Fischer went on to explain that Mrs. Etra had recently sold her husband’s story to Hollywood. Now I was the one who had to be careful.
For half an hour or so, Susan Etra told me what she knew. Her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Etra, had never been in any trouble before. As far as she knew, he’d never been intolerant of gays, men or women. And yet he had supposedly gone to the home of two gay enlisted men and shot them dead in bed. At the murder trial, it was alleged that he was hopelessly in love with the younger of the two men.
“The murder weapon was an army service revolver. It was found in your home? It belonged to your husband?” I asked.
“Jim had noticed that the revolver was missing a couple of days before the murder. He was very organized and meticulous, especially when it came to his guns. Then suddenly, the gun was conveniently back in our house for the police to find.”
Lawyer Fischer apparently decided I was harmless enough and left before I did. After he was gone, I asked Mrs. Etra if I could take a look at her husband’s belongings.
Mrs. Etra said, “You’re lucky that Jim’s things are even here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about bringing his clothes to a local charity group like Goodwill. I moved them into a spare bedroom. Far as I’ve gotten.”
I followed her down the hall to the room. Then she left me alone. Everything was neat and in its place, and I had the impression this was how Susan and James Etra had lived before murder and chaos had destroyed their lives. The furniture was an odd mix of blond wood and darker antiques. A war table against one wall was covered with collectible pewter models of cannons, tanks, and soldiers from various wars. Next to the models were a lot of guns in a locked display case. They were all labeled.
1860 COLT ARMY REVOLVER, .44 CALIBER, 8-INCH BARREL.
SPRINGFIELD TRAPDOOR RIFLE, CARTRIDGE, USED IN THE U.S. INDIAN WARS. HAS ORIGINAL BAYONET AND LEATHER SLING.
MARLIN RIFLE, CIRCA 1893, BLACK POWDER ONLY.
I opened the closet next. Lieutenant Colonel Etra’s clothes were divided between his civvies and army uniforms. I moved on, checking the various cabinets.
I was rummaging through the drawers of a highboy when I came upon the straw doll.
My stomach tightened. The creepy doll was the same kind I’d found at Ellis Cooper’s place outside Fort Bragg. Exactly the same — as if they’d been bought at the same place. By the same person? The killer?
Then I found the watchful, lidless eye in another drawer of the highboy. It seemed to be watching me. Vigilant, keeping its own nasty secrets.
I took a deep breath, then went outside and asked Mrs. Etra to come to the room. I showed her the straw doll and the all-seeing eye. She shook her head and swore she’d never seen either before. Her eyes revealed her confusion, and fear.
“Who was in my house? I’m sure that doll wasn’t here when I moved Jim’s things,” she insisted. “I’m positive. How could they have gotten here? Who put those dreadful things in my house, Detective Cross?”
She let me take the doll and the eye with me. She didn’t want them around, and I couldn’t blame her.
Chapter 49
MEANWHILE, THE MURDER investigation continued on another front. John Sampson turned his black Mercury Cougar off Route 35 in Mantoloking on the Jersey Shore and headed in the general direction of the ocean. Point Pleasant, Bay Head, and Mantoloking were connecting beach communities, and since it was October, they were fairly deserted.
He parked on East Avenue and decided to stretch his legs after the drive up from Washington.
“Jesus, what a beach,” Sampson muttered under his breath as he walked up a public access stairway and reached the crest of the dunes. The ocean was right there, less than forty yards away, if that.
The day was just about perfect. Low seventies, sunny, cloudless blue sky, the air unbelievably clear and clean. Actually, he thought, it was a better beach day than people got for most of the summer, when all these shore towns were probably jammed full of beachgoers and their transportation.
He liked the scene stretching out before him a lot. The quiet, pretty beach town made him feel relaxed. Hard to explain, but recently his days on the job in D.C. seemed tougher and more gruesome than usual. He was obsessing about Ellis Cooper’s death, his murder. His head was in a real bad place lately. That wasn’t true here, and it had happened instantly. He felt that he could hear and see things with unusual clarity.
