No mention of her name.
Ryan searched the deleted e-mails. Hundreds more, a cascading avalanche of letters, notes, congratulations, advice, questions. David had forwarded whole batches, along with stock replies, to campaign headquarters where some volunteer must have sent the replies. It would have been beneath David to reach down and touch the common folks who had reached up to him and would have put him in the governor’s office. Another story began to emerge, one she hadn’t expected. The imperious David Mathews strolling through people’s lives, strolling through hers, brushing off any residue, never connecting. What a fool she had been, believing him, believing in him, accepting everything he said as the truth, just like the people who had e-mailed him. We’re behind you one hundred percent! I’ve mailed in my contribution to your campaign. I’m praying the Lord will let you be elected. We need you. How easily David had shunted them to a volunteer at campaign headquarters. She wondered if he had even bothered to read the messages.
A user, Sydney had called her husband. David Mathews used people to get what he wanted. He had used her, Ryan thought. She’d had experience working financial frauds in Minneapolis, and she had suggested to the sergeant that she could help the DA’s investigation into Broderick Kane’s allegations against David. She had advised the DA against pursuing the matter. Allegations, the whole complaint was nothing but allegations. One accounting firm contradicting another. Not worthy of the taxpayers’ money. She had wanted to get close to David, that was all. She had met with Broderick Kane and suggested he settle the matter. And by then, David’s wife had stepped forward with the money to buy out Kane. Case settled amicably.
David had used her.
A sickening tightness took hold of her stomach. This was the man she had killed! And now her own life could be sucked into the sewer. She couldn’t let that happen. David had been adamant about never e-mailing each other, never leaving a record, and she had adhered to his rules, believing he wanted to protect her and her career from any unpleasant publicity that could leak out should some snoopy campaign staffer or volunteer come across any e-mails between her and David. Now his concern was like a sick joke. David Mathews’s only concern was for himself. Still, she had to be sure that David had kept the rules. She skimmed through the last messages, her muscles stiff with the possibility of finding herself.
“When you gonna knock off?” Ryan flinched. The voice was like a bullet out of nowhere, zinging past her ear. She had assumed she was alone in the detectives’ area, fluorescent ceiling lights blazing over vacant cubicles, the faint sounds of nighttime Denver drifting past the windows.
“You said you were going home.” Ryan swiveled around and faced her partner who was leaning against the wall, gripping a foam cup in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. The odor of stale coffee invaded the cubicle.
“I figured you’d still be here, working the case.” He swung the bag over onto the desk. “Brought you a sandwich. You haven’t eaten, right?”
She said that was right and thanked him, trying to swallow back the acid rising in her throat. The thought of food and sleep, anything normal, seemed impossible, something for other people. Normal people. She could scarcely believe such ordinary things were ever part of her life. Still, she was grateful for the way Martin looked after her. Even if a thin thread linking her to David Mathews should turn up, Martin would fight with the last bit of his strength to protect her.
“Forensics report just came in on the murder weapon. The lab techs dug two bullets out of the wall, and the autopsy turned up the third 9mm.” He worked at his coffee a moment, then gave a half nod toward the computer. “Find anything?”
“I’m afraid not.” They had recovered the bullets, she was thinking. As soon as they found the Sig in the Evergreen house, the case would be closed.
“The techs might pull something Mathews tried to delete,” Martin said. “Scary when you think about it. Nothing ever truly deleted. Follows you around like a bad odor.” Ryan flinched; she felt as if he had hurled a rock at her. What he said only confirmed why she’d had to check the computer first. She had to be prepared.
“Why not call it a day and let the techs take over tomorrow? You’re taking this way too personally.”
