“Yep.”
“Back at it tomorrow, then,” she said, turning to go.
“Yep.”
Starke had one more thing to do before heading home. He tugged an unlabeled file from the corner of his desk, the one containing Kerrigan’s divorce papers. He scanned the documents until he found the street address for Richard Holywell. He ran a crisscross and came up with a phone number. He ran a DMV check and came up with a photo. He printed both out and tucked both pages into the file. Prying into her personal life still made him uneasy, but he was more convinced than ever that he was fighting for his job, maybe his professional reputation. He didn’t want the police union rep going into that fight unarmed.
24
From his spot on a ridgeline about a mile from the inferno’s leading edge, the fire captain knew this one looked like trouble. It was hard to tell from down on the line, where he’d been directing the effort to contain it for the past two hours. So he’d driven up here in a San Bernardino County Fire rescue vehicle for some perspective. He was standing on the truck’s hood, walkie-talkie in hand.
The scene before him was familiar and strange at the same time. There was something beautiful and surreal about a wildfire at night, and he’d seen a lot of them in his nineteen years as a firefighter. The Santa Anas usually slowed after dark, but they were still whipping this one and it was growing fast. It’d spread through greasewood and scrub oak from the canyon where the lightning struck, and within the past hour had reached a fifty-acre stand of Coulter pines that had been dedicated as a memorial to the four firefighters who lost their lives in the 1969 El Piñon Fire. Pine bark beetles were the main problem. The little bastards thrived during drought, and had devastated hundreds of thousands of acres in the San Bernardino National Forest. They’d eaten their way through more than half of the El Piñon memorial trees. Brown as rusted nails, the dead ones stood side by side with their still-green-but-doomed compatriots that somehow had also survived the drought. In ten years, if nothing changed, the whole national forest would be the same color. He’d had work crews clearing the dead trees almost nonstop for three years, and they hadn’t even made a dent.
He lifted the walkie-talkie. “It’s bad, Carlos,” he said. “It’s moving away from the point of origin in three prongs, north, west, and east. Main problem is west, down in the memorial grove, so for now let’s focus any extra resources there. Over.”
His line commander’s voice crackled back. “Couple of Riverside crews just got here. That’s where you want ’em?”
“Fast as they can get there. We got to stop it there, or else there’s nothing but dried trees clear into Riverside. Read me?”
“Got it. Hang on.”
He climbed down from the truck’s hood. Carlos forgot to take his finger off the communicator’s “talk” button, because for a moment he could hear him directing the Riverside crews. The flames were getting brighter at the western edge of the ribbon of orange as the fire worked its way through the memorial grove’s tinder. There, they roared hundreds of feet in the air. Their light defined the column of dirty white smoke that rose thousands more feet into the night sky. His eyes followed the column of smoke up, up—shit.
“Carlos?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m looking way up high, and it looks like the wind up there is shifting. It’s pushing the smoke east.”
“East?”
“Maybe it’s nothing. I’ll check with the weather folks and keep an eye on it.”
“An offshore wind, if that’s what it is, actually might help. Lot less fuel in its path if the wind pushes it that direction. Over.”
“Roger that, Carlos. Less trees, but more houses.”
The endless housing tracts and treeless new neighborhoods around Los Colmas might be easier to defend, he knew, so Carlos was right. On the other hand, he still hoped they were wrong about the offshore wind shift. One of those tract houses was his.
25
Shelby had checked the driveway gate, double-locked the front door, tested all the windows upstairs and down, slid bar locks into all the sliders, loaded Paul’s handgun and put it in the drawer of her bedside table, and set the house’s sophisticated alarm system. She’d offered Chloe the chance to sleep with her in her king-sized bed—quietly locking the bedroom door behind them—using the argument that they needed to be together on the eve of Paul’s funeral. In truth, she knew they were being watched. He knew their routines.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?” Shelby stroked her daughter’s hair as she lay curled beside her in the dark, under the pillowy down comforter Shelby used year-round because the house’s air-conditioning blew so cold.
