The Witness

Chapter Seventeen

CONNOR RELAXED against the bench of the restaurant booth and considered the odds that pancakes might solve the odd mismatch of sensations in his stomach that had lingered for days. He felt like something the dog had brought in dead.

“You can’t keep your eyes open.”

He smiled at Marie or at least hoped that was what his expression came out looking like. “Not fully,” Connor agreed. “But it’s not dimmed my perceptive abilities. You look as lovely as ever.”

She smiled but pushed the coffee toward him. “Drink it; they refill for free.”

“Who’s keeping the tabloid reporters at bay? We’ve been sitting here five minutes with relative normalcy.”

“A back-corner booth with Bryce at the next table over-it works most of the time. What are you thinking about trying?”

“Pancakes.” It seemed to be one of the few words he could read. He was so tired he thought his eyes were going to swell shut just to get some darkness.

Marie signaled a waitress and they placed their orders.

“You should have canceled and gone to bed.”

“I’m not canceling and standing you up more than three times in a row short of someone shooting me and there being a tube stuffed down my throat when I wake up.” He put both hands around the coffee cup and thought the double vision might be one eye going to sleep on him.

“How long has it been since you really slept?”

He smiled. “Sixty hours, but who is counting? I’m not driving myself home; a patrol guy is taking pity on me. I think the bed is still at the old apartment, but everything else got moved to the new one. At this point I don’t care. I’ll sleep on the floor somewhere.”

“Where’s Marsh?”

“Comatose in his own bed, I expect,” Connor replied, pleased the coffee actually tasted like coffee to his spinning senses. “Let’s not talk about my work-you’ll see it all in the paper anyway. Let’s talk about you and me going out somewhere for dinner.”

Marie smiled. “We’ll see if you can manage breakfast at four in the afternoon first. You really should have just gone home, Connor.”

He looked at her over the coffee cup and let his smile fade. His gaze held hers, and he let the last day show in his eyes, just a bit, never more than a bit, and told her the truth. “I wanted a better image in my mind to drift to sleep on.”

She blinked, gave a very slight nod, and then smiled at him. “Want me to sing you a bedtime song over the phone so you can listen to me too?”

He chuckled but thought he might push her to do exactly that later on. “It’s been a brutal couple days.”

She reached over and touched his hand, for her, quite a shift to be the one reaching out first, and it felt nice as her hand settled firmly on his. “Eat, sleep. Tomorrow the world will still be insanely crazy, but you’ll be back standing upright to face it.”

“Exactly.” He nodded at the waitress’s offer of more coffee. “I left the chief at the office where he planned to shut the door on his office and catnap on the couch, and Marsh at home, threatening the world at large if anyone bothered him in the next eight hours. I figured half an hour for food and twelve hours of comatose time and I might figure out what day of the week it is again.”

He yawned and it cracked his jaw. “Talk to me, Marie, and I don’t care about what. I’m just going to sit here and wilt some more while I eat and enjoy looking at you.”

She dumped a packet of sugar in her coffee, and he would put her on a full blush starting, but she gamely nodded and took up the challenge. “The paintings came in as magnificent as I expected. I think Tracey is going to take the lake painting as a gift for Marsh as she loved it on sight. And I think I might give Daniel that Gibson you knew he would like so I can make room for this really gorgeous study in the color red. It’s cubes and squares and firework bursts, and it reaches out and grabs you from across the gallery.”

Connor listened and smiled and thought about having a future with her one day, the idea growing stronger with every moment together. She was a hole filler in his life, a hole that had needed to be filled for a very long time.

“What?” She paused her chatting to smile at him, the blush growing.

“Our breakfast is here.”

“That was not what you were thinking.”

“I know.” He shifted aside his coffee and ice-water glass to accept the plate, suddenly feeling a smidgen more awake. “Eat.”

“Connor.”

He just smiled at her. “You want to share those strawberries? They look good.”

She’d ordered a cheeseburger and a fruit bowl. She set the bowl between them. “You’re going to tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Not right now I’m not.” He smiled at her, because she amused him and pleased him and he liked looking at her over breakfast foods. “I told the patrol guy to pick me up in forty minutes. Tell the rest of the stuff about the paintings.”

She unfolded her napkin. “Do you like art?”

“I will by the time you tell me all the reasons you love it.” He picked up his coffee and smiled at her. “Going to keep the Denart?”

“It’s already been moved upstairs to the apartment,” she admitted.

“I knew it. What else was in the recent shipment?”

She talked and he ate and he thought about maybe next week… that would be a good time to talk with Marsh about the two of them starting to double-date. Nothing too hard to sort out, just two sisters, two partners, figuring out how to shove the job aside for long enough to do some courting in proper fashion.

