Catherine lifted her glass and took a deep drink of wine. She had pushed too far, she was thinking. And what had she hoped for? That Nick Bustamante might tell her that Detective Beckman could be capable of murdering a man she was involved with? “So what kind of fishing trip are you on?” he said. “I work closely with a lot of women. It’s part of my job. I just spent eight days in L.A. working with a detective on the L.A. force. I don’t sleep with my colleagues, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Catherine finished the wine, set down her glass and waited while Nick refilled it. Things had gone off track. She was a reporter, for godssakes, used to asking questions that elicited information. How had she given Nick the idea that this was personal, that she was jealous of his colleagues? She sipped at the wine, aware of the muted warmth spreading inside her, willing it to move faster. The undertow of conversations at the other tables pulled at the silence that had descended between them.
“Are we breaking up?” Nick was smiling. Only half joking, she thought.
“No. No,” she said. “This isn’t about us. I’m curious, that’s all. What would happen if an officer were accused of some crime?”
“What the hell are you talking about? What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” Catherine said. “Reporters hear things sometimes.”
Nick worked at his spaghetti for a long moment, then sat back and regarded her. “My dad used to talk about the rogue cops in Denver back in the early sixties. A whole burglary ring of cops. The joke was that if a burglar broke into your house, you should get his badge number. Every other cop in Denver, including my dad, was furious and ashamed. The good cops were the ones that brought the bad ones down. They cleaned up the place. We’ve had a professional department for fifty years. What are you saying? You know something about Beckman or Martinez or somebody else?”
“I didn’t say that.” They’ll consider the source, Metcalf said this morning. An anonymous source, and they’ll drop the accusation into a well. Even worse, she knew, was that Beckman would know for certain there was a witness.
“But you’re on a fishing expedition,” Nick said.
Catherine sliced a piece of ravioli, then pushed the pasta away and took another drink of wine. She wasn’t hungry, and this was all wrong. She’d already said too much, alerted Nick. He might go back to headquarters and mention something to Detective Beckman, put her on alert. The last thing Catherine had wanted. She wasn’t sure what she had been hoping for: a little inside information, a hint Beckman may have been investigated for something else? Even a minor infraction of the rules would show that the woman broke rules, stepped over lines. And yet, she and Nick had an agreement: she would not use anything he told her about his job, and he would do the same. She had been the one stepping over a line.
She heard the muffled coughing of her cell and dug into her bag. Not a number she recognized. The man’s voice sounded young and tentative. “This is Jeremy Whitman.” Behind his voice was the clanking noise of a bar. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “Where can I meet you?”
“I’m at Old Sally’s.”
“How will I know you”
“I’ll be waiting at the front door.”
“I’m sorry, Nick.” Catherine snapped the phone shut and got to her feet. “It’s someone I’ve been trying to get ahold of. I have to talk to him,” she said. Then she swung about and started back through the restaurant, conscious of the dark, perplexed gaze drilling into her back.
12
The man standing under the neon sign that blinked “Old Sally’s” was medium height, with a wiry, cyclist’s build, light-colored hair plastered back from his face and a drawn, unsteady look about him. Little groups of people moved along the sidewalk, but he was watching the cars that crawled down the street, as if he expected Catherine to jump out of one. She hurried past the three girls tottering along in five-inch heels and short skirts and came up beside him. “Jeremy?” she said. He jumped back at least two inches and started to stumble. She thought he might fall. Regaining his balance, he blinked at her.
“You the reporter?” Catherine read his lips. Music pulsed out of the bar, pounding rhythms mixed with laughter and shouts that spilled onto the sidewalk.
“Catherine McLeod,” she shouted. “I know a quiet place. Do you mind walking?”
He hesitated. The annoyance and grief in his expression finally gave way to a squint of curiosity. “Let’s go,” he said.