“I think Dad had a secret life. Like maybe he was a spy or something. Or in the Mafia. Or a fugitive. I think that’s what happened.”
“You think so?”
Shelby felt Chloe shift up onto one elbow. “People like you and Dad always have secret lives. That’s what me and Ashlyn think. There’s things you never tell your kids. Like you really did smoke weed when you were in high school. Like you hooked up a lot before you got married. Like you’d still like to party and dance naked once in a while except you don’t because you’re worried what the neighbors would think. Admit it.”
Shelby laughed. “You never stop making mistakes and learning, that’s true. You do things as you grow that sometimes you regret, and you don’t necessarily want the world to know about. I know I’m still screwing up. That’s just life.”
Chloe laid her head back down. “Spare me the Big Lesson. You’re such a bore when you do that.”
Shelby put an arm around her daughter’s thin shoulder and pulled her close. “Maybe what happened to your dad isn’t what you’re thinking at all. You’ll see at the funeral tomorrow. He had a lot of friends. Personal friends. Business friends. Golfing friends.”
“Girlfriends?”
There was no point in lying; Chloe already knew the answer. She’d overheard their arguments, watched Paul bully her, helped her mother brush makeup onto her bruises on too many mornings after. They’d cowered together on the floor the summer night she’d finally challenged him and Paul pulled the gun.
“Yes, girlfriends,” Shelby said.
“Did you hate him for it?”
“Sometimes.”
“You put up with it, though?”
A year ago, before Shelby had secrets of her own, the comment would have cut her deep. Not now. “We all make choices,” she said. “I chose not to make it an issue in our marriage, because my family means too much to me. I couldn’t risk that.”
“Dad’s the one who was risking it, Mom. He was the one perving around. What’d he think, you were stupid?”
Shelby pushed Chloe away and rolled over. She felt the tears coming. “I did make it an issue once, and you saw what happened. Think it was worth it?”
Neither of them said anything else. A minute passed, maybe two. “I was so scared, Mom. He meant to kill us both. I saw it in his eyes. I hated him.”
“Me, too, baby.”
It was late and their conversation was lagging. The gaps were getting longer.
“They won’t be there tomorrow, will they?” Chloe asked, rallying. “At the funeral.”
“Who?”
“The women Dad was fucking.”
Shelby flinched at the word. “I wouldn’t know them anyway.”
Chloe rolled away and pulled a pillow to her chest. Within minutes, Shelby heard her daughter’s breathing fall into a deep, steady rhythm. Good to know at least one of them would sleep tonight.
Alone with her thoughts, Shelby’s mood darkened. What had she told LoveSick? What hadn’t she? She’d poured her heart out to him in the past few months, since he’d professed his love for her. Not just her fantasies, but the details of her life, of Paul’s life, of Chloe’s. Paul’s routines. Her routines. He knew so much. He was close. The only thing she knew about him for sure was that he’d already killed without conscience, an
d that he was smart—smart enough to know she was the only person who could ever link him to Paul’s murder. Smart enough to set her up as an accomplice.
Whoever he was.
26
After a few Newcastles and his late-night browse through the NSA Room, Starke was, by ten the next morning, interviewing the “executive escort” who’d been with Robert Delgado the night Paul Dwyer went missing. He’d cadged the name of the service from the receipt he’d glimpsed at Delgado’s office, run that through a friend at Las Vegas PD, and come up with incorporation papers listing the owner’s name. Turns out, the owner owed the Vegas cop a favor, badda bing, badda boom—Miss Congeniality called him back.
“You had a client a little more than three weeks ago, a homebuilder from LA named Robert Delgado,” he said. “There was a convention in town. This ringing any bells, Luscious?”
“It’s Lucy,” she said. “When I’m off the clock, sweetheart, I’m Lucy.”
