I wasn’t sure where all the blood near Billings’s neck was coming from, and felt helpless kneeling next to him, knowing he might be dying and I couldn’t do anything.
DeShay returned to my side and said, “Apartment’s clear.”
Billings hadn’t stirred. I felt for a pulse again. This time I couldn’t find one. “I-I think he’s dead.”
DeShay knelt and rolled Billings over.
I saw the wound, saw where all the blood had come from. His throat was cut.
DeShay bent over Billings, his ear close to the man’s open mouth, checking for any sign of life.
All I could do was gag and turn away.
“CPR won’t do this dude any good. From what I saw he ran out of blood in that kitchen.” DeShay leaned back on his heels. “Maybe God kept him alive to carry him those last steps to this spot.”
The backup police officers and paramedics arrived not long after DeShay led me to a filthy couch and told me not to move or touch anything. By the time Don White arrived, CSU must have already taken a hundred pictures, and bright circles of light blurred my vision. Now the videographer was finishing up.
When White saw me, my skin no doubt the color of a fried egg white, he said, “I should have known you’d be here.”
DeShay was in the kitchen, where apparently Billings had been attacked, and called, “She came with me.”
“That figures.” White turned his attention to the body. Keys, wallet and rolled-up cash that probably once belonged to me had been bagged in plastic by the HCME assistant who’d arrived a few minutes ago.
White knelt by Billings’s body and stared at the neck wound. “That’s a jagged mess. What’d the killer use? A fucking butter knife?”
DeShay came around into the living area. “No weapon found. Probably took it with him. I’ve got a few uniforms searching the shrubs, drains and Dumpsters. Whatever he used didn’t kill Billings right away.”
The ME’s assistant said, “You found no arterial spray, Sergeant Peters?”
“Nope. Just blood in the kitchen where he first fell, then the trail in here. Looks like he crawled to this spot and collapsed.”
The young man nodded. “Killer cut several veins rather than the carotid. The victim probably bled for a good while.”
I said, “Could we have saved him if we’d gotten here sooner?”
White gave me his “why don’t you shut up?” look.
The assistant said, “I can’t answer that.”
“Any footprints other than the victim’s?” White asked, scanning the dark gray carpet.
“No,” DeShay answered. “No sign this was a burglary, either. Like this guy would have anything worth stealing.”
His life was worth stealing, I thought. Probably because he knew something, maybe tried to sell information to a higher bidder than me. But he paid with his life.
White addressed me. “Explain how you and Peters ended up here.”
“Sure, but somewhere else, if that’s okay. You guys may be used to a dead man in the middle of the room, but it’s making me kind of sick.” My mouth felt wiped dry inside, but I didn’t want even one sip of water from this horrible, dirty apartment.
“Somewhere else,” White said with a smirk. “Sure, princess. Wouldn’t want you to have an upset tummy.”
I had no idea why he’d taken such a dislike to me, but it had all started when Emma asked for me to be with her during his first interview with her.
White left DeShay to interview the neighbors who had gathered on the second-level cement walkway bordering the apartments. Maybe someone besides Rodolfo Aguirre heard or saw something tonight. Meanwhile, White and I went down to his unmarked car.
The moment I sat in the front passenger seat, my phone rang. I checked the caller ID and showed the display to White. “It’s Jeff.”
“By all means tell him what you’ve been doing tonight.”
I opened the phone and put it to my ear. “Hey.”
“You getting ready for bed?” he asked.
“Not exactly. I’m sitting in Sergeant White’s car at a crime scene. Hang on.” I looked at White. “Can we go to speakerphone, Sergeant?”
“Why?”
“I think Jeff would like to talk to you.” God knows I needed his help.
“Sure, princess. I’ll talk to a real cop.”
“What happened?” Jeff said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Speaker okay?”
“Yes,” Jeff answered.
I pressed the speaker option. “I’m about to tell you and Sergeant White why I’m here at a murder scene.”
And I did, talking too fast at times—Jeff had to ask me to slow down more than once—and finishing with, “I hope it’s not my fault this man is dead.”
“Your fault? I don’t think you wielded that knife tonight, Abby,” Jeff said. “Don, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“I heard about Bennie. I’m sorry, man. How’s his wife doing?”
“You know what she said? She said all these years neither one of us got shot in the line and then he goes down on the job anyway. Fucking bad luck, you ask me.”
“You’re there for them both, though. And that’s good luck. Bet you can’t think about much else,” Jeff said.
“That’s the God’s truth. I guess no one can call your girl off this case, Kline? Not even you?”
“She’s working for a client and has a license to do it. You know that, right?”
White sighed heavily. “I know, but she’s probably the same age as my daughter. She’s gonna get hurt. Then I got these TV assholes to deal with. And your partner? You can have him back the minute you show up. Wants to tell me how to do—”
“Don? If you trust DeShay and if you let Abby do her thing, I promise you they’ll work as hard as any of us. You can spend more time with Bennie that way.”
