Читать книгу Dead Wrong - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 10

TRINA AND Meg Patton, having failed to catch Doug Jennings at home, drove up to the Juanita Butte ski area on Saturday.

The lieutenant parked in the employee lot, taking a spot right by the slope of packed snow leading up to the lodge. Since her husband was the ski area general manager, she had reason to feel at home here.

Unlike Trina, who stepped out of the Explorer gingerly.

Despite frostbite-inducing cold, the lift lines were long, the slopes busy enough that skiers and boarders must be having to dodge each other. Never having learned to ski, Trina felt out of place here, which made her sulky and reminded her of her teenage resentment of the popular kids. But how could she help it? In contrast to all the tanned, long-legged, bleached-blond athletes heading for the lifts, she was pasty-skinned, dark-haired and compact.

She trailed ten feet behind Lieutenant Patton by the time they reached the A-frame that was, according to the lieutenant, the nerve center of the ski area. Ducking to save her skull from a snowboard carelessly swung by a teenage boy calling to friends above in the lift line, she slipped, knocked into a passing skier who yelled at her and finally righted herself at the foot of the snow-packed stairs leading up into the hut.

Naturally, the information center was staffed by a tanned, Nordic blond beauty.

“Oh, yeah! Doug’s wife! That was such a bummer. I mean, he’s going around with this tragic face.” She sounded awed at his suffering. More practically, she added, “His shift should be ending in a minute, anyway. I can call him down here.”

She got on the radio and his crackling voice agreed that he would rendezvous with the police officers at the ski school hut.

Stamping her feet and shivering, Trina thought about what Lieutenant Patton’s husband had said about Doug Jennings. Enthusiastic, great with the public, no apparent ambitions beyond the next ski season.

“Of course, Scott doesn’t know him well,” she’d added. “Unless the guy had been a major problem, a lift operator is a pretty small cog in Scott’s operation.”

Now, Lieutenant Patton also had the Nordic goddess call the ski school and ask for Travis Booth, Will’s friend who now headed the ski school. “If he could come down in, say, half an hour?”

Yet another crackling voice agreed.

Recognizable from photos in her apartment, Amy Owen’s ex-husband slid to a stop right by the door, as beautiful and Nordic as the goddess inside. Tapping the bindings with the tip of one of his poles, he stepped off the skis and set them inside.

His eyes were actually brown, despite the sun-bleached blond hair. Brown and puppy-dog-like and mournful. “You’re here about Amy?”

“Yes.” Lieutenant Patton nodded toward the lodge. “Can we go inside and talk?”

“Oh. Sure. I guess you’re cold?”

Despite heavy parkas and gloves, the lieutenant and Trina weren’t dressed for sub-zero weather. In just minutes, Trina had lost awareness of her face as a part of her body. When any of them talked, their breath froze in plumes that hung in the air. Trina wanted to say, Gee, you think?

Inside the busy lodge, they stamped snow from their boots. Meg Patton led the way upstairs to what appeared to be offices. A secretary smiled and said, “Scott said to give you the small conference room. Can I bring you coffee?”

“Please,” the lieutenant said.

If she’d turned it down, Trina would have whimpered. She was shivering and trying to hide it. Damn, she thought. Why hadn’t she taken a job somewhere warmer? She didn’t even like snow. The LAPD must have openings on a regular basis. Or maybe San Diego.

In the conference room, Doug Jennings dropped his gloves on the table, stripped off his snow-white hat with the cute pompom and peeled off his form-fitting parka. Very reluctantly, Trina divested herself of her outer layers. Gratefully seizing a mug of the coffee the secretary brought, she sat next to the lieutenant and opened her notebook.

Lieutenant Patton asked, “Mr. Jennings, when did you last see your ex-wife?”

