Yes! Yes she did. More than she had wanted anything besides Cate’s good morning in a long time. But she had somewhere to go. A dinner date to keep. And interrogations were not her job. Finding the evidence, that was what she was good at, all she was good at.
Bill was waiting for her.
Ash answered before she could. “I’m sorry, I forgot that you’ve got to be somewhere. Plus you’ve already done more than everyone put together already. Forget I asked.” He gave her an adrenaline-charged smile.
“You’ll do better without me. But call me if there’s anything—if you have anything I can help with.”
“Of course,” he said over his shoulder and they heard his footsteps going fast down the driveway. Windy was almost dizzy with envy.
“Why don’t you go home to your family and I’ll finish up here,” Ned said when Ash had gone.
“No. That’s not fair.”
“Go on, boss,” he insisted, using the word “boss” naturally now, without thinking about it. “I’ve got nobody waiting on me and you do. Let me take care of it.”
The woman in the green car parked outside of the Johnson house watched Windy come down the walkway and get into her Volvo station wagon. She seemed distracted and in a hurry. But she looked like she knew something. Something important.
The woman in the green car decided to follow her home.
CHAPTER 8
“He’s innocent,” Jonah told Ash, eyes wide, pointing with his head to the man in the interrogation room. “Doesn’t know a thing about any murders. Or anything, for that matter. One of those guys who brags about his bench press record being twice his IQ.”
The exterminator had a beefy build, with a boyish face, longish wavy hair, and the air of someone accustomed to being told he was “hot.” He looked like a man that most women would not hesitate to open the door to.
Ash wondered if Windy would agree.
He turned his attention back to Jonah. “Anything else?”
“Been with Pest Packers ‘They Send Your Pests Packing’ for ten months. They say he is good, no complaints. Name is Anthony, Anthony Solomon, but his friends call him Tony or The King. Not after Elvis, after the one in the Bible.”
“Get someone checking the addresses of the other properties The King serviced. I want to know if there were any burglary complaints filed in the weeks after he’d been there. And if they are all alive.”
“Got it.”
“Has he called a lawyer?”
“Waived his rights. Man’s innocent, I tell you.”
“What a surprise. An innocent suspect caught red-handed. What about his house? Find any other merchandise there?”
“The address he gave is his mother’s place. We’ve got a team tossing it right now. But there’s a woman in reception claiming to be his girlfriend.” Jonah half smiled. “I think she’s been watching too much Law & Order. She’s demanding conjugal visitation rights in the holding cell.”
Ash and Jonah stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the exterminator. “Does he look to you like someone who might want to brag?”
Jonah nodded. “Someone who might respond well to one of our shows? Yeah, I’d say so. You want to do it in the conference room? Take all the files out of my drawers again and spread them on the table before bringing him in, make it look like a command center, big investigation underway looking for him?”
“Exactly. And grab all the memos the mayor has sent in the past month. The ones we keep meaning to read.” There had to be four or five boxes of them by now, each of them labeled URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL in red capital letters on the top. Ash frequently wondered if Mayor Gerald Keene’s plan to Clean Up Crime In Las Vegas simply involved blanketing the city in paper and having everything come to a stop like a snow drift. “If all that isn’t impressive looking, drag in any box from the supply cabinet that isn’t obviously labeled ‘cleaning supplies.’ ”
Ash headed back to his office as Jonah made for the kitchen where he routinely “stored” the mayor’s dispatches on top of the refrigerator. Jonah had been a beat officer in the Los Angeles Police Department until he was discharged over discipline problems, which meant, when Ash checked out the official file, “regular insubordination to a superior officer and remarkable inability to follow orders as given.” Seeing that, he had hired Jonah as his assistant on the spot.
Ash believed in genuine teamwork, the kind that hierarchy stifled, and he had all those boxes of mayoral memos to show for it. Mayor Gerald Keene liked to keep things tidy and organized, from the precise pyramid structure of his administration to the perfect crease in his khakis. His predecessor, who had established the Task Force and appointed Ash, had been a flamboyant and beloved figure, who had stepped down to pursue a lucrative career as a liquor spokesperson. Gerald seemed to have groomed himself to be almost exactly the opposite of that man. Where the previous mayor was spontaneous, fun loving, and occasionally irreverent, Gerald was a picture of serious sobriety. He looked like a soap opera version of a mayor.
Ash figured he was a decent enough man, but he made the mistake of believing his own press. It did not hurt that he was dating his press secretary who, it was rumored, wouldn’t even let him feel her up if he didn’t make the front page of one of the local papers. Ash was wondering what he got for national coverage, the kind a high profile serial murder case would garner, when his phone buzzed, Jonah telling him the conference room was all set.
Inside, the table was stacked with paper and there were boxes piled on the walls.
“Impressive,” Ash said. “I think we’re ready. Bring Mr. Solomon in.”
Instead of looking around as he reached the door, Tony Solomon marched over to the table Ash was sitting behind, banged his palms on it and said, “I’ve had enough of this crap treatment.”
“Sit down,” Ash said, directing him to a chair with his eyes.
