The Perfect Suspect (13 page)

“Sorry to start without you,” Nick said when the waiter turned to their table. “What would you like?”

“The same.” Catherine nodded toward his glass. She had started drinking Merlot since she'd met Nick Bustamante.

“Bring us a bottle,” Nick said, looking up out of the corner of his eyes. Then he leaned forward and set his hand over hers. He had a way of looking at her, Catherine thought, as if he were trying to glimpse something below the surface that swam just out of view. He was looking at her like that now. “I would have preferred to be here with you. Rough day?” he said.

“It's not every day a gubernatorial candidate is murdered.” She allowed her hand to rest in his. The murder moved itself again to the front of her thoughts. The caller's voice was still in her head. She pressed her fingers against his a moment and tried to ignore the fact that Nick Bustamante worked every day with Detective Beckman. “If you'd been in town,” she said finally, “it might have been your case.”

“The whole department's on it,” Nick said, “from the chief to the guys on the street. The cable channels have set up in front of headquarters. They'll be broadcasting live tonight. Reporters all over the place. I saw Metcalf in the lobby.”

Catherine slipped her hand free, sat back and waited while the waiter poured a glass of Merlot and set the bottle on the table. She ordered ravioli and salad, and Nick said he would have his usual. The waiter nodded and smiled. Spaghetti with sausage. After the waiter walked off, she said, “Is something about to break?” Beckman could have arrested someone—anyone—to keep suspicion away from herself.

“It won't be long.” Nick shrugged. “High-profile murder, probably only a few primary suspects. It's a matter of zeroing in, determining who wanted the candidate out of the way. Starting with the widow.” He took a sip of wine and seemed to reconsider. “You're not working, are you?”

“No,” she said, and yet, she was working, she knew, all of her instincts on alert. Nick could say something that might link Beckman to David Mathews, drop a hint, an innocent word.

“It's simply a matter of eliminating everyone close to the victim,” Nick continued, “working your way outward.”

The waiter brought the pasta and salad and made a great flourish of grating veils of parmesan over the plates. “What's your opinion of Beckman?” Catherine said when the waiter disappeared.

“Catherine . . .” He picked up his fork and held it over the pasta a moment. “You know I can't talk about police business.”

“I'm just wondering how competent she is. Like you said, this is a high-profile case. The whole country's watching.”

“She's competent. Learned the ropes in Minneapolis. Denver gets the benefit of what she knows. The case is in good hands, in case the
Journal
is wondering.” He wrapped the spaghetti around his fork—the way his mother had taught him to eat spaghetti, he'd once explained—and took a bite. Then he sliced into the sausage.

“Do you work closely with her?” Catherine sampled her ravioli. The taste of tomato sauce and melted cheeses was sharp on her tongue.

“What's this about?” Nick said, wrapping another forkful of spaghetti.

“I'm wondering if she's capable of solving Mathews's murder.”

“She's not working alone. Martinez is on the case with her.” He took another bite, then patted his napkin at his mouth and sat back, looking at her as if he hoped to peer below the surface.

Catherine lifted her glass and took a deep drink of wine. She had pushed too far, she was thinking. And what had she hoped for? That Nick Bustamante might tell her that Detective Beckman could be capable of murdering a man she was involved with? “So what kind of fishing trip are you on?” he said. “I work closely with a lot of women. It's part of my job. I just spent eight days in L.A. working with a detective on the L.A. force. I don't sleep with my colleagues, if that's what you're thinking.”

Catherine finished the wine, set down her glass and waited while Nick refilled it. Things had gone off track. She was a reporter, for godssakes, used to asking questions that elicited information. How had she given Nick the idea that this was personal, that she was jealous of his colleagues? She sipped at the wine, aware of the muted warmth spreading inside her, willing it to move faster. The undertow of conversations at the other tables pulled at the silence that had descended between them.

“Are we breaking up?” Nick was smiling. Only half joking, she thought.

“No. No,” she said. “This isn't about us. I'm curious, that's all. What would happen if an officer were accused of some crime?”

