New River Blues (11 page)

Nino could not remember ever feeling a single impulse to help Zack with anything. But the man was driving contentedly along North Oracle Road, apparently convinced they were old buds. The cold beer he had brought along was sliding in on top of that nice tasty burger like the right answer to all of life's questions. And maybe it was, because Nino's stomach was beginning to feel almost ready to get back in the game. The sun was warm through the window on his side of the van. Nino relaxed a little and let his eyelids droop.

‘Gonna be a while,' Zack said, ‘you want to put the seat back?'

In just under three minutes, Henderson began to make the snuffling, throat-clearing sounds of recovery. Without a word, Sarah pushed a box of tissues in front of him. Sheepishly, he blew his nose and wiped his face. When his face was dry he sat up straighter, looked at his watch and muttered, ‘Sorry.'

‘I understand,' she said. ‘You've been through a very hard time.' She let her sympathy hang in the air for a beat or two. Then she opened a file folder, looked through a few pages, closed it and said, ‘Actually, we haven't identified the weapon that killed them yet.'

The words ‘weapon' and ‘killed' were so brutal they usually avoided them when they talked to family members of victims. She used them advisedly now, to see what effect they had on Henderson. He seemed to hear only ‘haven't identified,' and the words made him angry. His breathing grew ragged, and his red eyes glared at her out of the swollen slits left from his latest bout of weeping. His voice was like a rake over gravel. ‘So you were just fishing.'

She sat up straighter and recrossed her legs, feeling the sting of his contempt.

‘This is what you do, huh? Play tricks on people?'

‘What's tricky about it?'
Never let them put you on the defensive.
‘A shotgun killed your wife and your shotgun is missing. So I'm asking, where is it?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘When did you see it last?'

‘I don't remember.' He looked past her. Was he thinking about it, or posing? ‘I haven't been hunting at all this fall. Let's see, last year? I'm not sure.' He shifted in his chair. ‘It's an ordinary gun, I got it years ago from my father and I hardly ever think about it. So . . . I don't know.'

‘Where would it most likely be if it's not on the rack? Do you leave it around the house someplace?'

‘Absolutely not. Never. It should be unloaded, on the rack, and the cupboard locked. How'd you get into it, by the way?' He waited. Her shrug said, we're police. ‘I better by God not find any broken locks in my house when I get back into it.'

‘You won't. Or not broken by us, anyway. Do you belong to a shooting club, could you have left your shotgun there? No? Do you have a cabin in the mountains, a hunting lodge?'

‘No. I never did hunt much, and these days I'm always too busy to take long weekends.'

Give it up.
‘OK. Let's get back to this weekend. When did the conference end?'

‘Saturday night. That stupid banquet that I mostly skipped.'

‘Why didn't you skip it entirely and drive home?'

‘I considered that but I had some more . . . bankers I needed to see and I wanted to see that piece of land in daylight. So I stayed.'

‘Oh? I thought you said driving out to look at that land was an impulse on Sunday morning.'

‘No. I never said that.'

‘Not too far out of your way, you said—'

‘Well, I'm sorry if you got the wrong impression. It was no impulse, I'd been thinking about it for some time. I've had a couple of conversations with the owner—'

‘You just said you wanted to see it before you talked to anybody.'

‘I meant the county people, the boards and bureaus that have to nit-pick everything now. The rancher that's selling it, I've known him for years. We've agreed more than once that by the time he was ready to quit growing cotton, I'd be about ready to start building houses out there. And as soon as this slump's over I'll do it.'

‘So you knew all along that you wouldn't be home for your daughter's birthday party, is that right?'

‘No. I expected to be home for the party till I learned I had more work to do in Phoenix. Then I called my wife. She knew I wasn't going to make it.'

‘And Patricia?'

‘Well, no.' He went back into his personal cloud bank for twenty seconds or so, came back out and said, ‘I meant to call her but I . . . things came up and I forgot.'

