“My guess is that you already know I did,” he said. “What’s the point?”
“The point is that you now have a homicide to work,” I said. When he didn’t respond, I offered, “If you’re too booked up, Detective, I’m willing to investigate Billie Cox’s murder, but it is your case. If you’d prefer, I’ll step back and let you and your partner run with it.”
I didn’t think less of Walker for making a mistake by writing off the murder as a suicide. Anyone can be fooled. There’s an old
ranger story about Colonel Jack Hays during the Texas war for independence. Believing he was one step ahead of the Mexicans, Hays left San Antonio with his men to scout for approaching enemy troops only to discover when he returned five days later that a Mexican military force had used his absence as an opportunity to move in and take over the river city.
So it wasn’t Walker misjudging the situation that bothered me; it was that he didn’t fight for his investigation, that he didn’t insist on working his own case. Instead the detective fell silent, perhaps considering if he could get away with turning it over. If Buckshot was right about Walker’s attitude, it had to be tempting. There was no way the Cox case was going to be easy, with the killer’s trail already a week old. Walker must have settled on a way to explain my commandeering the investigation to his lieutenant, because the next thing he said was, “I’ll fax you a copy of the case file. I know you’ve seen it, but you might want it, now that you’ll be the lead.”
“Sure,” I said. “Fax away.”
I hung up, and then, rather than wait on the paperwork to arrive, I put in a call to Faith Roberts and brought her up to speed on the coroner’s new findings. When I told her Billie’s death was now officially a homicide, I heard her sobbing. Sometimes, even when folks believe a loved one’s been murdered, hearing it’s real comes as a shock.
“Faith, I need more information on Billie,” I said. “Do you have other family, anyone else I should talk to?”
“Just myself and my husband, Grant. We’re Billie’s only family,” she said. “Like I told you, our parents died young, our father first and then our mother when we were still kids.”
“Then I’d like to talk to you and your husband,” I said. “I need to know everything either of you can tell me about your sister.”
“Of course, anything we can do to help,” she said. “Grant’s a
Realtor, and he offices near the house. I’ll call him, and he’ll come right home. We’ll be waiting when you get here.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
“Lieutenant Armstrong?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
I put down the phone and grabbed my rig out of the drawer, strapped on my Colt .45, and pulled on my blazer. I was heading toward the door when David Garrity walked in.
“You look like you’re prepared to do some business,” he said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Kind of. Looks like I’ve picked up a murder case. I’m on my way to interview the victim’s family,” I said. “Do you need something?”
“If it’s okay, I’ll tag along,” he said. “Slow day at the office, and I’d like to talk about our plans for Saturday night.”
“Saturday night?” I repeated, clueless.
For a moment, he just looked at me with a bemused smile. “Unless we have other plans, I’m talking about the Collins concert,” he said, obviously finding my stumble entertaining. I felt myself blush, but decided to ignore it and head for the door. Quickly, David returned to business. “I’d like to go over the arrangements, to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.”
“That’s what’s set up so far,” I concluded on our drive to the Robertses’ home. “We’re doing a full-court press on security, but if you’ve got other ideas, I’m all for expanding.”
“No, that’s great,” he said. “You’ve got everything in motion.”
“How about those subpoenas?” I asked. “Any results yet?”
“It’s looking tough,” David admitted. “Looks like the e-mails
went through a web of resenders, those forwarding services that hide the identity of the source. To get access to the records, we have to write more subpoenas at every level. In the meantime, the lab guys are tracing back the text messages that came in on Collins’s cell phones, but that looks like another dead end.”
“Bouncing off towers all over the country, I bet,” I ventured.
“Don’t you know it,” he said. “This guy, whoever he is, knows how to scramble the towers of origin. The lab guys say he’s clued into the latest technology, new equipment that funnels through phone networks to scattered towers. They’re impressed.”
“I’m happy your lab guys are enjoying this, but it’s making a mess of work for us,” I said. “And all these roadblocks sure aren’t moving the investigation along.”
