The Switch

by Sandra Brown

  "Talked."

  "Talked." Lawson screwed up his face as though trying to envision the scene. "Talked there at the coffee table?" "Why don't you just come right out and ask what you're itching to ask, Lawson?"

  "Okay. Did you sleep together?"

  CHAPTER 11

  His answer was succinct. "No."

  "Well, somebody thinks you did."

  Lawson removed several glossy eight-by-ten photos from a manila folder he'd brought in with him and passed them to Chief. Unprepared for what he was about to see, he irritably snatched the photographs from the detective. But his pique was short-lived. A single glance at the first photo caused him to grimace. Raising his hand to his forehead, he groaned, "Oh, Jesus."

  "May I?" Birchman extended his hand; Chief passed the first photograph to him.

  He leafed through them all before passing them to his attorney. For a moment he stared into near space, then he focused on her. "Melina, I . . ." Lost for words, he let his expression speak for him. He raised his opened hands toward her in a gesture of helplessness before lowering them listlessly.

  "Well?"

  After holding her stare a few moments longer, he looked at Jem, who'd practically snarled the question at him. "Well, what?"

  "Did you do what the writing says? Did you fuck my fiancée?"

  "Jem!"

  "You're offended, Melina?" he shouted. `Be offended by him, not me!"

  "Perhaps Mr. Hennings should be removed."

  Lawson ignored Birchman's suggestion but addressed Jem. "Final warning, Hennings. One more outburst and you're outta here."

  "Oh, no, I'm staying," Jem said, shaking his head vigorously. "I want to hear what the space cadet has to say for himself."

  "Anything I have to say, I'm saying to Gillian's sister." Chief's voice vibrated with an intimidating timbre. "Not to you."

  "Jem, would you please calm down?" she asked wearily.

  "I'll calm down. Because I don't want to miss a word Mr. Astronaut says."

  Lawson resumed by asking why someone would write such things. "There must be some basis of truth to it, Hart." "You're asking me—"

  "Colonel." As though to stop Chief from speaking, Birchman put out his hand. Chief swatted it aside.

  "That's blood, right?" he said, gesturing toward the photographs, which had been returned to the detective. "You're asking me to make sense of it? You expect me to explain what some sick bastard wrote on a woman's wall in blood after killing her?"

  He snorted a scornful laugh. "I'm not a psychiatrist. And I'm not a goddamn detective. So how the hell should I know why he wrote it? How could anybody know? Anybody who could do this," he said, again flinging his hand toward the photographs, "is psychotic. Deranged. How the hell do you expect me to make sense of it?"

  "All right, calm down."

  "Like hell."

  "Did you have sexual relations with Gillian Lloyd last night?"

  "What'd I tell you?"

  "You told me no."

  "So there you have it. She left my room, and—"

  "What time?"

  "I told you I don't remember."

  Lawson swiveled his head toward her. "What time did she return home, Melina?"

  "Late. Sometime between two and three I think."

  Lawson turned back to Chief, his expression sardonic. "Y'all talked for an awfully long time."

  Jem seemed barely able to hold himself together.

  But Chief didn't quail. If anything, his demeanor grew more defiant. "I don't remember what time it was when she left. I have no idea why she was murdered. That's it. I'm finished here."

  He stood up, but Lawson barked for him to sit down. When Birchman protested, the attorney and the policeman launched into a heated argument. Jem shot Chief a menacingly look, then retreated to a corner and put his back to the room.

  Meanwhile, the gaze Christopher Hart had fixed on her didn't waver. His eyes were as piercing as laser beams. Whatever he was feeling at the moment—indignation, guilt, despair—he was feeling it passionately.

  "Just a few more questions, and then I think we'll be finished with Colonel Hart," Lawson was saying to the attorney.

  "These questions had better be pertinent to your murder investigation, Detective."

  Lawson turned his attention back to Chief and asked if he had noticed anyone following him and Gillian the night before.

  His arms were crossed over his chest. "No. But I wasn't looking. Why would I have been?"

