Shame (10 page)

“Come on out from under there, Pepper. Come on, boy.”

The man was walking in the same direction as Brandy. He was hunched over, peering so as to be able to see under the car.

“Bad dog,” he said. “Come here right now.”

“He obeys about as well as my boyfriend,” Brandy said, laughing.

“Is that your car?” the man asked.

“Yes,” said Brandy.

“I’m afraid Pepper’s taken refuge under it. I think he’s eating some trash that he knows I wouldn’t approve of. Give that dog a choice between a T-bone steak and two-day-old garbage, and he’ll take the garbage every time.”

He closed the distance between them.

“You’re describing my boyfriend again,” Brandy said, laughing some more.

The man yelled out, with some impatience, “Get out of there, Pepper.”

Brandy bent down, tried to catch a glimpse of the dog. “I can’t see him.”

“He’s hunkered down near your left front tire, chewing on something. Probably something I don’t want to know. He’s hard to make out, because he lives up to his name. Pepper. He’s dark, very dark. I suppose you’re going to tell me like your boyfriend.”

Brandy laughed but just a little. She tried to get a better glimpse of the man’s face, but the way he kept bending over and moving, it was hard to see.

“Weren’t you in tonight?” she asked.

“Where?”

Her head tilted back to the doughnut shop. “D. G.’s.”

“Not me.”

He turned his head toward her for a moment before looking back to his dog. “You look familiar as well. I think I’ve seen you in class.”

“You go to Mira Costa?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her question, instead seemed intent on getting his dog. He got down on his knees and stuck his head under her front bumper.

“Bad dog, Pepper” she heard him say, his voice muffled.

Brandy opened her car door and listened as the man carried on a dialogue with his dog under her car.

“What have you got there, Pepper? Give me that. Give.”

What did the dog have, she wondered?

“My God,” the man said.

“What?”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“What is it?” Brandy asked, hurrying to the front of her car.

The man eased his way from under her car. He was shaking his head and breathing hard.

“Should I call the police?” Brandy asked.

The man nodded.

“What should I tell them?”

“Tell them there’s a dead woman under your car.”

“What?”

As her face showed its horror, he threw the leash around her neck, twisted the loose ends in opposite directions, and pulled tight.

“A
NOTHER
C
OKE
, C
AL
?” asked the taller of the two sheriff’s homicide investigators, Detective Holt.

“Yes,” Caleb said. “Please.”

Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Alvarez stood up. “I’ll get it,” he said. But before fetching the soft drink he made the observation, “Sweating a lot, aren’t you, Cal?”

Alvarez didn’t wait for an answer, and Caleb didn’t offer one. Though the two detectives didn’t look anything alike, Caleb thought they could have been brothers. Holt was fair complexioned, with light, thinning brown hair, while Alvarez was Hispanic with a bushy head of black, curly hair. They both had mustaches, but that wasn’t what made them alike. It was their eyes. They looked at him with the same intensity, Holt with his blue eyes and Alvarez with his brown.

“I’m beginning to think I should have a lawyer,” Caleb said.

“That’s certainly your right, Cal,” said Holt, “but it seems to me when your writer friend talked with the sheriff she was adamant about keeping this talk out of the news. The fewer people we bring in, the fewer will know what’s going on. It’ll be hard to maintain your anonymity and keep your relationship with your father out of the news if you bring in a bunch of outsiders.”

The threat was veiled but implicit. “You still okay with our talking, Cal?”

“I suppose.”

“Is that a yes or a no, Caleb?”

“Yes.”

But it wasn’t. The interview hadn’t been what he expected. At the best of times law enforcement frightened him. Now he was doubly scared. Caleb felt as if he had been ambushed. It was clear the Sheriff’s Office had worked all morning and early afternoon finding out all that they could about him. They knew things, personal things. He hadn’t expected that. Somehow he had thought he could just explain to them. He wished he’d taken Elizabeth’s advice about bringing a lawyer.

The two detectives had taken turns asking him questions in the interview room. That had made Caleb feel trapped and claustrophobic. The interview room had a whiteboard that both of the detectives wrote on. Sometimes they’d take one of Caleb’s words, or a phrase he used, and write it up on the board as if it had special significance. The walls of the interview room were lined with blue carpeting, which not only absorbed the noise but gave the room the feel of a padded cell. Caleb suspected he was being filmed, though there was no camera visible.

Lita Jennings’s name didn’t surface until well into the third hour of questioning. Both detectives had been upbeat and friendly the entire time, prefacing any tough questions with apologies, with phrases like “Just to clarify matters” and “I’m having a little trouble understanding.”

Holt was the one who had said her name first. He was a nodder, always nodding at whatever Caleb had to say. “Do you watch the news, Cal? Or read the newspaper?”

He waited for Caleb to nod, then gave him a triple return on that investment.

“It’s enough to make you sick. Did you hear about that college girl who died about a month ago? She had her whole life ahead of her. She was pretty, too. What was her name?”

Caleb didn’t offer it. His silence lost him a nod.

“Lita something or other,” said Holt, then pretended suddenly to remember. “Lita Jennings. It probably sounds like a stupid question, but you wouldn’t happen to know her, would you, Cal?”

Caleb opened his mouth. His hands tried to orchestrate his words, but there were a lot more hand movements than there were words. “My wife’s a nurse....”

Holt was nodding nonstop, offering “Uh-huh” with every one of Caleb’s halting words.

“She knew her. The girl’s father is a doctor.” Caleb’s hands kept trying to explain, trying to show the connection. “My wife’s at Scripps, and that’s the hospital her father works out of.”

“Lita Jennings’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know him?”

“Not really. I guess I’ve met him and his wife at a few parties.”

“What about Lita?”

“It’s possible I saw her a few times.”

