Becoming Three (28 page)

Alexander Quick entered the interview room with a suited man in tow. Max closed the door behind them, and the stranger stuck his hand out to Duke first, then Jace. “Stan James.” He introduced himself as he sat down. “I am Mr. Quick's lawyer, and I've already advised him not to answer any questions I don't give him the okay to first.”

Jace narrowed his stare on Quick. “That was fast.”
“Not really,” Alex answered while taking a seat next to his lawyer. “Stan is my contract attorney. It looks like I'm going to get the land I want, so I flew him in yesterday. While I thought it wise to have him here”—he spared a fast look at the man he spoke of—“I already told him I'll answer any questions that seem reasonable.” He turned a level stare on Jace, dealing with him. “Particularly once I know what this is about.”
Jace slid Alex a copy of a photo from the original missing-persons file for their second victim. “Do you know a Sonya Mayer?” he asked.
Glancing at the woman's likeness, Alex slid it back to the center of the table. “No—wait.” He picked up the picture, studied it a second time, and made eye contact with Jace. “Is this the dead woman found in the ditch?”
“Yes, it is.” Jace pushed the picture of the woman in front of Alex again. “Do you know her?”
“I saw the morgue photo that one news station obtained,” Alex answered. “I thought it was an ugly thing to do. I don't know her otherwise.”
“She's from Boston,” Jace revealed, watching closely. “Like you.”
The attorney suddenly became animated. “Whoa. Stop right there.”
“Actually”—Alex overrode his lawyer's voice—“I'm not technically from Boston. I'm from a little town outside of Atlanta. My business, however, is based in Boston, and I do live there most of the time now. You are correct in that.”
Jace raised an eyebrow but otherwise ignored the
technical
correction of Alex's roots. “Okay. How about this woman?” He pushed another photo in next to Sonya's. “Do you know her?”
With barely a glance, Alex mimicked the raised eyebrow Jace had given him. “Just like the first, I know her face.” He took another look at Ginger's image. “How could I not? This poor woman has been splashed all over the local TV and papers since you guys discovered her body.”
“Would it surprise you to know that Ginger, like Sonya, spent some time in Boston?” Jace tapped his finger against Ginger's photo. “Take another look. Are you sure you didn't meet her there in a bar and have some kind of no-strings-attached weekend together?”
Stan put his hand on Alex's arm. He bypassed Jace and directed his comment right to Duke. “I don't like where this line of questioning is leading, Sheriff.”
Alex continued to ignore his lawyer and kept his attention on Jace. “I don't go out to bars.” His jaw ticked, but his voice remained surprisingly even.
Cool. Very controlled
. It would take hitting just the right button to rattle this man's cage. “Let's move on from that for a moment.” Jace shifted gears. “Can you tell me where you were last Friday night?”
“I would guess in my motel room preparing the best way to approach Mr. Michaels and Mr. Sandavow about their land.”
“Anyone with you?”
“No.” The barest hint of irritation slipped out in Alex's voice. “But I probably went out and grabbed a fast-food burger or taco or something at some point. I couldn't tell you which, but it would have been one of the places within a five-minute drive from where I'm staying.”
Jace made a note to check the chains in the area of the motel. “Do you remember the time you stepped out?”
“It probably would have been somewhere between eight and ten,” Alex answered. “That's when I usually get hungry for dinner. I can't narrow it down any more than that.”
“That motel you're staying at.” Jace kept his tone conversational. “Would it shock you to hear that our first victim was at the very motel you're staying at the night she died?”
Alex's eyes widened, but he just said, “It's not really my business where other people sleep.”
“I guess not. Not normally mine either, except when I have two dead women who both have connections to Boston, where you happen to live.” Jace kicked the pressure up a gear and let ice slip into his tone. “Additionally, Mr. Quick, I can put you and Ginger at the same establishment the night of her death. That doesn't make you look innocent in my eyes.”
Next to Alex, Stan's face mottled with red, and he pounded his fist on the table. “Are you accusing my client of murder?”
“Here's something else I find odd,” Jace went on, his eyes entirely on Alex, whose remained entirely on him. “A big-shot guy like you turns up in our little town, out of the blue, looking to buy a modest ranch that shouldn't be on anybody's radar beyond our own state, and maybe Wyoming, certainly not someone like you, all the way out in Massachusetts. Seems a striking coincidence that you show up in a town you've never visited or likely heard of before, but you're now looking to buy property. In a town where I now have a dead girl whose home it is, but who also visited the place you make your home.” He finished and calmed his voice to rational. “Now I'll ask you again. Are you sure you never met Ginger Carlton in Boston? Are you sure Ginger isn't how you heard of Quinten?”
