The Perfect Suspect

by Margaret Coel

  “What made you stay,” Catherine said, because he had stayed. Otherwise he wouldn’t be talking to them.

  “The fact he was running for governor. The more he talked, the more I realized he had on a big mask, painted to look just like he wanted it to look. Every once in a while, he let the mask slip, and I got a glimpse of somebody else. Started me thinking, who the hell is this guy that wants to run the state? Maybe I don’t want him running the state. Something not straight about him, you know what I mean? You get a real sense of people when you’re up there on the slopes trying to get ’em skiing. They wear all kind of masks on the lifts, but when they get out on the slopes and look down, that’s when they show themselves—the bullies and crybabies and folks so timid they’re scared of their own shadows. You get a sense for what’s real in folks, and what isn’t. Then I seen in the newspaper that his wife shot him, and it made me think she must’ ve known the real guy.”

  Nick had taken out the photos. He handed them to Lucky Jameson. “Anyone look familiar?” he said.

  Jameson tapped the photo on top. “That’s his wife,” he said. “Saw a picture of her in the paper this morning. Good lookin’ babe.” He moved the photo to the bottom, stared for a moment at the next photo. He shook his head. “Never seen her around here.” He glanced up. “I never forget a face,” he said. “It’s my business to remember people. I got people come back year after year for skiing lessons.”

  “What about the last photo?” Nick said.

  The man was already looking at it. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s her.”

  Catherine felt her heart take a little jump. “How do you know her?”

  “She walked into the bar, about the time I was trying to get away. Mathews practically turned the table over trying to get to her. He led her to a booth in back. Gave me a little nod on the way, said something like it was nice talking to me, and they scrunched themselves together in the booth. I finished my beer and left.” He took a moment, looking up and down the street at the traffic inching past. “That wasn’t the last time I saw him. Next day, he walks into the bar alone, sits at my table and says, ‘Hey, man,’ like we’re old buddies. ‘I was wondering if you could just forget about the lady yesterday.’

  “ ‘Your girlfriend?’ I said. By then, I knew he wasn’t the man he pretended to be. Wedding ring on his finger, hot babe in the booth. He was definitely glad to see her. I expect they didn’t waste a lot of time before they moved on to a room somewhere. So he says, ‘Let’s just say it would be inconvenient for the press to know about the lady.’ Then he pushes some folded bills across the table. He’d make it worth my while, he says. I told him to take his money and stuff it.”

  “Did you happen to see her on TV?” Catherine said.

  “Nah. ” The man shook his head. “Never owned one. I read the papers, read my books. That’s how I get informed.”

  “Why are you willing to talk to us,” Nick said.

  “Frankly, that jerk offended me. Real low class, you ask me. Anybody with real class knows nobody in Aspen is gonna blow their privacy. No need to bribe people. I sure as hell didn’t want that guy in the governor’s office. You ask me, he probably got what was coming to him.”

  24

  The sun was low in a copper-plated sky when they drove alongside the Blue River into Breckenridge. Traffic jammed the main street, crowds spilling out of restaurants and shops. People strolled down the sidewalks licking ice cream cones and bouncing to the sounds in their earphones. Groups of diners sat at the outdoor tables and lifted shimmering glasses of wine. There were flowers everywhere, nasturtiums and pansies in baskets that hung from light posts, bright orange clusters of petunias banked in rock gardens that abutted the buildings. On the drive over Vail Pass from Aspen, they had discussed David Mathews. Too smart for his own good, Catherine had said. She’d covered types like Mathews—God, she’d been married to one—certain they had everything under control. Masters of their own spinning universe. Mathews would never have registered at the same hotel as Ryan Beckman. He had stayed at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, but she would have stayed somewhere else. When he returned to his room after a banquet of rubber chicken and several thousand dollars pledged to his campaign, she would be waiting.

