Flashpoint (39 page)

He waited till she was beside him before he started walking. “I missed Ashley's funeral. Did you go?”

“Yes,” Sonora said, trying not to remember.

“I'm glad. So, what's going to happen with her?”

They both knew who he meant.

“She'll plead insanity, and I think it'll fly. Then she'll be put in an institution for the criminally insane and periodically petition to leave. Which will never happen, hopefully. But she won't be executed.”

He put a hand on her arm. “I wanted to thank you for saving my life, that day. And to tell you that you're a very good cop.”

He bent down and kissed the top of her head. They walked back to the driveway and the children, who were staring wide-eyed and watchful.

Keaton snatched the ball from Tim and dribbled it up to Heather. She shook her head.

“I never have got a basket. I'm too little.”

He lifted her high in the air beneath the net. “You just need a little extra height.”

Heather threw the ball and it touched the rim, rolling around the edge. Sonora held her breath. The ball fell through the hoop.

“Swisher!” Heather said, waving a hand in the air.

62

Sam put a cup of coffee on Sonora's desk. She said thanks but didn't look up, intent on getting her lipstick straight.

“Why don't you call it quits, girl?”

Sonora glanced at Sam. He was glaring at her, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I mean it, Sonora. We got her up one side and down the other. We're putting files to bed every which of way, the casebook is a beauty. We got more physical evidence … quit looking in the mirror and talk to me.”

“Sam, we've had this conversation.”

“You don't have to be the one talks to her, Sonora.”

“She wants me.”

“Who cares? You still feel like you owe her?”

“I do owe her.”

“Sonora.” He took hold of the mirror, but steadied it instead of snatching it away. “Look, girl. Look at your eyes. Look at the shadows
underneath
your eyes. Now I talked to Crick, and he said all you got to do is say the word.”

Sonora looked into the mirror, remembering her first week working homicide.

She'd been invited to a drunken pub crawl in honor of one Burton Cortina, who was moving to Fraud and Forgery. He had been kind to her, taking the time to make her feel welcome when she was brand new and shy.

They'd talked amiably and loosely, strangers who'd had too much to drink and the comfortable knowledge that their paths were unlikely to cross in the near future. They had both confessed homicide their highest ambition, and had a beer on it. Sonora had been unable to look at him without pity.

“You think I'm crazy, giving it up, don't you, slugger?”

Sonora shrugged.

“I know how you feel, probably better than you do yourself.” He had glanced in the mirror behind the bar, then faced her with a dead look in his eyes that she'd seen on other cops, older cops. “All I can tell you, slugger, is that one day it gets to be enough.”

That was all he'd said, but the words had stuck, hanging over her head like a threat.

“I'm okay, Sam.”

“Yeah? And how's your ulcer?”

“Gone.”

“Gone? No kidding?”

“No kidding.” Sonora blew on the mirror, fogging her reflection. It was true. Since that day by the river, the anger she'd felt for who knew how long had drained away, giving her a centered, steady feeling. She didn't hate them anymore—not her dead husband, not Chas, not her father. Not Selma. The ulcer hadn't twinged since.

Sonora checked her watch. Almost time. She called home to check on the kids—in the middle of these long sessions with Selma Yorke, she needed to hear the voices of her children.

They were fighting over the last blueberry bagel. Sonora told them to split it—radical thought—and hung up. Checked her watch again. Grabbed her notes.

Gruber gave her a thumbs-up when she passed him in the hallway. She peered into the interview room. Selma was already there, sitting complaisantly beside her lawyer, Van Hoose. Van Hoose always managed to keep a poker face but was often pale and shaky by the end of each session. Sonora saw major counseling in his future before the year was out.

She studied Selma, as she always did, wondering if Dr. Fischer was right, if she'd been reaching out, going through some weird metamorphosis. Wondered about the anguished Selma in the phone calls. Wondered why a woman who could douse someone with gasoline and set them on fire wouldn't shoot her when she had the chance.

Sonora pushed through the door, startling the lawyer but not Selma, who sat quietly, hands on the table. She had cut her bangs again, which meant things were not going well. Her brown eyes were bloodshot, hands steady. She wore prison denims. She looked small.

“Hello, Selma.” Sonora nodded at the lawyer, who said hello. She put a fresh tape in the machine, sat across from Selma. Tapped a pen on the edge of the table. “Selma, you want a Coke or something?”

“No.”

Sonora made a note in her interrogation log. It was her habit to keep track of everything—time in, time out, every offer of refreshment, cigarettes, bathroom breaks. No rubber hose in Cincinnati.

“Let's talk about your brother today,” Selma said.

Sonora pushed away from the table. “Let's not. Let's talk about the fire again, where your parents got killed.”

Selma frowned. “We already talked about that.”

“Did you do it, Selma? Did you set that fire?”

There was a tap on the door. Sonora got up, frowning. Gruber.

“Sorry. Phone call for the counselor, supposed to be urgent.”

Sonora looked over her shoulder at Van Hoose.

“I'll take it. Only be a minute.” He left the room like he was glad to go.

Sonora closed the door behind him. Turned off the tape recorder, looked at Selma. Bad seed? Anything good, anything salvageable? She was having long talks with Molliter about this, and neither one of them was happy.

Sonora sat down and leaned across the table. “Just you and me, Selma. Did you set that fire?”

“I got something for you.” Selma reached into her pocket, and Sonora felt her, heart skip. Selma slid a cassette across the table.

Sonora picked it up, read the label. Whale songs.

Sonora swallowed. “This what your parents sounded like, the night they died?”

Selma looked at the floor. “All of 'em sound like that. Stuart did.”

Sonora felt the wash of tight, panicky breathlessness that came whenever she thought of her brother.