His face crumpled, as if he were about to cry. “Wow. I can’t believe she’s dead. Amy was…” He swallowed. “Um. When did I see her the last time. Maybe Monday?” He pondered. “Yeah. Monday. I ran into her at Safeway. Kind of on purpose. See, I know she shops there, and she usually goes after work. So that’s when I shop.”

“But you are divorced.”

“Yeah, but…” He took a huge breath and let it out in a rush, his beseeching gaze moving from Lieutenant Patton’s to Trina’s and back. “I didn’t want to be! I love Amy! I shouldn’t have let her go.”

“And how did Ms. Owen feel about your pursuit?”

Expression ingenuous, he said, “I think she was coming around.” As if reading doubt on their faces, he added, “Really! We’ve actually kind of gotten together a couple of times lately. You know.”

They knew.

“Had you asked her to marry you again?”

“She said no, but not like she was mad or wanted me to leave her alone. More like…” He frowned. “Like she was teasing. I figured it was just a matter of time.”

“And the issues that led to the divorce in the first place?”

“I told her we could have a baby if she wanted. Kids are okay.”

Trina barely refrained from rolling her eyes at his magnanimity.

Lieutenant Patton’s voice changed. “Mr. Jennings, I have to ask where you were from Wednesday evening until Thursday morning.”

“Where I was?” He gaped at her, and Trina realized he really was naive enough not to have realized why he was being questioned in the first place. Bronwen was right; he was dumb. “You don’t think I…” Wildly searching their faces, he saw that they did indeed think the possibility existed that he had murdered his ex-wife. “I loved Amy!”

“Mr. Jennings, we’re obligated to rule out an ex-husband. If we can verify your whereabouts…”

He relaxed. “Oh, sure. Um…” More deep thinking. “I was here. I worked late shift on Wednesday evening. After the lifts shut down at ten, some of us stopped at the Timberline for drinks.”

The same place Amy had been earlier in the evening.

“You didn’t see Amy there?” Trina asked.

Both the lieutenant and Doug looked startled to hear her speak.

“No. It must have been close to eleven by the time we got there. She gets up early for work. She wouldn’t have still been out…” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Hastily, before the moistness in his eyes could develop into a deluge, the lieutenant asked, “How late did you stay?”

He seemed to focus with an effort. “I don’t know. Until about one? Then Steve and I went back to our place and crashed.”

“Steve?”

“My roommate? Steve Bacon? He works lifts, too.”

“I see.”

Trina could read her mind. Why the hell hadn’t anybody mentioned that Doug Jennings had a roommate?

“Is Mr. Bacon here at the ski area today?”

“Sure!” He started to surge to his feet, then checked himself and sank back in the chair. “I think he’s working Outback today.”

The lieutenant abruptly stood. “Just one moment.”

She slipped out, returning quickly. “All right, Mr. Jennings. A couple more questions. Was Ms. Owen dating other men?”

“Flirting sometimes. Maybe just to make me jealous.” Even he didn’t believe himself.

“Did she mention anyone making her nervous? Following her, bugging her for a date?”

“Nothing like that.” He shook his head and pleaded, “Why Amy? Everybody liked Amy.”

Voice gentle, Meg Patton said, “The chances are that she was chosen randomly, simply because she happened to be alone at the wrong moment.”

His face worked. He cleared his throat. “Are you, uh, done with me?”

“Yes. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Jennings.”

Face still contorted, he nodded, shoved the chair back and blundered from the room.

The two officers sat in silence for a moment. “What did you think?” the lieutenant asked.

“My impression is, he’s sincere. Also not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“No kidding.” Lieutenant Patton let out a gusty sigh. “I’m liking the feel of this less and less.”

Trina knew what she meant. A murder committed by a spurned ex-husband was one thing; a brutal, sexually motivated murder by a stranger choosing a victim only because she was available and fit a vague “type” was another altogether.

After a moment, Trina asked, “Did you send for the roommate?”

Still brooding, the lieutenant nodded. “Let’s squeeze him in before we talk to Travis. We might as well accomplish as much as we can while we’re here.”

