The Perfect Suspect (6 page)

The voice on the other end dissolved into a shaky laughter that shifted toward hysteria, then went quiet. “They'll never believe me. Why do you think I'm calling a reporter? You've been writing about David. I figured I could trust you. Maybe I figured wrong.”

“Wait a minute,” Catherine said, hearing the urgency in her own voice, the fear that the woman would end the call. “Tell me what you saw.”

“The killer coming out of David's house, right after I heard the gunshots.” A tenseness, rippled with fear, in the woman's voice. “Standing there on the porch, under the light. I got a clear view of her face.”

“Her? You believe the killer is a woman?” Sydney Mathews, Catherine was thinking. Whoever was on the line had seen Sydney Mathews come out of the house. “Why can't you go to the police?”

The laughter bubbled again, followed by the sound of breathing and the nearly imperceptible sound of fear, as if the woman had clamped a fist to her mouth and was trying to catch her breath around the edges. “They'll never believe me. They'll say I'm lying. They'll want to know what I was doing there. They'll suspect that I killed David. They'll arrest me . . .”

“They won't believe you? I don't understand,” Catherine said again, but she was beginning to understand. Sydney Mathews was well-known in the community; she would have powerful friends.

“They'll never take my word against hers. She's one of them, don't you get it? She's a cop.”

Catherine took a moment, struggling to make a space for this new idea to emerge around the scenario she had already mapped out. “You're telling me that you saw a policewoman coming out of Mathews's house?”

“She's the blonde I saw on TV when they were bringing out his body. She was in the doorway. She wasn't in any uniform. I figure she's one of the detectives.”

Catherine realized she must have sat down, because the edge of the chair cut into her thighs. The rustle of activity, the clicking keys and the ringing phones, the bobbing heads in the cubicles faded into a background that blurred around the image of Detective Ryan Beckman, the blond woman she had seen in the doorway. The police would never believe it. An anonymous caller claiming to have seen a homicide detective at the scene of a murder! And yet, something in the caller's voice, something that ranged between terror and insistence, had the sound of truth. “Who are you?” she said. “I can't do anything unless I know your name.”

“No names. I told you what I saw. You take it from here.”

“Listen,” Catherine began, but the line had gone dead. A hollow space had opened between her and whoever had been on the other end.

5

“She refuses to give her name? What does that tell us?” Marjorie sat sideways at the desk, eyes on the computer screen to her right. She continued typing as Catherine perched on a side chair. An anonymous caller in the newspaper business was about as valuable as a paper clip on the street. Nobody would stoop to pick it up. No-name calls came with every big story, breathless voices claiming they were part of the heist, witnessed the robbery, helped plan the murder, slept with the killer. It was the investigative reporter's job to sort through the fantastic claims, the inherent contradictions and decide whether the story deserved followup. Most did not, but by the time a reporter worked that out, fifteen or twenty minutes had been stolen from the real story and the actual leads.

“I called Jason. He's still at police headquarters,” Catherine said. “He confirmed that Ryan Beckman is the lead detective on the case. She's been with the department three years. Before that, she spent eleven years with the Minneapolis PD. She's a good detective. Everybody on the force seems to like her okay. It probably helps that she's beautiful.” She shrugged. “The caller could hardly go to the police and ID somebody like that.” And yet, the voice on the line had been different from the usual anonymous calls. There had been the fear, tenacity and certainty ringing with truth. As implausible as the story might seem, Catherine could feel the truth of it in the pit of her stomach, like a physical object, sharp and real.
Listen to your life.
She could almost hear Dulcie Oldman's voice in her head.
Listen to your own sense of what is true and real.
So much of her Arapaho heritage to learn, Catherine thought. A whole different way of looking at the world.

She said, “The police would dismiss the caller as a crank.”

“What makes you think she isn't?” Marjorie stabbed a key hard, swung around and locked eyes with Catherine.

