Stress Test (26 page)

“Sir, please step out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them at all times.” The policeman’s voice was firm, and suddenly there was a pistol in his hand.

Matt complied. “What’s—”

“Sir, please lean against the car with both arms out. Spread your legs.”

Matt had seen this on TV but never imagined it could happen to him.

The policeman’s tone told Matt he meant business. “Stay in that position, please.” Then he yelled, “Murphy, Rogers. Get over here. This is our man.”

Scuffling feet approached, then another voice said, “Just stay as you are. No sudden moves.”

Matt thought he’d been subjected to indignity at the hands of TSA screeners at the airport, but that was a breeze compared with
what followed. Brisk hands frisked him, ripping away the tape that held a scalpel to Matt’s ankle. The policeman gave a low whistle when he found the pepper spray in Matt’s pocket. “You’re ready for anything, aren’t you?”

“I can explain,” Matt said.

“Save it. Now step back and turn around. Put your hands up and keep them where I can see them.” Matt did so and saw that the first policeman, his gun still trained on him, had been joined by two others, a man and a woman. The newcomers hadn’t drawn their guns, but their hands hovered near their weapons, and the retaining straps of the holsters were unsnapped.

The man had sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves, and he took charge. “With your thumb and forefinger remove your wallet from your pocket. Take out your driver’s license and show it to us.”

Matt complied.

“Okay, you can put it back.” He spoke into a microphone clipped to the epaulet of his dark blue uniform, his voice too low for Matt to understand the words.

“Can I put my hands down?” Matt asked.

“Not yet,” the sergeant said.

Matt bowed his head, not so much in prayer as in defeat. He’d been through so much, and now apparently there was going to be more piled on him. He closed his eyes.
Lord, I don’t understand. I can’t
stand much more—

“Well, well, just the man we wanted to see.”

Matt recognized the voice and his heart sank. He looked up to see Detective Virgil Grimes, his grin like a death’s head on Halloween.

“Is he clean?” Grimes asked.

“He had what looked like a surgical knife taped to his ankle, and a canister of pepper spray in his pocket. No gun.”

Matt swallowed three times before he could get the words out. “What’s going on?”

“That’s what we hoped you could tell us,” Grimes said. He jerked his head toward one of the cars. “Take him to the station. We’ll question him there.”

“Wait,” Matt said. “Why won’t you tell me what happened? Why can’t I go into my house?”

“Because it’s a crime scene,” Grimes said. “We’re searching it right now, and I’ll bet what we find is going to put you away for a long time.”

Sandra heard the noise but couldn’t process it. Not her alarm clock—that was a buzz guaranteed to have her feet on the floor and her hand slapping the off button in a matter of seconds. Not the telephone. Not the smoke alarm. But something was most definitely assaulting her eardrums and interrupting her sleep.

Cell phone
. That was it. She turned on the bedside lamp, snatched up her phone, and answered, hoping it was something important. She’d been awakened occasionally by wrong numbers, usually from drunks unable to navigate the keyboard of their phones. If that’s what this was, she’d give the caller an earful, guaranteed to sober him up. “Sandra—” she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Sandra Murray.”

“Sandra, this is Matt. I was about to give up on you, and I think I only get one phone call.”

“Matt? Where are you?”

“I’m at police headquarters. They say someone was killed in my house while I was at work tonight—last night, I guess it is now—and they suspect me.”

Sandra swung around and slid her feet into slippers. Automatically, she checked her bedside clock. A little after one a.m. She shrugged a robe over her shoulders. “Are you under arrest?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say I was, didn’t handcuff me. Just brought me here in the back of a police car. They said they wanted me to answer some questions.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Detective Grimes and his partner.”

“Tell him you have nothing to say until your attorney is present. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

By this time Sandra was in the kitchen. She flipped the switch on her coffeemaker, glad she’d followed her usual routine of having it ready to brew when she awoke. She had a hunch she had a long night ahead of her. While the coffee bubbled into the carafe, she pulled a suit and blouse out of the closet and headed for the shower. When Sandra strode into the police station, she wanted to appear in charge—even if she didn’t much feel like it right now.

As soon as Sandra entered the interview room, she saw a disheveled and beaten-down Matt Newman. She caught his eye and shook her head. “Don’t say a word.”

Detective Grimes turned from his seat across the table from Matt and smirked. “He hasn’t, Counselor. But that doesn’t mean he can’t listen, and I’ve been giving him an earful. Want to hear what I have to say?”

“I need some time with my client. Please wait outside.”

Grimes shrugged and jerked his head toward the door. Detective Ames eased away from her position against the wall and followed Grimes out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.

Sandra took the chair beside Matt. She opened her briefcase and pulled out a legal pad. “Have they advised you of your rights?” she asked.

“Yes. I got the Miranda warning when they put me in the squad car for the ride here. I wanted to ask if I was under arrest, but I didn’t say anything until we got here. That’s when I said I wanted a lawyer.”

“Good. But did they talk with you in the car?”

“Yeah. I think they were hoping I’d react to what they were saying, but I kept my mouth shut.”

“What did they say?”

Matt dry-washed his face, then let his hands fall limply on the table. “They got a 911 call about gunshots at my house. The responding officers found my front door unlocked and a man inside, shot to death. He had a gun beside one hand, an open baggie of white powder in the other.”

