Flashpoint (18 page)

Sonora looked grave. “Mr. Daniels was tied up, doused with accelerant, then set on fire.”

“Was he conscious?”

“Yes.”

“Had he had sexual relations with this killer?”

“We don't believe so.”

“Was this woman a prostitute?”

“How long was he in the car before the officer pulled him out?”

Sonora made a grudging show of reluctance. “We do not think the killer was a prostitute, but we do not rule that out.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Was she working with a partner?”

“Was Daniels robbed?”

“Did Daniels know his killer?”

“We believe Mr. Daniels met the woman in a bar Tuesday night, a few hours before his death.”

Intense faces. Furious scribbling from the print media.

“Had they known each other long?”

Sonora shook her head. “We're still working on that.”

“Do you have her name?”

“We can't release that information at this time.”

“Wasn't Daniels from Texas?”

“He was from Kentucky, wasn't he?”

“Mark Daniels was a student at the University of Kentucky, and was working on a bachelor's degree in social work.”

“What do you know about the killer?”

“The woman last seen with Daniels is small boned and short. She has brown eyes and wavy blond hair. We have a sketch.” Sonora waited for the cue from the cameraman. He nodded and she went on. “Anybody who has seen this woman, or has any information about this crime, is asked to call the police department immediately, and ask for Specialists Blair or Delarosa.”

“Detective Blair, don't you consider this a rather grisly crime for a woman to commit?”

“I think it's a grisly crime for anyone to commit, and I personally intend to see the perpetrator brought to justice.” God, Sonora thought. I sound like
Dragnet
. But Crick had said to make it personal.

“What kind of a person does this?”

Sonora thought of her key words. Pathetic. Dysfunctional. “We're obviously talking about a
pathetic
individual with extremely poor social skills—”

Someone in the back of the room laughed loudly. “I'll say.”

“A severely dysfunctional individual.” Sonora took a breath. She'd gotten it all in. She looked at them, felt relieved—let them hammer, then wind down. She nodded, did not smile, thanked them for their attention, and walked away.

Someone called her name. Tracy Vandemeer smiled maliciously. “
Love
the tie, Sonora.”

21

Mark Daniels's father had been born, raised, and buried in Donner, Kentucky. In death, at least, Mark would follow in his footsteps.

Sonora drove and Sam frowned over a map. He smelled faintly of cologne, his cheeks pink and freshly shaven. He had gotten a haircut the day before, and he looked younger than ever, different in his best suit.

He refolded the map, pulled down the visor, and looked in the mirror, fingering his tie.

“I don't know, Sonora. Yellow? What do you think?”

“I kind of love it, Sam.”

“I hate any tie I don't pick out my own self. That a new lipstick?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Too dark.”

Sonora looked in the rearview mirror.

“Watch
out
.”

She looked up and slammed on the brakes.

“
Jeez,
” Sam said. “Your lipstick is fine.”

“You'll be the visible cop,” Sam was saying as they pulled up to the redbrick church. White columns gave the structure a feeling of elegance and grace. “Here, here, park here.”

“I hate to parallel park.”

“Come on, Sonora.”

She pulled to the side of a white Lincoln Continental.

Sam shifted in his seat. “Molliter and Gruber should be here already, looking through the crowd. Flash will be tempted as hell to show up.”

“I'm staying close to Keaton. He'll signal if someone looks promising, odd in any way. You watch the girls in the pews, see if they're crying like their hearts will break, or looking smug. Looking hellish at Sandra, or watching Keaton.”

“Yeah.”

“Love that tone, Sam. You don't think he had anything to do with it?”

“No. It was too nice a car to burn up if it was his own.”

Cars were arriving in a steady stream, circling the church parking lot and cruising up and down the main drag, looking for a place to light. Sonora looked over her shoulder, turned the wheel hard to the right.

Sam pretended to wipe sweat from his brow. “I was sure that Lincoln had bought it, as least as far as the paint job.”

“It's hard to see in this Taurus, Sam.”

“We need teeny tiny cars for teeny tiny cops.” He unbuckled his seat belt and got on the radio. “I'll bet Molliter's been here a half hour. He's usually early.”