“It’s an important case, Martin.” God, what had he meant by that? “What about the officers who canvassed the neighbors? Anybody remember anything?” The shadowy image of the woman on the sidewalk flared in front of her again, as if the woman were still watching her. A neighbor out walking her dog? Ryan hadn’t noticed a dog, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one nosing in the bushes. Someone who needed to get away from the house for a while, needed a breath of fresh air, a cooling off time? Any number of scenarios could send a woman fleeing her home. God knows, she had investigated enough domestic abuse cases to compile a list of scenarios as long as her arm, but usually the police were called because the woman hadn’t fled.
Martin was shaking his head. “They talked to every neighbor within three blocks. Nada.”
Ryan glimpsed the hesitation in Martin’s manner, as if he had stumbled onto something he hadn’t realized was there. “What?” she said.
“The next door neighbors, the Kramers. They made the 911 call when the housekeeper showed up, ranting about her boss being dead. They say they’ve told us everything they know. Any further contact will be nothing but harassment and intimation by persons in authority, or some such legal gobbledygook. They’ve lawyered up. We want to talk to them again, we gotta call the lawyer.”
“Why would they do that if they don’t have anything to hide?” Ryan said. Carol Kramer, the woman on the sidewalk? Which meant that this morning, when Ryan had talked to her, the woman could have recognized her and was too frightened to say anything. Ryan turned away and clapped a hand over the smile she could feel pulling at her lips. Ironic. She had more power as a murderer than as a police detective; but combined, she was invincible.
“I think we should talk to them again with their lawyer,” Martin said. “If they do know anything, the lawyer can advise them about withholding information and impeding a homicide investigation.”
It was the last thing Ryan wanted. Give Carol Kramer a chance to point at her in front of a lawyer and say, “You’re the one. I saw you.” She tapped an index finger on the edge of the desk. “He’s a CEO and she’s a socialite,” she said. “They’re the kind who want to stay as far away from criminal matters as possible. Arranging a meeting with their lawyer could look like harassment, especially when we’re on a fishing expedition. There’s no reason to believe they’re withholding information. They said they didn’t hear anything until the housekeeper pounded on their door. Then they called 911. I think we should back off. We have other people to look at. How about the records of Mathews’s phone calls? Do we have them yet?”
Martin rolled his eyes. “Look, I was planning to knock it off for the day, and you should do the same. We can check it out first thing in the morning.”
“I want to look at them now,” Ryan said.
“How long have you been on duty? Fourteen, fifteen hours? Come on, Ryan, enough for one day. What is it with you?”
Ryan kept her eyes on his, not saying anything. After a long moment, Martin finished off the coffee and tossed the cup into the wastebasket. Shrugging, he backed out of the cubicle and headed for the corridor, and she went back to surfing through David’s deleted e-mails. Here was something new. On a four-day-old e-mail, in the “from” line was the name: Kim. Ryan had never seen the name before. There was no message in the e-mail itself, blank, as if Kim, whoever she was, had started to write something, thought better of it, and inadvertently tapped the send key. Ryan highlighted the name, and the e-mail address came up: [email protected].
Good-times Kim. Who the hell was she? Where did she fit into the story? There was no one else, David had assured her for months. No other woman in his life, except Sydney, but he and Sydney had an agreement. As soon as the election was over, she would file
for a divorce. We’ll be together. Just you and me, babe, like you want. Then two weeks ago, everything had changed. The earth had erupted, tectonic plates shifting, casting her down into a black, surreal world she didn’t recognize, a world without David. He and Sydney had come to another agreement, one that didn’t include Ryan Beckman, and he was truly sorry things hadn’t gone the way they both had wanted. Oh, he was as disappointed as she was, he wanted her to know that. But it was for the best. He and Sydney putting their marriage back together, going to the governor’s mansion together. Sydney would be a great First Lady, a real asset to his career. In four years, the U.S. Senate seat would open up, and Washington would be the natural step for a popular governor. A governor without any scandals dogging him.
