Maggie finally put her hand on his bare shoulder, gently and then with more pressure. “Is that what happened?”
He looked up sharply. “What are you saying?”
“You don’t make mistakes like that.”
“No, I don’t. But it was a mistake. A huge mistake. Do you have any idea how humiliated I am?”
“Did you explain what happened?”
“Of course. But you should have seen their faces. This is going to come back at me hard. You can forget a gold shield. That’s gone.”
She felt him slipping on the edge of something, an out-of-control tailspin that would make it impossible to learn more. She’d seen it in the interrogation room, read it in transcripts, heard it in recordings. She kept her hand on his shoulder, but they were far apart.
“You need to tell me the whole thing,” Maggie said. “All of it.”
Chapter 15
“We’ve been looking for Gibbs,” Karl said after a long pause. “Everything you said about his open marriage made sense, and I had Mike start digging into the Gibbs’s associates. There didn’t seem to be a lot of people they knew closely, but they had enough friends to make it worthwhile. Any one of them might have been the jealous type. You know how it is: all it takes is one person who wants more than they’re getting and it all goes sour.”
“If Mike was doing that, what were you doing?” Maggie asked.
“He worked that angle, while I tried to pry something loose on my own. I looked into Gibbs’s business record. Did you know he owns a commercial real estate business that doesn’t have any clients? That’s never had any clients?”
“No,” Maggie said, and gave nothing away.
“Yeah, so that got me thinking how he makes his money. He couldn’t afford a house in the Parish if he doesn’t have an income, and as far as I can tell he’s not living off a trust fund. So the cash was coming in. So what if the whole thing wasn’t just an open marriage? What if he was renting his wife out? She wasn’t young anymore, but she was good looking and they were the type. She goes out, makes the money, and he cashes in.”
Maggie got up from the bed and found pajamas for Karl. She lay them down beside him. “Did you talk this over with Mike?”
“I did. He said it was a good angle. It’s like you said before, it’s a big game to them. Where have you been? What did you do? Who’d you do it with? And if you can make a living at it, so much the better.”
She watched him get into the pajamas. Everything about him denoted shock. A homicide detective didn’t display such reactions. She thought of the blood on his clothes. No one had seen him go in. He’d been totally alone with the victims, and by his own admission traces of him were all over the scene. “Was there anyone who saw you with Carole or Philip?” she asked.
“No. They were already dead when I got there. I was first through the door.”
“How did you get in?”
“The front door was open.” Karl’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you ask me that?”
She skipped over his question. “You said it was an anonymous tip.”
“That’s right.”
“Left for anyone?”
“No, they said to give it to me.”
“Who was the caller? A man? A woman?”
“A man. He used a prepaid cell phone. No way to follow the chain back from there. Listen, I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. I’ll admit it: I screwed up tonight. I should have waited for the uniforms to arrive. I shouldn’t have gone into that bathroom until I had someone watching my back. So if you want to come down on me for that, you can, but I’m already angry with myself. I am screwed.”
“This isn’t all about you, Karl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Maggie moved past it. Her mind kept working. “You think the man who called it in was the doer?”
Karl’s face was twisted, but he answered straight. “Could have been. Or someone else.”
“When will you get prints back?”
“In the morning, probably. You know how it goes. Why?”
Maggie was slow to speak. Karl’s attention was on her, probing her the way she had done to him. It could not all be hidden, but some part of the truth could be kept secret. “I saw Bryant Gibbs in Carole’s house. With her husband. Five nights ago.”
“How did you see this?” Karl asked.
“The night I was out late with the girls. I drove by Carole’s house and they were in the front room, and they didn’t care who was watching.”
“They were…close?” Karl ventured.
“Yeah, you could say that. And while I was watching, Carole made a cash payment to Gibbs, and I don’t think it was HOA dues. If you were looking for evidence of prostitution going on, it wasn’t restricted to Holly Gibbs. Carole was a part of it, too, and her husband knew. Whether he was in it because that’s how he got his jollies, or because he liked the cash, I don’t know, but that’s three bodies on Bryant Gibbs and all of them connected to one thing.”
Karl sat back on the bed. His mind was working, every thought written on his face. Maggie glanced at the bag in the corner, then back toward him. No one saw him go into Carole’s house. No one. She chastised herself for even daring to think of the possibilities stemming from that.
“How many wives do you think are in on this?” Karl asked finally.
“I don’t know, but someone told me not to get involved, so I’m taking a step back.”
“But you uncovered this! Mike and I had suspicions, but you provided the corroborating evidence. You need to make a statement and we need to come down on Gibbs hard. He’s the key.”
“If I make a statement, then I have to admit I was colluding with the lead detective,” Maggie said. “I can’t do that. You think tonight’s mistake made you look bad? People will forget it someday. But letting your wife run part of the investigation on her own? That’s not going to fly, and I don’t care how you gussy it up. No, you have to keep my name out of it.”
