Blood Of Angels (19 page)

'I didn't do anything wrong,' she said. 'And I'm not even under arrest, am I?'

Monroe came back into the viewing room. 'We're doing it now,' he said. 'She's had her chance.'

The other five women were brought into the room and arranged. Gulicks wound up in a position second from the left. A screen was pulled down over the glass.

Then Diane Lawton was brought into the observation room. Monroe explained her role and reminded her that she was not to feel that she had to pick someone out: also that if she did make a selection, she had to be frank about her degree of confidence in that choice. She nodded. She got it.

Reidel leaned forward and raised the screen.

They'd done the best they could. Lighting in the room had been adjusted to prevent the women's hair colour from being too apparent. Tying it back made a difference too, pulling attention on to the facial features. I knew exactly where Gulicks was standing in the line, and it still took me a beat to pick her out again.

Lawton slowly turned her head to scan along the row from left to right, pausing for a couple of seconds on every face. Then she went back the other way.

Monroe was watching her face carefully. 'Are you able to pick someone out?'

'Yes,' she said.

'How confident are you?'

'One hundred per cent. It's not like Wednesday was the first time I ever saw her.'

'This is not just about whether you've seen someone in the Mayflower,' Nina said, firmly. 'On that night or any other. It's specifically concerning who you saw with Lawrence Widmar last Wednesday, and who you believe he left the bar with.'

'I know that,' Lawton said. 'It's her. It's number two.'

Monroe nodded. Reidel smiled from ear to ear. Nina looked down at the floor.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Lawton was taken to another room to provide a formal statement. Police in Owensville had been asked to collect Mark Kroeger and bring him over for further questioning concerning the night of his last date with Gulicks. Monroe had gone to obtain a warrant for Gulicks' apartment and car, and to initiate the search of those areas. Two local cops had been dispatched to the Mayflower to elicit further witnesses for the previous Wednesday evening.

Everyone had been told to keep it as quiet as possible. So far it was holding. It wouldn't last, and as soon as the media got hold of it any trail of evidence would be irrelevant. News editors and couch potatoes are our keenest legal minds these days, it appears. I watched through the glass as Julia Gulicks was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Lawrence Widmar. She was offered and declined yet again the opportunity to contact a legal representative. She requested and was provided with a glass of water.

Reidel sat at one end of the table. Nina at the other. Gulicks looked pale but composed. Paleness could be the result of the strip light in the room. Composed appeared to be her natural state. Cold, even.

Reidel did the talking. 'You understand why you've been arrested?'

'You have a witness who claims I was in a bar with a man on Wednesday night.'

'We believe you met Mr Widmar in the Mayflower bar mid to late evening. That you drank and conversed with him for some time. Our witness says you left the bar together around eleven.'

'And then what?'

'Excuse me?'

'What happened then?'

'You tell me.'

'I have
no idea.
I have never been to this bar. I never met this man while he was alive. Your witness is just plain wrong.'

'You've never been to the Mayflower?'

'I'm not in the habit of drinking alone in bars.'

'Yes or no, Ms Gulicks.'

'No.'

'You sure you want to be that black and white about it?'

'I have no conception of what you mean.'

'What he means,' Nina said, 'is that we obtained your name from the manager. Who is not the person who just picked you out, but an additional witness we'll get a statement from later this evening. If you claim you've never been in the Mayflower, and two independent witnesses say you have, you're not in a good position. Confirming that you frequent the bar is not an admission of anything else. Your case would be best served by avoiding simple untruths at this or any other stage.'

'Okay,' Gulicks said, nodding slowly. 'Thanks for the translation, scary lady. But I've still never been there.'

'You should listen to what the agent is telling you,' Reidel said. 'She's your unofficial counsel here. Having seen the body, I'm less inclined to cut you any slack.'

'I saw it too,' Gulicks said. 'And what hasn't been explained to me yet, even
a little bit,
is why I would have led someone straight to it. And then called the police, and waited until they came. I want to know why you think I would have done that.'

