by J. Bertrand
“Don’t just leave that there,” he says.
I scoop it up and make the dunk.
“I’m gonna go watch the tapes of your interview yesterday.”
“You do that,” he says.
“And if I don’t hear back on those prints, heads are gonna roll.”
“Let ’em have it.”
Outside my cubicle, I run into Captain Drew Hedges, a file folder under one arm and an HPD mug in the opposite hand, his usual plain gabardine suit traded in for an expensive-looking pinstripe model. He still has the weather-beaten leathery appearance of an old-time Texas lawman, still the same piercing gaze, but the hair is different, too. The gunmetal salt-and-pepper is gone, replaced by an even patrician white.
“Morning, sir.”
“Oh, March,” he says, making it sound like we’ve just been talking and he’s remembered something he wanted to add before I left. “I just wanted to say . . .” Then his voice trails off. He reaches with his free hand and pinches the lapel of my sport coat, rubbing the fabric back and forth. “Where did you get that?”
“What, this old thing?”
Aguilar’s head pops above a nearby cubicle wall and doesn’t retract when he sees I’ve spotted him. Clearly anticipating some kind of show.
Hedges drops my lapel thoughtfully, his eyes still lingering on the fabric. “I just wanted to say, good work this weekend. I knew you were fast, but that was something else.”
A fishhook of a smile digs into Aguilar’s poker face.
“I haven’t closed mine, sir. Not yet. In fact, I’m having a hard time getting all the forensics back from the scene.”
“Ah,” he says. “I must have heard wrong.” He gives my shoulder a pat. “Keep your nose to it, March, and get that thing cleared.”
The thing I’ve always liked about Hedges is that he stays on top of cases. The higher up you go in the food chain, the harder it is for a sworn officer to stay true to the calling. The pressure to manage, to be an armed administrator, comes at you from all sides. For as long as he’s run the Homicide Division, his sights have been set on what’s happening underneath him, not up on high. To see him with his head in the clouds all the sudden, confusing one case with another and not being bothered about it, really throws me.
Not Aguilar, though. He wanders over with a glint in his eye.
“Is he gonna help you with your fingerprint conundrum?”
“He didn’t even offer.”
“So what’s up with Hedges, anyway?”
“Maybe Bascombe knows.”
“Ask him if you want, but I wouldn’t. All you gotta do these days to get the lieutenant sideways with you is bring up the captain’s name. Used to not be that way.”
“Right, I know.”
A glance behind me confirms what the tingling along my neck already suggested, that Bascombe is staring at me right now through his open door. I raise my eyebrows in his direction, then retreat into my cubicle to make another futile round of phone calls in search of reports that haven’t arrived. Once I’m done, I lay everything out before me—the photos, the paperwork, the notes—doing my best to work out what happened.
What I know so far is that on the afternoon or early evening of Saturday, December 5, Simone Walker went outside to have a smoke. She brought her laptop and phone outside with her, and I have a request in for phone records. Either she was sitting facing the house or the pool—I don’t know which, but if I did, it would help figure out which direction the killer came from. He might have entered through the house, but he might also have come through the garage or over the fence, even though there are no signs of forced entry or the inevitable broken foliage if he’d landed in the bushes.
Simone was wearing white shorts and some kind of top. The fiber recovered from the wound appears to be a light blue cotton. According to Dr. Hill, Simone often wore a baby blue Lacoste pullover that now is missing from her room. She might also have been wearing sweats on top of the shorts because of the cold.
The killer entered somehow, came up behind Simone while she was seated, covering her mouth and plunging the knife in. He worked it around in the wound, holding her tight until she bled out. There would have been blood all over her and most likely all over him. He must have stripped her while she was seated, then tilted the chair back to the ground before getting on top of her. Then he did the mutilation game, first in front and then on her back, probably rolling her away from the chair.
I think Bascombe was wrong when he suggested she was dragged to the pool’s edge while seated. That would explain how the chair ended up at the bottom, but I can’t make sense of the action. He probably threw the chair in after her because it was filthy with blood. The crime scene techs did fish it out and check for prints, but there was nothing.
Once he’d finished his game and thrown her body and the chair into the lap pool, he used towels and possibly Simone’s clothing to wipe up the blood, rinsing everything in the water. When he left, he took all of it with him, along with her laptop and phone. He left the ashtray on the table with her cigarette inserted into a notch. All the butts in the ashtray were bagged for testing, but the results will no doubt be long in coming.
His second-to-last gesture, I think, was to pull her out of the water and pose the body. By the time he departed, he’d done a thorough job cleaning up after himself. Thanks to Luminol, recreating the spatter at the scene proved straightforward—the report, neatly wrapped in a binder by a tech named Edgar Castro, sits proudly on my desk, a reproach to the missing fingerprint results—so there’s not much doubt that the attack took place under the pergola.
According to Dr. Hill, the furniture had been rearranged slightly. That’s because of what his final move must have been. With everything he was taking packed away, probably in a bag brought to the scene for that purpose, he went to the far end of the pool and crouched down, just where Bascombe and I perched ourselves, and made sure that the image he was leaving behind matched the one in his mind.