“I’m still on the job,” White said defensively. “I’m still—”
“Listen to me. Abby and DeShay are the good guys. They’re smart. They can help you.”
White bowed his head. “I never thought anything would be more important than the job. Never. Not until Bennie went down.”
I think I’d been holding my breath through the entire conversation, but I felt like I could relax a little now.
Jeff said, “Abby? You there?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“Work with Don, not against him, okay?”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll call you later.”
I disconnected and looked at White. “I’ve told you all I know. I’m worried about the tail, the one Larry Murray picked up on. Someone could have been following me all day, and that’s how they got to Billings.”
“See, that’s the kind of stuff that worries me, Abby.” At least, thanks to Jeff, all his anger and sarcasm seemed to have dissipated.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re saying a murderer probably followed you around,” he said. “Doesn’t that scare you?”
My turn to be defensive. “Sure it does, but that’s part of my job.”
He smiled. “Tough girl, huh? Who besides the TV company would want to tail you?”
“An investigative reporter from a TV or radio station was sniffing around my house this afternoon. Mary Parsons. She seemed to know I’m working for Emma.”
“I know her. She’s nothing to worry about. Anyone else?”
“I was seen all day with Emma on Monday—the day the house was leveled. Our pictures were even in the Chronicle. Then, after her accident, I made plenty of trips to her hotel. I’ve also had a little publicity of my own in the last few years. Guess it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out who I was and what I do if someone decided to check me out.”
He said, “Who you are, yes, but maybe not what you’re doing for Emma Lopez. The TV crew knew, though. One of them could have been approached by or spoken to the wrong person when everyone was standing around watching after the baby bones were f
ound.”
“I never thought about that. Did the HPD videographer catch any crowd footage?” I asked.
White raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You want to see if you recognize someone you’ve never seen from crowd footage?”
Guess all the sarcasm wasn’t gone.
He went on, saying, “All we know is that someone was real interested in what you’ve been up to. I’m glad you were smart enough to ask Peters to come with you tonight.”
“Hey, I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. And so you know, I have a thirty-eight in my glove compartment and I know how to use it.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me, Annie Oakley.” He closed his eyes, shook his head. “Figuring out how all these cases are connected will be tough. Billings died because he knew something. Either that or he got too honest at that meeting he went to and pissed somebody off. Christ, we’ll have to find out where he was and who he talked to. And the anonymous don’t much like talking to us. Maybe because we put so many of them in jail before they decide to get sober.”
“You actually believe it was a coincidence that he was murdered on the day I talked to him? Or that one of hisAA—”
“No, I don’t believe he was murdered by one of his AA pals. But I always try to think about all the possibilities.”
“Billings knew Christine O’Meara and mentioned her baby to get me to offer him more cash. Someone had to shut him up before he talked.”
“Duh, yeah,” White said.
“You think Christine’s murderer and Billings’s killer are the same person?” I asked.
“We can’t jump to that conclusion yet,” White said. “One thing I do know: Someone’s out there with a major secret, and they’ve been covering their trail for years—piling on layers while all we’ve got are dried-up leads.”
“Then a TV show comes to town,” I said. “And shines a big, bright light on a buried child.”
“Yeah.” White nodded. “That’s what drew this turd out of the shadows. The publicity.”
“The Chronicle ran a piece before Emma’s house went down. I didn’t see the article, but Chelsea Burch was pretty upset that the paper printed a story about the reality show in advance. If the demolition hadn’t been moved up, all the local TV stations would have been there Tuesday morning.”
He laughed. “Ain’t that too bad they missed out.”
“But that doesn’t mean the killer wasn’t there later on,” I said. “He or she could have arrived on the scene once the story about the baby bones was bulletined across every television screen.”
We were both silent for several seconds. White finally said, “We can guess all we want, but we need evidence. I gotta go help Peters with that. Your car around here?”
“DeShay drove.”
“Then I guess you’re stuck until I can find you a ride home.”
I could have called Kate, but decided I’d rather hang around a little while, maybe learn something more. But I hoped that didn’t mean I had to sit with the corpse.
19
The following morning, a Saturday, I awoke feeling like I hadn’t slept at all. The same question kept invading my dreams, waking me over and over: What did Billings know that got him killed?
As I lay under my quilt with Diva purring beside me, possibilities rolled around in my brain. Billings may have lied about why he declined the Crime Stoppers reward. Perhaps he’d figured out who killed Christine and was blackmailing the murderer. But judging from his low-rent apartment and his job mounting tires, he sure hadn’t received much of anything for keeping a very big secret. I suppose he could have lost the blackmail money somehow—or maybe the ex-wife took everything for child support. I had no idea.
Billings had mentioned the baby to me, and from what Rhoda said, Christine was hanging out at the bar while she was pregnant with Emma’s sister. Maybe Billings knew that Christine lied about Xavier Lopez stealing the child and he planned to sell me that piece of information. Perhaps that was all he knew. But the killer might have feared Billings knew more. Leaving him alive to tell me anything was too big a risk.
