“Well, it depends,” I said.
“Are you thinking this guy isn’t dangerous? He was in the audience in Las Vegas and didn’t try anything. I’ve been telling Cassie that he’s probably just a big talker trying to scare a young girl. Why if that son of a—”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I interrupted. “If Argus left his home territory, wherever that is, and traveled to be in the same city as Ms. Collins, bought a ticket to her concert, that means that he has to be taken very seriously. Most stalkers, especially those who use the Internet, don’t do that. They don’t travel and physically shadow their victims.”
“Is there another possibility?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s possible that this Argus lives in Vegas, and that’s why he was in the audience that night.”
“So, what do we do? How do we find out who this sicko is?”
“You need to keep an open mind, not restrict the investigation to Texas,” I suggested. “And you need solid evidence.”
“I’m all for that. What do you suggest?”
“Unfortunately, we start by going down what will most likely lead to a dead end,” I said. “As you requested, I will subpoena the Internet records. But I predict it’ll be of little or no use, because anyone savvy enough to find unlisted phone numbers to text message and private e-mail addresses knows how to cover his tracks.”
“So, what do we do?” he asked. “Lieutenant, we have to stop this guy. Cassidy’s a wreck. She’s hardly sleeping. You’ve gotta have more than that for us.”
“I’ll talk to Los Angeles P.D., since that’s your home city, and we’ll put traces on all her phones, all incoming text messages, to see if we can track one.”
“They’re coming through on the kid’s cell as all kinds of numbers,” Barron said. “Sometimes the caller I.D. shows ‘number withheld’ or ‘private’.”
“Your guy’s scrambling the numbers,” I explained. “But if we can
trace the text messages in transit, maybe we can determine where they’re originating. While L.A.P.D. helps us out with that, I’ll investigate this Justin Peterson. Just to see if he could be your guy.”
“Okay. Sounds like a plan. But if this Argus isn’t stopped, what do you think he’s capable of?”
“Like I said earlier, Mr. Barron,” I warned. “From the tone of the text messages and e-mails, and assuming this stalker is really physically trailing Miss Collins, he needs to be taken very seriously.”
Now that we had a plan, I needed to get busy. I hung up the telephone and called the captain’s secretary. “Sheila, get me a number for special crimes at L.A.P.D.,” I said. “And send in Janet. I need to have some subpoenas drawn up.” Janet was Janet Kirk, our civilian employee, a whiz at writing subpoenas.
“Sure,” Sheila said. “But there’s someone here to see you.”
“I don’t have any appointments. Who even knows I’m back?”
“There’s a lady in the lobby. She says her name is Faith Cox Roberts, and she wants to talk to you about her sister, Billie.”
M
y sister did not commit suicide,” the woman who’d taken over my office insisted, pacing in front of my desk like a nervous prosecutor addressing a jury in opening arguments. “I know it like I know my own name, like I know that the clock on your wall reads one o’clock. My sister would not, did not commit suicide. She was murdered.”
“How can you be so sure?” I prodded.
“I saw her that afternoon. We had lunch at the Four Seasons. We talked and laughed,” she said, strain pinching her voice tight. “Billie wasn’t depressed. She was successful, growing rich, and loving it. She invited me to fly to Manhattan with her to shop. Does that sound like a woman so miserable she fired a bullet into her head?”
“Mrs. Roberts,” I said, trying to calm her. “I’m really not the one you should talk to about the case. The detectives at H.P.D. are in charge.”
“I’ve tried to reason with that detective,” she said, her lips anchored into a lopsided frown. Older than her sister, Faith Roberts
didn’t appear to have her sister’s funds. She wore an ill-fitting pinstriped skirt and a long-sleeved white sweater. Cut short, her dark brown hair tapered awkwardly into a bob around her ears. Yet she had on an impressive pair of canary yellow diamond stud earrings, marquis cut, and carried a black purse with the Fendi symbol zigzagged across the fabric. Gifts from her dead sister?
“The Houston detectives have decided that this is a solved case, period, and they’re not about to open it back up. The governor’s office tells me you agree,” she said, becoming even more agitated. “I know why H.P.D. won’t listen to me. That detective thinks I’m some kind of a loon. But I’m not. You have to listen to me. You just have to.”
