Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  “He had a gun.”

  “That’s usually where bullets come from, Sparrow,” Hamilton said, but Rowe had stopped listening.

  Sloane wiped the ink from each of his fingertips with an alcohol swab.

  “You mind if I ask you a few more questions?” Rowe had sat through the fingerprinting process. Sloane didn’t think he was being friendly.

  “The newspaper seems to think I’m a suspect, Detective.”

  “They didn’t get that from me or anyone in this unit.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  Rowe folded his arms across his chest. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Sloane. I’m not going to bullshit you; you can figure it out. You were in Barclay Reid’s home and had access to her gun the morning before Vasiliev was shot. The gun is missing. Vasiliev threatened you and your family.”

  Sloane continued to wipe off the ink. “Sounds like I’m a suspect.”

  “So help me clear it up.”

  “I thought I did last night.”

  “A neighbor says she saw you out early that morning, between three-thirty and four A.M.” The paper had not reported the time Vasiliev had been shot. “You said you were home in bed that night,” Rowe said.

  “I was.”

  “So that wasn’t you?”

  “I went to bed that night close to midnight and woke up early and went for a run.”

  “So she did see you.”

  “I don’t know if she saw me or not. But yeah, I went running that morning.”

  “You always run that early?”

  Sloane tossed the alcohol wipe in the wastebasket. “Since my wife’s murder, I get insomnia. I either can’t fall asleep, or I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep. So I went for a run.”

  “Do you always drive to go for a run? She said she saw you getting out of your car.”

  “You’ve been to my house. I’m not in any shape at present to run up those hills. I drive up the hill to the middle school and run around the track or the flat area.” Sloane was eager to leave. “Anything else?”

  “You told me last night you don’t own a gun.”

  Sloane’s mind raced. “I don’t own a gun.”

  “Have you ever owned a gun?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  Rowe reached behind his back and handed Sloane a document folded lengthwise that he’d had in his back pocket. Sloane considered it as Rowe continued. “You gave a statement in the hospital after you were shot.”

  Sloane’s eyes scanned the statement and came to the sentence as Rowe spoke.

  “You said you couldn’t get to the gun in your desk drawer that night. So I’m wondering . . . if you’ve never owned a gun . . . what gun were you referring to?” Rowe leveled his gaze. “And where is it now?”

  CAMANO ISLAND

  WASHINGTON

  Charles Jenkins called out as he walked in the back door. “Alex?” The kitchen smelled like sausage.

  “I’m in the study,” Alex replied.

  She sat with her hands on the keyboard. She had the stereo on low, listening to the Shania Twain CD he’d bought for her. As he walked in, Sam rose from her slumber long enough to bark. Max, his pit bull, didn’t even bother to raise his head from his paws, looking at Jenkins with an arched brow.

  “Nice watchdogs,” Jenkins said.

  He had intended the room at the back of the house to be his “man cave” when they rebuilt following the fire, a place where he could retreat and watch television, maybe smoke a cigar. That explained the wood paneling, the dark-colored furniture, and the forty-two-inch flat-screen on the wall. But the mess on the desk belonged to Alex, who used the room as her office.

  “So what happened?”

  Jenkins had rushed from the house upon learning that Vasiliev’s killer had used a .38 and spoke to her only briefly on the phone to tell her he’d spend the night at Sloane’s, promising to fill her in when he got home.

  “He went in to get fingerprinted. I told him I’d call later today.” Jenkins picked up the mug from the desk, the tea lukewarm.

  She manipulated her black curls into a ponytail. “They can’t really be considering him as a suspect.”

  “They can and they are.”

  She had the sliding-glass door to the deck open to allow fresh air. Jenkins walked out onto the deck, the dogs following. The view looked like something painted on a canvas. A blue, cloudless sky hung over two Appaloosas grazing on a field of yellow-brown grass that stretched across their acreage to the adjacent dairy farm’s rolling green hills.

  She joined him. He handed her back the empty mug. “Where’s CJ?”

  “Preschool. And don’t change the subject. What’s wrong?” Her eyes narrowed in question. “You’re worried.”

  “Of course I’m worried. He’s my best friend.”

  But she knew him better than that. “Don’t dismiss me. You’re not worried about the police . . . about the investigation. You think he could have done it. Is that why you told me to try to get in touch with John?”

  Jenkins had asked her to call Sloane’s law partner, John Kannin, who had criminal law experience but remained on vacation somewhere in the Amazon. “Did you?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  The Appaloosas raised their heads in unison, turning to the barking of the neighbor’s dog. Sam waggled out onto the porch to consider it. Max had closed his eyes.

  “I think he’s been through a lot,” Jenkins said. “An awful lot.”

  “He wouldn’t do it,” Alex said.

  Jenkins knew otherwise. In Vietnam, he’d seen good men break from the stress and anxiety—shoot women and children—men who would not have deliberately stepped on a bug when they first arrived in-country. And he’d been there the night Sloane had nearly blinded Anthony Stenopolis with a fire poker. He’d seen the rage.

