Out from her hiding place, Faith glared at her husband. “Call that lawyer yourself, but make sure you tell him there won’t be any big paycheck,” she said, each word dripping in contempt. “I won’t use a penny of Billie’s money to defend her murderer.”
“You’ll do as I say. Call the damn attorney. It’s all set up. I need someone good,” Grant ordered yet again. “You’re my wife. I expect you to stand by me.”
“You expect? You have no right to expect anything,” Faith said, pulling her blue terry cloth robe tight and cinching the belt around her narrow waist. “I should have known you’d target Billie. Money has always been more important to you than people. How could I not have known you were behind all this?”
“Faith, please,” he said, his demands softened to pleading. “Don’t believe them. Listen to me. I’m innocent. You know me. You know I couldn’t kill Billie.”
Without responding, she walked over to a hall table where her husband’s wallet sat on a small porcelain dish. She flipped through receipts, a little folding money, a small stash of business cards, and found what I assumed was the one from the lawyer. Her hands steady, Faith stared at her husband as she tore the card up and let the pieces drift to the beige carpeted floor. Then, she grabbed four quarters out of a pile of change on the same table, and handed the coins to me. “Lieutenant, this is for my husband,” she said. “So he can call a cheap lawyer.”
“Why you bitch,” Grant slurred.
“With the little bit we have in the bank, our meager commu
nity property, maybe you’ll qualify for a public defender. Or you can use the blood money you got for killing Billie,” she said.
“As soon as we find it, that’ll be confiscated,” I explained. “I’m afraid he’ll have to find other funds.”
“It’s settled then,” Faith said, her face a mask of calm in a room electric with tension. “Since I assure you that I won’t donate a penny for your defense, a public defender it is.”
“Wait until I’m free,” he said. “I’ll . . . You’ll be . . .”
As entertaining as Grant Roberts’s frustration was, we had a job to do, and I was ready to call it a night. “It’ll be a long time before you’ll be free,” I said. “Too bad you took Wagner’s and Dick-son’s money. Now those old men can testify against you.”
“They’re the ones,” he snapped. “I don’t know what they told you, but they’re the killers. They wanted me to murder Billie, but I wouldn’t do it. I’m innocent.”
“You be sure to tell that to the judge and jury,” David said. “Right now, you’re heading downtown, for booking.”
The young cop was helping his partner down the steps, an egg on his forehead the size of a quarter. While David helped them take Roberts to the squad car I lingered with Faith. She cried softly, and I put my arm around her. “I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I think I knew,” she whispered. “Down deep, I suspected Grant was Billie’s lover. I saw the way he looked at her, and I knew my sister better than she knew herself. I understood that as smart and beautiful as Billie was, she was still that motherless child, with an emptiness inside her that made her vulnerable to any man who said the right words. And that’s something my husband excelled at, selling himself, first to me, then to my sister. What I don’t understand is why he had to kill her.”
“It’s hard to know if Grant would have murdered Billie if Wagner and Dickson hadn’t offered him the half-million,” I said. “Your
sister knew enough to send them to jail and cost them millions, two things those old men couldn’t let happen.”
Faith nodded, but her face mirrored her disgust. “My sister was worth so much more than money. How pitiful that they didn’t understand that,” she said. “Lieutenant, if there’s anything you need from me, any way I can help with the case, please ask. Grant may technically be my husband, but only until I can get divorce papers filed, and my loyalty is to my sister.”
“I understand,” I said. “But now I think we’d better go. We have paperwork to complete before we call it a night. Will you be all right, or is there someone we can contact for you?”
“There’s no one,” Faith said, wiping her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “Billie was everything to me, my only family.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I truly am.”
“You have no reason to be. My husband and those two old men are responsible,” Faith said, with certainty. “Thank you for solving my sister’s murder. Thank you for believing me. Now, perhaps, Bil-lie can rest in peace.”
“Okay,” I said. “But if you need someone to talk to, someone to listen and offer support, I can call the victims’ assistance folks, and they’ll be out here in a flash.”
She shook her head. “I’ll get through this, because I know it isn’t forever,” she said. “Thanks to Dr. Dorin, I understand that Billie and I will be together again, although not in this life, in the next.”
