The Witness

by Dee Henderson

  “Where?”

  “Marble Road. That’s what, northeast?”

  Connor reached for his coat. “Let’s go ask in person. I’m going brain-dead reading this stuff.”

  Marsh considered the idea a wild-goose chase but reached for his own coat. Connor had been doing all the shoving on this case for the last forty-eight hours; it was time he saw some fresh air even if the lead wasn’t all that solid.

  “Where is she?” Luke asked softly, taking a seat on the cold city bench of a bus stop next to Sam.

  His friend merely shifted the newspaper he was reading. “You’ll see her coming down the fire escape at that brownstone east of the bank in about two minutes, I think.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Had one of my guys go knock on the door as a deliveryman. She won’t answer it, but she’ll rightly assume she might not want to be there in the next few minutes.”

  “Interesting place she chooses as a safe house, dead in the center of town and within walking distance of the gallery.”

  Sam smiled. “She’s got moxie. I’ll give her that. And it cost me a clean five hundred to get that much of a lead on her. She’s inspired some loyalty on the street.”

  “She’s not going to be pleased to see me, so you might as well head on.”

  Sam winced. “Forget it; we just got spotted and lost her at the same time.”

  Luke turned to see a jogger turning the corner at the end of the block.

  “So much for her using conventional exits. She must have gone up to the roof and over to another building before coming down.” Sam picked up his radio. “Anybody want to tell me they have her?”

  “You didn’t mention she used to run track,” one of his men complained back. “She’s heading over two streets toward the park.”

  Sam looked at Luke.

  “Let her go,” Luke replied.

  “Let her go and come on back in,” Sam repeated for those on the radio loop. “You want me to join you?”

  “No. I’ve a hunch where she might go eventually, and if not there, a reasonable guess for where one of her other safe houses is located. At least if she’s uptown she’s not prowling the lower east side looking for our Irishman.”

  “Don’t underestimate the hurt she’s feeling over Tracey; Amy may in the end simply put out word where she is and intentionally let the Irishman find her.”

  “I know, and I’m not sure who would be the last one standing in that confrontation.” Luke checked his watch and then turned up the collar of his coat. “Call me if you spot her again or if she makes contact. She’s spoken with Caroline and Marsh so far—I’m guessing she sees her sister Marie sometime soon.”

  “She’s going to call you.”

  Luke shook his head. “No. Not this time. Not until she’s settled everything she wants to settle on her own.” They might be friends, and maybe a lot more than friends, but she wasn’t going to trust him with this part of her world yet, and he wasn’t going to be able to set aside the fact he was the chief of police long enough to look the other way. But there was no reason to chase her at this moment and just make it harder on both of them.

  “Thanks, Sam.” He headed back toward his car.

  Caroline was beginning to expect the slipped-in visit when the nurses thought she was asleep. “Do you want me to call the chief for you?” she asked Amy softly, worried at the stress on her friend’s face, at the lack of sleep she could see.

  “Calling him just makes this harder. Luke has his own ideas for how this should play out, and I’m tired enough not to want to fight him over it.”

  Caroline eased a breath in against the heaviness in her chest. “It’s the same guy, isn’t it, the shooter here and the man who shot Greg?”

  “Maybe. Eight years kind of changes someone’s appearance. Your sketch was close, but it wasn’t an immediate that’s-him reaction.”

  “So maybe I got part of the face wrong,” Caroline whispered, not surprised if that turned out to be the case.

  “You’re tired. I’d better be going.”

  Caroline touched her hand to stop her. “Call Luke, please. He cares an awful lot about you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know.” Amy squeezed her hand. “I see Marie in the morning; Daniel’s arranging it for me. Anything you want me to pass on to him?”

  “Daniel?” Caroline asked, looking puzzled at her friend.

  “He’ll be asking to stop by and see you, I think.”

  Caroline smiled. “Sure he will; he’s a nice guy. Luke doesn’t have friends who aren’t basically nice guys.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time you let one of those nice guys get close enough to be the one pacing the halls when you’re in here.”

  “He’s not a cop; it doesn’t work unless it’s another cop,” Caroline whispered, appreciating the thought though.

  “Maybe true.” Amy smiled. “You can tell Luke that he can call me. He’ll understand.”

  Caroline frowned at her, confused by the message. “Where, what number?”

  “He’ll figure it out,” Amy replied. She leaned over and offered a gentle hug. “I’ll see you later, friend. That’s a promise.”

  Because there were certain days in his life being the chief of police was simply too hard a burden to bear, Luke watched Amy walk across the hospital parking lot and turn back toward downtown, and he let her go without stopping her. The car dashboard clock showed minutes after 3 a.m. He had figured she would come to see Caroline, that she would eventually make arrangements to see Marie, and so far he was two for two.

  He finished his coffee and wearily wondered if Amy was staying somewhere reasonably safe and if she’d ever decide it was simply time to trust him and call him. The shooter would get picked up sooner or later, and if Henry’s son out there had done the two murders—it was only a matter of time before they figured out his name. This wasn’t settled by any means, but the pieces were moving around on the board. All that remained was the learning to live with the reality that had come. But it looked like he had lost Amy, nearly as permanently as Marsh had lost Tracey. He just hoped Connor and Marie managed to survive this together.

