Rutkowski waved him to a seat. Jack felt like a sulky teenager summoned to the principal’s office, especially since Chief Keller half sat on one end of the sergeant’s desk. He appeared relaxed while also keeping a height advantage.
Jack sat, his back to a window with closed blinds that blocked the view into the squad room. He wondered if they were seeing the same death’s head he had in his bathroom mirror a couple of hours ago.
“The chief dropped by to talk about something else, but your investigation into the Ortiz murder came up. You haven’t given me much in the way of updates to pass on,” Rutkowski pointed out. A big, bulky man with the homely face of a former boxer—although Jack had never heard he really had been—the sergeant was currently scowling. Best way to annoy him was to fail to keep him current on an investigation.
Chief Keller’s expression was more curious than irritated, but Jack didn’t know him well enough to guess whether that meant anything or not. Like the sergeant, Keller was a brawny man, any softening in his muscles disguised by well-cut suits. Handsome instead of homely, Keller had silver at his temples and scattered in his dark hair that helped give him a seemingly natural air of authority.
Dodging the necessity of really laying out what he’d learned, Jack still hadn’t figured out what to say, and what to keep to himself. The memories Gabby had shared yesterday left him even unhappier.
Sergeant Roger Rutkowski and Police Chief Dean Keller were close to the age Colleen Ortiz would have been if she were still alive. Rutkowski had graduated from high school here in Leclaire, Keller attending for a couple of years, too, until his parents moved him to a military-style, regimented boarding school back East somewhere. In those days, there’d been only the one high school in town, so Colleen had very likely known or at least recognized either or both of Jack’s bosses. Rutkowski had been raised Catholic, too, although his family had attended Assumption Catholic Church rather than St. Stephen’s. Both men had been patrol officers when Gabby’s mother was killed.
Both would have worn navy blue uniforms and kept the regulation black shoes shiny. That uniform included a hat.
Gabby hadn’t mentioned seeing a holstered weapon or a shield—but the bulging plastic bag containing the bloody protective suit, gloves and separate shoe coverings, if there’d been any, as well as the knife, could well have hidden a badge and name on the chest pocket, and a gun and other accoutrements worn on the standard, heavy-duty black belt.
The Leclaire Police Department wasn’t huge. Other men had also spent their entire careers with LPD. Jack hadn’t yet had a chance to work his way through the entire police force, but the ones he’d taken a look at didn’t jibe with the security camera footage of the man trying to get into Gabby’s hotel room. Either of these two men might.
Of course, even if the killer was a police officer at the time, he might no longer be, or had moved on to a different law enforcement agency. Reason said he could have been a cop with another agency here in the Spokane area—but the navy blue uniform ruled out the City of Spokane PD and the county sheriff’s department. State patrol officers wore blue, but not a shade Jack would call navy. And how likely was it that a state trooper assigned to this region at the time of the murder would have had any history with a local woman? He’d pursue that possibility only if he came up short on his current avenues of investigation.
Jack had begun tracking, with so-so success, a few men who’d been with LPD then but had left in the intervening years. In most cases, finding a photo was enough to rule them out. He wasn’t wasting a lot of time on the ones who hadn’t stayed in town, because one of the things bothering him from the beginning was the rapid reaction to Gabby’s return to town. He still couldn’t rule out the killer having been a neighbor, a school principal, an old family friend—any of the people Ric had told about her upcoming visit.
Both Rutkowski and Chief Keller had known about her from the moment Jack asked permission to reopen the case.
The sergeant’s scowl was deepening, and even Chief Keller was starting to look annoyed at Jack’s prolonged silence.
“I’ve had several meetings with Ms. Ortiz,” he said. “She’s been reluctant to revisit those memories, as you can imagine. I didn’t want to push too hard or too fast.”
“Have you learned anything new?” Sergeant Rutkowski demanded.
“Yes. I know now that the killer initially wore what she described as a ‘puffy’ white one-piece coverall with a hood. Once he’d killed Colleen Ortiz, he stripped off the suit, used the kitchen sink briefly—you may recall that trace amounts of blood were found in it—then left carrying a plastic trash bag that presumably held the blood-soaked garments. That’s when Gabrielle saw him wearing all blue.”
Both men stared at him. It was the chief who said finally, “That’s pretty specific. I assume you got more than that.”
He said reluctantly, “Yeah, I did.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He’d just lied to his commanding officers, if mostly by omission.
Jack walked back to his desk, opened his laptop and pretended to become immersed in what he’d been working on before being summoned by the sergeant.
He had told them both that the killer had yelled, “You ruined my life!”
To which Chief Keller had nodded. “I vaguely recall her saying the murderer said his victim had ruined something. ‘His life’ doesn’t necessarily enlarge on that. It still could imply Mrs. Ortiz had broken up his marriage, or...” He obviously groped for a second option.
“Had told his family something that meant they cut him off,” suggested Rutkowski. “Or he lost a job because of her.” He frowned. “Did she work out of the home?”
