“And?” She went cold inside. Her stomach flipped, then sank. She knew exactly what he was going to say and why he was there.
“You want to tell me the last time you fired that gun, or are you going to wait until I tell you what I found on the sleeves of the sweatshirt you gave us?”
Amanda sighed. She’d forgotten. Completely forgotten . . .
“I was at the range two Mondays ago. You can check with the gun club. They’ll confirm that. You have to sign in—”
“What kind of a gun do you have?”
“A .38. Everyone in the county knows about it. I’m surprised you don’t.” Her hands were on her hips now, defiant. Derek had been killed with a bullet fired from a .38. Everyone in the county knew that, too. “I wrote all about learning to shoot the damned thing for the County Express back in March.”
“Where’s your gun now?”
“It’s in the drawer in the table next to my bed.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you for it.”
Amanda sighed. “I can make you get a warrant, can’t I?”
“Sure. But what would that do besides delay the investigation? If the bullet that killed your partner wasn’t fired from that gun, we’ll be able to confirm that right away. Like you said before, the sooner we eliminate you, the sooner the investigation can move ahead. I’d think you’d want to clear that up as soon as possible. I mean, with the finding of the GSR on your sweatshirt . . .”
“I wore the shirt to the range two weeks ago. I didn’t happen to wash it between wearings, so I imagine there would be residue on the sleeves.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”
“Because I wasn’t thinking . . . I wasn’t thinking about having shot off my handgun at the range as having to have anything to do, however remote, with Derek being killed.”
“You knew though that he’d been shot with a .38?”
“Of course I did. It was on the news. But he wasn’t shot with my .38.”
“Let’s prove it.”
They stared at each other. She was the first to blink.
“All right. Evan will scream bloody murder when I tell him I did this, but you’re right. You can prove that Derek wasn’t killed by my gun.” She started toward the front steps.
She was almost to the front door when she saw it.
She stopped abruptly and uttered a quiet little, “Oh.”
Mercer followed her gaze to the porch. On the decking, just outside the door, lay a long-stemmed red rose.
“Looks like someone left a token of their sympathy,” he said.
Amanda’s face had drained of color and her eyes had grown wary.
“Ms. Crosby? Are you all right?” He touched her arm, and she recoiled as if she’d been burned.
He went up to the door and picked up the rose. “There’s no card.”
“There never is.” She remained on the step.
“There have been others?”
She nodded.
“Any idea who they’re from?”
She shook her head.
He held the rose out to her, but knew she’d decline to take it.
She shook her head a second time, then walked past him and unlocked the front door with a key she’d withdrawn from her back pocket.
“Nice house,” he said as she closed the door behind them.
“You’ve seen it before. You were here before.”
“Yes, but things were a little hectic then. We’d just found your partner that morning, we were trying to get statements—”
“So what you’re saying is that in all the confusion, you failed to notice how nice my house is.” Before he could respond, she added, “So maybe you can understand how, in the midst of that same confusion—and considering that it was my partner and best friend who had been murdered—I forgot to mention that I do own a gun, and that I’d fired it the day before. It just never occurred to me, since it wasn’t used to kill Derek.”
“Ruling out your gun as the murder weapon will certainly go a long way to prove that, since there is that matter of gunshot residue on the sweatshirt you were—by your own admission—wearing on the night Mr. England was killed.”
“Because I’d worn it to the firing range.” Her jaw was clenched. “And I can prove that. There’s a video camera set up on the range. Check it out and you’ll see exactly what I was wearing.”
“Thanks. I’ll do just that.”
Muttering under her breath, she turned and marched up the stairs to the second floor. She stopped midway up and looked down at him over one shoulder.
“You tested my hands and arms as well. What were the results of those tests?”
“They were clean. No residue.”
“I could have told you that.” She made no effort to hide the touch of smugness as she continued up the steps.
She held the gun out to him handle first, as she came back down a moment later.
“Here. It’s not loaded. But you were taking quite a chance, weren’t you? I mean, how did you know I wouldn’t come back down, gun blazing?”
“My very obvious error.” She would have expected him to look a bit embarrassed by this oversight, but he did not.
“I’ll get you a plastic bag from the kitchen so that you don’t even have to get your prints on it”—she waved for him to follow her toward the back of the house—“since you obviously didn’t expect to gather any evidence this afternoon.”
He walked behind her down the short hall and into the kitchen.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag into which she unceremoniously deposited the gun. Handing the bag to him, she said, “There you go. In a few days, you’ll know for certain that I am absolutely, positively telling you the truth. I did not kill Derek.”
He accepted the bag and folded over the top. “Thanks,” he told her. “I hope it proves you didn’t.”
