Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (6 page)

“The hardest thing, Sarah, is that children grow away from us,” Mom said. “Things happen and we can’t fix them. Sometimes, we need to give them room to come to terms without our interference. Give Maggie a little time. She’ll come around.”

I remembered how I’d felt when my dad died, the pain, the loss. Then Bill. Still, I wasn’t a kid.
It must be so much harder for Maggie
, I thought.

I stared up at the house, where Maggie had disappeared inside. I wanted to run to her, but maybe Mom was right. Maybe Maggie needed time to sort through her thoughts on her own. Maybe we both just needed more time.

Half an hour later, I checked on Maggie and found her with Strings on the computer in the family room. Ever levelheaded, she was convinced that with minimal research on the Internet she would persuade her friend and her mother that no evidence existed that pointed to dinosaurs still roaming any part of the earth, not a deserted island, the jungles of Africa, and not, as Strings had suggested in the car on the way home from the museum, caves in the center of the earth. Despite the row it was sure to cause with his science teacher, I silently found myself hoping she’d fail. I wasn’t sure I’d like living in a world without the possibility of Strings’s dinosaurs any more than I wanted to live in one without believing in God and heaven.

With Mom busy in the kitchen working on a cheesecake order and with no one to complain, I settled down in front of my own computer in the workshop. After reading an e-mail from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children thanking me for the photos and information on Ben, I tapped into Nexis to do a search on Edward and Priscilla Lucas, followed by another on Annmarie Knowles.

As expected, the morning’s papers had bannered the murders. “Lucas family stunned by murders,” read the
Houston Chronicle
. “Bizarre murder claims Edward Lucas and lover,” read the
Galveston County Daily News
, the only one to have uncovered the lurid details surrounding the deaths, including that the bodies were found nude and posed under a bloody cross.

Although the official autopsy wouldn’t be finalized for another week, the M.E.’s office had called me an hour earlier with preliminary findings. Lucas and Knowles had not had intercourse that day, suggesting that they were either escorted to the house by the killer or interrupted shortly after arriving. And, as I’d expected, the puncture marks in their hands and feet were inflicted before death by a long, thin blade. The chest cuts, while gory, only broke the skin deep enough to inflict pain and fear and release a river of blood, blood the killer wiped on the wall in the form of a cross. While Annmarie’s bruised throat showed signs of ligature strangulation, that wasn’t what killed her.

A not uncommon irony: both victims had been remarkably healthy and probably could have expected to live well into old age, if not for the bullet that sliced through Lucas’s brain and the knife that slashed Knowles’s throat. In this case, the M.E.’s office had no difficulty assessing causes of death.

A call from the crime lab had proved less helpful. As the captain had suspected, the killer had been exceedingly careful. The fingerprints on the scene had all been tied to Knowles, Lucas, and the family maid. Not a single print from an unknown source—namely the killer. The only forensic evidence found consisted of two long blond hairs, one found on Lucas’s shoulder, the other retrieved from the shower drain. Longer than Annmarie’s and unbleached, the probability ran high that they had come from the killer. Unfortunately, neither hair had a root, a source of mitochondrial DNA.

How the Galveston newspaper had learned the details of the murders disturbed me. A high-profile case, the word had quickly passed down through the ranks that a media blackout was in force. Revealing too much could jeopardize the investigation and prove disastrous in a future trial, once the murderer was found. Obviously the reporter, Evan Matthews, had worked a good source within GPD. A mention in the second paragraph led me to believe Detective O. L. Nelson might be our leak.

“We’re looking closely at Edward Lucas’s family situation,” Nelson was quoted as saying. “And we have already held our first interview with his wife.”

That Nelson could be callous, opinionated, and difficult, I knew. That he could be outright stupid, however, surprised me. With that announcement in the paper, any possible cooperation we might have anticipated from Priscilla Lucas and her lawyer vanished.

