Time of Death (32 page)

“I’m glad you called, Dr. Gray. I saw your name in the paper on the Metro Mangler case, and I thought it might be easier to talk to a doctor than a detective.”

She decided not to correct the impression that she was sure he had, that she was a medical doctor.

“I’ve got some information on the murder of Cheryl Royalview,” he said.

A break.
The hair on PJ’s arms rose and she took a deep breath.

“Go on.”

“I’m sure when Cheryl was autopsied, there was semen found. It wasn’t in the papers, but it had to be there.”

“What makes you think that? And what’s your name?”

“I’m Jason Dearborn. Cheryl and I were having an affair. We made love that Tuesday night, the day before the paper said she was killed. Oh, God, it’s so horrible.”

PJ’s excitement drained away. This sounded mundane, although she had to be thorough. “Do you have an alibi for the time of death, Wednesday, around noon?”

“I’m a vet, and I was at my clinic all day. Wednesday is surgery day. I was in surgery with my assistant from ten in the morning until three.”

The fact that Dearborn was a vet revived PJ’s interest. Vets worked with ketamine.

“Dr. Dearborn, I’d like to talk further with you. Would you come in to Headquarters? I can have a cruiser pick you up.”

There was a long hesitation. “I’d rather not. I’m married, and I was hoping this could be kept quiet. I only called because I figured I’d be tracked down by DNA and it would be better to volunteer the information up front.”

“How about meeting me at a place of your choice, then?”

“I guess that would be okay. I’ll have to go after hours, since I’m at the clinic today. This doesn’t have to come out, does it?”

“I’ll do everything I can to protect your privacy.”
I’m sounding more and more like Schultz every day. Say anything to lure ’em in.

“How about meeting at Millie’s Diner then,” he said. “Around five o’clock? Do you know the place?”

Oh, great.
“I know it. See you then.”

PJ arrived early, intending to get situated and warn Millie not to recognize her. Dearborn beat her to it. When she came in, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them in her coat pockets, he made unmistakable eye contact with her right away. He was seated at a table near the window, where’d he be certain to intercept her as soon as she came in.

She went over to the table. “Dr. Dearborn?”

“Yes. Please call me Jason. You look prettier in person than you do in your newspaper photos. You have a strong face.”

“Thanks,” she said.
I guess.
For some reason, she didn’t feel comfortable being on a first name with the man so soon. Or ever.

Jason Dearborn was about her age, with a roundness of face and body that reflected too many late night snacks. He had a prominent chin and nose, dark eyebrows, a small English mustache with an exaggerated curl at the ends, and was dressed entirely in black. He bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Snidley Whiplash. When he stood to greet her, she was surprised to see that he was not only her age, but her height too.

This guy must have some really endearing qualities or Cheryl Royalview was royally desperate. Maybe he’s rich.

Setting aside her first impression, she was determined not to assume villainy on Jason’s part. She was jumping to conclusions too much lately, a bad trait for a psychologist.
At least hear the guy out.

Millie came over with a smile on her face that faltered a little when she saw Jason, but quickly recovered.

“How are you, dear—?” Millie began.

PJ interrupted her. “That’s right, this is Dr. Dearborn. You two know each other?” She shook her head slightly, hoping Millie would pick up on it.

“I’m not a regular,” Jason said. “Are you the real Millie?”

“In the flesh. What can I get you two today?” Millie flipped over coffee cups and flipped open her order pad.

“Dr. Gray?” Jason said, indicating that she should order first.

“I’ll have the cashew chicken salad and iced tea.”

“Excellent choices. You, sir?”

PJ’s mouth almost fell open. Millie was actually writing in her order pad, playing her undercover role to the hilt.

“Grilled cheese platter and coffee, please.”

Millie nodded smartly and headed off for the kitchen.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” PJ said. “How did you meet Cheryl?”

Dearborn answered her questions but didn’t elaborate. There was nothing remarkable about the story. Lonely woman neglected by a workaholic husband meets obliging man. When the food arrived, he stopped talking until he thought Millie was out of earshot. Little did he know that Millie could be out in the alley behind the diner and still not be out of earshot.