  He started the car and let it idle again to warm. Another couple hours and he’d visit Caroline too, then head over to see Daniel.

  “55-14.”

  He reached for his radio. “10-2.”

  “DMV records for that plate shows a Hampton Road address, 754, Apartment A, registered name Ivan Graves.”

  “754 Hampton Road, Apartment A.” He thought about it a moment and put the car in drive. “Mark me 10-8, same address.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was a long night of playing hunches, but there were only so many ways the reporter dogging his investigators could get inside information to run in screaming headlines above the fold on page one. Sykes had made news with too many stories to make it simply good reporting. And since Luke couldn’t put an inside source on the most serious of the leaks, that meant the reporter had another source. He wasn’t above admitting a reporter had better contacts than the cops when it became obvious he did. Luke would start with what he had. Ten minutes ago Sykes had walked out of the hospital, over to a car owned by Ivan Graves, and slipped into the passenger seat. Who had been driving was a mystery, but the deadline for a story in tomorrow’s paper was thirty minutes from now and Sykes was still working—that was enough to get a chief’s interest.

  In the middle of the night there was time for a chief to follow a very slim hunch.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “COME SIT DOWN, MARIE,” Daniel encouraged. “Amy won’t be late. She just said she was walking over, and it’s a cold morning out there. Give her a few minutes.”

  “I know.” Marie walked back over to the couch in the living room. She smiled. “I changed my mind; your apartment does kind of grow on a person over time.”

  He offered the pillow she’d taken to sliding behind her back to ease the ache. “You can help with more of the a
rtwork if you like. It still needs a lighter touch, I think.”

  “Maybe the seascape,” she offered, having thought that before. Her smile faded into the weight of waiting for Mandy. Days had passed, and she still didn’t know what to say. She’d stayed behind at the restaurant to ask Connor about Christmas plans with Mandy being able to join them, and moments later glass had rained down and she had ceased to be thinking.

  “Don’t cry. Not before she comes,” Daniel said softly, offering his handkerchief.

  “Some guest I turn out to be, walking around in slippers and carrying a box of Kleenex and sleeping the majority of the days.”

  “The rest of those pills from the doctor are going to get used too and without protest. Another five or six days and you may be standing upright without weaving on me, but until then you’re sleeping some more.”

  She rested her head back against the couch and thought again that she was glad she liked him, this cousin she had never known she had. “Tracey would have never wanted all this, the manhunt, the hiding, the fact her photo is headlining newspapers.”

  “She’s safe in heaven; the rest of us will shift and cope with that,” Daniel replied. “Are you okay with what you want to tell Amy?”

  “Yes. She’s not coming to the funeral. I can absorb that. The rest of it—” She didn’t let herself think about the rest of it. “Will Luke be here, to see her too?”

  “He knows she’s coming, but I think he’s giving her room instead. Room to decide what she wants to do most.”

  “Yes, Luke would want to be fair that way. Mandy doesn’t trust him yet, not really, completely. Kind of like you, how you don’t trust God. All the pieces are there, but it just never nudges across the line to take the risk.”

  “She’s afraid of getting hurt.”

  “We all are.”

  Marie listened for a soft knock on the door and wished Connor had been able to come and see her this morning. Not that she would do anything more than cry on his shoulder like she had done last night, but it would be nice to have him here to lean against. He’d just wrapped her in a hug and said he was sorry over and over again, and she hadn’t been able to think of anything to reply but to hug him and be glad he was there. It wasn’t Connor’s fault, and it wasn’t Amy’s, but both carried the hurt as if it were their tragedy to prevent and they had failed.

  The knock came on the door, and Daniel got to his feet.

  “Stay with us, Daniel, please.”

  He squeezed her shoulder as he passed behind the couch and went to answer the door.

  Traffic had picked up while Luke was visiting Caroline in the hospital. He turned east out of the parking lot and headed toward Daniel’s place. A night following the tracks of a reporter had been a bad trade-off for the amount of sleep he hadn’t gotten—watching who the reporter was meeting was a sound idea; assigning himself to do it not so sound. Maybe a quiet word to the traffic detail and they could start sourcing addresses where they spotted Sykes’ car over the next week—that might give him a lead. The guy was getting his information somewhere.

  Luke covered a yawn and checked the time again. He didn’t want to arrive at Daniel’s so early that Marie and Amy were in the early stages of grieving with each other, nor arrive so late that he missed seeing Amy.

  “Have him call me,” Amy had said. The message Amy had left for him with Caroline circled around and around in his thoughts and didn’t make sense. He wondered if Caroline had remembered it properly, or if he was simply too tired to understand the message.

  Then he knew.

  He reached for his pocket phone and opened it; he called directory assistance. “Park Heights, the Radisson Hotel, please.”

  He listened as the operator dialed and then the front desk answered.

  “Ann Walsh, please.”

  “One moment, I’ll connect you to her room.”

