The Perfect Suspect

by Margaret Coel

“Let me put it another way,” Catherine said. “Do you know who might have gone to his house last night? Which one of his affairs?”

  Cannon was quiet a long moment, sucking air through his nostrils. “What makes you think anybody else was there?”

  “It’s something I stumbled onto,” she said. “It may or may not be true.”

  “So this person who may or may not have been there might have seen something?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to check out. Anybody around here drive a black BMW?”

  “You kidding me?” Cannon gave a howl of laughter. “David was generous, but not that generous.”

  “What about the volunteers?”

  Cannon took a minute. His gaze roamed across the cartons and chairs and debris, as if somewhere in the leftovers of the campaign, the image of a black BMW with a face behind the wheel might materialize. “Not that I know,” he said. He pitched himself forward and laced his fingers between his knees. “I’m not saying anything on the record.” Catherine nodded, and he went on. “David was a powerfully attractive man. Men like that get a lot of women. Maybe it’s not what they want, but the temptations are great, you understand? All I know is what I heard. Rumors, the same ones you’ve heard. Not that I cared what he did in his private life, but the problem is, candidates don’t have private lives. He and Sydney were the ideal couple, beautiful and rich. Everybody wanted to be around them. Hell, they wanted to be them. The image we projected in the campaign was of the successful, brilliant man and his loving wife. It goes without saying, the image conveyed faithfulness. We’d lose the conservative votes if there was any sign the rumors were true. Get my meaning?”

  “Did you ever confront him?”

  Cannon nodded. “Soon as one of the volunteers started asking about the rumors, I knew I had to have it out with him. He was about to blow the whole campaign, put an incompetent nobody in the governor’s office. At first, he denied the rumors. Vicious lies spread by his political enemies, he said. Slapped my back. Told me not to worry so much. Go get a beer, relax. I’d been working too hard. That was David. He had a way of deflecting any unpleasantness, anything he wanted to ignore. I sat down in front of his desk and told him I wasn’t leaving until he told me the truth. That was last June, after a staffer came in, all long-faced like his hero had just been toppled, said he’d seen David in an Aspen bar with a babe who wasn’t his wife. From the way David was pawing her, the woman was more than a friend.”

  “What did David say?”

  “He admitted everything,” Cannon said. “Just like David, always knowing when to bluff or punch it out and when to retreat. Retreat, marshal his forces and get right back into the game. He’d gotten involved with somebody, he said. Wasn’t proud of it. Wasn’t who he was. The woman had pursued him, made herself available any time or place. She had been discreet, he had to give her that. He was besotted with her at first. For David, everything was about the adventure, the conquest of something new. But it was over, he assured me. He apologized profusely that a staffer had happened to see them together. Said he’d told the staffer himself there wasn’t anything to what he’d seen. Just an old flame he’d happened to run into in Aspen. They’d had dinner and a couple glasses of wine. He had probably gotten more familiar with her than he should have. They had parted outside the bar, and he didn’t plan to see her again. He asked me to tell the staffer the same thing, smooth things over, you know?”

  “This staffer, whoever he was, bought the story?”

  Cannon lifted both arms. “The truth? I think David went up a few notches in his estimation. You know, a big enough man to admit his mistake, take the blame, and start over. Everybody loved David. They wanted him to be the man they thought he was.”

  “The woman in Aspen? Who was she?”

  “David never told me her name. I guess the affair went on for a while because Sydney eventually found out. Came in one day and started a big argument with David. Then she moved to the house in Evergreen. It was the last thing we needed weeks before the election—David and Sydney separated. David had promised he would end the affair and set everything right with his wife.”

  “When was this?” Catherine said. She felt a sharp pinprick of memory. Lawrence, her ex, making extravagant promises, buying extravagant gifts, but nothing ever changed. She had finally realized that he couldn’t help himself, that something was missing in his makeup, a cog that might have kept him moving along a normal route. She had divorced him, and she wondered when Sydney Mathews might have done the same. Not until after the election, most likely. Maybe not until David had served his term in office. First Lady was a tantalizing position, worth steeling yourself against the pain and humiliation. Maybe Sydney Mathews would never have divorced her husband.

