Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (8 page)

“What did you make of that?” David asked.

“Didn’t know what to make of it except…”

“Except what?” I prodded.

“Folks around here thought it was pretty strange with the way old Ms. Fontenot was, that’s all,” he said, this time anticipating our next question. “It’s not a pleasant thing to talk bad about the dead, but the fact is Louise Fontenot was the town gossip. She was always on that damn phone talking bad about somebody.”

David and I glanced at each other.

“And this was well known in town?”

“This was well known in the county,” said the sheriff. “Anytime anybody had anything going on that they didn’t want their neighbors to know, they did their best to hide it from Miss Fontenot. Anytime I wanted information out, like that if the kids didn’t stop smoking in the big oak tree behind the high school, that I was considering raiding the place, I just let it slip while I was talking to Louise. Less than a day and everyone in town had heard about it and no more worries about the school catching fire from a cigarette butt.”

“Was Louise talking, gossiping about anyone in particular in the weeks before the murder?” I asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“Anybody disappear from town around the time she died?”

“Not that we could tell,” he answered. “We thought of that and made a canvass, a deputy and me, but we didn’t find anybody noticeable gone. The thing is, around here a lot of people live back in the woods and people don’t see them much. That and we have a lot of migrants and the like. It’s not the kind of thing where we can really keep track of people.”

“Any evidence the killer hung around after the murder?” I asked.

“I considered that possibility,” he said. “There were wet towels in the bathroom, and it looked like maybe he cleaned up right here in the house before he took off. He was careful though. We closed the house up and had the forensics people come in from Beaumont P.D. They didn’t find a thing.”

David glanced over at me and I knew what he was thinking. With the cross, the positioning of the body, and the similarities in the victims’ wounds, we hadn’t needed more, but here, too, the killer had taken his time on the murder scene, then meticulously cleaned up all evidence. It was another piece of the puzzle that fit perfectly, as
well as further evidence of our killer’s bravado. This guy wasn’t spooked. Dead body in the next room and the killer hung around and made himself presentable.

It was past eight when we finished at the house. The sheriff went home, and David and I found the only non-fast-food place in town, a small dimly lit restaurant with wood tables and a lunch counter. Someone, it seemed, had apparently put a couple rolls of quarters in the jukebox and a George Strait marathon was playing over the tinny speakers.

David ordered a brisket sandwich. When it came, it dripped with a sweet barbecue sauce and shared the plate with mayonnaise-and-mustard potato salad and a pickle. I’d been meaning to start watching my cholesterol but ordered the chicken-fried steak. Together with mashed potatoes and white gravy, it hung over the chipped white plate like a bedspread over a mattress. The gravy had all the finesse of Elmer’s glue, which left me nibbling at the peas and carrots. I ordered a Shiner Bock and figured that gave me enough calories for the night.

“We’ve got two murdered adulterers and a gossip,” I said, putting into words what I knew we’d both been thinking. “So we’ve got a murderer on a mission from God, placed on earth to smite the sinners?”

“Undoubtedly, tells himself he is,” said Garrity as he consumed the last fork of potato salad and got ready to start on a bowl of apple cobbler in a puddle of half-melted vanilla ice cream. He’d chosen one of the two wine choices the place offered, the red one, although it actually looked more pink. “Of course, the truth is that he’s just a pathetic loser carting around a lifetime of anger, of not fitting in, and a twisted perversion that mixes sexual fantasy with an obsession for power and violence,” he said. “What do we know so far?”

“Not much. The guy is blond and most likely white, probably twenty-five or younger,” I said, based on the found hairs and national
profiling statistics. “My guess is he’s from somewhere around here. He had to have known of Louise to know she was a gossip. Lucas and Knowles, on the other hand; he would have known she wasn’t his wife just by following either one of them for any period of time. He could even have come to that conclusion from the photo of Priscilla and the kids on the nightstand.”

“Anything else?”

“These aren’t his only victims,” I ventured. “This guy’s enjoying it too much to wait more than a year in between.”

“Good point,” he said. “We’ve done the ViCAP search, though. It’s hard to understand why more victims aren’t coming up.”

“True,” I said. “But I’d be willing to bet a month’s pay that they’re out there.”

