The Perfect Suspect (19 page)

He had set the books back on the shelves. “If Sydney notices anything out of place, she'll wonder what I was doing,” he'd said. “She knows I like to show the books to friends.” He had bestowed another one of those smiles. “And lovers.” Then he had hurried on—she could almost feel him beside her now, tidying up the shelves, hear the familiar tone of his voice—
We have the whole night. Sydney won't return from New York until tomorrow afternoon. The whole night, just for us.

Ryan had wanted more than one night, and she had told him so. “We belong together,” she'd told him a dozen times, and he had agreed, lying on the big silky mattress with the silky sheet tucked around his waist. He would have agreed to anything then, she realized now. She removed a stack of books, flipped through the pages of one and threw it on the floor. Then the next, and the next, looking for nothing. Except, perhaps, a letter from Good-times Kim. She decided to be more vigilant, actually look inside the books, instead of going through the motions. Such a letter might exist.

“For godssakes, be careful,” Sydney said. “They're very valuable. They've been in the family for years.”

Wendell started whispering again, something about not expecting Ryan to care about such things. She slammed another book hard on top of the stacks growing at her feet. The book slid off and clunked onto the floor. Sydney groaned.

The piles of books stood almost two feet deep when Ryan moved on to another credenza across the room. She turned the drawers upside down and shook out letters and papers, wondering when Martin would finish in the living room and move on to the study. She went down on one knee, lifted each letter and examined the address. Most were from Chicago, some dated years ago, probably from Sydney's family and friends.

“Those are private,” Sydney said.

Ryan opened one of the letters. The painstaking script was the kind she hadn't seen in years, not since the elementary school posters of beautiful handwriting plastered on the walls. The letter was signed “Your loving Mother.” Ryan glanced through the scrolled words.

“How dare you,” Sydney shouted. “You have no business reading my private correspondence.”

Ryan went back to pawing through the other letters from Sydney's mother. So Sydney had married David Mathews against her mother's wishes. Even in the last letter, she had urged her daughter to leave David. “He has never been one of us” she had written.

Ryan left the letters tumbled over the floor and headed into the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martin stride across the entry. Her heart started hammering. My God, was it possible he would neglect to search the desk drawers? Then another possibility worked its way into her thoughts. What if Sydney or her odious brother had found the gun, realized it had been planted, and disposed of it?

Sunlight flared through the wide windows that overlooked the L-shaped kitchen counters and dark cherry cabinets and shiny steel appliances. “We hardly use the kitchen,” David had said. “We eat out, or take in.” He was talking about himself and Sydney, giving her a little glimpse into their private, domestic life, and Ryan had wanted to throw up. “Don't tell me about her,” she had said. “She doesn't matter. We're all that matters.” They'd eaten Chinese out of the cartons at the granite-topped counter dividing the kitchen. She had picked up dinner on her way to Evergreen.

Now she started yanking open the drawers, rummaging through them, dumping them on the floor. The bastard! And all the time he was making love to her—promising, promising—he had been planning to reconcile with Sydney. Her family money had bound them together.

“I hope you intend to clean this up.” Wendell shouted from the great room.

Ryan walked back into the room and faced the man. “Where were you the night he was murdered?”

“Talk to my lawyer.”

“Hey, Ryan.” It was Martin shouting from the front of the house. Ryan pulled out a drawer and let it drop onto the floor before she started for the entry. She could hear the detectives moving about upstairs. Martin stood in front of the desk in the study, two of the techs beside him. His hideout, David had called the study. The only place he could get away from Sydney, he'd said, and she had believed him. She had wanted to believe him.

“Look what we have here.” Martin held the middle desk drawer open while one of the techs trained a camera on the Sig Sauer 226. “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Same as the murder weapon. If it is the murder weapon, that woman is stupid to leave it around.” He shook his head in the direction of the great room. “Or just cocky.”

There was the swoosh of the front door opening, the hard clack of footsteps in the entry. “Sydney?” It was a man's voice.