“Why didn't you kill me that day in the park?”

Selma looked up. This time there was no question, no mistake. Selma Yorke smiled, lips curving gently in a way that was eerie and sensuous.

And Sonora wondered who had who.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Sonora Blair Mysteries

1

Peter Peter, Pumpkin Eater

Had a wife and couldn't keep her

Put her in a pumpkin shell

And there he kept her very well

                —Children's nursery rhyme

It was one of those moments when Sonora hated police work.

Butch Winchell sat across from her in the interview room, laying the family snapshots out on the table. There was brown-eyed Terry, three years old, Power Rangers sweatshirt barely covering a pouchy tummy. And baby sister Chrissie, struggling sideways in her lap, fine hair a wisp at the top of her head, sister's hand clutched in a tight and tiny grip.

Their mommy was missing.

Sonora liked it that the Winchell kids had normal names. None of the soap opera specials—Jasmine, Ridge, Taylor, or Noelle. She ran a finger along the edge of the table. Outside it was ninety degrees and sunny, but it was cold in the interview room. Everywhere in the city people were going boating, swimming, out to movies.

Homicide detectives never had any fun.

Sonora looked across the table at her partner, Sam Delarosa. If the baby pictures were bothering her, he'd be worse off. Softer hearted.

He smiled at her, gave her his “come hither” look. He was a big guy, big shoulders, dark brown hair side-parted and falling in his eyes. He looked young for his age, boyish—though Sonora, who knew him well, noted the careworn signs of worry around his mouth, and at the corners of his eyes. He had the kind of small-town, country-boy, Southern charm that made women want to confide in him, and men automatically include him as one of the boys. There was no doubt that he was the kind of guy who opened doors for women, watched football, and didn't like to shop. His normality was one of the things that attracted Sonora. They'd worked homicide together for five years.

And it was the second come hither look Sonora had gotten out of him this week. She was sure they had put all that stuff way behind them. He must be messing with her mind.

She smiled back, heavy on the eye contact, and he gave her a second glance before his eyes went back to Winchell.

“Her name is Julia, Detective Blair.” Winchell laid one more photo beside the rest. He looked up at Sonora.

Just like her kids, Sonora thought. Quick to pick up on a moment of inattention. She pushed hair out of her eyes. Too long, too curly. She wondered if cutting it would tame it down or pouf it up.

She picked the picture up off the desk.

It was a quickie Polaroid with the sticky glaze of constant handling. She gave it a long look, passed it across the table to Sam.

There was something breathtaking about Julia Winchell.

The hair was magnificent—red-lit brunette, thick and curly, rising from a widow's peak, pulled back from a heart-shaped face. She had a high forehead, a touch of severity about the mouth. The lips were lush, heavy at the bottom, the eyes almond-shaped, deep brown, with well-defined eyebrows. She had narrow shoulders, long slim fingers, delicate porcelain wrists.

She was the kind of woman you would expect to find vacationing in Paris, or exploring the countryside of southern Italy. She would order clothes from J. Peterman, shop at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Hard to believe the woman in the picture could be the wife of this ordinary man who looked petulant, uncertain, and afraid.

Married young, Sonora thought.

Winchell picked up the Styrofoam cup of coffee Sam had brought him and raised it to his lips, but didn't drink.

Bad coffee? Sonora wondered. Nerves?

“Mr. Winchell, would you like a soda or something?” she asked.

He shook his head. He'd be a medium to small, if attractiveness was measured like T-shirts, black hair wet with gel, heavy black rims on the glasses, a round sort of face. Sloping shoulders, paunchy stomach. The kind of extra weight nobody noticed on a man. The kind of extra weight that sent women screaming to the salad bar.

Somebody's brother, somebody's cousin, somebody's killer.

Sonora figured on a high probability that the man sitting across from her had killed his wife, provided she turned up dead. She might just have run away from home. Back when Sonora had been a wife, she'd wanted to run away from home.

But not enough to leave two little children behind, both babies still.

Winchell hunched forward in his chair, shoulders tense. He had hollows of darkness beneath his eyes. “You can't see it in the picture, but she's also got a tattoo on her ankle.” He pushed the glasses back on his nose. “It's not cheap-looking, okay? She did it graduation night when she was a senior in high school, and her mama like to kill her. It was just kids cutting up. She and her friends had been out to a Chinese restaurant to eat, and decided that they should get their birth year symbol tattooed on them somewhere. Hers is the year of the dragon—she was born in '64. None of the others went through with it. Can't blame them, if they were born in the year of the rat or the monkey or the pig or something. It's really kind of neat-looking, blue and green with red eyes and a long red tongue.”

Sonora leaned forward, memory stirring, cop instinct on edge. “Did you say left ankle?”

He hadn't said. Sam looked at her.

“I think … yeah, it was her left ankle, definitely.”

Both men looked at her expectantly.

Sonora didn't care to elaborate, not with Butch Winchell and those baby pictures staring her in the face. It wasn't the kind of theory you shared early—not if it involved a severed leg found alongside the interstate highway. It was a long shot anyway. The leg had turned up a whole state away. Julia Winchell had disappeared in Cincinnati, Ohio, not where-some-ever Kentucky. What gave Sonora pause was the way the leg had been taken off.

It was sweaty work, cutting up bodies. Most killers took the hard road, sawing the leg straight off at the thigh, with the usual combination of brute force and ignorance. Working from the joint was a lot easier, same as boning chicken. In the instance Sonora was thinking about, the top of the leg had been severed at the ever so practical hip, but the foot had been taken off over the ankle, well above the joint. Inconsistent, she had thought, when she'd heard the story. It had bothered her at the time.