Maybe they were working a similar case, she reasoned, and were trying to find a connection. They’d never tell her, of course, but she was a trained professional and this wasn’t her first murder investigation.
What if the dead man had confessed, first, to the minister of Dolores’s church?
She gasped out loud. It was like lightning striking. Of course! The minister might know something that he could tell her, unless he’d taken a vow of silence, like Catholic priests. They couldn’t divulge anything learned in the confessional. But it was certainly worth a try!
She dug Harley’s cell phone number out of her pocket and called him. The phone rang three times while she kicked at a dirt clod impatiently. Maybe he was knee-deep in mired cattle or something…
“Hello?”
“Harley!” she exclaimed.
“Now, just who else would it be, talking on Harley’s phone?” came the amused, drawling reply.
“You, I hope,” she said at once. “Listen, I need to talk to you…”
“You are,” he reminded her.
“No, in person, right now,” she emphasized. “It’s about a minister…”
“Darlin’, we can’t get married today,” he drawled. “I have to brush Bob the dog’s teeth,” he added lightly.
“Not that minister,” she burst out. “Dolores’s minister!”
He paused. “Why?”
“What if the murdered man confessed to him before he drove down to Jacobsville and got killed?” she exclaimed.
Harley whistled. “What if, indeed?”
“We need to go talk to her again and ask his name.”
“Oh, now that may prove difficult. There’s no party.”
She realized that he was right. They had no excuse to show up at the senator’s home, which was probably surrounded by security devices and armed guards. “Damn!”
“You can just call the house and ask for Dolores,” he said reasonably. “You don’t have to give your name or a reason.”
She laughed softly. “Yes, I could do that. I don’t know why I bothered you.”
“Because you want to marry me,” he said reasonably. “But I’m brushing the dog’s teeth today. Sorry.”
She glared at the phone. “Excuses, excuses,” she muttered. “I’m growing older by the minute!”
“Why don’t I bring you over here to go riding?” he wondered aloud. “You could meet my boss and his wife and the boys, and meet Puppy Dog.”
She brightened. “What a nice idea!”
“I thought so myself. I’ll ask the boss. Next weekend, maybe? I’ll beg for another half day on Saturday and take you riding around the ranch. We’ve got plenty of spare horses.” When she hesitated, he sighed. “Don’t tell me. You can’t ride.”
“I can so ride horses,” she said indignantly. “I ride horses at amusement parks all the time. They go up and down and round and round, and music plays.”
“That isn’t the same sort of riding. Well, I’ll teach you,” he said. “After all, if we get married, you’ll have to live on a ranch. I’m not stuffing myself into some tiny apartment in San Antonio.”
“Now that’s the sort of talk I love to hear,” she sighed.
He laughed. “Wear jeans and boots,” he instructed. “And thick socks.”
“No blouse or bra?” she exclaimed in mock outrage.
He whistled. “Well, you don’t have to wear them on my account,” he said softly. “But we wouldn’t want to shock my boss, you know.”
She laughed at that. “Okay. I’ll come decently dressed. Saturday it is.” She hesitated. “Where’s the ranch?”
“I’ll come and get you.” He hesitated. “You’ll still be here next Saturday, won’t you?”
She was wondering how to stretch her investigation here by another week. Then she remembered that Christmas was Thursday and she relaxed. “I get Christmas off,” she said. Then she remembered that she’d promised to work Christmas Eve already. “Well, I get Christmas Day. I’ll ask for the rest of the week. I’ll tell them that the case is heating up and I have two or three more people to interview.”
“Great! Can I help?”
“Yes, you can find me two or three more people to interview,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ll call Dolores and ask her to give me her minister’s name.” She grimaced. “I’ll have to be sure I don’t say that to whoever answers the phone. We told everybody we were giving her a message from her minister!”
“Good idea. Let me know what you find out, okay?”
“You bet. See you.” She hung up.
She had to dial information to get the senator’s number and, thank God, it wasn’t unlisted. She punched the numbers into her cell phone and waited. A young woman answered.
“May I please speak to Dolores?” Alice asked politely.
“Dolores?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause. Alice gritted her teeth. They were going to tell her that employees weren’t allowed personal phone calls during the day, she just knew it.
But the voice came back on the line with a long sigh. “I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “Dolores isn’t here anymore.”
That wasn’t altogether surprising, but it wasn’t a serious setback. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with her? I’m an old friend,” she added, improvising.
The sigh was longer. “Well, you can’t. I mean, she’s dead.”
Alice was staggered. “Dead?!” she exclaimed.
“Yes. Suicide. She shot herself through the heart,” the woman said sadly. “It was such a shock. The senator’s wife found her… Oh, dear, I can’t talk anymore, I’m sorry.”
“Just a minute, just one minute, can you tell me where the funeral is being held?” she asked quickly.
“At the Weston Street Baptist Church,” came the reply, almost in a whisper, “at two tomorrow afternoon. I have to go. I’m very sorry about Dolores. We all liked her.”
