The Perfect Suspect (14 page)

“Was anyone else from the campaign in Aspen at the time? Anyone else who might have seen them?”

Jeremy drew his lips into a tight line a moment. “Just fricking me,” he said finally. “I was the lucky one that got to catch David in his lies. God, I need a drink.” There was a helplessness in the way he looked around.

Catherine pushed the coffee cup toward him. She hadn't touched it. “Try a little coffee,” she said. Sometimes, she had discovered, caffeine had a way of soothing the need for a drink.

Jeremy stared at the cup a moment, then took a long sip. He set the cup down hard, as if he feared missing the table. A tiny puddle of brown liquid started to spread. “We'd gone to Grand Junction,” Jeremy said, “David and I and a couple of staffers. David spoke at a chamber of commerce luncheon. He had driven himself. David liked to drive alone. He said it gave him time to collect his thoughts. After the luncheon, he told me he was going back to Denver. The other staffers stayed in Grand Junction to check up on things at the campaign office for the Western Slope. I'd taken the weekend off. I had my gear in the back of my Subaru, and I headed to the Maroon Bells outside Aspen. Spent two days climbing and camping. Like David, I needed some time to get my head clear.”

“So Mathews knew that no one on the trip would know whether he did, in fact, drive back to Denver.”

Jeremy nodded. “Looks that way.” He sipped at the coffee again. “Caffeine's not doing it for me,” he said. “I need a drink. Can we get this over with?”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” he said. “After I got off the mountain, I wandered around town, checking out the bars. I wandered into the Hotel Jerome 'cause I'd heard it had a great old bar. David was sitting at a table in the corner with a babe, you know? All I could think was what's he doing here with her? He saw me, got up and came over. He took my arm, I remember, and steered me out of the bar and into the lobby where I couldn't see the babe. ‘It's not what you think,' he said, and he gave me some bullshit about happening to run into her and having a drink for old time's sake. I said I'd understood he was going back to Denver. ‘Well, that was the plan.' David could finesse anything. God, he was the best. Nobody could rattle him or throw him off his pitch. That's why he was so great on the campaign trail. Farmers out on the plains, ranchers in the mountains, professors, students, soccer moms, there wasn't a question they could throw where he didn't have the perfect answer. It was like he'd been expecting that question all along.”

“You believed what he told you?”

“Everybody believed David Mathews.” Jeremy waited a long moment before he went on. “I wanted to believe him. I hated the doubt, but I couldn't shake it. If any of the rumors proved true, it would ruin the whole campaign. Colorado voters like their politicians to be square shooters, and if they aren't, they don't want to know about it.”

“So you talked to Cannon?”

“I ran it by him. He told me to forget it. Don't go making something out of nothing. Next day, he pulled me into his office and gave me the same story David had given me. The woman was an old girlfriend he had happened to run into. They had a few drinks and that was it. So I should forget about it. We had a campaign to run. I was glad to have Cannon telling tell me what to do, you know? Made it easier to put it aside, not think about it anymore.”

“Listen, Jeremy,” Catherine said. She started to suggest that they go to police headquarters right away, then thought better of it. He was half-drunk. She didn't want to give Internal Affairs any reason to discount his story. “I want you to come with me to police headquarters first thing tomorrow,” she said. “I'll get an appointment with Internal Affairs. You can tell them what you saw in Aspen and what David told you.”

“I don't think so.” He pushed the coffee cup away and managed to stand up, knocking the chair back a little, wobbling on his feet. “My word against a police detective's? Who they gonna believe? If she had anything to do with David getting murdered, I'm hanging below the radar. Let somebody else link them together.”

Catherine stood up. “There might be someone else. Someone who saw her outside David's house seconds after he was shot. You would be corroborating each other's story. You'll make a stronger case together. Internal Affairs will have to intervene, take her off the case, investigate her involvement with David. Are you with me?”

“Who is it?”