'In an attempt to establish innocence. You met Lawrence Widmar in the bar. At some stage you introduced a substance into his drink to impair his judgement. You left together and got into your car. You drove someplace, very likely the lot above Raynor's Wood. You murdered the victim and dragged his body down the slope to the position where it was discovered. At some point during the night or next day you realized you could lead your friend from your office to the scene under the guise of a romantic encounter, and thus appear to be a bystander discovering the body. Kind of clever, but also kind of dumb.'

'Dumb is right,' Gulicks said, staring at him. 'You've got to be on drugs. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. On the basis of my hair colour you're going to file charges on that?'

'Not yet. We don't have to,' Reidel said, standing. 'We have three days. If we need an extension after that, we'll get one.'

Gulicks turned to Nina. 'But… you've got no evidence.'

'We'll get it,' Reidel said. He paused, looking down at her. 'And then we'll start on body number two.'

She stammered, just a little. 'What?'

'The other dead man. Guess you didn't realize we'd found him too.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'That line's getting old, Julia. Don't worry — I'll keep explaining myself. Sooner or later you'll get what I'm talking about, and how serious we are.'

Julia Gulicks suddenly looked very young, and confused, and as if she had at that moment understood this afternoon was not just going to fade away of its own accord: that at least one of the people in the room with her really did think she was a murderer, and wasn't going to stop until he'd proved it.

She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. 'I would like to talk to a lawyer now,' she said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

She was left in the room with the door locked and a cop outside. Reidel went to expedite an attorney and to give Gulicks some time to stew in a small room with a very depressing table in it.

I took Nina out into the street for some fresh air, and so I could have a cigarette. When you can't even smoke in police stations you know the
Zeitgeist
has won. Nina's phone rang as we hit the pavement. She picked up and listened for a while.

'They got the warrant,' she said, when she was done. 'Gulicks' place is about to be turned upside down.'

'So hopefully they find nothing,' I said.

Nina just shook her head, but I couldn't tell what this meant. It was coming up for six o'clock.

'I got to go soon,' I said. 'I want to get there in plenty of time, size up a safe location before this Unger guy hits town.'

'I can't come with you,' she said.

'I know. I wasn't expecting it.'

'I wanted to cover your back.'

'You will,' I said. 'I'll hear your voice.'

'Tell me how careful you're going to be.'

'Careful. They'll be calling me Ward "Careful" Hopkins. I'll be a new byword for caution. There will be timid nocturnal forest creatures with big eyes, pointing and sniggering and calling me disrespectful names, all on account of my excessive prudence.'

'Seriously, Ward.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'I know.'

'Beep me before you go in.'

'I will.' I took her hand. 'Don't worry about me. Just go back in there and sort this thing.'

'Do you think she did it?'

'Nina, I don't know. It's not my job to even make a judgement. I'm just a civilian.'

'You know that woman I told you about?'

'What about her?'

'I think I fell asleep before I finished. Year and a half after she killed herself with the spoon, they pulled some guy over on a DUI in a place fifty miles from Janesville. Turned out he had a bunch of drugs and a couple of guns in the back of the car, wrapped in a bloodstained coat. So they brought him in. In the end they nailed him for a murder up in North Dakota.'

'So?'

'They also eventually made him for the killing of one of the dead guys in Janesville. Just a plain vanilla robbery-homicide, it turned out.' She smiled tightly. 'She didn't do it after all.'

'She didn't do that one,' I said. 'You don't know about the rest.'

'She was innocent on a charge of which she was convicted. That's enough. The case should have been…'

'Yes, Nina, but it was too late by then and that was her fault. Tell me something, honey — why are you here?'

'You know why.'

'No, I really don't. You wound up in law enforcement because of this one case, it seems to me, and it still screws with your head. Monroe knows this, and yet
this
is the job he wants to pull you back into the fold for? Why?'

'To stop the same thing happening to some other woman.'

'Maybe,' I said. 'Or perhaps because he wants a babe on board to make sure he's covered if it all gets politicized.'