Ryan watched Sydney Mathews rush past the door and throw herself into the arms of a bulky, gray-haired man in a dark suit creased across the crotch. The officer moved next to Sydney, her brother a couple of steps behind. “Thank God you're here, Landon.” Sydney sounded as if she might burst into tears. “They've torn up my house. God knows what they're doing outside, probably digging up the grounds.”

Wendell moved in closer, placed a hand on his sister's shoulder and pulled her out of the lawyer's arms. “What right do they have to do this?” he said. “My sister is mourning the horrible murder of her husband. This is unconscionable.”

“You have a signed warrant?” Landon the lawyer strolled into the study, and Ryan slipped the warrant out of her blazer pocket. Before she could hand it to the man, Sergeant Crowley materialized between them. He took the warrant and handed it to the lawyer who took his time perusing the document, studying the judge's signature. “I want a list of everything you remove from the house,” he said, dropping the warrant on the desk.

Martin held up the gun he had just placed inside a plastic bag. “Could be the murder weapon in a desk drawer,” he said.

“You can't possibly believe that!” the lawyer said. “My client is entitled to own a weapon. You have no evidence the gun was used to kill her husband.”

“Landon, the gun's not mine.” Sydney gripped the lawyer's arm, her face a white mask, blue eyes bulging and bloodred lips stretched in a grimace of shock. “I've never seen that gun before.”

The other detectives pounded down the stairs and shouldered their way into the study past Sydney and the two men. “Clear on the second floor,” the first detective said, his voice low.

“The gun could have been David's.” The lawyer reached around and patted Sydney's hand. “Don't worry. It means nothing. Ballistic tests will prove the gun was not used . . .” He stopped and drew his lips into a tight line.

“This is an outrage,” Wendell said, turning toward Crowley. “You have no right to persecute my sister. Take what you've found and get out of here.”

“It's not that simple,” Crowley said. He held the gaze of the lawyer, still steadying Sydney Mathews. “We have reason to believe Sydney Mathews went to the house in Denver two nights ago, argued with her husband, and shot him to death. I'm confident ballistics will show that she used this weapon.”

“So you have a gun,” the lawyer said. “You have no proof this weapon was used to murder David. You're making an outrageous supposition.” The lawyer half turned toward the woman gripping his arm. She had the faraway look in her eyes that Ryan had seen in the eyes of other suspects, as if they were floating away from reality, looking for someplace to hide.

“Try not to worry.” The lawyer slipped an arm around Sydney's shoulders. “This will all be cleared up. They have nothing.”

Ryan watched them taking photos of the study, placing a plastic bag over the computer, sealing it, initialing the bag. There wasn't yet probable cause to arrest Sydney Mathews for the murder of her husband, but there would be soon. A sense of euphoria swept over her. She was the leader of the parade.

18

“Police are calling Whitman's death a mugging.” Jason Metcalf perched on the corner of his desk, dangling one foot, tapping out an intermittent rhythm on the floor with the other. “Gangland style. Could have been a gang initiation. Whitman was ordered to throw down his wallet and he refused. The mugger shot him, got hold of the wallet, emptied the bills and tossed the rest onto the sidewalk.”

“It wasn't a mugging,” Catherine said.

“We don't know that for certain.” Marjorie had walked over and positioned herself in the doorway of Jason's cubicle. “Stranger coincidences have happened.”

“Jeremy Whitman saw Mathews and Beckman together in Aspen in June,” Catherine said. “It upset him because he believed all the press releases about David and Sydney, the happy couple. He believed in David. So David explained to Jeremy how he had run into an old flame, and that's all there was to it. He had Don Cannon tell him the same thing. In other words, David was determined to convince Whitman he hadn't seen what'd he'd seen.”

“Cannon knows who the woman was?”

Catherine shook her head and pressed a shoulder against the bookcase. “David said he wanted to protect the woman's privacy. He didn't give Don her name. And Jeremy didn't know the woman was Detective Beckman until yesterday when he saw her at campaign headquarters. That's when he got scared. He didn't know what to do . . .”

