He worried so much about her. But then, she gave him good reason.
“Stay home today, please? I’ve got the day off, and I’ve cleared my weekend. I don’t think you should be putting yourself out there, not after this. Your partner agreed. He said he’d talk to the captain, that he’d understand if you missed the interview this morning. Let him take care of it for you.”
A noise of disbelief escaped her lips. She turned her head, met his eyes dead-on, and said, “It’s not up to either of you, though, is it?”
“Jo, I’m afraid for you, and I just—”
She put her fingers over his lips to silence him. She didn’t want to argue.
“I can’t lay low,” she said. “Please understand.” She knew where his concern was coming from. She wasn’t exactly feeling as cool as a cucumber, but she wasn’t backing off this case. She wasn’t going to abandon Jenny.
He glanced away with a sigh, and she touched his cheek, drawing his gaze back.
“If someone’s dogging me, at least now I know it, and I’ll watch my step. I promise. You can stay here until we get this guy, if that makes you feel better, but let me do what I have to do. And I have to do this, Adam.”
He gave a hesitant nod. “I know.”
He took her hand and turned it palm up, pressing his lips firmly into its curve, nose caught against her thumb, causing her heart to leap. She nearly gave in, told him she’d stay with him, that she’d forget about Jenny Dielman just for today.
But she couldn’t do it.
“I want to be there for the interview with the potential witness from the Warehouse Club parking lot, and I have to be at the funeral later. Jenny’s sister’s coming in, and she’s bringing something Jenny sent her.”
“What?”
“Some things of Finn’s from the night he died.”
“Oh, man.” He lowered her hand in his, holding it tight against his thigh, and he raised his chin, looking at her with an expression so full of concern, it made her chest ache.
She knew she wasn’t easy to love, but somehow he did. It was clear in his eyes. She rubbed a thumb over his lips.
“I’m not sure what to do with you,” he said, a catch in his voice that tore at her soul.
“Be patient,” she asked, as if she hadn’t asked a thousand times before. “Let me figure things out. I have to be who I am.”
“I know who you are, Jo.”
She saw his earnest expression and believed that he meant it. She wanted to believe, too, that he’d love her still when he knew everything about her. All the pieces she’d hidden.
She left his arms to take a shower with promises he’d put on some coffee. The hot spray on her face didn’t quite make up for the lack of sleep, but she felt better afterward, better still when she’d dressed and pulled her holster snug against her hip and snapped in her sidearm.
She humored him by chewing on a piece of toast and swallowing a few gulps of caffeine before she donned her coat and picked up her keys, which Adam promptly took from her hand.
“I’ll drive you,” he said, in a way that made her not want to fight him.
“So now you’re my chauffeur?”
He gave her a flicker of a smile as he pulled his coat over the rumpled T-shirt and jeans he’d slept in. “I’m off today, remember? I’ve got nothing to do but shuttle you around.”
“You could find me another mailbox.”
He cocked his head. “Anything else?”
She thought of Kimberly Parker and the package she’d be bringing, and she said, “How about meeting me at Grace Church at, say, quarter to one? I might need your help with something.”
He didn’t say a word, so Jo didn’t complain when he walked her out to his SUV and opened the door for her, helping her in and all but fastening her seat belt.
By the time Adam dropped her off at the station house, Hank was there. And from the looks she got as she buzzed through the door and past Dispatch, word had gotten around about the dead crow found stuffed in her mailbox.
Her partner shoved a cell phone in her hand as soon as he saw her. “It’s my wife’s,” he said. “Just take it until you’re issued a new one.”
Jo hadn’t even had time to fill out the paperwork on the phone she’d fatally maimed in the cold quarry waters. She thanked him, and he nodded.
They said no more about it.
Jo went with Hank into their captain’s office, and after reassuring Cap that she was fine, they sat and waited for the witness who reportedly saw Jenny in the Warehouse Club parking lot sometime around 5:30 p.m. on Monday night.
The woman was a sixty-five-year-old widow named Hannah Sykes who ran a day care center in Plainfield. She’d called the tip line yesterday, and Captain Morris had sent officers to pick her up and bring her in.
