The Witness

by Dee Henderson

“You’ve talked to the chaplain?”

  “And the department shrink. Thing is, in the old days I would have thought it was something to mention to Tracey and maybe have her push me out of it, and she’s not around and that makes it come full circle with the pain.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you worrying about Amy this way?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I think I’d better take some time before I have to catch a new case and have to work it along with Tracey’s murder … you’ll be shorthanded with Marsh off and Caroline not coming back.…”

  “I’ve been shorthanded before, and that’s a problem for this side of the desk, not that side, so don’t worry about it. You’ll take a week, two, and if you need more you’ll say so. I want you around for the next decade. I’m not worried about the next month. I’ve been a cop a long time, and I haven’t seen murders like those two more than a couple times in my career. It was evil in action and it’s sticking. Give it time to slide to the side.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  “You’re escorting Marie to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Marsh wouldn’t hear of riding with us, with Daniel. He’s coming, but coming alone.”

  “Sometimes the drive is the only thing that lets the thoughts settle. You’ll be with him for the service and the graveside—he’ll know he’s not alone.”

  “Most of the department is turning out,” Connor said. “Amy?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still working the problem.”

  “If I can help, or Marsh—”

  “I’ll ask,” Luke promised, pleased at the offer. “It isn’t that Amy doesn’t want to desperately be there, but bringing trouble to her sister’s funeral—I think that would kill her if it happened.”

  “I know, but she needs to come. Marie seemed steadier today, like the shock is drifting off. Sad, but okay. She said heaven makes a difference right now.”

  “I know it does. Tracey was happy to the last moment of her life; that helps with the memories too. Anything I can do for you and Marie?”

  “Bryce gave us the details on the place you’re thinking of for Amy to stay. It will take a burden off Marie, being able to stay with Amy, and being away from the gallery will help too. Bryce said he’d have security ready tomorrow, so Marie is going to leave Daniel’s on Sunday and let me drive her over there.”

  “Take Marie’s studio things over with her too. Nathan said we can have the property as long as we need it, and he’s the kind of sheriff who makes that offer and means it literally. It will be home for them until this is fully wrapped.”

  “I appreciate it, Chief.” Connor moved to the doorway. “Would it be okay for the service if I have Marie not arrive particularly early? She’ll have enough condolence words after the graveside service to not want her dealing with a lot before the funeral too.”

  “Five minutes before it starts is going to be plenty early.”

  Connor still hesitated. “I bought Tracey a bunch of daisies, not all that original, but I thought she needed something that wasn’t traditional mourning flowers.”

  Luke smiled. “That’s good instincts. Marsh and Marie are going to appreciate it too.”

  “I don’t plan to tell Marsh,” Connor remarked, half smiling for the first time. “He knocks my flower choices. I’ll see you tomorrow, Chief, unless something else breaks in the case overnight.”

  Luke watched his officer leave. He thought back through the emotions he’d seen in Connor and nodded to himself. They were on the money, not too far into the pain side to not be countered by the steel that formed with this job. Connor needed the couple weeks off, but he’d absorb this and make it back. The job was always pushing a man. Connor was holding. Luke wasn’t so sure Marsh would make that turn, but he was hoping and watching. He needed both men back and able to handle the job that was still ahead.

  Luke was pleased to see the funeral service turnout of officers to support Marsh was close to every officer off duty. Luke watched Marie from where he stood off to the side of the sanctuary. The shock was slipping into the past, and the transition to coping with the loss was settling in. That was a good thing to see. Marsh had hold of Marie’s hand, and that was steadying them both, Luke thought.

  Daniel rose to introduce a friend of Tracey’s from college to do a reading. Daniel had assumed the public role for Marie to give her the space she needed, and Luke thought Daniel was keeping the right light touch to the service. The minister had done a remarkable job of capturing all that was best in the lady they celebrated without minimizing the loss. Daniel was doing his best to end this service on that same note.

  Luke shifted his gaze back to the casket as the final hymn music began and people moved to stand. He owed Tracey justice. Somehow he had to find her that justice.

  The service drew to a close, and pallbearers came forward to lift the casket, Marsh and Connor and Daniel forming the lead of the group. Luke moved toward where Marie stood and slipped her hand under his arm to escort her.

  “Thank you, Luke.”

  He covered her hand with his. “Amy’s here—left of the balcony, in the choir prep room. Connor’s going to slip you away before the short walk to the cemetery and bring you back here afterward.”

  Her eyes filled with tears at his quiet words, and she simply nodded.

  He didn’t release her hand until they had left the sanctuary and ushers were going forward to orderly dismiss the crowd row by row, and then it was only to leave her in Susan’s keeping while Connor completed his task. There would be a police parade-rest line forming between the church and cemetery grounds, and Luke thought Marsh might need some company for that solitary walk. It was the one place that was going to hit him most hard.

  Luke walked by Bryce and got a solemn nod that arrangements were in place for Amy, and then he went to join the minister and arrange a seamless ten-minute delay before the cemetery walk began.