Catherine started back the way she had come, the young man beside her, Top-Siders scuffing the sidewalk. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the deliberate way he walked, arms at his sides, shoulders straight ahead, like a drunk driver desperate not to break any traffic rules. “This about David?” he said when they escaped the bubble of noise. “The worst thing ever happened in my life. I can’t believe it.” He had choked up; his voice dropping a half octave. “Keep telling myself it can’t be true. He was a great man. A great man,” he said again, head bobbing in affirmation.
“You might have some information that could help find his killer,” Catherine said. They had passed her parked car and were stopped for the red light where Sixteenth Street butted into Wazee. A block away, the massive gray stone façade and tiled roof of the Union Depot loomed under the streetlights. In another time, another world, Catherine thought, hundreds of train passengers had traipsed along these same sidewalks every day to the nearby hotels and restaurants. On the corner was the Tattered Cover bookstore, and beyond, the tall buildings that ringed the edges of LoDo, bright yellow lights gleaming in black windows. Traffic shunted past, spitting out exhaust fumes and dust. The air was cool, a sweater evening. She wished she had thought to bring a wrap.
The walk light flashed, and Catherine hurried across the street, Jeremy still in tow. He seemed to have lapsed into himself, consumed with his own thoughts. They made their way up the steps and through the heavy wooden doors into the Tattered Cover, past the knots of people browsing books stacked on tables and arranged on shelves of movable bookcases, the vividly colored book covers jumping out under the ceiling lights. The patina on the old floor boards took on a metallic cast.
Catherine motioned Jeremy into the coffee shop. “What can I get you?” she said.
“Nothing for me.” He sank onto a chair at the only vacant table. The coffee shop was quiet; the other customers intent on the books propped in front of their coffee cups. At least their table stood apart, out of earshot. “The day’s been too weird. I’m sticking with booze tonight,” he said. At the counter, she ordered black coffee, carried it over and sat down across from him.
“What did you mean, I might know something?” A worried note sounded in his tone. Tiny red veins mapped the whites of his eyes.
Catherine took a sip of coffee, then took her cell out of her bag. She touched one of the icons and held up the phone between them. The TV news from this morning started replaying in miniature: The gurney, the bulky form of David Mathews’s body in a gray, plastic bag, the coroner’s officers at both ends, and the barely audible monotone of the newscaster announcing that a body had been removed from the gubernatorial candidate’s home. Then, the briefest glimpse in the opened door of a beautiful woman with stylish blond hair and a dark blazer and khaki slacks. She might have been one of the newscasters, Catherine thought.
“I already saw it,” Jeremy said. He seemed slightly offended, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. Then he shifted about, and she followed his gaze toward the nearest table where a gray-haired man in a professor’s sweater with leather elbow patches bent over a thick book with a cover of swirling comets and stars.
Catherine replayed the newscast, and this time, she stopped on the image of Detective Beckman. “Do you recognize the woman in the door?” she said.
The young man took a moment before slowly turning back. He squinted at the image. “One of the investigators,” he said. “Otherwise, why would she be in the house?”
�
��She’s the homicide detective in charge, Detective Beckman.” Catherine could feel her heart accelerating. “Anything familiar about her?”
“Why would there be?” Jeremy looked away.
“I spoke with Don Cannon this morning,” Catherine said. “He told me you had spotted Mathews in Aspen with a woman a few months ago. Could the woman have been Detective Beckman?”
Jeremy stayed quiet, staring out into the bookstore, hands clasped on the table. Finally he looked back at the tiny image of Detective Beckman. “When I saw the news this morning, I recognized her. I knew I’d seen her before. But that’s crazy. Why would David have anything to do with a homicide detective?” The weight of the implications seemed to crash over him, like a falling wall. He sat back, not taking his eyes from the image. “It’s so bizarre. I keep telling myself it can’t be true.” He was murmuring at the screen. “A police detective involved in murder?”
“We don’t have any evidence,” she said. God, what was she doing? Jeremy Whitman would show up at campaign headquarters tomorrow and tell Cannon everything. How long before Detective Beckman learned Whitman identified her? “All I have so far,” she hurried on, “is a possible link between Beckman and Mathews. If you saw them together in Aspen, it would be enough to have her removed from the investigation.”
