Collateral Damage (20 page)

I laid the photos of the three Asians on the bar. “Billy, does any one of these look like the guy who came to the bar the night of the Desmond wedding?”

He looked closely at the pictures, pulled some reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, and peered some more. “This one,” he said,
pointing to the photo from the airport security camera. “That's the one who was at the bar that night.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive. I've got a great memory for faces. No doubt about it. That's him.”

Jock looked at me. “Your gut's probably right. It's too much of a coincidence to have Mr. Nguyen show up here on the night of the wedding and be aboard
Dulcimer
the next night.”

“Not to mention that he hired somebody to try to kill me.”

“Or to scare you.”

“If that was his intention, he did a pretty good job.”

On the way home, I called J.D. and told her that Billy had identified John Nguyen as the man who'd been at his bar the night before the murders.

The University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville was busy with summer school students scurrying from one class to another, lugging books and computers, frowns of concentration on their faces. A few lolled in the grass under the trees that studded the campus, the light from the July sun diffused by the leafy cover.

A U.S. Army first lieutenant dressed in the summer uniform of dark green skirt and light green shirt, black epaulets with the single silver bar of her rank, strolled toward the army's Judge Advocate General Corps School. She was in her second week of learning how to be an army lawyer.

She was a very bright young woman, blonde, fit, and personable. She'd easily finished college and law school, never breaking a sweat while earning top grades. She'd had a number of offers from large civilian firms, but decided to be a soldier, like her dad, the man who'd meant the most to her growing up. She wasn't sure if the army was the ultimate career for her, but the four-year commitment she'd made would give her time to mature, gain some courtroom experience, and serve her country. In a way, she was putting her life on hold, but it seemed the right thing to do. She needed some breathing space before locking into the future.

The JAGC School wasn't particularly difficult. She'd met some nice young people, all with the same interest, law. The class was small and everyone seemed compatible. The only blot on this otherwise idyllic portrait was a student from New York who had attached himself to her on the first day. He had, in a short time, become almost obsessive about her. She'd tried nicely to tell him that she wasn't interested, that she had a boyfriend
back home, and that they should just be friends. But the New Yorker was getting worse. There were calls to her cell phone from a blocked number. The caller always hung up when she answered. She'd see him watching her, even in places where he had no reason to be, like the local shopping mall when she was buying clothes the day before.

Only this morning she'd found him waiting outside her quarters when she left for class. She approached him, angry and a bit frightened, and told him that he had to stop following her, that it was creepy and unbecoming for a brand-new army officer. He laughed at her, told her to grow up, that he had a right to be where he was and if she happened by, so be it. He knew that she wanted him and that it was just a matter of time. She told him that if there was one more phone call, one more stalking incident, she would go to the colonel who commanded the school. He laughed and walked away.

She'd thought some more about talking to the administrators of the school, but she didn't want to be tagged as a complainer, a wimp. She was in the army, and that sort of thing was not tolerated. She only had eight more weeks of school before being assigned a duty post. She could handle the harassment until then, and she'd probably never see the guy again.

The day was drawing to a close. She was headed for the library for some book time with her study group. There were four of them, two men and two women, who'd come together in the lounge of the school on their first day. Their backgrounds were varied, different colleges and law schools, hailing from different parts of the country. She was the only northern Californian in the group, although there were a couple of students in her class from the southern part of the state. She'd grown up in a small town in the Trinity Mountains, not far from the Oregon border, in a close-knit family of four. Her sister, older by two years, was married with a baby, living happily within spitting distance of the trim house in which the two girls had lived their entire lives.

A good life, but not for her. She wanted to see some of the world, and the army was a good vehicle for that. Her life was good, her future rosy and exciting. She was looking forward to joining a unit somewhere in the
world, to suiting up and going to court, to representing the interests of the army and the United States.

She mounted the steps to the school building, warm thoughts of the years to come suffusing her brain. She walked into the portico and was reaching for the door when a man stepped out of the shadows and plunged a knife into her heart.

Jock and I were sitting in a rental car outside a duplex near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It was late afternoon, the sun hanging at a low angle over the city, a bit cooler than in Florida, but not much.

A ten-year-old Honda pulled into the driveway and stopped. The young man who got out of it was tall and lanky, a mop of brown hair sticking out from under a ball cap. He was in jeans and a T-shirt stained with sweat. He moved slowly, a man tired after a long day of work in the sun. He walked to the front door and let himself in. He was the man in the photograph I held in my hand, the one of the boyfriend sitting across the table from Katherine Brewster on the night she died.

I'd talked to Debbie the night before, after she got off work and was home and in a less than great mood. I asked her to hack into the University of North Carolina at Charlotte computers and see if she could come up with an address for Doug Peterson. She gave us the duplex.

We'd taken a plane from Tampa nonstop to Charlotte that morning, arriving just after noon. We had open reservations back to Tampa and enough clothes to last us a couple of days if necessary. We'd come looking for information on the Brewsters and we figured Doug Peterson was the one who could enlighten us.

We'd been there for an hour, sitting in the car, watching the neighborhood. It was quiet, most of the people at work or school or somewhere. The area was depressed and depressing, a place for minimum-wage job holders and students struggling to better themselves, to live, or exist, until things looked up for them. Hope kept the residents moving forward,
toward a college degree or the next promotion on the job. Hope that the future would relieve them of the necessity of living in a rundown part of town that had seen its best days shortly after World War II.