“She looks credible,” he’d assured them, tapping broad knuckles against a file. “She’s got a current license to run her business, not a single complaint against her, and no rap sheet. She taught junior high school for twenty years, God bless her, and she didn’t strangle a single kid.”
“She’s a regular Mother Teresa,” Hank quipped.
“Let’s just hope she has twenty-twenty vision.” Jo was too nervous to joke with them, too anxious to smile.
After a strained fifteen minutes, Mrs. Sykes appeared in the captain’s office, settled into a chair, and declined an offer of coffee.
Jo couldn’t sit still, so she stood, her arms crossed, watching the woman shrug out of an aqua-colored car coat with Hank’s assistance.
With a broad drawl, Sykes dealt him a “thank you, darlin’,” as he hung it on a rack near the door. She smiled fleetingly, patting at gray hair cropped close to her skull. She looked around, her eyes large behind red glasses that perched on a slightly beaked nose. Grooves creased her face, and skin sagged at her jawline, but she looked trim and fit in purple sweater and matching pants.
The captain had finished his “we appreciate your coming in” speech by the time Jo finished visually appraising Hannah Sykes. “We’ll have you work with our FACES artist—that’s a computer sketch artist, ma’am—and take a formal statement from you when you’re done here, if that’s all right.”
“Just so long as I’m back at the center by noon,” she said. “That’s when we do lunch for the kiddos and sing along with Barney after cookies.”
“We’ll do our best,” Cap assured her as Hank positioned a chair beside Mrs. Sykes. “Can you tell us what you saw, ma’am?”
Mrs. Sykes clasped her hands in her lap and tipped up her chin. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told that nice police officer on the telephone. I went to the Warehouse Club on Monday, oh, about five thirty, leaving Earlene waiting for Bobby to get picked up from the center so I could get our supplies for the next month and be home in time for Jeopardy. That’s on at six thirty, if it matters any.”
Jo nodded encouragement as the woman glanced in her direction.
“It was getting dark by then, but the parking lot is brightly lit. I pulled into the first empty spot and looked straight through the windshield as I turned off the car.” Mrs. Sykes nodded. “That’s when I saw her, the woman who went missing, although I didn’t know who she was at the time, not until after I saw her picture on the news and heard the description of her car. But it was her, all right.” She tapped the red rim of her specs. “With these puppies, I can see things sharp as a tack.”
“How far away were you parked from Mrs. Dielman?” the captain asked.
Hannah tugged an earlobe. “Well, now, the spot I pulled into was one row over from where the red car sat. I was pretty far away from the store, but it’s so darned hard to find a space that I’m just relieved when I find one that’s empty.”
Jo toe-tapped the floor, wishing Hannah Sykes would speed things up. Sometimes it seemed folks liked to draw things out, just for the sake of feeling important. Here was a widowed ex-teacher who changed diapers and sang Barney songs all the livelong day, so she probably relished having t
he attention of three adults who weren’t finger painting and didn’t need a chaperone to the potty.
“Ten yards, would you say?” Hank suggested, and the woman looked at him thoughtfully.
“I was close enough to see that her coat was dark and her purse was brown. And she was carrying a big shopping bag.” The woman raised her chin, making the tendons in her neck turn ropey. “My car was facing another car, and hers was in the next lane over, but I was getting out of mine and locking up. So I was standing, and there wasn’t anything in my way. I saw her talking to a skinny fella. They were on the passenger side of the red car. She was about to put her bag in, only he came out of nowhere and set a hand on her arm, so she stopped what she was doing and faced him. Then they started talking.”
“Talking or arguing?” Jo asked.
“No one looked mad, if that’s what y’all mean.”
Something didn’t feel right, but Jo wasn’t sure what it was. “Are you certain it was a man?”
“Fairly certain . . .” She paused and continued with less confidence. “Though it’s hard to tell sometimes these days, isn’t it? There are so many young fellas with long hair and earrings and gals with crew cuts who look like boys.” She squinted through her specs. “He was at least half a head taller than Mrs. Dielman.”
