Chasing Venus (7 page)

“You don’t seem
embarrassed by your rap sheet.”
 
That from Simpson.

Annie glanced at him
and decided that her best course was to continue telling the truth.
 
“I’m not.”

“Even though it gives
you a history of resisting authority?”

“If you knew my
parents, you’d know they raised me to do exactly that.”

Higuchi pushed his wire
frames higher up his nose.
 
“Ms.
Rowell, what did you do on the Saturday night of the LA conference after the
awards ceremony?”

“Michael and I went to
the bar in the hotel and had a few drinks.
 
Then we called it a night.”

“So you went upstairs
to your room.”

“That’s right.”

“And when is the next
time you left your room?”

“Not until …”
 
She tried to think.
 
“Not until I went downstairs on Sunday
to check out.
 
It was around eleven
thirty.
 
I had room service for
breakfast and I was working all morning.
 
Writing.
 
I’d brought my
laptop with me.”

Simpson spoke.
 
“And when you were in Manhattan for your
friend’s wedding, did you have cause to travel to Connecticut?”

Connecticut.
 
Where Elizabeth Wimble was
murdered.
 
In her home in the
picturesque town of Greenwich.

It was as if a sinister
presence had come inside Annie’s shabby living room and made itself at home.

Annie rose and walked
to the front window to collect her thoughts.
 
The cocker spaniel from across the
street had been freed from the oak tree by its mistress.
 
It bounded toward its porch, all joy and
energy.

Annie tried to regain
the cool she’d felt in the kitchen.
 
“No, I never went to Connecticut.
 
The wedding was in Manhattan, as was the reception.
 
I was in Manhattan the entire time.”

Simpson consulted his
notebook.
 
“When did you arrive in
the New York area?”

“On the Thursday before
the wedding.
 
I arrived in the
evening and went straight to my hotel.”

“Did you attend any
events related to the wedding on Friday?”

“I saw my friend in the
morning at her apartment and then had lunch with my editor.
 
Both in the city.”

“And after lunch, what
did you do?”

“I went back to the
hotel and worked.
 
Wrote.”

“All evening?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t go out to
dinner?”

“No.
 
I skipped dinner.
 
Lunch was pretty filling so I just had
snacks from the mini bar.”
 
Chardonnay and M&Ms, as she recalled.
 
The next morning she made up for the
indulgence on the treadmill.

Higuchi spoke up.
 
“At the time your deadline was three
months away, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yet on a free evening
in Manhattan, you chose to stay in your hotel and write?”

“Authors don’t write only
when they’re on deadline, Mr. Higuchi.
 
Otherwise they’d never meet their deadlines.”

Simpson eyed her.
 
“Did anyone see you on that Friday
evening, Ms. Rowell?”

“No.”
 
So
I don’t have an alibi
.

“Ms. Rowell,” Simpson
went on, “we have taken note that you were in the vicinity of every one of
these murders when they occurred.”

It was as if she were
standing on an Alaskan glacier.
 
She
was that cold.
 
“There has to be
somebody else who was in all those places at all those times.”

“We haven’t found
anybody else.”

“You will.
 
It’s only coincidence in my case.”
 
And extraordinarily bad luck.

“Then you’ve got
nothing to be concerned about.”
 
Simpson rose and walked to her front door.
 
That, apparently, was that.
 
Come in, put her in a panic, and leave.

“Have a good day, Ms.
Rowell,” Higuchi said as he brushed past.

The men let themselves
out into the picture-perfect California afternoon.
 
Yet even in the unseasonable heat, all
Annie could do was shiver.
 
She sank
onto the sofa Helms and
Pincus
had just vacated and
rocked back and forth, shaking.

Before this afternoon,
her worst nightmare had been that she could be the killer’s next target.
 
Now a horrifying new possibility had
presented itself.

She could be a suspect,
too.

In a red vinyl booth in
a
taqueria
south of San Francisco, Reid watched
Sheila raise her left arm to glance at her watch.
 
The motion caused a half dozen silver
bangles to shimmy down her olive-colored skin, jingling all the way.
 
She tapped her nail on the
tabletop.
 
“Simpson better get here
soon.
 
We have to leave for the
airport in 45 minutes.”

“He’ll be here.”

“Is he always this
late?”

Reid nodded.
 
He’d known Lionel Simpson for years,
from when Reid was a cop.
 
Since
Reid had been hosting
Crimewatch
they’d intersected more often, what with tips from the show leading to one
perp
or another getting nailed.
 
The show helped the feds, the feds
helped the show; it was a symbiotic relationship.

Reid didn’t know what
it was—his LAPD tenure, the show, maybe the fact that he was
third-generation law enforcement—but lots of his friends wore
badges.
 
Probably it was the shared
experience, the we’ve-been-in-the-trenches mentality of people who regularly
witnessed horror.
 
Sometimes Reid
felt separated from everybody who didn’t.
 
He envied them.
 
He just
wasn’t one of them anymore.

He inhaled the
tantalizing aroma of pork frying in fat and dipped another tortilla chip into
the best salsa he’d had in some time.
 
Given that he lived in LA, home of primo Mexican food, that was saying
something.
 
He nudged the basket
closer to Sheila.
 
“Try some.
 
It’s great.”

She shook her
head.
 
“How can you just sit there
and eat?”

“I leave it to my
producer to get nervous.
 
She does
it enough for both of us.”

“At least we’ve got
everything we need for the piece in the can.”