“I don’t have to do anything you say, you piece of crap policeman. I can—”
“Sit down.”
Tony sat. Now he looked around, chewing the inside of his cheek. “What is all this shit?”
Ash stared at him, admiring his wide vocabulary. Adjective: crap. Noun: shit. Nice.
Tony narrowed his eyes in the direction of three boxes of mayoral correspondence marked EXTREMELY URGENT. “That my file?”
Tony was distinctly edgy, but Ash couldn’t tell whether from excitement, fear, or coming off some kind of high. He said, “You realize this is an official interrogation, Mr. Solomon?”
“Call me The King. What are you called?”
“Detective Laughton.”
The eyes, brown, puppy dog-ish, came to Ash. “Hey, you’re the boss, aren’t you? Hey,” Tony said, leaning back in his seat, “I must be pretty important. All this shit about me, now you here.” He grinned, liking it, and tightened his biceps.
Ash made himself nod. “Yes. Mr. Solomon, we are investigating the murder of Carol Johnson.” They had done their best to keep the dead children out of the news and so far it was working. “Since you spent the last week at the Johnson house, we thought maybe you could assist us.”
“That other guy said I was under arrest.”
“Well, you were caught selling stolen jewelry but maybe, you know, if you give us information . . .” Ash left it vague.
“Those pearls weren’t stolen.”
“Really? Why don’t we start with that, then. How did you get them?”
“You want to know? I’ll tell you. Mrs. Johnson gave them to me.”
“She did?”
“You bet.” Tony’s eyes sparkled and Ash had a strong feeling he could guess what came next. “In exchange for ‘services rendered.’ I could have had more too.”
“You went to bed with Mrs. Johnson,” Ash said, trying to sound impressed.
“Sure did.”
Ash could tell Tony wanted to talk, but he was only going to do it if he could be assured of an appreciative audience. “How did you get in? To the house, I mean.”
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p; “That? Easy. Mrs. Johnson was lonely, you know. She would open her door to anyone, postman, FedEx guy in his truck. She was looking for a man to talk to. All week she would come out and offer me lemonade, try to make small talk. She liked me. Then one day she came out in these short shorts and asks me if I’d noticed a green car across the street. I tell her sure, maybe, because I knew it was just a line, and she says she thinks someone is watching the house and is scared. So I offer to, you know, comfort her. All alone, the kids at school.”
“She took you up on your offer?”
“Took me up on it? She practically dragged me up the stairs to her bedroom. Couldn’t get me there fast enough.” The biceps flexed again, twice.
“You had sex with her in the master bedroom?”
“For like three hours. Some guys, you know, they’re into the floor, a bathtub. But an older broad like that, you got to go for comfort. She was scrawny too, you know, always dieting.” Ash could tell Tony was warming to his theme. “Yeah, bony like. So I—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Solomon, but we’re going to have to ask you for a hair sample.”
“What?”
“To check against the hairs found on the sheets. And fingerprints.”
Now, for the first time Tony looked wary. “I don’t—no.”
“Just to eliminate yours from the killer’s in the bedroom. It’s routine.”
Tony cleared his throat. “You won’t find mine.”
“It would be hard to go at it in a bed for three hours without leaving some trace.”
“Not me. Maybe for you but I’m young, see. I still got all my hair.” He pulled on his, hard, to demonstrate.
Ash smiled at him, open, friendly. “Then one less piece won’t matter to you.”
“I’m not saying another word without a lawyer.”
Ash traded his smile for confusion. “What are you telling me, Tony? That you didn’t go to bed with Mrs. Johnson? Is that why we won’t find your hair there?” Tony looked poised to say something but Ash went on. “Because if that is what you are saying, it means you lied and stole the pearls. Either you were in bed with Mrs. Johnson and she gave them to you and you are innocent and we’ll find hairs like yours there. Or you didn’t go to bed with her and you stole the pearls, and we won’t find any hairs that match yours. If that’s the case, we’ll have to consider increasing the charges. If you’re lying, you should tell me now.”
“Increasing the charges? To what?”
“Murder, Tony.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“Okay. But it’s almost ten. No one will come out tonight. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Except tomorrow is Sunday. That means you’ll probably have to wait until Monday. But I bet you won’t mind. Strong guy like you, you’ll be fine in the cells. Popular.”
Tony opened his mouth again, decided to settle for a glare, and shut it.
“Why don’t you think about how you want to play this for a while. Really examine all the options. I’d suggest coming clean, but that’s up to you. I’ve got some work to take care of in my office, but there’ll be an officer outside the door and he’d be happy to come get me if you decide you have something to say.”
Ash pushed his chair away from the table and went through the door. Walking slowly down the corridor to his office, he felt worn out by the Tonys of the world, all that macho posturing and muscle flexing. When he was seventeen he’d taken his GED exam and left high school early, packing his possessions into an old pickup truck and driving around America. He worked at anything that would pay him, never staying anywhere longer than three months, and watched people, trying to figure out who he wanted to be. He had his heart broken twice, his arm broken once, lost a few hundred dollars playing pool and then won back several thousand. By the time he entered Harvard the fall after his eighteenth birthday, he knew how to fix a carburetor, how to hit the corner pocket off the rail every time, how to break up with someone gently, and how to program a computer. It was the last skill that earned him a fortune, $30 million when someone bought the rights to software he’d written for fun, but he valued the others more highly. He had been a beat cop when the program sold and everyone expected him to quit the police force, retire on a yacht somewhere. Instead, he’d bought a new car with a really complicated engine and worked harder to make detective. Computers could never be half as interesting as people.
