The Perfect Suspect

by Margaret Coel

  “Why did he withdraw the complaint?”

  “My father made the mistake of allowing David to have his own accountants audit the books. David was clever. Naturally, his accountants came to completely different conclusions. The money couldn’t be missing; it had never been there. The mistakes had been in logging incorrect sums. The police detective who was involved in the case advised my father there wasn’t enough proof to bring criminal charges. David’s accountants would counter anything the other accountants claimed. At that point, David offered to buy out my father. Five million dollars. You can do the math. David Mathews made off with the other five million.”

  “You might have brought a civil lawsuit. Other accountants might have confirmed what your father’s accountants found.”

  “You don’t understand,” Betsy said. “Two weeks after he sold out to that bastard, my father had a stroke. I couldn’t put him through anything else; he’d been through enough. So there you have it, all the dirty little background details about the real man our next governor would have been.”

  “What about the rumors of David’s infidelities.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “A black BMW was seen at night on his block. You drive a black BMW, don’t you?”

  Betsy Kane brought a fist down onto the desk and got to her feet. “What the hell does that mean? Are you accusing me . . .”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything,” Catherine said. “It’s possible someone other than the killer was at David’s house at the time he was shot. Maybe it’s the driver of the BMW, I don’t know. But I do know that whoever was there could be in real danger.”

  Hugging herself, the woman walked across the office and stared at the red painting, as if she wanted to make some sense out of the smooth, flat red canvas. There was reluctance in the way she turned back, arms still folded, shoulders slumped. “I told you David was a charming man, the kind you could love and hate at the same time. You covered his campaign. Don’t tell me he didn’t turn his charms on you.”

  “He wasn’t my type,” Catherine said. She was close; she could feel the truth at her fingertips, and yet something was wrong. The scared voice on the phone, the confident woman in front of the red painting made no sense together.

  Betsy Kane was quiet a moment, eyes steady, considering her options. “You’re saying there’s some kind of witness? I find it highly entertaining that a journalist is looking for a witness, but the police aren’t.”

  “How do you know they’re not?”

  “Two detectives were here an hour ago, asking a lot of inane questions. I gave them the statement. My father and David were always the best of friends.”

  “Who was here?”

  “Excuse me? The detectives, the investigators. Whatever they call themselves. Martinez and Beckman. It was Beckman who took Father’s complaint, fell all over herself for David, and convinced my father that filing charges would do no good.”

  “Had you met either her or her partner before?”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m curious whether you had talked to them when your father made his complaint.”

  “He handled the matter himself. He was very much his own man. He had no confidence in the police.” She gave a little laugh. “Turned out he was right. I don’t hold out any hopes they’ll solve David’s murder. We’re still off the record, of course.” She walked back to the desk, picked up the phone and said, “Print out my itinerary for the L.A. trip.”

  She slammed the phone down. “My secretary will have something for you on your way out,” she said.

  20

  Catherine started the engine and rolled down the windows. A cool breeze drifted across the convertible. She spread the itinerary against the steering wheel and read the dates and times. Betsy Kane and her husband, Mark Talban, flew on United to L.A. the morning before David Mathews was shot and returned the following day at 4:31 p.m. “Financial services convention at the Omni Hotel,” the woman’s secretary had said as she’d handed Catherine the sheet of paper. “Ms. Kane was the keynote speaker that evening. Check the convention blogs. You’ll see she gave a wonderful speech, as usual.”

  Which would have been a few hours before David’s murder, hardly enough time to fly back to Denver and be at David’s house at midnight. If a BMW was in the neighborhood that night, it didn’t belong to Betsy Kane.

  Catherine folded the sheet and stuffed it into her bag. The numerals on the dashboard clock read a faint 3:47 p.m. in the bright sunshine. She put on her sunglasses and pulled out of the lot. She had less than two hours to get back to the newsroom, make a few phone calls, and write up what Marjorie called “all the background information you can find” for tomorrow’s edition. She drove around the winding tech center roads out onto the main thoroughfare, writing the article in her head.

  She would open with the devastation of Mathews’s campaign staff, the empty desks and unswept papers littering the floor as if a tornado had blown through. First the murder of the candidate, and last night, the murder of a staffer. She said the name out loud, Jeremy Whitman. A sense of regret lodged inside her, like a cold, hard object. She could see Jeremy across the table at the Tattered Cover, scared at what he knew and a little drunk. No doubt that was why he had agreed to go to the police with her today, because he was drunk. She should have insisted they get up from the table, march to her car and drive right over to police headquarters. And what would that have accomplished? A drunk trying to remember who he saw last June in Aspen? But he would be alive. It would have accomplished that.

  Jason had written about Jeremy’s death in today’s edition. How the police believed the mugging on a LoDo street had nothing to do with Mathews’s murder. She would refer to the article, leaving out the part about the police, and work in a quote from Cannon: “Everyone loved David. I’ve sent people home to mourn in private.”