“This is understandably a highly emotional time for you,” I said, looking down at my watch. Doc Larson was supposed to be at the ranch at two. I had to leave and head home soon or risk missing him. “It’s difficult to accept that a family member could commit suicide, and it’s not unusual for families to disbelieve it, even when it’s obvious.”
“Too obvious,” the woman stormed. “I saw the photos. It looked like a made-for-TV suicide. The whole thing was unbelievable. She even had the note right there on her body.”
Had someone told her that I questioned the scene in the bedroom, troubled that it appeared too perfect? That wasn’t possible. I hadn’t told anyone except the captain. Even if she had heard somehow, it didn’t matter. I’d found no evidence of homicide and already passed on the case. Faith Cox Roberts was H.P.D.’s headache, not mine. I’d learned my lessons. I’d taken on more than I should have a year earlier on the Lucas case and regretted it. I’d gotten in too deep.
“I’m sorry they showed you the photos,” I said, meaning it. “You shouldn’t have had to see that. I’m sure it was disturbing.”
“I demanded to see them,” she said, standing across from me at the desk, her hands locked in tight fists at her sides. “I had to see what they said my sister did. I had to know for myself.”
“Mrs. Roberts, you need to limit your inquiries to the detectives in charge of the case,” I said again. Sorry I’d agreed to talk to her, all I wanted was for the woman to leave. “This is inappropriate. It’s H.P.D.’s case, not mine.”
“I’m telling you that detective already made up his mind. He doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t care,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You’re my last chance to get justice for my sister, to find out who murdered her.”
Damn, I thought. I promised Maggie. If I’m not out of here in ten minutes . . .
Faith Roberts dropped into the chair opposite my desk. Her shoulders sagged, and she appeared to wear the weight of her sister’s death like the heaviest of shawls. Finally, she spoke again, confessing, “I think I said some things to the Houston detective, things that made him conclude I wasn’t thinking clearly. Things that led him to believe that I’m some kind of a nut. But I’m not. I promise you, I’m not.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
Roberts hesitated and shook her head. “I’d rather not say,” she said, nervously drumming her fingers on the wooden chair’s arm in a swift
rat-a-tat-tat.
“Obviously, I made a mistake confiding in the detective. I’d rather that you don’t get the same impression, that I’m some sort of maniac.”
“Your reactions, under the circumstances, are entirely understandable. You’ve suffered a terrible loss,” I said in my most reassuring voice. Still, I needed to know. “But if you don’t tell me what you said to the detective, I’ll simply call and ask him. Wouldn’t you prefer to explain the situation?”
“Shit,” she said, spitting out the word with all the force of a
more substantial curse. She covered her mouth with one hand, her tomato-red polish chipped and splintered, as if she’d been absent-mindedly peeling it away. When she spoke again, she pleaded, “I don’t know why I even said that, about what I told that other officer. It has nothing to do with why I’m here. Can’t we talk about my sister’s death? What does it matter what I said?”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll call H.P.D. and ask the detective,” I said again. “He
will
tell me.”
The woman frowned, looking regretful and tired. She gathered her mouth into a tight bow. “Hell,” she said, and then she paused. She waited for me to interrupt and let her off the hook. I didn’t. “Well. I didn’t really say anything all that shocking,” she said, finally. She squared her shoulders, bracing, I gathered, for my reaction. “I just told him that my sister’s communicating with me, letting me know she wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”
“Communicating with you?” I asked, glancing at my watch. I really needed to leave.
“Yes. Communicating with me,” she said again. “Can we just leave it at that?”
“Not a chance,” I said. “You’ve got me for four more minutes, so I suggest you take a deep breath and go for it. Tell me how your dead sister’s sending you messages, and why you’re convinced she was murdered.”
My intentions were good. I meant to leave for home in plenty of time to talk with Doc Larson, to be ready to answer all Maggie’s concerns about Emma Lou. Instead, forty-five minutes later, I weaved through traffic, rushing home, hoping to beat Maggie’s school bus. I tried the ranch phone and Mom’s cell but she didn’t answer either. I figured she was out in the shed with Bobby and Doc, getting the rundown I should have been there to hear.
Still, how could I have left? I couldn’t take my eyes off Faith Roberts, much less tell her to go away.
