Flashpoint (8 page)

Sonora took a breath. They weren't being fired. She could still pay the mortgage. Her children were safe.

Crick's phone rang. “Yeah. She's here.” He looked at Sonora. “You got a call. Keaton Daniels. Wants to talk specifically to you.”

“I'll take it at my desk.”

The light on line four was blinking red when Sonora sat down. She picked up the stuffed bear and tossed it on Sam's desk.

“Specialist Blair,” she said, propping her chin on the shoulder piece. “Mr. Daniels?”

“Yeah, hi. I thought I should let you know. I've had an odd phone call.”

He sounded confident. A woman, Sonora thought, would have been defensive, would have apologized for bothering her, and would have made five disclaimers about how it was probably nothing. At least men didn't have to be coaxed and reassured.

“Tell me about it.”

Sam had come out of Crick's office and was examining the bear on his desk. He glanced at Sonora out of the corner of his eye.

“She said—”

“She?” Sonora asked.

“It was a woman. She asked me about Mark.”

Sonora sat forward in her chair and picked up a pen. “Start at the beginning, Keaton, and tell me the exact words, as well as you can remember.”

He paused. Sonora pictured him, concentrating, gathering his thoughts.

“She called me … I guess an hour ago.”

Sonora checked her watch. Made a note on the scratch pad.

“I said hello. And there was a long silence. I was about to hang up, then she said she wanted to check on me, and see how I was doing. I thought at first it might be Ashley, my wife. I even thought for a minute it might be you. So I said I was shaky, and kind of numb. And she made a noise, you know, a sympathy thing.”

“Sarcastic?” Sonora asked.

“It didn't strike me that way.”

“Go on.”

Sonora saw that Sam was watching her, intent on her end of the conversation, waiting her out with a patience that always amazed her. Mr. Stakeout.

Daniels cleared his throat. “She said … how did she put it? She said, it's a terrible thing, to lose a brother. Were you … no. She said you'uns. ‘Were you'uns real closer'”

“You'uns,” Sonora muttered.

“And I said … I didn't answer her. It dawned on me that I didn't know who this was. But I still had the feeling that it was a friend or something, because she knew about Mark. So I said, I'm sorry, who is this?

“And she said someone who's interested. Then she asked if I was thinking much about how he died. Was it terrible for me? Was I missing him, had I thought about the funeral? So then I thought maybe she was a reporter or something. I was going to hang up, but it made me mad. I thought she was out of line, and that I should get her name and her newspaper, or whatever, so I asked her again who it was.”

Sonora gave him a moment. “What did she say?”

“She said … she said Mark was brave.”

The nib of Sonora's pen tore through the paper on the notepad. She listened to Keaton Daniels's breathing on the other end of the line. She flipped the notepaper up, exposing a clean sheet.

What is it? Sam mouthed. Gruber had picked up on the tension. Sonora could feel him edging close behind her.

“Mr. Daniels, I don't guess you've had a chance to change the locks on your doors?”

“No.”

“Why don't you get on to that right away?”

“It was her, then, wasn't it?”

Sonora pursed her lips, measuring her words. “It's a possibility. It's also possible, likely even, that it was some crank, some sick puppy out there getting a nasty little vicarious thrill.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at her.

“We haven't released your brother's name to the press,” Sonora continued. “But something like this—the gossip mill churns pretty fast. The hospital people will talk. The reporters know the ID from the car license. Forgive me, but your wife may have talked about it to the wrong person at work.” How well are the two of you getting along? Sonora wondered.

“I don't think it was a reporter. And it wasn't my wife, I'd know it.”

Jumped right on that one, Sonora thought. She'd seen divorcing parties do worse.

Keaton's voice thickened. “There's something else.”

“Yes?”

“After she said that about Mark. That he was brave. She said … will you be?”

9

Mark Daniels's roommate had said the apartment was in the Chevy Chase area, next to the University of Kentucky campus. The Taurus inched down Rose Street, and Sam squinted as he strained to avoid the knots of university students who seemed oddly oblivious to traffic. Sonora glanced at the sheet of directions.