Jenny had been five-foot-five. Half a head would make their suspect closer to six feet. That would fit with the distance the driver’s seat was pushed back in the Nissan.
“What else did you notice about him?”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Sykes hesitated. “Well, he was wearin’ a long, tan coat that covered him down to his shins. He wore a hat, too, the kind with flaps over the ears, which I thought was kinda odd, but folks around these parts are so thin-skinned when it starts getting cold. He might’ve had a scarf wrapped around his neck. I couldn’t see down as far as his shoes.”
“Did you see his face?”
Mrs. Sykes deflated, chin sinking. “No, hon, and I wish I had now that I know what happened. I mostly just saw the back of him, maybe a little from the side.”
“Do you think you could recognize him again?”
The woman sighed. “If he was dressed the same as that, with the coat and hat, maybe I could. Otherwise, I’m not so sure.”
Jo glanced at her partner. She couldn’t even look at Cap.
They weren’t going to get much of a composite out of this woman, and any description they issued from her statement would sound so vague, it could be almost anyone.
Damn.
“Another question, Mrs. Sykes, if you would,” Hank said, giving Jo a rest. “What happened after this man approached Mrs. Dielman?”
“They talked for maybe a minute. Then they got in the car and drove off.”
“Did he force her into the vehicle?”
Owlish eyes blinked behind red rims. “Well, I can tell you this. Nobody pulled a gun, and nobody twisted any arms as far as I could make out.”
“Was the man wearing gloves, Mrs. Sykes?”
“I don’t rightly recall.” The woman pursed her lips. “Well, now that I think about it, when he reached for her arm, I saw brown. So it must’ve been gloves, unless he was dark-skinned.”
Jo struggled to keep from throwing up her hands. The woman seemed so eager to please, so happy to oblige that her descriptions got vaguer by the minute.
“Who was driving the car? Do you remember that?” Hank asked, and Mrs. Sykes turned to him and smiled.
“Now that I do remember, clear as day. It was the gal, the one who disappeared. The fella with the hat was in the passenger seat.” Mrs. Sykes frowned. “He’s the one who killed her, isn’t he?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Hank said and patted her hand.
Jenny was driving?
Jo wanted to shake her head and tell them, “No, that can’t be right.”
Because the driver’s seat in the Nissan had been adjusted to accommodate someone who was nearly six feet tall, the size of the stranger Mrs. Sykes just described. So Jenny couldn’t have been driving, unless the pit-stop theory was no theory. Jenny and her abductor had stopped somewhere between the Warehouse Club and the abandoned quarry.
But where? And why?
At least one thing was apparent: Jenny and this man from the parking lot had gone to an unknown location, at which point Jenny must have shed her coat and had her hands bound with duct tape.
But why had Jenny given a lift to this person in the first place?
Jo rubbed the back of her neck, her thoughts spinning.
“Do you recall exactly where the victim’s vehicle was parked, ma’am?” Hank pressed. “If we took you over to the lot, could you point it out?”
“You know, Officer, I’m not sure I could. It was so crowded that day, and I remember drivin’ in circles until I found the empty spot. I was parked between a pretty sports car and a shiny Mercedes, and that’s all I made a point to recall so I could find my car when I left the store. It was a far piece back. That I do know.”
“With the rain we’ve had since Monday, it might not matter a whole lot,” Cap commented.
“Scene’s been compromised already, what with all the vehicles that have parked there since,” Hank agreed.
Jo blocked out their voices, listened only to what her head was telling her about the slender man dressed in a long coat and wearing brown gloves. That sounded a lot like a doctor she knew, one who hunted and skied and probably owned a winter hat with earflaps, and who happened to be doing emergency surgery at the time his ex-wife disappeared.
Jo called Presbyterian Hospital and was put through to Inpatient Surgery.
That was the easy part.
A nurse named Jackie stuck her on hold for a good fifteen minutes while she checked Monday’s schedule and talked to a member of Dr. Harrison’s surgical team who’d assisted on the emergency gallbladder removal.