“David told me she was an old girlfriend.” Jeremy waved away the cell, and Catherine tucked it back inside her bag. Dejection clung to him like sweat; she could almost smell it. “I loved that man,” he said. “I believed him. He happened to run into her, that was all, and they’d had a drink. You’re saying it was a lie? There was something going on between them?”
“I don’t know,” Catherine said.
“Oh, come off it!” Jeremy shouted. The gray-haired professor at the next table lifted his eyes from the book and glanced over. Catherine could feel the annoyed stares from the other tables. “Don’t come around telling me I have important information, show me a photo, then tell me you don’t know anything. Jesus, I loved the man.” He shot a look around; then, lowering his voice, he said, “I loved him, and he lied. He was chasing around, like his enemies wanted the public to believe. I thought they were lying, trying to ruin a decent man. I told myself, David and Sydney Mathews were the perfect couple with the perfect marriage. I wanted to be just like him. Rich, successful, beautiful wife, great houses, everybody eating out of my hand. He would’ve been the best governor Colorado ever had, and now you tell me it was all a lie?”
“Was anyone else from the campaign in Aspen at the time? Anyone else who might have seen them?”
Jeremy drew his lips into a tight line a moment. “Just fricking me,” he said finally. “I was the lucky one that got to catch David in his lies. God, I need a drink.” There was a helplessness in the way he looked around.
Catherine pushed the coffee cup toward him. She hadn’t touched it. “Try a little coffee,” she said. Sometimes, she had discovered, caffeine had a way of soothing the need for a drink.
Jeremy stared at the cup a moment, then took a long sip. He set the cup down hard, as if he feared missing the table. A tiny puddle of brown liquid started to spread. “We’d gone to Grand Junction,” Jeremy said, “David and I and a couple of staffers. David spoke at a chamber of commerce luncheon. He had driven himself. David liked to drive alone. He said it gave him time to collect his thoughts. After the luncheon, he told me he was going back to Denver. The other staffers stayed in Grand Junction to check up on things at the campaign office for the Western Slope. I’d taken the weekend off. I had my gear in the back of my Subaru, and I headed to the Maroon Bells outside Aspen. Spent two days climbing and camping. Like David, I needed some time to get my head clear.”
“So Mathews knew that no one on the trip would know whether he did, in fact, drive back to Denver.”
Jeremy nodded. “Looks that way.” He sipped at the coffee again. “Caffeine’s not doing it for me,” he said. “I need a drink. Can we get this over with?”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” he said. “After I got off the mountain, I wandered around town, checking out the bars. I wandered into the Hotel Jerome ’cause I’d heard it had a great old bar. David was sitting at a table in the corner with a babe, you know? All I could think was what’s he doing here with her? He saw me, got up and came over. He took my arm, I remember, and steered me out of the bar and into the lobby where I couldn’t see the babe. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said, and he gave me some bullshit about happening to run into her and having a drink for old time’s sake. I said I’d understood he was going back to Denver. ‘Well, that was the plan.’ David could finesse anything. God, he was the best. Nobody could rattle him or throw him off his pitch. That’s why he was so great on the campaign trail. Farmers out on the plains, ranchers in the mountains, professors, students, soccer moms, there wasn’t a question they could throw where he didn’t have the perfect answer. It was like he’d been expecting that question all along.”
“You believed what he told you?”
“Everybody believed David Mathews.” Jeremy waited a long moment before he went on. “I wanted to believe him. I hated the doubt, but I couldn’t shake it. If any of the rumors proved true, it would ruin the whole campaign. Colorado voters like their politicians to be square shooters, and if they aren’t, they don’t want to know about it.”
“So you talked to Cannon?”