Steve Bacon arrived a minute later, dark-haired, at least, but otherwise fitting the mold: blue eyes sapphire-bright against that glowing tan skiers all seemed to have. Cold air and an aura of energy entered the conference room with him. His glance took in Trina, dismissed her in an all-too-familiar way and turned to Lieutenant Patton.

Irritated, Trina said too loudly, “We understand the area was open for night skiing on Wednesday.”

She felt the flick of the lieutenant’s gaze. Nonetheless, Meg Patton stayed quiet.

As if she were an idiot, Steve Bacon said, “Yeah, sure. It always is.”

“And did you work?”

“Yeah. I ran the Gold Coast lift.”

“Did you carpool up here that day?”

She must have sounded too bellicose.

He balked. “Is this about Amy’s murder? Why are you asking me questions?”

“Can you just answer the question, please.”

“I rode with Doug. Doug Jennings. We take turns when we’re working the same shift.”

“And you did that night.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“What did you do after the lifts shut down?”

He told the same story Doug had. He was more certain about the time, because he’d glanced at the clock when they walked in their apartment. “We got home at 1:45. Then we sat around and bull-shitted for a while. I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Neither of us had to be at work until one.”

After letting him go, the lieutenant said, “So much for the ex-husband.”

“It didn’t look like a murder committed by an ex-husband.”

Meg rubbed the back of her neck. “No,” she said, voice weary. “No, it didn’t.” Her eyes were sharp when she looked at Trina. “You didn’t like him.”

Trina hunched her shoulders, a bad habit when she felt defensive, one she was trying to overcome. “No. I guess I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“He just seemed like a jerk.”

“In a way relevant to this case?”

“Uh…no.”

“Was coming on that strong justified, then?”

Trina looked back at her, face as expressionless as she could make it. “No, ma’am.”

Voice milder than Trina expected, the lieutenant said, “On the job, keep your personal feelings to yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Trina repeated woodenly.

“I didn’t like him, either. Ah.” Lieutenant Patton tilted her head. “Possibly Travis?”

Sure enough, Trish escorted in yet another handsome man with that unmistakable air of vitality and athleticism. He had changed from high school as much as Will Patton had. Adolescent cockiness had become masculine confidence. But something on his lean face hinted at pain and regret.

Both were obliterated by his grin. “Hey, Will’s mom.”

Smiling, the lieutenant stood. “Travis. It’s good to see you. Congratulations on the Frye Museum showing.”

“Thanks. It felt good. I guess I’m not just a local boy anymore.”

Frye Museum?

“We’d like to ask you some questions having to do with Amy Owen’s murder,” the lieutenant continued. “I understand you’d stayed closer friends with her than Will had.”

“Sure, no problem. Hey, Trish,” he called over his shoulder. “Can I get a cup of that coffee?”

He dragged out a chair and turned it so that he was straddling it, arms crossed on the back. He studied Trina. “I know you, don’t I?”

“I was two years behind you in school. Trina Giallombardo.”

He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Trina Giallombardo. Again, if we ever actually met before.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, then.” He smiled thanks at Trish when she brought his coffee. Turning back to the police officers, he said, “As for Amy… I don’t know about friends. She was more part of the group. We didn’t have much in common.”

Trina asked, “Did you ever go out with her?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. After she and Doug said bye-bye. But we didn’t have much to talk about, and it didn’t go anywhere. I doubt she was hurt when I didn’t call again.”

“Then the decision not to continue dating was yours rather than hers?”

“I really do think it was mutual. Amy was a sweetheart, but not much of a reader, no interest in art, didn’t like to ski because she got cold…” He shrugged. “In turn, I have no interest in the latest movie opening at the cineplex, fashion, what everybody we knew back to grade school is doing nowadays… We ran out of things to talk about. She looked as restless as I felt.”