  I’m tired, Charlie. I’m tired of people threatening me, threatening my family.

  “Every man has his breaking point,” he said. “Every man has that potential.”

  “What are the police saying?”

  “Nothing directly, but between the lines, they’re saying someone shot Vasiliev in the back of the head with a thirty-eight.” Jenkins removed the Glock from his pocket and clicked free the clip, putting both on the deck railing. He knew what she was thinking, that if they ran a ballistics test, it could rule out the gun.

  “I couldn’t take the chance,” he said. “I don’t think it’s been recently fired, but . . . Barclay owns a thirty-eight Smith and Wesson. It’s missing. David had access to it that morning.”

  She gave this some thought. “Okay, but you said Vasiliev didn’t threaten him until later that day, after he left her house.”

  “Maybe the threat wasn’t the motivation.” Jenkins had the hour-and-a-half drive to consider it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it’s like he said, Alex. Maybe he’s just tired of people threatening those he loves.”

  “He told you he loves her?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  Alex paused again, seeming to digest the information. “Then why would he take her gun? Why would he put her in that position?”

  Jenkins had also considered that question. “Why would he take on an unwinnable case against the U.S. government? Why would he go after Kendall Toys when he knew it could create problems?” He sat on the bench seat built into the deck. Alex sat beside him. “He asked me if he courted it.”

  “Courted what?”

  “Danger . . . cases that put those he loves in jeopardy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  He glanced at her. “Is it?”

  A cool breeze blew the hair from her face. “What are you saying—that he took her gun so she would need him?”

  “It does add to the confusion, doesn’t it?”

  She shook her head as if not believing it possible, but she had not been there when Jenkins had asked Sloane point-blank if Sloane had killed Vasiliev.

  Did you do
it?

  Do what?

  Did you kill him?

  What are you talking about?

  It was on the news.

  I know.

  I made a call; the bullet was a thirty-eight.

  You have to ask me that question? You were there. I could have blown Stenopolis’s head off.

  Sloane hadn’t answered the question.

  THE JUSTICE CENTER

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Rowe munched a PowerBar as he made his way back to his cubicle. The unit was in full swing, and he could hear the voices of his colleagues on the phone or in conversation. Two were discussing the Mariners game from the night before, when the bullpen fell apart and the Angels came back to win.

  “It was a belt-high fastball . . . I could have hit it out.”

  Rowe wished he had the time. He found Crosswhite at her desk reading, but the tiny shake of her head gave away her mood even before she opened her mouth. It was the shake she gave when she didn’t believe what she was hearing or, in this case, reading. She tossed the document to him. “She passed.”

  “What?”

  The head shake again. “The polygraph. She passed it.”

  His eyes immediately saw the initials ND on the document—“no discernible deception.”

  He rolled his chair closer to her cubicle, sat on the edge of his seat, and handed her the second PowerBar as he continued to go through the report.

  “I talked to Stephanie,” Crosswhite said, meaning the examiner. “She said she’s never had anyone with that low a baseline before. Reid displayed little if any signs of being anxious or nervous.”

  Rowe flipped the pages, looking at the attached charts. He wasn’t great at deciphering them. Most people didn’t take polygraphs anymore. With the Internet and other sources of information, most people had learned they didn’t have to or that the reason polygraphs weren’t admissible was, in part, because the science behind them wasn’t completely accepted. But he understood enough to know the charts should have been filled with peaks and valleys where the pen had scratched across the paper. Reid’s chart looked damn near like an EKG readout of a patient who had flatlined, as straight a line as he had ever seen on the few reports he had read.

  “How does Stephanie explain it?” Rowe asked.

  Crosswhite shrugged. “She can’t.”

  He slumped back against the seat. “What about the fact that Reid’s an attorney?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, we don’t get too many people as educated or with as much experience asking and answering questions. She’s probably been in similar situations—depositions and trials—a hundred times before. She’s used to the stress.”

  “Yeah, except in those situations, she’s the one asking the questions, not hooked to a machine answering them as a suspect in a murder case.”

  “Agreed, but my point is, she’s been in stressful situations before, a lot more than most people. Maybe she’s learned how to control her emotions better; she doesn’t get as worked up.”

  Crosswhite pointed to the report. “That good? I don’t think anyone’s that good, Sparrow. Besides, the test is designed to find the person’s baseline, and that’s what everything is measured against. Even if she were the most cool, calm, and collected person in the world, the test should still register fluctuations.”

  He scratched the side of his face. When he didn’t shave, his skin itched. “So where does this leave us?”

  The tiny shake of the head again. “Either she didn’t do it, or she beat the test.”

  “Stephanie ever have that happen before?” Rowe also knew from the Internet that people had access to a lot of information on how to beat a polygraph by doing things such as altering their breathing patterns, or biting their tongue to induce pain, even putting a tack in their shoe and pressing down on it during certain questions to create a false physiological response. But the examiners had become savvy to these tricks, and the test accounted for them.

  “Not to her.”

  “But she’s heard of it?”

  “She said it’s in the literature. The test depends on the normal human psychology of anticipation and release of tension.”