“Take a right at the intersection. I can't read your writing here, Sam. Eunice?” She glanced at a street sign. “Euclid. Turn here.” She noticed a Hardee's and a Baskin-Robbins and decided she was hungry. “Here,” she said, looking up. “No. Casa Galvan, that's the Mex restaurant he mentioned. Turn around, we've gone too far.”

It was a part of the city that mixed campus, old residential, and commercial. Mark's apartment was in a pinkish red brick building with a black, wrought-iron fire escape down one side. Sam parked the car a long block away, tucking the Taurus between a pickup and an ancient Karmann Ghia.

Sonora shut the passenger door softly. “Well, Sam, Lexington is one town where your pickup would blend.”

Sam gave her a look. “Yeah, and who do you call when you need a load of firewood?”

Sonora grinned and Sam waved her ahead, always the gentleman. The pebbled sidewalk in front of Mark Daniels's apartment building had cracked and buckled. The lawn was sparse, equal parts crab, dandelion, and bluegrass.

Sonora paused on the front walk and looked at the windows. No one was stirring. The mix of sagging Venetian blinds, cheap threadbare curtains, and woven shades—one open, one closed—gave the building a bedraggled look of neglect. People slept here. They didn't stay long.

Sonora checked her watch. Just after seven. Sam caught her look.

“Yeah, well. Be sure to find people home, this time of day. Plus the roommate has an eight-o'clock class.”

Sonora thought of her own university days. “Doesn't mean he actually goes. I can't believe you got me up at five to drive down here.”

She wondered if the killer had stalked Mark Daniels, if she'd known him from Adam. Was this a random hit? A well-planned hit, random victim? Why did Keaton Daniels come up every time she looked for Mark?

The linoleum in the apartment hallway was peeling up in the corner and overlaid with muddy footprints. The mud was reddish brown—most of the prints showed the webwork of rubber soles. Big feet, too. A lot of size tens and elevens, one that looked bigger. Mostly guys, Sonora decided. Lexington had evidently had its share of rain. Their footsteps were muffled by a hideous, raisin-colored runner.

“Sam, what color was the mud in the park?”

“Gray-black, Sherlock.”

Sonora was out of breath by the time they passed the second floor. “What's the kid's name?”

“Brian Winthrop. Age twenty-three.”

“Ever notice we never talk to people who live on the first floor?”

“It's a well-known phenomenon. Always the third-floor people who get into trouble.”

“Is he going to say you'uns too?”

Sam gave her a sour look.

“Hey, I only meant to be offensive.”

Sonora scooted to the door ahead of him and knocked, thinking how much time she spent on doorsteps, wishing she could somehow convert it to time spent with her kids, or better still, sleeping. She crooked her finger at Sam, and he dipped his head to listen.

“The guy
I
want to talk to is the one who called it in. You think there's any chance he'll get back to us?”

“Shit, no. He's in Mount Airy Forest on a weeknight, after dark, in the rain. Who do you know who goes to the park under those circumstances?”

“Gays.”

“Closet gays. He did his civic duty and called nine-one-one. I don't look for him to buy any more trouble.”

A dead bolt clicked, and the door cracked open just slightly, then stuck. The thin wood bowed inward, and Sonora heard a muted mutter.

“Yes?”

Mark's roommate was a tall boy, and thin; shoulders bumpy, hipbones jutting, Adam's apple prominent. His head seemed overlarge for his body. His hair was dark brown and wavy, and a bad barber had given him a poor haircut too long ago. His skin showed blemishes here and there, nothing major, and he was of an age to shave daily, though he hadn't. Sonora wondered if he was into the stubble look or trying to grow a beard.

Sam showed his ID. “Specialists Delarosa and Blair, Cincinnati Police Department, about Mark Daniels. We talked last night?”

Sonora tried not to yawn. “Can we come in?”

“Inside. That would … yeah, in the room, that would be to say, for the best.” Winthrop nodded vigorously and stepped back.

Sonora scratched her cheek and looked at Sam. He raised one eyebrow and motioned her ahead.

The room smelled like fried fish and tartar sauce. The rug was worn, mustard colored, with a rusty-looking stain under the window.

