Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (9 page)

“Her name is Gwyneth . . .” says Harry.

Noland writes it down. “I’m sure that’s her real name. Sounds pricey. Gwyneth what? And I’ll need a phone number!”

“Gwyneth Riggins,” says Harry.

Noland writes for a second and then stops abruptly, as if his brain has seized. With the pen frozen over the pad he glances sideways at Harry and says, “You mean like the . . . ?”

“Yeah,” says Harry, “like the Superior Court judge. And spelled the same way.”

Noland has this quizzical look, wondering, I’m sure, what call girl is sufficiently stupid to be using the judge’s name—or if he’s just being jerked around.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna break the news to her,” says Harry.

Noland is sitting there perched on the corner of Harry’s desk looking at him, not sure if he should ask, but curiosity gets the better of him. “What news?”

“That you think Gwyn looks like a hooker.”

“Who are we talking about?” says Noland. “Are you talking about the judge?”

“Who else? That’s the only Gwyn Riggins I know.”

“I never said she looked like a hooker!”

“Now I suppose you’re gonna ask me if I stayed there all night,” says Harry. “Whether we got down and did the big naughty. I can’t lie to a law enforcement officer,” says Harry. “I was there all night. And we did in fact—”

“So that’s why you had to affidavit her?” I cut him off. Harry has been dropping paper on Riggins for weeks. I wondered why. He moved to disqualify her every time he found himself in front of her on the bench. Whenever I asked him why, he brushed me off. Harry told me he had a problem with her. It wasn’t serious. He was working it out. So I let it slide. Figured it was his problem.

“OK, so I lied,” says Harry. “I never actually affidavited her. She recused herself. She had this problem, call it a conflict.”

“You were sleeping with her?” I ask.

“Yeah, well, that’s what ultimately caused the problem,” says Harry.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s a conflict! Why didn’t you let me in on it?”

“For the same reason I didn’t want to tell them.”

“Hey, I’m your partner!”

“What are you worried about? She did the right thing. No crime, no foul,” says Harry.

I can’t tell if he’s talking about Gwyn’s recusals or the fact that she’s sleeping with him. He gives me a sheepish look. “We’ve been dating for a couple of months now. She didn’t want the world to know. Can you blame her?”

“Congratulations!” I say. “But you can tell her it’s out of the bag now.”

“Yeah. Congratulations!” At the moment Noland looks sick.

“Thanks,” says Harry, “but we still need to work this out, the three of us, you, me, and Gwyneth.”

“What do you mean?” says Noland. “Work what out?”

“Maybe it’s her makeup or the way she dresses,” says Harry. “Perhaps if we get together you can give her some pointers, so next time you won’t mistake her for a hooker.”

“I never said . . . I didn’t say that . . . I never said anything about the judge. You heard me.” Noland looks to his partner for help.

Owen puts both hands in the air, palms out. “I’m not involved in any of this. I never said a word.”

“Forget the whole thing.” Noland rips the page out of his notepad as if to emphasize the point.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to do that,” says Harry. “Aren’t your notes subject to discovery?”

“He’s not. And they are,” says Owen. “But in this case I think we can make an exception.”

“I think we’re done here.” Noland lifts his ass off the desk and starts to move toward the door.

“No. No.” Harry stops him in mid-stride. “Now that you pushed me to the wall, forced me to give up Gwyn’s name, outed her, so to speak, you’re gonna have to talk to her to verify my alibi. I insist!”

“I believe you,” says Noland. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“I wouldn’t,” says Harry. “That’s not good process. You have a job to do.” He plucks the receiver off the phone on his desk and starts to punch in numbers to dial: “Let me call her. I’ll get her off the bench, talk to her, tell her what you said, and then you can get on the line.”

“No. No,” says Noland. “No need to bother the judge. I’m sure she’s busy.” He moves away from Harry’s desk like it’s radioactive. “I’ll call her later. I’ll check it out myself. I promise,” he adds.

“Or I can have her call you,” says Harry.

“No, I wouldn’t do that. I’ll take care of it. I said I would, and I will.”

“Are you sure?” says Harry.

“I’m sure!”

“Fine. Then for the moment I suppose, we can let that slide.” Harry lays the receiver in the cradle and says, “So now let’s talk about Sofia.”