“He's anal retentive.” Sonora laid her head back on the seat. They hadn't stopped for lunch, and the ulcer was saying hello. She glanced at Sam, still on the radio, coordinating, and tapped a fingernail on the steering wheel, half expecting Sam to comment on the dark nail polish.

She recognized the navy blue Chrysler LeBaron immediately, watched as it pulled up across the street, stopping in a no-parking zone. The driver's door opened and Keaton stepped out. He wore the inevitable khakis and a blue striped shirt, dark tie, sport coat. Reeboks this time, and they looked new.

Sonora laughed softly. “So he didn't get the suit. Good for you, Keaton.”

He opened the passenger door and helped his mother out onto the curb. She leaned heavily on two canes, her steps slow, short, and cautious. Keaton stayed close, looking both ways before they crossed the street, stepping between his mother and oncoming traffic.

They were up onto the sidewalk when he saw Sonora. He smiled and she smiled, and they looked at each other for a long steady moment before he turned back to his mother, gave her his arm, and helped her up the concrete stairs.

Sam clicked the radio off. “What was all that about?”

“All
what
about?”

Sam looked from Sonora to Keaton, then back to Sonora. “You know better.”

Sonora flipped hair over her shoulder. Opened her car door. “Butt out, Sam. There's nothing here for you to worry about.”

“Tell me another one, girl.”

The cemetery was on the outskirts of town and badly in need of mowing. Trees were few and far between, headstones thick across the gentle roll of hills in this community of the dead.

Sonora saw a headstone for a PFC Ronald Daniels who had died at age nineteen. She looked at the month and year of death. Tet offensive, Vietnam. A tiny American flag speared the ground beside the pinkish marble headstone.

Sonora was aware of intense activity in every direction. Frail elderly men and women being helped into chairs, Keaton Daniels moving from one group to another. His mother, seated up front, wiping her eyes with a neatly folded handkerchief. Molliter, Sam—detectives looking at license plates, faces in the crowd.

The papers had reported that Mark Daniels had lived long enough to describe his killer. Flash would know better than to come.

The temperature dropped as the wind whipped up, sending hats flying. People bowed their heads and shoulders, partly in grief, partly against the wind that tore at their clothes and rippled their hair. Sonora jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, grimacing when the wind carried her tie over her shoulder and made her skirt billow and bare her legs. The crowd shifted and settled as the graveside ceremony began, and Sonora wondered what was left to be said that hadn't already been covered inside the church.

A car from Channel WKYC-TV-Live-From-Oxton pulled presumptuously onto the lawn, and Sonora groaned, amazed that such a small town had a television station and news team. The
Cincinnati Post
had sent a photographer, who had taken a few quick shots of mourners in front of the church, then gone.

Sonora wondered if some regional opportunist was stringing for a Cincinnati station. At least if they covered the funeral, they'd show the artist's rendering of Flash. Maybe someone knew her.

The reporter was shunned as she videotaped the funeral from a discreet distance, disapproval evident in the stiffly turned backs. Only the children watched openly.

One of the funeral directors, face tensely polite, descended upon the camerawoman, smiling, gesturing, explaining the legal range. The woman went rigid, legs braced, thick blue-black hair blowing in the wind. She shrugged, moved a few yards away, and lifted the camera.

Odd for her to be working alone, Sonora thought.

The minister called for a prayer. Every head bowed, except Sonora's. She watched Keaton Daniels, sport coat whipping in the wind. And realized that she was not the only one watching.

The reporter had the vid-cam focused almost exclusively on Keaton, and Sonora turned and stared.

The woman leaned forward, arms rigid, and even from a distance, Sonora could see that her complexion was fair, despite the perfectly aligned black hair.

Everything fell into place—a strange woman in a black wig, working a camera alone, focusing on Keaton.

Flash.

Sonora started toward her, pacing herself. Keep it slow and easy; don't spook her. The woman was short, maybe five-one, fine boned and disappointingly average looking. Just as Sonora was wondering what she expected—some physical manifestation of bloodlust?—the camera swung reluctantly away from Keaton, capturing his mother and his wife, then moved again, panning the crowd, making a circle and resting at last on Sonora.