Marsh held out the second coffee mug he carried and stepped back to let Connor enter his home Sunday afternoon. “You don’t look that much more awake than when I left you yesterday. You were supposed to sleep, remember?”

“I went to share a mid-afternoon breakfast with Marie first,” Connor admitted. “But the rest of the time I was flat and out of it. Not that I wouldn’t have taken another week of sleep if it were offered.”

Marsh smiled, not entirely surprised at the answer. He walked back to the dining-room table. “Have you seen the newspapers?”

“No.”

“Sykes is doing a magnificent job. He’s got the text of the first note and a really great photo of the blood running down the living-room wall at Nolan’s place.”

“You’re kidding.”

Marsh handed over the paper.

“How the…?” Connor turned a darker shade of red as he got angry, and Marsh watched him push away the reaction and then look up, his gaze hard. “Who’s the leak?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Marsh replied, impressed with the control his partner was learning. When he had seen the photo, he’d slammed down a mug on his counter so hard he’d split it into three pieces. “To get the photo-that says someone in the chain of evidence in the lab. A negative gets exposed to make two prints instead of one, that kind of thing.”

“Sykes doesn’t have the second message?”

“Not yet. But you’ll figure he’s working everyone who might have stepped into that living room and been there to see it. I figure the building super is already leaking the full details for a wad of cash. From the phone call to 911 to the first cop securing that apartment door-I’d make it five minutes for the super and at least one or two nosy neighbors to have seen more than we would like.”

“So much for burying the information. Reverse tactics and play cold case now? Push the information we have out to the press and see who comes back to nibble at it?”

“Granger can figure that out. It’s going to be Monday before forensics gives up enough to run with. I’m taking the rest of today, such as it is, off.”

“No disagreement here. Someone is pulling phone records, bank records for us?”

“Yes.”

“Monday is early enough then. Granger has us on for the 6 a.m. update again?”

“Seven, he said. I think he wants some sleep too.”

“At least no one else on the list of Henry’s employees turned up dead. I’m hoping the next note is simply a nice simple fax to Daniel’s office.”

Connor set down the paper, having skimmed the article. “I came by to see if you want to maybe do a double date two weeks from Tuesday night, take the sisters out to a concert. I’ve got tickets for the nine o’clock show at the fairgrounds. It’s a big enough crowd we might be able to blend in and enjoy some privacy such as there is in a crowd of five thousand.”

Marsh reached for his wallet. “I’ll pick up half.”

Connor waved it away. “You can buy the dinner. Want me to ask them both?”

“If Marie says yes, Tracey is going to jump on the offer. She’s been dropping hints for the last week about you two.”

“It’s just a date.” But Connor smiled as he said it, and Marsh could read the way the wind blew. “Marie’s a nice lady,” he observed. “Calm and private and contained in her world. It’s a nice world to slip into, I’d be thinking.”

“I’ll learn to appreciate the art.” Connor finished the coffee. “You need a new coffeemaker or at least a new filter and grounds; this is awful.”

Marsh laughed. “Get going, Connor. I’d say you have a lady to see before she makes plans for her evening.”

His partner headed out with a nod, and Marsh let himself relax back into the chair and consider the changes. Connor dating was a good thing. Dating Marie… she wasn’t dating material; she was the marrying kind. He wasn’t so sure about that idea, for Connor had never even drifted that way before, but Marsh thought the idea would grow on him with time.

The coffee really was awful. Marsh dumped his out in the sink and risked pulling out the basket on the coffeemaker. He couldn’t remember when he’d dumped those grounds in there. He made a fresh pot of coffee and pulled out the remains of a deli sandwich to eat as he worked. The pad of paper and the pens were sitting there on the table waiting for the inspiration of what to write, but so far they were blank. Marsh sat at the table and went back to contemplating the crime scenes in his mind’s eye and thinking about what still bugged him about what he had seen. He picked up his pen and doodled.

When the coffee was done, he got up and poured himself a full mug. Better, he thought, appreciating the difference. He slipped a lid on the mug and he picked up his phone. “Chief, you got a minute?” Marsh had taken a chance and called him at home. “I’ve got an idea I want to run past you.” He picked up the newspaper and took it with him as he headed to his car, the photo circled in a bright red pen.

Luke found the afternoon unexpectedly warm and appreciated again the fact he’d built the backyard deck as a place he could linger on the sunny winter days. “Sam, you were the one running background checks for Henry on the staff he hired. Was there anything at all in the background check of Philip Rich that suggested trouble?”

Luke leaned back against the railing of the deck and studied his friend, trying to pull anything of use out of the guy’s memory without having to come right out and explain Marsh’s idea. It was far-fetched but still the kind of thing he paid his officers to sense, and Marsh was convinced he had something. Luke was too.

