Blackbird (15 page)

Jordan shook her head in disgust, then appealed to me. ‘Mom said maybe you’d let me see the booking room.’

Casey’s attention had moved on. Taking her line of sight, I saw a crew-cut patrol officer named Rick O’Reilly crossing the squad room carrying a blue folder and returning her smile. Yesterday he’d looked about sixteen to me, but now he was thirty-five if he was a day.

I waved him over. As he joined us, Casey took his picture.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said.

I introduced him to the girls and said, ‘Have you got a few minutes to walk Jordan through the booking area, show her the cameras and fingerprinting stuff?’

‘Be happy to,’ he said like a gentleman.

When they were gone I asked OZ for a timeout and took
Casey back to my office. ‘Yesterday I heard something – ’ she said as she settled herself in the chair at the end of my desk. ‘This feels so weird – I heard something I thought you guys might need to know.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s something my friend Lena told me – ’

‘The one whose mother owns the candy store?’

‘Yeah. But the thing is, she really, really doesn’t want to get in the middle of anything – I mean like having to be a witness or something – ’

I nodded.

‘Well, from the back of the store you can sort of see the rear entrance to Jeff Feigel’s office – there’s just the one little angle.’ She cleared her throat, obviously uncomfortable with the loyalty conflict: was she her friend’s friend or was she a Cadet Detective?

‘Jeff Feigel, the lawyer?’

‘Yeah, that’s the one. He’s got that silver Audi with the licence plates that say “BIG LAW”.’

‘What did Lena see?’

‘She says on most weekdays Dr Gold would go in the back door of Mr Feigel’s office and stay a half-hour or so, then leave.’

‘What time of day?’

‘Around noon.’

‘She notice anything else, like whether Dr Gold was carrying anything in or out?’

Casey shook her head.

‘Thanks, Case,’ I said. ‘This could really help us. And I’ll do my best to keep Lena out of it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

I waited, feeling sure that more was coming.

‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I always picture you going places in a car or talking to some thug on the sidewalk – it’s hard to imagine you working up here every day. But at least I’m used to the smell.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s how your clothes smell when you come home at night – ’ Her voice broke. ‘When you
came
home at night.’ She brushed away tears.

‘Hey, Case – ’ I said as I stood to go to her.

But she cut me off. ‘No, wait,’ she said, holding up an index finger to stop me. ‘I can do this.’ She took a last swipe at her eyes, cleared her throat a couple of times and composed herself. ‘Sorry I cried.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with crying. Your Aunt Lee is right – tears are a solution, not a problem.’

‘I know. But Mom says it’s unfair for women to control people by crying, especially people they love. She really means men, because it doesn’t work on other women. Anyway, she says that’s emotional blackmail.’ Casey snuffled and swallowed hard. ‘She cries all the time about you guys not being together – she just doesn’t let you see it.’

I couldn’t think of a response worth speaking.

‘But that’s not what I wanted to say,’ Casey went on. ‘I wanted to say – ’ She found a tissue in her pocket and honked into it. ‘I wanted to say, if Jordie or I did anything to cause this, I want to make it right. We both do.’

‘What do you think you did?’

‘I don’t know – maybe being too attached to our friends here, or maybe talking too much about liking school. But that stuff’s not important, really it’s not. All we want is to be where you and Mom are.’

I considered this in silence for a minute, thinking the
last thing Casey needed right now was to feel that her offering was trivial or meaningless. I said, ‘Thanks for letting me know about Dr Gold, Case. And don’t worry, you didn’t do anything to cause problems between your mom and me. However things turn out with us, we’ll figure out a way to work around it, okay?’

She got up, took my hand to pull me up from my chair and hugged me, standing for a while with the side of her head resting against my chest. Finally she stood back and said, ‘I love the sound of your heart.’ She kissed the tip of her finger and touched it to my nose.

When the girls were on their way, and I’d given Patrolman O’Reilly one last hawk-like glare just to be on the safe side, I walked back to OZ’s office.