  "Did she phone anyone?" "Not while she was with me."

  "Which was for most of the evening."

  Chief shrugged. "There were a few times when we were separated, so I suppose she could have called someone. I didn't see her place any calls."

  "Or receive any?"

  "Or receive any."

  "Did she talk to anyone?"

  "Sure. To everyone. Doormen. Parking valets. Everyone who attended the press conference. The people seated with her at the banquet."

  "Anyone suspicious? Unusual? Someone who looked out of place at the function last night?"

  "No."

  "Someone she might have bumped into by chance? Former classmate? Old boyfriend? Neighbor or acquaintance?" Chief was shaking his head. "No, no, and no."

  "At any point during the evening, did you exchange cross words with someone? Did she?"

  "No. Melina," he said, suddenly turning to her. "I know you were counting on me to provide clues. I'm sorry. I can't."

  "If there was something for you to remember, you would remember it." She smiled sadly. "Even if an awkward incident had occurred, as Mr. Lawson suggested, you probably wouldn't have realized it. She would have handled it adroitly."

  "Nothing like that—" He broke off abruptly. "Wait a minute."

  She sat forward in her chair. "Colonel?"

  "I do remember something." He thought on it a few seconds longer, while they all watched him expectantly, then he turned to Lawson. "There was a guy. At the taco restaurant. He was coming out as we were going in. He spoke to her. Called her by name. Called her Gillian."

  He looked over at her. "She was damn good at pretending to be you, Melina. This guy used her correct name, but it never flustered her. When I asked her why the guy had called her Gillian, she explained that he had obviously mistaken her for her sister." He ran a quick scan of her features. "I can see how that could happen. Anyway, that's when she told me about you, about her identical twin."

  "What was his name?" Lawson asked.

  "He said it, but—"

  "What was it?"

  "Hell, I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to anybody except..." His eyes cut totem, who was listening from his place in the corner. Chief let his original statement drop and continued with, "I'm not sure that Gillian recognized him even after he said his name. They exchanged pleasantries. She passed it off as a case of mistaken identity, and I didn't give it another thought. But now, thinking back on it..."

  "What?"

  "I could be wrong, Melina, but I think he made her uneasy." "In what way?" Lawson wanted to know.

  Chief shook his head. "I'm not sure. I just get the feeling that he creeped her out. In fact, he kinda creeped me out. Strange character."

  "How so?" Lawson had his notepad out, pen poised over it. "His looks, for one thing."

  "Describe him."

  "Tall. Pale. Very skinny. Eyeglasses, definitely. Because they were so thick they distorted the shape of his eyes, and they had slipped down on his nose. But it wasn't so much his physical appearance that made him strange as the way he acted. The way he looked at Gillian."

  "Which was?"

  "Like..." He groped for the right words. "Like he was shocked, maybe even a little put off, to see her there. Especially with. . ." He hesitated, but after throwing Jem a glance, he finished. "With me."

  Mulling it over, Lawson said, "And you're sure he thought she was Gillian?"

  "That's how he addressed her," Chief replied. "And she never corrected him, never passed her
self off as Melina to him."

  "If for some reason this man was affronted by seeing Gillian Lloyd with Colonel Hart," Birchman speculated, "I would say you have a suspect, Detective."

  "But why would seeing her with me piss him off?" Again, he looked across at Jem. "Unless he was a friend of yours and jumped to the wrong conclusion."

  "You're full of shit," Jem sneered. "Don't any of you realize that he's making this up? He's created a boogeyman to take the focus off himself. He's lying!"

  In a blink, Chief was out of his chair. "You son of a bitch." Apparently seeing the wisdom in containing his temper and backing down, he turned abruptly to Melina. "Melina, I saw the guy. Talked to him."

  She held his stare for several seconds, then looked to Lawson. "It bears checking out, doesn't it? If this man was as strange-looking as Colonel Hart described, maybe someone else remembers seeing him."

  "Is that all you can tell us about him, Hart?"

  He was pushing his fingers through his hair as though supremely agitated. His temper hadn't yet found a proper outlet. "Yeah. The whole encounter lasted maybe twenty, thirty seconds."