Sam relaxed in the deck chair he’d chosen. “Philip was not a guy you want to spend time with-an hour with him reminded me of a root canal-but he was precise at his job, competent to make money recommendations, and he knew the proper way to keep a person’s finances away from an IRS audit. If he got paid a little too much and reported more hours worked when he had some lower-paid staffer actually doing the work-it wasn’t so far across the line that Henry bothered to care about it.”

“The bookkeeper and the chauffeur have one thing in common; they both knew Henry Benton,” Luke offered. “And Henry was definitely keeping a couple secrets for the last three decades. The bookkeeper knew something; the chauffeur saw something-and someone out there put two and two together and figured out Henry’s secret.”

“If it’s not the fact he had two daughters, then what? Another affair? Henry is dead-he’s not going to care,” Sam noted.

“Daniel would; the sisters would.”

“But that kind of thing is a blackmail fax, not two murders. Why shut up two retired guys who apparently didn’t know they knew something? Philip at least would have been hitting Daniel for a monetary fee if there was something that smelled not quite right in Henry’s affairs and should be best left swept under the rug. He’d stay silent for a price, but he was the kind of guy who would want to be paid for his silence.”

“Nothing like that was going down,” Luke replied.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “You mind if I make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead.”

“You and your guys, you’re seeing this nice and logical and from the crime scenes working your way out. Why don’t you just step back a minute and see the big picture? It looks different from where I’m sitting.”

Luke sensed another turn coming his way. “I’m listening.”

“Amy’s shooter out of New York disappeared a week ago; it took at least four days before the cops up there noticed the old man was not around, as in gone and three more for them to conclude he wasn’t sleeping off a hangover somewhere in their own backyard. That’s what I came over to tell you this fine evening. And he currently drives an old tan Lincoln.”

Luke slapped the railing of the deck as the pieces of information fit together. “‘Pay me to go away’-he’s hunting down a list of people who get him ever tighter and closer to Daniel and the sisters.”

“Seems like a reasonable fact to me. These two gents-they were easy targets for a guy like that, easy to approach, simple to kill. The family secret is staring you in the face, Luke. Amy is alive. That’s the family secret. The fact these two guys were chosen as the place to leave the messages-six degrees of separation is all. They were convenient ways to get Daniel’s and the sisters’ attention. This guy couldn’t care less about Henry and his dalliances over the last decades and who else the guy might have been seeing-and yes, those ladies are definitely out there because a guy like Henry never changes his stripes, but they are just background noise to this. The chauffeur and the bookkeeper were chosen to simply get the attention of the man with the money. ‘Pay me to go away’-I’m guessing he’s got a figure around forty million in mind, given Richard Wise’s sense of interest payments.”

“Amy is the real target,” Luke said with rising dread; trouble had come and found the lady he cared a great deal about.

Sam nodded. “And if the New York shooter is here and doing the hunting, you can bet he’s not leaving without his personal problem solved. Amy had to have seen him that night, no matter what she says. He’ll have a personal reason to want her dead.”

“So do we work these two murders to find this guy?”

“There won’t be evidence to find, I’ll wager. He’s careful in his own overkilling style. And it served his purpose this time to do the extreme overkill with a knife rather than a gun. He’s making sure the press are hungry for every detail of the cases and doing the digging for him. One of those reporters will one day get a hint that Amy may not be dead, and this will burst open on you. The shooter may even plant that rumor to help have dozens of eager reporters searching for where Amy is hiding out.”

“This doesn’t ever get easier, does it? Big picture or small, I’ve still got the same problem. Amy to protect, two murders to solve, and Richard Wise out there wanting to make trouble for this family until the day he gets what he wants.”

“I think the money will always be his scorecard of who is winning and who is losing, but the end of this-he’ll want Amy dead. And as long as there is someone willing to pick up that assignment there is going to be trouble.” Sam got to his feet. “You want me to talk to Jonathan? have a few more guys out watching Amy?”

He would love to build a brick wall around her, but he shook his head. “Not yet. Amy’s got the senses of a cornered alley cat-she knows when there is more than Caroline around the property. Don’t ask me how, but she’s pegged when Jonathan’s people were out there three out of four times now. The circle of people who know that location is small enough; I think we can keep it locked-down knowledge. For now I’ll just warn Caroline which guy we think has shown up in town. Put your focus on finding that car he’s driving and where the guy is staying. There has to be something being whispered on the streets that will help us find the guy.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Always glad to help the police,” Sam replied, smiling a bit too dryly for Luke to take him seriously. The man didn’t respect authority as much as he accepted the fact it existed. But he was the good kind of friend to have around, regardless.