David nodded. He concentrated on the cobbler, scraping out the last of the ice cream with his spoon, and then glanced up at me across the table.

“I know I didn’t mention this before, but I knew Bill,” he said. “Scroggins and I both met him in Waco.”

“Garrity,” I said. “You know, I remember…” Suddenly David Garrity’s name surfaced in my memory. Bill ranting and raving about the FBI, complaining that they’d taken over the scene. He was irate with Scroggins, but sometimes he mentioned an agent named Garrity. Bill respected him. Once he paid him what, coming from Bill, was the highest compliment: Bill called Garrity a good cop.

“Those were long days and nights in Waco. Bill and I got to know each other a bit. We talked about you, Sarah,” David continued. “He said that there wasn’t a string of clues you couldn’t crack.”

“Bill was one of a kind,” I said.

“What’s it been now?” Garrity asked. I didn’t need to ask what he meant.

“Bill died a year ago last month,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Must be rough.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

“Write This Down” came on the jukebox, Strait crooning to a heavy country beat, reminding his lover of the place she holds in his heart. It was a favorite of Bill’s, and one we danced to often. I used the music as an excuse to close my eyes. Before long I was swaying a little in time with the song, and when I opened my eyes, Garrity was smiling at me. It was beginning to appear that he found me a continuing source of amusement. Embarrassed, I waved at the waitress. In no time, she’d slapped down a second bottle of beer.

“Kind of nice that we’re off duty,” Garrity said.

“As off duty as two cops on a case ever get,” I said.

“That’s true, but, well, I was thinking,” he said, with a soft, nervous chuckle. “There are things I need to learn if I’m going to live down here. I mean, I hear things are different.”

I stifled an urge to laugh. Nearly every Yankee I’d ever met had a preconceived notion about Texas that included cowboys, oil wells, and characters out of that old movie
Deliverance
. The truth is, they were partially right; we have some of all three, especially the oil wells. Still… “Well, you have entered a foreign country,” I replied in my best Texas drawl, deciding to play along. “We Texans are pretty particular. You don’t fit in; we may not let you stay. Some of us aren’t too partial to foreigners. We’d rather all of you packed up and went home.”

“I’ve heard that,” Garrity said, laughing softly, this time without the uneasiness, and I laughed along with him. The beer was going down smooth, and it felt good to unwind after a long day.

“Well then,” he ventured. “Under those circumstances, I’d say it’s your responsibility to teach me to fit in. You don’t want your partner, even a temporary one, standing out like a dairy cow in a field of longhorn steers.”

“What’ve you got in mind?” I asked. When he didn’t answer right away, I suggested, “You know, I could teach you the UT fight song?”

Personally, I thought I was highly entertaining, but this time,
Garrity didn’t laugh. Instead he reached across the table and covered my hand with his—thick, solid, and warm.

“Let’s dance,” he said, standing up and trying to nudge me to my feet beside him.

This was something I hadn’t expected. I hadn’t danced since Bill died. Drawing my hand away, I said, “You know, there’s no dance floor, and I don’t think…”

“We’ll just get a couple of these tables out of the way,” he said, doing just that, the table legs making a chalk-on-a-blackboard screech as he pushed them across the wood floor. The place smelled of beer, cooking grease, and decades of cigarette smoke.

“Now I know how to dance, but I hear you do it differently down here,” he said, again slipping his hand over mine, gently pulling me toward him. “Come on. Help an old Yank out.”

He was watching me, and I felt my face grow warm.

“I don’t need any sympathy dances,” I said, shaking my head.

“Sympathy dance?” He sighed. “Lieutenant, I’d consider this a personal favor. What if I have to work undercover in a Texas dance hall? How will I fit in if I can’t two-step?”

I thought for a minute, listening to Strait’s crooning fill the darkened room. “Why not?”

I stood up and put Garrity’s right hand on my waist, then wrapped my left arm under and behind him. He took my right palm in his outstretched hand. I waited a minute, and then eased into the strong beat of the music with a quick step forward with my right foot, following it with my left. Then two slides, left, left, with a pause. Garrity bobbled, and we repeated across the dance floor. He had a strong, athletic body, and he moved well, catching on quickly. Before long, he took the lead. Halfway through the song, he pulled me closer. For just a second I tensed, but I didn’t pull away. I wanted to remember the heavy sweetness of a man’s smell, and the tug of a strong arm gently riding just above my hip.

