The Perfect Suspect (10 page)

Cannon nodded, as if Martin had only confirmed what he'd already figured out.

“Whitman knows something, you ask me,” Martin said. He rapped the steering wheel with his thumb and squinted into the brightness drifting past the lowered visor. The air conditioner labored over the heat that had built up in the car. Ryan sat ramrod straight in the passenger seat. They had spent a couple hours collecting file folders, boxing up computers, fax machines and telephones. After the tech guys had loaded everything into the van outside, Ryan had tossed Martin the car keys. She was the better driver, they both knew, faster reflexes, the ability to multitask, but now she was too shaky, too distracted to negotiate the late afternoon traffic.

“What makes you think so?” she managed, wondering if Martin had noticed Jeremy staring at her.

“Come on, Beckman.” He tossed her a look and gave her a smile that flashed a row of perfect, white teeth in the dark complexion of his face. There were streaks of white in his Marine-cut black hair. “Don't tell me you can't feel when somebody's holding out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let's say he's holding out. What could he know? He's stuck behind a computer all day, a real geek. I doubt he'd register a threat to bomb the place.”

“He would have seen any threats against Mathews on the Internet. We'll know more after the techs look at the computers. You hungry?”

Ryan shook her head. The thought of food made her want to retch. Everything depended on finding the murder weapon in the desk drawer. She hadn't expected to be the lead investigator. What a lucky break that was the way it had turned out. She willed the nerves in her stomach to stop jumping around and reminded herself she was in control. She had to make the most of it, steer the investigation toward the grieving widow, the first person any detective worth his salt would look hard at. All she had to do was get a search warrant on the Evergreen house, which wouldn't be a problem. Sydney had admitted that David owned a gun. The warrant would specify the computer, gun, any documents—letters, financial records—that might shed light on the investigation. With all the national attention and pressure to solve David's murder, the judge would affix his signature to any warrant she and Martin wanted. She would make certain someone else found the murder weapon, and the case would be closed.

“You need to eat.” Martin swung the car onto the pavement of a fast food restaurant and headed into the drive-through lane. “Hamburger? Chicken sandwich?”

“Oh, God, no,” she said. The thought of food sent her stomach into new spasms.

Martin gave her a sideways glance, then shouted his own order into the outdoor intercom—double cheeseburger, double order of fries, coffee—then she leaned over and said she would have a Coke. “One large Coke,” he shouted.

As soon as they picked up the order, Martin stripped the wrapping off the hamburger and took a big bite. Guiding the car with one hand, he drove across the pavement and out into the traffic moving north. “I say we need to talk to Jeremy Whitman again.”

“He's in shock.” Ryan sipped at the Coke. The combination of sweetness and ice knocked back the acid rising in her throat. She could feel her head clearing. Jeremy had been frightened when he saw her—a police detective involved with the victim! He hadn't known what to say, how much to divulge. No one else had seen Ryan and David together. David had assured her of that. It would be Whitman's word against hers. But he knew that she also recognized him; she had seen it in his expression. He would think things over, maybe talk to Cannon—God, had he already returned to the office? Chances were he hadn't. Oh, she knew the type: methodical, careful, anything but impulsive. The type who lived in his head, and that's where he would work out whether he should tell the police about Aspen, and that could take a few hours.

“You can't make anything out of the way he acted,” she went on. But she had made everything out of it, she was thinking. Jeremy Whitman had become an unforeseen problem that she had to solve.

Martin chewed for a moment, then dug a hand into the white paper bag on the console, helped himself to a bunch of fries and chewed some more. “So we wait until tomorrow,” he said finally, “and we go have another heart-to-heart with Jeremy Whitman.”

9

The neighborhood was as still as a photograph. Giant, contemporary houses with the moneyed look of stucco, decks and oversized windows arranged under elms and oaks, like a movie set with the feel of vacancy about it. The occupants had decamped for the day to the downtown steel and glass skyscraper offices that rose against the sky in the distance. Catherine had taken the chance someone might be at home, a woman in between social committee meetings or a tennis match at the country club a few blocks away. Someone who might have seen something unusual last night and remembered a tiny fact that could help her find this morning's caller.

Catherine slowed past Mathews's house, which looked a little out of place, more extreme in its glass and steel architecture, more prominent, just like Mathews himself, she thought. Always wanting to stand out from the crowd. The yellow police tape stretched across the front yard and the bouquets of flowers, photographs of a smiling Mathews and condolence cards piled along the sidewalk where the reporters and gawkers had milled about were the only signs that something unusual had happened there. The official vehicles gone, the crowds vanished. She parked in front of the next-door neighbor's house, found the small notebook inside her bag. It had taken about two minutes to find the names on the Internet: Carol and Lee Kramer. She glanced through the notes she had made. Lee Kramer had called 911 at 5:06 a.m. Reported body in house next door.

The bronze front door of the gray stucco house was about twelve feet high, inserted with strips of artfully arranged glass that gave Catherine a fragmented view of the black-and-white tiled entry. She rang the bell and waited for someone to emerge from the depths of the interior. There were no footsteps, no faint tremors of movement. Only the lingering muted echo of the gonglike bell inside.

She was about to start back down the sidewalk when the door opened and a short, gray-haired woman with pink cheeks and a prominent, purplish nose peered out. “Yes?” she said. Beyond the woman, at the edge of the entry, a dark-haired, middle-aged woman stood hugging herself, her face creased with curiosity and anxiety.

Catherine introduced herself, said she was with the
Journal
and would like to speak with Mr. or Mrs. Kramer.