“Why, Chief Mercer, I believe you—”
The air between them was split unexpectedly by the harsh ringing of the phone.
She glanced at the wall unit.
“You going to answer that?” he asked.
Amanda hesitated.
The answering machine in the front hall picked up. Even from the kitchen, the sound of heavy breathing was clear and distinct. Her face drained of color as she walked quietly into the hall, listening. Finally, Sean followed, then lifted the receiver and said, “Hello? Who is this?”
The phone immediately went dead.
The caller ID displayed two words. Unknown number.
He hit the buttons for the return call feature.
“The number of your last incoming call is unknown,” the recording announced.
“You get a lot of those?” Mercer asked.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“When did they start?”
“A few days before Derek was killed.”
“Any thoughts on who the caller could be?”
“No. I called the phone company and they said they couldn’t trace the calls. That they were most likely being made from a cell phone using a phone card.”
“Did it occur to you to report this to the police?”
“No, frankly, it did not.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve made it clear that I’m your number one suspect in Derek’s death. How seriously would you take me? Besides, the last time—” She stopped in midsentence.
“The last time?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on, Chief.” She ran an agitated hand through her short spiky dark hair. “You’ve been here long enough to have heard the story about how I was stalked and attacked. An attack which was followed by your predecessor’s being fired, as I’m sure you know.”
She turned on her heel and went back into the kitchen, where she ran water in the sink and filled a glass, which she drank down.
“I did know that you had been attacked, but I wasn’t familiar with all the details. Since it was a closed case, I di
dn’t look at the file. This is how it started, with heavy-breathing hang-ups?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back against the counter. “The man who attacked you went to prison.”
“He’s still there.”
“Do you think it’s him making the calls?”
“Not a chance. He’s been ordered to have no contact with me. Ever. Even a phone call to me will cost him more time.”
“That’s no guarantee that he isn’t making the calls.”
“No, but the timing is wrong. The calls come at all hours of the day and night. Inmates don’t have such free access to phones. I admit that I’ve been thinking about calling the district attorney about it, but I just haven’t gotten to it, with all . . . everything . . . Derek . . .” She shook her head.
“I’ll look into it tomorrow.”
“I said I’d do it.”
“A phone call from you will not have the same effect as me showing up in the warden’s office first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Of course I do. It’s part of the investigation.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Someone killed your partner. Now someone appears to be harassing you. Coincidence?”
Amanda frowned. “That wouldn’t make any sense.” She shook her head. “There isn’t any reason.”
“No reason that you can see. Maybe someone sees something you don’t.”
“Are you still thinking there could be some connection to the goblet?”
“There could be. Maybe someone’s figured out that it went directly to you.” He picked up the gun that he’d earlier placed on the counter. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
She shook her head.
He nodded at the rose he’d left on the table. “Most women love to get roses. You went white when you saw that on the porch. Any particular reason why?”
“Archer Lowell—the man in prison for stalking me last year—used to leave red roses in that same spot near my front door.”
“And now someone else is doing the same thing? And you didn’t think it was important enough to report?”
“I found the first one the day after Derek was killed. One every day since. At first I thought that maybe a neighbor had left them. As you said, an expression of sympathy.”
“Where are the others?”
“I stuffed them down the garbage disposal.”
“Even though you thought they were innocent gifts from a neighbor?”
“Since . . . since before, I can’t stand to see or smell them. Regardless of where they come from, or from whom, or the sentiment intended.”
He looked around the room, then, locating the roll of paper towels that hung from the end of the counter, tore off a sheet and wet it at the faucet before wrapping the stem in the damp paper. “I’ll take this with me, since you don’t want it.”
“Fine.” She shrugged her indifference.
“Well, anything else I should know? Anything else you didn’t bother to report?”
“No. Just the calls and the roses.”
“I’ll get back to you when the tests on the gun are complete. In the meantime, I want you to tell me if you get any more calls or roses, or if anything else happens that might seem out of the ordinary. Anything that doesn’t feel right, anything that makes you the least bit uncomfortable, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem at the time. Deal?”
“All right.”
He nodded and walked toward the front of the house.
Amanda saw him out. She stood on the top step, watching his long form move down the walk. He paused midway, turned, and said, “I almost forgot. Earlier, when I asked you why you didn’t report the calls, you started to say something about the last time, but never finished. What were you going to say about the last time?”
“The last time, I did report the calls.” She crossed her arms. “I was told everyone got hang-up calls, that it was probably nothing more than someone dialing the wrong number.”
“And the roses? You reported those?”
“Of course. But Chief Anderson told me that I was a lucky girl. That most women would love to have a secret admirer sending her flowers every day.”
He visibly winced. He’d made a similar remark earlier.
“I’m sorry. That I wasn’t any more . . .” He appeared to be searching for the right word.