“What about her?” says Noland.

“I understand you have some reservations about our visiting the scene.”

Noland thinks for a moment, glances at the phone on the desk, and finally says, “No. There must be some misunderstanding. I don’t have any reservations. Do you have any reservations?”

He looks at Owen, who shakes his head. “Fine by me. Whatever.”

“There you are, see? No problem. You can come by and take a look anytime you want. Your convenience. Just give us a call.” Noland reaches into his pocket, pulls out a business card, and drops it on Harry’s desk.

“No need for that. Why wait,” says Harry, “when we can do it right now? We can swing by our client’s house, see if Sofia ever arrived, and then go directly from there out to the scene.” Harry makes a note on a Post-it slip, tears it off, and hands it to Noland before he can pull his hand away. “That’s the address to our client’s house. We’ll meet you there in forty-five minutes. You will be there?”

Noland stands there looking at him.

Harry picks up his card. “In the meantime I’ll just hold on to this, in case I have to pass it along to Gwyn, see if she wants to call you.”

How could he say no?

TWELVE

H
arry and I locked up the office and headed out. We picked up Herman Diggs, our investigator, on the way. The cops are no doubt going to want to question Herman at some point. He’s the only other male in our office. But after tripping over Harry, I suspect they may want to do a backgrounder on Herman’s dating habits before they brace him.

The three of us drive forty minutes through midafternoon traffic until we find ourselves on the street in front of Emma Brauer’s house. By the time we arrive it’s almost three. Owen and Noland, the two detectives from the sheriff’s Homicide Unit, are sitting in the “black beast,” their unmarked Dodge Charger that no one can miss. It’s parked at the curb waiting for us.

As soon as I pull into the driveway, they get out. Harry leads the way since he has the four-digit code to get into the house. He also has directions from Brauer as to where she hid the key to her safe-deposit box, the one holding the small cardboard box with the other key and the paper she said looked like an ID.

If we can grab her safe-deposit key without the two detectives seeing us, we’ll do it. Otherwise we’ll have to come back. Emma’s key itself is not evidence of anything. We can’t even be sure if it’s still here. The police may have found it during their earlier search. What’s in her safe-deposit box could be evidence depending on where it leads us. Right now the first order of business is to check on the dog, see if he’s still at the house. If he’s gone, it’s a fair assumption that Sofia got this far before she was killed.

Harry steps to the front door and punches the code into the lock.

“I don’t hear any dog, do you?” says Owen. The big detective is right behind Harry. “If somebody is at the front door, it’s usually gonna bark.”

Harry opens the door.

Inside, from what I can see around the hulking form of Owen, the entry area is dark. The blinds across the front windows are all drawn.

“What’s the dog’s name?” says Owen.

“Dingus,” says Harry.

“Here, Dingus! Come on, boy!” Owen slaps his open palm on the frame of the front door and calls the animal’s name, loud enough to be heard in the backyard this time. We wait for a few seconds. Not a sound. Nothing.

Harry steps into the entryway, Owen right behind him. We start to follow.

“Hold on a second.” Suddenly Owen stops just inside the door. Noland and Herman bump into him like cars on a train. “If this is an active crime scene we shouldn’t all go tramping through it,” he says. Owen checks with Harry to make sure we and he have permission from the owner to be in the house. He wants to make sure he doesn’t need a warrant.

Harry assures him that he’s authorized to enter.

“Then I’m gonna ask you three to stay here.” He looks at Harry, Herman, and me. “Don’t touch anything. My partner and I will take a look around.”

Just as he turns to walk away a female voice from the bright sunlight outside says, “Can I help you?”

Owen looks out the door and says, “Who are you?”

“I might ask you the same thing.” She’s older and a bit cranky, in sweatpants and a top that’s bulging in all the wrong places with a hairdo like Cruella De Vil trying to decide which color it wants to be next.

“Sergeant Brad Owen.” He flashes her his badge.

“When are you people gonna be finished?” she says.

“What?”

“Hi. I’m Paul Madriani. I’m a lawyer. I represent Emma. You must be her neighbor?” End of the train, I step out to shake her hand before Owen or Noland can ask any more questions.

“When’s she gonna be home?” says the woman.

“Probably tomorrow.” I look up at Harry.

He nods.