Some people, anyway.
Back at his desk, he reached for his phone and was dialing before he knew what he was doing. By the time his brain stepped in, the phone on the other end had rung twice.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d been looking forward to hearing her voice until a man’s answered, a recording, saying that Windy and Bill were not available and asking him to leave a message at the beep.
Based on the voice Ash’s brain supplied a picture of Bill that was a little too flattering, then stepped in with a quickie slide show of what “not available” might mean. Pitching his own voice low—yeah, right, he was tired of macho posturing—Ash asked Windy to call him at her convenience, that he had some questions about the case, then hung up.
He spent three and a half minutes assassinating “Bill” in his mind. Asked himself what the hell he was doing. And got back to work.
CHAPTER 9
“Cate is sleeping curled up with the Soccer Barbie you gave her. It’s obscene how much she likes it,” Windy said to Bill as she came into the bedroom. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. There is no one in the world I want to speak to that is not under this roof right now. And that,” he said, taking a sip from a high ball of scotch, “is what I call heaven.”
It was a simple statement, but it was also a warning to her, not to check the messages, not to look. The night was for them.
Windy moved toward him and ran her fingers up his tie. “I think you should slip into something more comfortable,” she said. There was something about Bill that made it okay to say corny lines like that, that made them seem romantic, not idiotic. Her relationship with him was like a photo album filled with perfectly composed moments—snap—captured for all time.
Bill put his index finger under her chin now, tilting her lips toward him. “What are you thinking about?”
“Us. You. How good you are to me.”
Snap. Close-up of a passionate kiss.
Snap. Distance shot of four bodies in a puddle of blood.
She pulled away from Bill fast.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just had an idea.” She knew before it was out of her mouth it was the wrong thing to say.
He took a step backward, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You were thinking about work.” Crossing his arms over his chest now, looking at her with disappointment. “Were you thinking about it all night? When you were pretending to enjoy my company?”
“No. Not once tonight. It was just right now—”
“While we were kissing. Doesn’t do much for a man’s ego.” His shoulders sagged.
“I’m sorry. The kissing was wonderful. Everything tonight has been wonderful. That’s what made me think of it. It’s so perfect, and I was feeling so lucky, and it made me think—” She could tell she was losing him again. “Never mind. I am so sorry. It is just that there is a man out there destroying families, and I feel like I have a responsibility to try to catch him. I feel guilty about not working.”
“Guilty? What about your responsibility to the people in your life?” Bill shook his head. “Dammit, I did not want to have to do this tonight. I just wanted to have a nice evening with you. What a fool I was. I bet you would give anything to check the messages right now, see if there is some work you can do to get away from me.” There was frustration in his voice but also a touch of anger, a touch Windy almost never heard. That was when she realized how much she had really hurt him.
She had to make this right. “I don’t want to be anywhere but right here.” He shook his hea
d, not buying it, and she went on, almost begging. “What do you want me to do? How can I make you believe that?”
“I don’t know.” He stared straight in front of him, avoiding her. “Or actually, I do. I want you to keep your promise to me. To us. I agreed to move to Vegas, to change my whole life, because I want to be with you. Because you promised your hours would be more predictable, controllable. You said that here we would be able to have a regular life, without you tearing out of bed in the middle of the night to look at crime scenes and dead bodies. But now I have to wonder.” His eyes came to her. “Is it really going to be different? What happens if I move here next month to make a family with you, but you’re always too busy? What kind of life is that for us? What kind of life is it for Cate?”
Windy saw everything she had been building so carefully for the past year, all the stability, the even keel, the security, slipping away from her. She grasped for it. “That won’t happen. This is just a hard period, with us being apart and only getting to spend weekends together. Not to mention being in a new city. After a move, there’s bound to be a period of adjustment. Add to that, a big case.” She looked at him steadily and said, “I promise you, we will make this work. I will not be too busy.”
“I want to believe that. I want to believe I matter to you as much as your work.”
“You do.”
She reached for him but he stayed just out of range. “How am I supposed to know that? How am I supposed to believe that I’m not going to play second fiddle to your job here the way I did in Virginia? A job, I might add, you don’t even need.”
Windy went cold. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, I think it’s very noble of you not to want to touch the money you inherited when Evan died, but be honest about it. You don’t need to work. You work because you want to.”
“That’s not true. I’m not doing it because it’s noble. I’m doing it because I don’t want the Kirkland money. It’s not mine. It was Evan’s, and, when she turns twenty-one it will be Cate’s. But never mine. By the time Cate inherits it, I want her to understand how important it is to work at something and care about something. To help people. And how can she understand any of that unless she sees me doing it? I don’t want Cate to grow up the way Evan did, without role models and careless.”
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