New River Blues (8 page)

‘OK, looking for an angle,' Roy said, peering into the tiny birdshot holes that peppered the walls and headboard. He sang it softly, ‘Now show me an angle, an angle,' to the tune of an old song that started ‘I'll give you a daisy, a daisy.'

‘Man, these things are just so damn small, though – oh, looky here.' He beamed at an ugly scratch a metal pellet had made across the front of a nightstand. ‘More like it! Pass me the little square laser that figures angles.' He held the black plastic device next to the scrape and turned it on. A red tunnel of light cut through the dim haze in the room. He fiddled till he was sure he had the beam lined up with the scrape, then read the angle. ‘Seventy-eight degrees. Beautiful. Sarah, bring that artist's tablet over here, will you? Good, now stand about where you think the shot came from. There you go.' A red dot appeared on the tablet. ‘Jenny, bring over the other laser, please.'

He lined up his beams with scrapes and nicks, and measured the angles. When most of the dots lined up on the tablet Sarah was holding, they took that for the shoulder height of the shooter, and measured the distance from the dot to the floor. Roy consulted a chart and told Sarah, ‘If your shooter aims from the shoulder like most shotgun users he's shorter than average, not over five feet eight.'

‘But if he shoots from the hip he's a giant, right?'

‘Way over six feet. Which do you like?'

‘Don't know yet. Haven't seen the husband.'

Her phone rang and Lopez said, ‘Gentleman just drove up, says he owns this house and he wants to talk to whoever's in charge.'

She put the phone against her chest and asked Roy, ‘Is this weird or what? I say “husband” and he appears in the yard.'

‘Awesome. Could you conjure up another lab tech? I could use some help here.'

Sarah put the phone back on her ear and said, ‘Hold him right there, I'll come down.'

Holding Roger Henderson anywhere might be quite a job if he'd decided to put up a fight, she thought as she walked toward him. He was a big, solid man, looming over Lopez. Muscled up in the chest and shoulders, too, and Patricia hadn't exaggerated about his arms and hands.

Her watch said one-fifteen.
Where the devil has he been?

Frankie Lopez was squinting and shrugging and waving his hands, using body language to emphasize his deep regret at keeping Henderson out of his own house. Lopez had learned to compensate for his small stature by defusing tense situations with good nature and guile. Just now the tactic didn't seem to be working very well. As Sarah walked up to them, Henderson turned toward his house and snapped, ‘Oh, bullshit!'

She ducked under the tape and stood erect in front of him, holding up her shield. ‘Hello, Mr Henderson. I'm Detective Sarah Burke.'

‘I asked to speak to the person in charge.' His voice was hoarse. He had a wide face with a bad scrape on one cheekbone. His nose had a neat flesh-colored bandage that she hadn't noticed before, and his eyes were bloodshot. In puzzling contrast to his commanding manner, his head looked as if it might have been in a bar fight.

‘I'm the case officer, Mr Henderson. I'm very sorry for your loss.' Her quiet courtesy pricked his bubble of outrage; he opened his mouth and closed it again.

While the quiet lasted she looked him over. He wore neatly pressed khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled twice. Two pens were clipped in his shirt pocket. The cell phone that hadn't answered earlier was in a carrier on his belt, along with a measuring tape, hand-held GPS, and a beeper – his belt was almost as busy as a patrolman's, she thought, all he lacked was a gun. Or did he? She considered patting him down but decided,
Not in front of his house.

‘I called my office,' he said, ‘and my secretary said trouble here at the house – so I called the County Attorney . . . he's a friend of mine.'
Of course he is.
‘He kindly sent one of his assistants to meet me at the morgue so I could see the—' His big jaw clamped shut and a muscle in his face flexed. He swallowed. ‘It's my wife . . . and another person. Is my daughter . . . ?'

‘Daddy, I'm here,' Patricia said, suddenly behind him on the sidewalk.

Shit. Here we go again.
Sarah braced for a new emotional storm.

