by David Freed
I let the slap pass. “Why the interest in Walker’s Luger?”
“One of our forensics people recovered a spent 9-millimeter round last night from the Sheen homicide scene,” Rosario said. “I just got a call from the lab. They think they matched the make and model of the weapon.”
“Was it a Luger?”
“How’d you guess?”
Twenty-five
No county sheriff with career ambitions would ever rush right out and throw handcuffs on a Medal of Honor recipient suspected of homicide without careful tactical planning, especially in a military town like San Diego. You don’t simply cordon off the neighborhood, break out the bullhorn, and demand that the suspect surrender or else. You set about your work quietly and unobtrusively, hoping not to alert the breathless bobbleheads over at Action News, because if things go sour, you’ll never be elected sheriff again. Or anything else.
Detective Rosario’s plan, which her chain of command apparently had approved, was that I go in first. She was certain that Hub Walker trusted me by virtue of having saved his granddaughter from drowning, and by my having guided him to a safe landing on that fogged-in approach to the Rancho Bonita airport, when his airplane was running low on fuel. I could talk some sense into him, Rosario reasoned, and persuade him to surrender peaceably. He would have fifteen minutes to ponder his options before the SWAT team took over and took him by force. First, though, I’d have to sign a waiver absolving San Diego County of any liability in the event rounds start flying and I caught one or more of them.
Arresting a legitimate war hero for murder, discreetly or otherwise, had national news story written all over it. As soon as the story leaked, the military bashers would use it to perpetuate the myth that every veteran who sees combat comes home messed up in the head. Some do, but certainly not all. How much of Walker’s alleged bloodlust, if any, was influenced by his exploits in Vietnam forty years earlier was unknown. I’d once idolized the man. Now, I didn’t know what to think of him. The knot in my stomach was the size of a grenade.
“You do have health insurance, correct?” Rosario asked me as I waited in the backseat of her unmarked unit, two sun-splashed blocks up the street from Hub Walker’s house.
“I’m covered by the VA.”
“Good luck with that,” Rosario’s partner, Lawless, said derisively from the front passenger seat. He yawned, heavy-lidded, like he’d been up all night.
I asked if his wife had given birth yet.
“None of your business, Logan.”
“And on that cheery note . . .”
I opened the door and stepped out.
“Just be careful,” Rosario said like she meant it.
“Always.”
Two black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows hunkered on the opposite side of the street, facing in the direction of Hub and Crissy’s house—the SWAT team ready to roll in should my efforts to diffuse the situation prove unsuccessful.
Just don’t leave me hanging, boys.
THE WELL-HEELED residents of La Jolla tended their bug-resistant roses. They walked their little yapper dogs. They pulled out of their driveways in their fine, impeccably detailed Beemers and Benzes. No one said a word to me or looked my way as I strolled toward the home of their celebrated neighbor, a suspected murderer—no one except Major Kilgore, who watched me through parted blinds as I passed by his house, then crossed the street. I flashed him a peace sign. Kilgore just stared.
The brass knocker on the Walkers’ towering front door echoed like gunshots.
“Who is it?” Crissy called from inside after a few seconds.
“Logan.”
Locks were unlocked. The door cracked open. Crissy smiled at me as though relieved. She was wrapped in a Japanese print kimono, red, her hair up.
“You scared me. With all this stuff going on around here, you can’t be too careful, you know?”
I nodded.
Hub was at the airport, she said, doing some work on his airplane in preparation for a flight they were planning to take to Mexico the next day. She expected him back soon. Did I want to come in and wait?
I said I did.
Crissy made sure to double-latch the door behind me. “Coffee? I just made some.”
“Sure.”
I followed her into the kitchen, the scent of lilac soap wafted behind her.
“So, Mexico, huh?”
“Hub just wants to get away for a few days. Says things around here are getting too stressful. He’s right. Also, there’s a pediatric ophthalmologist I found online in La Paz. American guy. Very innovative. He’s supposed to know everything there is to know about Ryder’s eye condition. We’re taking her down there to see him.”
Mexico. Where investigators would have a tougher time finding Walker.
“Where’s Ryder?”
“Still sleeping,” Crissy said.
“Been a awhile since I was able to sleep this late.”
“You and me both. I can’t seem to sleep at all anymore.”
She poured me a cup.
“I was thinking over what you said about Ray,” Crissy said. “I don’t know if this matters but, for what it’s worth, I do know he’s extremely jealous of Greg Castle. Ray’s convinced he’s the real brains at Castle Robotics. Thinks he never gets any credit. If you ask me, he’d stop at nothing to get his hands on that company.”
“How do you know all that?”
“How do I know?” Crissy fumbled for a credible answer. “Ask anybody who knows him. They’ll tell you. Ray’s got a little bit of a nasty streak in him.”
I sipped my coffee.
“So, what was it you wanted to see Hub about?” Crissy said. “He told me he already paid you what we owed you.”
“I’d prefer to discuss that with him directly.”