Jack shook his head. “She had an LPN certificate and was employed as a nurse for a year and a half before she got married. Stayed home after that. She might have intended to go back to work once the kids were both in school. I don’t know.”
“Working as a nurse, she could have learned something about him that he needed kept private,” Keller pointed out. “Like the guy had syphilis, which meant he’d cheated on his wife—”
Jack was shaking his head before the chief could finish. “Colleen’s job was in a nursing home.”
They threw around more ideas. Once, the chief looked him in the eye and asked directly whether he had anything else new to add to the picture, and that’s when he’d flat out lied. He not only said no, he didn’t tell them everything Gabby had shared: that she’d also heard her mother saying she’d never tell, or the killer responding with, “Now you won’t.”
He left out the shiny black shoes, the hat and the disturbing fact that the killer had looked straight at Gabby on his way out.
That Keller had remembered this particular killer saying the victim had “ruined” something for him initially raised a warning flag for Jack. On reflection, it didn’t seem so unreasonable, though. Murders were a lot less common back then, with Leclaire having been a smaller town. The entire Spokane area had grown in the intervening years. A gruesome crime like this would be especially memorable, as well as an investigation that turned out to be a genuine mystery. It had probably made a big impression on all LPD officers.
In their early thirties, Keller and Rutkowski had hardly been rookies, though. Jack turned his head to be sure no one could see his monitor, then looked to see when each had been hired. Roger Rutkowski had signed on only three years out of high school, so by the time Colleen was murdered, he’d have already had...eleven years with the Leclaire Police Department. Colleen was thirty-one at the time of her death, and Rutkowski would have been thirty-two. He hadn’t been promoted to detective yet—there’d been fewer opportunities then—which meant he’d still been wearing the uniform.
Jack was a little surprised to see that the police chief had actually been hired on quite a bit later than the sergeant. He was younger, too. In fact, he was the same age as Colleen, making
them classmates. They just about had to have known each other. He hadn’t been at the high school her last two years, though, and he hadn’t come home for more than potentially summers for a lot of years. His college degree was from Arkansas State University.
It was possible the young Dean Keller had just wanted to get away if his home life hadn’t been great. He might have family in Arkansas, or had applied there to follow a girlfriend. Who knew? According to his online bio, he’d started his career in law enforcement in a small town in Tennessee, then moved on to Little Rock, Arkansas’s largest city. In fact, he hadn’t come home to Leclaire until a couple of years before the murder. Supposedly, Keller had returned to support a parent in ill health, which made complete sense.
So he would have been relatively new on the job when Colleen was murdered. Whatever his rank and job in Little Rock, he’d hired on here as a patrol officer, according to the records. However, he’d become a detective only a year after the murder. It was likely that he’d taken a look at the case at some point thereafter, just as the sergeant admitted he had, and Jack had in turn.
Looking seriously at these two men was probably a giant waste of time, but Jack couldn’t let it go. He had to eliminate them as suspects, if only for his peace of mind.
He muffled a groan. Cops hated to admit that one of their own could have gone bad, but it happened. In this case... He tried to imagine arresting his own police chief, and covered his face with his hand.
Okay, if he were to consider either of his commanding officers as suspects, he needed to figure out what could have occurred to make them believe a well-liked woman, a “good Catholic” according to her neighbor, had ruined their lives.
At the moment, that was hard to see, as both had apparently successful careers—unless one had teetered on the brink of getting fired early on—and Rutkowski, at least, had recently passed his thirtieth wedding anniversary. Jack seemed to remember Keller had a divorce in his past. He’d check that out. If the entire marriage and divorce had taken place in Arkansas, Colleen couldn’t be blamed for what had gone wrong.
Brooding, Jack made himself think logically. He should be looking at the year or two before the murder—and at the high school years, when Colleen had rather suddenly become more mature, more service oriented. Something significant had happened to change her from the typical teenager to an adult.
Yeah, he’d dig deeper...but not today. It was only three o’clock, but he’d worked many more than forty hours these past few weeks. He was going home. He had hardly slept last night. He needed to pull himself together if he was going to give his best to the investigation.
And yeah, he owed that to Gabby. He’d blown it in every other way, but she might be able to find closure—cliché though that had become—if her own effort to recover memories actually helped Jack identify and arrest the killer.
He closed his laptop, stuck it in its sleeve and under his arm, made sure his desk was otherwise bare, and started for the hall door.
Behind him, Sergeant Rutkowski called, “Cowan, hold up!”
If Rutkowski was going to give him hell for cutting out early, Jack would have a hard time swallowing it. But he turned around.
The sergeant said, “Let’s go out in the hall.”
It was empty at the moment.
“I had a thought,” Rutkowski said. “Has Gabriella Ortiz ever tried hypnosis?”
Jack blinked. The idea had crossed his mind, but Ric had set him up to believe she was utterly resistant to remembering. He’d become fully convinced that wasn’t true only yesterday, when she’d given him such a compelling child’s-eye view of the crime—after which she kicked him out of her life.
“I haven’t suggested it yet,” he said.
