Watch Me (Jefferson Winter 2)

by James Carol

  ‘Okay, let’s go see if Shepherd’s given himself a stroke yet.’

  31

  It was eleven minutes to midnight when we arrived back at the station house. Eleven minutes until zero hour and that clock was ticking louder than ever. Every parking slot was taken. A line of police vehicles sat gleaming under the sodiums. Most belonged to the sheriff’s department, but there were a few tan-coloured ones from the Eagle Creek PD.

  In addition there were a couple of dozen civilian cars. Three stood out because there was no way a cop could afford them, not unless they were doing something illegal. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be doing it much longer. The golden rule: don’t flash the cash around, not unless you want to end up doing some serious prison time.

  The three cars that stood out were a top-of-the-range Bentley, a bright red 1950s Cadillac Coup De Ville and a Porsche 911. The Caddy was well loved, the bodywork pristine. It was difficult to tell for sure in this light, but my guess was that it was in as good condition as the day it had rolled off the production line. I was also betting that both the Bentley and the Porsche were brand new. There was something about the way they sat there that made me think of car showrooms.

  The media were here too. Three people can keep a secret, but only if two of them are dead, and there were a hell of a lot more than two people who knew about Sam Galloway. If you wanted proof of that you didn’t have to look much further than Sergeant Gomez over in Shreveport.

  For the moment there was just the one van. It was parked out on Main Street, as close to the station house as possible. A camera had been pointed at us as we drove past, but I doubt they got much, certainly nothing worthy of airtime. I hadn’t recognised the acronym, but chances were it was a station broadcasting out of Shreveport. That’s the way this game worked. The local media got hold of the story first, then, if it was big enough, it would go national. The next step was international, but there weren’t many stories big enough to make that leap. What happened next would determine where this one stalled. If victim number two was another lawyer then the story wouldn’t get much past Shreveport.

  I abandoned our car as close as possible to the station house‚ then got out. Taylor got out the passenger side, slammed his door shut and started towards the building.

  ‘Hold it a second,’ I called over.

  He executed a neat about-turn and came back.

  ‘Enemy territory.’ I nodded towards the station house. ‘We need a plan.’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’

  I stared past Taylor’s shoulder while I played out some moves in my head. Whenever I was short of cash at college I’d challenge my buddies to beat me at chess. On one memorable occasion I took on ten people at the same time. Ten games happening simultaneously, ten battlefields. The deal was that if any one of my buddies beat me, just one, I’d cough up twenty bucks to each competitor. If they all lost they’d pay me ten bucks each. That had been a good day. Any day where you end up richer than when you started was going to be a good day.

  ‘There are nineteen suspects on the whiteboard back at my room.’ I nodded at the station house again. ‘This is the only show in town tonight. Anyone who’s anyone will be here.’

  Taylor stood for a moment, thinking this over, waiting for me to say something else. I gave him all the time he needed. His eyes widened when the realisation finally hit.

  ‘The unsub can’t be in two places at the same time.’

  ‘Not unless he’s working outside the four dimensions that keep the rest of us tied to this reality. Okay, time to play spy. I need you to use your cellphone to get pictures of any white males aged thirty to forty who’ve come to watch the show.’

  Taylor grinned. ‘And we compare those pictures with the list of suspects. Whoever’s missing is our guy. That’s brilliant, and so simple. This guy’s really screwed up, and the beauty is that he doesn’t even know it.’

  ‘They all screw up eventually. Don’t let anyone work out what you’re doing, though. Think you can manage that?’

  ‘No problem. Everybody’s going to be watching the countdown anyway. Six and a half feet tall and it’ll be like I’m completely invisible. I guarantee it.’

  The station house doors suddenly banged open and Barbara Galloway strode out. She was accompanied by a man in his early sixties. It was almost midnight and he was dressed in a fitted suit, tie in place, the Windsor knot absolutely perfect. Shiny shoes, and a shiny gold watch, and a glimpse of shiny gold cufflinks with something sparkly set into them, something I strongly suspected were diamond rather than zirconium.

  This guy had to be a lawyer, but he wasn’t an Eagle Creek lawyer. The sort of wealth he was displaying made Sam Galloway look like a pauper, and Sam had been one of Eagle Creek’s top earners. This lawyer was probably based in Shreveport or Monroe. Maybe even further afield. Dallas was only a couple of hundred miles west on I-20, which was no distance at all in that Bentley. Hit the road, set the cruise control, a little Bach on the stereo, and you’d eat up those miles in no time.

  Barbara saw me and came to a halt. She looked older than earlier. It had only been six hours but it might as well have been six years. She looked exhausted, like she was running on fumes, and those fumes were dissipating fast. Even so, she looked good. There was something imperious about the way she was staring at me. Her husband had been murdered and her life had changed irrevocably, yet she was holding it together and I was more convinced than ever that she was going to survive this thing.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Winter.’

  For once I didn’t mind being called mister. It somehow sounded right coming from her.

  ‘Mrs Galloway,’ I replied with a small nod.

  ‘They think I had something to do with my husband’s murder.’

  ‘Barbara,’ the lawyer said sharply. ‘You don’t have to speak to these people.’