Flash let the camera drop, and for a long moment the two of them eyed one another. Sonora paused midstride, and any doubts she'd had dissolved. The wind blew hard against her chest, and her mouth went dry. The woman tucked the camera under her arm and turned away.

Got you, Sonora thought.

Flash went straight for the car, walking quickly but not running. Sonora picked up her pace, slowed by high heels that dug into the spongy ground, all the while thinking about the sensible flats in the bottom of her closet beneath the snow boots, also unused.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit shit.”

Flash was moving faster now, skirting the back of the car. Sonora's purse slid down her arm, and she kicked off the high heels and ran, aware that some of the mourners were beginning to turn and stare, aware that if she was wrong she was going to disrupt Mark Daniels's funeral and look like an idiot and maybe get a reprimand from her sergeant. The damp grass was a cold shock through the nylon on her feet, and it crossed her mind that if she was going to make a habit of wearing ten-dollar panty hose to work, she would have to start taking bribes.

“Hey, girlfriend, wait up!”

Flash faltered, then slid into the front seat of the car and slammed the door. Sonora thought of her gun, buried amid the rubble in her purse, which she had dropped along with the shoes. She was a homicide cop. Out of the gun habit. DBs didn't shoot back.

Loose gravel bit into Sonora's feet as she hit the pavement. The car engine caught just as she reached the side door. She snatched the handle. Locked.

Sonora made eye contact, saw Flash set her lips in a thin line. Flash jerked the car into reverse in a spurt of acceleration that ripped the metal handle out of Sonora's hand, twisting her wrist with a bruising wrench. Sonora stumbled forward and fell, skidding on her knees. She heard the shift of gears and the growl of the engine being revved, and she tried to scramble to her feet. No time.

Sonora threw herself sideways, vaguely aware that someone—Sam?—was shouting her name. She saw the left bumper of the car veer toward her, saw spots of rust on the metal. She shut her eyes, bracing for the blow.

Sonora felt a rush of air. The tires passed inches from her head. She lay still, feeling the wet ground seep through her jacket and skirt.

Too close, she thought, thinking the unthinkable—Tim and Heather, orphans in the world. She wondered if she had enough life insurance.

It was getting damn personal, this case.

22

The world was suddenly full of legs and voices, people calling her name. Someone shouted “officer down,” and Sonora looked up to see Sam crouching beside her. She sat up, aware that her knees were stinging and sore.

“You hit?”

“It was Flash, Sam, get on the—”

“Done, girl, you think you're the only one around here with a brain? Called it soon as I saw you running. You okay?”

Sonora looked at her legs. Balls of nylon hung from a large hole in her panty hose, and her knees showed tiny pinpricks of blood across abraded flesh. Her kids often came inside with worse, and she'd stick a Band-Aid on them and send them right back out.

She felt mildly disappointed.

A new voice interjected. Gruber. “What'd you chase her for, Blair? She wouldn't have spooked if you'd just called it in. We could have—”

“Can the Monday-morning quarterbacking, will you?” Sam said. “You going to sit on your butt all day?”

Sonora took his hand, felt hot pain in hers. Gruber went behind her, putting his hands on her ribs, and lifted her to her feet.

They were thick around her—Sam, Gruber, Molliter. She looked over Sam's shoulder, saw Keaton Daniels three feet away, watching. He waved. She waved back with the hand that didn't hurt.

Off in the distance, there were sirens.

Sonora sat sideways on the passenger's side of the Taurus, trying to fill out a report with her left hand. The door was open, and her feet dangled over the side of the seat. She shivered. Her skirt was wet. It was getting cold out.

The radio crackled, the voice of the local dispatcher providing a comforting cop background. Sam sat on the hood of a Kentucky State Police car, talking amiably with a tall man in a Smokey hat.

“It was her, wasn't it?” Keaton Daniels rested an elbow on the car door, a pair of black high heels dangling from his fingers. He handed the shoes to Sonora. “It was her.” Sonora turned the shoes over, studying the heels.