  “Then there was Aspen,” Nick had chimed in, tapping his fingers against the wheel. Jameson had agreed to go with them to a notary where he had sworn out a statement that he had seen David Mathews with Ryan Beckman in the J-Bar in late June. It could be enough to reopen the investigation. A slim hope, but it was all they had. “Mathews didn’t count on anyone spotting him,” Nick said. “No campaign records that he ever stayed in Aspen. Nobody would have known if Lucky Jameson hadn’t spotted him and one of his own staffers hadn’t blundered into the bar at the wrong time.”

  “Even then, Mathews thought he was in control.” Oh, he was clever, Catherine was thinking. For a man who wanted to be governor, he played a risky game with high stakes. “He must have breathed a sigh of relief that Jeremy Whitman was the one who caught him with Beckman. Whitman idolized him, and Mathews counted on Whitman swallowing his explanation.”

  “Only he didn’t,” Nick said.

  Catherine had watched the mountainsides flying past, the flashes of gold in the clusters of aspen trees, the deep gorges filled with wildflowers and mountain streams. The image of Jeremy Whitman had unreeled like a movie in her mind. Sitting across the table from her, waving away her offer of a cup of coffee. He had said he was into serious drinking that night. “Whitman was shaken by Mathews’s duplicity and hypocrisy,” she said. “He had believed in him. He was looking forward to working at the state capitol. It wasn’t easy for him to agree to go to the police, but I think, in the end, he wanted Mathews’s killer charged. Maybe he thought it was the last thing he could do for the man.”

  Nick had been quiet for a long period, eyes narrowed on the highway, forehead creased in thought. Finally he had said, “I don’t think Lucky Jameson gave him any worry, even after he’d turned down Mathews’s hush money. If we hadn’t shown up asking questions, Jameson wouldn’t have come forward. It’s not part of the Aspen culture.”

  “Funny,” Catherine said. “Jameson is the only one to have seen through David Mathews.”

  “Except for you.” Nick had given her another quick look. “Come on, Catherine. I read your stuff on the campaign. No matter what Mathews said, you found a way to bring in a counterargument. He said he’d lower taxes, and you pointed out how the last two governors had promised the same thing. Never happened.”

  Catherine had sunk back in the seat and looked out the window. Maybe her journalistic instincts, or some instincts, had kicked in and she had done something right. She hadn’t let David Mathews off the hook, and it had bothered him. How many phone calls late at night—three? four?—after an article had run that he didn’t like. She had missed the whole point of his speech, he had thundered at her. She should check her notes, write a retraction. He’d been drinking, she was pretty sure.

  Nick swung right off Main Street and started up the hill toward the ski area. Log houses, hotels and condominium buildings sheltered in the pines, separated by narrow dirt roads that wound around, disappeared and reappeared farther up the mountain. A half hour ago, Catherine had checked the GPS on her cell. The complex where Mathews had stayed was off one of those roads. “Could be a wild goose chase,” Nick said. “If our theory is correct, nobody will have seen Ryan Beckman anywhere near Mathews’s condo.”

  “She’s familiar with Breckenridge,” Catherine said. “Supposedly she was here for a few days when Mathews was killed. The perfect alibi. Wherever she stayed, she would have made sure someone saw her and could vouch for her.”

  Nick made another right and shifted into low gear. The car groaned as they started up the steep, narrow road. He slid to a stop in front of a glass-enclosed porch that jutted from a two-story, cedar-framed building. The word “Office” was printed in discreet black letters on the white plaque next to
the front door.

  A young woman with dark hair and quick eyes stood behind the counter. “What can we do for you?” she said as they crossed the lobby, another comfortable mountain affair with overstuffed chairs, Oriental rugs and a massive stone fireplace.

  Nick went through the same routine: holding up the wallet and badge, explaining they were investigating a case, asking if she’d be willing to look at a few photos.

  “I don’t know.” She glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else available. “I guess it’s okay. What’s this about?”