Only one thing troubles me. With this much planning and this much method behind the killing, there’s no way it happened on impulse. The killer I’m looking for is organized, a details man, a mechanically inclined problem solver. There was a rage driving him, sure, a dark mania, but on top of it was a ruling and rational template.
Is that Jason Young? So many things point to him, but I just don’t know. Like Bascombe said yesterday, what I need is physical evidence. The blood from Young’s shirt. The results of the fingerprint analysis. None of which I’m likely to get fast.
Aguilar comes into my cubicle, nudging my chair. “The lieutenant said you were gonna look at the video from yesterday. Mind if I sit in?”
I shake my head. “I need some coffee first. Get it cued up and I’ll be there in a second. Want me to bring you anything?”
“I’m good.”
In the break room, as I’m searching the drawers for something other than nondairy creamer, afraid that the unadulterated brew might prove toxic, my phone starts buzzing. I dig it out of my pocket and see Templeton’s name on the screen. I’m tempted to let him go to voicemail, but it’s always possible he checked his correspondence and found a letter from Jason Young.
“Hello?”
“I’ve got something for you.” The delight in his voice is unmistakable, which gets my hopes up. “First thing this morning I read the news stories about your case. There was something you forgot to mention, wasn’t there?”
“I told you what I could.”
“But you didn’t tell me that your murder victim was living with Joy Hill.”
“You seemed to know already.”
“I knew it was in West U., but not that the dead girl was found in Joy’s house. That is too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“In what way, Brad?”
“Dr. Joy Hill,” he says.
“And?”
“You don’t know about her? A couple of years ago, the parents of one of her female students brought a civil
suit. For sexual harassment.” He chuckles over the line. “It was withdrawn, probably settled out of court, but at the time there was some talk about her tenure being in jeopardy.”
“In this day and age? Professors and students hooking up isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.”
“Well, her husband obviously thought it was a big deal. He said sayonara tout suite, even though it cost him. She got the house and a nice chunk of change.”
“According to her, she took in a tenant to help make ends meet.”
Templeton laughs. “You might want to check her bank balance just in case. I can think of other reasons why she’d want to have a pretty young girl at her beck and call. And if that girl wasn’t so amenable, well, people get killed over things like that.”
“Is that all you’ve got for me?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Go back through your correspondence file and make sure you haven’t gotten any crank letters that fit the profile I gave you.”
“What about Joy Hill? Did you go through her bookshelves?”
“Brad, has she ever written you a letter?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why don’t you check. Goodbye.”
I gulp some coffee down without any creamer, which only gives me something else to worry about. My first conversation with Joy Hill replays in my mind, from the time she snatched my Filofax to her last-minute tribute to Simone. Self-absorbed, calculating, condescending—all characteristics of methodical killers, though the qualities are not exclusive to them. Unless she’s stronger than she looked, it is hard to imagine Dr. Hill committing such a physical crime. But then, I hardly know anything about her. If she was lying about her relationship with Simone, that’s something I need to find out. A liaison between them would give her a motive.
And if he discovered something like this, given his religious convictions, how would Jason Young have reacted? If what Templeton says is true, it might give him a very compelling reason to lash out.
When I get to the monitoring room, Aguilar isn’t alone. Mack Ordway leans against a filing cabinet with a plastic evidence bag dangling from his hand. Inside is the promotional card from the strip club we found in Young’s back pocket.
“You boys are gonna watch a video?” he says. “That sounds nice. But I’m thinking we ought to run out to this place and take a look around.”
I pluck the envelope out of his hand, then drop into the chair next to Aguilar.
“Hit play.”
After a lingering glance at the card, during which Ordway exits in a huff, he leans forward and mashes the button.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 7 — 10:24 A.M.
Driving south from Bush Intercontinental Airport, half the billboards on I-45 advertise places like the Silk Cut, the upscale establishments catering to the affluent business set. Unlike the seedy roadside joints with neon signs and gravel parking lots full of dusty pickups, these gentlemen’s clubs offer up their vice in a polished, sanitized form complete with a buffet.
The Silk Cut is screened from the surrounding chain restaurants and hotels by a line of sickly brown palm trees. A pink stucco building. A circular drive leading up to the covered entrance with a tail of asphalt wrapping around back. Rectangular brickwork to suggest the outline of absent windows. The landscaping up front is in worse shape than the trees, and the walls could use a good power wash. Business must be down.
Inside, the place is empty. Ordway would have been disappointed. The manager greets me and Aguilar at the front door, ushering us past an empty bar and an unlit stage into a back office where stored boxes of liquor compete with a cramped desk and a bank of video monitors. He’s a clean-cut kid in his late twenties in designer denim and a tight-fitting T-shirt with a chain hooked to the fat wallet stuffed in his hip pocket. He gives us the two available chairs and sits on the edge of the desk.
I produce a photo of Jason Young. “Can you tell me whether this guy was in here recently?”
“This guy?” He flicks the photo with his finger. “I had a feeling when you called that’s what it was about. We came this close to calling y’all in the first place. I kept the video, too, just in case.”