That conversation ended and, like the day before, there was an uncomfortable silence between us. To fill it, I recited the basics on the Cox case, since David would be at the interview. He asked only a few questions, probably because I left out all of Faith’s assertions about the haunted television and computer.
“How’s Maggie’s horse?” he said, changing the subject.
“Emma Lou seems a little better, but we’re not sure about the foal yet. Today’s day three hundred, so if she doesn’t give birth before tomorrow, Doc says there’s at least a prayer that the foal has a chance.”
“That’s good news,” he said. “Maggie looked upset when I was there yesterday. Poor kid’s been through a lot.”
“Well, we’ve had a rough spell. First losing Bill, and then that mess last year,” I said.
Then, again, silence.
I thought about David and me, what we’d been like and his unexplained retreat. I wondered if he was waiting for me to make a move, if he’d gotten tired of knocking on a door I never opened. I glanced over at him. Heck, I’d never been in favor of wishing and
hoping. Seeing him again, well, it made me remember how much I enjoyed the brief time we’d spent together.
“You know, when you stopped calling, I was surprised,” I said. “I’d thought that maybe we’d—”
“I did, too, Sarah. I really did,” he interrupted. I glanced over, and he was staring at me. He looked sad, distant, yet I had the sense he wanted to reach out, to touch me. And there was something, something on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be said. But what? I considered pulling the car over, but we were right around the corner from Faith and Grant Roberts’s house, and they were waiting.
“If there’s something you need to tell me, you should just say it, David,” I said.
“There’s nothing I can tell you, Sarah. I wish there were,” he said, quietly. “Sometimes, what we want isn’t as easy as it should be. Sometimes there are other people involved.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, but he said nothing, only shook his head, still staring at me. “David, I’m a grown woman. There’s no need to mince words. If you found someone else or changed your mind about how you feel about me, that’s something I can understand. I know I wasn’t particularly available.”
“It’s not as clear cut as that,” he said, as I pulled into the driveway of a square, box of a house, two stories and redbrick, in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, the kind with tree-lined streets and sidewalks, where neighbors pick up each other’s newspapers and mail when they go on vacations.
I turned off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car. I wanted an answer. When he went to open the door, I flipped the locks.
He looked startled at first, but then smiled. “What is this? Am I being kidnapped? You know that’s a federal crime.”
“Time to fess up,” I said. “I need to understand where we are, what changed.”
He turned toward me in the seat and skimmed his hand gently
over my shoulder, then slowly up to my cheek. It felt so good, just to feel his touch again. I turned toward him, and then cupped my left hand over his. “Tell me, David,” I said. “Tell me where we are and how we got here.”
I wanted and didn’t want to know, but David smiled, the crooked, warm, aggravatingly charming smile I’d thought about so many times since I’d last kissed him. But again, he shook his head and didn’t answer. I could see it in his eyes, something, a parcel of truth he wanted to tell me. I thought about brushing back the hair that had fallen over his forehead. I thought about what his skin felt like when we’d made love, warm and firm.
“Now’s not the time,” he said, resolutely turning away and unlocking the car door. As he swung it open, he said, “Let’s go talk to the victim’s family.”
“The truth is, we really don’t know of anyone who’d want to hurt much less kill my sister,” Faith said. “I’ve been thinking, maybe it does have something to do with that man she was seeing? Maybe she broke it off with him, and he couldn’t bear it? Maybe he was angry? You read about things like that in the newspaper all the time, some spurned boyfriend who kills a woman just because she doesn’t want him anymore.”
“But you can’t put a name on this mystery man?” I asked. “Any information about him at all would help, Faith. Anything Billie mentioned would be a start.”
Faith shook her head no. Beside her, Grant Roberts, not a bad-looking guy, a little thin for my taste, but tall and just a bit stooped, with short saddle-brown hair and tepid blue eyes, talked for the first time in our interview. “I heard that he was someone she worked with or in a company she had dealings with. A business relationship,” he
said. “Billie mentioned it one afternoon, when she was here having Sunday dinner.”
His wife looked at him, surprised. “Billie told you about him? She never said anything to me.”