“I ran it by him. He told me to forget it. Don’t go making something out of nothing. Next day, he pulled me into his office and gave me the same story David had given me. The woman was an old girlfriend he had happened to run into. They had a few drinks and that was it. So I should forget about it. We had a campaign to run. I was glad to have Cannon telling tell me what to do, you know? Made it easier to put it aside, not think about it anymore.”
“Listen, Jeremy,” Catherine said. She started to suggest that they go to police headquarters right away, then thought better of it. He was half-drunk. She didn’t want to give Internal Affairs any reason to discount his story. “I want you to come with me to police headquarters first thing tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll get an appointment with Internal Affairs. You can tell them what you saw in Aspen and what David told you.”
“I don’t think so.” He pushed the coffee cup away and managed to stand up, knocking the chair back a little, wobbling on his feet. “My word against a police detective’s? Who they gonna believe? If she had anything to do with David getting murdered, I’m hanging below the radar. Let somebody else link them together.”
Catherine stood up. “There might be someone else. Someone who saw her outside David’s house seconds after he was shot. You would be corroborating each other’s story. You’ll make a stronger case together. Internal Affairs will have to intervene, take her off the case, investigate her involvement with David. Are you with me?”
“Who is it?”
“Give me a day or two,” Catherine said. A day or two to run down an anonymous caller? It could be impossible. She hurried on: “I’ll go with you to Internal Affairs first thing in the morning. But you could be right about staying under the radar. Beckman might want to interview you, and when she does, she could recognize you from Aspen. I know she saw you this afternoon. She could have recognized you then. She’ll know you can tie her to Mathews. Is there somewhere you could go for a couple days until I locate the other person?”
He seemed to consider this, a sober look about him now. “My dad’s got a fishing cabin up in North Park.”
“Good; go there after we talk to Internal Affairs,” Catherine said. The North Park area in the northwestern part of the state was nowhere, a vast expanse of wilderness surrounded by mountains, home to bears and mountain lions and brown trout.
“Right now I need a couple drinks.”
They walked back through the store, across the street and down the sidewalk toward the thumping noise at the end of the next block. Catherine left him at her car along the curb. He had a
lready gone inside the bar when she drove past. Fifteen minutes later, she parked in front of a block of condos that overlooked downtown from the other side of the Platte. A small porch butted against the front door at the middle condo. In a corner was a ceramic planter with a few petunias poking around the dried daisies. The door opened before she could press the bell, and she was aware of Nick Bustamante, black hair and dark, shadowy face, and white shirt, taking hold of her hand and leading her inside.
“You surprise me, Catherine McLeod,” he whispered in her ear. “Every time I see you, I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.”
“I’m sorry I had to leave so abruptly.” She pulled back a little. Pinpricks of light shone in his dark eyes. “It was an important interview I couldn’t miss.”
“Always the reporter,” he said. “I guess I’ll get used to it.”
13
Computers tell a story. Names, events, motivations, recriminations, revenge, love, hate, whole memoirs, autobiographies, even novels, captured in e-mails sent and received and websites visited. Ryan bent close to the monitor and tapped the keys. She had told the techs to leave David’s computer on her desk. They would examine it later. Any evidence relating to the murder would have to be validated by the experts, not by a detective who happened to locate sent e-mail messages. The guts, invisible wires and connections, those were left to experts. But first she had to know if there was anything about her on the computer. That fool staffer could have e-mailed David about seeing her and David in Aspen, or maybe David had e-mailed him, making excuses, claiming their meeting was nothing more than an accident. What was the name? Jeremy Whitman, the only person, besides the woman on the sidewalk, who could connect her to David Mathews.
She surfed through David’s e-mail inbox, three hundred and some notes, most about the campaign. Nothing personal. Even the messages from Whitman confirmed speaking engagements and appearances, interviews with the press. A couple dozen routine messages had gone to employees at Mathews Properties. David had taken a leave of absence from the company after the caucus in the spring, but it looked as if he hadn’t backed away entirely. Somebody named Martin Johnson was supposedly running the company, but the e-mails told another story. Johnson was a puppet, and David had pulled the strings.
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