  She scribbled on the notepad, circles and triangles and lines that she drove into the paper, trying to marshal her thoughts. Detective Beckman could be the woman in Aspen, angry at the breakup, hysterical, even out of her mind. She could have gone to Mathews’s house, confronted him, begged him to reconsider and, finally, pulled out a gun and shot him. The thought made Catherine feel a little weak, almost sick that someone so out of control and dangerous, a murderer, was in charge of the investigation.

  “Did you tell the police about the woman in Aspen?” she said.

  “They asked about his affairs and dalliances. I kept the answers vague. Told them that whatever may have happened in the past was over. I didn’t have any names, so what else could I say? I don’t want them dragging up a lot of unsavory stuff that will harm David’s reputation. He deserves better than that.”

  “You gave them the name of the campaign worker?”

  “Jeremy Whitman? He walked in while we were talking. The cops fired the same questions at him. He didn’t mention Aspen. Besides, I had confirmed David’s story, told him that the woman was an old flame he’d happened to run into and it didn’t mean anything. I could see he wanted to protect David. He loved the man. But he was real nervous, kept glancing over at me like he hoped he was doing the right thing for David. No sense in tarnishing David’s reputation because he’d had a drink with an old friend.”

  “Where can I find Jeremy?” Catherine said. My God, if the woman in Aspen was Detective Beckman, then Jeremy Whitman must have made the connection, which explained his nervousness. No wonder he didn’t say anything; he was trying to hide what he knew. He was in as much danger as the woman on the phone this morning.

  “You’re not going to write about this,” Cannon said. “Everything I’ve told you is off the record.”

  “Whitman could help solve David’s murder.”

  Cannon went quiet again. Finally he said, “Loft in LoDo. The old Hudson warehouse.”

  “Thanks.” Catherine got to her feet and started for the door. She swung back. “As far as you know, did David ever meet Detective Beckman?”

  Cannon pushed himself to his feet and ran the palm of his hand across his forehead again. He looked worn, spent, as if he might fold like an accordion, the wind sucked out of him. “I think she might’ve helped on the investigation into the stupid fraud charges his partner tried to bring. That ugly business was settled. No charges were ever brought. Yeah, to think of it, Beckman was working with the DA’s investigator. If I remember right, she had some experience with fraud cases. She helped bring the whole thing to a close.” He walked over and stared down at a pile of cartons. “Now she’s investigating David’s murder. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  11

  Catherine plunged into the stream of vehicles flowing through LoDo on the edge of downtown, the warehouse district at one time, with blocks of nineteenth-century brick buildings boasting ramps from the streets and double-bay doors that had accommodated horse-drawn wagons and trucks. She remembered coming to LoDo with Dad when she was a kid. He would check on the cabinets he’d ordered for a building he was constructing, and she always hung on to his hand, a little scared of the buzz and whine of machines, the smells of oil and electricity and the golden di
mness of the dust-filled air. Now the warehouses and factories were art galleries and restaurants and high-ceiling condos with crowds spilling onto the sidewalks. Many of the names from that other time remained stenciled on the brick walls.

  She pulled into the curb behind an SUV that was pulling out and hurried a half block toward the six-storied corner building with HUDSON splashed in black letters above the windows on the top floor. Groups of people swirled around her, tourists in shorts and tee shirts and locals with dress shirts plastered to their backs, briefcases swinging, cell phones stuck in their ears. A high-pitched energy ran through the shouts of laughter and hum of voices. She had turned forty this year, and the failures and compromises dogged at her steps. A failed marriage, a couple of affairs that had worn themselves out, leaving her without solid footing, a proper place to fit into. She wanted to laugh at herself hurrying through LoDo like everyone else. Catherine McLeod, investigative reporter, on a story about a man who was shot to death. And last year, she had shot a man to death. The thought never left her mind. It was always in the background somewhere, emerging at the least expected moments, clanging in the nightmares.