“With a cooperative witness, someone who wants to succeed, it can be very effective. There are issues with details recalled only under hypnosis when it comes to trial, but we don’t have to worry about that yet.” He held out a Post-it note. “Here’s the name and number for a psychologist who also does hypnosis. We’ve only used Dr. Adams a couple of times, but had good luck.”
Then he nodded, said, “Take Friday, too, if you want,” and went back into the squad room. With tomorrow being Thanksgiving, the sergeant must be offering a four-day weekend. Go figure.
Jack looked down at the name. Would Gabby even take his call?
* * *
“UH... I TALKED to Jack.”
Gabby was on the phone with Ric for the second time today. The first time, this morning, she’d told him how his good buddy, Jack Cowan, had used both of them in pursuit of his great and noble “quest.”
Ric had sounded annoyed that Jack hadn’t been straight with him, but not as outraged as she was. That annoyed her. As set as her brother had always been on her admitting what she remembered, no matter the anguish she’d suffer, Gabby suspected he’d have hopped readily on board Jack’s plan to lie to her, if only he’d asked nicely.
If she’d found out Ric had cooperated in the deception, too, that would have been the end of any hope of a relationship between them. She wondered if he realized that.
She, of course, had done nothing but hang around her room and stew so far today. What could she do? Go for a long walk to find out if someone really was willing to run her down or shoot her? An especially violent mugging would do the trick, too. Ric, of course, was at work. He’d offered to meet her for dinner, but given that they’d finally made plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant tomorrow, she figured she could survive a day on her own.
He must be home by now. She’d just been thinking about ordering a room service meal when her phone rang for the third time this afternoon. The other two calls—and messages—were from Jack. Messages deleted unheard.
“I was just about to order dinner,” she told her brother. When he expressed alarm, she said, “It occurred to me I could request a woman to bring the food to my room.”
“Oh. Good thought.”
Then he moved on to the purpose of his call. Unlike her, he’d been willing to talk to Jack.
“He had a suggestion I think might be a good one. Uh. I know I’ve been a jerk before, and if you don’t want to do this, I promise I’ll understand and support you. It’s just...”
“Do what?”
He explained about how the police worked with a psychologist who did hypnosis, who might be able to take her back to the day of the murder. “If you can go through the same events you described to Jack but be separated from your emotional response to them—”
“Is that possible?”
“Uh... I don’t actually know. I’ve read about how they can get you to freeze a single moment, though, so you can study what the guy is wearing, or...”
Or his face.
Reluctant as she was to admit it, this was a good idea. That’s probably why Jack had been calling. She should have realized he hadn’t been leaving messages because he was heartbroken and desperate for her to listen to his excuses. Nope, he still had the same goal.
Mad as she was at him, she couldn’t 100 percent fault him, because she had the same goal.
“Would I have to see him?” she asked suspiciously.
Ric immediately knew she meant Jack. “Maybe?” Pause. “Probably. He’d almost have to be there to give the hypnotist the background and prompt her to ask particular questions.”
Damn, damn, damn.
Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Sure as shooting, no professional would go into the office until Monday, which meant Colleen would be stuck in Leclaire at least until then.
She sighed. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Do you want me to call him?”
No more cowardice. “I’ll do it.”
“Okay.” Ric sounded more cheerful. “I’ll pick you up at one tomorrow.”
Gabby wasn’t eager to hear Jack’s voice again. Part of her knew that she’d
overreacted. It had been her decision to sleep with him. He might well have seen their relationship as very casual. She hated remembering the tenderness in his voice, the times he’d comforted her, sympathized. Those made her feel most gullible.
What really hurt was that he’d let her think all those hours of talking were a mutual exploration, important to him, too. And he’d kissed her as if he meant it.
So he probably was attracted to her. She guessed he must have been, or he couldn’t have... Well.
Sighing, she went to recent calls and touched his name and number. Two rings later, he answered with an urgent, “Gabby?”
“Yes. Ric passed on your suggestion that I undergo hypnosis. I wanted to let you know that I’m willing. Please schedule it as soon as you can.”
“I’ll do that. Gabby...”
“Let me know.” With one stab, she ended the call.
She’d been right—just hearing his deep voice hurt.
* * *
GABBY STARED AT the house from where she’d just parked her rental car in the driveway. She hadn’t even argued when Ric called this morning and started with, “So, listen.”
The gist was that after getting home from their Thanksgiving dinner and going up to his bedroom, he’d happened to glance at the square in the hall ceiling that allowed access to the partial attic. Since their father died, Ric had never had reason to go up there, or even think about it, but talking to her had awakened a memory.
“Dad made me help him put some boxes up there. He was on the ladder, and I handed them up to him.”
Ric had fetched the ladder from the garage and climbed up there yesterday, finding half a dozen boxes. He’d brought them down, peeked in a few, and realized this was all Mom’s stuff. “Even her clothes,” he’d said, sounding squeamish.
He wanted her to go through them with him, and had carried them all downstairs this morning.
With a groan, she got out of the car, locked it and went up to the front door, which opened before she crossed the porch.
Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 51