“You have video?” I ask.
“Give me a second and I’ll pull it up.”
He goes to the computer linked into the video system and mouse-clicks his way through the software. I leave my chair to peer over his shoulder.
“He’d already had plenty to drink when he came in here, but at first he didn’t make any trouble. Just sat at the bar and watched the girls from there. Next thing I know, he’s going at it with these other customers—here, look.”
For the second time this morning, I find myself staring at Jason Young’s image on-screen. The interview footage with Bascombe, crystal clear in vivid color, is a sharp contrast to this pixelized black-and-white view, and Young’s demeanor is entirely at odds, too. Where he’d been shocked and tearful in Interview Room 2, giving a convincing performance of a man who’s just learned of his wife’s death, at the Silk Cut bar he holds himself with the tense, aggressive posture of a compressed spring. Facing the distant stage with his elbow propped behind him on the bar, he keeps turning his head sharply at the circle of customers to his right, a mix of men and women straining to order drinks.
The time stamp on the video reads half past eleven, well after Simone’s body was discovered. The action at the Silk Cut was unfolding simultaneously with my investigation of the scene, which means it doesn’t give him an alibi.
“He was making rude comments to the ladies.”
“Are those girls strippers or something?” Aguilar asks.
The kid shakes his head. “They came in together, that whole group. I think they’re all servers at one of the restaurants down the street. One of the men with them finally got in his face—see that?—and then wham, it all breaks loose.”
The man accosting Young gets a word or two out before the fist shuts him up. When he stumbles, Young charges forward into the group, swinging at the others, and then I lose sight of him in the press of bodies until a couple of black-shirted security men start pulling everyone apart.
“Our guys didn’t know what exactly went down, but if you have ten against one, guess who gets tossed to the curb? That’s me.” He points to his own silhouette on-screen, following security as they frog-march Young out of frame. “Here’s the front door camera. We chuck him outside, and as soon as my back is turned, two of the guys he went after stream out after him. See, right there. He turns and bam, they clock him with something—maybe a belt buckle?—and he doesn’t go down. He just takes it and goes right after them. Our guys had to break it up again.” He taps the monitor. “There we are.”
One of the security men gets Young in a bear hug and hustles him out into the parking lot off-screen. The other men stand and argue with the manager, then leave in the opposite direction.
“That’s it.”
I keep a USB hard drive on my keychain for moments like this. “Can you copy this stuff over for me?”
Once the transfer is made, we find our way back through the building quietly, saving the debrief for the privacy of the car. Light rain dimples the windshield.
“So what do you think?” I ask.
“I’d say it cuts in his favor. If we’re looking for a calculating, methodical planner, this behavior doesn’t really fit. Why would he go through all the trouble of orchestrating that scene if his next play was to tie one on and pick fights in a strip club?”
“Well, he could have been blowing off steam. After so much controlled activity, he needed some kind of break.”
“But the killing is the release, right? After that, how’s a stupid punch-up gonna give him a high? It don’t make sense to me.”
“No,” I say. “Me, either. But he was lying to us.”
“Everybody lies to the police, but that doesn’t make them murderers. If a guy like Young, who makes himself out to be so upstanding, saving money and going to church
and even working for that reverend, is at the same time getting drunk and blowing money on strippers, maybe he’s not gonna come clean about it without some pushing.”
“All right, then. I guess we’d better push.”
Before he’ll talk to us, Reverend Curtis Blunt insists on a guided tour through his facility, an uninsulated steel-framed warehouse with corrugated walls and a warren of nicely appointed offices in back. His silver mane sits high on his head, shellacked in place and rendered stiff by a large volume of hair spray, and he dresses all in black—black Justin boots, black jeans, a black shirt open at the throat, a black leather sport coat—except for the shiny Western buckle at his waist.
Of the four businesses he’s successfully founded in his life, he tells us he sold two and passed the other two on to his sons, freeing himself up for full-time ministry. Then he shows us where this ministry occurs: an elaborate movie set made to appear like a book-lined study with a clear plastic lectern standing in the middle.
“We’re doing a two-camera shoot these days,” he says, indicating the tripods set up at opposite edges of the stage, “and we’re doing the cuts in real time back there behind that glass.” A window at the rear of the room reveals a darkened control center, much more elaborate than the bank of monitors at the Silk Cut.
Next, he takes us to the duplicating room, where stacks of DVD cases are lined up along a row of folding tables. On the wall hang a series of artful portraits showing Blunt in action against the blurred backdrop of the set we’ve just witnessed. Blunt with a raised finger in the air, an open Bible clutched in his other hand. Blunt with eyes closed, hands folded in prayer. Blunt waving the Bible above him, almost as if he’s a quarterback cocking his arm for a pass. He sees me looking at the photos and smiles.
“Take a couple of these,” he says, pulling some videos off the stack. “Just so you get a feel for what it is we do here.”
In his office, place of pride is reserved for a pair of massive Frederic Remington bronzes: a cowboy straddling a bucking bronco and a stampede of bison. Again, Blunt smiles as I take note of them, though he stops short of offering me one.