‘Uh-
huh
.' Sarah decided to see if he even remembered what he'd missed. ‘What time was the party?'

‘I . . . some time in the afternoon. Kind of vague, I think. Like so many—' He stopped and went back in the cloud bank.

‘So many what?'

‘Hmm? Oh . . . my wife liked to do that – say, “Stop in around three,” or, “Come over when you're free.” Her parties often went on for hours. Where were we?'

‘You were explaining that you had to go back to Phoenix and see another person. I still don't understand why you couldn't have made it home? It's only a two-hour drive.'

‘Well, sometimes in Phoenix traffic, closer to three.' He lowered his head and glared around like a cornered bear. ‘God, my wife is dead, why the hell are we arguing about a birthday party?'

He's using his wife's death to stonewall me.
She wrote, ‘Stalling,' on her pad, let a little time pass while she looked at it, put the pen down gently and asked him, ‘Who's the man?'

‘What ma— oh, you mean the man in the morgue?'

‘The man in the morgue who was in the bed with your wife. Yes.'

‘I have no idea.'

‘Really? You don't know him?'

‘To the best of my knowledge I never saw him before.'

‘Did you know your wife was having an affair?'

‘She wasn't having an affair!' He grew red again and bristled. ‘Weezy didn't – it wasn't anything like that.'

‘What do you want me to call it? When your wife—' There was a quick tap on the door. They both turned toward it as Delaney put his head in, said, ‘Sarah?' and nodded toward the hall.

Getting up, she asked Roger Henderson, ‘Can I bring you anything when I come back? Coffee, water?'

‘No.' He stood up too. ‘I really have to get going.'

Delaney raised a cautionary hand, blinking solemnly. ‘Just have a seat, please, Mr Henderson. We won't be long.'

Challenge seemed to be Roger Henderson's Gatorade. Energy puffed him up at once; a muscle in his jaw jumped, his shoulder muscles bunched and he clenched his fists. ‘Am I under arrest?'

‘Not yet.' Delaney followed his laconic answer with a long moment of silence. He stood in the doorway like a sun-blistered sphinx and let the power of law and order pile up behind him. Sarah watched in wonder as Roger Henderson slowly sat back down, postponing a discussion of probable cause. ‘We're just asking you to wait here while we check a couple things, hmm?'

Impressed, Sarah followed her boss into the hall.
How much of that gravitas
, she wondered,
depends on Delaney's size and deep voice?
And right away,
Better be thinking what to use instead.

In his office he said, ‘We found the car. Your hunch was good, it's got the same GPS device as the one out front. I sent a wrecker, it'll be down tonight. But you don't need to wait for the device itself, of course, what you need is access to the database. So go ahead and get your warrant.'

‘Right, I will. Good!'

‘How do you think he's looking?'

‘Better and better. He's got guilt and anger coming out of his ears.'

‘Yes. It's going to be awkward, though. Pinning a crime like this on one of the biggest players in town. We better be damn sure we're right.'

‘We will be.'

‘Good. And in the meantime, I'm thinking, why don't we let Henderson go?'

‘Boss, I was just getting to the—'

‘I know where you were getting, I was watching. You don't have enough to arrest him yet, though, do you?'

She frowned at the opposite wall. ‘No.'

‘So what I'm saying is, let's show a lot of compassion now for his tragic situation. You get your warrant and read his tracker, I'll have the lab check his car, and if you're still hot for him we'll arrest him when he least expects it.'

Which covers your butt with the powers that be in case Henderson comes up clean.
‘OK. We can't let him back in his house yet, though.'

‘Well, no.' He rattled the coins in his pocket, thinking. ‘But he's easy to find whenever we want him. He owns Hen-Trax and a pile of other stuff, he's building eight hundred houses on the south-east side and bidding on another big project for Rio Nuevo, and he's got a GPS tracking unit in his car. Where's he gonna go?' Delaney stuck two fresh pieces of gum in his mouth and chewed them energetically. ‘Does this case seem kind of like bad TV to you?'