Starke could hear a mournful opera playing in the background, the soundtrack of high culture. Vegas, Starke thought. Gotta love it. “OK Lucy, this would have been sometime on—” Starke looked up the date that Dwyer disappeared and read it to her. “The gentleman in question says he was in Vegas that weekend, and his story checks out with the people who ran this convention. He was definitely in Vegas. But I’m told he slipped away from the group on Friday night, and I suspect he was with you, probably between about ten and midnight.”
“Busy weekend, you know,” she said. “Homebuilders is one of the big ones.”
“You might remember this guy. About five foot five, 230, with kind of a pencil-thin mustache that—”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” she said. “Sawed-off little dude. That mustache. Dressed like a Havana tourist. Jesus.”
Starke made a note. The convention’s keynote dinner that Friday night was black-tie only. “Define ‘Havana tourist,’ please.”
The background aria was building like a storm as Lucy rummaged for details. Starke imagined her with her eyes closed, sifting the faces and body parts of a busy convention more than three weeks ago. How many that weekend? How many since?
“Guyabera. White shoes. Cigar.”
Starke stopped her. “No tux?”
Lucy laughed out loud. Actually snorted. “Seriously? He’d look like an eight ball in a tux.”
Starke was struck by how vividly she remembered Delgado. “How long would you say you were with him?”
“He got the full hour,” she said. “Made an issue of it, in fact. Finished in ten minutes, but didn’t want me to leave. He wanted to talk. Whatever. So I just listened to him brag about himself for fifty minutes and watched the clock.”
“And this was in his room at the Hooters hotel?”
“I usually won’t work there. Hooters gets your less-enlightened types. But the request came in for a real redhead, and that’s my thing, and money’s money. I remember he made a big deal about the hotel, like it was big-time Vegas. ‘Free porn,’ he kept saying. ‘Three channels!’ Like that would be a huge turn-on for me.”
She seemed to have Delgado’s personality nailed. “Do you remember what time you left his room, Lucy?”
“Late. After midnight, I’d guess. I walked through the casino to get out, so there’d be video if you want to check.”
True, Starke thought. But he still had no idea when Dwyer actually went missing. He was last seen at his office around 7:15, and Eckel’s best guess was that he’d been shot within forty-eight hours of that. If he could narrow the time frame, the video might be important in terms of confirming or undercutting Delgado’s alibi.
“And you’re sure this was that Friday night?” he asked, reading her the date again.
Her pause was long enough to be uncomfortable. “I think maybe it was Saturday. But I remember him, for sure.”
“Saturday? Not Friday? You’re not sure about that?”
Another pause. “I know you want me to say I’m sure, but I’m not. Busy weekend, like I said.”
“The day is pretty important, Lucy. Friday versus Saturday.”
“I wish I could be sure. But I’m not. I’m sorry.”
Starke buried his face in his free hand. He’d held the Executive International receipt for a moment before Delgado snatched it back and shredded it. He flipped back to his notes from that conversation, but found only the corporate name. No date. But he still had options. The lobby surveillance tapes. And if Executive International was legit enough to offer receipts to clients planning to write off its services, there’d be a discoverable duplicate somewhere if other evidence pointed to Delgado.
“Lucy, thank you for helping with this,” he said. “I think that’s all I need for now.”
In the background, the unfamiliar aria reached its crescendo. “I remember Mr. Eight Ball, for sure,” she said. “And it was definitely sometime during Homebuilders.”
“I’ll try to run that down on my end, Lucy,” Starke said. “I’m actually surprised you found him so memorable.”
Lucy laughed again. “One thing I’ll say for the little Napoleons: They tip well.”
27
The pews of St. Lawrence Martyr were mostly filled, with the late arrivals standing along the perimeter. They had all come for Paul, whose polished oak casket was parked at the front of the center aisle, barely visible beneath the massive spray of fresh gardenias on its lid. Shelby dabbed a tear with her crumpled tissue and looked out over the congregation from the lectern, hoping words would come, noting how the people representing each facet of her husband’s complicated life seemed to clump together.
