"What we'd like from you, Colonel," Lawson said, "is an account of Gillian Lloyd's last few hours."
Indolently, Chief motioned for Lawson to proceed. "What do you want to know?"
"When did you first see her?"
He explained how they'd met, then talked them through the press conference and banquet. "I never would have guessed that Gillian wasn't the media escort, Ms. Lloyd." Looking over at her, he said, "She handled it like a pro."
"She was very capable. And please call me Melina."
He acknowledged that, then picked up his account of the evening. "When the banquet concluded, she returned me to my hotel."
"No stops along the way?"
"One. I asked her to stop for take-out tacos. She obliged me, explaining that an escort's job was to see to the needs and requests of the client. Right, Melina?"
"Right."
Jem spoke up for the first time since reentering the room. "For chrissake, can we skip the part about tacos? I want to get to the part that relates to the writing on the wall."
"Writing on the wall?" Chief looked to Lawson for clarification.
The detective was glaring at Jem. "If you don't mind, Mr. Hennings." He reminded Jem that his warning about a jail cell still stood, then turned back to Chief. "You had a take-out order?"
"Yes."
"So where'd you take it?"
"To my room at The Mansion."
"Gillian accompanied you to your room?"
"Yes," he replied evenly. "We'd bought enough for two. She admitted to being hungry. We ate off the coffee table in my suite."
"The taco stand didn't have any vacant tables?"
His exasperation showing, Chief said, "I wanted a drink. There was liquor in the bar. Bourbon, in case you want to know that, too. I had one drink."
"And Gillian?"
"One also."
"How long did she stay in your suite?"
"We finished our meal. I don't remember what time it was when she left."
"Did anyone see her leave?"
"I don't know. I didn't walk her out. Maybe I should have." She saw Birchman give him a cautionary look, but it was so subtle that it had probably escaped the others' notice. Lawson was saying, "So you ate. You had one bourbon. What else did you do?"
"Talked."
"Talked." Lawson screwed up his face as though trying to envision the scene. "Talked there at the coffee table?" "Why don't you just come right out and ask what you're itching to ask, Lawson?"
"Okay. Did you sleep together?"
CHAPTER
11
His answer was succinct. "No."
"Well, somebody thinks you did."
Lawson removed several glossy eight-by-ten photos from a manila folder he'd brought in with him and passed them to Chief. Unprepared for what he was about to see, he irritably snatched the photographs from the detective. But his pique was short-lived. A single glance at the first photo caused him to grimace. Raising his hand to his forehead, he groaned, "Oh, Jesus."
"May I?" Birchman extended his hand; Chief passed the first photograph to him.
He leafed through them all before passing them to his attorney. For a moment he stared into near space, then he focused on her. "Melina, I . . ." Lost for words, he let his expression speak for him. He raised his opened hands toward her in a gesture of helplessness before lowering them listlessly.
"Well?"
After holding her stare a few moments longer, he looked at Jem, who'd practically snarled the question at him. "Well, what?"
"Did you do what the writing says? Did you fuck my
fiancée
?"
"Jem!"
"You're offended, Melina?" he shouted. `Be offended by him, not me!"
"Perhaps Mr. Hennings should be removed."
Lawson ignored Birchman's suggestion but addressed Jem. "Final warning, Hennings. One more outburst and you're outta here."
"Oh, no, I'm staying," Jem said, shaking his head vigorously. "I want to hear what the space cadet has to say for himself."
"Anything I have to say, I'm saying to Gillian's sister." Chief's voice vibrated with an intimidating timbre. "Not to you."
"Jem, would you please calm down?" she asked wearily.
"I'll calm down. Because I don't want to miss a word Mr. Astronaut says."
Lawson resumed by asking why someone would write such things. "There must be some basis of truth to it, Hart." "You're asking me—"
"Colonel." As though to stop Chief from speaking, Birchman put out his hand. Chief swatted it aside.
"That's blood, right?" he said, gesturing toward the photographs, which had been returned to the detective. "You're asking me to make sense of it? You expect me to explain what some sick bastard wrote on a woman's wall in blood after killing her?"
He snorted a scornful laugh. "I'm not a psychiatrist. And I'm not a goddamn detective. So how the hell should I know why he wrote it? How could anybody know? Anybody who could do this," he said, again flinging his hand toward the photographs, "is psychotic. Deranged. How the hell do you expect me to make sense of it?"
"All right, calm down."
"Like hell."
"Did you have sexual relations with Gillian Lloyd last night?"
"What'd I tell you?"
"You told me no."
"So there you have it. She left my room, and—"
"What time?"
"I told you I don't remember."
Lawson swiveled his head toward her. "What time did she return home, Melina?"
"Late. Sometime between two and three I think."
Lawson turned back to Chief, his expression sardonic. "Y'all talked for an awfully long time."
Jem seemed barely able to hold himself together.
But Chief didn't quail. If anything, his demeanor grew more defiant. "I don't remember what time it was when she left. I have no idea why she was murdered. That's it. I'm finished here."
He stood up, but Lawson barked for him to sit down. When Birchman protested, the attorney and the policeman launched into a heated argument. Jem shot Chief a menacingly look, then retreated to a corner and put his back to the room.
Meanwhile, the gaze Christopher Hart had fixed on her didn't waver. His eyes were as piercing as laser beams. Whatever he was feeling at the moment—indignation, guilt, despair—he was feeling it passionately.