  She had to get a statement from the Colorado Republican Party, although she knew what the spokesperson would say: the party had not yet made a decision on Mathews’s replacement. Consulting with the national committee. Making certain the best candidate reaches the governor’s office, everyone thinking only of the good of the state, and other boilerplate nobody believed. She would also write the truth: since no other Republican had challenged Mathews for the candidacy, the party would either have to run the candidate for lieutenant governor or select a dark horse. Either way, some poor party member was about to be dumped into the governor’s race weeks before the election.

  She would have to get the reaction of the Democrats. No doubt, they were ecstatic. Their candidate, running so far behind that she’d had to make an effort to mention him in her articles, had probably leapt ahead in the polls. She would see if any of the pollsters had an update on the numbers.

  She would wind up with a brief recapitulation of Mathews’s career, including a mention of the theft charges brought and dropped by his former partner, just to remind readers that the popular David Mathews was not the virtuous paragon everyone wanted to believe. She would have to add Betsy Kane’s statement on how the whole matter had been settled, how her father and Mathews had remained friends. A few readers might read between the lines and see beneath the surface of Mathews’s polished image, but chances were that Edith, his housekeeper, would see only the polished image.

  The cell had started ringing as she drove onto I-25. Ignoring it, she worked her way into the fast lane. It rang again. One hand on the steering wheel, she managed to drag the cell out of her bag and flip it open. “Catherine McLeod,” she said.

  “I have to talk to you,” Nick said. His voice was tight against the hum of the traffic.

  “I’m on deadline,” she said. “We can meet later.”

  “Now, Catherine.”

  She took a moment, trying to absorb this unfamiliar tone. “I’m on my way back to the Journal,” she said.

  “I’ll see you there.” She was left with a dead line, and a blank feeling inside.

  C
atherine drove slowly down the narrow ramp into the garage. She removed her sunglasses and blinked into the dim lights as she followed the white line toward the rows of cars nosed against the far wall. Just as she pulled into a vacant space, the driver’s door of the black sedan in the next slot flung itself open and a dark-haired man jumped out. Catherine followed the man in her rearview mirror.

  “It’s me, Catherine,” Nick said, and she was aware of the sound of her breath escaping like a deflating balloon.

  “You frightened me,” she said, getting out of the car and slamming the door.

  Nick stood with his arms at his sides, shadows lengthening his face. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  She gave him a half nod and headed across the garage toward the banging elevators, his boots clacking behind her. They rode up to the lobby in silence. In silence, across the tiled floor to the reception desk. Nick showed his badge and signed in, and she led the way to the elevators across the lobby. She bit her lip to keep from asking what was wrong. It must be terrible, and she had the feeling—a silly notion, she knew—that if she didn’t ask, the terribleness would evaporate. The doors parted and she headed to the right, calling over her shoulder to the receptionist in front of the newsroom that she would be using the conference room for a few minutes. Nick stayed in step beside her.

  “What is it?” she said when they were inside. She had never seen him like this; thin lipped, barely controlling the anger that she could almost smell. This wasn’t a side of Nick Bustamante she recognized or understood. They were so new together, barely ten months old, still feeling their way.

  “I went to the Hudson building this morning.” Nick started patrolling the small room, down one side of the table with the chairs pushed in at the sides, hands stuffed into the pockets of his dark slacks. “I asked to see the security videos from yesterday, thinking I might see Jeremy Whitman with somebody in the lobby we’d want to talk to. I saw you, Catherine.” He came up the other side of the table.

  Catherine sank into the chair at the end. “I met with him last night,” she said.

  “I know.” He was gripping the back of a side chair. “I talked to a couple of guys he was drinking with. They told me he left the bar to meet a reporter. Forty-five minutes later, he returned to the bar and said he’d been at the Tattered Cover, and when I showed photos around there, three clerks identified you and Jeremy, the couple that looked like they were having a big argument in the coffee shop. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted to,” she said.

  “That a fact? Well, try me now.” He yanked out the chair and sat down hard. “What the hell’s going on? This is a murder investigation, and you could have important evidence. You think that’s something you should have told me about?”

  “I didn’t think it would do any good.” Catherine stared past him down the table. She’d been wrong, she thought. She could have called Nick last night, and he would have escorted Jeremy to the police station. Maybe Nick could have convinced Internal Affairs to take Beckman off the investigation, and if that had happened, Beckman wouldn’t have gotten an arrest warrant for Sydney. God, Catherine thought, she had made the wrong choice, and now she was running out of choices that mattered. The man who had seen David and Detective Beckman together in Aspen—lovers in a bar—was dead. The witness who had seen Beckman at David’s house after his murder might as well not exist, and Sydney Beckman would no doubt be indicted for murder.

