Ransom (8 page)

“My children were here with me,” she said, as he nodded.

“Anyone else?” Along with a cook, he expected maids and a housekeeper too. It was the kind of house he presumed would be staffed. Maybe an au pair or two, or even a butler. It seemed odd to him that she was the only one there. Maybe they were off on Sunday, he assumed.

“No, just us. The kids and I,” she said simply.

“Was your husband home?” he asked, and she hesitated, and then glanced away. She still hated to explain it. It was too new, and the word still hurt whenever she had to say it.

“No. I'm a widow.” Her voice was soft and seemed to catch as she said it. She hated the word.

“I'm sorry. Did any of you go outside before you heard the explosion?” He sounded kind as he asked the questions, and she didn't know why, but she liked him. So far, Detective Lee was the only one doing the talking. The other inspector, Detective Stone, still said nothing. But she saw him glance around and notice the kitchen. They seemed to be taking in everything, and studying her as well.

“No. We went outside afterward, but not before. Why? Did something else happen? Did someone set fire to the car?” Maybe it was malicious mischief, and not an innocent fire after all, she thought.

“We don't know yet.” He smiled pleasantly. “Did you look outside, or see anyone on the street? Anything unusual, or anyone suspicious?”

“No. I was doing some paperwork at my desk, I think my daughter was asleep, one of my sons was watching a video, and the other one was doing a science project for school.”

“Would you mind if we asked them?”

“No, that's fine. I'm sure the boys will think it's exciting. I'll go get them.” And then she turned as an afterthought as she stood in the doorway and Ted Lee watched her. “Would you like something to drink?” She glanced at both of them, and they shook their heads, but both of them smiled at her and thanked her. They seemed extremely polite to her. “I'll be back in a minute,” she said, and bounded up the stairs to the children's rooms. She told them that the police were downstairs and wanted to ask them some questions. As she had predicted, Ashley looked annoyed. She was on the phone and didn't want to be interrupted. And Sam looked excited.

“Are they going to arrest us?” He looked both scared and hopeful. And Will tore himself away from a Nintendo game long enough to raise an eyebrow and look intrigued.

“Was I right? Was it a car bombing?” He looked hopeful.

“No, I don't think so. They said they don't know what it was, but they want to know if any of you saw someone or something suspicious. And no, Sam, they are not going to arrest us. They don't think you did it.” Sam looked momentarily disappointed, and Will stood up and followed his mother to the stairs, while Ashley objected.

“Why do I have to come downstairs? I was asleep. Can't you tell them that? I'm talking to Marcy.” They had serious matters to discuss. Like the eighth-grade boy in their school who had evidenced some recent interest in Ashley. As far as she was concerned, that was a lot more important, and more interesting than the police.

“Tell Marcy you'll call her back. And you can tell the detectives yourself that you were sleeping,” Fernanda said, as she preceded them downstairs and they followed her to the kitchen. The children came into the room right behind her, as the two detectives stood up and smiled at them. They were a nice-looking bunch of kids, and she was a nice-looking woman. Ted Lee suddenly felt sorry for her, and from the look on her face when she'd answered him, he got the feeling her widowhood was recent. He had an instinctive sense of things, after almost thirty years of asking questions and watching people when they answered. She had looked wounded when she answered him, but she looked more comfortable now, surrounded by her children. He noticed that the little redheaded boy looked like an imp, and he was staring up at him with interest.

“My mom says you're not going to arrest us,” Sam piped up, and everyone in the room laughed, as Ted smiled down at him.

“That's right, son. Maybe you'd like to help us with the investigation. How does that sound? We could deputize you, and when you grow up, you can be a detective.”

“I'm only six,” Sam said apologetically, as though he would have liked to help them out if he were older.

“That's all right. What's your name?” Detective Lee was good with kids, and instantly put Sam at ease.

“Sam.”

“I'm Detective Lee, and this is my partner, Detective Stone.”

“Was it a bomb?” Will interrupted, and Ashley rolled her eyes at her brother, convinced it was a dumb question. All she wanted was to go back upstairs and get back on the phone.