Skip Bronson and the company’s executive staff and their families gathered to her left, toward the front. Behind them sat the Dwyer Foundation staff and some of its most notable beneficiaries, including its executive director Deacon Beale and the presidents of the two local colleges and a local hospital that the foundation so generously funded. To her right, Shelby saw her parents seated with Paul’s stoic widowed mother, neighbors, friends from church, Chloe’s school counselor and a few of her friends, as well as several of Paul’s most trusted bankers, architects, and contractors. She recognized Oscar Esparza, head of the company that for years had done grading and infrastructure work for Paul’s major projects, and a major foundation donor. A scattering of people she didn’t know well watched from the rear of the church, including the ice-cold Los Colmas police chief who’d brought her the news four days before. She sat alone.
“Thank all of you for being here for us,” Shelby began, “for me and Chloe. Your friendship and support means the world to us. I’m sure it would have meant the world to my husband.”
She stopped for a moment to collect her thoughts. “You know, Paul was so grateful to you all for helping him realize his vision over the years. He saw his work as one extended partnership, and considered it his privilege to be a part of that. His name was on the company headquarters, so he got the credit, but he’d have been the first to tell you, as he often told me, he was just part of a talented team. I want to thank you all on his behalf.”
She turned to the young priest who’d said the funeral Mass. “Father David, thank you for your words of comfort and hope. They were lovely. Really.”
Shelby considered sitting down, even turned away from the lectern. Then she stepped back to the microphone and squared her shoulders. There was an elephant in the room, and it felt wrong to ignore it.
“Paul was a good man. You all know that as well as I do. He deserved better. That’s all. He just—” Another glance at the priest, a forced smile. “I know we’re supposed to forgive. We all need forgiveness. I’m a work in progress right now. I just hope God bears with me.”
Shelby heard sniffles and a rustle of tissues from the pews. She had no idea what to do next, so she stood mutely to the side and waited until Father David stepped to the microphone. He thanked everyone for coming, asked that they keep Shelby and Chloe in their prayers, and invited the immediate family to accompany Paul to Emer
ald Hills Cemetery for a short graveside service.
Six pallbearers moved down the center aisle toward the casket. Shelby had chosen them carefully—Skip Bronson, Dwyer Development’s interim chief executive; Deacon Beale, the foundation’s CEO; the two college presidents; and Paul’s two younger brothers. At the funeral director’s command, they took up their assigned positions, three to a side.
An elderly gentleman with an usher badge touched Shelby’s arm. “Would you like to greet your guests at the back of the church, Mrs. Dwyer?”
She nodded.
“We’ll need you to follow the casket then. Are you and your daughter ready?”
Shelby put her arm around Chloe, who’d held her tears throughout the Mass, and focused on the open door at the rear of the church. They fell into step behind the rolling casket. Chloe quietly greeted family and friends as she walked. Toward the rear of the church, she leaned into a pew and hugged a young man Shelby had never seen before. He was dark and tall, well over six feet with the shoulders and chest of an athlete, sitting with Oscar Esparza. For a moment, Shelby flashed to Chloe’s comment from the night before, about people having secret lives. But she stayed focused, facing straight ahead, concentrating on the task at hand.
The receiving line was going to be the toughest part, the struggle to look all these people in the eye. She offered another silent prayer to St. Jude as she turned and waited in the vestibule for the guests to file out.
The rest was a blur of handshakes, hugs, sad eyes, and requests to “let us know” if she and Chloe ever needed anything. No one mentioned the murder. When the young man Chloe had hugged shook her hand, Shelby asked, “And you are?”
“Mario Esparza,” he’d replied. “I—”
“From school, Mom,” Chloe interjected. “A friend.”
“My family worked with Mr. Dwyer. My sister, too,” he added before moving on.
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