  The graveside service was mercifully short. Luke nodded to Connor once Marie was safely in Susan’s keeping and taking the condolence of friends, and his officer crossed to join him. A cemetery was not the place to talk business, but Luke didn’t think in this instance Tracey would mind.

  “The service—Tracey would have approved,” Connor said.

  “I think so too.” Luke pushed his hand into his pocket and retrieved a note he had written to himself during the graveside service. “I’m sorry to bring business up in this setting, but I need you to consider something for a minute. That newspaper story Sykes ran this morning came with details I know we never released even in-house. What if our killer is talking to our favorite reporter?”

  Connor blinked before a flash of anger crossed his face, and then a serious intensity took its place. “I noticed the details too. We never said a word about that knife tip being broken off, and the medical examiner purposely filed a restricted report direct to the deputy chief just to keep it out of the general knowledge pool. Hold on, Chief.” Connor walked away and minutes later returned with Marsh. “The chief has a hunch you need to hear; just listen a minute.”

  “The information that the knife tip was broken off was severely restricted, but Sykes had it this morning. He’s also got the location and objects right for where the messages were left—the books, the painting. What if our reporter is talking to our killer?”

  Marsh studied the grass at his feet for a moment, then lifted his head and nodded. “Yes. Sykes is not that good a reporter; we all know it. And he’s been breaking news since that very first story.”

  Luke waited, wanting to hear what Marsh thought should be done. His officer smiled. “Put a tail on the reporter. We’re not likely to get wiretaps authorized by any sitting judge I know of, but a discreet tail—there’s enough to warrant it based on that story this morning. We can always argue we were investigating an internal leak of privileged material and the reporter was tangential to an internal probe. Better to put internal inspectors on the tail to back up that argument. Connor and I can
do some backtracking with the people the reporter has been quoting in his articles and see who else he’s been mentioning as names for second- and third-confirmation sources to get folks to talk to him. There’s nothing that says we can’t talk to the same people he is.”

  Luke studied Marsh and weighed the offer. “You two know these cases backward and forward, and we’re looking for something subtle that was at the scenes but not in internal notes. Give me another twenty-four hours and just see if it’s worth pursuing. The time off still stands for as long as you need it, but I could use a little more time first.”

  “It’s an idea, Chief. They’ve been few and far between. We’ll be at the 6 a.m. update with whatever we find,” Marsh promised.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “CHIEF.”

  Luke looked up from the phone messages in hand. It was not yet 5 a.m., and the office was as busy as it ever became by midday let alone for a weekend shift. His officers wanted this street shooting solved and were working it 24-7 to make it happen. The district attorney stood in his doorway, and the fact the man had come over rather than calling said a great deal for how this was becoming an all-hands case.

  “I’ve got you a warrant on the blood sample Henry sent in for testing. The lab didn’t use it all in that paternity test, and Daniel twisted arms and got some incredibly good lawyers to argue the rest of the submitted sample still frozen at the lab is the possession of the estate. We’ve got the remaining blood sample of Henry’s son being flown from the clinic to our lab. They promise a profile in twenty-four hours, and if there’s a hit in the systems from this guy we’re going to have it by noon tomorrow.”

  “An ID on the son takes us one very large step toward a possible killer.”

  “I’m not leaving the office in the next forty-eight hours. You get a name, I’ll give you whatever assistance I can on making motive alone enough for a search warrant.”

  “I’ll try to bring you something else to dress it up once we have the name. Thanks.”

  The district attorney nodded and left.

  Luke lifted the phone. “Margaret, are Connor and Marsh in early?”

  “They never went home as best I can tell. They’re using the deputy chief’s conference room for whiteboard space.”

  “I’ll find them. When the mayor calls, tell him it will be an hour before I can get back to him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Luke pushed the phone messages into his shirt pocket and picked up his jacket. He’d left Connor and Marsh chasing a lead, and when they got something solid they were not the kind of guys to let go of it.

  The conference room was littered with folders and binders and the sharp smell of old pizza with anchovies on it.

  “The reporter isn’t talking to the people he’s quoting; he’s making large parts of the stories up, Chief,” Marsh said, as Luke pulled out a seat and sat down to listen to what they had. “We worked the phones for hours yesterday, backtracking Sykes’ stories. He has most of his facts right, even the sequence of things that happen are right, but he’s putting that knowledge as coming from people he’s quoting as his sources, and those sources are saying they never talked to him.

  “I’ve got confirmation that the medical examiner quoted in the article Friday morning was in a court deposition and not available by phone. Connor has two people quoted in Thursday’s article who were driving back from Florida and insist that they took no calls, let alone talked to a reporter named Sykes. There are four factual items mentioned in the articles we can’t source to reports filed in-house. They are mentioned in private notes filed direct to the deputy chief, and no one accesses his office and his safe but him. So in my opinion the answer is yes, this reporter is trying to make his jump from local daily to national newspaper, and he’s doing it with the help of the killer passing him information.”

  “What are we thinking? Phone calls? Meetings? How’s the information getting passed?”

  “With any other reporter I would say it would have to be anonymous phone calls or faxes coming in that the reporter is exploiting for these articles, but with Sykes—I wouldn’t put it past the guy to be doing middle-of-the-night, dark-garage meetings with the killer himself. I type him as liking the drama of that kind of danger; Sykes is aggressive, fidgety, everywhere we turn, and wants attention on how great a reporter he is.”