“What the hell are you talking about? What do you know?”

“I don't
know
anything,” Catherine said. “Reporters hear things sometimes.”

Nick worked at his spaghetti for a long moment, then sat back and regarded her. “My dad used to talk about the rogue cops in Denver back in the early sixties. A whole burglary ring of cops. The joke was that if a burglar broke into your house, you should get his badge number. Every other cop in Denver, including my dad, was furious and ashamed. The good cops were the ones that brought the bad ones down. They cleaned up the place. We've had a professional department for fifty years. What are you saying? You know something about Beckman or Martinez or somebody else?”

“I didn't say that.” They'll consider the source, Metcalf said this morning. An anonymous source, and they'll drop the accusation into a well. Even worse, she knew, was that Beckman would know for certain there was a witness.

“But you're on a fishing expedition,” Nick said.

Catherine sliced a piece of ravioli, then pushed the pasta away and took another drink of wine. She wasn't hungry, and this was all wrong. She'd already said too much, alerted Nick. He might go back to headquarters and mention something to Detective Beckman, put her on alert. The last thing Catherine had wanted. She wasn't sure what she had been hoping for: a little inside information, a hint Beckman may have been investigated for something else? Even a minor infraction of the rules would show that the woman broke rules, stepped over lines. And yet, she and Nick had an agreement: she would not use anything he told her about his job, and he would do the same. She had been the one stepping over a line.

She heard the muffled coughing of her cell and dug into her bag. Not a number she recognized. The man's voice sounded young and tentative. “This is Jeremy Whitman.” Behind his voice was the clanking noise of a bar. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Where can I meet you?”

“I'm at Old Sally's.”

“How will I know you”

“I'll be waiting at the front door.”

“I'm sorry, Nick.” Catherine snapped the phone shut and got to her feet. “It's someone I've been trying to get ahold of. I have to talk to him,” she said. Then she swung about and started back through the restaurant, conscious of the dark, perplexed gaze drilling into her back.

12

The man standing under the neon sign that blinked “Old Sally's” was medium height, with a wiry, cyclist's build, light-colored hair plastered back from his face and a drawn, unsteady look about him. Little groups of people moved along the sidewalk, but he was watching the cars that crawled down the street, as if he expected Catherine to jump out of one. She hurried past the three girls tottering along in five-inch heels and short skirts and came up beside him. “Jeremy?” she said. He jumped back at least two inches and started to stumble. She thought he might fall. Regaining his balance, he blinked at her.

“You the reporter?” Catherine read his lips. Music pulsed out of the bar, pounding rhythms mixed with laughter and shouts that spilled onto the sidewalk.

“Catherine McLeod,” she shouted. “I know a quiet place. Do you mind walking?”

He hesitated. The annoyance and grief in his expression finally gave way to a squint of curiosity. “Let's go,” he said.

Catherine started back the way she had come, the young man beside her, Top-Siders scuffing the sidewalk. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the deliberate way he walked, arms at his sides, shoulders straight ahead, like a drunk driver desperate not to break any traffic rules. “This about David?” he said when they escaped the bubble of noise. “The worst thing ever happened in my life. I can't believe it.” He had choked up; his voice dropping a half octave. “Keep telling myself it can't be true. He was a great man. A great man,” he said again, head bobbing in affirmation.

“You might have some information that could help find his killer,” Catherine said. They had passed her parked car and were stopped for the red light where Sixteenth Street butted into Wazee. A block away, the massive gray stone façade and tiled roof of the Union Depot loomed under the streetlights. In another time, another world, Catherine thought, hundreds of train passengers had traipsed along these same sidewalks every day to the nearby hotels and restaurants. On the corner was the Tattered Cover bookstore, and beyond, the tall buildings that ringed the edges of LoDo, bright yellow lights gleaming in black windows. Traffic shunted past, spitting out exhaust fumes and dust. The air was cool, a sweater evening. She wished she had thought to bring a wrap.