“It happens every evening, right about six o’clock,” she said. “Six, you know, is about the time the coroner estimates my sister died.”
“What happens?” I asked.
“It’s always different,” she said. “The day Billie died, before I got the bad news, I was home, picking up a pile of newspapers my husband left on the den floor, when the television clicked on. I hadn’t turned it on, and no one else was there.”
“Some kind of a fluke,” I said, dismissively. “Mrs. Roberts, you can’t place emphasis on a chance occurrence.”
“When the television clicked on, it was on one of those crime channels, you know, the ones who have the real stories about real murders,” she said. I nodded, and she started again. “I never watch those channels. I’ve never had any interest in them. Neither does my husband, so why our television would be set there, that puzzled me. The topic of the program was a New York case, a forensic show featuring a coroner.”
“Well, there are a lot of crime shows on television. It’s not surprising that the TV was on one.”
“That day’s episode was about a murder covered up by making it look like a suicide.”
That was odd, I had to admit, but I said, “Coincidences do happen.”
“I stopped and watched it. I’m not sure why. Like I told you, I never watch those kinds of shows,” she said. “I guess it was about two hours later, when the detective called to tell me that my sister’s body had been found. He read the suicide note to me over the telephone.”
“You think your sister was talking to you through that television program?” I asked. No sense in dancing around the implica
tion. I’m almost always in favor of getting everyone’s hand laid out, cards right side up on the table. “Mrs. Roberts, certainly you don’t truly believe that?”
“Not at that point. As you say, I assumed it had to be some kind of bizarre coincidence. But then, late the following afternoon, I was at the funeral home with my husband, picking out my sister’s casket,” she said. “I was crying. I had been ever since I’d heard the news. I was struggling with why Billie would have done this, when she’d been so happy at lunch. I hadn’t thought much about the TV show the day before. Really very little.”
“Well, then, why are you now thinking it was anything more than chance?”
“Because of what happened next. I had a hard time choosing, so we were there a long time. Just before six o’clock, my husband excused himself to return a business call and walked into another room. While I stood there surrounded by open caskets, wondering how something so terrible could happen and where I would get the strength to bury my sister, my cell phone rang,” she said. Faith Roberts brushed a tear off her right cheek, and paused. “My cell phone rang, and I answered it. I said hello, but there wasn’t anyone there.”
“A wrong number,” I speculated.
“My sister’s name and cell phone number were on the caller I.D.,” she said.
That, of course, was rather interesting. “Where was Billie’s cell phone?” I asked.
“She’d forgotten it on the table at the restaurant the day before. I left after she did and took it with me,” she said. “Since I hadn’t seen her to return it, I still had Billie’s phone in my purse.”
Sure it was odd, but not unexplainable. “Phones sometimes dial by mistake. It’s happened to me,” I said with a shrug. “I was the last one somebody called, and his redial button was accidentally pushed, and my phone rang. My mom has my number programmed into her
cell phone. Something triggered the button once without her knowing, and my phone rang. I could hear her talking to someone, but she didn’t know I was listening. It’s most likely that something in your purse hit the button and made the call, that’s all. You can’t assume anything more than that.”
Faith Roberts bit her trembling lower lip, and stared down at her hands. I wondered if she’d be able to go on. To move the conversation along I asked, “I gather something happened again Sunday, at about six p.m.?”
Roberts nodded.
“Yes. I was in the sunroom at our house when the breeze picked up from an open window,” she said. “It flipped the pages on an album I’d been looking through, collecting photos for the funeral. The page it opened to was a photo of Billie and me as children. We were holding hands. It was taken shortly after our mother died. The last thing my mother asked me to do was to always look out for my sister.”
Faith was crying openly now, wiping away tears. It was getting harder to leave, but I really had to.
“This is very interesting, even quite sweet,” I said. “But we’re talking about easily explained events, and I need to be on my way.”
“Late yesterday, Monday, I was in my sister’s office at Century Oil, cleaning out her personal items,” she said. “Her company computer was turned off, not on standby,
turned off.
At precisely six, it clicked on, all by itself. No one else was in the room, and I was standing at least five feet away, boxing up family photos, so I didn’t do it by accident.”