“About time,” she says. “Poor woman. Why don’t they leave her alone?”

“She’s in the bucket on a homicide charge,” says Noland. “Maybe we need to talk a little more about this.”

Apparently the two detectives have been on their radio or a computer in the car on the way out here. Once we gave them Brauer’s address they called it in and checked her out. They probably know as much as we do at the moment.

“We can talk about their client later. First things first. Let’s find the dog,” says Owen. “Any idea where her dog is?” he asks the neighbor.

“What do you want with Dingus? I suppose you want to arrest him, too?” she says. “He’s fine. He’s with me.”

Noland turns to his partner and says, “I told you. It’s a goose chase. Nobody’s been here.”

“How long have you had him?” asks Owen.

“Since Friday night,” says the woman. “I heard him barking so I came over and got him.”

Owen steps out into the sunlight. “Did you see any sign of a young woman here, brown hair, pretty, in her twenties? She was supposed to come by and pick the dog up.”

“That must’ve been the one I talked to on the phone,” she says. “She called but she never showed up.”

“When did you talk to her?” says Owen.

The woman thinks for a moment. “Must’ve been around five thirty, maybe six o’clock.”

“This would be Friday evening?” says Owen.

“Yeah. She said she was gonna come by and get Dingus. But she never showed.”

“Did you get her name?” I ask.

She thinks for a moment, shakes her head. “I can’t remember if she gave it to me. If she did I forgot. She said Emma gave her my number. She said she worked for a law firm.”

“That would be her,” said Owen. “Did she say where she was calling from?”

The woman thinks for a moment, then shakes her head again. “But it sounded like she was in a car. You can always tell.”

Owen is thinking what I am. Except for her killer, the woman standing in front of us may have been the last person to talk to Sofia alive.

“Did she say anything else?” says Owen.

“Not that I recall.”

“The call. Did you take it on a cell phone?” he asks.

“No. The only phone I have is the landline in the house.”

“How about caller ID?”

“You think I can afford such luxuries? You try living on Social Security.”

It seems her only luxury is gossip. A cell phone would have easily kept a record of incoming calls. It would have shown Sofia’s number and the precise time that she called. If Sofia called from a cell phone, the authorities could trace the call and discover which towers it went through, which would give them an approximate location of where Sofia was when the call was made—that is, when the two women talked. If the cops have Sofia’s cell phone, which they aren’t saying, they’ll be working this angle already, seeing if she called anyone else.

“So I take it you had the code to get into the house?” Owen asks the woman.

She nods. “Whenever Emma is away I watch her place. Take care of things, you know? Pick up the mail, put out the garbage, water a few plants, that kinda stuff. She does the same for me. Sometimes I watch the dog, but usually she takes him with her.”

“And you never saw this other woman come by to pick up the animal?”

She shakes her head.

“Have you seen anyone else around the house?” asks Owen. “Say since Friday evening?”

“No.”

“We’re wasting our time,” says Noland. “Why don’t we go out, show ’em the scene before it gets too late.” He’s looking at his watch. “Another half hour and we’re gonna get tied up in traffic.”

“Sounds like a man in a hurry,” says Harry. “What’s the problem, you got an early date?”

“No. Nothing like that. But if you want to see everything in place we should move. Once the forensics people finish processing the area around the body, the ME’s gonna pick her up and move her.”

Owen turns to the woman and says, “Thank you. I appreciate your help.” He takes her name, address, and phone number and writes it down, turns to me, and says, “You wanna take the dog?”

The thought of what to do with the dog hadn’t entered my mind. Before I can open my mouth the neighbor says, “He’s fine with me. And you said Emma’s gonna be home tomorrow anyway . . .”

“If you don’t mind,” I tell her. “That would help. If there’s any problem with Emma I’ll give you a call.” I also get her phone number and give her my business card.

Harry locks the front door and we head to the cars. I slip behind the wheel. Harry and Herman get in. As I wait for their doors to close I take a deep breath, an effort to steel myself. My hands are shaking on the wheel as I think about the dark task ahead. We asked for it and now we must do it. I back out into the street. As Noland pulls away from the curb I fall in behind him. We follow the black beast as it drives slowly down the street, the sorrowful sojourn, the lonely caravan on its way to find Sofia’s lifeless body.