No Place to Die (5 page)

Neither Maggie nor I had eaten anything since early morning, and dinner was doubtless a long time into the future. So, in spite of Maggie’s earlier pledge to pass on lunch, we decided that we should take advantage of the opportunity to eat something while on our way from David Thompson’s office to that of his wife.

In Maggie’s case, “lunch” consisted of a small garden salad with a simple oil and vinegar dressing on the side, accompanied by a refreshing cup of soy milk. Apparently deciding to live life in the fast lane, she ordered chocolate soy milk rather than vanilla, which was her usual choice. I was less confident than she that we’d be eating again any time soon and so ordered a Coke, a medium-rare hamburger, and a side salad of my own.

Watching the juice drip from my burger, Maggie arched her eyebrows, shook her head, and gave me a look that asked,
How can you possibly eat that shit?

We’d had the “diet” conversation so many times by now that she really didn’t need to say anything at all. I knew her lecture by heart, just as she knew my responses. And the fact that I’d ordered a salad with the burger rather than a large side of fries did little to allay her concerns about my long-term health and well-being.

In an effort to change the subject, I asked what she’d been doing when we’d been called out last night.

She shook her head. “Dinner at my mother’s.”

“And what’s your problem with that?” I countered. “Your mom’s a great cook.”

“The problem was not the cooking,” she sighed. “The problem was the company. Mom’s trying to play matchmaker again.”

“Oh, God. Who is it this time?”

“The new associate pastor from her church. He’s about my age, and divorced with a couple of kids. He just moved here from Memphis with the kids in tow, leaving the ex-wife behind, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear—at least to my mother. The two of us have absolutely nothing in common save for the fact that we’re both divorced and that we were both in the army. I can’t imagine why in the hell Mom would think I’d have any interest in they guy, let alone why he’d have any interest in me.”

“Is the guy deaf and blind?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then trust me, Maggs, he’s interested.”

“Right,” she snorted. “At least he will be until he discovers that except for weddings and funerals, I haven’t been in a church in probably the last ten years and that I have no intention of ever going into one again. I’m sure that, plus the fact that I’m totally incapable of relating to little kids, should pretty well squelch whatever interest he might have in a big fuckin’ hurry.”

“No doubt,” I laughed. “But I’m sure he was captivated by your ladylike language.”

I waited while she ate a bite of her salad and then said, “So tell me about him.”

She gave a small shrug and jabbed her fork into the salad. “His name is Patrick Abernathy, and he’s a good-looking guy. He’s bright and seems to be reasonably laid-back for a minister—not that I’ve ever dated a minister before.”

“You gonna date this one?”

“Shit, I don’t know, Sean. It’s not like my dance card
is especially full at the moment. I got the feeling that he might ask me out, and if and when he does, I’ll guess I’ll make up my mind then.”

“So what’s the story with the kids and the ex-wife?”

“I’m not really sure. The two kids are both girls. One’s ten; the other’s seven. He seemed a bit reluctant to talk about them. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to scare me off by going on nonstop about his kids and maybe leaving the impression that he was desperate to find them a new mother.

“Of course Mom asked him a million questions about them and insisted that he show her pictures. They are pretty cute kids—if you’re the kind of person who likes kids, I mean—and Patrick claims that they’re both extremely smart and that they’re doing very well in school.

“As to the former Mrs. Abernathy, I have no idea. He made no mention of her whatsoever, and of course Mom didn’t feel compelled to press him on that subject. He and Mom talked about his work at the church, and he and I talked about the Diamondbacks and about how happy we both were to be out of the fuckin’ army. Only he didn’t describe it that way, of course—at least not in front of my mom.”

“Well, it sounds like he must have made a good impression on your mother.”

“Oh, yeah, no question,” Maggie sighed, reaching for her soy milk. “Shit, maybe he’ll ask her out instead.”

Just after one o’clock, we walked into the offices of the law firm in downtown Phoenix where Beverly Thompson was a partner. The managing partner, Alan Ducane, was expensively but conservatively dressed in a navy blue suit that hung very well, even on his portly frame. A fringe of gray ringed his otherwise bald head, and a pair of reading glasses was hooked over
the breast pocket of his jacket. He showed us into a richly appointed law library, and the three of us took seats at a long mahogany conference table.

“This is such a tragedy,” he said. “We’re all in shock. Is there any news yet about Beverly?”

“No, sir,” I replied. “I’m afraid there isn’t. As you might expect, since we released Ms. Thompson’s photo this morning, we’ve had a number of reported sightings, but none of them has led us anywhere yet.”

The lawyer shook his head. Absentmindedly toying with his glasses, he said, “What can we do to help?”

“Well, sir,” Maggie said. “Obviously, we’re very interested in knowing whether you or anyone else here can think of anyone who might have been upset with Ms. Thompson. Is there an angry client or coworker who might have wanted to harm her?”

Again, Ducane shook his head. “Absolutely no one, Detective McClinton. Beverly is well liked and respected by everyone here and, for that matter, by everyone who knows her. She’s a very bright woman with a strong social conscience. She’s an excellent lawyer and she hasn’t got an abrasive bone in her body. I can’t think of anyone who would wish her harm.”

