Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  The distance from Nancy’s cubicle to the reception room was about a hundred yards over light green heavy-weave carpet with three-quarter-inch padding underneath. Her journey took her past a row of side-by-side cubicles identical to her own, with secretaries seated outside lawyers’ offices, typing or filing or doing their nails, and this morning the short walk seemed to Nancy like a hundred miles. Surely everyone wasn’t staring at her, it only seemed that they were. The staff at Brantley, Nevers and Wilts, P.C., was about evenly divided, half on her side and half on Helen Taylor’s, but at the moment who liked who didn’t matter. The flap about Lackey in the newspapers—coupled with Nancy’s own picture on television two nights earlier—had the whole office twittering, including the lawyers. That Nancy’s fiancé was a sex-fiend murderer (it didn’t matter that Lackey hadn’t even been charged with anything, of course, everyone was assuming he was guilty because of what they’d read in the paper) had taken the place of Mrs. Brantley’s affair with the young lawyer as the main coffee-room topic. Why don’t they just come right out and ask me about it? Nancy thought. You can bet I’d have something to tell them. As she passed Trudy’s desk, her Number-One best friend raised soft brown eyes and smiled. Nancy returned the smile with a confident wink. As she thought, I ought to take acting lessons, Nancy went through the floor-to-ceiling door and entered the reception area.

  Nancy would have spotted the two cops as something other than run-of-the-mill visitors even if she hadn’t known in advance who they were. After a few months around the office she’d been able to tell visitors’ business merely by their postures in the waiting room. Salesmen sat upright on the chairs or sofas with their briefcases held in their laps; civil clients checked their watches over and over as they wondered whether the lawyers’ fee meters were running while the client cooled his heels; criminal clients all appeared to be worrying. These two detectives, though, were lounging. The big blond guy was sprawled on the couch with one long leg bent at a near-perfect ninety-degree angle as he rested his ankle on his knee and flipped through a magazine. The bald one, the older of the two, had his skinny rump forward on the cushion as he lay practically full-length in an armchair. His elbows were on the armrests and his hands were folded over his navel. Nancy wondered briefly whether the slob effect was intentional in order to put her off guard. Helen Taylor sat behind a half-moon shaped desk, pressing lighted buttons and routing calls, and she now stopped long enough to arch an eyebrow in Nancy’s direction, then throw a knowing look in the direction of the detectives. Here she is, boys. Have at her.

  The blond detective’s suit was pale blue, the bald one’s light brown. The blond sat up on the couch and put both feet on the floor, at the same time laying the magazine he’d been reading on an end table beside a shaded lamp. Sports Illustrated, Nancy thought, that or Popular Mechanics; she’d have guessed Playboy or Penthouse, but knew that the law firm didn’t keep any girlie mags around in the waiting room. Those were for the lawyers in the privacy of their offices. The blond detective extended his index finger, formed a pistol with his hand, and pointed it at Nancy. “Hey. Hey, you Nancy?” He shot a quick glance at his partner.

  They both look surprised, Nancy thought. Probably they were expecting one of the cleaning people. She placed one spotless white shoe in front of the other and folded her arms. “I’m Miss Cuellar,” she said.

  “We’re—” the blond guy said, then showed an almost-bashful grin. “Hey, I’m Detective Morrison and this guy”—waving a hand as the bald man sat up into an erect position—“is Detective Henley. We’ve got a few questions. Is there a place . . . ?” He looked around expectantly.

  “Sure,” Nancy said. “Why not? Follow me, gentlemen.” She turned to lead the way back into the inner offices. The cops rose to follow. The bald one said something to Helen Taylor which Nancy couldn’t hear. Helen whispered something back to the guy.

  The trip down the corridor with the detectives in tow was only slightly worse than the walk up to the reception room had been. This time, secretaries stopped what they were doing and stared openly. The two cops grinned as though they were enjoying the attention, and Nancy guessed that they were. As she opened the door to the conference room and stood aside for the cops to enter, warmth crept up the back of her neck and settled behind her ears. She stepped inside behind Henley and Morrison and closed the door.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Nancy said professionally. She needn’t have bothered; the detectives had already helped themselves to styrofoam cups and had surrounded the Mr. Coffee like chow hounds at the chuck wagon.

  Both men took their coffee black, just like in the movies. Henley and Morrison carried their cups over to take seats on one side of the long polished conference table. Nancy sat down on the other side, facing them, and smoothly crossed her legs. Two adjacent walls in the room were lined with bookcases which contained black hardcovers of Vernon’s Annotated Texas Statutes, red-bound volumes of the United States Code, and big light-brown tomes that looked like log books and which were in reality the Federal Reporter, 2nd Edition. Nancy mentally held her breath and waited for the session to begin. She briefly wondered whether they’d take their coats off and adjust their shoulder holsters.

  Morrison hunched his shoulders and put his hands on either side of his coffee cup. He blew lightly on the surface of the liquid, then took a sip. “I don’t guess I have to tell you this is about your old man,” he said.

  One corner of Nancy’s mouth tugged sideways in irritation. “My father?”

  “No, your . . .” Morrison grinned sideways at Henley. “Lackey Ferguson, you know,” Morrison said.