When she got back on the line, the nurse not only confirmed that Harrison was in surgery for two hours beginning at five, doing the cholecystectomy with associated abdominal hernia repair, but Jackie herself recalled seeing Harrison checking on his patient while the man was in post-op, well after the surgery, sometime after seven o’clock. As if that weren’t enough, the nurse noted that the good doctor had personally entered post-surgical medications for his patient into the hospital system, which had logged the time as 8:05 p.m.
Okay, so maybe Harrison had set up an airtight alibi, smart guy that he was, figuring he’d likely become a person of interest in the investigation. Maybe he had someone else intercept Jenny in the Warehouse Club lot, beg a ride from her, and lead her to some preordained spot where she’d be held until Harrison was free.
“They talked for maybe a minute. Then they got in the car and drove off. . . . Nobody pulled a gun, and nobody twisted any arms as far as I could make out.”
What if Harrison’s accomplice was someone Jenny knew from their married days, someone from the hospital or a hunting buddy without a conscience who owed him a favor? Thinking about it was enough to give Jo a migraine.
She called Bistro 31 and spoke to the maître d’, who knew Dr. and Mrs. Harrison well. “They eat in sometimes, or they’ll order ahead, and Dr. Harrison picks the food up on his way home.” He confirmed that the couple had a reservation for nine o’clock on Monday evening. “I remember that Mr. Davis”—Alana’s father—“arrived first, perhaps a few minutes early, but the Harrisons came in about fifteen minutes later. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Wanted to hear?
Hell, no.
Harrison was at the hospital until 8:05 p.m. Factoring in the trip from Presbyterian to his house, a shower, and change of clothes, then the drive over to Bistro 31, it would have been a tight fit for Jenny’s ex to get out to the quarry and back again before dinner.
Too tight.
Still, Jo knew Harrison was somehow connected to the case. She felt certain Jenny’s disappearance and death had something to do with what had happened to Finn. Ha
rrison was a surgeon. He was careful and precise, a perfectionist, someone who didn’t screw up.
Too bad, because it would have helped if he’d shown up at the restaurant with blood on his coat, wearing an idiotic hat with earflaps and leather gloves, and yelled to the crowded room, “Sorry I’m late, but I just came from the old limestone quarry, where I put a bullet in my ex-wife’s skull.”
Jo chewed on the cap of her pen, wishing she could force pieces together that didn’t fit. But no such luck. After a few minutes of throwing her own private pity party, she looked up a number online, then picked up the phone and dialed.
“Jacob Davis Properties,” a voice chirped.
She asked for Alana Harrison’s secretary.
After a “Hold, please” and a few clicks, she reached Alana’s assistant, whose friendly twang didn’t sound quite so solicitous once Jo explained who she was and asked where Alana Harrison was between five and nine o’clock on Monday evening.
The woman harrumphed, telling her theirs was a very busy office and that Alana Harrison’s schedule was always swamped like the Everglades. So couldn’t this wait?
Jo reminded her that this involved an ongoing murder investigation, not an invitation to a charity ball. But that only earned her an impatient sigh and a clipped reply: “All I can tell you is that Alana’s last appointment was around five on Monday. She mentioned checking on some property before dinner with her husband. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Could I possibly speak with Mrs. Harrison?” Jo asked.
The assistant sniffed. “I could put you on hold while I get her on her cell. But she’s off today. She doesn’t even have any showings scheduled, so it could take a while to track her down.”
Jo had a bad feeling Alana’s assistant would put her on hold indefinitely, what with the snooty attitude. She started to say, “I’ll try again later, thanks,” but didn’t even finish before she realized she was talking to dead air. “Bitch,” she said into the phone before she hung up.
“You about ready?”
Hank rested his hands on her desk and leaned over, doing his best impression of superglue. He’d barely left her side all morning and had offered her a ride when she mentioned wanting to see Patrick Dielman before the funeral. She needed a picture from Jenny’s photo album, the one of Finn’s tree house. Okay, and she had one other objective as well, but she hadn’t told Hank. He’d think she’d gone soft, God forbid.
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