“Sure, whatever.” She pulled the kimono tighter around her. “Well, like I said, he should be home any minute now, and I really do need to go get ready. I’ve got another big meeting at Animal Planet up in LA this afternoon.”
“Cat Communicator?”
“They’re making noises like they’re actually going to pick up the series,” Crissy said as she padded down a long hall. “Can you believe it?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I waited until I heard her bedroom door close, then called Rosario to tell her that Walker wasn’t home, but would be back soon. She put me on hold for nearly a minute.
“Change of plans,” she said when she came back on the line. “SWAT’ll move into position and take him down when he pulls into his driveway.”
“Works for me. Then I’m out of here.”
“Just do me a favor and stay put until we’ve got him, Logan. If he’s due back any minute and decides to resist, I don’t want you walking outside into the middle of a firefight.”
Getting shot before finishing one’s first cup of morning coffee is no way to start the day. I agreed to hang loose until Rosario called me back with the all-clear. Besides, I wanted the chance to confront Walker and ask him why he did what he did. Better, I figured, to pose that question after he was restrained.
“Just so you know,” I told Rosario, “there’s a little kid in here. Walker’s granddaughter.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. We’ll be extra careful.”
My phone beeped with another incoming call. I told Rosario I’d wait to hear from her and pushed the green button.
“You disconnected me yesterday,” Savannah said.
I had totally forgotten to call her back.
“There was nothing preventing you from calling me back, Savannah.”
“You mean other than phone etiquette? You cut me off, Logan. Etiquette requires that you should’ve called me back.”
“Duly noted. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Anything else?”
“I didn’t call to chew you out. I actually have some great news. I talked to the hospital. Mrs. Schmulowitz is being released today.”
Great news, indeed, but
I wasn’t much in the chatting mood as I fretted about the pyrotechnics that I feared might ensue when Walker arrived home.
“I appreciate you letting me know, Savannah.”
“You sound distracted. I’ll let you go—oh, one thing before I forget. You know my client I told you about, the one who works at Animal Planet?”
“The panicky programming executive.”
“That’s a bit callous, Logan, don’t you think?”
“I have to go, Savannah.”
“OK, well, anyway, I mentioned that idea to him, the one Crissy said she was pitching, about the cat trainer. He said he’d never heard of it, or her.”
“Could be she’s dealing with some other panicky programming executive. There are probably lots of them in Hollywood.”
“My client says Animal Planet has no record of her ever having been in for any kind of meeting. The weird thing is, he really likes the idea. He wants her to come in and talk about it.”
I told Savannah I’d have to call her back.
The disquieting scenario that unfolded inside my brain made what had become a chronic headache only worse. Ray Sheen had been shot dead hours before Crissy Walker claimed to have left San Diego for an early morning meeting at Animal Planet in Los Angeles, and before her husband woke up. I wondered if the alleged meeting was intended as an alibi, to put time and distance between Crissy and Sheen’s murder. She certainly would’ve had her own motives to kill Sheen. He’d refused to terminate their affair, and had threatened to blackmail her when she tried to end it.
I gulped down the rest of the coffee, hoping the caffeine jolt would help clear my mind, and tried to focus.
Someone other than Sheen had to have driven his truck into the hills east of San Diego that night. Sheen, after all, was driving his MINI. Maybe he’d called Crissy after we crashed and asked her to come pick him up. Maybe she’d realized he was out in the boonies, where no one would see them, took matters into her own hands, along with her husband’s German pistol, and put an exclamation point on the end of her affair with Sheen—not to mention his life.
I still had more questions than answers. Who tampered with my airplane? Who stabbed Janet Bollinger? And why had Sheen come after me with such a vengeance?
On the counter to my left was a stainless steel toaster. On my right was a photo in a gilded frame of Hub and Ruth Walker embracing after her graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. Next to the picture was the butcher block carving set I’d admired four days earlier, when Walker had paid me the final money due me. There were slots for thirteen pieces of high-end, black-handled cutlery, eight of them matching steak knives. I noticed that two of the steak knives were missing. I slid one of the remaining knives out of the block.
The blade was about six inches long.
The edge was serrated.
I remembered the fatal stab wound Janet Bollinger had suffered to her abdomen. The edge was jagged. The kind of wound a serrated blade would’ve left.
Plenty of knives have serrated edges. The fact that two of them were missing from Crissy Walker’s carving set, I reminded myself, proved nothing. They were probably misplaced, somewhere in her kitchen. I began looking for them, if only for my own peace of mind.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I turned. Hub Walker was standing behind me. In his right hand was one of the missing knives.
“Crissy said you were out at the airport,” I said, closing a drawer and hoping my surprise didn’t register with him.
“I don’t know where she would’ve got that idea,” Hub said. “I’ve been out in the guesthouse all morning, trying to fix that drip you told me about.”
“With a steak knife?”
“Water supply line’s rusted out. Had to cut away some drywall to get at the angle stop. Just don’t tell my wife. She loves these knives. She should. They cost a small fortune.”
I stepped aside as Walker washed the knife off in the sink.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What are you doing here? I thought we were all settled up.”
“Where’s the other steak knife, Hub?”