  “We’re trying to identify someone.” Nick pulled the photos from his shirt pocket and set them on the counter. “Take your time,” he said.

  The woman shifted her gaze from one photo to the next, then lifted the photo of Sydney Mathews. “You’re investigating a murder case,” she said, glancing up. “I saw her on TV. Wasn’t she married to that guy that got shot? Candidate for senator or something? She got arrested.”

  “Either of the other photos look familiar?” Nick said. Catherine could feel her stomach muscles contracting. It was always possible Beckman had been spotted at the condos, always possible the man in control had messed up. The woman took her time studying the other photos. Nick had the kind of patience it took to wade a creek, Catherine thought. Slogging forward a half inch at a time while staying upright and balanced.

  “No, I never saw them.” The woman shook her head. “But I’m pretty sure the candidate stayed with us this summer. What was his name? Matheson or something?”

  Catherine waited until they were back in the car, negotiating the ruts and rocks, the engine growling, before she said: “We can check every hotel or condo that Mathews stayed in while he was campaigning, but the chance is slim that we’ll stumble on anyone who recognizes Beckman or ever saw them together. Beckman’s counting on that. She’s got everything figured out. She’s ahead of us.”

  Nick shot her a look that was lined with hope. “She doesn’t know about Jameson’s sworn statement,” he said.

  Ryan sipped at the lukewarm coffee she had drained from the bottom of the container and stared at the black text on the computer screen. The downtown lights danced in the black windows at the end of the detective’s area. The only sound was the faint hum of traffic on Thirteenth Street. She had told Martin to go on home, she’d write up the report, compile what they had on Sydney Mathews. The black widow, they had taken to calling her. Very rich, now that her husband was dead. What Martin didn’t know, and she hadn’t told him, was that the widow had been richer than David by millions, before she had met the man. All that would come out when the DA dug up the couple’s financial records. It didn’t matter. The motive was much simpler, more primitive. Sydney had put up with her husband’s philandering long enough. They had argued, and she had shot him. The phone calls from the Denver house and the Evergreen house proved Sydney and David had talked to each other eight times over a two-hour period the night he died. Fortunately, the calls had ended by eleven o’clock, which allowed plenty of time for Sydney to drive to Denver. And ballistics had confirmed that the gun hidden away in Sydney’s desk drawer was the murder weapon.

  It was beautiful.

  Except for Catherine McLeod. It should have been a simple matter to take care of her last night. The instant she got out of her car in the garage, she would have been dead. But she didn’t pull into the garage, and that was a miscalculation on her part, Ryan realized. When Ryan had driven down the alley, she had spotted the tracks leading from the gravel apron into the garage and deduced that McLeod usually parked in the garage. Still, Ryan could have shot her in the yard, if it hadn’t been for the damn dog yapping and jumping about and McLeod zigzagging all over the place. Another perfect chance muffed with McLeod framed in the kitchen window, and all Ryan had to do was pull the trigger. She had missed, and the thought of failure burned like a hot coal inside her. Now McLeod knew she was a target. Ryan would have to rethink the hunt.

  She had run into people like Catherine McLeod before. Something different about them, edgy and distrustful, operating on instincts that defied logic, yet seemed to work out. She had gone after murderers and bank robbers and rapists in Minneapolis, and within minutes she knew when she was up against one of those intuitive types. Survivors, was how she thought of them. They could outrun bullets. But eventually they stumbled, let go of their survival instincts, and that was when she had gotten them.

  She finished typing the times of the phone calls between the Evergreen and Denver houses and pressed the print key. “We’ve worked out an agreement,” David had told her. “Sydney will stay with me through the campaign.”

  “What about after the campaign?” Ryan had asked. The memory of that last conversation at David’s house stoked her anger. She could feel the heat rising in her chest, warming her cheeks.

  “Listen, Ryan.” He had used that irritating, condescending voice, as if she weren’t quite up to his mental capacities or his social standing. She had wanted to smash in his face. “You and I both have to move on.”