  She turned to Nick, aware that he had been waiting for her to say something, the blue vein in his neck pulsing, his mouth and chin rigid. She told him all of it. Aspen and the excuses David had made about how he’d run into an old flame, and Jeremy’s inability to disbelieve his own eyes. The phone call from the anonymous woman. Both Jeremy and the witness terrified that the police wouldn’t believe them, would shrug off anything they said that reflected badly on one of their own. Detective Beckman would be alerted. She could see in the way Nick’s face had started to shut down that Jeremy and the caller had been right.

  “Don’t pretend it couldn’t happen,” she said. “Last fall Internal Affairs spiked an investigation into the domestic abuse call at a police officer’s home. Spiked it for how long, three months? Long enough for the second call when the officer’s wife had to be hospitalized.”

  Nick let the silence settle between them like another presence. Finally, he asked, “Anyone else see Mathews and Beckman together in Aspen?”

  “No one in the campaign,” Catherine said. Then she told him that David had been to a fund-raising event in Grand Junction and had insisted upon driving back to Denver alone. Everybody else stayed in Grand Junction, except Jeremy who went hiking near Aspen and, three days later, dropped into the bar at the Jerome Hotel and found David and Detective Beckman.

  “I managed to convince him that he and the caller would support each other’s stories. With two eyewitnesses linking Mathews and Beckman, Internal Affairs would have to investigate Beckman.” Catherine stopped; the image of the tall, gangly young man floated in front of her. She tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat.

  “If you believed that, why didn’t you take him to police headquarters last night?”

  And Whitman would still be alive. Nick hadn’t said the words, but they echoed around the conference room as if he had shouted them.

  “He was drinking,” Catherine said. “He needed to be sober when he talked to Internal Affairs.” She could hear the feebleness in her own words, the wobbly effort to excuse herself. She forced herself to go on: “I’d hoped to find the witness today. She may drive a black BMW.”

  “Along with twenty thousand other people in Denver.” Nick spread his hands on the table. “So let’s examine what you’ve got. A caller who’s probably a kook. You know how many crazy people call the police in high-profile cases? Admit to the crime or claim their ex-lovers or sisters or bosses did it? All looking for their own fifteen minutes. Whitman could have been mistaken about what he saw. Mathews had a plausible explanation, right? People in his campaign will probably confirm it.”

  Catherine didn’t say anything. Don Cannon would confirm Mathews’s explanation. Cannon believed in David Mathews.

  “Bottom line, Catherine, Sydney Mathews was arrested an hour ago,” he said, his voice still tight. “Her lawyer got her out on bail, but she’ll be indicted and she’ll stand trial. The murder of David Mathews is solved.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Catherine could feel the heat in her cheeks.

  “What I believe is that you’ve tried and convicted a police detective on innuendo and an anonymous statement.” He drew back, pouring his gaze over her. “There’s no evidence any of it is true. Jeremy Whitman could have been mistaken. He could have seen Mathews with a blond woman who resembled Beckman. An unfortunate coincidence. He was murdered in a gang initiation attack. Assaults have been going on all summer, played down, I admit, so people wouldn’t stop coming downtown. The point is, the method was typical of gang initiation. As for Sydney Mathews, a search warrant turned up a 9mm Sig 226 Tactical, and ballistics says it’s the murder weapon. Hard evidence, Catherine, against your . . .” He lifted his hands. “Instincts.”

  “Now you see why I couldn’t tell you.” He didn’t take his eyes from her, and she pushed on: “The police would dismiss the whole thing, but Detective Beckman would know that Jeremy could connect her to Mathews. She’d know the witness had called the Journal. She could go after both of them and make sure they never talked. Last night she made sure Jeremy could never talk.”

  Nick got to his feet and kicked the chair back. It shuddered against the hard floor. “Whitman took a . 38 bullet, Catherine. You think this is a game? Two homicides that the evidence says aren’t related. Just a game to you? Straight out of a movie about the dumb flatfooted detective and the beautiful girl reporter who solves the crime for him? Oh, and another police detective is the murderer. How original.”

  “Nick . . .” Catherine started to her feet, b
ut he put out a hand, as if to keep her away. He turned and flung open the door.

  “What this comes down to is trust,” he said, looking back. “Whether you trust me and whether I can trust you. Without that, we don’t have anything.”

  21

  “How are things with you?” Dulcie Oldman got right to the point, ignoring the polite preliminaries Catherine was becoming accustomed to when she met with her mother’s people. She could feel the intensity of Dulcie’s gaze boring into her over the rim of a coffee mug. Flecks of light shone in the woman’s dark eyes. She was Arapaho, in her forties, with black hair that brushed her shoulders and tiny silver earrings. She wore a blue skirt and the kind of white blouse that fit underneath a suit coat. A thoroughly modern woman, Catherine thought, with a string of degrees and a position as director of human resources for a telecommunications company. Yet rooted in the past, with black eyes framed in dark, carved features, much like Catherine’s own. Looking at Dulcie was like looking at an image of herself in the mirror.