He turned around and looked at me.
“There’s one knife missing from the set,” I said.
Walker toweled off the knife in his hand and fixed me with a frigid stare.
“What do you care where it is?”
Crissy strode into the kitchen just then. She was wearing black stiletto heels and an ivory pants suit trimmed at the neck and sleeves in mother of pearl. Slung over her left shoulder was a black crocodile tote easily worth more than everything I owned.
“There’s some of that leftover casserole Ryder likes,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “You can heat it up for dinner. I should be home around nine.”
Walker gestured to the carving set, but his focus remained intently on me.
“Mr. Logan wants to know where the other steak knife went off to.”
Crissy shut the refrigerator door.
“It’s probably in the dishwasher. Why?”
“It’s not,” I said. “Or any of your drawers. I checked.”
She set the water bottle down on the counter. Her eyes flashed fire.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Ray Sheen’s dead.”
Crissy gasped and covered her mouth.
“He was shot last night,” I said. “With Hub’s Luger.”
“That’s impossible,” Walker said. “My Luger’s in a locked box, in the back of my closet. I haven’t even looked at it since I got out of the Air Force.”
“You can tell it to the detectives. They’d like to talk to you both.”
“Why would they think I shot him?” Walker said, then turned and glowered at Crissy. “Just because he’s been having sex with my wife for years?”
She forced a laugh.
“Hub, you’re imagining things.”
“Stop, Crissy. Please. I’m not stupid.”
“You need to go to the doctor. You need help.”
“I read your goddamn emails!”
The blood drained from Crissy’s lovely face. “You did what?”
Walker fought back tears.
“Oh, Hub. I’m sorry. My God, I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It was just one of those things that got out of control. I never loved him. I love you. I tried to end it, but he wouldn’t. He threatened to tell you. You have to believe me. Please. I’m begging you.”
She reached out to him with both arms. He pushed her aside with the knife still in his hand, then turned to glare at me like I was Judas.
“The police sent you in here to flush me out, so I’d go peaceably, didn’t they?”
I said nothing.
He turned his back and stared silently out at the pool. “It’s crap. All of it. I don’t know who killed Ray Sheen, and I don’t know who killed Janet Bollinger. But it wasn’t me.”
He slid the knife back into the butcher block, leaving one slot still vacant. Then he turned and faced me once more, chest out, chin squared, like he was back in the Rose Garden of the White House, about to be presented the Medal of Honor all over again.
“Let’s go,” Hub Walker said. “I got nothing to hide.”
His beautiful wife gazed at him admiringly for a long moment with her eyes pooling. Then she reached into her crocodile shoulder bag, brought out a 9-millimeter German Luger pistol, and leveled it at me.
Crissy Walker, as it turned out, had plenty to hide.
Twenty-six
“We’re getting out of here, Hub. You, Ryder and me. Start fresh down in Mexico. Everything’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Hub stared at her slack-jawed.
“Put down the gun, Crissy. We can work it out, whatever it is.”
“We should have never hired him,” Crissy said, pointing the pistol at me. “ ‘Leave well enough alone.’ Did I not tell you that? ‘Who gives a damn what Dorian Munz said or didn’t say before they put h
im out of his misery. Let Greg Castle fight his own fight.’ But did you listen to me, Hub? Have you ever listened to me? You didn’t marry me for my brains. Admit it. You married me because I took my clothes off once and stood in front of a camera because I was too young and too poor to know any better. A stupid hick with a face and a body. That’s all I’ve ever been to you.”
“Crissy, you know that’s not true. I respect you, for who you are. Now, please, give me the gun.”
Walker took a step toward her. She swung the Luger toward him. He froze and took a step back with his hands raised. Then she turned and aimed it at me once more.
“This is all your fault.”
“Your father was an Air Force mechanic,” I said.
“My father was a great man. A million times better than you’ll ever be.”
“What’s her father got to do with this?” Hub said.
“He taught her about airplane engines. Crissy was afraid I’d find out that Dorian Munz didn’t murder your daughter, Hub. So she borrowed Ray Sheen’s truck, pinned her hair up, put on some overalls, and drove on to the flight line that night.”
Walker gaped at me in silence, then at Crissy, waiting for a denial.
None came.
“The only problem was, I survived the crash. So Crissy tells Sheen that I found evidence confirming what Munz had said was true, that Castle Robotics was ripping off the government. Sheen told Greg Castle, and Castle ordered Sheen to shut me up, permanently.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Crissy said.
“Not quite. I’m still scratching my head about who sent that anonymous letter to Munz, tipping him off to the scam.”
Crissy’s nostrils flared. “That was Ray’s idea. He thought Castle would resign to avoid a scandal, then he’d be named president of the company.”
“And Ray wasn’t worried about being audited,” I said, “because he’d already cooked the books by then, right?”
Crissy began to weep.
“You shot him,” Walker said, steadying himself on the edge of the kitchen counter like he’d just been punched in the stomach. “You shot Sheen.”
“Whatever I did, I did for us, Hub, for our future. You’ve got to believe me.”