“Maybe,” Ted Lee said honestly. “It might be. We're not sure yet. Forensics has to check it out. They're going to be going over the car pretty closely. You'd be surprised what they can find out.” He didn't tell the kids, but they already knew it had been a bomb. There was no point frightening the neighbors by telling them yet. What they wanted to know now was who had done it. “Did any of you go outside, or look out your windows before you heard the explosion?”

“I did,” Sam said quickly.

“You did?” His mother looked at him with amazement. “You went outside?” It seemed more than unlikely to her, and she looked at him skeptically, as did his brother and sister. Ashley thought he was lying to seem important to the police.

“I looked out the window. The movie got kind of boring.”

“What did you see?” Ted asked with interest. The boy was cute as could be, and reminded him of one of his own sons, when he was little. He had had that same open, funny way of talking to strangers, and everyone he met loved him as a result. “What did you see, Sam?” Ted asked, sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs, so he didn't tower over him. He was a tall man, and once he sat down, Sam looked him right in the eye without hesitating.

“People were kissing,” Sam said firmly with a look of disgust.

“Outside your window?”

“No. On the movie. That's why it was boring. Kissing is stupid.”

Even Will smiled at that one, and Ashley giggled, while Fernanda watched him with a sad smile, wondering if he'd ever see kissing again in real life. Maybe not in her lifetime. Only in his. She forced the thought from her mind, as Ted asked him more questions. “What did you see outside?”

“Mrs. Farber walking her dog. He always tries to bite me.”

“That's not very nice. Did you see anyone else?”

“Mr. Cooper with his golf bag. He plays every Sunday. And there was a man walking down the street, but I didn't know him.”

“What did he look like?” Ted asked almost casually.

Sam frowned as he thought about it. “I can't remember. I just know I saw him.”

“Did he look weird or scary? Do you remember anything about him?” Sam shook his head.

“I just know I saw him, but I didn't pay any attention. I was looking at Mr. Cooper. He bumped into Mrs. Farber with his golf bag, and her dog started barking. I wanted to see if the dog would bite him.”

“And did he?” Ted asked with interest.

“No. Mrs. Farber pulled on the leash, and yelled at him.”

“She yelled at Mr. Cooper?” he asked, smiling, and Sam grinned. He liked him, and answering Ted's questions was fun.

“No,” Sam explained patiently, “she yelled at the dog, so he wouldn't bite Mr. Cooper. And then I went back to the movie. And then after that, it sounded like something blew up.”

“And that's all you saw?”

Sam concentrated again and then nodded. “Oh. And I think I saw a lady too. I didn't know her either. She was running.”

“Which way was she running?”

Sam pointed away from the place where the car blew up.

“What did she look like?”

“Nothing special. She looked kind of like Ashley.”

“Was she with the man you didn't know?”

“No, he was walking the other way, and she bumped into him. Mrs. Farber's dog barked at her too, but the lady just ran by them. And that's all I saw,” Sam said conclusively, and then he glanced up at the others, looking embarrassed. He was afraid they would accuse him of showing off. Sometimes they did.

“That was very good, Sam,” Ted complimented him, and then looked at his brother and sister.

“What about you guys? Did you see anything?”

“I was sleeping,” Ashley said, but she was no longer hostile about it. She liked him. And the questions were interesting.

“I was doing my science project,” Will added. “I didn't look up till I heard the explosion. I had the Giants game on, but the explosion was really loud.”

“I'll bet it was,” Ted said, nodding, and then stood up again. “If you think of anything else, any of you, give us a call. Your mom has our number.” They all nodded, and as an afterthought, Fernanda asked him a question.

“Whose car was it? Any of our neighbors, or just a car parked on the street?” She hadn't been able to tell with the fire trucks all around it. The car had been unrecognizable by then, engulfed in flames.

“Judge McIntyre's, he's one of your neighbors. You probably know him. He's out of town, but Mrs. McIntyre was there. She was about to go out and drive somewhere, and it really scared her. Fortunately, she was still in the house when the incident occurred.”

“It scared me too,” Sam said honestly.

“It scared all of us,” Fernanda admitted.

“It sounded like they blew up the whole block,” Will added. “I bet it was a car bomb,” he insisted.