“Ms. Thompson specializes in medical malpractice?” I asked.

“Yes. The bulk of her clients are people with claims against doctors and insurers, and she has a very good record of winning favorable settlements for them. Like any other attorney, of course, she occasionally loses a case and a client winds up disappointed, but to the best of my knowledge, none of her losing clients has ever been angry enough to do something like this.”

“What about the people she sues?” Maggie asked.

Ducane shrugged. “The people she sues are doctors who are insured against malpractice suits, or the insurance companies themselves. Obviously, they don’t like to lose the money, but it’s hard to imagine that an
insurance company would hire someone to kidnap an attorney in a case they’re contesting. And even if they did, it wouldn’t accomplish anything of course. Another lawyer would simply step in and take over the case.”

“How long has Ms. Thompson been with your firm?” I asked.

“A little over sixteen years. After law school, she spent a couple of years working in the public defender’s office. That pretty much soured her on the idea of doing criminal law, and then she came to us. She was an associate for three years and then made partner.”

“And you know of nothing going on in her life outside the office that might have prompted someone to attack her and her husband?” Maggie asked.

“No, I don’t. Beverly and David were a terrific couple, very much in demand socially, and to all appearances, very much in love with each other. As I said, I can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to harm either of them.”

We spent some time interviewing Thompson’s secretary and a number of other people in the office, but none of them knew anything that was of any help. Ducane provided us with addresses for Thompson’s brother in Washington, D.C., and for her sister, who lived in Nebraska. With his assistance, we went carefully through Thompson’s desk. However, as had been the case with the Thompsons’ home offices, we found no threatening notes, no blackmail letters, or anything else suggesting that anyone had posed a threat either to Thompson or to her husband. And according to the files, neither Alma nor Robert Fletcher had ever had any sort of professional association with Beverly Thompson.

At four o’clock, Maggie and I met again in the Homicide Unit’s conference room with Pierce and Chickris.
Some other group had used the room since we’d been in it earlier in the day, and they’d left in their wake three donuts that looked to be about as stale and tasteless as the box they were sitting in. Greg poured coffee for himself and Maggie after Pierce and I declined the offer. Then he dropped into a chair, snagged a maple-frosted donut from the box, and pushed the box across the table toward the two women. Maggie gave him a look, then picked the box off the table and pitched it and the last two donuts into the wastebasket. Saying nothing, Greg turned in my direction, arched his eyebrows, and shook his head.

Unfortunately, Pierce and Chickris had made no more progress on their end of the investigation than we had on ours. None of Alma Fletcher’s neighbors remembered seeing a black van in the neighborhood on the day of her murder, and none of the people that Elaine and Greg reinterviewed was able to shed any additional light on the killing.

“We’re still at a complete dead end with Fletcher,” Elaine sighed. “We have no motive, no suspect, and no forensics worth a shit. And neither Mr. Fletcher nor anyone else we talked to had ever heard of either David or Beverly Thompson. It doesn’t look like we’re going to make a connection from that end.”

“But there
has
to be one,” Maggie protested. “Why would some cretin just randomly pop a little old lady and then turn around and shoot Thompson and abduct his wife?”

No one had an answer for that, and after a few seconds, Greg said, “What have you guys got from your end?”

“Not a helluva lot more than you have,” Maggie replied. “We’ve contacted the Thompsons’ siblings, but neither they nor anyone else has received a ransom demand from whoever took Mrs. Thompson. That, combined with the connection to the Fletcher woman,
makes it seem pretty unlikely that she was grabbed so that the kidnapper could extort a payoff out of somebody.”

“And I take it we’ve gotten nothing off the hotline?” Elaine asked.

“ ‘Nothing’ is right,” I sighed. “At least nothing solid. We’ve had reported sightings all over the friggin’ state now, and the local authorities are chasing them down as fast as they can. But none of the reports has panned out, and it’s hard to imagine that any of them will.

“Thompson was snatched twenty-one hours ago, and her picture’s been out there for seventeen. You’ve got to figure that whoever grabbed her has already killed her and dumped the body. Either that or he’s gone to ground with her somewhere. Certainly he’s seen the TV coverage long before now, and he’s got to know that we’re looking everywhere for Thompson. I can’t imagine that he’d risk being seen in public with her at this point.”

“So what else do we have?” Greg asked.

“Not much,” I sighed. “The Thompsons’ phone records just came in. I assume you’ve got Fletcher’s?”

Elaine nodded. “Yeah, we’ve got ’em, but we checked all the calls both in and out for the three months before she was shot. There was nothing out of the ordinary there.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s compare Fletcher’s records to the Thompsons’ and see if there are any numbers in common. Then we can work our way through the Thompsons’ calls and see if there’s anything that jumps out at us there.”

The first baseman was a tall, rangy blonde with long straight hair, good eyes and hands, and even better foot speed.

Wearing a black cowboy hat pulled down low over his eyes, Carl McClain sat hunched over in the twelfth row directly above first base in the Alberta B. Farrington Softball Stadium, watching the girl intently as he had for each of the last three Arizona State home games.