‘Opera, I was thinking.'

‘I see what you mean. Crime in high places, lots of blood and screaming.' He treated her to a rare smile. ‘Proceed with care, huh?'

She walked back in the interview room, thanked Roger Henderson for coming in and told him he was free to go. She gave him her card and told him to call if he thought of anything he wanted to ask, and then she led him down the hall to where Patricia sat across the table from Ray Menendez. They were talking quietly, like old friends.
You sure did a better job on the rapport than I did, Rye Moon Dough.
She watched them for a couple of heartbeats, thinking,
Of course you had the easy one, didn't you?

Patricia Henderson was young and beautiful and rich and right now she was hurt and very vulnerable. Low-hanging fruit.
And even if he is a cop, Ray Menendez is still a twenty-something man. So let's be extra careful here.

She watched Patricia march stone-faced out of the building beside her father. Then she hurried back to Menendez' cubicle, where he was typing his notes into his computer, and made sure he understood that Patricia's daddy had been escorted to the morgue a couple of hours earlier by an assistant county attorney.

Menendez rocked back in his chair and said, ‘You don't say?'

‘I do say. And not only is Patricia Henderson's father a mover and shaker, her mother was the daughter of—'

Menendez held up one hand like a crossing guard. ‘Sarah, I know all about the Della Maggios, OK? My grandmother used to do housework for one of Patricia's great-aunts. You don't need to worry about me trying to pull a Roger Henderson.'

‘I didn't mean—'

‘Sure.' His ironic smirk turned quickly thoughtful. ‘It's turned out pretty well for him, though, hasn't it?' Then he put the whole conversation behind him and got back to business. ‘You want to hear the answers to all those questions you gave me?'

‘Absolutely.' Chagrined, she sat down and turned a page. ‘What have you got?'

‘Number one, the man in the bed. She didn't want to talk about him at first. Said, well, his face was gone and I certainly never saw any of the rest of him before, so . . . then she calmed down and said come to think of it, though, she
had
seen that stupid ring at the party, and she thought it was one of the caterers' helpers wearing it. And I'm inclined to believe her because it doesn't figure one of the guests would be wearing anything so tacky.'

‘So Mama was sleeping with the help. Speaking of tacky.'

‘Fairly shoddy, yeah. Then, let's see . . .' He was checking off a page of notes. ‘Oh, yeah, number two, her mother usually didn't bother with a guest list, just asked everybody she could think of and told them to bring friends if they felt like it, come over whenever they could. Mom was a free spirit in more ways than one, I guess.'

‘I wonder how she figured the supplies?'

‘I asked that – aren't we practical types? Patricia said, “Mom always just told the caterers to bring plenty of everything.” I guess if you're really rich you don't worry about getting overcharged.'

‘Hey, the caterers.' She looked up, embarrassed. ‘I haven't got anything on them.'

‘I thought of that too. So I asked her who catered the party Sunday and she said she doesn't know the name of the company but one of the servers was an actress named Felicity, works at that community theater called Grand Street. It's in the book.'

‘Leave me a note, will you? What else you got there?'

‘Well, three, Patricia could always get a little extra money from her mother if her allowance ran short. But if she wants advice, which I gather she seldom does, Daddy's the Man.

‘And four, her brother Adam's gone to eastern boarding schools since seventh grade. She thinks it started with some scrape he was in here in Tucson, but she was too young then to hear any of the details. Now she says he makes fun of dusty old Tucson and says he'll never come back here to live. As for five,' he looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable, ‘I chickened out on the question of why nobody cares if Mom gets extra nookie – that's a hard question to ask a daughter, you know?'

‘Rude. Yes. Seems kind of key, though.'

‘You think?' He rolled his eyes up. ‘What else?' He turned his handwritten notes sideways and read a scribble along the edge. ‘Oh, yeah, six. The candy dish was Mom's. It was always filled with those wrapped candies and as long as Patricia can remember it's stood on that bedside table nearest the door.'