A Pitying of Doves (14 page)

S
hepherd
entered the incident room with Guy Trueman a respectful half-step behind her. He was playing his supporting role to perfection, and if Shepherd was aware that there might be an element of calculation about it, she didn't seem to mind. Those familiar with Domenic Jejeune, however, might have detected something of the inspector's own views on Trueman's presence by the way he abruptly abandoned his customary desk-perch at the back of the room to take up an awkward hovering off to the side of Danny Maik as the sergeant delivered his morning briefing.

“As you all know, the focus of our investigations has now switched to one Jordan Waters. Now I know one or two of you are familiar with Mr. Waters already, Constable Holland in particular, but for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, I can tell you that he is most often to be found where drugs are being sold, when he is not trying to get the money to buy them.”

“We're talking B and E, stolen goods …” offered Holland, “basically, anything that would help him avoid doing an honest day's work.”

“Are we thinking he's our killer, Sarge?” asked Salter from the front row. The only visible sign of her previous ordeal with Maggie Wylde was a small bandage on her neck, but that wasn't to say there weren't other, internal scars. She was looking at Maik in a way that seemed to suggest his answer mattered a lot to her.
Are we giving up on Maggie?
she was asking.
Are we closing the book on my last chance to redeem myself?

“He is, I would say, someone we would be extremely interested in speaking to about the murders.” Maik looked across at Jejeune for confirmation that he didn't need. Despite plenty of practice, Maik still wasn't comfortable running the briefings to this extent, less so when Shepherd was in attendance, let alone his ex-CO. But if Jejeune saw no reason to relieve the sergeant of his burden just yet, Shepherd apparently did.

“While we are out beating the bushes trying to locate said Mr. Waters, it might be nice to have a solid motive in place for when we do eventually bring him in. Do we happen to know, for example, whether he was stealing the birds to order? I hear Luisa Obregón posted a list of birds she would be willing to purchase for her aviary. Anything in that, do you think?”

Shepherd studiously avoided looking at Trueman. Jejeune suspected that, like him, she had little doubt about the identity of Maik's source, but she also suspected Trueman would be unwilling to confirm the details of illegal phone surveillance conducted at the behest of Mexican officials while he was in front of a roomful of police officers. Nevertheless, Jejeune and Maik could hardly be expected to keep the rest of the investigative team in the dark about the fact that Waters had telephoned Obregón. So now Shepherd was apparently casting around for another way to introduce the Obregóns into their collective consciousness. Not for the first time, Holland was in quickly to take up his DCS's lead.

“Most of us here remember what a tearaway the son was in his younger days,” said Holland, casting a sly glance in Jejeune's direction.

Salter nodded. “It wasn't just teenager temper tantrums either,” she said. “That assault on the photographer was vicious.” She turned to offer an explanation to Jejeune. “He caught him sneaking around on their property, trying to get pictures of his mother. A follow-up story to the father's disappearance; you know what they're like — ‘the grieving wife, two years on.' Gabriel Obregón attacked him with an iron bar, sent him to the hospital. In the end, it all went away. The photographer was trespassing. I suppose it could have gotten messy for the newspaper …” She shrugged.

“The boy
is
very protective of his mother,” Maik said thoughtfully. “If somebody had upset her in some way …” he made a
who knows
face. “Still, she seems to have him on a pretty tight rein these days.”

“A mommy's boy with a hair-trigger temper,” said Holland. “Put a lid on a simmering pot like that, and something's bound to blow.”

“I wonder,” said Jejeune, casting a significant glance in Trueman's direction, “does anyone know what Victor Obregón's area of study was?”

“Something to do with genetic engineering,” said Trueman. “He was very highly regarded, I believe.”

Shepherd nodded. “That's right. I remember reading at the time that it was something of a coup for North Norfolk University to get him.” She cast an inviting glance around the room, seeking others to confirm her recollections.

“So, have we been overthinking this thing, then?” Holland asked the room at large. “A genetic engineer, a Mexican. I mean, hello, let's connect the dots here. I can think of a couple of Mexican organizations who might be very interested in Obregón's line of work. And I'm not talking about increasing the yield of their guacamoles, either.”

“I'm not sure the north Norfolk climate would be the ideal place to do genetic engineering on guacamole trees, in any case,” said Maik, grateful that Salter in the front row had dropped her gaze to avoid eye contact with him.

“No,” said Shepherd quickly. “There's no evidence to support that at all. I think that's at least one avenue of investigation we can safely shut down. Agreed, Domenic? No traction there?”

She seemed keen to not only kill off Holland's line of inquiry, but to bury it in a lead coffin. Her furtive glance in Trueman's direction confirmed what Jejeune suspected. With Anglo-Mexican detente dangling from an ever more tenuous thread these days, stereotypical theories involving Mexican drug cartels were not the sorts of ideas DCS Shepherd wanted Guy Trueman taking back with him to the consulate. Having scoured the room with a glance that dared anyone else to postulate any connection between Obregón's disappearance and this case, Shepherd switched gears with her customary élan.

“Did you come across anything of significance at the Obregón's aviary, Domenic?”

“Possibly,” he said warily. “Did you notice anything about the birds in that aviary, Sergeant?”

“They had wings?” said Maik. Although Jejeune suspected there might not be quite as much ambivalence as there once had been, Maik clearly wasn't going to admit to any interest in birds today, especially in front of his former CO.

“They were all doves. The Mourning, Inca, and Zenaida doves I could recognize, but there were a couple of other species I couldn't identify — possibly hybrids of the other three.”

He looked at Shepherd as if anticipating some sort of protest. Instead, all he got was a dead-eyed stare. “The thing is, they're pretty drab birds. I mean, I don't particularly advocate keeping birds in an aviary anyway, but if you were going to, there are some fairly spectacular species you could choose: monmots, turacos, rollers. Even if you wanted to stick to pigeons and doves, you could have Luzon Bleeding-heart Doves, for example, or Splendid Fruit Doves. They are astonishingly beautiful, exotic-looking, just the kind of thing you might expect a private collector to want in an aviary. But to set up such an elaborate arrangement and then stock it with dowdy birds like these, well, it just doesn't seem to make sense.”

If Jejeune was waiting for anyone in the room to contradict him, it seemed like he might be waiting a very long time.

“I've also looked into the species Luisa Obregón was looking to buy,” continued Jejeune. “Again, all doves. Pacific, Galapagos, and Eared.”

“I didn't know doves had ears,” said Holland, to relieve the silent astonishment of the room.

Jejeune ignored the interruption. “I think somebody should look into all these species of doves, the ones she has, the ones on her list. Let's see if we can find anything that connects them all.”

Maik stepped back slightly, although whether it was to distance himself from the suggestion or to make way for the avalanche of volunteers he expected for this task wasn't entirely clear. As it was, the suggestion hung loosely in the air, unclaimed, uncomfortable, unwelcome. The sound that escaped Shepherd's lips could have signified any number of things. To most in the room, exasperation could most definitely have been one of them.

“Well, an interesting idea, certainly,” she said with an enthusiasm that sounded just a little bit forced. “But in the meantime, it does seem that Jordan Waters is our best suspect. For now, at least, finding him should be our number one priority.”

“Right then,” said Maik briskly. “We all know what needs to be done, so let's get out there and do it. If there's nothing else?”

Possibly there was. Amid the general scraping of chairs and low mutterings as the group collected their belongings and began to file slowly from the room, Jejeune appeared ready to say something to his sergeant. But Maik was already sharing a laugh with Trueman, and at the last moment the DCI seemed to think better of it. Whatever it was that Domenic Jejeune was going to say, it could apparently wait for another time.