She had descended into a black well, the sides pulled around her, going through the motions: gang fight in Park Hill, random beating of a tourist in LoDo, the files moving across her desk like an assembly line and she, the robot pushing them along, knowing an essential part of herself had been destroyed. She had called David on his throwaway cell. It was how they had contacted each other—on the cells he replaced every couple of weeks. No trace left behind, no records.
He hadn’t answered her calls. She had left messages, begging to see him. If she could only talk to him in person, she could make him understand how wrong this was. They could work everything out. Even if he didn’t leave Sydney, what difference would it make? They could go on in the same way. She wasn’t proud; she would do anything, as long as David was in her life. Now she understood why he hadn’t returned her calls. It had nothing to do with Sydney. He had met good-times Kim. The woman on her way to David’s house in the middle of the night, the dark figure on the sidewalk.
Ryan could feel the chill running like water down her spine. Whoever was on the sidewalk could identify her, but the woman would be frightened, not wanting to get involved in a homicide committed by a police officer. First thing tomorrow, she and Martin would have to get a search warrant to present to the Internet provider. By afternoon, the techs would place Kim’s name and home address on her desk.
Ryan shut down the computer. She had to play her cards carefully. Charge the most likely suspect, Sydney Matthews, and close the case. Gambling that Good-times Kim would want to stay uninvolved, and with the case closed, Kim could slink into the shadows out of which she had come.
“Good news and bad news,” Martin bellowed behind her. He strode into the cubicle and plopped the thin stack of papers onto her desk. “Good news, we got the phone records for the last three months. Bad news, you’re going to want to go through them right now.” He drew up a chair and sat down beside her.
“We have to close this case. You heard the sergeant. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, AP, CNN, Fox News, ABC and NBC and CBS—they all expect results. What are we doing? Gubernatorial candidate shot to death, and they make us look like we’re sitting around playing video games.” She lifted the first batch of sheets, records from the landlines at David’s home in Denver, and glanced down the list of names and numbers. “We won’t have any peace until we solve this thing.” Her eyes stopped on the calls to J. Whitman from almost three weeks ago. Hardly important. Whitman worked for the campaign. The chance that they had discussed Aspen was slim; Aspen had happened last June. She thumbed through the other pages. August. July. June. A total of twelve calls to Whitman. What had they talked about then? David cajoling and pleading with Whitman to keep his mouth shut, promising him what? A position in the governor’s office? And the more he had promised, the more certain Whitman would be that what he had seen with his own eyes was the truth.
“You find something interesting?” Martin was scouring the records from the landline in Evergreen.
“Calls to campaign workers,” Ryan said. “Nothing unusual.”
“What about this?” Martin slipped a sheet toward her. “Check it out. Five calls to the Denver house the night of the murder.” He knuckled the sheet. “The widow didn’t say anything about talking to her husband.”
Ryan went back to the first page of the Denver records. God, she had missed the most obvious calls, she’d been so worried about finding calls to Whitman or Good-times Kim. “Looks like he called her back three times,” she said. “They had a real conversation going on.”
“Or an argument.”
“We can add this to the request for a search warrant on the Evergreen house.” She could feel the pieces tumbling together, like marbles rolling into predestined holes. This was what she needed, another reason for officers to tear apart the house where Sydney Mathews had been living.
There was only one other problem she had to solve.
14
Ryan drove the black, unmarked sedan out of the police garage, around the edge of downtown and north through Park Hill and beyond. The deeper she plunged into the neighborhood, the seedier it became, baredirt yards that wrapped around bungalows with boarded windows and stripped siding. Spindly, half-dead trees hung in the dim overhead streetlights. A pale orange glow of the lights reflected in the black sky; thunder clouds eclipsed the moon. The streets were alive with people on the sidewalks, traffic slowing, pulling over, speeding up. An undercurrent of noise tied one block to the next: rap music thumping full volume, dogs barking, people shouting, arguing. She spotted the house she was looking for. Parked at the end of the driveway was a souped-up truck with chrome fittings and four-foot-high wheels. Light streamed out of the house, illuminating the dark faces of the men standing around watching her.