He figured he’d better get to work, though. It was almost three-thirty, and he had promised to meet Billie Houston at her house then. Mrs. Houston’s husband had allegedly killed another soldier at nearby Fort Monmouth. The victim’s face had been painted white and blue.
Let’s do it, he told himself as he opened a slatted gate and walked toward a large, brown-shingled house on a path strewn with seashells. The beach house and the setting seemed almost too good to be true. He even liked the sign: PARADISE FOUND.
Mrs. Houston must have been watching for him from inside the beach house. As soon as his foot touched down on the stairs, the screen door swung open and she stepped outside to meet him.
She was a small African American woman, and more attractive than he’d expected. Not movie-star beautiful, but there was something about her that drew his attention and held it. She was wearing baggy khaki shorts with a black T-shirt and was barefoot.
“Well, you certainly picked a nice day for a visit,” she said, and smiled. Nice smile too. She was tiny, though — probably only five feet tall — and he doubted that she weighed much more than a hundred pounds.
“Oh, it isn’t like this every day?” Sampson asked, and managed a smile himself. He was still recovering from being surprised by Mrs. Houston as he mounted her creaking, wooden porch steps.
“Actually,” she said, “there are a lot of days like this one here. I’m Billie Houston. But, of course, you knew that.” She put out her hand. It was warm and soft in his, and small.
He held her hand a little longer than he’d meant to. Now why had he done that? He supposed it was partly because of what she’d been through. Mrs. Houston’s husband had been executed nearly two years earlier, and she’d proclaimed his innocence loudly and clearly until the end, and then some. The story felt familiar. Or maybe it was because there was something about the woman’s ready smile that made him feel comfortable. She impressed him about as much as the town and the fine weather had. He liked her immediately. Nothing not to like. Not so far, anyway.
“Why don’t we walk and talk on the beach,” she suggested. “You might want to take off your shoes and socks first. You’re a city boy, right?”
Chapter 50
SAMPSON DID AS he was told. No reason the murder investigation, this interview anyway, couldn’t have a few nice perks. The sand felt warm and good against his bare feet as he followed her down the length of the big house, then up and over a tall, broad dune covered with white sand and waving beach grass.
“Your house sure is something else,” he said. “Beautiful doesn’t begin to do it justice.”
“I think so,” she said, and turned to look back at him with a smile. “Of course, this isn’t my house. My place is a couple of blocks inland. One of the small beach bungalows you passed driving in. I house-sit for the O’Briens while Robert and Kathy are in Fort Lauderdale for the winter.”
“That’s not such bad duty,” he said. Actually, it sounded like a great deal to him.
“No, it’s not bad at all.” She quickly changed the subject. “You wanted to talk to me about my late husband, Detective. Do you want to tell me why you’re here? I’ve been on pins and needles since you called. Why did you want to see me? What do you know about my husband’s case?”
“Pins and needles?” Sampson asked. “Who says ‘pins and needles’ anymore?”
She laughed. “I guess I do. It just came out. Dates and locates me, right? I grew up on a sharecropper’s farm in Alabama, outside Montgomery. Not giving you the date. So why are you here, Detective?”
> They had started down a sandy hill sloping toward the ocean, which was all rich blues and greens and creamy foam. It was unbelievable — hardly a soul up or down the shoreline. All of these gorgeous houses, practically mansions, and nobody around but the seagulls.
As they walked north he told Mrs. Houston about his friend Ellis Cooper and what had happened at Fort Bragg. He decided not to tell her about the other murders of military men.
“He must have been a very good friend,” she said when Sampson had finished talking. “You’re obviously not giving up easily.”
“I can’t give up. He was one of the best friends I ever had. We spent three years in Vietnam together. He was the first older male in my life who wasn’t just out for himself. You know, the father I never had.”
