The Book Stops Here (19 page)

“I’m sorry.” I had my arms wrapped around his waist and I hugged him a little tighter. British stoicism or not, he was wonderful. “Mary Grace fooled us all, but especially me.”

“I’ve had a hard time forgiving myself for that.”

“So have I,” I admitted, “but she turned out to be a psychopath. She was hardwired to lie. It’s like her life depended on it.”

“It did.”

Unwilling to dwell on the bad memory any longer, I said, “Let’s come back to the current situation.”

“All right, love.” He kissed the top of my head. “I like Alex.”

I leaned back to look him in the eye. “You do? Just like that?”

He chuckled. “Yes, just like that. She won’t take advantage of your good nature. She’ll return your friendship in equal measure. And she’ll make us awesome cupcakes.”

I choked on a laugh. “All true.”

“And I’ve elicited her solemn promise,” he said, frowning reflectively, “to kick anyone’s ass who comes around making trouble when I’m not here.”

•   •   •

“W
e got him,” Inspector Lee announced when I answered the phone early Monday morning.

My heart jumped once, then settled down in my chest. I took in a big, slow breath and let it out. I hadn’t realized how flipped out I’d been, waiting to hear her say those words about Horatio. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “I’d like to swing by in a few minutes and have you look at a few six-packs.”

I was pretty sure she didn’t mean beers. Or, sadly, half-dressed male models with good stomach muscles. “What do you mean by six-packs?”

“Photos of suspects. They’re on cards, six photos on each.”

“Got it. Do you want to come right now?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

It took her only ten minutes to drive over from the Hall of Justice, where she worked in the Personal Crimes Division, which included Homicide. I poured her a cup of coffee and we sat at the dining room table. She handed me the cards one by one. Each five-by-eight-inch card showed mug shots of six different men. It was odd to see the faces of so many men who’d gone through the prison system. Most of them looked either wasted or angry or dazed, and I realized that getting a picture taken for a mug shot was not anyone’s best moment.

A shiver scuttled up my spine the moment I saw the mug shot of Horatio. He looked half-asleep, but his eyes still managed to convey malice and his lip was curled in a mean snarl. I tapped his picture, then dropped the card on the table. “That’s him.”

“You sure?” Inspector Lee held up all the cards I hadn’t seen yet.

“I’m absolutely positive, but if it helps strengthen the case against him, I’ll look at a few more cards before pointing to the same guy.”

“Not necessary. You’ve already looked at a couple dozen, at least. But I want you to be sure. Look at him again. Is that the man who attacked you in the Peapod Studio parking lot?”

“Yes.”

“Would you say you’re one hundred percent sure that’s him? Or eight percent? Sixty percent?”

“One hundred percent sure that’s the guy.”

She wrote out a short statement on a printed sheet that included the time and date of the attack, checked a few boxes, and had me sign it.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Are we finished?”

“For now.” Pushing her chair away from the dining room table, she stood and gathered her cards and papers. “The district attorney might want you to come in for an in-person lineup. It depends on the lawyers.”

I stood, too. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do—just let me know. I want this guy behind bars.”

“You and me both. Problem is, he won’t stay in jail for long on a mere assault charge. And except for your statement that he threatened to kill you and Vera, we don’t have anything substantial tying him to Vera’s murder. It’s all circumstantial at this point.”

“What about fingerprints? Or witnesses.”

“There were no prints on the murder weapon.” She seemed to realize what she’d said and scowled. “If I hear that repeated on the evening news, I’ll come after you with a pipe wrench.”

“Ouch.” I pretended to clutch my chest in pain. “After all this time, I should think you would trust me a little more.”

“I do, actually.” She huffed out a breath. “Sorry. Just, you know, keep it to yourself.”

“I will.” I walked with her down the short hall, into my
workshop, and over to the front door. “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything that could jeopardize this case. I want him to go to prison forever.”

“If he killed Vera Stoddard, we’ll make sure he gets what he deserves.”