“She waited until you were out of the room. Billie knew you wouldn’t approve, Faith,” he answered. “The man was married. She was your little sister. You know that she always wanted you to think well of her.”
Faith dropped her head, and wiped her eyes with an already soggy tissue she clenched in her right hand. “I guess that’s true,” she said. “Billie was always concerned about the way I saw her. After our mother died, I was as much mother as sister.”
Something about what Grant Roberts had just said rang wrong for me. Not the part about Billie being reluctant to tell Faith about her lover, but that Billie would confess something so personal to her brother-in-law. So I asked a question I would have anyway, only sooner, “Please don’t be alarmed. We ask this of everyone in an investigation. Just for our records, where were both of you on that Friday, say from four to six, the afternoon Billie died?”
Faith shrugged, unconcerned. “We discussed this,” she said. “I was home, picking up a few things around the house. Then I watched that show. You know, when the television just suddenly—”
“Was anyone else home?” I interrupted. The haunted TV episode was something I really didn’t want to share with David. I wasn’t too sure how he’d interpret a victim communicating from beyond the grave.
“No,” she said. “I was alone.”
“And you, Mr. Roberts? Where were you?”
Grant Roberts didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he looked at David and me, as if wondering what to say. He’d now piqued my curiosity twice. Finally, he said, “I was at the real estate office around
six-thirty that afternoon,” he said. “Before that, I was driving around Houston previewing houses for a client, but by six-thirty, I was in the office. I left there at about quarter to seven, and came directly home for dinner.”
“Grant’s office is only a mile down the road,” Faith said. “I remember him coming in before seven. I noticed the time because I was still watching television. It was an hour program, just ending, and I didn’t have dinner ready, as I usually do by then.”
“Write down your office address and phone number for me, Mr. Roberts,” I asked, handing him my pad of paper and a pen. “Just so we can contact you when we have news on the case.”
Grant Roberts did as requested, but I noticed his hands trembled, ever so slightly.
D
o you mind stopping at Grant Roberts’s office with me?” I asked David in the Tahoe.
“You sensed he was lying, too,” he said. “Something is off there. You can hear it in his voice.”
“It shouldn’t take long,” I said. “Promise this isn’t like yesterday. I’ll get you back to your car before dark.”
“Unless you decide to kidnap me again,” David responded. When I looked over he had a roguish grin.
“I only attempt one federal crime a day. Here on out, I’ll wait until you’re ready to talk,” I said, figuring I might as well. It was obvious he wasn’t in any hurry to come clean. “But I do think you owe me an explanation, and now you can’t say I didn’t try to get to the bottom of this.”
“This?”
“Us,” I clarified.
His smile had disappeared, and David said nothing, but looked again as if he wanted to. I considered reneging and ordering him to spit it out, but restrained myself and drove to Grant’s real estate
office. I had work to do. I pulled into the parking lot, turned off the Tahoe, and got out without asking David any of the questions that wouldn’t stop bombarding my mind.
“Yes, Mr. Roberts was here last Friday,” April Sims, a shapely young woman in high heels and a red dress said, when we inquired. Long dark-blond hair falling about her shoulders, the office manager was tall with a wide smile and arrestingly inquisitive almond-shaped green eyes. “I’m sure he was here until three-thirty or so. He left, saying he was going to preview houses, and he returned by six-fifteen or shortly after, maybe six-thirty. Why?”
“We’re just checking on a few things,” I said, being as vague as possible. “Do you know where he was that afternoon? Any record of what part of the city or what houses he previewed?”
“Well, not really,” she said.
“Don’t the agents tell you where they’re going?” David asked. “It seems to me that they would want someone to know where they were, who they’re with, when they’re showing houses.”
“
If
they’re showing houses,” a voice behind us boomed. We turned and saw Grant Roberts walk through the door, blisteringly angry. “Why are you here? I told you I didn’t have a client with me. I was previewing.”
“Grant, these officers are asking about last Friday.”
“It’s all right, April,” Roberts said. “It’s nothing. In fact, they were just leaving.”