“I didn't know Ginger,” Alex said through clenched teeth, “or the other girl.”
Jace studied the photos of the two women and let their need for justice talk through him. “Let me tell you a story about how I think things might have played out.” He talked as he would when working out a scenario with one of his coworkers. “You're a rich, bored guy, and you meet a pretty girl vacationing in your city. You hook up, something happens between the two of you, maybe really good, or maybe she pissed you off in some way. Either way, you felt the need to pay her a visit. Hell, you're a busy, important man, and maybe Ginger wouldn't leave you alone. I don't exactly know yet; I'm just floating some theories out there for you.”
Looking up from the pictures, Jace lowered his voice to lethal. “I don't think you came to Quinten with the intent to buy land at all, Mr. Quick. I think that's a cover for your presence here. I think you came here to kill Ginger. She did something, or you perceived that she did, and it angered the hell out of you. Or maybe you're just insane; I don't know. In any case, I think the sick way you decided to go about murdering her required an accomplice and that you knew Sonya Mayer. She worked as a prostitute in Boston. Maybe you hired her; maybe had a history with her, enough to know she had a drug habit and was likely malleable to whatever you wanted her to do, as long as you kept her supplied. I think Sonya helped you kill Ginger and nail her to that tree. I think Sonya was a loose end but also irrelevant, and so you suffocated and strangled her and left her like trash on the side of the road rather than taking the time to pose her as you did Ginger.” Fire burned in Jace's belly, but his words were covered in frost. “Do you want to make any corrections to my story? Tell me how it really happened?”
Stan sputtered and stood up. “This is outrageous.” Horror and anger turned his fleshy face crimson. “We are leaving.”
“No.” Alex turned to his lawyer. “
You
get out of here, Stan. Now.”
Stan's mouth gaped. “What?”
The eyes of a man used to being obeyed nailed Stan James to the wall. “I need to talk to this man alone. Get out of here,” Alex stated emphatically again. He then turned his attention to Duke. “Sheriff, I'm going to ask you to give me a little bit of breathing room and leave too.” His gaze lifted to the mirror. “Also, whoever might be watching from behind that glass.”
Stan glanced wildly back and forth between his client and law enforcement. “I must advise you very strongly against this course, Mr. Quick.”
“And I've heard you,” Alex replied. “Now please go.”
Duke stood and ushered Alex's lawyer to the door. “Come with me. You can wait in my office.” He took hold of Stan's arm and guided him out of the interview room.
Once they were alone, Alex laid a sobering stare on Jace. “Off the record?” he asked, his voice conciliatory.
“I can't promise that.”
Damn
. Jace was curious as hell, but he wouldn't lie. “It depends on what you say.” He did, however, shut off the tape recorder. “I will take notes. If it turns out you have nothing to do with this, and there is no way I can connect you to either of these women, I'll say this was just a friendly chat and try to keep it out of the file.” He could only give Alexander Quick what the sheriff had given those married johns out of respect for their families.
Alex looked like he digested something foul, and his jaw clenched some more, but he finally nodded. “I guess that's fair.”
“Start talking.”
“I honestly don't know or have ever crossed paths with either woman when they were alive.” Alex's voice held no subterfuge or defensive edge, and his eyes remained focused on Jace. “I learned about Quinten a few months ago when I was surfing the Internet. But not for real estate. You were correct about that.” He blinked and looked away for a moment, pausing, and then turned back. “I read an article posted on the blog of a Montana independent 'news'”—he put his fingers up in quotes—“source titled 'Quinten, the Queerest Little Town in Montana.'” His lips pulled down in hard lines. “It was condescending and made everything sound rather incestuous and like your sheriff was some leftist radical for having a gay deputy on his staff and that the deputy was carrying on and living with the sheriff's homosexual son. It mentioned the two Hawkins brothers having male partners and that the third embraced homosexuals working his land too, and that the straight cowboys who didn't like it were fired, and the ones who stayed couldn't say a word against working with queers. It was clearly meant to be a searing judgment on a forced liberal agenda in your town, but I didn't see it that way.”
Once again, Alex stopped for a moment. He scratched at his jaw, and his eyes deepened in color. “It had just the opposite effect on me, Deputy, because I'm gay.” He dropped that bit of information in a rough voice. “Made me want to build here and contribute to the town.” He leaned forward and produced his cell phone. “I can show you the link to the article, if you need to see it.”