“Good.” I opened the door for her. “Let me know if you need me to identify him in a lineup. That would be so cool.”

“You’re a twisted woman, Wainwright.”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “It’s part of my charm.”

“Yeah, charm. Or something.”

•   •   •

T
wo hours later, Inspector Lee called. “The district attorney met with our suspect’s lawyer. They’re demanding a police lineup and they’d like to do it tomorrow morning.”

“That was fast.”

“Can you make it?”

“Absolutely.”

She gave me the time and place and we ended the call. I wanted to jump up and do a happy dance, but I restrained myself. After all, there was nothing happy about Vera being dead. And I was the one who would be fingering her killer.

“Fingering,” I muttered. When had I started to talk like a Mob boss?

•   •   •

I
stared at the one-way glass window. “Can they see me?”

“No, they can’t see you,” Inspector Lee muttered.

I was pretty sure every last person who had ever gone through this procedure had asked the very same question.

Besides Inspector Lee and me, there were two men in a small viewing room. Both wore suits and I guessed they were attorneys. I wasn’t introduced to either of them. I figured nobody wanted to get too chummy with me, seeing as how I was there to finger the perp, as they said. Good grief, more fingering.

Lee spoke into a small intercom speaker. “Send in number one, please.”

I watched through the glass as a uniformed officer opened the side door of the room. A large man walked slowly halfway across the space. He was told to stop there and look straight ahead. He stared right at me, although Inspector Lee insisted again that he couldn’t see me.

Nobody else walked in with him.

I frowned. “Where are the others?”

“We don’t do it with a group anymore,” Lee explained. “We do what’s called a sequential lineup. It’s supposed to be better for you, the witness, so you’re not comparing the suspects to one another. Instead, you’re judging them each individually against your own memory of the person you saw. It lowers the chance of a false positive.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay, you’ve described your attacker as a large man. So if we lined up four skinny guys and one great big guy, you might identify that one larger man as the perpetrator, even though he’s innocent. All you’re seeing is one large man out of five or six, so you’re assuming he’s the guy.”

“But I would never do that.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t, Wainwright, but plenty of people would. Especially if they didn’t get a good look at his face up close.”

“I see,” I said, still a little thrown off, because this wasn’t the way they did it on television. But I could definitely see the benefit of a sequential lineup. And I was learning a sad truth, that cop shows didn’t always portray these procedures exactly as they were done in real life.

“Let’s do this,” she said. “I want you to take a good long look at this guy.”

I stared at the first guy for another minute.

“Seen enough?” Lee asked.

I nodded.

The first man was instructed to leave by the same door he came in, and a few seconds later, the next guy walked into the same space and stared straight ahead at me.

It was Horatio.

I flinched at the sight of him. He was as huge and frightening and menacing as he’d been a week ago and I had to remind myself that he couldn’t see me.

I sucked in a breath, exhaled slowly, and then whispered, “That’s him.”

“So noted,” she said, and shot a glance at the taller man in the suit standing next to her.

A moment later, she said, “Send in the next person, please.”

I didn’t say another word as the same routine was repeated for the rest of the suspects. There were a total of five and all of them were tall and heavyset.

I looked at every one of their faces, their clothing, their height, their shoes, their hair, and the shape of their heads. Horatio was the second man in. Number two. He was the tallest and heaviest of the five, and he looked the meanest. I had recognized him the instant he walked into the room. The memory of seeing him so close made me shiver again. I still wasn’t 100 percent confident the guy couldn’t see me through that glass wall.

He had to know that I would be one of the people who would identify him. But that didn’t mean I wanted to have a face-to-face confrontation with him. I’d done that already.

“Did you recognize any of these men as the one who attacked you?” Inspector Lee asked, her voice a bit stilted and formal.

“Yes.”

“Can you give me his number, please?”

“He was number two.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, absolutely one hundred percent certain that’s the man who attacked me and Benny the guard at the studio last week. He’s the one who threatened to kill me and Vera Stoddard.”