“Surely you knew this when you asked her out.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But when conversation is general in big groups you don’t always remember who contributes what. She was fun, pretty, had a nice laugh. So on impulse I asked if she wanted to have dinner. This was…I don’t know. Maybe six weeks ago. The next weekend we had drinks and she came to a gallery opening with me. Afterward she wanted us to join Marcie and Dirk Whittaker at Sister’s, that new brew-house. I made an excuse and left her there. End of romance.”

The lieutenant asked, “Did you sleep with her, Travis?”

His eyebrows rose. “Does it matter?”

“We’re gaining the impression that she tended to end her evenings in someone or other’s beds. I guess I’m asking if that was true.”

Expression conflicted, he appeared to be thinking furiously. “Okay,” he said at last. “After our first date, she came home with me. Are you asking me to rate her performance?”

Lieutenant Patton gave a crooked smile. “No. What I’m trying to determine is whether she would readily have agreed to leave a bar with someone Wednesday night.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. I think maybe she would. My take is, Amy liked sex. Or maybe what she liked was having a guy. She always seemed to be looking.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Thank you for your honesty.”

Forehead still creased, he asked, “Why would anyone want to kill Amy? She liked sex, sure. But to the best of my knowledge, she never hurt anyone.”

“Knowingly.”

He shrugged in concession. “Let me put it like this. I think she went out of her way not to hurt anyone.”

Face drawn, Lieutenant Patton said, “Travis, I want you to think back. Way back. Do you know of anyone who has harbored a grudge against Will? Anyone who is still around town?”

He straightened, gripped the back of his chair. His gaze locked with Meg Patton’s. “Will? What does…” He uttered a guttural obscenity. “Amy wasn’t murdered like Gilly, was she?”

“There were…similarities.”

He swore again. “You told Will?”

She nodded.

“How’s he taking it?”

“I don’t know,” the lieutenant said in a voice Trina had never heard from her. “As I’m sure you’re aware, he doesn’t open up to me much.”

“Why didn’t that idiot call me?” He shoved himself to his feet, hesitated, then sat back down. “No. God. I can’t think of anyone who hated Will like that. Everybody liked him.” He shook his head as if he were trying to clear it. “Mendoza was convicted. I called damn near every night during the trial! Will told me about the evidence!”

“Ricky always said there was another explanation. That he left her alive.” The pencil in the lieutenant’s hand snapped. She didn’t seem to notice. Her voice had become raw. “What if he did?”

“God.” Travis scrubbed his hand over his face. “Is Will still at his dad’s? He hasn’t found a place?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll talk to him tonight.” He stood then, and squeezed Lieutenant Patton’s shoulder. “Hey, Will’s mom. You’re super cop. You’ll find out who did this.”

Her smile hurt to look at. “Thanks, Travis. You’re a good kid.”

His laugh wasn’t any more real than her smile. “When I want to shed a few years, I just come see you.”

She watched as he left the room, then met Trina’s eyes. “I’ve known him since he was fourteen.”

“Wasn’t he around during the trial?”

“No, he was in Europe training for the World Cup tour. He had an exciting life in those days. Val d’Isere, Innsbruck, St. Moritz…Will would get postcards. Travis won the opening downhill of the season that year, at Chamonix. I remember how excited Will was.” She fell silent for a moment. “Gillian was killed that spring. Travis was in Japan that week. By the time the trial started, he was back in Europe training for the next winter.”

That’s why she’d felt comfortable telling him as much as she had, Trina realized. He might be the only friend of Will’s his mother could trust.

The lieutenant’s gaze sharpened. “Trina, I’m going to have you go see Mendoza in Salem. You have a fresh eye.”

Trina kept her mixed excitement and trepidation out of her voice. “Do I tell him about this murder?”

“Why not? But first, learn what you can about his friends, cousins, nephews. Anyone who might care enough to think of a sick way to get him off.”

“Or who wants to be just like Ricky,” Trina said slowly.