He was impressed by the girl’s natural athletic ability. It was also clear that she’d put in her time in the gym, and on the practice field as well, and the combination of her natural ability and her work ethic had enabled her to make the team as a freshman.

The girl was also extremely attractive, especially compared with the other young women on the field. Most of the other players had the heavy thighs, thick bodies, and butch haircuts typical of all too many female athletes. But the first baseman was a knockout, and McClain speculated that she was probably a real heartbreaker.

There were two outs in the bottom of the third inning, and ASU was leading Stanford 3-1. With the count at two and two, the Stanford batter hit a short pop-up in the direction of ASU’s second baseman. The girl moved under the ball, made the catch without difficulty, and retired the side.

McClain watched the first baseman as she loped into the dugout and disappeared. Then he pulled the
cowboy hat even lower over his eyes and turned to look at the girl’s mother, who was sitting six rows down and about forty feet to his right.

The mother, whose name was Amanda, was a blonde herself. She wore her hair considerably shorter than her daughter’s, in a style that was designed to appear casual and carefree. McClain would’ve bet, though, that she’d probably spent at least a couple hundred bucks to get her hair cut just exactly right and that she probably dedicated at least thirty minutes a day to keeping it that way.

Amanda was thin and lightly tanned, and the diamond set on her left hand sparkled even at this distance. She’d worn a different outfit to each of the three games that McClain had attended, and this afternoon her small, pert breasts were peeking out over the top of a light blue camisole. Below the cami, a pair of brief white shorts left no doubt about the fact that Amanda’s legs were still her best feature, hands down.

Being rich agreed with her, McClain decided, and she had aged very well. In fact, closing in on forty, Amanda was even sexier than she’d been at nineteen, which was when Carl McClain had first sweet-talked her into going to bed with him. He promised her that he’d pull out, but then of course he didn’t. It was the first in a long line of promises that he’d made to Amanda and then broken, and the result had been Tiffani, the first baseman.

As Stanford took the field, Amanda turned and scanned the crowd behind her—perhaps sensing his eyes on her?

Not very likely, he decided. Besides which, Amanda was, and always had been, a woman who was used to having eyes on her—one of those women who naturally expected it. No, more than likely she was simply anticipating the arrival of Richard, the man who was now her husband and their daughter’s stepfather.
McClain looked away, just another spectator casually surveying the crowd on a beautiful afternoon at the ballpark.

He wasn’t really worried that Amanda might recognize him after all this time. He was thinner now too—in his case by nearly seventy-five pounds—and he had toned up considerably. He’d never been one of those prison head cases who lived in the weight room, striving to become the Incredible Hulk or some fuckin’ thing, and he didn’t have the genes for it anyway. But the crappy prison food had finally tamed his insatiable appetite; he’d worked out on a regular basis; and after sixteen years, he’d morphed into a man who looked nothing at all like the Pillsbury Doughboy that Judge Walter Beckman had once sentenced to life for murder in the first degree.

Just then McClain saw Richard, his tie loosened and his suit coat slung over his shoulder, making his way up the stairs to join Amanda. McClain wondered why in the hell the guy didn’t just lose the tie altogether and leave the suit coat in his Jag. It wasn’t like the temperature was suddenly going to drop thirty-five degrees into the low forties. But the man was conscious of his image, and the coat and tie doubtless made a statement that Richard thought important.

Thirteen years ago, when Amanda married Richard, McClain had wasted a lot of sleepless nights, lying awake in his cell, swearing that if he ever got out of prison, he’d cut Richard’s dick off and stuff it down his throat. But McClain was older now and, he hoped, at least a little wiser.

McClain could hardly blame Amanda for divorcing him. He’d given her plenty of cause even before the night of the murder. And he really couldn’t blame her either for cutting him off completely, both from herself and from their daughter. He could never have imagined Amanda and Tiffani riding the bus out for visitors’
day every other week, and in truth he never would have wanted them to. In the end, he couldn’t even blame Amanda for marrying Richard. She saw her chance and she took it, both for herself and for her daughter. What else was the woman supposed to do?

He’d had no direct contact with Amanda or with Tiffani since two days after his arrest, but he had his sources. He understood that Richard loved both his ex-wife and his daughter and that he treated them very well. McClain also knew, in his heart of hearts, that Richard had been a much better father to Tiffani than he ever could have or would have been himself, and he was truly grateful for that. And so in the end, he’d abandoned his dreams of revenge against Richard and focused them on other, more deserving targets.

McClain watched with a profound mixture of longing and regret as Richard settled into his seat next to Amanda. She put her hand on his arm and gave him a small peck on the cheek. Then they both turned to watch as Tiffani moved into the batter’s box.

McClain turned to watch too, and with the count at two and one, the pitcher threw one in low and just outside. Tiffani uncoiled and took a smooth, strong cut at the ball, drilling it into left center field. The outfielder bobbled the ball momentarily, and Tiffani whipped around first base and slid safely into second.

McClain jumped to his feet, cheering and clapping with the rest of the home-field crowd. With a lump in his throat, he watched his daughter come to her feet and brush herself off. At least he’d done one goddamn thing in his life that he could be proud of.