Befitting the lofty social status of Mr. and Mrs. Lucas, their Nexus hits riddled the screen. In photo after photo, the couple smiled happily at Houston’s finest social events, fund-raisers for the ballet and opera, the symphony, along with a smattering of worthy causes, including breast cancer research and the downtown homeless shelter. In Galveston, Edward Lucas was a member of the exclusive, old-moneyed Mardi Gras krewe the Knights of Momus. A quick reading and it was readily apparent that, as she’d said, Priscilla Lucas had no need for her husband’s money. A
Forbes
magazine ranking the nation’s wealthiest families estimated the Barker Oil fortune in the $500-million range. The Lucas family’s commercial real estate empire edged her out with an impressive $800 million. Together the two families controlled more than a billion dollars.

Annmarie Knowles was another story. Search though I might, I found but one mention of her, in the caption of a photo taken the previous fall. In the black-and-white image she stood behind her boss
at a groundbreaking for a Galveston condo project, just the latest of the Lucas family’s many real estate ventures. Annmarie, it turned out, was only twenty-seven and nearly two decades younger than Lucas. In the photo, she gazed at him with a proud, proprietary smile. I had to wonder: perhaps Priscilla Lucas had seen the same photo and correctly interpreted the young woman’s intentions. There was no doubt that the widow was a woman with secrets.

I
’d grown accustomed to the dream, expecting it in those final moments before sunrise. Bill called out to me, surrounded by flames, not from hell but the fire-engulfed car in which he’d died. All the danger our jobs are fraught with, but my husband died in a commonplace car accident on a Houston freeway. In the nightmare, he begged me to save him. Unable to reach him, I screamed that I loved him, as he disappeared in the jagged yellow flames. This morning was no different than the others, and I awoke with tear-streaked cheeks.

The Houston offices of the Texas Department of Public Safety, a nondescript beige brick government building just off the West Loop, appeared a refuge when I arrived at seven Monday morning. I swiped my ID card and made a beeline for my office, next to the captain’s, in the section of the building reserved for the rangers, near the rear, overlooking the parking lot and the radio tower used to transmit to the department’s Austin headquarters.

After a Sunday spent working with Maggie on her science project, a computer-generated, 3-D, mock-up of the solar system,
illustrating the path of a coming lunar eclipse, I was glad to be on familiar ground. Hours of nodding as she discussed her plans, trying not to embarrass myself by asking too many questions, had left me exhausted. My own sixth-grade science fair project had been on a more modest scale, stalks of celery in glasses filled with food-colored water to illustrate how plants draw moisture through roots and stems into leaves. Of course, that was a different era, pre-personal computer.

Although it was all I could think about, I didn’t bring up the conversation about death and heaven from the day before. Neither did Maggie. I’d considered it a few times, trying to figure out how best to approach the subject of the hereafter, but decided Mom was right. I had no real answers to share with my daughter. Right after the accident, we’d gone to a counselor a few times, but that hadn’t seemed to help, and we’d just stopped going. Maybe there aren’t any standardized blueprints for surviving grief.

“Lieutenant Armstrong,” the captain called out, as soon as he saw me. “I’d like you to come in here.”

That didn’t bode well. The captain called me Lieutenant Armstrong only when I was in trouble, the way Mom called me Sarah Jane.

After hanging up my blazer and throwing my black leather purse in a drawer, I walked into the captain’s office and found he wasn’t alone. One man I recognized, an FBI agent I’d met in the past. The other guy I didn’t know. Glancing at the captain, I sensed he wasn’t happy with whatever they’d been discussing. He was chewing on the inside of the jowls middle age had settled onto his face, another sign of bad news to come.

“You know Agent Ted Scroggins.”

“Sure. Hi, Ted,” I said, shaking his hand.

“And this is Agent David Garrity. He’s a profiler, like you. Transferred here a few months back from Quantico,” the captain continued,
motioning toward the other man. The captain’s voice was even-toned and resolved, hiding what I knew must have been deep irritation, when he said, “Based on the high-profile of the Lucas family, the governor has asked the FBI to work with us on the Galveston double-murder case.”

“We don’t need—” I jumped in, ready to defend my turf and point out that the case was well in hand, when the captain motioned for me to stop talking.

“This isn’t optional. It’s an order from the top.”

“But we’ve only had this for a few days. You know there’s absolutely no indication at this stage that this is a case we can’t—”

“This isn’t a reflection on your investigation, Lieutenant.” He cut me off, his deep baritone leaving no room for argument. “These two agents are here to offer help and suggestions. It’s still your case.”