  “He’s my fiancé.”

  “Yeah, him,” Morrison said. He drew a small recorder from his inside breast pocket, placed the recorder on the table and pressed a button. Tiny reels began to turn. “You don’t mind,” Morrison said. “It saves note-taking.”

  Nancy’s gaze flicked at the recorder, then steadied on Morrison. “Go ahead,” she told him.

  “Cuellar, that’s . . .” Morrison scratched his eyebrow. “Hey, isn’t there a Mexican restaurant?”

  Nancy blinked. “El Chico. Not the same family. Cuellar’s a common Spanish surname, Mr. Morrison. Not like Smith or Jones, but probably on a level with Douglas or Moore in English.”

  “I thought maybe there was a connection,” Morrison said. “Well, hey, Nancy—”

  “Miss Cuellar,” she said.

  “—so long as we’re here and the tape recorder’s laying in plain sight, and so there won’t be any question that we all know what this is about, you know we’ve got your boyfriend—”

  “Fiancé.”

  “—under investigation, don’t you? On some pretty serious charges, specifically in connection with the murder of Mrs. J. Percival Hardin III.”

  “I’ve seen the TV news,” Nancy said. “I didn’t bother with the newspaper stories, but I did see the headlines. None of it’s true.”

  As Morrison did all of the talking, Henley was alternating his gaze between the tape machine and Nancy as she sat across from him. There was a half-smile on Henley’s lips, accompanied by an alternate lifting and dropping of his eyebrows. Nancy knew that she looked all right—was proud of it, in fact—and admiring glances from men were something that she didn’t mind at all. But this guy was leering, and her uneasiness over confronting these two was now accompanied by a creepy-crawly sensation which paraded up and down her back. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, glanced down at her lap and then concentrated on Morrison again. Henley’s grin was still visible in the periphery of her vision.

  “Can you state your full name, so it’ll be on the tape?” Morrison said.

  “Nancy Patricia Cuellar,” she said. Morrison was now leering as well, and Nancy wondered briefly if she should get up and do a couple of bumps and grinds for this pair.

  “You’re what?” Morrison said. “Twenty-one or two?”

  “Twenty-five,” Nancy said.

  “Our sources tell
us you went to college.”

  What sources? Nancy thought. There was a quick tightening in her throat, but she kept a poker face. She wasn’t about to ask who they’d been talking to. Not yet, anyway. “I’ve got a B.B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington,” she said.

  “That’s a commuter school,” Morrison said. “My wife took some hours out there. You work your way through?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I thought this was about Lackey,” Nancy said.

  Morrison shot a triumphant glance at Henley, and Nancy mentally kicked herself under the table for giving them a reaction. Even under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have liked Morrison, the big Anglo cop talking down to the Mexican girl. She thought that people with racial hangups were too dumb to waste any time with, and made up her mind not to let Morrison get another rise out of her.

  “Just getting background info,” Morrison said.

  “I worked at Arby’s,” Nancy said.

  “They make a pretty good sandwich,” Morrison said. “You got any brothers or sisters?”

  She pictured the kitchen table when she’d been a kid, and mama chiding her brothers in Spanish over their table manners. “Six,” Nancy said. “Three and three. Two older, a brother and sister. The rest are still at home.”

  “Any of the others go to college?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Our sources tell us you tried to go to law school.” Morrison’s interest was picking up, his eyes widening slightly. He’s wondering about the best way to trip me up, Nancy thought.

  His question told her their source: Mr. James, her high school counselor, who she still called once in a while, who’d talked her into taking the SAT to begin with and, upon seeing her scores, had really done a sales job on her to get her into college. Lackey didn’t know about her law school apps, she’d been saving that as a surprise in case her dream came true. So they’d been nosing around Richland High, letting everyone who knew her in on the fact that Lackey was a sadist killer and Nancy was his Number-One moll. Nancy choked back her anger. “I’m going to law school,” she said. “Just as soon as I find the right one.”

  “Oh?” Morrison said. He looked surprised.

  “I’ve been accepted to three. One is too expensive, that’s SMU over in Dallas, and the other two are in Lubbock and Houston. I thought about moving, but since I’ve gotten engaged I decided not to. There’s a new one. UT Dallas is beginning a law program, and once it’s in gear I’m going to see about going over there.” It occurred to Nancy that she might be volunteering too much, but her education was something she was really proud of. Human nature, she decided, and if these guys wanted to know her grade-point average she’d tell them that as well—3.2, and that while holding down a full-time job. How „bout that, Mr. Tough Anglo Detective?

  The corners of Morrison’s mouth turned down, the blond tough guy showing that he wasn’t impressed, no way. “Okay, say you’re going,” Morrison said. “Well let’s talk about Lackey awhile.”

  “I thought that’s what you were here for,” Nancy said.

  “Yeah,” Morrison said, grinning. “Yeah, it is. So how’d you and old Lackey get together?”

  “You mean, how did I meet him, or how did we get engaged?” Or how often we do it together, Nancy thought, that’s what these guys would really like to know.