She nodded, but didn’t pry. Sampson liked that. He still couldn’t get over how petite she was. He had the thought that he could have carried her around under his arm.
“The other thing is, Mrs. Houston, I am totally convinced that Ellis Cooper was innocent of those murders. Call it a sixth sense, or whatever, but I’m sure of it. He told me so just before they executed him. I can’t get past that. I just can’t.”
She sighed, and he could see the pain on her face. He could tell she hadn’t gotten over her husband’s death and how it had happened, but she still hadn’t intruded on his story. That was interesting. She was obviously very considerate.
He stopped walking, and so did she.
“What’s the matter?” she finally asked.
“You don’t talk about yourself easily, do you?” he asked.
She laughed. “Oh, I do. When I get going, I do. Too much sometimes, believe me. But I was interested in what you had to say, how you would say it. Do you want me to tell you about my husband now? What happened to him? Why I’m sure he was innocent too?”
“I want to hear everything about your husband,” Sampson said. “Please.”
“I believe Laurence was murdered,” she began. “He was killed by the State of New Jersey. But somebody else wanted him dead. I want to know who murdered my husband, as much as you want to know who killed your friend Ellis Cooper.”
Chapter 51
SAMPSON AND MRS. Billie Houston stopped and sat in the sand in front of a sprawling ocean house that must have had at least a dozen bedrooms. It was empty now, boarded up and shuttered, which seemed a monumental waste to Sampson. He knew people in D.C. who lived in abandoned tenements with no windows and no heat and no running water.
He couldn’t peel his eyes away. The house was three stories high with wraparound decks on the upper two. A large sign posted on the dune near the house read THESE DUNES ARE PROTECTED. STAY ON WALKWAY. $300 FINE. These people were serious about their property or its beauty, or both, he thought to himself.
Billie Houston stared out at the ocean as she began to speak.
“Let me tell you about the night the murder happened,” she said. “I was a nurse at the Community Medical Center in Toms River. I got off my shift at eleven and arrived home at about half past. Laurence almost always waited up for me. Usually we’d catch up on each other’s day. Sit on the couch. Maybe watch a little TV together, mostly comedies. He was a big man like you, and always said he could carry me around in his pocket.”
Sampson didn’t interrupt, just listened to her story take shape.
“What I remember the most about that night was that it was so ordinary, Detective. Laurence was watching The Steve Harvey Show and I leaned in and gave him a kiss. He sat me on his lap and we talked for a while. Then I went in to change out of my work clothes.
“When I came out from the bedroom, I poured myself a glass of Shiraz and asked him if he wanted me to make popcorn. He didn’t. He’d been watching his weight, which sometimes ballooned in the winter. He was in a playful mood, jokey, very relaxed. He wasn’t tense, wasn’t stressed in any way. I’ll never forget that.
“The doorbell rang while I was pouring my glass of wine. I was up anyway, so I went to get it. The military police were there. They pushed past me into the house and arrested Laurence for committing a horrible murder that night, just a few hours earlier.
“I remember looking at my husband, and him looking at me. He shook his head in absolute amazement. No way he could have faked that look. Then he said to the police, ‘You officers are making a mistake. I’m a sergeant in the United States Army.’ That’s when one of the cops knocked him down with his baton.”
Chapter 52
I WAS TRYING to forget that I was on a case. Carrying around a nasty straw doll and lidless evil eye. In pursuit of killers. Relentless as I had ever been.
I walked into the lobby of the Wyndham Buttes Resort in Tempe, and there was Jamilla. She had flown east from San Francisco to meet me. That had been our plan.
She was wearing an orange silk blouse with a deeper orange sweater around her shoulders, slender gold bracelets and tiny earrings. She looked just right for the Valley of the Sun, which is what I’d heard the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, and Tempe was called.
“I suspect you already know this,” I said as I walked over and gave her a big hug, “but you look absolutely beautiful. Took my breath away.”
“I did?” she asked, seeming surprised. “That’s a nice way to start our weekend.”