Instead, what followed was an awkward short ballet of painful body language between father and daughter. Roger Henderson said, ‘Oh, Patsy,' with what sounded like relief, and reached out for her. She leaned toward his arms for a nanosecond, then pulled back and blurted, ‘Mom's dead!'

He took back his unused embrace quickly and put his hands in his pockets. ‘I know. I saw . . . somebody shot her.' They stared at each other, breathing hard, for two or three seconds before he said, ‘Well, I guess we have to . . .' inclining his head sideways toward Sarah.

Patricia nodded curtly, the way you'd confirm a drink choice or an order for pork rinds, and the two faces turned toward Sarah as if it was her job to figure out how this complicated pair should deal with each other.

Sarah gestured toward the busy yard behind her. ‘I'm sorry to say that your house has become a crime scene. Do you understand why I can't let you in there till we're done? We have to protect the chain of evidence.' Patricia looked at her shoes and said nothing about getting in there by accident.

‘But we need to talk,' Sarah said. The two Hendersons nodded again, identical businesslike nods. Patricia Henderson's features were a near-perfect copy of her mother's in the younger pictures back there in the house, but all her body language seemed to echo her father. ‘We could sit in my car but it isn't very convenient. Why don't we go downtown?'

‘The police station?' Henderson's guard came up. ‘I don't want to—'

‘We can talk in a private room there,' Sarah said, ‘and – would you like to come too?' she asked Patricia.

‘OK.' Patricia looked more than willing to go hear what her father had to say. He muttered something about needing to make some phone calls first. Patricia asked him coldly, ‘Are they more important than finding out who killed Mom?'

‘No, of course not,' he said, ‘but it's already one o'clock and . . . all right.' He clamped his jaw shut around the rest of his objections and told Sarah, ‘Shall we go in my car? It's over there in Ortman's driveway.'

‘It is?' Patricia stared across the street. ‘I thought Ruth said you wrecked it.'

‘I picked up another car at the office.'

‘It looks exactly like the one you had.'

‘It is. We lease a whole fleet, you know that.'

‘Mr Henderson,' Sarah said, ‘you had an accident?'

‘This morning, a few miles south of Phoenix. That's why I'm so late getting home.'

‘Are you OK?' Patricia asked him. ‘Did you get hurt?'

‘I got a bump on the head and spent a couple of hours in an emergency room. Got these fancy bandages and they say I have a bruise on my cheek, can you see it?' He gave Patricia an ironic little insider nod. ‘You know how I always nag you to wear your seat belt? Well, my seat belt saved my life this morning.' They stared at each other, rendered speechless by so many calamities back to back. Finally Henderson took a deep breath, dug out his keys and said, ‘Well . . . you coming with me?'

‘I guess.' She asked Sarah, ‘Can I put my car in the garage?'

‘Give me the keys, will you? I'll get an officer to take care of it. And then,' to both of them, ‘I guess Patricia better ride with me.' She had to try to keep them separated until they'd been interviewed, but she expected an argument, and was surprised when they both gave her another businesslike nod. This pair had similar instincts when it came to picking their battles. To Henderson she said, ‘That's my Impala behind the van. Will you follow me, please?'

She rolled away from the curb quickly, relieved that Roger Henderson hadn't staged a fight with photographers nearby. She was wary of complaints about overzealous police work from his friends at City Hall. On the other hand, Roger Henderson was such an obvious person of interest, she really shouldn't let him out of her sight till he'd answered some questions.

Also, she needed to talk to Henderson alone. So now, what to do with Patricia? She called Delaney as soon as she put the car in gear and told him Roger Henderson was coming in with her.

‘Nice work.'

‘Yes. His daughter Patricia is coming along as well. She's here with me.'

‘Ah.' His voice changed at once as he realized she couldn't speak freely. ‘Let's see, we'll need somebody to talk to her while we interview her father, hmm?'

‘Right.'

‘I'll see if Menendez is still here, I saw him a minute ago.'

‘Well . . . I'd really rather have Ollie. But . . . I guess he's still working on the crime scene, isn't he?'