  ‘It’s okay, Alan.’

  ‘As your lawyer, I strongly recommend you don’t say anything else.’

  Barbara smiled at him. ‘I heard you the first time, Alan.’ She turned back to me. ‘My husband was having an affair. The police think I was consumed with jealousy and that I hired a hitman.’

  ‘It’s just procedure. They need to check these things out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for a hitman. Do they advertise in the Yellow Pages? On the internet?’

  Alan the expensive lawyer was standing slightly behind Barbara, so she couldn’t see the way his eyes had just widened. Her questions didn’t blatantly indicate premeditation, but with some judicious manipulation they could be twisted to fit that concept.

  ‘Like I said, it’s just procedure. There’s a possible motive there, so they have to check it out. That’s all.’

  ‘It wasn’t the first affair he’d had, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looked at me, her expression blank and unreadable. ‘Do you think I had anything to do with my husband’s murder?’

  Alan took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I think it’s best if we leave now.’

  ‘Shut up, Alan.’

  I shook my head. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with your husband’s murder.’

  ‘Captain Shepherd doesn’t think that.’ She fixed me with her sad, tired eyes. ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t make sense. Judy Dufrene was no threat to you. The affair would probably have gone on for another two or three months before eventually burning out. For a couple of months afterwards Sam would have been attentive and guilt-ridden. The perfect husband, in other words. He’d buy you jewellery, take you away on an expensive vacation, treat you like a queen, and you’d be lapping up the attention. And then he’d get that itch again. He’d meet someone new and the cycle would start over. It’s possible that somewhere along the line he might have met someone who’d give you a run for their money. If that happened then, yes, I’d seriously be looking at you as a suspect. However, so long as Sam was playing the game by your
rules then everything was A-OK. It’s only if he’d broken those rules that there would have been a problem. The bottom line: Judy Dufrene was a nice enough girl, but she wasn’t a game changer.’

  ‘Thank you again for your honesty, Mr Winter.’

  Barbara walked off in the direction of the Bentley, Alan tagging along behind. The lawyer was doing a lot of talking, but Barbara wasn’t listening. She was staring straight ahead, her face turning from orange to yellow as she walked through the sodium wash created by the lights.

  Ten feet from the car, the driver got out and opened the back doors. Barbara got in one side, Alan got in the other, then the driver went around shutting the doors again. It was all done with the brisk efficiency of someone on double time, but who was still anxious for the day to be over. The Bentley eased out of the parking slot. It paused at the entrance to the lot, turn light flashing, then disappeared into the night. First stop, McArthur Heights. Second stop, wherever the hell Alan the expensive lawyer was staying tonight.

  ‘Shepherd wasted no time there,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Small-town cop, small-town motive. He couldn’t help himself.’

  We went inside.

  32

  Everyone had congregated in the conference room because it was the largest room in the station house. There had to be at least fifty people squashed in there. It was standing room only, every seat taken. A laptop had been wired up to a projector, the image beamed onto a large screen. Blurred white numbers on a grey-black background, and blurred stick figures biting the dust. 00:04:33. Only twenty-eight stick men to go.

  The three turned into a two and then a one, the countdown moving with agonising slowness. The numbers were huge, three feet tall and a foot wide. The stick figures were as tall as toddlers. Everything had been blown up to the point where the pixels were separating. Those numbers dominated the room.

  The atmosphere was worse than I’d imagined. I’d never known a room containing this many people to be so quiet. It was like a funeral but without the music, prayers and eulogies. Just everyone staring at the coffin, waiting for something to happen.

  Then there was the smell.

  Most of the people here were involved in the investigation. They’d been out since dawn in temperatures that had hit a hundred plus. There might have been a few spare moments to grab a quick bite to eat and a coffee, fuel to keep you going, but not enough time to grab a shower. The stench that pervaded the room was a pungent mix of body odour and the deodorant that had been used to hide it. I was probably contributing to the smell. Taylor, too. We’d been out there in the hottest part of the day, sweating and toiling with the best of them.

  ‘Romero and Barker are here,’ Taylor whispered in my ear. ‘Darrell Hodginson, too.’

  ‘Hodginson was the asshole, right?’ I whispered back.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good. So that’s three we can cross off the list straightaway. Only sixteen to go.’

  I glanced quickly around the room, taking in faces. Three people stood out because they didn’t look like they’d been out in the noonday sun. They were sat together in a neat row and there was a couple of feet of space all around them, like they were protected by a force field. Everyone else’s personal space had been compromised. Not theirs.

  The old guy in the middle of that select group wasn’t a cop, and he was obviously the most important person in the room because he had the best seat. He was wearing a black silk shirt that didn’t have sweat stains under the arms, and he looked like the sort of person who’d drive a vintage Caddy.

  I was betting that the middle-aged guy on the right was the Porsche owner. He was a younger version of the Caddy guy, heavier but obviously related. Same eyes, same nose. Father and son, without a doubt. The biggest difference was the attitude they projected. The old guy’s authority was absolute. Nobody would think to question it, not for a second.