“And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Everybody in the lobby is checking you out.”
She laughed. “Now I know you’re putting me on.”
Jamilla took my hand and we walked across the lobby. Suddenly I stopped and spun her around into my arms. I looked at her face for a moment, then gave her a kiss. It was long and sweet because I’d been saving it up.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she said after the kiss. “You always look good. Tell you a secret. The first time I saw you in the San Francisco airport, you took my breath away.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Well, we better take this upstairs, get a room, before we get in trouble down here.”
Jamilla leaned in and gave me another quick kiss. “We could get in a whole lot of trouble.” And then another kiss. “I don’t do things like this, Alex. What’s happening to me? What has come over me?”
One more hug and then we headed for the hotel elevators.
Our room was on the top floor with a view of the Phoenix skyline and also of a waterfall cascading into a mountainside swimming pool. In the distance, we could see jogging and hiking trails, tennis courts, and a golf course or two. I told Jamilla that a nearby football field we could see must be Sun Devil Stadium. “I think Arizona State plays there.”
“I want to know all about Tempe and Arizona State football,” Jamilla said, “but later on.”
“Oh, all right.”
I touched my fingers to her blouse, which was brushed silk. “This feels nice.”
“It’s supposed to.”
I slowly ran my hands over the shirt, Jamilla’s shoulders, the tips of her breasts, her stomach. I massaged her shoulders and she leaned up against me and let out a long “mmmm, yessssss, please and thank you.” It was like an impromptu dance, and neither of us knew exactly what was going to happen next. So nice to be back with her again.
“There’s no hurry,” she whispered, “is there?”
“No. We have all the time in the world. You know, this is called entrapment in police circles.”
“Yes, it is. I’m fully aware of that. It’s also an ambush. Maybe you ought to just surrender.”
“All right, I surrender, Inspector.”
There was nothing except the two of us. I had no idea where this was going, but I was learning to just go along, to enjoy each moment, not to worry too much about the destination. I hadn’t been with anybody recently except that day with Jamilla in Washington. Nobody else in a while.
“You have the softest touch of anyone,” she whispered. “Unbelievable. Don’t stop.”
“So do you.”
“You seem surprised.”
“A little
bit,” I admitted. “It’s probably because I saw your tough-as-nails side when we were working together.”
“Is that a problem for you? My tough side?”
“No, it isn’t,” I told her. “I like your tough side too. As long as you don’t get too rough with me.”
Jam immediately pushed me back onto the bed, then fell on top of me. I kissed her cheeks, then her sweet lips. She smelled and tasted wonderful. I could feel the pulse under her skin. There’s no hurry.
“I was a tomboy when I was a kid in Oakland. Baseball player, fast-pitch softball,” she said. “I wanted my father and my brothers to approve of me.”
“Did they?”
“Oh yeah. Are you kidding? I was all-state in baseball and track.”
“Do they still approve?”
“I think so. Yeah, they do. My pop’s a little disappointed I’m not playing for the Giants,” she said, and laughed. “He thinks I could give Barry Bonds a run.”
Jamilla helped me with my pants while I unhooked her skirt. I shivered, couldn’t control it. All the time in the world.
Chapter 53
WHEN HE WAS finished with his interview of Mrs. Billie Houston, it was too late for Sampson to head back to Washington, plus he liked the atmosphere at the shore, so he had checked into Conover’s Bay Head Inn, a bed-and-breakfast in town that Billie had recommended.
He had just stepped into his room on the third floor when the phone rang. He wondered who could be calling him here. At Conover’s Bay Head Inn?
“Yeah?” he spoke into the receiver. “John Sampson.”
There was a short silence.
“This is Billie. Mrs. Houston.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and found that he was surprised, but he was smiling. He definitely hadn’t expected the call, hadn’t expected to hear from her again. “Well, hi. I haven’t spoken to you . . . in minutes. Did you forget to tell me something?”
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