“Possible?”

“Probable. I just don’t remember.”

Lots more nodding and understanding. “But your wife knew her well?”

“I don’t know if well is the right word.”

“But she knows Dr. Jennings well?”

Caleb’s hands stopped moving. “Yes.”

Holt backed off, changed subjects, but both of them knew the subject was far from closed.

“We’re trying to get a handle on a lot of things, Cal,” said Alvarez.

Holt, ever affable, nodded at that assessment.

“And we were wondering if you could help us along with this whole matter.”

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked.

“I think it’d make it easier on you and us both if you’d consent to a polygraph.”

“You mean a lie detector?”

“It’s no big thing,” Holt said. “A guy asks you questions, just like we’ve been asking you.”

Alvarez chimed in, “And this way you tell us, ‘Hey, I was catching some Zs with my wife when that happened,’ or ‘I was at such and such a place at that time,’ and this thing’s able to corroborate what you say.”

“Think of it as insurance for you,” said Holt.

“’Course it’s all voluntary,” Alvarez said.

“You mean do it now?” asked Caleb.

“Good a time as any,” said Alvarez.

Holt nodded, his head willing Cal’s to follow the same route.

“It won’t take very long,” said Alvarez. “Got a guy who’s all set up to come in and do it right now.”

“Everything goes right,” Holt said, “and we’ll all be home for dinner.”

Elizabeth looked at her watch again. Seven o’clock. More than once she had thought about suggesting that Caleb’s interview session be terminated for the night, but to do that might jeopardize her newfound position of trust at the Sheriff’s Department. At the moment, she was the golden girl. The inner circle credited her for bringing Caleb to them. They thought she was on their side, which meant they were much more receptive to sharing information with her. They assumed she was there for the same reason they were—to be in on the kill. Still, they didn’t totally trust her. She had been asked to remain in a vacant office, had been kept away from the recording room where Caleb’s interview was being monitored by other sheriff’s homicide detectives.

Detective Alvarez decided to throw her a bone. His eyes were shining, reflecting an ebullience that had been noticeably lacking among the investigators. He didn’t walk into her office so much as strut in. “We got him,” he said.

Her eyes asked for more. Alvarez stopped his strutting long enough to give it to her: “Parker’s been talking to the box. BB—Barry Brooks—is working him. We called Barry this morning and had him waiting here in the hope that Cal might consent to the box. During break time BB offered us some preliminary results. Apparently our Mr. Parker is a liar. But that’s the least of his sins. According to the polygraph, he’s also a murderer.”

Alvarez pointed his index finger at her, smiled, and started to walk out of the room.

“Hey,” said Elizabeth. “You’re leaving me on that note?”

“Our bird’s still wired and singing.”

“Then how about giving me a few more notes?”

Alvarez hesitated, then finally decided to offer a little more. “It was textbook,” he said. “BB’s going along all smooth, finessing him, and then out of the blue he asks, ‘Have you ever murdered anyone, Mr. Parker?’ And our boy Cal sort of gulps and then says, ‘No.’ According to BB, at that moment the polygraph all but went
tilt
.”

Elizabeth did her best to match Alvarez’s broad smile. It inspired him to talk a little more.

“Not only that,” he said, “we’ve even got motive on one of the murders. We did some checking this morning. Apparently Cal’s wife was involved with a certain Dr. Donald Jennings, father of Lita Jennings.”

“Tell me—”

“Can’t talk anymore. Got to get back.”

“Are you going to book him tonight?”

Alvarez made a little face. “That’s going to be the lieutenant’s call,” he said. “My guess is we’ll wait until tomorrow just to make sure everything is bundled up tight.”

He again pointed his index finger at her, winked, then walked out of the room.

An hour later Caleb left the interview room. He was hoarse and terribly tired. Only when he had started slurring his words, and appeared ready to swoon, had the detectives reluctantly terminated the interview. Friendly to the end, they had advised him not to leave town until matters were “better clarified.” They also asked him to come back for “a few more questions” the next day.

He had thought their questions would never end. Caleb had sweated through his shirt. He was surprised the polygraph hadn’t shorted because of all his perspiration. Caleb shuddered a little. He didn’t like being wired to anything.

They’d given him aspirin for his headache a few hours earlier, but it hadn’t helped. His head throbbed. All those questions. All those insinuations. And more than insinuations.

Do you love your wife, Cal?

Were you envious of your father’s notoriety, Cal?

Did you want to be like your father, Caleb?

Did you know Teresa Sanders, Caleb?

They already knew so many dirty things. And the whole time that damn machine had kept reacting, always scratching, scratching.

Have you ever murdered anyone, Mr. Parker?

He pushed the door open, glad to be free of the building. The night air, and his soaked shirt, made him shiver.

“Caleb?”

Her voice came from the darkness and made him jump. Elizabeth rose from the stairs.

“God, you scared me,” he said.

I’m the one who’s scared, Elizabeth thought. And crazy for being here. The lie detector says you’re a murderer. But she wasn’t as certain. Her inner polygraph knew that Caleb had been less than forthcoming with her. He was hiding things. Which was why her hand was inside her purse, cradled around
her gun. But taking precautions was different from pronouncing guilt.

Damn him, Elizabeth thought. His features were just like his father’s. But she was standing there because he didn’t feel like Gray.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

He shook his head.

There was a melancholy so deep in him that Elizabeth didn’t know where it started and he ended. He averted his eyes when he talked with her. His father hadn’t been like that. Gray had been much more confident.

“I have some things for you,” she said, holding out a bag.

He took the bag without opening it, without asking any questions.

“My card’s in there,” she said. “I’ve written down all my numbers. My answering service knows how to track me down, so I prefer you only use my cell phone number if it’s an emergency.”