“Give me a day or two,” Catherine said. A day or two to run down an anonymous caller? It could be impossible. She hurried on: “I'll go with you to Internal Affairs first thing in the morning. But you could be right about staying under the radar. Beckman might want to interview you, and when she does, she could recognize you from Aspen. I know she saw you this afternoon. She could have recognized you then. She'll know you can tie her to Mathews. Is there somewhere you could go for a couple days until I locate the other person?”

He seemed to consider this, a sober look about him now. “My dad's got a fishing cabin up in North Park.”

“Good; go there after we talk to Internal Affairs,” Catherine said. The North Park area in the northwestern part of the state was nowhere, a vast expanse of wilderness surrounded by mountains, home to bears and mountain lions and brown trout.

“Right now I need a couple drinks.”

They walked back through the store, across the street and down the sidewalk toward the thumping noise at the end of the next block. Catherine left him at her car along the curb. He had already gone inside the bar when she drove past. Fifteen minutes later, she parked in front of a block of condos that overlooked downtown from the other side of the Platte. A small porch butted against the front door at the middle condo. In a corner was a ceramic planter with a few petunias poking around the dried daisies. The door opened before she could press the bell, and she was aware of Nick Bustamante, black hair and dark, shadowy face, and white shirt, taking hold of her hand and leading her inside.

“You surprise me, Catherine McLeod,” he whispered in her ear. “Every time I see you, I wonder if I'll ever see you again.”

“I'm sorry I had to leave so abruptly.” She pulled back a little. Pinpricks of light shone in his dark eyes. “It was an important interview I couldn't miss.”

“Always the reporter,” he said. “I guess I'll get used to it.”

13

Computers tell a story. Names, events, motivations, recriminations, revenge, love, hate, whole memoirs, autobiographies, even novels, captured in e-mails sent and received and websites visited. Ryan bent close to the monitor and tapped the keys. She had told the techs to leave David's computer on her desk. They would examine it later. Any evidence relating to the murder would have to be validated by the experts, not by a detective who happened to locate sent e-mail messages. The guts, invisible wires and connections, those were left to experts. But first she had to know if there was anything about her on the computer. That fool staffer could have e-mailed David about seeing her and David in Aspen, or maybe David had e-mailed him, making excuses, claiming their meeting was nothing more than an accident. What was the name? Jeremy Whitman, the only person, besides the woman on the sidewalk, who could connect her to David Mathews.

She surfed through David's e-mail inbox, three hundred and some notes, most about the campaign. Nothing personal. Even the messages from Whitman confirmed speaking engagements and appearances, interviews with the press. A couple dozen routine messages had gone to employees at Mathews Properties. David had taken a leave of absence from the company after the caucus in the spring, but it looked as if he hadn't backed away entirely. Somebody named Martin Johnson was supposedly running the company, but the e-mails told another story. Johnson was a puppet, and David had pulled the strings.

No mention of her name.

Ryan searched the deleted e-mails. Hundreds more, a cascading avalanche of letters, notes, congratulations, advice, questions. David had forwarded whole batches, along with stock replies, to campaign headquarters where some volunteer must have sent the replies. It would have been beneath David to reach down and touch the common folks who had reached up to him and would have put him in the governor's office. Another story began to emerge, one she hadn't expected. The imperious David Mathews strolling through people's lives, strolling through hers, brushing off any residue, never connecting. What a fool she had been, believing him, believing in him, accepting everything he said as the truth, just like the people who had e-mailed him.
We're behind you one hundred percent! I've mailed in my contribution to your campaign. I'm praying the Lord will let you be elected. We need you.
How easily David had shunted them to a volunteer at campaign headquarters. She wondered if he had even bothered to read the messages.

A user, Sydney had called her husband. David Mathews used people to get what he wanted. He had used her, Ryan thought. She'd had experience working financial frauds in Minneapolis, and she had suggested to the sergeant that she could help the DA's investigation into Broderick Kane's allegations against David. She had advised the DA against pursuing the matter. Allegations, the whole complaint was nothing but allegations. One accounting firm contradicting another. Not worthy of the taxpayers' money. She had wanted to get close to David, that was all. She had met with Broderick Kane and suggested he settle the matter. And by then, David's wife had stepped forward with the money to buy out Kane. Case settled amicably.