Then, the order: “Go over what we’ve got so far with them.”

“Of course, Captain,” I said, frowning. Despite his assurances, I’d been a ranger long enough to understand that when the feds moved in, they controlled the investigation. It only made matters worse that I knew Detective Nelson undoubtedly felt the same way about my arrival in Galveston.

Still, as I saw it, I had reason not to be happy with interference, especially from Scroggins. He was in Waco in ‘93, one of those Bill credited with heating things up to the point David Koresh holed in instead of giving up. After the compound burned to the ground, taking everyone inside with it, Scroggins blamed the local police, including the rangers, painting them all as bumblers.

Since then, I’ve had little use for Agent Ted Scroggins.

On the other hand, Agent Garrity I didn’t know. We’d never crossed paths during my months studying profiling at the FBI academy in Quantico. Garrity was tall, not a bad-looking man. I would have remembered. So for him, the jury was still out.

“Let’s go in the conference room,” I suggested.

I collected my files and met them there.

“This is what we know so far,” I said, launching into the condensed version of the murders of Edward Travis Lucas and Annmarie Knowles, including forensics, the M.E.’s findings, and what Nelson and I had learned from Priscilla Lucas and the murdered woman’s neighbors.

“Looks like you don’t have much more than we could have gotten reading the Galveston newspaper,” taunted Scroggins, a scrawny man, balding, with small narrow eyes under thick bushy brows. “What about Nelson’s theory, that it’s a hit ordered by the wife?”

“I’m not saying it’s impossible, but my gut tells me it’s not her. I just don’t buy it,” I said, not at all surprised he’d already talked to Nelson.

“Seems to me she had motive and the money to finance it, along with knowing where the guy would be and—”

“This was the work of someone who murders for enjoyment, not money,” I cut in. “It doesn’t impress me as a murder for hire.”

“Maybe Priscilla Lucas didn’t want to impress you. Maybe she just wanted to dump the philandering old man to take up with the French teacher,” Scroggins said, mocking.

“Ted, back off,” snapped Agent Garrity, his voice quietly firm.

Scroggins shot him a hostile glance, and a flush of red crawled up his neck and faded into his monk’s fringe of dark brown hair.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Scroggins asked, furious. Garrity at first looked surprised at my reaction but almost immediately seemed amused. He had a good smile, like a next-door neighbor I wouldn’t have hesitated to borrow a lawnmower from. Scroggins shot his colleague a cautioning glance, but Garrity ignored him.

“Nothing really. It just struck me as funny,” I said. “Guess this is the way you do it in D.C.? Down here we only play bad cop, good cop with suspects. We assume other officers know the drill.”

“Geez, Nelson said you’re hard to deal with,” Scroggins sputtered. His flush deepened, and he pulled a wrinkled tissue out of his pocket to wipe a sweaty film from his forehead.

Meanwhile, Garrity said nothing but continued to appear pleased with the exchange. With Scroggins’s ravings at least temporarily silenced, I took the opportunity to size up the man who’d just come to my defense. Well-formed, Garrity appeared fit enough to spend mornings in the gym. His hair, a sandy brown with just the hint of white at the temples, was combed straight back, but it bushed slightly about his neck and ears, giving him a rugged look. His light gray suit hung haphazardly from his body, creased as if he’d forgotten or just didn’t bother to hang it up the last time he’d worn it. The word “rumpled” came to mind, a rather unusual adjective for an agent of the spit-and-polish FBI.

“Ted, the lieutenant’s right. We’re all on the same side here, and we need to take this a step at a time,” Garrity said. “I’m not saying Nelson’s theory is without merit, but we’ve got some problems with it. On the surface, these murders appear too ritualistic to be a hit. Using bindings and a gun from the site, leaving the bodies posed under a bloody cross? What if we’re dealing with something else here? Don’t we have to consider that possibility, before we reserve Priscilla Lucas a prison cell?”

“Hell, the profilers have spoken.” Scroggins shrugged and again faced me, ignoring his fellow agent. “Nelson said you had dismissed his theory about the wife without real consideration, and I can see he’s right.”