  But something else had happened last year. She had learned she was part Arapaho, and something inside her had begun to pry itself open. She had met Dulcie Oldman at the Indian Center and begun connecting with a part of herself that, like the old buildings rising around her, used to be something else before they were changed.

  The Hudson building stood at the far end of the block, a triangle of redbrick walls jutting toward the street corner. Catherine followed the bricks around to the large glass-framed door with bronze hinges and a bronze knob shaped like an anvil. Inside was a lobby with white marble floors and hundred-year-old exposed beams running across the high ceiling. The walls were a muted gunmetal gray. On the right, a set of elevators, and straight ahead a gray-haired man in a dark suit watching her from behind a mahogany counter.

  “I’m here to see Jeremy Whitman,” she said, walking over, heels clacking on the marble.

  He gave her a matter-of-fact look, leaned over a computer and tapped a few keys. “Haven’t seen him come in. He expecting you?”

  “Catherine McLeod, from the Journal.” She tried for a tone that said whether she was expected made no difference. She dragged the small leather envelope out of her bag and extracted a business card.

  “He’s not responding,” the man said.

  Catherine turned over the card and scribbled her cell number. Then she wrote, Call me ASAP. Very important. “Please give him this as soon as he comes in,” she said, pushing the card toward the gray suit.

  The sun had dropped behind the mountains, and streaks of violet, orange and magenta flared in the sky as Catherine drove over the Fifteenth Street viaduct. Ahead the hilly mesas of Highland lifted themselves out of the riverbanks. It was still daylight, but dusk was coming on fast, and there was an orange cast to the air. Denver had started at the confluence of the Platte River and Cherry Creek, she knew, mobs of gold-seekers and adventurers a hundred and fifty years ago overrunning the land that had belonged to her own people. Frank McLeod had been a great storyteller; she had loved listening to the stories he’d heard from his father and grandfather. How settlers, crowded in log cabins and bungalows, mired in the mud and offal of the river bottoms, had looked out across the river to the high lands and dreamed of moving up. The Irish had gone to Highland first, then the Italians and the Jews and, finally, the Hispanics, each group making its own community, remnants of which still existed. She loved that about the old neighborhood, known as North Denver, even though it was northwest of downtown. Pastrami, Italian sausages and cheeses over here, kosher salami, bagels and rugulach there, fresh tortillas and chilis a few blocks away, and clusters of cafés and bakeries, galleries and theaters and an old Carnegie Library.

  By the time Catherine parked in the driveway off the alley behind her bungalow, it was almost dark, and long shadows lay over the alley and the yard. Nick was probably already at the restaurant; he was always early. She let herself inside and walked through the house. Rex was waiting in the backyard, head bobbing and tail flapping. She patted his head, rubbed his ears, then filled his dish with his favorite dog food and gave him fresh water. Five minutes later, she had brushed her hair, touched up her lipstick and was retracing her route toward the river and Gaetano’s at the edge of Highland.

  Nick sat at a corner table in the far room behind the bar. The place was packed, every table taken, people stacked around the hostess podium. There was an air of celebration, glasses clinking and waiters darting about. Aromas of spicy tomato sauce, sausages, warm bread and strong wine drifted toward Catherine as she made her way past the smiling faces of the Smaldone brothers and their associates looking out from the framed photos on the walls. Gaetano’s was another remnant from the past, a place with its own history and right to belong. The Smaldones, Denver’s own version of the underworld, once owned the restaurant, running bootleg booze during Prohibition, and illicit gambling for decades later from corner tables. One of Frank’s stories was how the kids in the neighborhood liked to shoot basketballs into the hoop outside the restaurant. Anytime a police car pulled up, the kids fired the balls at the wall itself to warn the men inside. Later, somebody would come out and give them a couple of quarters.

  Nick was on his feet as she approached. He reached out and tugged her toward him. She could feel his heart thudding next to hers, the power in his arms and the warmth of him flooding over her, as if she had arrived in a place toward which she had been heading for a long time. She kissed him back hard.