Bloodstain? Sonora wondered. Always a copper.

A card table sagged under the clutter of books, papers, and pizza cartons. A set of barbells and weights sat in the corner. Along the wall behind the couch was an IBM PS/2, a modem beneath a phone, and a Hewlett-Packard laser printer. The computer screen was lit, the background a searing blue. A miniature cartoon man in a green suit with an orange vest did backflips to the tune of a ditty that set Sonora's teeth on edge.

Winthrop flung an arm toward the living room. “Place to sit. Here. If you'd like. Of course, you might not, but probably you would.”

Sam sat in the middle of the couch and reached into his coat pocket for his recorder. Sonora took a worn armchair that had a Salvation Army look. The chair sank beneath her, a wayward spring the only thing keeping her off the floor. She scooted forward, balanced on the edge, and studied Winthrop.

“Brian, how long were you and Mark roommates?”

“You … we were friends a lot of, well, knowing. I could tell you but remembering is one thing, but it is more than years.”

Sonora wondered if Winthrop was sincerely unable to communicate, playing it smart, or terrified of police. Sam met her gaze, raised his right shoulder slightly. Big help.

It could never be easy.

Sonora tried again. “So you've known Mark several years?”

Winthrop made an obvious effort. “Three. That would be as roommates. Ten as known friends. Longer really.”

For the first time in her life, Sonora missed the sneering streetwise punks who were sometimes irritating, sometimes chilling, but at least able to communicate, often in lyrical, if obscene, rap.

“So you've roomed with Mark for the last three years?”

Winthrop nodded vigorously.

He seemed bright enough. She detected a working mind behind the intelligence of the gaze, and a look of panic to go with the sheen of sweat on the forehead. He could have had something to do with Mark's killing, but she didn't think so. Her instinct told her the panic was due to sheer social nervousness, and she supposed that if she talked the way Winthrop did, she'd be nervous too.

She thought of her brother, going through school with his speech impediment, teased, imitated, retreating every afternoon to his room.

Winthrop cleared his throat loudly. Impossible not to root for him in his intense effort to organize his thoughts into speech. And that was the problem, she decided. Some kind of mental stuttering.

She grimaced, turning it into a smile. “Did Mark date around a lot? Was he pretty popular with girls?”

“No, but they all, to say, that's because you know Sandra. But they would if he wouldn't.”

“Sandra's his girlfriend, right?”

Winthrop nodded.

“Did he date anyone else?”

“Well I don't. Not to my … my own understanding, I couldn't say always know ever. But he, as far as I would know, and I didn't ever see it.”

“He didn't as far as you know?”

She was beginning to get the hang of talking to this guy—very like communicating with a two-year-old. Grab the gist, double-check the results, and resist the urge to drop to your knees and beg him to just
say
it.

She led him through the routine patiently, getting a lead on Mark's favorite bars (three or four, Lynagh's in particular); favorite restaurants (the Mex place, Casa Galvan, and Jozo's Cajun); what he studied (social work); and what bothered him (the job market, AIDS, final exams). There were no surprises—an average male college student in his early twenties.

He loved Sandra, he partied on Friday and Saturday, spent Sunday afternoons playing pickup basketball, and studied week-nights after work. He worked evenings, but had recently been “let go” by new management. Nothing major there, just something of a personality clash with the new guy. Winthrop suspected Mark had been fired because the new owners didn't want to pay more than minimum wage. They were letting a lot of the regulars go and putting in new people. Mark hadn't been the only one out the door.

Sonora shifted on the uncomfortable rim of the armchair, wishing she'd beaten Sam to the couch.

“Okay, Brian, there's something I want you to think about. Did Mark get any odd phone calls—anything unusual, maybe someone calling and hanging up?”

“The phone now that's a … its … I might not. Because you never know if he'd say in particular, though he might, you know. He might.” Spittle spewed from lips that were thick, chapped, and dry. Sonora shifted to one side so that Sam was in the direct line of fire.

“Anything you're sure about? Any calls you took, any calls Mark mentioned?”

“I don't. No. Usually, Mark would—”