We had seen no movement in the other side of the duplex. No one home. Jock looked at me. I nodded. We got out of the car and walked to the front door. I knocked. Doug Peterson opened the door, a quizzical look on his face. Probably thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses or something.

Jock stepped past me, put his hand on Peterson's chest, and pushed him back into the house. I followed. “Doug Peterson,” I said, “you are in more trouble than you can even imagine. Sit down.”

Jock pushed him into a nearby easy chair in front of the TV. Fear was written on the boy's face, shocked by the violent intrusion into his sanctuary. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice trembling.

“Where are the Brewsters?” Jock asked.

“How would I know?” He was making an effort, scared as he was. My respect level rose. He was scared but wanted to protect his friends.

“Because,” I said, “two days ago you rented a U-Haul van, packed up the Brewsters, and drove to Hickory with them following you in their car.”

He blanched, the color draining out of his face.

“Look, Doug,” I said, “we're here to help. I met with the Brewsters three days ago. They couldn't tell me much. We want to know about Katherine's murder and why the Brewsters lied to us.”

“That was you who came to their house on Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“You said they lied to you. I don't understand.”

“You don't have to,” said Jock, scowling.

Doug looked at Jock and back at me. “We think you had something to do with Katherine's death,” I said.

“No. God, she was my whole life. We were going to get married.”

“Why were you on the dinner boat with her the night she was murdered? You didn't go to Florida with her.”

“Who are you?” he asked, plaintively.

“I'm a lawyer and this is my investigator. We're looking into the murders on the
Dulcimer
.”

“Why?”

“That's none of your business,” Jock said, a tightness in his voice. He was playing his role nicely. “Answer the question.”

“No,” Doug said, “I didn't go to Florida with her. Look, we'd been having a little rough patch. I didn't like her working at Hooters, but she was making too much money to quit. She was going back to school, and as soon as we finished we were going to get married.”

“What was your problem with Hooters?”

“Not with the restaurant, with some of the customers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guys were hitting on her.”

“Surprise.”

“Yeah, but there was this one guy in particular. He was stalking her, calling her cell phone, driving by her house.”

“Did she give him her phone number or address?”

“No. I think he got it from one of the other girls, but I'm not sure.”

“Did he ever threaten her?”

“Not in so many words. But he'd come into the restaurant and sit for hours staring at her. He told her once that he loved her and would have her one way or the other. That may have been a threat.”

“Did she go to the police?”

“No. She thought she could handle it.”

“Did you ever talk to the stalker?”

“Once. I saw him at Hooters. Kat pointed him out to me. I went over and told him to leave her alone or I'd kick his ass.”

“What kind of response did you get?”

“He just laughed.”

“That was it? Nothing else?”

“No. Kat was embarrassed that I'd made a scene. Told me to butt out.”

“Did you?”

“Pretty much. That was the cause of our disagreement. I felt like I wasn't protecting my girl, but she wouldn't let me get involved.”

“Do you know the guy's name?”

“No. She wouldn't tell me. Said she was afraid I'd do something stupid.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Just what one of the girls told me.”

“What?”

“That he owned a travel agency and traveled a lot.”

“What was the name of the agency?”

“EZGo Travel.”

I looked at Jock. “Now there's a nasty coincidence.”

“Yeah. That's the same agency that bought the gift certificate at the Anna Maria Inn.”

Doug said, “That's right.”

“What do you know about that?” I asked.

“I had dinner with the Brewsters the day Kat was killed.”

I interrupted him, an edge to my voice. “Don't lie to me, Doug. The Brewsters already pulled that one on me. You were on the boat with Kat that evening. I've got the picture to prove it.”

He nodded. “I was.”

I was puzzled. “How do explain having dinner with the Brewsters and still making it to the boat that evening?”

“We finished dinner about one in the afternoon, and I caught a plane out of here a little after three.”

“So you had lunch with the Brewsters?”

“Well, yeah. Lunch, dinner, whatever.”

The light dawned and I looked at Jock. “We're forgetting our roots, old buddy.”

Jock laughed. “That we are, podna.”

I mentally kicked myself. The Brewsters hadn't lied to me. In the South, a lot of people still called the midday meal “dinner” and the evening meal “supper.” Jock and I had both grown up knowing that dinner was served at noon. Lunch was something your dad took to work in a lunch-box or you took to school in a brown paper bag.

“What made you decide to go to Katherine?”

“I was talking to the Brewsters about her trip. She'd called them and
said she liked the area and was enjoying being alone for a little bit. They told me Kat had called the charity that sent her the gift certificate. She wanted to thank Mr. Brumbaugh, the man who sent it to her. The people at Charlotte Learns had never heard of him.”

“Didn't they think that was a little strange?”

“Yes. But Kat only called the morning she was supposed to leave, and she really wanted to go. Told her mom you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“But this was the first you'd heard about it?”

“Yes. I asked where the gift certificate had come from and Mrs. Brewster went and got a copy of it that Kat had made for what she called her memory box. When I saw it had been issued to EZGo Travel, bells started going off. I figured the bastard from Hooters was trying to get her to Florida for some reason.”

“You thought she was in danger?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call her?”

“I tried, but she didn't answer her cell. I called the Anna Maria Inn and a lady there told me that Kat was out. I left a message for her to call me as soon as she got in. The lady said Kat was going on a dinner cruise and it might be late before she got back. Then I checked airline schedules.”

“Did you ever hear from her?”

“No.”

“How did you know where to find Kat?”