The walk light flashed, and Catherine hurried across the street, Jeremy still in tow. He seemed to have lapsed into himself, consumed with his own thoughts. They made their way up the steps and through the heavy wooden doors into the Tattered Cover, past the knots of people browsing books stacked on tables and arranged on shelves of movable bookcases, the vividly colored book covers jumping out under the ceiling lights. The patina on the old floor boards took on a metallic cast.

Catherine motioned Jeremy into the coffee shop. “What can I get you?” she said.

“Nothing for me.” He sank onto a chair at the only vacant table. The coffee shop was quiet; the other customers intent on the books propped in front of their coffee cups. At least their table stood apart, out of earshot. “The day's been too weird. I'm sticking with booze tonight,” he said. At the counter, she ordered black coffee, carried it over and sat down across from him.

“What did you mean, I might know something?” A worried note sounded in his tone. Tiny red veins mapped the whites of his eyes.

Catherine took a sip of coffee, then took her cell out of her bag. She touched one of the icons and held up the phone between them. The TV news from this morning started replaying in miniature: The gurney, the bulky form of David Mathews's body in a gray, plastic bag, the coroner's officers at both ends, and the barely audible monotone of the newscaster announcing that a body had been removed from the gubernatorial candidate's home. Then, the briefest glimpse in the opened door of a beautiful woman with stylish blond hair and a dark blazer and khaki slacks. She might have been one of the newscasters, Catherine thought.

“I already saw it,” Jeremy said. He seemed slightly offended, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. Then he shifted about, and she followed his gaze toward the nearest table where a gray-haired man in a professor's sweater with leather elbow patches bent over a thick book with a cover of swirling comets and stars.

Catherine replayed the newscast, and this time, she stopped on the image of Detective Beckman. “Do you recognize the woman in the door?” she said.

The young man took a moment before slowly turning back. He squinted at the image. “One of the investigators,” he said. “Otherwise, why would she be in the house?”

“She's the homicide detective in charge, Detective Beckman.” Catherine could feel her heart accelerating. “Anything familiar about her?”

“Why would there be?” Jeremy looked away.

“I spoke with Don Cannon this morning,” Catherine said. “He told me you had spotted Mathews in Aspen with a woman a few months ago. Could the woman have been Detective Beckman?”

Jeremy stayed quiet, staring out into the bookstore, hands clasped on the table. Finally he looked back at the tiny image of Detective Beckman. “When I saw the news this morning, I recognized her. I knew I'd seen her before. But that's crazy. Why would David have anything to do with a homicide detective?” The weight of the implications seemed to crash over him, like a falling wall. He sat back, not taking his eyes from the image. “It's so bizarre. I keep telling myself it can't be true.” He was murmuring at the screen. “A police detective involved in murder?”

“We don't have any evidence,” she said. God, what was she doing? Jeremy Whitman would show up at campaign headquarters tomorrow and tell Cannon everything. How long before Detective Beckman learned Whitman identified her? “All I have so far,” she hurried on, “is a possible link between Beckman and Mathews. If you saw them together in Aspen, it would be enough to have her removed from the investigation.”

“David told me she was an old girlfriend.” Jeremy waved away the cell, and Catherine tucked it back inside her bag. Dejection clung to him like sweat; she could almost smell it. “I loved that man,” he said. “I believed him. He happened to run into her, that was all, and they'd had a drink. You're saying it was a lie? There was something going on between them?”

“I don't know,” Catherine said.

“Oh, come off it!” Jeremy shouted. The gray-haired professor at the next table lifted his eyes from the book and glanced over. Catherine could feel the annoyed stares from the other tables. “Don't come around telling me I have important information, show me a photo, then tell me you don't know anything. Jesus, I loved the man.” He shot a look around; then, lowering his voice, he said, “I loved him, and he lied. He was chasing around, like his enemies wanted the public to believe. I thought they were lying, trying to ruin a decent man. I told myself, David and Sydney Mathews were the perfect couple with the perfect marriage. I wanted to be just like him. Rich, successful, beautiful wife, great houses, everybody eating out of my hand. He would've been the best governor Colorado ever had, and now you tell me it was all a lie?”