Karl nodded. “Okay. We’ll make our case some other way. But that means you have to step back. You got us part of the way, but we can handle the rest. There’s no need for you to stick your neck out. We have three victims, and if things go any further…I don’t want to think about what could happen. The girls. You. It’s not worth it.”
“No, Karl, that’s exactly why it’s worth it. Because it could have been any of us.”
Chapter 16
They spent a restless night together. Maggie didn’t sleep, and she suspected Karl didn’t, either. She knew he was thinking about what came next. A mistake like the one he made wouldn’t cost him his badge, but it would be bad. How bad depended on how the new chief of detectives felt about making examples. Collins liked making examples.
In the morning she made wordless breakfast for the family. Her mother puttered around the kitchen making small talk. Karl tried to play with the girls. From the outside they were okay. On the inside it was different. When Karl’s phone rang, a veil of darkness passed over his features. “It’s the chief,” he said dully.
“Take it in the other room,” Maggie told him. It was not a suggestion.
She cleaned up the table, her mother beside her. Still Susan appeared to know nothing, or if she did it was so well-hidden even Maggie couldn’t pull it to the surface. “What are your plans today?” her mother asked airily.
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I was thinking I’d take the girls to one of those activities classes they have. Gymboree. They can play with the other babies. You can have some alone time.”
Maggie looked at Susan out of the corner of her eye. Again there was nothing, but she had to have known. She realized her mother would have made the perfect interrogator: everything was concealed, and her mother gave nothing away. “That would be nice,” Maggie replied. “But don’t put yourself out.”
“Nonsense. It’s what grandmas live for.”
With that, Susan swept the girls out of the kit
chen like a gentle whirlwind, leaving Maggie alone. She was conscious of Karl speaking quietly in the other room, and then the fun-filled tone of her mother talking to the girls, one tucked into the crook of each arm. Maggie didn’t think she’d have that much left in her when she was Susan’s age.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and waited at the table for what came next. Finally Karl returned. “Okay,” he said.
“What will he do?”
“First he wants a statement on the record. Then we’ll see about an official hearing.”
“Do what they tell you to do. Say what you said to me.”
Karl nodded. He was not like Susan. He wore guilt and darkness around him like a shroud. “I have to go,” he told her.
She let him kiss her on the cheek. She stayed at the table until he was gone, then rinsed the coffee cup in the sink and went upstairs. The plastic garbage bag was still in the corner. She carried it into the bathroom.
Laying the clothes out on the bright white tile made them seem gorier than they were. It seemed as though Karl had bathed in Carole Strickland’s blood. It was spattered and smeared on his clothing. She pictured how each mark came to be. A knee down on the floor. A hand slipped in the puddle of blood. The cuff soaked, the sleeve tagged. He’d wiped a hand on his stomach unconsciously. The department would want all of this, and they would want to know what Maggie had seen.
When she was done, she put it all away. She dressed mechanically, because her mind was somewhere else. She wanted to be where Karl had been, seeing everything exactly as he’d seen it on the night in question. Failing that, she wanted the pictures. Large glossy photographs in living color. Every droplet of blood. Every inch of pale, drained flesh.
“We’re going!” her mother called to her.
Maggie started. She looked at the clock and realized she’d been standing at the open closet door, staring at herself in the body-length mirror, for most of an hour. “Okay,” she called back. “Drive safely!”
A thump of the front door closing. The sound of the girls babbling while Susan got them in their car seats in the rental car outside. Then fading engine noise as they drove off.
Maggie went to the ground floor. She stood in the middle of her foyer with indecision stretching away from her on every side. The options were many, but the realistic ones few. Suddenly she heard another thump downstairs. A door closed firmly. She went to the front window, but Karl’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Her mother hadn’t returned.
She dropped a hand to her hip, but there was no weapon. The only pistol was locked in a box upstairs in the closet. A Colt Detective Special she’d gotten from her father on her eighteenth birthday. A traditional gun. A cop’s gun. A gun she did not have.
The sound was quiet, but instantly identifiable: a heel falling on concrete in the garage. Then silence. Maggie swallowed and felt her dry mouth and the sound of the swallow in her ears. Her heart didn’t race. She was closed and calm and unshaken.
She went into the formal living room, silent on the carpet. The fireplace waited, clean and empty. She took a brass-handled poker from its rack. It was not a perfect weapon, but it was enough.
Not a single new sound came from the garage. Maggie thought about calling 911. Her phone was in her pocket. Dialing it would be simplicity, but she didn’t. A faint hum had begun in the back of her head. She breathed in through the nose and out through her arid mouth. She didn’t want anyone’s help.
She made no sound on the walk to the kitchen. At the edge of the tile she used her toes to slip out of her shoes, so she wore only socks when she stepped out like a whisper. The door to the garage had a dead bolt, but she saw from the position of the knob that it was open. Karl had forgotten to secure it when he left the house.