I
woke up to a ringing phone early the next morning, Monday, and, still half-asleep, I grabbed for the cell on the nightstand. I felt groggy and tired. I’d hit mom’s bed at three and slept little. I wasn’t sure why. It felt like something gnawed at the back of my mind. I couldn’t figure out what needled me. But there was something there, just out of reach.
“Lieutenant, it’s about time you picked up,” Rick Barron said. “Where’s Cassidy? The press is calling, and none of us know what to tell them. This thing is turning into a nightmare.”
Damn,
I thought. I looked at the phone in my hand. Sure enough, it was the old one, the one the captain had ordered me not to answer. Wishing I’d been awake enough to realize, I said, “Miss Collins is in a protected place. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Are you with her?” he asked.
“No,” I lied. “I don’t know where Miss Collins is, but I know that the captain has made arrangements to be sure she’s being protected.”
“Well, is she playing the rodeo tonight?” he asked, sounding
frustrated. “We’ve got more than seventy-thousand fans with tickets. The captain says she is, but are you sure? Is she going to perform?”
“I’m not in touch with Miss Collins,” I said, wondering if at that moment someone was tracing the signal, pinning down my location. Why hadn’t I just let the damn phone ring? “All I can tell you is that the captain told me the same thing he told you, that Miss Collins will put on her show at the Houston rodeo tonight as scheduled.”
“Lieutenant, does that mean you’re closing in on this Argus? You’ll have an arrest today?” Barron asked, sounding relieved at even the suggestion that it was possible the turmoil of the past months might finally be behind him. “Can we count on that?”
“Mr. Barron, now that we’ve taken over Miss Collins’s security, the situation has changed. I don’t know where she is, but if I did, I couldn’t tell you, and details about our investigation are off limits,” I said. “All you need to know is that Miss Collins is safe and she will be at the rodeo tonight, just like the captain told you. Have your crew get ready, as they would for any other performance. Goodbye.”
I hung up and turned off my cell, rolled over in bed and buried my face in the pillow, when I heard someone walk in. I reluctantly squinted at the figure beside me with one eye, exhausted and just wanting to turn back over and sleep.
“No, I’m not! And you can’t make me,” Cassidy said, peering down at me, her hands folded across her chest in the universal stance of defiance.
“I understand how you feel,” I said, pushing myself up on my side and running my fingers through my hair. It was no use. As soon as I moved my hand my frizzy mop flopped back into my eyes. “Let’s talk about this, calmly. I’m sure I can explain why Agent Garrity and Captain Williams want you to perform.”
“You can’t force me to,” she said, furious. Still, compared to the in-your-face kid who’d arrived on our doorstep, this was a new Cas-sidy. I could tell she was at least trying to maintain control. “Lieutenant, you can’t force me to get on that stage. No one can.”
“Cassidy, this isn’t about your fans, it’s about your future. I don’t care whether or not you disappoint a bunch of teenage girls. I do care about catching Argus,” I tried to explain. The kid looked ready to turn and run. I couldn’t say I blamed her. “We haven’t been able to get a solid lead on him. We need to draw him out.”
“Sounds good. Go ahead,” she said. “But you’ll need another pigeon. This one’s had it. When it’s your life, you make the decision. Right now, this schizo wants to kill me, and he’s making fools of all of you big-shot cops.”
“California hasn’t come up with anything to help us?” I asked, again. I’d heard it once but didn’t want to believe it.
“Nothing,” David said, with a shrug. “They haven’t found Jack Shaw, and he remains our most likely suspect. Turns out he’s the son of one of the old women who lived at the trailer park, just like Cassidy thought. The woman was Sharlene Shaw. I say ‘was’ because she passed away the year after Cassidy moved. The other two old ladies couldn’t tell us much about him. The California office questioned the other men on our list and found no indications that they were at all involved in the stalking. In fact, they all have alibis for the periods when Argus was known to be following Cassidy. Their computers were seized as part of the search warrants on their homes and offices, and the tech guys came up dry. They arrested one man for having child porn, but nothing suggests that either one is our stalker.”
“Great,” I said. “It’s always so good to wake up to good news. First Cassidy overhears me on the telephone with Barron. Now
California comes up dry. Everyone else is eliminated and no leads on that Shaw pervert.”