David had used her.

A sickening tightness took hold of her stomach. This was the man she had killed! And now her own life could be sucked into the sewer. She couldn't let that happen. David had been adamant about never e-mailing each other, never leaving a record, and she had adhered to his rules, believing he wanted to protect her and her career from any unpleasant publicity that could leak out should some snoopy campaign staffer or volunteer come across any e-mails between her and David. Now his concern was like a sick joke. David Mathews's only concern was for himself. Still, she had to be sure that David had kept the rules. She skimmed through the last messages, her muscles stiff with the possibility of finding herself.

“When you gonna knock off?” Ryan flinched. The voice was like a bullet out of nowhere, zinging past her ear. She had assumed she was alone in the detectives' area, fluorescent ceiling lights blazing over vacant cubicles, the faint sounds of nighttime Denver drifting past the windows.

“You said you were going home.” Ryan swiveled around and faced her partner who was leaning against the wall, gripping a foam cup in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. The odor of stale coffee invaded the cubicle.

“I figured you'd still be here, working the case.” He swung the bag over onto the desk. “Brought you a sandwich. You haven't eaten, right?”

She said that was right and thanked him, trying to swallow back the acid rising in her throat. The thought of food and sleep, anything normal, seemed impossible, something for other people. Normal people. She could scarcely believe such ordinary things were ever part of her life. Still, she was grateful for the way Martin looked after her. Even if a thin thread linking her to David Mathews should turn up, Martin would fight with the last bit of his strength to protect her.

“Forensics report just came in on the murder weapon. The lab techs dug two bullets out of the wall, and the autopsy turned up the third 9mm.” He worked at his coffee a moment, then gave a half nod toward the computer. “Find anything?”

“I'm afraid not.” They had recovered the bullets, she was thinking. As soon as they found the Sig in the Evergreen house, the case would be closed.

“The techs might pull something Mathews tried to delete,” Martin said. “Scary when you think about it. Nothing ever truly deleted. Follows you around like a bad odor.” Ryan flinched; she felt as if he had hurled a rock at her. What he said only confirmed why she'd had to check the computer first. She had to be prepared.

“Why not call it a day and let the techs take over tomorrow? You're taking this way too personally.”

“It's an important case, Martin.” God, what had he meant by that? “What about the officers who canvassed the neighbors? Anybody remember anything?” The shadowy image of the woman on the sidewalk flared in front of her again, as if the woman were still watching her. A neighbor out walking her dog? Ryan hadn't noticed a dog, but that didn't mean there hadn't been one nosing in the bushes. Someone who needed to get away from the house for a while, needed a breath of fresh air, a cooling off time? Any number of scenarios could send a woman fleeing her home. God knows, she had investigated enough domestic abuse cases to compile a list of scenarios as long as her arm, but usually the police were called because the woman hadn't fled.

Martin was shaking his head. “They talked to every neighbor within three blocks. Nada.”

Ryan glimpsed the hesitation in Martin's manner, as if he had stumbled onto something he hadn't realized was there. “What?” she said.

“The next door neighbors, the Kramers. They made the 911 call when the housekeeper showed up, ranting about her boss being dead. They say they've told us everything they know. Any further contact will be nothing but harassment and intimation by persons in authority, or some such legal gobbledygook. They've lawyered up. We want to talk to them again, we gotta call the lawyer.”

“Why would they do that if they don't have anything to hide?” Ryan said. Carol Kramer, the woman on the sidewalk? Which meant that this morning, when Ryan had talked to her, the woman could have recognized her and was too frightened to say anything. Ryan turned away and clapped a hand over the smile she could feel pulling at her lips. Ironic. She had more power as a murderer than as a police detective; but combined, she was invincible.