Wow, an entire sentence. Nathan glanced at Fiona. She was staring at his new partner again, looking impressed now, but still distrustful.
She turned back to Nathan. “So based on the interview, and the information provided, and the information not provided, I’d say your witness has a credibility problem.”
Just what he needed. A well-respected judge with a credibility problem. He couldn’t wait to run this up the flagpole.
He decided to play devil’s advocate. “What about her injuries? She claims she was knocked to the ground, and she’s got a concussion to back that up.”
“I don’t know who knocked her to the ground,” Fiona said. “It could have been someone she knew.”
Nathan’s head started to pound. He had to unravel this murder case, deal with the politics, and train a rookie detective all at the same time. This case was going to suck.
Fiona took out a manila envelope, slid the drawing inside, and handed it to him. The sketch was eight inches by fourteen, just the right size to fit in his case file. She paid attention to details like that.
“Call me if you need anything else.” She turned to Hodges. “Welcome to Austin. It was nice meeting you.”
She disappeared into an elevator, and Nathan looked at Hodges, who was still standing on the other side of the room.
“You get all that?”
He gave a slight nod.
“You agree with her?”
Another nod. Not much of a talker, this guy. It was going to be a party teaching him to elicit a confession.
A buzz sounded, and Nathan reached for the phone clipped to his hip, just beneath his side holster. “Devereaux.”
“We’ve got a Code 37 at Zilker Park.”
“I’m at Seton Hospital on the Goodwin interview. Give it to Webb.”
“He’s still in court. You and Hodges are it.”
Could this day get any worse? Nathan pulled out his notepad and jotted down a few details before hanging up. Then he made a call and arranged for a uniform to hightail it over, just in case the Honorable Judge Goodwin decided to check herself out of the hospital. Finally, he turned to his partner.
“We got a shooting at Zilker.” He lobbed the rest of his stale candy bar into a trash can. “I’m driving.”
Ten minutes later, they were in an unmarked unit en route to Austin’s largest park. Hodges had said nothing since leaving the hospital. Nathan slid a glance at him. His short haircut reminded Nathan he’d been in the military not so long ago. He decided to make more of an effort.
“You ever work homicide before now?”
“Narcotics.”
“Well, there’s three rules once we get to the scene: Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch anything. And don’t fucking touch anything.”
Hodges kept his eyes trained on the road.
“And you can pretty much bet that the least competent jackass we got wearing a badge is going to be the first responder. It never fails. And it’s been that kind of day.”
Nathan swung onto Barton Springs Road, the four-lane street that cut straight through the park. He could already see the congestion up ahead, where a uniform had diverted traffic away from the parking lot serving the hike-and-bike trail that paralleled Town Lake. Nathan off-roaded it for a few hundred feet and then flashed his ID at the guy manning the blockade. He started to move the wooden barrier, but Nathan swerved around it and saved him the trouble. The narrow road wound down closer to the water and ended at a gravel parking lot surrounded by dense foliage.
Nathan jogged here sometimes and knew the area well. Typically, this lot would be filling up right now, despite the oppressive heat. But the only cars parked here today were police units, a crime-scene van, and a silent yellow ambulance. No news crews yet, but it wouldn’t take long. Nathan pulled up beside the ambulance and waved at a paramedic he knew vaguely.
They parked and made their way over to the crime scene, which had already been taped off. Inside the cordoned-off area, on a tree-shaded patch of gravel, sat a blue Buick Skylark and a black Porsche Cayenne. Both vehicles faced a thicket of mesquite and mulberry bushes. The Cayenne’s doors were closed. The two doors on the Buick’s left side stood open, and a photographer knelt between them now, taking a picture.
Nathan approached the dour policewoman standing beside the sawhorse that marked the crime scene’s southeast corner. He’d been right about the jackass thing.
He nodded. “Brenda.”
She nodded back, then squinted at Hodges.
“This is Will Hodges,” Nathan said. “He just came on board.”
“Victim’s name is John David Alvin,” she announced proudly. “Age forty-two. Six-eighty-nine Sunset Cove.”
“You rifled his wallet?”
Her face fell. “Uh, no. I just—”
“Never move the victim.”
“I didn’t. His wallet’s sitting open right there on the floor. I saw his ID through the window.”
Nathan took the clipboard she held out to him and scrawled his name and badge number on the crime-scene log—which consisted of a torn slip of paper. Hodges followed suit, and they both ducked under the tape.
John Alvin. The name rang a bell, but Nathan didn’t know why. Alvin. Alvin. Where had he heard that name before?
He walked up behind the photographer and peered inside the Buick. The smell of fresh death wafted out from the roasting car, and a swarm of flies was already busy. Sometimes Nathan longed for a job in Minnesota. Or Vancouver. Anyplace where it took insects longer than twelve seconds to go to work on a corpse.
“Hey, Bart.” Nathan crouched down beside him. The photographer’s olfactory nerves had gone numb already, and he was snapping away with his camera, oblivious to the smell. Nathan needed a minute.
“Close range,” Bart said. “I’d say about one meter.”