I glanced across the street. A little way up it a car was parked. Two guys who were obviously reporters were standing by it. Thirty yards further along was a window-less white van that could easily hold covert TV cameras, or a whole nest of journalists ready to pounce. 'Look. Someone leaked already. It won't be long before this is coast to coast.'

'All the more reason.'

'Okay. All I'm saying is don't get pulled in too deep.'

'Right. Take it easy. Look after number one. Don't worry too much if the wrong person goes down.'

'That's not what I mean and you know it. I'm just saying the world will do what the world always does.'

'Thanks, Yoda,' she snapped. 'That's real heartwarming. So maybe you should just shrug and forget what happened to your parents, too. Nothing you can do about it now, after all.'

'That's not the same. They were my family.'

'Everybody is someone's family, Ward. Everybody, everywhere, at all times. It isn't about blood ties. It can't be. Otherwise we're all just Straw Men. Either people look after strangers and treat them like they matter, or the whole world goes down.'

'You're right.' I held up my hands. 'You'll do what you want to do. My advice is notoriously worthless anyhow. I'll let you know how I'm doing, okay? I'll call when it's done and I'll be back at the hotel soon as I can.'

She nodded, but didn't say anything. I walked away, feeling like I was going in the wrong direction.

Just before I turned the corner I looked back. She was still standing on the pavement outside the station. After a moment she raised her hand a little and waved, and something around her wrist glinted softly. I waved back.

She mouthed two words. I mouthed back that I would be.

Then I went off to meet a guy.

Brad's heart turned over in a slow, laboured beat as soon as Mrs Luchs came out of the house. Karen's mother usually moved in a measured fashion. It was one of the distinctive things about her, like the fact that — uniquely amongst his friends' parents — she was a little overweight. Not fat, of course, and she carried those few extra pounds in a way which gave her more presence than the stick-insect treadmill martyrs. It was like a declaration she was sufficiently centred she didn't feel it necessary to slog herself off to the gym every day. Or, in her case, to pad downstairs to the one in the basement of her own house. When she came out now she was walking with purpose, however, and a little too fast. Maybe he read it in her face, too, a subliminal signal that something unpredicted had come into her polished life.

Or perhaps he'd just been waiting for it.

It was a little after four and Brad was sitting out by their pool. Karen was swimming methodically from end to end. She'd just thrashed forty lengths and was winding down. She'd been a fixture on the swim team in school and still seemed to take it seriously. Brad wasn't sure why.

'Karen,' her mother said. 'Some policemen are here.'

Brad's stomach immediately went to battery acid. Karen came to the side and lifted herself out in one fluid motion. Sun sparkled off the water as it fell, and off the swinging K of the necklace.

She grabbed a towel. 'Cops? Why?'

'I don't know, dear. But they would like to talk to you.'

Two guys in casual suits had walked across the grass a few yards behind her. 'Okay,' Karen said. 'I guess.'

The detectives were largely indistinguishable from each other except one had a moustache and the other had paler skin, like he made an effort to keep out of the sun. The first held out a badge.

'Detective Cascoli,' he said. 'Karen Luchs?'

'Yes,' she said.

The cop looked at Brad. 'And you are?'

'Brad Metzger,' he said. His voice sounded fine.

'How about that?' the detective said. He got out a pad and flipped through it, tapped a page with his finger. 'There you go. Bradley M. You're on our list too.'

Mrs Luchs folded her arms a little tighter. 'What's this about?'

The cop ignored her, but politely, as befitted the size of her house. 'You're both friends of a guy called Peter Voss?'

'Well, yeah,' Karen said. 'Pete, yes of course. Why? Is he okay?'

'We don't know that, Ms Luchs, because we don't know where Peter is. He didn't return home on Saturday evening. Apparently he sometimes stays over with friends, so, whatever. But he didn't come back yesterday, or call home. So last night his parents got in touch with us.'

'Oh God,' Mrs Luchs said, her hand hovering around her throat. 'Really?'