“Let me guess,” Marjorie put in. “You tracked him down and convinced him to go to the police.”

“He agreed to go with me this morning,” Catherine said. “He didn't just happen to get mugged last night. Beckman recognized him and knew he could connect her to Mathews.” She drew in a long breath; she would have liked a drink now. A sip of Burgundy. She went on: “The caller recognized Beckman coming out of David's house. Whoever the caller is, she's in danger. The only thing I've learned so far is that she may drive a black BMW.”

“You told Bustamante any of this?” Jason said.

“No.” Catherine took in another breath and exhaled through clenched teeth. She had wanted to tell him. She had wanted to close the space that gaped between them, but she hadn't wanted to take the chance that Nick would alert Beckman. She hadn't trusted him, she realized. He might stand with Beckman; they were both part of the thin blue line. Ironic, she thought. Beckman was alerted anyway. “I told Jeremy about the witness,” she said.

Jason stood up, plunged his hands into his pockets and started patrolling the small cubicle. “Beckman could have seen the witness on the sidewalk. You think Jeremy told her the witness contacted you?”

“Let's assume he did,” Marjorie said. “Beckman's top priority has to be finding the witness. Now she's going to worry about you.”

Catherine had to turn away. She stared out over the newsroom, the routine chaos of bobbing heads, clicking computer keys and ringing phones. A normal morning, gathering the news from the city, the state, the police, the FBI, the wire services, trying to make the connections and fill in the spaces that the politicians and bureaucrats preferred to leave blank.

Marjorie was going on about how Catherine should take time off, get away for a while. Exactly what she had told Jeremy last night. “I'm going to insist on this,” Marjorie said, and Catherine thought about how she should have insisted with Jeremy. “We can't take any chances.”

Catherine swung around. “Beckman doesn't know what the witness might have said, and she doesn't know who I've told. We could all be in danger. Now isn't the time to back off.”

Marjorie sank back against the glass wall of the cubicle, this new possibility deepening the worry in her eyes. She shot a glance at Jason, who had stopped in mid-stride and was looking at Catherine, as if he had never seen her before. The police reporter, shooting the breeze with the cops, throwing back beer in the cop bars, writing up the reports on murders and robberies and carjackings and gang muggings, never considering the possibility that he might become the subject of one of those reports. Beckman would assume the police reporter and the editor knew everything.

“You could be right.” Marjorie faced Catherine. “We need to double our efforts to find the witness. Put a message on your blog.
To the woman who called yesterday, please call back. Very important.
Somebody close to Mathews drives a black BMW. Find out who.” She started to back out of the cubicle, then stopped. “One other thing. Find everything you can on Detective Beckman. Jason, that means you. Talk to your cop friends, get them to tell you what they really think about her. Go off the record, if you have to. We need to know who we're up against.”

Jason started fumbling with the small black case attached to his belt. “I gotta take this,” he said, extracting his cell and clamping it against his ear. “What?” he said. “When?” He stood rooted in place, breathing hard. “I'm on my way.” He snapped the phone shut and, still clutching it in his hand, said, “Sydney Mathews is about to be arrested for the murder of her husband. An arrest warrant's been issued.”

Catherine felt as if her throat were paralyzed. She couldn't spit out the words jamming themselves together in a hard knot. How can it be? What evidence?

“My contact says they found the murder weapon in the Evergreen house. Ballistics confirmed the two bullets they dug out of the wall and the one in Mathews's chest came from the weapon. He says they've got other evidence to tie her to the murder.”

“Well, that changes everything.” Marjorie looked from Jason to Catherine. “Seems like we could have gotten ahead of ourselves here. Who knows what motivated the caller to want to implicate a police detective.”

“The caller was telling the truth,” Catherine said. The tight, clipped sound of her voice surprised her. “Beckman's found a way to frame somebody else, and Sydney's an easy target. She and David were separated, and Sydney could have had a motive to want him dead. It wouldn't have been hard for Beckman to set up—”