‘Cain’t tell you who it was,’ he said when I was settled in my chair. ‘But a old boy I’ve known a long time put a bug in my ear about a Ranger’s gonna be in town here in a day or two, if he’s not already here – ’

‘He won’t check in with you?’

‘Not on a deal like this,’ OZ said. ‘I wouldn’t either if I was him. He’s gonna be lookin’ at you mainly, but everybody’s on his list until he crosses ’em off, and that don’t disinclude me.’

This came as a complete surprise to me, but there was no question what it meant. The Texas Rangers is the oldest law enforcement outfit in North America, and Rangers are not regular cops. They had once patrolled the border country north of the Rio Grande, but now they got called in on things like old unbreakable murder cases, rogue cops and dirty departments.

‘Looking at me for what?’

‘It’s the first time I ever heard any such of a damned
thing,’ OZ said, ‘but word is Hazen had the AG looking for a way to call your hands deadly weapons. Kick it up to a felony.’

No reply occurred to me. I looked down at my hands, wondering if what he was talking about was actually legally possible.

‘How about the head doc that got hung up out there – what was your beef with her?’

‘No real beef,’ I said. ‘I threw her out of my office once. Just before you came on board.’

‘How come?’

‘She basically offered to pass whoever I wanted on the psychologicals and eighty-six anybody I didn’t like. That, and give me a blow job.’

‘In return for what?’

‘The Employee Assistance contract, guaranteed referrals, all the department business, family counselling for officers, that kind of stuff.’

‘What’d you tell her?’

‘I was pretty busy that day. I think I said something about not letting the doorknob hit her in the ass on her way out.’

‘Bertie told me it was you got her contract cut. That the reason why?’

‘The main one, but she gave me a bad feeling in general. It wasn’t really my call, but Hank down in HR had the same impression of her I did. We went to a rotation with the other psychologists in town right after that.’

OZ took a sip of coffee and said, ‘That don’t sound like much to me, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the subject comes up again. There may be some noise about you being the wrong guy to investigate her killing, you having history
with her and whatnot. We ain’t gonna burn that bridge until we come to it, though.’

‘You rather have somebody else on the case, Chief?’ This was blowing smoke and we both knew it; if OZ had wanted me off the case I’d be off it already. I looked at my hands again, thinking about what he’d said earlier.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You want off it?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, how about you go ahead and do what you swore on to do, then come on back in here and have a snort with me?’

SIXTEEN

The last day of Deborah Gold’s
shiva
was tailor-made for grilling hotdogs and throwing Frisbees around at the park, but I was on my way to talk to the widower, who’d told Ridout he’d be home because he wasn’t going anywhere that he didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do.

Winter was still on hold, the sky hard and bright and the air sharp-edged, as I drove up to the Jamison-Gold home near the top of Sterling Road. It was a two-storey in the style I had heard called ‘faux Georgian’, at least five thousand square feet, built on what looked like a triple lot, with a broad deck overlooking four levels of terraced flowerbeds, a fifty-metre pool with low and high boards, and clumps of weeping willows bending down to perfectly trimmed lawns. A green Hummer and a tan Lexus were parked side by side on the pebbled concrete driveway.

Background information on Andy Jamison was that he was a local, the youngest of three boys, who had given in to pressure from his father and enrolled in Business Administration at UT in Austin but quit in the middle of his junior year after both parents were killed in a plane crash outside Steamboat Springs, Colorado, using the insurance money to start his computer consulting and supply
business. He’d been arrested once for cocaine possession when he was still in high school and gotten a DWI on Thanksgiving three years ago. His business was in the black, the house mortgage was current, both vehicles were paid for and he had never taken out life insurance on Dr Gold. There were rumours that he’d run around on both his wives right from the start but had never stuck with any romantic side-interest longer than a year or so. Nobody who was interviewed remembered him expressing any unhappiness with Dr Gold or the marriage, meaning that unless he was the one who killed her he was probably just a basic suburban cheater. The kind you hear on country music radio, whining excuses for themselves and their whiskydrinkin’ ways.