I squeezed my eyes shut at the thought, regret welling up in my throat. Despite what Jeff said last night, I still blamed myself for the murder. I’d probably led a killer to where Billings worked. When I left, my tail either stayed behind or followed me to the motorcycle shop. No matter what, he knew where to find Billings and followed him home. From my own experience with Billings, if he’d been offered cash, he would have allowed Hannibal Lecter inside his apartment.
No wonder I’d hardly slept a wink. Even though Jerry Joe Billings would never have been my best friend, he was still a human being who deserved better. But getting lost in guilt wouldn’t help anyone. All I could do now was what I did best—find answers. Find out what happened to him, to Christine O’Meara, and to those innocent babies.
Something came to me then, something I should have realized as soon as I learned that Christine O’Meara died in 1997. She couldn’t have written the letter to Reality Check. Then who did? Who watched Emma’s family and cared enough to write to a TV show? I needed to quiz Emma more thoroughly about this, and over breakfast, when Kate told me Emma had a few houses to show her, I decided to go along.
Emma’s rented cream-colored Cadillac arrived outside my house around noon, and the first house we drove to was only about four blocks from mine in West University Place. Kate decided not to tour this first place because it was too big. Although the lots in this part of town were small, recent buyers had taken to tearing down the original average-size houses and replacing them with huge new homes that left no room for a yard—and Kate wanted a yard for Webster.
When we started out for the next place, Kate’s cell rang. By her flirty tone, I knew who had called.
She said, “We’re leaving one house not far from Abby’s place. You want to catch up with us?” Kate asked Emma for directions to the next property, still in West U, and repeated them to her new best friend, Clint Roark.
Five minutes later we pulled up to a curb less than a mile away. Kate’s eyes lit up. It looked like an English cottage: redbrick, peaked roof, and small enough that it was probably the original structure, and thus had a backyard.
Emma glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Your friend’s here.”
Kate got out to greet him.
I introduced Emma to Roark and said, “Thought you were tied up this weekend.”
“My son had a movie date. Funny, I never had a movie date when I was that young.” He laughed. “Anyway, I dropped them off at the theater and had a couple of hours to kill.”
Kate said, “I told Clint about our house hunt.”
Emma led us up the walkway, and I realized that maybe I was feeling jealous. I feared Roark might monopolize Kate’s time, something Terry had never done. Today was proof of that. He couldn’t spend two hours without her.
I should be happy for her, I thought. Am I that selfish? Daddy always said I was a real foot stomper when things didn’t go my way, and I guess when you get older, foot stomper turns into “control freak.”
After Emma pressed a four-digit code into the lock-box, opened it and retrieved the key, we all went inside and stood in the small foyer that offered a view into the living area. The stairs were to our right, and a small angled room, a study or office with French doors, was on our left. The layout looked similar to mine, but this house appeared older on the outside.
Reading from a sheet of paper, Emma said, “Two baths and three bedrooms, master downstairs, two upstairs. New furnace and air conditioner, wood and tile floors throughout, kitchen redone two years ago.”
Roark smiled. “What are we waiting for?”
“Kitchen first.” Kate grabbed his hand.
I mumbled, “I’ll bet the son’s movie date was Roark’s idea so he could hook up with Kate.”
“What?” Emma said.
“Nothing. Can we talk when we’re done, or do you have to get back to the offic
e?”
“I have another client. Then I plan to go over to my own property before dark. The foundation has been poured and they’re framing today. I can’t believe they’re still giving us the house.”
“They have to stick to the contract, just like you did, and it clearly stated you would get the new house and gifts no matter what. Besides, you still have to appear on one of Venture’s programs.”
“Don’t remind me,” Emma said. “I’m amazed at the progress they’ve made on the house. They said from the beginning it would only take a couple weeks, but I guess I didn’t believe them,” she said. “They bring in all these people and work long hours.”
“Maybe I can meet you there this evening?”
“That would be great, but I hope you don’t feel the need to protect me. The house seems like a small thing after everything that’s happened.”
“And something else has happened. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“A witness has been murdered.”
She drew in her breath, covered her mouth with her hand. “Is it someone I know?”
“No—at least, I don’t think so. We can talk about all this later. There’s something more I want you to think about, even though we’ve been over this before. Your mother obviously didn’t write the letter to Reality Check. Finding out who did could help us. That person knew the baby was missing. Think about counselors or teachers or neighbors who took a special interest in you. Maybe one of them decided to disguise their identity by making the letter seem like it came from an uneducated person.”
Emma sighed, tucking strands of silky hair behind her ear. “I’ll try, Abby, but I’ve already gone over this a hundred times since we were chosen for the show.”
“Revisit it for me again, okay?”
“Sure. I should be over at the property by five. Can you tell me the name of the person who ... died?” Today she’d been free of the worried expression I’d seen all week, but now it had returned.
“Jerry Joe Billings,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “J.J. I remember my mother mentioning someone named J.J. Was it him?”
Shoot from the Lip Page 17