“We'll let you know,” Ted volunteered, but Fernanda suspected they wouldn't.

“Do you think it was meant for Judge McIntyre, if it was a bomb?” Fernanda asked with fresh interest.

“Probably not. It was probably just some random, crazy thing.” But this time, she didn't believe him. There had been too many police cars on the scene, and the captain's car had arrived very quickly. She was beginning to think Will was right. They were obviously looking for someone, and doing some careful checking. Too much so, she thought, for it to be just a random fire.

Detective Lee thanked them, then he and his partner said good night as they left, and Fernanda closed the door behind them with a thoughtful look.

“That was interesting,” she said to Sam. He was feeling very important after answering all their questions. They talked about it all the way up the stairs, and then went back to their own rooms, and Fernanda went back to finish cleaning up the kitchen.

“Cute kid,” Ted Lee said to Jeff Stone as they walked to the next house, where no one had seen anything either. They checked all the houses on the block, including the Farbers and the Coopers Sam had mentioned. No one had seen anything, or at least nothing they remembered. Ted was still thinking of the adorable little redheaded kid three hours later, when they went back to their office, and he poured himself a cup of coffee. He was putting cream in it, when Jeff Stone made a random comment.

“We got a printout on Carlton Waters this week. Remember him? The guy who killed a couple of people when he was seventeen, was tried as an adult, appealed about a million times, and tried to get a pardon. He never got it. He got out this week. Paroled to Modesto, I think. Wasn't McIntyre the sentencing judge on that case? I remember reading about it somewhere. He said he never doubted for a minute Waters was guilty. Waters claims his partner pulled the trigger and did the shooting, he was just standing there, innocent as a newborn babe. The other guy died by lethal injection at San Quentin a few years later. I think Waters was in Pelican Bay.”

“So what are you telling me?” Ted asked as he took a sip of the steaming coffee. “That Waters did it? Not very smart of him, if he did. He tries to blow up the sentencing judge, twenty-four years later, a couple of days after he gets out of prison? He can't be that dumb. He's a smart guy. I read a couple of his articles. He's no fool. He knows he'd get a one-way ticket back to Pelican Bay on an express train on that one, and he'd be the first one they'd think of. It's got to be someone else, or just a random thing. Judge McIntyre must have pissed off a lot of folks before he retired. Waters isn't the only one he ever sent to prison.”

“I was just thinking. It's an interesting coincidence. But probably only that. Might be worth a look though. Want to ride up to Modesto tomorrow?”

“Sure. Why not? If you think there's something to it. I don't. But I don't mind a ride in the country. We can go up there as soon as we come on, and be there by seven. Maybe something else will turn up between now and then.” But no one had seen anything or anyone suspicious so far. They had come up dry at every house.

The only thing that did turn up was the confirmation from Forensics that it had in fact been a car bomb. A nice one. It would have done the judge and his wife some serious damage if they'd been in the car. As it turned out, it had gone off prematurely. The bomb had a timer, and the judge's wife had missed being blown to kingdom come, by at least five minutes. When they called the judge on the number his wife had given them, he said that he was convinced someone was trying to kill him. But like Ted, he thought Carlton Waters was too big a stretch. He had put too much effort into winning his freedom to take a risk like that after he'd only been out a few days.

“The guy's too smart for that,” the judge commented on the phone. “I've read some of the articles he's written. He still claims he's innocent, but he's not dumb enough to try and blow me up the week he gets out.” There were at least a dozen other possibilities, of people he suspected were furious at him, and who were out of prison. The judge had been retired for the last five years.

Ted and Jeff went to Modesto anyway, and arrived at the halfway house just as Malcolm Stark, Jim Free, and Carlton Waters were coming back from dinner. Jim Free had talked them into going to the coffee shop at the gas station, so he could see his girl.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Ted said pleasantly, as all three men looked instantly guarded and hostile. They could smell cops a mile away.

“What brings you here?” Waters asked, once he heard where they were from.

“A little incident in our neck of the woods just yesterday,” Ted explained. “A car bombing of Judge McIntyre's vehicle. You may remember the name,” he said, looking Waters in the eye.