“I heard the truth in her voice.” It was all Catherine could do to keep from jumping up, circling the office and pounding the desk. “She called me because she has nowhere else to go. Look, Marjorie. If she saw Detective Beckman at Mathews's house, it's possible the detective also saw her. She's scared. She knows her life could be in danger. We're her only hope.”

Marjorie had a face like granite. Hardly the flicker of a shadow in her expression. Beneath the thick eyebrows her eyes were deep and motionless, perfect camouflage to whatever thoughts moved inside her head. It was a long moment before she stretched out an arm, picked up the phone and said, “Tell Jason I want to see him the minute he gets in.”

She turned back to Catherine and drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk. “The story sounds preposterous. There could be a dozen reasons someone wants to implicate a police detective. How about this scenario? Detective Beckman arrested the caller for prostitution, the caller saw the detective on TV and decided it was payback time. Here's another: The caller is a police officer, pounding the sidewalks, and along comes a beautiful woman from another city who gets promoted without paying her dues in Denver and rockets into the homicide squad. Maybe the caller wants to take her down. Or let's say, two women, both in love with David Mathews—quite an attractive guy from his pictures—and one decides to take revenge on her rival.”

Catherine was on her feet, patrolling the carpet, new possibilities jumping in her mind. “You're saying that Detective Beckman and Mathews might have been having an affair?” She stopped moving, as if her feet had stumbled into wet concrete. “My God,” she said. “Sydney Mathews could be the caller!” That possibility led back, like a rope uncurling itself, to Catherine's initial suspicion that Sydney Mathews might be involved in her husband's murder. But the voice on the phone was unfamiliar, and Catherine had interviewed Sydney, spoken personally with her. Still, Sydney could have disguised her voice.

“Suppose Mathews's wife killed him and is trying to throw suspicion onto Detective Beckman,” she said.

“Suspicion on Detective Beckman?” Jason must have walked through the door behind her, but she hadn't heard him. She spun as he nudged the door shut with his boot. Then he plopped down on the side chair beneath the wall of plaques with his name in black, bold type and framed newspaper photos of his grinning face. “What're you talking about? What's up?”

“Tell us about Detective Beckman,” Marjorie said.

“Like what? Is she a murderer?” He let out a loud guffaw. “Come on.”

Catherine dropped onto her own chair. “I got a call from a woman who said she saw Detective Beckman on Mathews's porch right after he was shot.”

“Let me guess. A caller who refused to give her name.” Jason gave a massive shrug that sent his shoulder muscles rippling through the fabric of his blue shirt. “You know how many so-called witnesses contact the police department every day? Too many, I can tell you. A case like Mathews, they've probably already collected a dozen useless tips. Your caller probably called them, and they dismissed her as a crackpot, so she called here. Hopes to send us chasing our tails over some crazy fantasy.”

“What kind of detective is she?” Marjorie said.

“Moot question, from what I hear. Beckman had taken a few days off and was in Breckenridge when Mathews was shot. She got called in to handle the investigation . . .” Catherine started to interrupt, and he lifted one hand. “Okay. Okay. Breckenridge is only a couple hours away. From what I hear, she's got a pretty good clearance rate, okay reputation. Professional, far as I know. Plus, she's a babe, in case you didn't notice.” There was something lazy and settled in the way he gazed around the office out of half-closed eyes. “Isn't an officer at headquarters who wouldn't like to get to know her better, you know what I mean. But she keeps to herself. Doesn't mix business and pleasure, looking out for her career. The guys respect that.”

“Was she having an affair with Mathews?”

“Mathews?” Jason's mouth hung open a moment. “You tell me,” he said, stabbing a finger at Catherine.