“And they think you’re responsible?”

“Apparently.”

“Obviously you weren’t there when this happened. Did you come directly home from the ER?”

“No. I stopped for a cheeseburger after I got off. Drove home and found the place crawling with cops.”

Sandra tapped her fingernail against her front teeth. “Okay. Let’s get Grimes and Ames back in here and see what they’ve got. Let them ask their questions. Look at me before you answer. If I nod, then give them the shortest answer possible. Don’t volunteer anything. And if I raise my hand, shut up, even if you’re in the middle of a word. Clear?”

“Clear.”

Matt had heard stories that, in some police stations, chairs on this side of the table had the front legs shortened slightly so suspects were always pushed forward and had to reposition themselves. Whatever
the cause, he found himself constantly squirming, trying and failing to find a comfortable position.

Grimes did it by the book. He asked permission to record the interview, repeated the Miranda warning, had Matt sign a statement that he’d been advised of his rights. After a few questions about who Matt was and what he did, the hard part started.

“Dr. Newman, can you account for your whereabouts this past evening?”

Sandra answered before Matt could open his mouth. “During what time frame?”

Grimes frowned at the interruption of his questioning. “From ten p.m. to the time you arrived at your house.”

Matt looked at Sandra, who nodded. “I was in the emergency room at Metropolitan Hospital working until eleven, maybe closer to eleven thirty. I was hungry, so I decided to eat before going home.” He went on to explain his search for an open fast food restaurant. “After I finally got my food, I sat in the parking lot and ate. Then I drove home.”

“So you have no alibi for the time from eleven thirty to twelve thirty?”

“Not really.”

“How about at the fast food place?”

“I used the drive-through. I doubt that anyone would recognize me, though. I handed them my money, they handed me my food, I left.”

“Did you use a credit card? Did you save the receipt for your food?”

When Sandra didn’t put up the stop sign, Matt said, “No, I paid cash. And when I finished my meal, I threw the wrappers and sack in the trash, along with my receipt.”
That’s what I get for not littering, I guess
.

“Detective,” Sandra said. “Why is my client implicated in all this?
Do you have any evidence that he was involved in this, rather than just being an innocent victim whose house was the scene of a break-in that ended in a fight between the perpetrators?”

“I guess you want to cut to the chase,” Grimes said. “We don’t think this was a break-in. It doesn’t appear that any door locks were forced. We think the doctor here let the dead man in to sell him drugs. It went bad, and your client shot him.”

“So where’s the gun he used?” Sandra asked.

Matt remembered how hard he’d fought when Sandra asked him to give her his pistol. Now he was glad he had. Otherwise one of the intruders might have found it and used it to shoot the other one.

“We didn’t find a handgun, but there was a rifle in the house. Ballistics is working on that now.”

“That’s—” Sandra’s glare cut Matt off.

“I need to consult with my client,” she said.

When the detectives were gone, Sandra asked, “I thought we’d been through this. No guns in the house, right?”

“The rifle belongs to my brother, Joe. He asked me to keep it for him when he left home. It was on a shelf in my closet. It’s unloaded, hasn’t been fired in years. I intended to get some ammunition for it. Just haven’t got around to it yet.”

“So that was the ‘perfectly legal’ protection you had in mind,” Sandra muttered.

Matt gave a sheepish nod.

Sandra tapped on the door and Grimes returned, followed by Ames. When they were back in place, Sandra told them about the rifle’s owner. “Joe is on the mission field, and it would be difficult to contact him. But the simplest thing is for you to do the ballistics. I’m sure that will clear my client.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that right now. The rifle
was unloaded and hadn’t been fired since who knows when.” Grimes shrugged. “But that won’t clear him. We sort of figure the doc used a handgun. Easier to hide later.”

“Did you find one?” Sandra asked.

“Not in the house,” Grimes said. “We think that when he drove up tonight he’d already gotten rid of it—but we’ll find it.”

“So far all you have is a crime committed in my client’s house. That’s no reason for you to hold him.”

Grimes shrugged. “We’ve identified the victim as Edgar Lopez. Small-time criminal, several arrests, no convictions. How do you know him?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

Grimes reached into a thin folder on the table in front of him, extracted an eight-by-ten photo, and shoved it toward Matt. “Maybe you knew him by another name. Recognize him?”

The picture showed a small, thin man sprawled on his back, sightless eyes staring into eternity, his countenance asking a question that would never be answered.

“Never saw him before in my life,” Matt said.

Grimes plunged ahead as though Matt hadn’t responded. “Lopez had a baggie of heroin beside his hand and a roll of bills in his pocket. We think this was a drug deal gone bad. And you were right in the middle of it.”

Sandra glared at Grimes. “Why do you think Dr. Newman would have anything to do with drugs? His prescribing practices have never been questioned.”

“All that means is that he hasn’t been caught,” Grimes said. “But I don’t necessarily mean prescription drugs. If you look at the neighborhood around the hospital where your client practiced, you can find a drug dealer on most corners.”

“That’s thin, Detective. We both know that you can find drugs, and for that matter, prostitution, in several areas of any large city. But it doesn’t mean—”