They’d spent the last
24 hours in San Francisco collecting elements for the novelist-murder story,
but Reid could still think of some he wished they had.
 
In particular, an interview with Annette
Rowell.
 
He’d stayed up later than
he should have reading
Devil’s Cradle
and was looking forward to delving into it again on the flight home.
 
He wasn’t a big fiction reader but the
mystery had pulled him in.

The author had lingered
in his mind as well.
 
As
wide-ranging as his acquaintance, he’d never met a published novelist
before.
 
He wasn’t clear what his
preconceived notion had been but this woman didn’t fit it.
 
She seemed too healthy and vibrant to
spend her days in front of a computer, living in her imagination.
 
Was she trying to escape something?
 
Or was that another off-base
preconception?

He drained his Coke and
instantly a bus boy materialized to refill his glass.
 
He could tell he was getting the best
service in the house.
 
From the
moment he and Sheila had shown up, a quartet of Hispanic men eating at the bar
had pivoted on their stools to stare.
 
They wore the rapt expressions he often saw on viewers who ran into REID
GARDNER,
CRIMEWATCH
HOST! in the
flesh.

A bell jangled on the
taqueria’s
door, heralding a new arrival.
 
Lionel Simpson appeared at their table,
wiping a handkerchief across his forehead.
 
Apart from mild perspiration, probably prompted by sprinting to the
restaurant from his car, he looked as spit-and-polished as ever.
 
Even though it was a Sunday, he was
dressed in a suit, with a crisp white dress shirt and striped tie.
 
Reid knew that only the Secret Service
was spiffier than the FBI.
 
Sheila
slid toward the window and motioned for Simpson to claim the spot beside her.

“Sorry to be so
late.
 
What with this writer-murder
investigation, this morning was …”
 
He waved a hand in disgust.
 
“You don’t want to hear it.”

“It sounds like one of
ours,” Reid said mildly.
 
“You know
Sheila Banerjee, right, Lionel?”

“We’ve met before.
 
Good to see you.”

Ordering was swiftly
accomplished and the tortilla chips just as quickly replenished.
 
Simpson dove in with the enthusiasm of a
ravenous man.
 
Then he grinned at
Reid.
 
“Okay.
 
You show me yours and I’ll show you
mine.”

Reid laughed and spread
his hands wide.
 
“I got
nothin
’.”

Simpson groaned.
 
“That’s not like you.”

“I’m stymied on this
one.
 
Sheila and I went to Maggie
Boswell’s funeral lunch and spoke to a bunch of people, put some on camera
…”
 
He shook his head.
 
“Nothing new came out of it.
 
Can’t get past the prevailing view that
it’s some wacko who hates mystery writers or thinks he’s God’s gift to writing
and the publishing industry just can’t see it.
 
Imagine the Unabomber with a dozen
unpublished mysteries piled up in his shack.”

Sheila spoke.
 
“Tell me, Lionel, what have you gotten
out of Quantico by way of a profile?”

Reid knew that one of
the first steps Simpson would have taken was to consult the agency’s violent
crime analysis team back in Quantico, Virginia.
 
Using behavioral science and computer
models, they generated reams of data that their own agents and local law
enforcement could use to pinpoint a killer.
 
Simpson excelled at serial-killer
investigations, which is why he’d been brought in on this one.

“The profile detailed a
lot of what Reid mentioned,” Simpson said.
 
“We’re looking for someone with above-average intelligence.
 
A capable, skilled individual who maintains
a great deal of control during the commission of the crime.
 
Like Ted Kaczynski, with an ax to
grind.
 
But unlike him, not
necessarily a loner, and very mobile.”

“Is the task force
taking a lot of heat yet?” Reid asked.

Their food came,
interrupting the conversation.
 
Chimichangas
and enchiladas for Reid and Simpson and salad
in a tortilla shell for Sheila.
 
Simpson waited till the server had moved off before he answered.

“It’s not so bad
yet.
 
But God forbid, if somebody
else gets whacked …”
 
His voice
trailed off.

Reid bent toward his
plate to ingest a forkful of refried beans but kept his gaze on Simpson.
 
“Something’s bothering you,” he said a
moment later.

The agent’s dark eyes
rose.
 
“We’re working on
something.
 
But I don’t like it.”

“What?”

Simpson took a few more
mouthfuls.
 
“This is off-the-record,
Gardner.”

“Sure.”
 
That was the category into which a lot
of information was first filed.
 
A
confirmation or two later, it was fair game for the program.
 
Those were the rules and Reid knew both
he and Simpson understood them.

“Okay.”
 
Simpson set down his fork and leaned
back, crossing his arms over his chest.
 
“One of the mystery writers was in all three locations.
 
Quite a few were at the LA conference
and Maggie Boswell’s party, obviously.
 
But this one was also in the New York metropolitan area over the weekend
when Elizabeth Wimble got killed.”

“Does he have an
alibi?”

“No.
 
And that’s another thing.
 
It’s a she.”

“A woman?”
 
Sheila’s voice rose in surprise.
 
“A woman serial killer?
 
I don’t think so.”

“That’s one of the
things I don’t like about it.
 
But
there are a few particulars that make this case unusual.
 
This woman got into an altercation with
Seamus O’Neill at the conference where he got killed.
 
And she’s been arrested a few times, for
protesting.
 
Her parents have
records as long as your arm, real anti-establishment folks.”

Reid leaned his elbows
on the table.
 
“The gap between that
and committing murder is huge.”