“You got it. But beyond that, I want you to get him to tell his story about what happened the night Gillian Pappas was murdered. Just…listen.”

Trina nodded. “Is there anything you want to tell me about him?”

There was a history here she didn’t know.

But Lieutenant Patton shook her head. “Meet him, hear his story. I don’t want to predispose you in any way.”

“I have been reading police reports and the transcript of the trial.”

“But talking to him in person, that’s different.” She got to her feet. “I’ll call over to Salem, we’ll set it up for tomorrow.”

“If he’ll agree to talk to me.”

She snorted. “Oh, he’ll agree. Ricky Mendoza never misses a chance to tell someone he’s innocent.”

THE APARTMENT WAS DECENT, the rent exorbitant. That was the price you paid for being in a hurry.

Will unpacked his suitcases and made the bed. After signing the lease that afternoon, he’d visited the storage unit where most of his worldly possessions were stowed and managed to find boxes labeled Bedding and Kitchen. He hoped like hell his coffeemaker was in one of them.

When the doorbell rang, he abandoned the box of towels on the floor in front of the incredibly tiny linen closet and went to let Travis in. His friend glanced around the blandly furnished living room, wincing at the watercolor print of Juanita Butte that hung above the distressed leather couch and peeled pine end tables.

“You know, you could have stayed with me.”

“It’s looking like I won’t be able to buy until spring. You don’t need a roommate for months.”

“If I’m not on the ski hill, I’m in the studio. You’d have hardly seen me.”

“This will do.” Will nodded toward the kitchen. “Beer?”

“Sure.” Travis waited until he was popping the top of the dark German brew to say, “I talked to your mother today. She told me Amy’s murder had similarities to Gillian’s.”

“Similarities?” Will made a sharp sound. “More than that. It was damn near a carbon copy. Too close for coincidence.”

“Why didn’t you call me? This must have stirred up some hellish memories.”

Will deliberately took a swallow, feeling the cold, bitter beer slide down his throat. The pause enabled him to say almost steadily, “You could say that.”

“Do you need to talk about it?”

Will looked at his hand gripping the bottle and realized it was shaking. The tremor was fine enough he hoped his friend hadn’t noticed.

“That’s all I’ve been doing! Even Jimmy McCartin called to talk about it!”

“My fault. I ran into him when I stopped for an espresso on the way up to the hill. I tried to back out the door, but he spotted me before I could make a getaway.” His gaze rested on Will’s hand. So much for not noticing. “Come on, buddy. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Will turned his back, staring out the small window above the sink. “What is there to say? Some sick son of a bitch thought it would be fun to copy another murder. Maybe it was chance he chose another woman I know. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he picked her because that’s another parallel. Either way… Do you know what he did to her?” Will asked in anguish.

Travis clasped his upper arm, just briefly, a gesture of support not so different from the reassuring slap on the back when one of them struck out on the ballfield, from the squeeze Will had given his arm when he visited him in the hospital after his career-ending pinwheel down the mountain at Kitzbühel. It meant something.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “I know what he did to her.”

Will felt his friend’s scrutiny. He lifted his beer and swallowed.

“Your mother asked me if I could think of anyone who hated you.”

Beer went down the wrong way. Still choking, he gasped, “What?”

“She looked scared, Will.”

Voice thick with fear of a different kind, fear that she was right and he was wrong, Will said, “She’s jumping to conclusions.”

“She’s looking at all the options. She was up at the Butte talking to Doug.”

“And?”

“He worked Wednesday night. He told me after he talked to her that he had been with other people until two in the morning or so. And his roommate swears he never left the condo.”

Will set down the bottle on the counter so hard it clunked. “This has to do with Mendoza.”

“But what?”

“Somebody is trying to get him off. To make everyone think Gilly’s killer is still out there.”

Travis would have made a hell of a lawyer. Mild enough to catch you off guard, he could still corner you. “Not many people are sick enough to kill like that. A man would have to enjoy it. You and I are good friends. I’d do a hell of a lot for you. But rape and murder? Nah.”