  “You said ‘normal.’ Who wouldn’t anticipate it, someone abnormal?”

  Crosswhite shrugged. “Sociopaths, apparently.”

  ELEVEN

  BURIEN

  WASHINGTON

  Unable to concentrate at work, Sloane told Carolyn to clear his calendar and went home early. As he drove down SW52nd Street, he saw the sign for the Saint Francis of Assisi School. He thought of the young priest, Father Allen, who he had not seen for a while.

  He turned at Twenty-first Avenue and drove past the brick-and-glass one-story building, parking in front of the rounded steeple.

  With Jake no longer living with him, Sloane had stopped measuring the months by the school year and was surprised when he got out of the car and heard the din of unseen children in the playground behind the buildings. It was the start of a new school year.

  Inside the building, the woman behind the counter advised that Father Allen was out on the playground but Sloane could not join him. She didn’t have to explain further that school rules frowned upon unknown adults wandering the grounds. She told Sloane she could text the priest if it was urgent. The comment made him smile—a priest who texted. What was next, confession via cell phone? Sloane didn’t know what “urgent” was to a priest—maybe someone dying? He told her not to bother. “Just tell him David stopped by to talk?”

  Sloane was slipping on his sunglasses as he walked back to his car when he heard someone shout his name and the sound of leather sandals slapping the sidewalk. Father Allen jogged toward him in his brown Franciscan robe, the knots of the rope tied around his waist bouncing in rhythm with his mop of curly blond hair. In his left hand, he held an iPhone. “Hey, I just got a text that you were here.”

  “I told her not to bother you,” Sloane said, wondering if there was something about the way he looked or sounded that had caused the woman in the office to determine on her own that his visit was urgent.

  “No bother.” Father Allen removed a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe, like a kangaroo’s pouch, and wiped at a trickle of perspiration. “You saved me. Wall ball is not my sport, especially not in sandals.” He stuffed the handkerchief back in the pouch. “How have you been? It’s been awhile.”

  Sloane wasn’t sure how he had been. “You haven’t seen the paper this morning?”

  The priest shook his head, and the mop of hair shimmied. “I saw that the Mariners lost and dropped another game behind the Angels and that my chances of going to a play-off game this year suck at the moment.”

  “This was on the front page. I was on the front page.”

  The school bell rang, loud and long. When the echo faded, Father Allen said, “You want to grab an iced tea or something up the street?”

  It being early afternoon, the crowd in the Tin Room amounted to a couple of men on stools, beer glasses on the bar. A soccer game played on the overhead television. Another man sat at a table finishing a hamburger and fries beneath a vintage photograph of a tinsmith’s tools. Sloane and the priest took a table at the back of the room, but the music was loud—Tom Petty—so they opted for the wooden deck, sitting under the shade of a table umbrella. Allen asked, “So I assume you being on the front page was not good news.”

  It was a long story without any logical beginning. “I’ve been seeing someone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We were both on the front page.”

  “Oh. Well . . . you’ve piqued my curiosity.”

  As Sloane explained his relationship with Barclay, Kelley, who had worked at the Tin Room since it opened, brought their iced-tea orders and a plate of nachos. Allen poured two packs of sweetener into his tea. “How do you feel about this woman?”

  “She’s a lot like Tina—independent, intelligent, athletic, competitive . . . funny.”

  T
he priest sat back. “And you’re physically attracted to her?”

  Sloane said he was.

  “Do you think you could be in love with her?”

  Sloane contemplated an appropriate answer for a priest. Was it too soon to be in love again? Would Allen frown upon their physical relationship, even between two consenting adults? He didn’t know. He knew only that he’d come to view Allen as more of a confidant and friend than a priest.

  “I think so.”

  “You’re uncertain.”

  “Not about her, about . . . With Tina, I thought I’d found a life, you know, something I had wanted, a family. But then it seemed I was always doing something I knew could jeopardize that—the case against Argus International, then Kendall Toys. I guess I’ve had moments when I doubted whether I really loved Tina, or only loved the thought of her and Jake, of being part of a family.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because if I loved her as much as I believed I did . . .”

  “You would not have taken cases that placed them in jeopardy.”

  “I’m wondering if I have a destructive streak. You know, something that makes me do things that could potentially destroy what I think I want . . . that puts me and those I love in harm’s way.”

  Allen contemplated this for a bit. Then he said, “I don’t doubt for a moment that you loved Tina, David, as well as the situation—a family, a husband . . . a father. There’s no reason to separate one from the other. It was part of what you found appealing about her as a person. But tell me something, did your feelings for Barclay begin before or after she found herself in trouble with the law?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Allen just smiled. “You know why; you’re an intelligent person.”

  “You think I’m attracted to women in trouble?”

  “I think you’re attracted to . . . causes, David. I think you’re attracted to people who need you. I think that it’s a manifestation of what you told me happened to your mother, how you felt powerless to help her. You have a weak spot for people in need, for people who turn to you because they have no one or no place to go.”

  “It’s my job, Allen. I’m an attorney. People don’t come to me unless they need me.”