“They're not at home.” The woman in the doorway enunciated the words as if there were an invisible list of phrases that she was accustomed to using, and this was the most familiar.

“Where can I find them?” Catherine said, hoping the door wouldn't slam in her face. The dark-haired woman had moved forward and was now only a few feet from the door.

“I'm not at liberty to divulge that type of information,” the first woman said.

The other woman stepped closer. “This about Mr. Mathews?” “Edith, I don't think this is a good idea.” The woman in the doorway glanced over her shoulder, then started to push the door shut.

“No, wait.” Edith muscled her way into the doorway. “What do you know about his murder?” she said, craning forward. She had dark eyes with gray pupils that looked cloudy and unfocused.

In an instant, Catherine understood who she was. “You're his housekeeper. You found his body,” she said. “How terrible that must have been for you.”

Edith opened the door. “You can come in for a minute.”

“I can't take the responsibility,” the first woman said. She had a worried, nervous look about her. Her hands twitched at her sides.

“Stop worrying, Mary. I'll take the responsibility.” Edith motioned Catherine inside and into a great room that extended into a kitchen at the rear of the house. Catherine could sense the nervousness in the gray-haired woman hovering behind them.

“Mr. Mathews was always good to me,” Edith said. She positioned herself in front of a table and dabbed a tissue under her nose. She was probably in her fifties, fit and attractive, despite the redness that rimmed her eyes and the tousled look of her hair, as if she had been raking it with her fingers. “Whoever killed him deserves the death penalty. What do you know?”

“Mrs. Kramer will be here any minute,” Mary said. She had moved to the window and was peering outside. “She won't be happy you let in a reporter.”

“He shouldn't have died like that. He was a good man. He took care of people like us.” Edith nodded toward the woman at the window. “We don't have much. We're not educated and smart like he was. He was always generous. Gave me nice bonuses at Christmas. Gave you a little extra, too,” she said, directing the comment toward Mary. “He didn't forget where he came from, people just like us. He would've been a great governor 'cause he would've remembered the little people.” She blew her nose, blinked several times and looked straight at Catherine. “Those detectives, they're chasing their tails, asking stupid questions. What did I see? Who came to visit Mr. Mathews last night? How would I know? I was home in my own bed with my husband. You ask me, they need to look hard at people that hated Mr. Mathews and didn't want him to be governor. I guess they got their own way, 'cause he's not gonna be governor now. Please tell me what you know.” She looked as if she might burst into tears, and Catherine suspected she had been crying since this morning and had probably turned to her friend, the woman who worked next door.

Catherine took a moment, considering how much to divulge. She decided to take a chance. “We believe there may have been a witness,” she said.

“What?” Edith's head snapped backward. She stared at Catherine out of wide, round eyes. “Somebody saw Mr. Mathews get shot?”

“We don't know for certain,” Catherine said. “We're looking into the possibility. What about the neighbors? Does anyone walk a dog at night? Anyone ever come home late at night?”

Mary let out a strangled laugh. “Not in this neighborhood.”

“Perhaps you can tell me if Mr. Mathews was accustomed to visitors late at night.”

“You gotta leave now.” Mary took a step toward Catherine. “Mrs. Kramer's meeting ended thirty minutes ago. She'll come straight home. I'll lose my job if she finds a reporter here. The Kramers don't want nothing to do with this.”

Edith swung away and stared out into the entry. Her expression hardened, as if her muscles had turned to stone. She looked back at Catherine. “You're just like the detectives. Asking stupid questions to ruin the reputation of a fine, upstanding man. I won't be party to it.”

“That's not my intention,” Catherine said, trying for a conciliatory tone that would let the woman know she only wanted Mathews's killer brought to justice. “Someone may have been outside when Mathews was killed. There were rumors he was sometimes unfaithful. If that's true, some woman may have been on the way to the house.”

“She killed him.”

“Who?” Catherine said. She was thinking of what the caller had said: if the police find out I was there, they'll think I killed him.

“Whoever came last night.” Edith's shoulders crumbled, and she dipped her head into her hands and started sobbing. “One of his women,” she said, the words muffled and tear filled. “I don't know who they were. I've never seen them. They'd still be there in the mornings when I got to work, but they'd leave real fast. Duck out the door under their scarves so I wouldn't see their faces.”

“I told you, you should've just told the detectives,” Mary said. She held out her arm and stared at her watch, as if it were ticking off the last minutes of her life. “Let them interview his mistresses.”

“How could I do that?” Edith shouted. “How could I betray him like that? Nobody would see his good side, the kind of man he really was. People would just see a cheater. I couldn't do that.” She swiveled toward Catherine. “You can't print this. It's what you call privileged information, off the record or something.”

“You want Mr. Mathews's killer caught, don't you?” Catherine said, still the conciliatory voice. “It's possible one of the women killed him. Or maybe one of the women he was involved with saw the killer. Is there anything else you remember, anything you know that could help me locate these women?”

“Oh, God,” Mary said. She was doing a nervous jig in front of the window. “She's home. Go out the back door.” She lunged for Catherine and started pulling her toward the kitchen. “We've got to get her out of here,” she said, pleading with Edith.

“What's going on?” Carol Kramer stood in the entry. She slammed the front door behind her and came into the great room. “I see we have another visit from the press,” she said, approaching Catherine. She looked crisp and businesslike, unlike the wrinkled, disconcerted woman this morning. “We've already told you everything we know.” Turning to her housekeeper, she said, “You had no right to let her in.”