The phone went dead.
Alice felt sick. Suicide! Had she driven the poor woman to it, with her questions? Or had she been depressed because of her boyfriend’s murder?
Strange, that she’d shot herself through the heart. Most women chose some less violent way to die. Most used drugs. Suicides by gun were usually men.
She called Harley back.
“Hello?” he said.
“Harley, she killed herself,” she blurted out.
“Who? Dolores? She’s dead?” he exclaimed.
“Yes. Shot through the heart, I was told. Suicide.”
He paused. “Isn’t that unusual for a woman? To use a gun to kill herself, I mean?”
“It is. But I found out where her pastor is,” she added. “I’m going to the funeral tomorrow. Right now, I’m going up to San Antonio to my office.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because in all violent deaths, even those ascribed to suicide, an autopsy is required. I wouldn’t miss this one for the world.”
“Keep in touch.”
“You bet.”
Alice hung up and went back to her van. She had a hunch that a woman as religious as Dolores wouldn’t kill herself. Most religions had edicts against it. That didn’t stop people from doing it, of course, but Dolores didn’t strike Alice as the suicidal sort. She was going to see if the autopsy revealed anything.
The office was, as usual on holidays, overworked. She found one of the assistant medical examiners poring over reports in his office.
He looked up as she entered. “Jones! Could I get you to come back and work for us in autopsy again if I bribed you? It’s getting harder and harder to find people who don’t mind hanging around with the dead.”
She smiled. “Sorry, Murphy,” she said. “I’m happier with investigative work these days. Listen, do you have a suicide back there? First name Dolores, worked for a senator…?”
“Yep. I did her myself, earlier this evening.” He shook his head. “She had small hands and the gun was a .45 Colt ACP,” he replied. “How she
ever cocked the damned thing, much less killed herself with it, is going to be one of the great unsolved mysteries of life. Added to that, she had carpal tunnel in her right hand. She’d had surgery at least once. Weakens the muscle, you know. We’d already ascertained that she was right-handed because there was more muscle attachment there—usual on the dominant side.”
“You’re sure it was suicide?” she pressed.
He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her through thick corrective lenses. “There was a rim burn around the entrance wound,” he said, referring to the heat and flare of the shot in close-contact wounds. “But the angle of entry was odd.”
She jumped on that. “Odd, how?”
“Diagonal,” he replied. He pulled out his digital camera, ran through the files and punched up one. He handed her the camera. “That’s the wound, anterior view. Pull up the next shot and you’ll see where it exited, posterior.”
She inhaled. “Wow!”
“Interesting, isn’t it? Most people who shoot themselves with an automatic handgun do it holding the barrel to the head or under the chin. This was angled downward. And as I said before, her hand was too weak to manage this sort of weapon. There’s something else.”
“What?” she asked, entranced.
“The gun was found still clenched in her left hand.”
“So?”
“Remember what I said about the carpel tunnel? She was right-handed.”
She cocked her head. “Going to write it up as suspected homicide?”
“You’re joking, right? Know who she worked for?”
She sighed. “Yes. Senator Fowler.”
“Would you write it up as a suspected homicide or would you try to keep your job?”
That was a sticky question. “But if she was murdered…”
“The ‘if’ is subjective. I’m not one of those TV forensic people,” he reminded her. “I’m two years from retirement, and I’m not risking my pension on a possibility. She goes out as a suicide until I get absolute proof that it wasn’t.”
Alice knew when that would be. “Could you at least put ‘probable suicide,’ Murphy?” she persisted. “Just for me?”
He frowned. “Why? Alice, do you know something that I need to know?”
She didn’t dare voice her suspicions. She had no proof. She managed a smile. “Humor me. It won’t rattle any cages, and if something comes up down the line, you’ll have covered your butt. Right?”
He searched her eyes for a moment and then smiled warmly. “Okay. I’ll put probable. But if you dig up something, you tell me first, right?”
She grinned. “Right.”
Her next move was to go to the Weston Street Baptist Church and speak to the minister, but she had to wait until the funeral to do it. If she saw the man alone, someone might see her and his life could be in danger. It might be already. She wasn’t sure what to do.
She went to police headquarters and found Detective Rick Marquez sitting at his desk. The office was almost empty, but there he was, knee-deep in file folders.
She tapped on the door and walked in at the same time.
“Alice!” He got to his feet. “Nice to see you.”
“Is it? Why?” she asked suspiciously.
He glanced at the file folders and winced. “Any reason to take a break is a good one. Not that I’m sorry to see you,” he added.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she took a seat in front of the desk.
“Poring over cold cases,” he said heavily. “My lieutenant said I could do it on my own time, as long as I didn’t advertise why I was doing it.”
“Why are you doing it?” she asked curiously.
“Your murder down in Jacobsville nudged a memory or two,” he said. “There was a case similar to it, also unsolved. It involved a fourteen-year-old girl who was driving a car reported stolen. She was also unrecognizable, but several of her teeth were still in place. They identified her by dental records. No witnesses, no clues.”