  "Did you see his car?"

  "No."

  "Talk us through it again. Maybe something else will occur to you."

  He reacted as though he might argue the necessity of the request, but then he looked across at her and his exasperation diminished. "He held the door for us as we were going into the restaurant. He spoke to Gillian. By name. I don't think she recognized him. It was one of those awkward moments when someone you're supposed to know speaks to you, but you can't place them or recall their name."

  "We've all had those moments," she said.

  "But he jogged her memory."

  "Yeah," Chief said in response to Lawson's prodding. "I think he said his name, but if you held a gun to my head, I wouldn't remember it."

  "Try." "He said he couldn't remember it, Detective," Birchman said testily.

  "Birchman, this is my inquiry, okay?"

  They may as well have not been speaking at all, because Chief seemed to have retreated into himself. She watched as he willed himself to remember. His facial features were strained with his effort to remember forgotten details. His brain was a computer. It contained more information than an average individual could fathom—difficult technical, scientific, and aeronautical data were stored there, data that were required for him to do his job. He merely had to concentrate to call the information up when he needed it, as one would bring up a saved file on his computer screen.

  "Even after he gave his name, I don't think Gillian made a connection until he said..."

  The argument between Lawson and Birchman ceased. Both stopped talking to listen to Chief.

  "Dammit, what'd he say?" He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "He said... from..." His eyes popped open. "Waters. Waters. That's what he said."

  "Waters!"

  Lawson looked sharply at her. "That mean something, Melina?"

  "The Waters Clinic."

  "What's that?"

  "Oh, God," Jem moaned, grinding his fist into his palm. "I knew that artificial insemination was a bad idea. I was against it all along."

  She shot him a look of angry disbelief but didn't have an opportunity to address his remark because Lawson had picked up on her excitement and was already repeating his question."The Waters Clinic," she explained. "It specializes in infertility. Gillian was there yesterday."

  "Ovulating," Jem muttered.

  Lawson was surprised. "Gillian was a patient?"

  "Yes."

  "What for?"

  "I think what is relevant, Detective, is that this strange man recognized her from there."

  Lawson frowned concession, then stuffed the ugly photographs back into the manila envelope. "All of you are free to go."

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "I'm going to check out the place, see if they have a weird-looking dude working there. I'll call when I know something. Hart," he continued, "I'd like for you to stay in town until we get this wrapped."

  "You can't ask my client to put his life on hold while you solve a murder case," Birchman protested. "That could take months."

  As he moved toward the door, Lawson stopped to address the astronaut. Birchman here's right. I can't force you to stay. But I would think you'd want to. Not because it's your civic duty to try and catch a woman-killer, and not because you've provided our best lead so far and I might need you to identify this mystery man. I'd think that as a decent human being, a hero, you'd want to hang around as a courtesy to the other Ms. Lloyd. The living one. Okay?"

  He lumbered out, creating a vacuum in the small room. Birchman was the first to move. He picked up his briefcase and nodded Chief toward the door. "After you."

  Instead of following, Chief turned toward her. "Melina. I'm terribly sorry for your loss."

  "Thank you. I regret any inconvenience this has caused you."

  "By comparison, it's nothing."

  "If you don't mind," Jem said rudely. "This has taken far too long already." He crowded up behind her as though trying to herd all of them through the door.

  Birchman and Chief wove their way through the warren of desks in the central room toward the corridor and the elevator; she and Jem followed. Just as Birchman depressed the button, the same plainclothes policeman who had approached Chief before sidled up to him again, proffering a writing tablet and nervously asking for his autograph.

  The elevator arrived. "I'll be a minute here," Chief said, quickly shaking hands with the attorney. He told him he would call him at his office later. Birchman stepped into the elevator.

  Jem nudged her toward the elevator doors.

  Making a spontaneous decision, she said, "You go on ahead, Jem. I need the ladies' room first."

  "Well, okay," he said as he awkwardly tried to keep the automatic doors from closing and squashing him between them. "I'll be over later."