Nathan ducked his head lower to get a better angle. He could just barely make out the face….
John David Alvin. Attorney-at-law. Nathan had met the man back in January.
“Shit,” he muttered, standing up. He was getting a very bad feeling about this. He walked around to the back of the vehicle and looked at the tag.
“We have a witness, Detective. Says she was in the car with the victim when he was shot.”
His feeling went from bad to very bad. He turned around to face the patrol officer, who stood flushed and dripping in the late-afternoon sun. He was fair-skinned and overweight, and the pits of his uniform were soaked through.
“In the car?” Nathan asked.
“Yep. Sounds like a robbery.”
“Where is she?”
The officer nodded toward a unit parked on the far-eastern edge of the lot. The back door of the car was open, and a woman sat there, barefoot, her elbows propped on her knees, her head buried in her hands.
“Shit.”
“What?” Hodges walked up and his gaze followed Nathan’s to the car. The witness waiting to be interviewed had long black hair streaked with vibrant red. She was hunched over her knees and looked to be massaging her temples. Nathan couldn’t see her face.
But he didn’t need to. He took one look at those mile-long legs and knew exactly who she was.
“Shit,” he repeated, too thrown off even to curse creatively.
“Who is she?”
He glanced at Hodges. “You know the artist you just met?”
“The suit at the hospital?”
“Yep.”
“What about her?”
“Brace yourself,” Nathan told him. “You’re about to meet her sister.”
CHAPTER 2
Flies streamed in and out of the Skylark.
Courtney tried like hell to ignore them, but she couldn’t stop looking. They were in there with David. He was dead. And if she’d been just a little bit stronger, a little quicker to understand, he’d be alive right now, and she wouldn’t be hearing this weird buzzing noise and looking at all those flies.
She dragged her gaze away from the car
. The skin between her shoulder blades tickled, and she had the disconcerting feeling she was being watched. She cast a glance over her shoulder and wondered, for the hundredth time, what had become of the man in the ski mask. Who was he? And where was he now? Had he scuttled off to nurse his wounds, or was he somewhere close, watching her?
“Miss Glass?”
She jerked her head around. It was that cop again, the fat one with the flattop. McCoy? Mahoney? She’d given him her story, and he’d told her to wait here, that more people would want to talk to her.
He flipped open a notebook. “I need to get down some additional information.”
She watched his mouth as he talked. He had pink lips and light skin. He was short and bulky. The ski-mask guy had been bulky—
“Full name?”
She checked his eyes. Blue-gray. They weren’t gray enough. And she was losing her mind even to consider that this potbellied cop might have held her at gunpoint.
“Ma’am?”
“Courtney Jane Glass.”
“Address?”
“Nine-twenty-five Oak Trail, Apartment B.”
The questions droned on, and she recited answers. Her gaze drifted back to the car, her car, where a man in white coveralls had climbed inside with a black case. What was he doing in there? A shudder moved through her.
She scanned the surrounding area. There were so many trees. So many places to hide. He could be anywhere. He could be watching. Her stomach knotted at the thought, and she wondered whether police cars had bulletproof windows. She glanced around the lot, where a group of uniformed men were huddled off to the side. A guy in street clothes stood near them, his back to her, having a heated conversation on his cell phone. Yet another man leaned back against the trunk of one of the police cars. He wore street clothes, too, and had a gun plastered to his hip.
He was watching her.
“Miss Glass?”
Her attention snapped back to the cop. Those gray eyes peered down at her. She shuddered again. “Sorry. What?”
“Could you tell me what time you arrived at the park?”
What time had she arrived at the park?
“I don’t know. Three-thirty? He’d asked me to meet him at three-thirty.”
Her gaze wandered back to her car. There was a stretcher there now, just beside the passenger door.
“Miss Glass?”
“What?” God, what was wrong with this jerk? Did they have to do this now? She could barely think straight.
The officer’s brow furrowed. “I have a few more questions—”
“Time for a break.” The street-clothes guy, the one with the gun, came up and slapped the cop on the back.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Detective Hodges.” He held a blue windbreaker out to Courtney. “Cold?”
She realized she was freezing. She had on a flimsy lime green sundress, and her whole body was shivering.
“It’s a hundred degrees out,” the cop protested.
The detective turned to him. “Why don’t you go grab a couple of waters? EMS should have some.”
It was an order, not a request. The uniform snapped his notebook shut, then trudged off toward the ambulance.
Courtney took the windbreaker. It was lined with gray flannel and had APD printed on the back in yellow block letters. She slid her arms inside the sleeves and felt better immediately, a little more protected from the chill and all the male gazes surrounding her.
The detective crouched down beside her. They were at eye level now, but he looked out at the lake, not at her. His silence continued, and she could hear the cicadas buzzing.
Or maybe it was that same relentless buzzing she’d been hearing since the gun went off.
“Tic Tac?”
She glanced over. Tic Tac? “No, thanks.”
He rattled a few mints into his spacious palm and popped them in his mouth.
“You like to bike here?”
The question put her on guard again. “No.”
“Not much of a biker myself.”
