?”
“Yes. Why? Is that significant?”
“When I talked to Rikki Rakowsky, she mentioned that she’d had a dream. In the dream she saw a house, and so we went looking for that house. We found it in a Briar Heights subdivision, and the house belongs to Jim and MaryAnn Billings.”
Devalos turned to his computer and tapped on the keyboard. “Kathy Billings’ closest relatives were her husband, Edward, the manager of the Office Supply Warehouse down on Third Street and a sister, Claire Bronson. Let’s see… Edward has a brother named Jim. Where did you say the house was?”
“Peachtree Lane, in the Briar Heights subdivision,” Allison said.
“That’s him, then,” Devalos said.
“Did anyone question Jim Billings?”
Devalos tapped a few more keys. “Says here he was present when they notified Edward of his wife’s murder, but there was no reason to question Jim Billings. There were several witnesses in the DMV office that saw a man they later identified as Alistair Morales come in and shoot Kathy Billings. And then Alistair Morales was captured.”
“Did he say why he shot Kathy Billings?”
“Morales has always claimed that his brother, Miguel, received an email that offered $7 million to whoever would go into the DMV and kill Kathy Billings.”
“Who sent the email?”
Devalos shrugged. “It was untraceable. The email went back to an Internet café somewhere in Santa Fe.”
“I think we need to talk to Jim Billings,” Allison said.
“Allison - Jim Billings has no motive to kill his sister-in-law,” Devalos said. “He’s a fine upstanding citizen. He owns a small business, a coffee shop. He belongs to the PTA. He pays his taxes and the worst crime he’s even been convicted of is a parking offense twenty years ago, when he was driving a Meals on Wheels vehicle that was accidentally left in a fire lane.”
“Well, that can’t change some things,” Allison said. “If Jim Billings hated Kathy, and if he wanted her killed, it would be a good idea for him to get someone else to do it. That way, his good-citizen image would still be protected.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Devalos said. “And how does it lead back to Daniel Rakowsky?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s suppose you’re right. Jim Billings goes to Santa Fe, sends an anonymous email that somehow gets passed to Miguel Morales, who forwarded it to his brother, Alistair. Alistair decides that he’s just desperate enough to do it. The crime goes off without a hitch, at least for Jim Billings, who is never suspected and who is not even remotely related to the plot. Alistair gets accused and goes to jail. Why would Jim Billings then kidnap Daniel Rakowsky, a researcher for the defense?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Allison said, “but when I looked at Rikki as she was telling me about her dream, I believed her.”
“Come on, Allison. She’s a young girl traumatized by her father’s kidnapping. Wouldn’t you be grasping at any straws?”
Allison put the cap back onto the pen and stood up. “You took a chance on me,” she said to Devalos. “And now I’m going to do the same thing for Rikki.”