Savagely, not wanting to hear the logic, Will said, “You’ve been talking to my father.”

“You know better than that.”

Will closed his eyes. Travis had stuck with him through the worst. And now he was being a jackass.

“Yeah. I know better. I’m sorry.”

Travis just shook his head. “No need. Are you going to be able to start work with this hanging over you?”

“Yeah.” Tension arced through him as if live wires were sparking. “I need to be busy. What am I supposed to do? Sit here and watch soap operas while I wonder if some other woman is being stalked?”

Relentless in his own way, Travis said, “If this guy stalked Amy, then that means he chose her. It had to be her. Why?”

“I don’t know!” Will all but shouted. He paced a couple of steps, turned back, bounced his fist on the counter. “I don’t know. I was using a figure of speech. Probably nobody is being stalked. Chances are the killer just grabbed Amy because she was available…”

“Has your mom figured out where she was snatched from?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Then maybe she wasn’t all that available.” Travis still leaned against the edge of the counter, seemingly relaxed, but his eyes were both watchful and compassionate. “You know, maybe the guy picked her. Maybe he had to plan how to lure her to him.”

“Which brings us back to me.” Will swore under his breath. “What did you tell her?”

“Her?”

“My mother.”

“That I couldn’t think of anyone who hates your guts.”

“That’s the kind of thing I’d know.”

Travis gestured with the beer bottle. “I’m not so sure. If somebody is targeting women because you loved them, he hates you bad. It’s not like this guy is telling the world what an asshole Will Patton is. This is something that eats at him. Takes the stomach lining, then his soul.”

“I’ve put people away…”

“But you hadn’t, back when Gilly was killed.”

“Mendoza…”

“We’re just supposing.”

“That he didn’t kill her.”

“Or that somebody, somehow, put him up to it. Maybe it took that somebody six years to work up the nerve to do the dirty work himself.”

Will wanted to reject a suggestion so unlikely, but he’d spent enough years in the D.A.’s office to know anything was possible.

“Do you remember that guy who set the fires because he blamed my grandfather for his mom’s death?”

Travis accepted the seeming non sequitor. “I remember.”

The first fire had been set inside a pickup truck chosen because it looked exactly like Police Chief Ed Patton’s. The worst was Aunt Abby’s townhouse. She’d barely escaped with her life. Even Will, just sixteen, had been targeted. His bike, parked outside the grocery store, had been squirted with gasoline and set afire.

He remembered how he’d felt, knowing someone had been watching him, following him, hating him. For a while, until they caught the guy, Will had lived with the heightened perceptions of a soldier in a war zone. He’d searched the faces of people in line at the store or sitting in the bleachers at basketball games, been painfully conscious of anyone walking behind him, of every driver behind the wheel of an approaching car. It was like looking through a magnifying glass, so that his vision was both abnormally sharp and a little skewed. He hadn’t trusted that anything was as it seemed.

If he bought into this theory, he would once again feel like an infantryman walking down the street in Fallujah and realizing he’d forgotten to put on his body armor. The smiles of old friends would look like the veiled faces of Iraqi women whose dark eyes were unreadable to that soldier.

Even with friends, he’d have to wonder what he wasn’t seeing, what he might have done to provoke hatred so virulent.

He didn’t want to revisit that kind of paranoia. Every cell in his body rejected the idea that someone he knew, maybe even someone he’d gone to school with, could do something so hideous.

He unclenched his jaw. “You’re reaching. All of you are reaching. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. It has to do with that sick bastard who murdered Gilly, may he rot in prison until the gates of hell open for him.”

“You may be right.” Travis opened the refrigerator and handed Will another beer as if it were an olive branch. “Let’s just hope we find out before another woman gets murdered.”

“Amen to that,” Will agreed, and popped the lid from the bottle. Goddamn it, but his hand was still shaking.