  “Sykes was the first to go after Henry’s affair and repeat the Amy murder story in any depth,” Connor added, “and both sounded slanted and sordid in the telling. Marie was really hot about that first one, I remember. So Sykes has enough information on this family to wonder where it all is coming from in such a short research time frame. I put him as having had more than a few conversations with whoever killed the chauffeur and bookkeeper and went after Marie. Does he know he’s talking to the killer? At this point you have to believe he does.”

  “What about the story on the street shooting?” Luke asked. “I can buy him talking to our knife killer, but what about the shooting? He knew details on it faster than anyone else did. I’d love to be able to explain that.”

  Marsh chewed on his coffee stirrer and nodded. “Sam. He said his place got ruffled and speculated it was our New York guy looking for a lead on Amy as he had done before.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where else would you go looking for information if you really wanted to be comprehensive about it and had money to spend?”

  “The streets, you’d buy it.”

  Marsh nodded. “And offer some of that cash to the reporters working the stories. Our New York shooter arrives in town, spreads a little money around, says he’s with a national paper and will pay for a tip and a lead and maybe help with a reference down the line as a thanks for the help, and we’ve suddenly got Sykes calling the shooter when he gets a rumor on where the sisters are going to be, or where they have been and who they have been with. Sykes is probably getting paid to hand over an early copy of his articles before they show up in print the next morning.”

  Luke saw Connor beginning to nod. “Yeah, Sykes would be jumping on that kind of opportunity. Cash and a foot in the door to a national paper—he’d cooperate with a guy that he didn’t see as local competition. Info he had in exchange for cash and maybe info the shooter thought worth passing back to him.”

  “We need more guys tailing Sykes,” Marsh repeated. “And I don’t care how tough that wiretap warrant is to get; we need it.”

  Luke agreed. “Give me your raw notes on everything that can serve as ammunition; then get enough guys together and build me a 24-7 surveillance plan on Sykes. Even if we can’t get the warrant I want to know and have photos of everyone the guy even shares a hello with during the next week.”

  “The newspaper office will be a problem.”

  “I’ll have an undercover sitting a desk away from Sykes by this time tomorrow. We’ll know who he sees and who he talks to.”

  “How?”

  “Call it a chief’s persuasion. And the fact the editor in chief owes me a favor the size of this state and has for over a decade. I’d say it’s time to make that account square.” Luke liked the thought of calling in that marker, and it would serve a double purpose this time.

  He looked at Connor, then Marsh. “I came bearing news of my own. We may have an inside way to get us the identity of Henry’s son.” Luke repeated what the district attorney had passed on. “Once he’s identified, if we can connect him to having talked to Sykes, the case for a search warrant gets a lot stronger.”

  “I don’t think he got rid of the knife,” Marsh remarked, “not when he took the trouble to bring it to both scenes. That knife means something to him for some reason for him to have held on to it after that tip broke off and to have chosen it for the crimes. We’ll get enough for the search warrant, and we’ll find the knife.”

  “I want in on that interview, Chief,” Connor requested.

  Luke looked at Marsh.

  “Yes.”

  Luke nodded. “Your lead on the cas
e, it’s your interview if you want it. But if he’s quick to lawyer up you’re going to be facing a dry well to sort back through and prove he was the one doing the killings.”

  “If he lawyers up rather than confesses, we’ll still make the case. There will be some trace of him at the scenes. The sweat stains they haven’t identified from the bathrooms, a couple of the unidentified trace hair fibers. You can’t swing a knife like he did for that long and not leave a trace of yourself behind.”

  Luke looked at the clock. “Noon tomorrow. It may be a long day once we have news, so get some sleep today. That’s an order.”

  Connor smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  Marsh just nodded, but Luke would take it as a promise. “Good job tracking this back. Get me the raw notes, and I’ll push for the wiretaps. And I think I’m going to enjoy waking up the editor in chief for this request. Marie will be okay with staying put another day?” he asked Connor, aware plans had been to take Marie to the safe house Nathan had offered as a long-term place for Amy and Marie to stay.

  “She’ll stay at Daniel’s another day. Amy?”

  “She’s with Sam today. He thinks he may have identified the two guys who had been tailing her since Minnesota; they’ve apparently been asking questions about her around town and asking them of people more inclined to call Sam than answer the questions. Sam wanted to get a visual confirmation from Amy before he pays the two men a visit.”

  “Who are they?”

  “A couple guys from New York who were around during the days Greg was working for Richard Wise. They’ll be after the cash, I’m guessing.”

  “Any idea how they got onto Amy’s location in Minnesota?”

  “None, and I doubt Sam asks when he walks up to their table at a restaurant and suggests this town is a dangerous place for them to remain.”

  “That’s not going to eliminate the trouble they represent. They’ll be back.”

  “Once Sam has their faces and names confirmed, it won’t matter. They won’t be able to go anywhere in this town without Sam knowing about it, and that kind of pressure will end their search for Amy.”