  The elevator doors closed, but she made no move toward the rest rooms.

  Chief glanced up and regarded her curiously. He finished signing the tablet for the policeman's son. "Thanks, Chief," the man said, saluting.

  "You're welcome. Good luck to your son, to Todd." He shook hands with the cop, who then marched off bearing his prize. Chief depressed the elevator button. "Going down?" "Please. I fibbed about needing the ladies' room." "I see," he said, although clearly he didn't.

  They waited, each staring at the seam between the elevator doors. The silence stretched out long enough to grow noticeable and awkward. When the elevator car arrived, she was glad to see that no one else was aboard. He motioned her in and then followed. As they began their descent, she turned to him. "I apologize for Jem."

  "It's not your fault."

  "I'm embarrassed for him. He behaved like an ass."

  "You won't get an argument from me." He grinned faintly, but she didn't return it.

  "I also wanted to speak to you privately."

  He made a quarter turn toward her. "All right."

  "To tell you what a gutless coward you are."

  He yanked his head back reflexively. "Excuse me?" "You're a coward, Colonel Hart."

  "I got it the first time," he said tightly. "Mind telling me why you think so?"

  "Not at all." The doors opened onto the first floor, but she remained where she was. "Jem was wrong to attack you, but he was right about one thing. You're a liar." Before he could counter, she plunged on. "You were too much of a coward to truthfully answer Lawson's question."

  "Which question?"

  "The one about sleeping with Gillian. You see, I know you did."

  CHAPTER 12

  Chief slammed into his suite at The Mansion, tossed his jacket into a chair, and headed straight for the bar. He was tempted to have a bourbon but settled on a soft drink instead. He carried it with him to the sofa, where he threw himself down among the cushions and emptied half the can before taking a breath.

  Not too deep a b
reath, however. On a deep breath he might smell Gillian's perfume on the sofa cushions and that would be too painful a reminder.

  A harsh, choking sound erupted from him before he could contain it. He sat up and placed the soft drink can on the coffee table, then propped his elbows on his knees and plowed all ten fingers through his hair and held his head. Despair settled on him like a coat of chain mail. He closed his eyes tightly and exhaled slowly.

  Christ. How could this have happened to him? Why? What god had he failed to appease?

  He wouldn't cry. Astronauts don't cry. People don't cry over the death of someone they knew only for a few hours.

  But even though he didn't cry, his throat was tight and, when he opened his eyes, his eyelashes were suspiciously damp.

  He retrieved his cold drink can and sipped from it as he reflected on Melina's parting words. He'd tried damned hard to stay angry. She had thrown down her gauntlet, then hightailed it from the elevator, all but carrying a banner of righteous indignation, leaving him with his dick in the dirt, so to speak, and when he'd tried to go after her and challenge her, he'd been waylaid by a man waiting in line to pay his traffic ticket at one of the teller windows the police department kindly provided. By the time he'd shaken hands to acknowledge the man's boisterous greeting, Melina had disappeared.

  On the drive back to the hotel, he'd tried to fan the anger she'd sparked. She'd called him a liar and a coward. He'd been ready to throttle Hennings for doing the same. He had every right to be good and pissed. But he'd been unable to stay mad because his conscience wouldn't let him. He knew he was wrong.

  Anger was a safe emotion. A burst of temper was familiar. He knew how to handle and control it. But this—whatever this was—he didn't know how to handle at all. If he couldn't even identify the emotion that was tearing him up inside, how was he supposed to get a grip on it?

  A beautiful woman had been brutally slain. Tragic, certainly. But his involvement with Gillian had been so fleeting, he wasn't sure it merited this gnawing desolation.

  Nevertheless, he couldn't simply dust his hands off and forget it. Lawson's lecture about duty and decency wasn't keeping him here. He had an ironclad sense of responsibility, but not necessarily to the Dallas Police Department. The detective's point about staying for Melina's sake was well taken, but even that wasn't enough to stop him from tossing his belongings into his duffel bag and heading back to Houston.