  The younger guy wanted to believe he carried the same sway, but he didn’t, and probably never would. This was someone who’d struggled his whole life to break out from the shadow of his father. Even when the old guy was dead and gone he’d still be fighting that one.

  Sheriff Fortier made up the threesome. He looked stressed and exhausted and smaller than ever, crushed by the gravity of what was happening here. He was staring into space, locked inside his own bubble of silence. Right now, he was probably wondering why on earth he’d bothered running for sheriff in the last election.

  ‘The guy up front with the Stetson on his lap,’ I whispered. ‘Jasper Morgan?’

  ‘Got it in one. And that’s Clayton beside him.’

  Jasper was staring at the screen, shoulders square, back ramrod straight. Nobody was speaking to him, and he wasn’t speaking to anyone else either. Like Fortier, he just sat there in silence and stared at the screen. Jasper’s tan was so deep his skin was like leather, lines carved into his face. He looked every one of his seventy-two years but there was something about him that gave the impression he could keep going for at least another thirty, which wasn’t good news for Clayton.

  ‘Okay, time to mingle, Taylor. Get some nice snapshots for me.’

  Taylor disappeared into the crowd, cellphone in hand, and I made my way over to the table where the laptop had been set up. The picture on the computer screen was better than the blurry representation being beamed from the projector, but the news was just as bad. 00:03:13. A limbless stick figure swung from the gallows beside the numbers.

  ‘This is a nightmare,’ muttered a quiet voice behind me.

  I turned and saw Shepherd standing there. If Barbara Galloway had aged six years, Shepherd had aged twenty. The stress was getting to him. It was in his muscles, it was in his eyes. Most of all, it was in every tight syllable he uttered. The neat uniform he’d been wearing when we first met was crumpled. There was a small greasy fingerprint smudge on the lens of his spectacles.

  ‘I saw Barbara Galloway on my way in.’ My voice was as quiet as Shepherd’s because the environment demanded it.

  Shepherd snorted and shook his head. He straightened his glasses, his finger pressing down on the smudge. ‘That lawyer of hers is a piece of work. She didn’t say a word to us. Not a single thing. She just sat there and exercised her right to be silent. Any questions we asked, the lawyer shut us down.’

  We were both staring at the laptop, counting off the seconds.

  00:02:34.

  ‘She’s not involved in her husband’s death. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But you know how these things work. Galloway was having an affair, so there’s your potential motive straightaway. We needed to check it out.’

  ‘What was the reaction when news got out that you were bringing her in?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Was anyone particularly vocal about it? You know, making a fuss, telling you that it wasn’t a good idea.’

  ‘Only Mayor Morgan. He’d been best buddies with Galloway’s father since way back when. His son had grown up with Sam. He didn’t see that anything could be gained by bringing Barbara in, and I can understand his point. But like I said, there’s that potential motive. We need to do this one by the book.’

  ‘Was there anyone who thought this was a good idea?’

  Shepherd shook his head and I got that hitch in my stomach that always came when things didn’t play out how I wanted. I’d been careful to make sure my last question sounded as casual as the previous one, and, judging by the fact that Shepherd didn’t seem curious about why I’d asked, I’d pulled it off.

  Not that it made any difference. It was another long shot, and it hadn’t paid off. I’d given the unsub an opportunity to steer the investigation down a dead end, but he hadn’t taken the bait. And when they don’t bite it’s back to the drawing board. I glanced up, searching for Taylor. He was on the other side of the room, one eye on the screen like he was watching the countdown with everyone else, one eye on his cell like he was checking for texts.

 
; ‘How did your lead pan out?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘So are you going to tell me where you’ve been all evening, or is that a state secret?’

  ‘I wanted to check out the old refinery.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m surprised. We ripped that place apart and didn’t find a damn thing.’

  ‘I need to see that crime scene.’

  ‘I’m hearing you, Winter, and we’re doing everything we can. We will find it, that you can guarantee. How’s it working out with Taylor?’

  ‘Good. He’s a bright guy. He’s got a great future ahead of him.’

  Shepherd stroked his moustache, then said, ‘So, what exactly have you two been up to?’

  ‘We’ve been chasing our tails and getting nowhere.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  I rubbed my face, sighed. ‘It feels like I’ve spent most of today banging my head against a brick wall, and now we’re about a minute away from someone else dying. I’ve had better days, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  We fell into silence, both of us fixated by the slow drag of those numbers on the laptop screen.

  00:01:04.

  The four turned into a three, then a two, then a one. Sixty seconds from now the countdown would hit zero and we’d be back in that concrete place again. There’d be a new victim hog-tied and struggling on the dirt-streaked floor. The homeless guy with the mismatched shoes was going to walk in with his jerry can and empty it out over the victim. Then he’d light a match. One small flame that would soon become an inferno.

  And there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop that happening.

  I’d never been so certain of anything in my life. It was the only scenario that made sense. The reason the big movie studios put out trailers for their films was so they could attract the biggest audience possible, and the reason they went to so much trouble came down to money. The financial layout for a major motion picture was enormous. Nine-figure budgets weren’t unusual, and every single cent had to be earned back before the studios turned a profit, so you could be damn sure that they were going to use every trick in the book to get those theatre seats filled.