“How long ago was this?” she asked.
He shrugged. “About seven years,” he said. “In fact, it happened some time before Kilraven’s family was killed.”
“Could there be a connection?” she wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. I don’t see how the death of a teenage girl ties in to the murder of a cop’s family.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” He put the files aside. “Why are you up here?”
“I came to check the results of an autopsy,” she said. “The woman who worked for Senator Fowler supposedly killed herself, but the bullet was angled downward, her hand was too weak to have pulled the trigger and the weapon was found clutched in the wrong hand.”
He blew out his breath in a rush. “Some suicide.”
“My thoughts, exactly.”
“Talk to me, Jones.”
“She was involved with the murder victim in Jacobsville, remember?” she asked him. “She wouldn’t tell me his name, she swore she didn’t know it. But she gave me the alias he used—the one I called and gave you—and she said he’d spoken to the minister of her church. He told her there was an accident that caused a lot of other people to die. He had a guilty conscience and he wanted to tell what he knew.”
Marquez’s dark eyes pinned hers. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You going to talk to the minister?”
“I want to, but I’m afraid to be seen doing it,” she told him. “His life may be in danger if he knows something. Whatever is going on, it’s big, and it has ties to powerful people.”
“The senator, maybe?” he wondered aloud.
“Maybe.”
“When did you talk to her?”
“There was a fundraiser at the senator’s house. Harley Fowler took me…” She hadn’t connected the names before. Now she did. The senator’s name was Fowler. Harley’s name was Fowler. The senator had recognized Harley, had approached him, had talked to him in a soft tone…
“Harley Fowler?” Marquez emphasized, making the same connection she did. “Harley’s family?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t say anything to me. But the senator acted really strangely. He seemed to recognize Harley. And when Harley took me to my apartment, he didn’t wait until I got inside the door. That’s not like him. He was distracted.”
“He comes from wealth and power, and he’s working cattle for Cy Parks,” Marquez mused. “Now isn’t that a curious thing?”
“It is, and if it’s true, you mustn’t tell anybody,” Alice replied. “It’s his business.”
“I agree. I’ll keep it to myself. Who saw you talk to the woman at the senator’s house?”
“Everybody, but we told them we knew her minister and came to tell her something for him.”
“If she went to church every week, wouldn’t that seem suspicious that you were seeing her to give her a message from her minister?”
Alice smiled. “Harley told them he’d asked us to give her a message about offering a ride to a fellow worshipper on Sunday.”
“Uh, Alice, her car was pulled out of the Little Carmichael River in Jacobsville…?”
“Oh, good grief,” she groaned. “Well, nobody knew that when we were at the party.”
“Yes. But maybe somebody recognized you and figured you were investigating the murder,” he returned.
She grimaced. “And I got her killed,” she said miserably.
“No.”
“If I hadn’t gone there and talked to her…!” she protested.
“When your time’s up, it’s up, Jones,” he replied philosophically. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. A car crash, a heart attack, a fall from a high place…it could have been anything. Intentions are what matter. You didn’t go there to cause her any trouble.”
She managed a wan smile. “Thanks, Marquez.”
“But if she was killed,” he continued, “that fits into your case somehow. It means that the murderer isn’t taking
any chance that somebody might talk.”
“The murderer…?”
“Your dead woman said the victim knew something damaging about several deaths. Who else but the murderer would be so hell-bent on eliminating evidence?”
“We still don’t know who the victim is.”
Marquez’s sensuous lips flattened as he considered the possibilities. “If the minister knows anything, he’s already in trouble. He may be in trouble if he doesn’t know anything. The perp isn’t taking any chances.”
“What can we do to protect him?”
Marquez picked up the phone. “I’m going to risk my professional career and see if I can help him.”
Alice sat and listened while he talked. Five minutes later, he hung up the phone.
“Are you sure that’s the only way to protect him?” she asked worriedly.
“It’s the best one I can think of, short of putting him in protective custody,” he said solemnly. “I can’t do that without probable cause, not to mention that our budget is in the red and we can’t afford protective custody.”
“Your boss isn’t going to like it. And I expect Jon Blackhawk will be over here with a shotgun tomorrow morning, first thing.”
“More than likely.”
She smiled. “You’re a prince!”
His eyebrows arched. “You could marry me,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “No chance. If you really are a prince, if I kissed you, by the way the laws of probability work in my life, you’d turn right into a frog.”
He hesitated and then burst out laughing.
She grinned. “Thanks, Marquez. If I can help you, anytime, I will.”
“You can. Call my boss tomorrow and tell him that you think I’m suffering from a high fever and hallucinations and I’m not responsible for my own actions.”
“I’ll do that very thing. Honest.”
The next morning, the local media reported that the pastor of a young woman who’d committed suicide was being questioned by police about some information that might tie her to a cold case. Alice thought it was a stroke of pure genius. Only a total fool would risk killing the pastor now that he was in the media spotlight. It was the best protection he could have.
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