  “I’ve missed you.” He led her to the chair across the table corner. He had black hair, flecked with gray that made it look silvery under the ceiling lights, and a strong face with sculptured features, not handsome, exactly, but confident and engaged. He had grown up a few blocks away; he was as much a part of the neighborhood as Gaetano’s, and that sense of belonging somewhere, she supposed, was one of the things that had drawn her to him.

  “How was L.A.?” she said, settling in the chair. A half glass of red wine twinkled in front of him. He liked Merlot.

  “Hot, windy and trying.” He motioned to a waiter. At the next table, a small child banged on a plate, then tossed the spoon onto the floor and started howling. “A week at the L.A. jail interrogating gang members who would’ve stuck us with a shiv if they could have.” The mother had pushed her chair back and was about to get up, when the waiter swooped in and handed the child another spoon. The howling subsided into loud, smacking sobs.

  “Sorry to start without you,” Nick said when the waiter turned to their table. “What would you like?”

  “The same.” Catherine nodded toward his glass. She had started drinking Merlot since she’d met Nick Bustamante.

  “Bring us a bottle,” Nick said, looking up out of the corner of his eyes. Then he leaned forward and set his hand over hers. He had a way of looking at her, Catherine thought, as if he were trying to glimpse something below the surface that swam just out of view. He was looking at her like that now. “I would have preferred to be here with you. Rough day?” he said.

  “It’s not every day a gubernatorial candidate is murdered.” She allowed her hand to rest in his. The murder moved itself again to the front of her thoughts. The caller’s voice was still in her head. She pressed her fingers against his a moment and tried to ignore the fact that Nick Bustamante worked every day with Detective Beckman. “If you’d been in town,” she said finally, “it might have been your case.”

  “The whole department’s on it,” Nick said, “from the chief to the guys on the street. The cable channels have set up in front of headquarters. They’ll be broadcasting live tonight. Reporters all over the place. I saw Metcalf in the lobby.”

  Catherine slipped her hand free, sat back and waited while the waiter poured a glass of Merlot and set the bottle on the table. She ordered ravioli and salad, and Nick said he would have his usual. The waiter nodded and smiled. S
paghetti with sausage. After the waiter walked off, she said, “Is something about to break?” Beckman could have arrested someone—anyone—to keep suspicion away from herself.

  “It won’t be long.” Nick shrugged. “High-profile murder, probably only a few primary suspects. It’s a matter of zeroing in, determining who wanted the candidate out of the way. Starting with the widow.” He took a sip of wine and seemed to reconsider. “You’re not working, are you?”

  “No,” she said, and yet, she was working, she knew, all of her instincts on alert. Nick could say something that might link Beckman to David Mathews, drop a hint, an innocent word.

  “It’s simply a matter of eliminating everyone close to the victim,” Nick continued, “working your way outward.”

  The waiter brought the pasta and salad and made a great flourish of grating veils of parmesan over the plates. “What’s your opinion of Beckman?” Catherine said when the waiter disappeared.

  “Catherine . . .” He picked up his fork and held it over the pasta a moment. “You know I can’t talk about police business.”

  “I’m just wondering how competent she is. Like you said, this is a high-profile case. The whole country’s watching.”

  “She’s competent. Learned the ropes in Minneapolis. Denver gets the benefit of what she knows. The case is in good hands, in case the Journal is wondering.” He wrapped the spaghetti around his fork—the way his mother had taught him to eat spaghetti, he’d once explained—and took a bite. Then he sliced into the sausage.

  “Do you work closely with her?” Catherine sampled her ravioli. The taste of tomato sauce and melted cheeses was sharp on her tongue.

  “What’s this about?” Nick said, wrapping another forkful of spaghetti.

  “I’m wondering if she’s capable of solving Mathews’s murder.”

  “She’s not working alone. Martinez is on the case with her.” He took another bite, then patted his napkin at his mouth and sat back, looking at her as if he hoped to peer below the surface.