“Number two,” Lee repeated.

I nodded. “Yes.”

She turned to the two men standing next to her. “You got that?”

“I got it,” the shorter one grumbled.

“Let’s go,” the other man said. He looked at me and said, “Thank you for your time.”

They walked out and I looked at Inspector Lee. “Who were those guys?”

“The unhappy one is number two’s lawyer. The other one is the ADA.”

Assistant district attorney,
I thought. The prosecutor. “Cool. Just like on TV.”

“Get out of here, Wainwright. I’ve gotta go take care of number two.”

She snorted and I swallowed a laugh as we left the viewing room.

•   •   •

B
efore heading to the studio, I found out from Inspector Lee that Horatio’s real name was Larry Jones. But he was better known by his street name, Lug Nut.

Lug Nut. Good grief. Had his parents called him that as a baby?

I walked out of the Hall of Justice building and turned east on Bryant. My apartment was only five blocks away, so I could’ve walked here from there. But they were five long city blocks and since I knew I would have to drive directly from here to the studio, I’d come by car.

It was getting chilly and I pulled my short navy jacket closer around my waist. I’d heard the weather report predicting rain
tonight, so I’d brought my new raincoat and an umbrella with me, but I’d left them both in the car. Too bad, because it looked like it would start pouring any minute.

I had parked in a lot on Boardman Street, a block south of Bryant, but I had my sights set on checking out a food truck I’d seen at the corner of Bryant and Harriet, one block past Boardman.

I had developed a dangerous affection for food-truck dining and was currently on the lookout for the perfect
pupusa de queso
, a yummy little fried treat made of thick cornmeal and stuffed with cheese.

I walked faster and checked over my shoulder to see if it was safe to cross the street. That’s when I noticed a man on the opposite side of the street, staring at me.

My breath hitched and I stopped in my tracks. The guy was huge and mean-looking and his mouth was set in a permanent sneer.

Horatio?

How? He was in jail. Did he have a twin? Whoever the hell this guy was, he noticed that I had seen him and he was jabbing his finger toward me in a menacing way.

“You!” he shouted. “I’m gonna make you sorry you ever went to the police.”

Damn, it couldn’t be Horatio—or, rather, Lug Nut. But he looked exactly like him. And he sounded like him, too, with that deep, harsh voice. But that was impossible. Lug Nut was in jail.

Had he escaped already? They couldn’t have let him go. But who was this guy? Lug Nut had to have a brother. In fact, this guy could be his twin. But why was he gesturing and yelling so angrily at me? He didn’t know me! Did he? Had he seen me coming out of the viewing room after identifying his brother?

Had he and his brother been spying on me? The thought made my head spin. But how else would he know who I was?

I stared dumbly for a few more seconds until I realized he was
checking the traffic, too. Was he waiting for a break so he could cross the street and— What? Threaten me? Kill me?

Damn it!
I turned and ran up the sidewalk, back to the crosswalk directly in front of the steps leading up to the Hall of Justice. But Lug Nut—or whoever he was—kept pace with me on the other side of the busy street. I couldn’t believe it. He was standing right in front of police headquarters, threatening me, blocking my access. So how was I supposed to get from here back into the building without running right into him?

I looked around for a cop. We were directly in front of police headquarters, for God’s sake. Where was a cop when you needed one?

At that very moment, a cop car approached the intersection and stopped to allow me to cross in front of him. I rushed around to the driver’s side of the car and the cop rolled down his window.

“Can you help me?” I asked, pointing toward my tormentor. “That man over there in the black T-shirt is following me.”

“The big one?” he said.

“Yes. I’ve been trying to get into the building to talk to the police but I’m afraid to go near him.”

The two cops in the car stared directly at Lug Nut’s twin. He stared back for a long moment, and if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead. After another few seconds, he shook his head in disgust, uttered some rude words I couldn’t hear, and stomped off in the opposite direction.

The police officer driving the car gazed up at me. “Do you want us to go after him?”