They chatted about other topics while eating. Dearborn was a comic book fan, and they reminisced about old heroes. Everything seemed ordinary until he reached over and took her hand. Startled, she left it within his grasp, a captured bird in a cage of moist fingers.

“My wife has never understood my needs,” he said. “Cheryl and I had a good understanding. It’s terrible about her, but life goes on for the rest of us, I guess. After a decent period of mourning, I’ll have to find someone else to,” he looked around, but the nearby tables were empty. “To take control. Have you ever worn leather, Dr. Gray? I think it would suit you.”

PJ’s eyes widened and she reclaimed her hand. “I think we’re done here,” she said. “Check, please!”

PJ had lost the urge to protect Jason Dearborn’s privacy. She called the team together, told her story, and asked Dave to do some background checking on him. “Do I detect a pattern here?” Dave said. “I’m getting stuck with all the sex weirdos.”

Schultz volunteered to go with a tech to get a DNA swab from Dearborn.

“Where does he live? Or better yet, work?”

“He’s a veterinarian, and I have his phone number,” PJ said. “I don’t know the address of his clinic.”

“No problem,” Schultz said. She handed him back the same greasy paper he’d given her, with Dearborn’s number on it. “You know, you shouldn’t go off meeting strangers. Somebody’s out to get you, remember? You were supposed to be working in your office.”

“I don’t need your permission to follow up on a lead,” PJ said. “I don’t need a lecture, either. Anyway, Millie was around and probably had her hand on the phone the whole time we were in her place.”

“That old broad’s about as perceptive as a brick. I wouldn’t count on her having your back. And what about when you left? The S&M guy could have given you a new nickname: Doctor Roadkill.”

PJ felt her hackles rising. Dave and Anita were watching with interest to see who was going to launch the next volley. She couldn’t allow her relationship with Schultz to interfere with her work—or his, for that matter. With effort, PJ put the whole thing behind her. Schultz sulked for a while, and then reverted to detective mode. The group had a long discussion about April and tossed around ideas for locating her.

“Schultz, anything come of your visit to May’s place today?” PJ asked.

“I was hoping to find some indication that Arlan was in that shed for the last four days of his life. That hunch didn’t pan out,” he said.

“April had him hidden away during the missing four days,” PJ said, thinking aloud.
Go back to the beginning and find out where Arlan was for four days, Merlin said. It might all come down to the disparity in his disappearance and his time of death.

“You just now figuring that out?” said Schultz. “Unfortunately, that puts us no closer to finding her.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe we should go back to the comfort zone idea. April probably owns a truck that was used at the barn, perhaps a black Blazer, too.” She locked eyes with Schultz. PJ saw his nostrils flare at the mention of the Blazer. He was right. She shouldn’t do anything careless. She wanted to be around for a long time to see Thomas far into adulthood.

If she died, Schultz would be there for Thomas. She knew that now, and it was a simple truth that was comforting. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, having no idea what was going through her head.

“So we drive around in all the kill sites and look for trucks?” Anita said. “Seems way too vague.”

Dave said, “We can narrow it down by using vehicle registration records. What do we know about the truck?”

“Only that it had an eight foot bed,” Schultz said. “To hold the garden cart.”

“Well, that’s something,” Dave said.

“Are you kidding? There must be hundreds of those in the zones,” Anita said. “And they could be inside garages where we can’t check them out easily.”

“Hundreds of full-size trucks with female owners about fifty years old?” PJ said. “Locate every resident who fits that description and check it out. Interview the neighbors.”

The rest of her team looked skeptical. No one was taking up the battle cry. One of PJ’s assets in her position was her ability to think beyond the constraints of police procedure. It was also one of her liabilities.

“The truck could be registered under a male name, or she could have sold it, or driven it into the river or something after it was used at the barn,” Anita said.

“Driven it into the river,” PJ said. “Arlan’s dump site was on the shore of the Mississippi. We never knew why that particular place.”

“Anita, you’re a genius,” Schultz said. “You get a gold star. Now go look for that truck.”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted and was out the door.