After our dance, we paid our check and left. David talked on the walk to the motel, but I barely listened. Once there, I hurriedly said good night, agreeing to meet him at my Tahoe at six the next morning. I settled into my room at the Easy Street Motel, with its sagging bed and a nightstand that someone had leveled with the aid of a frayed book of matches, as thoughts of Bill crashed about me. I wished that I could see him, talk to him, one last time. What would I say? That I loved him? Bill knew that, just as I knew without question that he loved me. I pulled on the chain, extinguishing the only light, and crawled into bed wearing the nightshirt from the spare bag I kept in the truck, when it occurred to me that if I had one last chance to be with Bill, I’d say nothing. Instead, I’d hold him in my arms for every second God gave me.

M
y hand reached for the telephone before my mind acknowledged the ringing. The sun was just barely up.

“Armstrong here,” I said.

“It’s Scroggins,” the voice said. “I couldn’t reach Garrity. Is he there with you?”

Still groggy, I didn’t immediately answer. I started to stutter, “No,” but it was too late. Scroggins was already laughing.

“I hear those Quantico guys are fast movers, but this has to be a record,” he said, still chuckling.

“He’s not…” Then I realized a denial would only do more damage. “What do you want? It’s not even six.”

“I thought we’d give you a heads-up,” he said. “Nelson and I are bringing in Priscilla Lucas this morning.”

“You’re what?”

“You heard me,” he said, his voice thick with self-satisfaction. “We talked to the Galveston D.A. late last night. He says we’ve got enough to arrest her. The bitch has lawyered up. With the neighbor’s ID of her as the woman Knowles argued with the night before the
murders, we’ve got more than suspicions. Plus, we found another one of Knowles’s neighbors who swears he saw the widow Lucas knocking on the dead mistress’s door on at least one other occasion.”

“That’s not enough to—”

“There’s more,” he said, his voice ringing with excitement. “Get this. We pulled her bank records. Three days before the murders, Lucas withdrew a hundred grand in cash from her personal account. We asked her lawyer for an explanation. Guy practically choked when he had to tell us that his client said it was a personal matter.”

I pulled myself up and sat on the edge of the bed. This was serious.

“Ted, I know it looks bad for Mrs. Lucas,” I said, straining to shake off sleep and gather my thoughts. “But Garrity and I found another murder using the same MO out here in East Texas. Everything about these murders points to a serial killer. You’ve got to be careful here. The Lucas family isn’t the only one with connections. Priscilla Lucas has not only three kids you’ll be putting through unnecessary hell but her own money and influence. Her father, Bobby Barker, and his lawyers will have you for lunch if you’re wrong. This could come back to haunt you, big time.”

My cell phone was silent.

“Same MO, huh?”

“Nearly identical,” I said. “Down to the cross carved on the old woman’s chest and the bloody cross on the wall over her head.”

Again, Scroggins said nothing.

“That close,” he finally said.

I knew I’d hit a nerve when I reminded him of Priscilla Lucas’s resources. No matter how much he wanted kudos from the top for closing the case, Agent Ted Scroggins wasn’t the type to step too far out on any limb.

“Any fingerprints or DN A on this one?”

“No, same as the last,” I said. “The scene was clean.”

“Well,” he said, restraint edging his voice.

Again only silence, and I knew he was carefully weighing what he’d say next.

“Under the circumstances, I think Nelson and I will have another powwow with the assistant D.A.,” he said.

Presuming we’d made some progress, that he fully understood what David and I had discovered in Bardwell, I couldn’t believe what happened next. As I listened, Scroggins made a complete one-eighty. I could almost hear the pounding as he hammered on our information, reshaping it to fit his preferred theory.

“But, you know, if you think about it, this really doesn’t have to hurt our case against Priscilla Lucas. The way I see it, so you found another murder that might or might not be the work of the same killer. That doesn’t necessarily change the situation,” he ventured, slowly reclaiming his former confidence. “Think about it. So the same guy offed some old woman in some little town…that only confirms our theories.”