"Just a few more questions, and then I think we'll be finished with Colonel Hart," Lawson was saying to the attorney.
"These questions had better be pertinent to your murder investigation, Detective."
Lawson turned his attention back to Chief and asked if he had noticed anyone following him and Gillian the night before.
His arms were crossed over his chest. "No. But I wasn't looking. Why would I have been?"
"Did she phone anyone?"
"Not while she was with me."
"Which was for most of the evening."
Chief shrugged. "There were a few times when we were separated, so I suppose she could have called someone. I didn't see her place any calls."
"Or receive any?"
"Or receive any."
"Did she talk to anyone?"
"Sure. To everyone. Doormen. Parking valets. Everyone who attended the press conference. The people seated with her at the banquet."
"Anyone suspicious? Unusual? Someone who looked out of place at the function last night?"
"No."
"Someone she might have bumped into by chance? Former classmate? Old boyfriend? Neighbor or acquaintance?" Chief was shaking his head. "No, no, and no."
"At any point during the evening, did you exchange cross words with someone? Did she?"
"No. Melina," he said, suddenly turning to her. "I know you were counting on me to provide clues. I'm sorry. I can't."
"If there was something for you to remember, you would remember it." She smiled sadly. "Even if an awkward incident had occurred, as Mr. Lawson suggested, you probably wouldn't have realized it. She would have handled it adroitly."
"Nothing like that—" He broke off abruptly. "Wait a minute."
She sat forward in her chair. "Colonel?"
"I do remember something." He thought on it a few seconds longer, while they all watched him expectantly, then he turned to Lawson. "There was a guy. At the taco restaurant. He was coming out as we were going in. He spoke to her. Called her by name. Called her Gillian."
He looked over at her. "She was damn good at pretending to be you, Melina. This guy used her correct name, but it never flustered her. When I asked her why the guy had called her
Gillian, she explained that he had obviously mistaken her for her sister." He ran a quick scan of her features. "I can see how that could happen. Anyway, that's when she told me about you, about her identical twin."
"What was his name?" Lawson asked.
"He said it, but—"
"What was it?"
"Hell, I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to anybody except..." His eyes cut totem, who was listening from his place in the corner. Chief let his original statement drop and continued with, "I'm not sure that Gillian recognized him even after he said his name. They exchanged pleasantries. She passed it off as a case of mistaken identity, and I didn't give it another thought. But now, thinking back on it..."
"What?"
"I could be wrong, Melina, but I think he made her uneasy." "In what way?" Lawson wanted to know.
Chief shook his head. "I'm not sure. I just get the feeling that he creeped her out. In fact, he kinda creeped me out. Strange character."
"How so?" Lawson had his notepad out, pen poised over it. "His looks, for one thing."
"Describe him."
"Tall. Pale. Very skinny. Eyeglasses, definitely. Because they were so thick they distorted the shape of his eyes, and they had slipped down on his nose. But it wasn't so much his physical appearance that made him strange as the way he acted. The way he looked at Gillian."
"Which was?"
"Like..." He groped for the right words. "Like he was shocked, maybe even a little put off, to see her there. Especially with. . ." He hesitated, but after throwing Jem a glance, he finished. "With me."
Mulling it over, Lawson said, "And you're sure he thought she was Gillian?"
"That's how he addressed her," Chief replied. "And she
never corrected him, never passed herself off as Melina to him."
"If for some reason this man was affronted by seeing Gillian Lloyd with Colonel Hart," Birchman speculated, "I would say you have a suspect, Detective."
"But why would seeing her with me piss him off?" Again, he looked across at Jem. "Unless he was a friend of yours and jumped to the wrong conclusion."
"You're full of shit," Jem sneered. "Don't any of you realize that he's making this up? He's created a boogeyman to take the focus off himself. He's lying!"
In a blink, Chief was out of his chair. "You son of a bitch." Apparently seeing the wisdom in containing his temper and backing down, he turned abruptly to Melina. "Melina, I saw the guy. Talked to him."
She held his stare for several seconds, then looked to Lawson. "It bears checking out, doesn't it? If this man was as strange-looking as Colonel Hart described, maybe someone else remembers seeing him."
"Is that all you can tell us about him, Hart?"
He was pushing his fingers through his hair as though supremely agitated. His temper hadn't yet found a proper outlet. "Yeah. The whole encounter lasted maybe twenty, thirty seconds."
"Did you see his car?"
"No."
"Talk us through it again. Maybe something else will occur to you."
He reacted as though he might argue the necessity of the request, but then he looked across at her and his exasperation diminished. "He held the door for us as we were going into the restaurant. He spoke to Gillian. By name. I don't think she recognized him. It was one of those awkward moments when someone you're supposed to know speaks to you, but you can't place them or recall their name."
"We've all had those moments," she said.
"But he jogged her memory."
"Yeah," Chief said in response to Lawson's prodding. "I think he said his name, but if you held a gun to my head, I wouldn't remember it."
"Try."
"He said he couldn't remember it, Detective," Birchman said testily.
"Birchman, this is my inquiry, okay?"
They may as well have not been speaking at all, because Chief seemed to have retreated into himself. She watched as he willed himself to remember. His facial features were strained with his effort to remember forgotten details. His brain was a computer. It contained more information than an average individual could fathom—difficult technical, scientific, and aeronautical data were stored there, data that were required for him to do his job. He merely had to concentrate to call the information up when he needed it, as one would bring up a saved file on his computer screen.