“I’ve got to admit that it’s not going particularly well,” the captain said, stating the obvious. I’d called him right after the kid’s blowup, and the three of us were powwowing around the kitchen table. I figured we looked like the characters in one of those old paintings, the ones with schemers around a campfire or candle, their faces etched by anxiety and glowing in the light of a flame. “Seems like we’re losing instead of gaining momentum. No need to say it again, I know, but I hoped we’d be able to explain our plan to the girl with more finesse. I thought I’d talk to her this morning, since we don’t have to deliver her to Reliant Stadium for the concert until about six this evening.”
Whether or not he wanted to rub it in, his words hit their mark, and I squirmed a bit in the old spindle-backed chair, resulting in the complaint of wood rubbing wood as its worn joints strained. The captain rubbed his eyes and looked as fatigued as I felt. This case was wearing on all of us. I had to admit I’d felt safer having David at the ranch 24/7 since our flight out of Dallas. Having him close was comforting, even if I knew it was only temporary. But the poor guy hadn’t even been able to run home to pick up his newspapers. This morning, he wore another of Bill’s shirts, black with pearl-topped snaps. For a Yankee, he made a pretty fair-looking cowboy. I refocused, bringing my mind back to the job at hand.
“Obviously, I didn’t realize Cassidy was walking through the hallway while I was on the phone,” I said, yet again. “No excuses, but I was pretty foggy after being out most of last night. While I admit my mistake, the rodeo is tonight, Captain, so we had to tell her soon. If she won’t perform, I don’t see how we can help her. The only other option is to ship her back to California.”
“You can’t do that,” Cassidy said. Mom’s old house, additions tacked on over the years when she and Pop had a few extra dollars
to spend, obviously had way too many nooks and crannies where folks could hide and eavesdrop on other folks. With Mom, Maggie, and me, it wasn’t a problem. We didn’t have many secrets. But lately, it complicated the heck out of keeping anything private.
“You can’t send me to L.A.,” she said. “Argus knows where I live. He’d find me. I need to stay here.”
“Miss Collins, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through,” Captain Williams said. “Sit down with us. Let’s talk.”
The kid ignored him and focused on me, pleading. “Lieutenant Armstrong, please don’t send me back. You just can’t. You need to find this creep. Please, help me.”
I saw the panic in her eyes at the suggestion that we could wash our hands of the case and felt a surge of sympathy for the kid, but the truth was that we were running out of ideas.
“Cassidy,” David pleaded. “If you’ll just sit down with us for a few minutes as Captain Williams suggested, we’ll discuss this.”
“No. You have to listen,” she said. She tucked her hands under opposite arms to stop them from shaking. “You have to help me. Please.”
Politely asking the kid to listen didn’t appear to be working, so I figured, as much as I hated to, that maybe we needed to wallop her with a heavy dose of reality. “Cassidy, the captain’s right. You haven’t thought this through,” I said. “You’re smart, but this guy has you running scared. That’s putting you in even more danger. You want to help us stop this jerk? Take a breath and listen to Agent Garrity and the captain.”
“Why should I?” she challenged.
“Because like you said, it’s your life, and with your help, we might be able to save it,” I said. “And because I don’t see anyone else standing in line to help you get out of this mess.”
Our eyes met, and for a long moment, she said nothing. I’d about given up hope when somehow it appeared that my words had
hit their mark. “Okay,” she said, her voice quaking. As frightened as she was, I had to give the kid credit for even attempting to hold it together. “I’m not agreeing to anything. But I’ll listen.”
The plan, as the captain explained it, was relatively simple. We wanted Argus to make his move, to act while we were fully manned and ready to pounce on him, so Cassie didn’t have to worry that one day he’d attack while she was alone and vulnerable.
Unlike Dallas, at the Houston rodeo there would be no formidable show of protection around her, no visible barrier of law enforcement circling, like wagon trains in an attack. Instead, we’d employ a substantial but more discreet force, dressed to blend in with the crowd. The reason? We were tempting Argus.
“I don’t like it,” the kid said, as skeptical as if we claimed we had an invisible force field to throw around her, like in those sci-fi movies, the kind that mysteriously bounces off killer rays. “I’ll be a sitting duck.”