Maggie approached the door. She put out her free hand and raised the poker with the other. She clasped the doorknob and turned. It made the sound of a gunshot, deafeningly loud. She pulled the door. It swung inward.
Bryant Gibbs stood on the other side with a gun in his hand. He was slick with sweat.
Maggie hit him with the poker.
Chapter 17
She wanted to knock the gun from his hand, a compact Glock the color of coal. He cried out when the iron poker crossed his forearm, but he didn’t let go of his weapon even as he reeled away. Maggie came after him into the darkened garage, the only light coming from the high windows on the door. She struck again and again, catching him across the shoulders, landing a glancing blow on the side of his head, which drew blood. She went for his knees and he went down.
“Goddamnit!” he shouted. “Goddamnit, stop!”
He brandished the Glock and Maggie saw his finger on the trigger and his knuckle whiten. She raised the poker once again, but didn’t strike. “You know how to use that thing?” she asked him.
“You want to find out? Try to hit me one more time. Try it.”
Maggie lowered the poker.
“On the ground.”
It clanged when it hit the concrete floor, and echoed in the open space of the garage. Gibbs nodded. He touched his bloody temple. “Damnit,” he said.
“Put the gun away,” Maggie told him. “I’m unarmed. You don’t need to have the gun out.”
“I think I do.” Still, Gibbs turned the muzzle away from her. He was on one knee, and if she moved fast enough, she might have been able to get hold of him and even disarm him, but she wasn’t as young or as fast as she used to be, and she wouldn’t die here in her own home where her mother would find her dead, where her children might see.
“People are looking for you,” Maggie said.
“I know. That’s why I came here. You used to be a cop, right? You are one big, happy cop family. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You knew Carole and Philip.”
“I did.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Gibbs said.
Maggie didn’t look away from him. Her voice betrayed nothing. “I believe you.”
Gibbs laughed at that. “No, I don’t think that’s true. But I don’t care. I care about people knowing the truth. And you’re going to help me do that. You’re going to help me uncover the whole thing. So we’re gonna walk in and sit down and I’m gonna tell you what happens next.”
“You’re the boss,” Maggie said.
“I am the boss. Walk in front of me.”
They went inside and he directed her to sit in a kitchen chair. He was careful to sit on the far side with the gun resting on the table, but not out of his reach. The wound in his head was bleeding more. Red had run down the side of his face and neck, and stained his collar. It made Maggie think of Karl’s suit. Gibbs’s clothes were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them. His face was shadowed with stubble.
“I know you said you believe, but I know what you’re really thinking,” Gibbs said after they looked at each other for a while.
Maggie didn’t reply. She had both hands on the table, both feet firmly on the floor. She calculated the weight of the table. How easily could it flip? How badly would Gibbs be startled? She did nothing.
“You’re thinking I killed my wife, and then I killed Carole and Philip to cover it up.”
“Did you?” Maggie asked.
“No. I’m not a killer. That’s not my thing.”
“What is your thing?”
“Money. Sex. A little blow if I’m feeling like a party. I’m a simple guy. You understand, right?”
“Sure,” Maggie said. “I saw you partying with Carole and Philip a few days before they died.”
A smile almost lifted Gibbs’s face. “Phil liked to watch her with me.”
“And now he’s dead,” Maggie replied.
Gibbs scowled. “Not because of me!”
Maggie soothed him with her tone. “If everyone was a consenting adult, there’s no crime. The police might even overlook the money if that was just part of the thrill. You need to do yourself a favor: put down the gun, let me call 911, and then you can tell your
whole story.”
The man shook his head emphatically. “No. No. You don’t get it. I can’t talk without any proof, and even then they’re gonna call me a pervert and a liar. People will listen to you. I’ll show you everything, and then when you take it to the cops, you won’t get pawned off on some pencil-pusher who thinks it’s all a bunch of bullshit. Carole said you were asking around. She knew you were interested in playing. She had you all figured out. I would have come to see you sooner or later. Then you’d know.”
“What is there to know?” Maggie asked. “Who killed them? Who killed your wife? I can’t help you if I don’t know.”
“Right,” Gibbs said, and his chin bobbed up and down. “You need to know everything. And I’ll tell you, but first we have to get everything together. So you come with me and we’ll get it. I have something I need to check, and then I’ll know for sure. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going with you anywhere,” Maggie said firmly.
“No, you are. You’re going to come with me, or I’m gonna…I’m gonna…”
He faltered. Maggie leaned forward in her seat. “What are you going to do, Bryant? You said yourself you’re not a killer. You’re a suburban pimp. Are you going to kill a cop’s wife? Is that how you’re gonna play it? Because they’ll give you the needle, Bryant. They’ll put it all on you, and then you’ll die.”
She saw his lips tremble, and then his mouth hardened. He lifted the gun from the table. “No. You are coming and I will kill you if you don’t. Because I don’t have anything to lose, baby. So get your shoes and grab your keys. We’re leaving now.”
Chapter 18
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