  Strange, she didn’t remember actually pulling the trigger. She was certain she had no intention of shooting him. She had wanted him to open his eyes and look at her. She had wanted him to listen to her. Then he would have understood there was no room for Sydney, no need for any other women. She would be enough.

  She got up, stepped outside the cubicle and collected the sheets the printer had spit out. There had been a few glitches. Last night at McLeod’s house was the worst, but in the end, things would work out. Sydney and her stupid phone calls, the murder weapon in the desk drawer—the grieving widow would be tried and convicted.

  Jeremy Whitman could have posed a problem, but she had taken care of him. Now there was only the woman out on the sidewalk and Catherine McLeod who knew too much for their own good.

  She thumbed through the printed sheets. Another possible glitch, she realized. Motivation. If Sydney Mathews had killed her husband out of rage or jealousy over his affairs, the district attorney might want to produce evidence of David’s affairs. Some eager investigator could start looking for the women. God, there was always the chance an investigator might stumble onto her! She clamped her eyes shut against the possibility. There was nothing to link her with David. Except for the woman on the sidewalk, and sooner or later, an eager investigator could stumble onto who she was.

  She had to find the woman and silence her. Then she had to take care of the reporter. Catherine McLeod, persistent, dangerous, and clever.

  Ryan started back to her cubicle, then stopped. There were footsteps out in the corridor, coming closer. Nick Bustamante working late on the gang angle in the Whitman murder, she suspected. She wondered how much his girlfriend might have told him, then pushed that thought away. Years ago she had taught herself to focus on threats that were real, not those she imagined. She was capable of imagining a lot of crazy things that never happened. If Bustamante had anything solid, he would have gone to Internal Affairs. Which meant his girlfriend didn’t have any solid evidence. Not yet.

  Martin rounded the corner into the detective’s area. “Figured you’d be working late,” he said. He looked ruffled and tired, a late-in-the-day beard shadowing his chin. “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Look, we’re close to winding up this case. You should take some time off, try to relax. I’m worried about you. This is a big case, but it’s not, you know, personal.”

  Ryan gestured toward the file in his hand. “What do you have?”

  “ID and address from Mathews’s Internet provider,” he said, handing her the file. Ryan made herself look away from the questions in his eyes. “Full name is Kim Gregory,” Martin said. “The address is registered to an escort service. Morningtide LLC.”

  “Lovely,” Ryan said.

  25

  “Shot at? You were shot at and all you had to say was that nobody was hurt? Then you take off. You’re out of contact for twenty-four hours? What the hell
is going on?” Marjorie rose from behind the desk, cheeks puffed out and red, and for an instant, Catherine had the image of a big red balloon about to explode. It was true. She had turned off her cell yesterday; the story was developing. She had nothing she could write about. She sank back in the chair.

  “I’m here, and I’m okay,” Catherine managed. She could tell by the way Marjorie rolled her eyes that she knew it was a lie. She was on edge, every nerve raw and flayed—Marjorie probably saw that as well. Catherine had tried the last two nights to put the shooting behind her, block it out of her mind, but even with Nick—the warmth and strength of him beside her—she had lain awake, replaying every minute in her mind, watching a jerky black-and-white film over and over again in slow motion. Had she parked in the garage . . . God, had she parked in the garage, she would be dead.

  “You’re off this story,” Marjorie said. “The police have the killer. She’ll be tried and no doubt convicted. Jason will handle the story from now on.”

  Catherine took a moment before she said, “An innocent woman standing trial for murder, an innocent young man shot to death in LoDo, and another innocent person in danger. I have to keep going. I’m the only one the caller has contacted.”

  “Which doesn’t mean anything.” Marjorie sat down hard, rolled in close to the desk and leaned forward. “You’ve put messages on your blog, but she hasn’t called back. My guess is she’s left the state, maybe the country.”