She slammed out of the sedan and walked over, recognizing most of the grinning, smirking faces. “Hey, trick, you come to party?” somebody shouted. Crips members, arrested at various times on drug violations, assaults, burglaries. She had arrested some herself. They had probably all done time.
“Where’s Devon?” she said.
“Ain’t no Devon here.” A thin, slope-shouldered man elbowed past the others, the self-appointed spokesman, she guessed. Still in his twenties, with a white scar running down the right side of his face. “Ain’t that correct?” He tossed his head about and shot glances at the others. “We ain’t never heard of no Devon. You should go back to your own side of town before something real bad happens. Don’t want nothing bad happening to a gorgeous trick like you.”
Ryan flipped open her wallet and shoved the badge close to the guy’s face. “We can make this easy or hard. I press this button.” She pulled her blazer aside and set her thumb on top of the radio on her belt. “In two seconds, this block will be swarming with cops and you’ll all be taking a ride. Anybody here without priors?” She shook her head and snorted a laugh. It was a gamble that they wouldn’t call her bluff. Nobody knew she was here. She’d told Martin she was going home, and he had believed her, nodding and commiserating about how she’d been called away from a well-deserved vacation. Murderers could be so inconsiderate, he’d said, laughing at his own stupid joke. She was alone here. No backups, no squad cars ready to ride in and rescue her.
You could never back down. She had learned that in basic training when that big SOB sergeant had kept pushing and pushing, hoping to break her, reduce her to tears and wash her out of the police academy. She’d spent weeks lifting in the gym and working with the tae kwon do master, and she’d flipped that SOB so hard he’d had to be helped to his feet. When the enemy is tough, you have to be tougher.
“I tol’ you she was a cop.” The voice came from one of the dark faces by the porch.
“You’ve got one second,” Ryan said, keeping her eyes on the skinny guy in front of her, her thumb on the button.
He flipped a hitchhiking thumb toward the house. “Devon’s inside.”
Ryan shouldered past and headed straight for the group in front of the house, forcing them to move aside. She took the steps, crossed the concrete porch and let herself through a lopsided door with the screen punched out, ragged at the edges, hanging off a broken hinge. The living room, if you could call it that, was filled with rancid smelling mattr
esses, cardboard cartons, broken sofas and chairs and litter of all kinds, tee shirts and towels and faded artificial flowers stuck in foam blocks, baseball caps and a deflated football. The remnants of what looked like a playground set was over in one corner, the plastic seat cracked, the chain rusty.
“Devon? You here? I need to talk to you.”
No sound apart from the ghostly whisperings of the pieces of cardboard and paper stepped on. “Try the back bedroom.” The voice startled her, coming from behind. She whirled around. The slope-shouldered homeboy was right behind her. He’d opened the rattling screened door without making a sound. She felt her heart go into overdrive. Never go into a risky situation unless your partner has your back! Lesson number one at the academy, and here she was, caught in the middle of a junk room, the door outside barred by a gangbanger a head taller than she was. Stupid. God, she had to do better than this. She should have found another way to meet Devon Waters, but the image of Jeremy Whitman, the geeky campaign staffer, the only person who could tie her to David Mathews, had crowded her vision, consumed her thoughts.
“Go get Devon,” she said, forcing herself to meet the homeboy’s eyes and ignore the way his lips turned up into a part smile, part smirk. He’d called her bluff. There weren’t any squad cars covering her, nobody else had come; nobody else cared what happened to her.
She saw the hesitation flicker in his eyes, the half smile freeze on his lips. “Could get funky,” he said. “His lady’s not gonna like the interruption.” Shrugging his shoulders as if he were shaking out a charley horse, he started down the hallway not bothering to walk around the piles of clothing and broken toys that snapped under his boots. He banged a fist on a closed door. “Hey, Devon. You got company.”
The Perfect Suspect Page 11