“Sensitive?” she offered sarcastically. “Informed?”
“Both. I’m sorry,” he repeated, and without waiting for her reply, proceeded down the path to his car.
As he drove away from Amanda Crosby’s house, Mercer’s eyes kept returning to his side view mirror, in which he could see that she still remained on the steps, even as he reached the stop sign at the end of her street. He wondered, after he’d made his turn, how long she stayed there.
He made two stops on his way home. One was at the station, where he immediately tagged and bagged the gun. The second was at the neighborhood convenience store, where he ordered a take-out sandwich. While the young man behind the deli counter made his ham and cheese, Sean strolled around the store, picking up a bag of chips and a plastic container of iced tea. On his way back to the counter, he passed a circular bin filled with flowers.
3 FOR $5, a handwritten sign announced.
“You sell a lot of those?” he asked the woman at the register.
“Sure.”
“You ever have roses?”
“Sometimes we get a few in. It depends on what the distributor has on his truck that day.” She began to ring up his purchases. “But you want roses, the supermarkets usually have those.”
“Which supermarkets?”
“All of them. They sell them by the stem or by the dozen. Nice to be able to stop and pick up something for dinner, grab a pretty something for the table at the same time.” She smiled at him. “The regular flowers are nice, but a rose really makes a statement, you know?”
He nodded and handed her a ten. While he waited for his change, he wondered what kind of a statement was being sent to Amanda. He was pretty certain it couldn’t be anything good.
It was almost ten when Sean closed Amanda Crosby’s file. He’d known that the mishandling of her case had led to the removal of the previous chief of police nearly a year ago, but he’d been unaware of all the facts, as had been painfully apparent earlier that day. He’d not known that the stalking had continued for a full six weeks before culminating in an attack that had left Amanda facially scarred. He’d noted the L-shaped mark on the upper part of her cheek near her left eye. According to the report, the cut had been made by a ring worn by her attacker. After witnessing her reaction to the hang-up calls, Sean was well aware that she’d been left with more than a physical scar.
He tried hard to push the image of her from his mind. Sweaty in shorts and that little top, her tanned, muscled arms and legs, her feet in bright yellow flip-flops.
She had pretty feet, he’d thought at the time. Long and slender, the toenails painted a deep burgundy red . . .
Don’t go there. She’s a suspect in a homicide investigation. Doesn’t get much more taboo than that. Don’t even think about it.
Work. Focus on the work.
Right.
Focus on the work . . .
He couldn’t believe that the reports she’d given to the police back then had been dismissed so easily. The stalker’s pattern had all the signs of classic erotomania.
According to the file, Archer Lowell, age nineteen, was a truck driver for a nearby auction house and had delivered purchases to Amanda’s shop on several occasions. Over the course of a year, he’d come under the delusion that Amanda was in love with him, though she’d testified in her sworn statement that she’d never given him any reason to believe that the kindness she’d shown to him was anything other than that. Simple kindness. She’d given water to him—and to the others on the truck—on hot days when they’d dropped off those items she or Derek had
bought at auction the night before. Yes, she always greeted him—and the others—by name. No, she never treated him any differently than she treated any of the deliverymen. No, she never knowingly encouraged him.
Yet Lowell believed she was in love with him. That they were meant to be together, always, through all time. That she was the single most important thing in his life. That he was the most important thing in hers.
It was a case right out of a textbook. How could the signs have been missed by anyone who’d been paying attention?
Sean stood up and stretched, then went into the kitchen for a snack. He scanned the top shelf of his refrigerator. Half a tomato, half a six-pack of Coors, half an orange. He grabbed a beer and made a mental note to try to find time to hit the grocery store tomorrow. Well, he’d been planning on checking out the selection of roses. Maybe he’d do a quick shop while he was at it, save a few steps. He slammed the refrigerator door and went back to the living room.
He eased back into his chair, an old dark brown leather number he’d bought at a secondhand store for his first apartment, and put his feet up on the ottoman. They were the only pieces of furniture he’d brought with him when he moved to Broeder. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes, rejoicing in the silence. No television, no radio. Just—silence. He wanted it to settle around him and linger for a moment or two while he cleared his mind of everything that clamored for his attention. Just for a few minutes, he wanted to be a blank slate. That’s how he’d taught himself to picture his mind anytime he felt headed for an information overload. The skill had come in handy over the years.
He took a few deep breaths and opened his eyes, ready to go back into the Crosby file, when the phone rang.
“Mercer,” he answered.
“Did you see her? Did you meet with her?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Sean said truthfully.
“Did she show you the photos?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Didn’t you recognize anyone?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about the surroundings, then? Didn’t any of it look familiar?”
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