“Not necessary.” Jace tilted his head and cracked his neck. “I'm aware of it.” Ever since that blog turned up, they'd had to change the county-limit signs when, every so often, someone would spray paint QUEERTEN over the name QUINTEN. “Do you have a boyfriend I can talk to in order to corroborate your claims?” he asked, shifting them back on track. He didn't quite cover the dry tone in his voice. “It's awfully convenient that I have two dead female prostitutes and your proof of innocence is that you aren't sexually attracted to women.”
“I don't have a boyfriend,” Alex said. The first glint of light sparked in his deep green eyes. “I suppose I could deep throat your cock to prove it, but I somehow don't think that would be accepted into evidence.”
It wasn't professional, but Jace chuckled anyway.
“Listen, Deputy, in this instance, I'm going to ask you to look at me and just see that I am innocent. The only other thing I can give you is the date I contacted Mr. Compton with an interest at looking at his property. That was a month ago. I made the call from Atlanta, and I'm sure he and the phone company can confirm it.” Just as quickly as the flash of light lit Alex's eyes, his gaze turned hard within another blink. “I won't give you the name of any man I've been with as proof of what I like. A very few of my most trusted people know I am gay, but otherwise, I am not open. My private life is just that, private, and only for me. I would be no more open to displaying my partners were I heterosexual. Part of that is my personality, and the other is that business is business. The people I do business with don't know a damn thing about my personal life any more than they know the lives of my associates. It's how we keep the company running smoothly and without drama.”
“And you want it to remain that way.”
“If I can.” Alex dipped his head. “I don't think releasing my sexuality to the public as part of an investigation update will help solve this case.”
“Unless it really is you, and you are right now very cleverly bullshitting me.”
Alex looked Jace up and down, studied him with an uncomfortable scrutiny, and shook his head. “You don't think it's me. You did when I walked in, but you no longer do.”
Jace quirked a brow. “Reading people part of your job too, Quick?”
“Absolutely.” He answered without hesitation. “I would have been swindled out of my money a hundred times over by now if I didn't. Besides”—he crossed his arms—“a piece of you has to know that Sarah wouldn't like me if I were
too
big an asshole. Or something worse. She has good judgment too, and you know it.”
“Don't use Sarah to get at me.” Jace lost any trace of humor in his voice. “That would be a big mistake.”
Shifting upright, Alex warded Jace off with a raised hand. “Wasn't meant in that way. I apologize.”
“Accepted.”
“Can I go now?”
“Go ahead.” Jace nodded at the door, but then went ahead and stood himself. “Don't leave town,” he added as he released Alex from questioning.
“No chance of that,” Alex answered, looking at Jace over his shoulder. “I still have land to buy.”
Max waited in the hallway to receive Alex. “Sir.” She lifted her arm in the direction of the bull pen and let him move first. “If you follow me, I'll show you and your attorney out. The sheriff was unexpectedly called away.”
As Jace watched another lead walk out the door, he gnashed his teeth and banged his head against the wall, praying for the answer to shake loose. He'd been
so
certain Alex would turn into their guy while he and Duke waited for the man to arrive. Shit, the more he'd spun the scenario he'd shared with Alex, the more he felt like it made a twisted kind of sense. Use one prostitute to kill another.
Now, it went back in the file with all the other dead ends.
Fuck.
“So?” Max joined him and leaned against the opposite wall. “What did he say one-onone?” She pulled her long hair back and tied it in a bun. “Do you think it's him and had to let him go, or he's not our guy?”
“The dude has some secrets he'd rather keep to himself, but he's not the killer.” Jace unlocked the war room door and let himself inside. “Just like ten other times, we're back to square one.”
“Not square one,” Max corrected. She took a seat across from him at the table. “We've eliminated a lot of suspects and learned a lot about our victims. In the long run, that's going to help. I liked your theory anyway.” She grabbed a piece of scratch paper and folded it in an accordion pleat. “It was starting to sound legit to me.”
Jace still had a sour taste in his mouth. “Not that it did us any good.”
“Still, I mean, the guy lives in Boston and at the very least the fact that our second vic was from there is something to sit up and make anyone take notice. You weren't off base in wanting to link those two things together due to location.” Max suddenly jerked up like a pointer dog and zeroed in on the piles of files sitting on the table. “Wait a minute. Wait wait wait wait wait.” She started searching through papers frantically, mumbling without looking up. “What if you were right?”