‘Yes. You want me to interrupt him?' It was her case now, her call.

‘No . . .' She tapped the steering wheel, thinking. ‘If Menendez is still there he'll be fine. Tell him we'll be there in about five.'

She parked quickly at the station, jumped out, and watched as Henderson maneuvered his big shiny car into the parking space she indicated. He had every gadget on board that anyone could want, hands-free telephone system, GPS navigation . . . A sticker on the driver's-side door read, ‘This vehicle protected by Accu-Trak.'
A tracker?
Makes sense. If he's got a fleet of these out on the road he needs to know where his crew is . . .
‘I'll get the door,' she said, pulling out her card.

Her little group moved into the station like a slinky toy with a kink in it. Henderson's natural tendency was to open all doors and gesture women through them with elbow support and back touches. Sarah lengthened her stride enough to get ahead of him, and since she was the only one who knew where they were going she managed to direct the line of march. But following was plainly not a word in Henderson's lexicon. He moved in stiff-legged lurches, distraught at not being in charge of the group, and compensated by dominating his daughter at every turn and doorway as if she was too retarded to navigate a hall. Patricia gave him neither resistance nor gratitude, sailing through the spaces he indicated with an expression that said she had no idea who this pesky doorman was.

Delaney was waiting for them at the elevator. He shook hands with Henderson, repeated the department's sympathy, and acknowledged Patricia with a grave nod. He ushered them courteously into his office and said, ‘Sarah, could you just step out here a second and look at . . . uh . . .' and to Henderson, ‘If you'll excuse us for a minute . . .'

In the hall he said, ‘I've set up two rooms. What's your take on Henderson so far? You like him for the crime?'

‘Well . . . he's the natural first choice, isn't he? The husband?'

‘Always.'

‘But you know, he's already contacted the CA, who sent one of his aides along to take him to the morgue.'

‘I know. I told you, it's going to be that kind of a case. Did he say what happened to his face?'

‘He was in a wreck this morning. On I-10 just south of Phoenix. While I'm talking to him . . . you must have a friend at DPS in Phoenix, don't you?'

‘Several. Sure.'

‘Will you ask one of them to find out where his car was taken, and get it towed to the DPS lab down here? They'll do that for us, won't they?'

‘Sure, if I ask them.' He blinked rapidly. ‘You fishing?'

‘Yes. Who knows what's in it? And I'm saying, let's move on it right away, get it in our custody while he's still distracted, before he starts throwing up road blocks. This man has good attorneys, I'm guessing.'

‘For sure. And friends in high places. What else?'

‘Anything on the other victim's prints yet?'

‘No, but we should get that soon. Here comes Menendez.'

Sarah hunkered with him in his crowded workspace while they pooled what little they knew.

‘That screaming Patricia did at the house, I think that's atypical behavior for her,' Sarah said. ‘She was shocked then. But she's no hysteric. Kind of a powerhouse, actually. She seems to have been very fond of her mother – well, you saw that – but she moves and talks like her father, almost a carbon copy at times. You might probe around that a little.'

‘You think she suspects he did it?'

‘She never suggested that. But she wasn't surprised by her mother's infidelity, or even very concerned about it – that seems odd, doesn't it? I asked if there was a lot of fighting between the parents, and she got kind of indignant, like, “Who ever heard of parents fighting?” But they weren't
communicating
very well, she said.' Sarah turned her hands up. ‘Nothing about her attitude toward her parents makes sense to me yet. She doesn't want to touch him.'

‘You think she's afraid of him?'

‘Not afraid. More like seriously pissed off.'

‘OK, so besides why she's mad at Daddy, what else do you want to know about Patricia?'

‘Ask her to think again about the man in the bed. Is she sure she never saw him at the party? Did she stay to the end? Maybe there was a guest list, could she get that for us? Which parent does she ask for advice? Or money? Come to think of it, how come her brother went east to school but she's getting her degree in Tucson? If you get some rapport going, see if you can get a clue as to why it doesn't bother her that her mother sleeps around. Maybe find out, how upset is Daddy?'