“I don't know,” Catherine said. This was the big gap she had never been able to close in David Mathews's life. The rumors that trickled around him like water, then dried up and disappeared the moment she tried to track them. Mathews, a ladies' man, and yet, until recently, Sydney Mathews had stayed by his side. Campaign stops, formal dinners, speeches, shaking hands and munching on hamburgers in a dozen rural communities, and Sydney right beside him, smiling, patting him on the back. She had stood on the top step of the capitol last January, flakes of snow blowing around her, a smile frozen on her face. But it wasn't Sydney who had found her husband's body; she hadn't been home last night. It was possible she had spent the night at their home in Evergreen, the hideout, Mathews had called it in an interview a few weeks ago. “When I need to get away from the madness, I go there,” he'd said. Catherine could still see the fleeting, wistful look in his expression. “Recharge my batteries, you know what I mean?” She had nodded, and scratched the words in her notepad: even candidates need to get away.

“I assume Detective Beckman has a private life,” Jason said, getting to his feet. “That's how she keeps it: private.”

“What if we were to tell the police about the call?” Marjorie had a way of probing that was nothing more than looking for confirmation on decisions she had already made.

“It would go to Internal Affairs. They'd look at it, because they have to, and determine if there was any plausibility.”

“How hard would they look?” Catherine said.

“Like I told you.” Jason patted a few strands of hair over the bald place on top of his head. “Detective Beckman has a clean record. They'd look at the anonymous complaint, talk to her for two minutes, lose the complaint in a filing cabinet.”

“We can't go to the police.” Catherine glanced over at Marjorie who sat immobile, hands tipied under her chin. Finally she gave a little nod and Catherine turned back to Jason, wanting to make sure the police reporter who liked to shoot the bull with his off duty officer pals understood the risks: “If there's the slightest possibility the caller has told the truth,” she said, “we can't alert Detective Beckman. Look at it from her point of view. If she is guilty, she could have seen the witness outside the house. If she learns that she has been ID'd, she'll use every resource she can muster to find the witness. If Detective Beckman has killed once, she'll kill again.”

Catherine sank back onto the chair. “The caller figured that out,” she said, looking past Jason to Marjorie, still leaning onto her tipied hands. The caller's words rang in her mind.
I know the killer
. “I heard the terror in her voice” she said. “Raw, naked terror.”

Jason puffed out his cheeks and blew a stream of air. “What does she expect from us? We're not in charge of the investigation. We're not the police.”

“She expects us to run down the truth,” Catherine said.

“Right! Without any help from her. Leave me out of this,” Jason said, lifting his voice an octave. “Go after the bad detective killer, if that's the way you want to waste your time.”

Catherine dug her fingernails into her palms. She stayed quiet a couple of seconds before she trusted herself to say, “It's not a scam, Jason. You would know if you had heard her voice.”

“Any other thoughts?” Marjorie said, focusing her gaze on the police reporter.

“I'd say let it go. If she's as scared as Catherine says, she'll probably call back. Try to get her name. Then we can go to the police. Let them sort it out. It's their investigation, and I sure don't want any part of withholding information or impeding an investigation. No name, forget it. We're up the old creek without the old paddle.”

“So,” Marjorie said, drawing out the long, soft sound. “We wait and hope she calls back.”

“We could wait until she's dead,” Catherine said. “She's assuming we'll investigate her story. We would be waiting each other out. In the meantime, Detective Beckman could be looking for the witness. And if she finds her . . .”

“Okay. Okay.” Marjorie threw both hands into the air, as if someone had just pulled a gun. “How do you imagine you can find this anonymous caller?”

“She could be a neighbor,” Catherine said. “Out walking her dog.” The caller hadn't mentioned a dog, she was thinking. “She could have been on her way to Mathews's house. Maybe she's a campaign worker, a friend.”

“A friend!” Jason let out a little snicker.

“I have to find out if she just happened to be outside or if she was on her way to visit David Mathews.”

“Okay,” Marjorie said. “Take some time and see what you can run down. A couple of days, no more. Gubernatorial candidate murdered! It's the biggest story of the year. There will be a lot of sidebars and fillers. Who's going to take his place? How will the party regroup? What happens to the campaign and all those volunteers who expected a nice, cushy state job after their man got elected? You have enough to follow up on without getting sidetracked on what could be somebody's sick idea of a joke.”