My first impression of him when he met me at the door wearing only designer jeans and a gold neckchain was of a guy hitting his forties on the calendar but about twenty in his head. He showed me into what I took to be a professionally decorated den with an oversized fieldstone fireplace centered on the south wall and a bar with indirect lighting and swivel-mounted armchair stools across from it. There were built-in dark oak bookcases on both sides of the fireplace filled with classy old leather-bound volumes that somehow looked as if they hadn’t been touched since the decorator put them there.

‘The place is a mess,’ Jamison said, running a shaky hand through his dark hair. He hadn’t shaved lately and he gave off a faint suggestion of underarm odour. I watched him drop the gum he’d been chewing into the ashtray on the coffee table as he waved me toward the most comfortable-looking chair in the room, which was not a mess in any way I could see.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he said distractedly.

‘No thanks.’

He found a pack of Salems on the coffee table, shook one out and lit it with a small white butane lighter. He took a hungry drag. ‘So is there anything new?’ he said. ‘I’ve been kinda out of it.’

‘It’s still early,’ I said. ‘But this is getting all the priority there is to give it.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Pretty much what it sounds like – everybody who can be spared is working the case one way or another, extra tip lines open, rush orders on lab work, that kind of stuff.’

‘Priority over what – a dead whore? Some crack dealer down on Nolthenius?’

I spread my hands. ‘Tell you what, Andy, the first guy you run across who doesn’t have to answer to anybody, give me a call.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re right. I’m sorry. Forty-eight-hour window, prominent psychologist, gotta look at the husband first, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘What I want to do is follow up a little on your interview with Mouncey and Ridout.’

‘Follow up how?’

‘Do you know of any new people in your wife’s life or any unusual involvements she could have had lately, any changes in her routine?’

He looked at me for a few seconds, something passing behind his eyes. ‘They asked me that.’

‘I need to hear the answer myself.’

‘Deb wasn’t that much of a socialiser,’ he said. ‘Not in the usual ways, at least. She had her circle.’

‘What kind of circle?’

He shook his head. ‘I guess that’s what you’d call it. Certain people she got together with fairly often.’

‘So she was seeing other men?’

He laughed oddly, ran his hands through his hair again. ‘Is that the whole question?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Deb had pretty catholic tastes in sex.’

‘Okay, make it seeing other people.’

‘Yeah, she was, and I knew it No big secret – that’s what the group was about. That and coke. Jeff Feigel, Ben Frix, Mark Pendergrass, a couple of those girls who work at Ben’s clinics. Not trying to get anybody in trouble here. I did a little blow with them once or twice, but I couldn’t keep up.’

I wasn’t quite sure how much of a surprise Pendergrass was, but I knew a little about the others. Benjamin Frix was a real-estate broker with offices here and in Texarkana. He had the reputation of being a Second Amendment bunker-builder-and-martial-arts kind of guy, tall, olive-skinned, all forehead, full lips and heavy-lidded black eyes, lots of dark hair on the backs of his long arms and hands, rounded shoulders. For the last twenty years he’d been getting himself arrested for everything from assault and battery to urinating on a police cruiser, which may have had something to do with his fourth wife divorcing him a year or so ago.

Feigel was a pudgy plaintiff’s lawyer who specialised in going after doctors for what he could get out of their malpractice insurance. He had a reputation as a rotten litigator himself, and other attorneys sometimes called his practice ‘Huff, Puff & Settle’, but the story was he kept platoons of expert witnesses on retainer who, for enough money, would testify that the dead man committed suicide
by stabbing himself in the back with a posthole-digger and then buried himself in a shallow grave. He generally left the local doctors alone, presumably because he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t going to come down with a ruptured appendix or a broken leg.

‘Which was their main jones, would you say?’

‘I’m not really sure how you’d pin it down with those guys.’

‘Andy, you know it’s all going to come out, don’t you? No matter what it is. You sure you want to do this all over again when it does, maybe get pulled into it yourself?’

He blew out smoke and watched the plume, then answered as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Mainly it was the sex games, I guess,’ he said. ‘Leather, fur-lined handcuffs, whips, boots, all that bullshit. It didn’t appeal to me.’