PJ was anxious to get home to see her son, but she wanted to work on something that had been bothering her. She had never worked out the link between her barn and riverfront VR scenarios. Schultz seemed determined to be underfoot, so she put him to work.

She did a little preparation, and Schultz donned the VR gear. She started the barn scenario after Arlan’s body was in the pickup truck. Inside the scene, he was seeing everything first person, but on her monitor, she saw a three-inch-high Schultz open the truck’s door and get in. PJ had never told him, but she’d scanned his picture into her computer and customized a Genman, so the little character really did look like Schultz, complete with the bald spot on top of his head.

He drove for a couple of minutes on generic streets. Speaking into a microphone, she told Schultz that he should take the second driveway on his left.

“Hey, I didn’t know you could talk to me in here,” he said aloud. “Wanna whisper sweet nothings?”

She didn’t answer him. She was typing rapidly to keep a little ahead of the simulation, feeling her way along.

The time frame wasn’t right, because PJ had no idea how long it would take April to get home. April’s house was a box with a garage and a light next to the front door.
Genhome.

She opened the garage door.

“Did I do that?”

PJ sighed. “I did. Stop asking questions. Go with the flow.”

Schultz went through the process of backing the cart into the garage, then using the rope and winch to get Arlan’s body out. He tucked the corpse neatly into the body bag from one of PJ’s earlier scenarios. It came across as a gentle procedure, and PJ was reminded of the urge she had to cover Arlan’s body with her coat as water lapped at his feet. Few people managed to inject any personality into VR, but Schultz was one of them.

PJ flashed to tucking Thomas into bed as a child, sweeping his long, black hair back from his forehead, planting a good night kiss there, and smelling his toothpaste breath on her face. Then she got another image of Thomas, this one horrible: she was tucking him into a body bag instead of his bed, and zipping it up over his bloodied face.

“Schultz!” she yelled into her microphone.

“What?” His hands went up to yank the HMD off.

The picture faded. Unnerving as it was, she thought it was her mind projecting what might have happened if gronz_eye had gotten hold of Thomas again.

Could-have-beens.

“Wait, it’s all right. Let’s wrap this up, though. I want to get home.”

He drove the truck some distance away from the dump site, fiddled with the rope and managed to jam the gas pedal, sending the truck roaring down the levee, windows open for maximum water entry.

“So my truck is in the river. I’m stranded here.”

“You walk over to Laclede’s Landing and hail a taxi to go home. Say, how about that?”

“Checking the taxi pickups and destinations for that night?” Schultz said. “Could it be that easy?”

T
HE PHONE WAS RINGING
when PJ and Schultz got back to her house. She dashed to answer in the kitchen, calling out for Thomas that she was getting it.

When she picked up the phone, there was dead air.

“Hello?”

“Penelope Jennifer Gray,” said a voice that sounded like it was under water.

“Speaking. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Someone with a special interest in you and yours.”

A chill climbed her spine. The gamer with the sword was in jail.
Now what?

“You’re out to get me, aren’t you, Penelope?”

Schultz was across the room rummaging in the open refrigerator, his back to her. She went over and kicked him in the shin.

“Ow!”

She gestured at the phone. He immediately went to the living room to listen in.

“I’m not out to get anyone. Why would you think that?”

There was a watery-sounding laugh. “Very good, Dr. Gray. Always thinking like a shrink, turning my question back on me. I know you’re trying to stop me. You’re one of them, and they’re always trying to get me.”

“Stop you from doing what? Are you planning to kill someone?” PJ was shaking. She felt as though evil were creeping along the phone line and pouring itself into her ear. In her practice as a psychologist, she’d dealt with killers face to face. But that was in a controlled setting, usually in an interview room in a prison. Standing in her kitchen, with her son upstairs, with a caller who could be anywhere, was a situation that shook her to the core.

“Too many questions,” the voice said. “How about this? Two questions are all you get. Someone may die, but I won’t lie.”

Someone may die.
PJ tried to pull her mind away from going back to that image of Thomas in a body bag.
Why didn’t I leave him at Lilly’s? Or is he safer here with us?