  “Start with the beginning,” Morrison said. Beside him, Henley adjusted his position in his chair, his expression as though he was about to get in on the real nitty-gritty.

  “Lackey went to school with my big brother,” Nancy said. “He’s ten years older, but you’ll already know that.” She hesitated; Morrison’s slight nod told her that they already did. Nancy went on. “When he went to the army I was eight, going on nine.”

  “Then when he got out you were all grown up,” Morrison said.

  “He had leaves, I’d see him around. My first, what you would call a real date with him was when I was nineteen. He came by the Arby’s out in Arlington where I was working.” Nancy permitted herself a small grin. “I was never sure whether he just happened by or if someone had told him I was working there. Still don’t know, he won’t tell me.”

  “So you went out with him when he was in town?”

  “Yes. Not just him. We started really, what you’d call going together about a month after he came home for good.”

  “And now, are the two of you living together?” Morrison never changed his tone of voice, the trained questioner, throwing the bombshell but making it sound like an offhanded remark.

  “No, Mr. Morrison,” Nancy said. “We’re not common-law.”

  Morrison and Henley looked at one another, their eyebrows lifted, clearly getting a surprise from the Mexican girl. “You’re not what?” Morrison said.

  “Common-law. We’re not married and we’re not common-law, so you don’t have any problem forcing me to testify against him if you want to.”

  “You know quite a bit about the law, Nancy,” Morrison said. “You ever been in trouble?”

  She snickered. “Of course not. I work for a law firm.”

  “Oh,” Morrison said. “That’s right.”

  “But you wouldn’t want me as a witness anyway,” Nancy said. “Since I know he didn’t do anything.”

  “How do you know? Were you with him on Monday?”

  “Just at night, I’m not an eyewitness to anything, I just know Lackey.”

  Henley cut in, the first time the bald detective had had anything to say. “You probably do.” Then, pausing, directing his words to the recorder. “This is Detective Henley talking here.” His gaze back on Nancy, “When you two are together, he ever do any rough stuff?”

  Her heart missed a beat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Rough,” Henley said. “Spanking or whipping or anything.”

  She didn’t bat an eye. “He’s so gentle you’d never believe it.” Which was the first lie she’d told; Lackey certainly wasn’t sadistic or anything, but he knew just how aggressive to be in bed so that her eyeballs rolled up into their sockets. She didn’t suppose that the detectives had been peeking in the window or anything, but with this pair she couldn’t be sure.

  “That’s with you,” Henley said. “How about with other people? Any fights or arguments, anything that makes you think he might lose control sometimes?”

  “Not when he was with me,” Nancy said, then decided that wasn’t enough and added, “And I’ve never heard of any.”

  Henley opened his mouth to say more, but Morrison raised a hand. The blond cop reached out and turned the recorder off, and Nancy watched as the turning reels came to an abrupt halt. “I’m turning the recorder off,” Morrison said, “because, to tell you the truth, we’re not supposed to do anything but ask questions. But I think I ought to help you out, Nancy.”

  I’ll bet you do, Nancy thought. She folded her arms and didn’t say anything, looking at Morrison with her lips parted questioningly.

  “Look, these army guys,” Morrison said, then appeared deep in thought as he got out of his chair, parked his rump on the table and leaned toward Nancy in a buddy-buddy attitude. “These guys have all been through combat training, a lot of them come through it okay, but it’s been our experience that some of „em come home with, maybe a little screw loose that they didn’t have before. This is a pretty brutal murder we’re talking here. Guys that do things like that to women are subject to do the same thing again. He’s already admitted to us that he was at the house, and we got other people that saw him. I’m wanting to protect you, you know?”

  “Who else did they see?” Nancy said.

  Morrison threw Henley a sideways glance. “Huh?” Morrison said.

  “You’re talking about neighbors and stuff,” Nancy said. “Did you ask them, „Hey, have you seen anybody?’ Or did you flash Lackey’s picture around and say, „Have you seen this particular guy, right here?’ There’d be a big difference, depending on how the questions
were asked, as to who they remembered seeing.”

  “We’re using established investigation procedure here,” Henley said.

  “No, now that’s not a proper answer,” Nancy said. “You can investigate a murder, or you can investigate a person. If you’re just asking around about a particular person, then that person’s all you’re going to hear about. Isn’t that right?”

  “Nobody’s told us they saw anybody else,” Morrison said. “And I’ll tell you, Nancy, your old man was in one big hurry to get away from there. He was in such a sweat he nearly sideswiped a little white Volvo.”

  “My fiancé,” Nancy said. “And you just said, that’s what I’m talking about, that there was somebody in a Volvo. What did you find out about the Volvo driver?” She was letting herself get more excited than she would have liked, but this was something to get excited about.

  “The guy in the Volvo’s not a witness to anything,” Morrison said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nancy said. “You say you’ve got all these people that saw Lackey, saw him nearly run into a car, now you’re saying that the other driver’s not a witness to anything? That’s a lot of baloney.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “I don’t think I want to talk to you people any more.”

  “Now calm down, Nancy,” Morrison said. “We were just trying to do you a favor, letting you know you could get hurt with this guy.” He switched the recorder on. “Tell you what, just a couple of more questions.”