This guy wasn’t from Austin. The town was full of Lance Armstrong wannabes who liked to “ride” and were “into cycling.” Bikers around here rode Harleys.
She didn’t say anything. The interview would start up again. Or maybe this was the interview. Maybe he was fishing for information. Do you like to bike? Jog? Did you shoot your ex-boyfriend in the chest?
Courtney shuddered.
“You’re in shock.”
“Huh?” She looked up at him and felt a twinge of relief. His eyes were brown, like amber, and even if they hadn’t been, his build was nothing like her assailant’s.
“Shock. Throws your system off. Heart rate, temperature, everything.”
She looked away. This detective wasn’t here to chat. He wanted something, probably answers to a long list of questions.
He shifted slightly and pulled something from his pocket. A neatly folded white handkerchief. He nodded at her scraped knees.
She took it from him. The only man she knew who carried handkerchiefs was her grandfather, and he was eighty-one years old.
She dabbed at her cuts, wiping away the dust and gravel. She had cuts on her arms, too, and probably her face from when she’d plunged into the woods to get away from the hideous ski mask. She’d run until it felt like her heart would burst, tripping over vines and roots, not hazarding a single glance backward until she’d reached the trailhead and found a blue emergency phone.
Her cuts needed cleaning. She had some hand sanitizer in her purse, but that was back in the Skylark. With David.
She stood up and stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stay here even a minute longer.
“I need to get home.”
The detective stood, too, and she got the full effect of his height and heft. She considered herself fairly tall at five-ten, but she had to tilt her head back to look at him. She squared her shoulders and tried not to seem intimidated.
“Can I go?”
He didn’t say anything. His gaze moved over her slowly, and she could feel him taking in her bare feet, her dirty knees, the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
“Are we done here?” she asked, straining to keep her voice even.
No response.
Why wouldn’t he answer? She had rights. Goddamn it, she had all kinds of rights! They couldn’t just keep her here indefinitely. Frustration burned in her throat, and she swallowed it down. She wouldn’t lose it. She would not lose it. Not in front of these cops, anyway.
The freckle-faced one plodded up to them wearing a sour expression. He offered her a bottle of water.
“I’m fine.” Actually, she was parched, but her thirst wasn’t nearly as pressing as her need to leave.
The cop shot the detective a glare and then turned to Courtney. “Ma’am. We need to take you to the station now to get a formal statement.”
A formal statement.
“Do I have a choice?”
His eyebrows snapped together. “You’re saying you won’t go?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t, I just asked if I had a choice.”
“We could probably do it here,” the detective said blandly, “if you really want.”
She looked around. The thought of being stuck at a police station for the next few hours made her head throb. But she couldn’t stay here. She felt rattled and vulnerable, and she needed a chance to pull herself together.
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “But someone better give me a ride, because my car’s occupied.”
Her car was a crime scene. She glanced over at it, just as those men in coveralls lowered David’s body onto a black bag that had been spread out atop the stretcher. They tucked his arms close to his sides. One of them reached for the zipper—
“Whoa.”
A hand clamped around her elbow as she swayed backward. Her vision blurred at the edges.
“Easy, now.” The detective frowned down at her. His
fingers gripped her arm, holding her up.
She pushed away from him and used the car door for support. “Sorry.” What the hell? She’d never fainted in her life.
“You’d better sit down,” he said.
“No.”
“I think you need some water.”
“I’m fine.” As long as she didn’t look at her car again.
“You sure?”
“Let’s just go,” she said. “I want to get this over with.”
Will left the witness in Interview 2 and went off to find a vending machine. He took the long route, stopping by his desk first to check phone messages and e-mail. He wanted her to stew for a while. And he needed some information before he and Devereaux began their interrogation.
After combing the first floor for a few minutes, he found a break room with a machine that took dollars. He bought two Cokes, one for himself and one for Courtney Glass. He’d bet she drank Diet Coke, but her system needed sugar. And he knew better than to bring a woman a diet drink when she hadn’t asked for it.
Cans in hand, he rode up the elevator and wove his way through the maze of cubes and corridors back to his department. He recognized the detective slouched against the doorway to the lieutenant’s office. Will made his footsteps silent as he walked up on him.
“Yeah, that’s because he’s twelve.”
He identified Devereaux’s voice inside the room.
“Twenty-nine.” This from the lieutenant. “And he’s a war veteran.”
“I don’t give a shit what he is; he’s never worked a homicide.”
Will stopped in the doorway, startling Webb, whom he’d met for the first time yesterday. He scanned the expressions. They ranged from pissed off (his partner) to stressed out (the lieutenant) to mildly entertained (Webb).
“Witness is in Two,” Will reported. “McElroy’s on the door.”
Lieutenant Cernak cleared his throat. “Someone’s got to take this girl’s statement. You’re it.”
“All right. Why me?”
“She seems to like you. And Devereaux’s been reassigned.”
Will glanced at his partner. Devereaux’s jaw tightened, and he looked away.
“She waived her right to an attorney,” Cernak continued. “Looks like she’s in a hurry to get home. You need to get her talking, then pin down every goddamn detail.”
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