  Luke listened to the phone ring, knowing Amy was at Daniel’s right now, and heard the room answering service pick up. He closed the phone without leaving a message.

  He took a right at the next light. Three hours, he’d give Amy three hours with Marie while he cleared away what he could on his desk and left the manhunt in the hands of his deputy chief, and then he was going to go knock on a hotel-room door. Amy wasn’t coming in from the cold, but she’d stopped running. That was enough for now.

  Thirty hours without sleep—Luke rested his head against his arm and hoped someone took mercy on him today and kept new crises for tomorrow. He needed shut-eye time and soon. Amy answered the hotel-room door on his third knock.

  “No food this time, but an offer to take you out for a bite if you would like,” Luke said softly, studying a face so stressed he knew her time with Marie had not gone well.

  “I don’t think I could eat right now,” Amy replied, studying his face as he was studying her and relaxing as she absorbed the fact he had zero desire to push her right now. She stepped back to let him enter the room. “You figured out the message.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked around the room, but other than signs she’d stretched out on one of the beds to catch a nap there was nothing in the room to show it as being occupied. He took a seat at the round table, and she paused by the ice bucket to retrieve a couple sodas keeping cold in the melting ice before sitting near him rather than across the table. He accepted the one she handed him, relieved it was caffeine free. “Thanks.”

  “Would it help if I turned in the ledger and told the New York cops everything I can remember from that night?”

  He blinked. “Yes,” he replied simply.

  “Then set it up for me, please. One of Jonathan’s guys can pick up the ledger for me if I give him detailed enough instructions on how to find it.”

  “Give me four or five days. We’ll make sure you have a lawyer of your own in on the discussions so they can’t bring you into the trial without your testimony being screened off and aliased.” He reached over to touch her face, seeing ten years of age in the last few days. “I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry about Tracey.”

  Tears drenched his hand, but she held his gaze. “It may have been the same shooter that killed Greg. I’m sorry; I just don’t know for certain.”

  She didn’t know; she really didn’t know who had shot Greg. “We’re close enough on his trail—we will find him. Caroline can make the case in court. She’s good on the stand, solid, credible, and she did see him. Please don’t feel guilty for not remembering the face of who killed Greg.”

  “It was dark that night and wet, and I should have seen enough to remember because he chased me for blocks, but I never saw enough to remember a face.…” Her emotions were tumbling on him, the calm of this lady long ago broken.

  Luke slipped a hand around her neck and moved to bring her into his chest and hold her.

  “Marie didn’t blame me. She just wanted me to come home.”

  The sobs broke his heart, and Luke closed his eyes. “You can safely come home, Amy. We’ll make it safe,” he whispered.

  Too much grief, too many hurts, too much running. She had come to a full stop with him, and he knew the running was over. He shook a bit, knowing the grief she carried and the risks that would now bottle her into one place. “I’ve got a place arranged in the next county over with a sheriff friend who will help us out. You and Marie can spend as much time there together as you like and not worry about here.”

  “What if this shooter leaves town and no one pays for killing Tracey? How does that get absorbed and swallowed and lived with? I want to stay and walk the streets and find him and make sure he can’t get away.…”

  Luke wondered all those things too, how long it would be before he could find justice for them, where this would end. God had let a wonderful lady get shot and killed, and there was a bitter taste to accepting that fact.

  He rested his head against hers and let Amy cry, and his heart broke with the pain she was in. There were no words he could say, no certainty he could offer. Just a promise th
at she was no longer dealing with this alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I DON’T KNOW, CHIEF. I must have contaminated the murder scene that night,” Connor said, entering Luke’s office with a file in his hand from the second murder scene. “The hair they took off the bookkeeper’s sleeve turns out to be that of the reporter Sykes. I did a couple shoving rounds with him in the parking lot that night when they surrounded the car, and it must have been on my jacket when I got upstairs. They had his DNA in the system from a bar brawl a few years back, the one where they were trying to figure out who bit someone’s ear.”

  “Sounds like Sykes.” Luke skimmed the lab report Connor had brought him and then tossed it on the stack of paperwork already on his desk. “Don’t worry about it. Write up what happened that night, ask the local station for an uncut copy of their interview with me in the parking lot since you’re probably in the background on that tape, and leave it for the district attorney to deal with when this case eventually gets to trial. It’s not the first time a trace fiber got explained to a jury, and it won’t be the last.”

  “Thanks.” Connor hesitated in the doorway.

  Luke looked up to study his detective more carefully. “You want to shut the door, go ahead,” he offered softly.

  Connor shut the door and slid into a seat across from the desk. “I’d like a slice of time off.”

  Luke didn’t let himself react. He’d been expecting something of the sort for a few days now. “How much time and when?”

  “Tomorrow after the funeral. Maybe a week, maybe two.”

  “Granted.”

  Connor lifted his hand. “I’m not … I’m not walking the line to resigning like Marsh is. I know I’m not. But I look at those photos of the knife attacks and I see Marie being one of them and I …” He shoved his arms back across his chest and just took a deep breath.