“Don’t take too many chances,” Luke requested. “I like my friends living long enough to bug me.”

Sam laughed and disappeared out the backyard gate.

Luke sighed. Nothing about this case set well right now, from the thought of the New York shooter prowling around his town to the idea Marsh had brought him earlier in the evening. It didn’t particularly matter which theory was right; trouble was here. Figuring out how to stand in front of it was the challenge.

He’d go see Amy once dark fell-he owed her that.

Amy settled into the couch across from the blazing fire, holding a mug of hot chocolate between her hands and staying too calm for Luke’s tastes; he’d rather see fear than a quiet resolve that said Amy was deciding something he might not like.

“Do you have a sense of where this man might stay in town, if he has arrived?”

Luke shook his head and just watched her think.

“I’d like Caroline to see the scenes and the photographs of the victims,” Amy said. “You said her loyalties would be to me first, then you. I need a firsthand sense of what this guy did and how he did it. I’ll trust her perspective.”

“Everything but the photos,” Luke agreed. “Both guys were stabbed; it was vicious. I’d like her opinion on this guy’s behavior too, but the rawest stuff can be skipped. Marsh and Connor dealing with the images is enough.” Luke hesitated. “You’re surprised he used a knife.”

“The man I remember seeing occasionally around Greg, doing business with him, was one of the calmest, coldest guys I ever met. If you’re right that this was the man who shot Greg, then I’m not going to dispute it. I didn’t see who shot him that night. But the man I remember meeting briefly with Greg wouldn’t use a knife, not if the situation allowed him to use a gun.”

She sounded very certain of that conclusion, and Luke wasn’t going to dismiss that impression easily. But if it wasn’t the guy from New York who had done the crimes, they were after a freelance killer who struck twice in one night for a reason entirely of his own creation. “The family secret being the fact you are alive, the demand he be paid to go away-it makes sense given what you feared would occur.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to arrange more security out here? Do you want me to move you somewhere else farther away?”

“No. You were right. The harder I am to approach, the more my sisters become the easier targets. Daniel isn’t thinking of paying this guy, is he?”

Luke had hoped she wouldn’t ask that question. “Daniel cares a great deal about the three of you,” he replied carefully.

“You know you feed money to a madman, he eventually comes back for more. It won’t change anything about this situation for the better.”

“I’ve conveyed that too.”

Amy pushed a pillow behind her back, her attention shifting more into her thoughts than on the present. She finally sighed. “When do you think his next message arrives? How much he wants and where he wants it delivered?”

“I don’t know. He could be waiting for us to use the press to send him a message that we agree to his conditions. He could be just sitting back considering striking again to drive his point home. We’ve warned those we think might be at risk, improved their security, put more people on the streets in the vicinity of the gallery block.”

“Defense is hard.”

He nodded. “Offense is always the easier way to run a case. I’ve got feelers out on the street for where this guy might have landed. That car of his is a vulnerability we should be able to exploit.”

“It will have been dumped by now; it simply helped set his ID in your head. He’d need to do that if he’s trying to make sure you knew it was a message coming from Richard Wise without actually tipping his hand that it was Richard behind this. Who’s been to see Richard recently?”

“His lawyers, two from his family, and one guy you may remember, Lewis O’Dell.”

“Yeah, I remember O’Dell. He’d be the one holding the door for Richard Wise.”

“He’s still doing basically that, as best the New York cops can tell. Still loyal and probably the one carrying the messages from Richard out to the old crew.”

“For a price loyalty is not that hard to achieve. So what do you think happens next?”

“I need something from the forensics at the scenes to point us solidly at an imported talent being the killer, or I need to figure out what killer grew up in my own backyard. That’s the priority right now. And hopefully preventing the next message from arriving at the end of a knife.”

“Tell Daniel from me that he can’t pay; no matter the pressure of what is happening. Money is not going to solve this.”

“Is there anything in that oldest ledger that might help us put this suspected shooter behind bars? anything that would make another case against him if we can’t make this one stick?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m not opposed to turning in the last ledger, Luke. It will likely put Greg’s father behind bars, but I’ve accepted that fact. I just don’t think we need another front opening right now. There were two men on my trail before I arrived in this town, and there is no indication they have gone away either. I’m worried about them sitting out there too, watching my sisters, trying to trail them to locate me. Don’t focus on New York as the only threat.”

“Connor and Marsh aren’t going to let a tail stay on them when they come out this way. It drives your sisters up a wall to go all around the county before actually coming here, but it’s working. They’ll make sure it keeps working.”

“One slip and someone has this location.”

“I know.” He smiled. “I’ve gotten accustomed to seeing you comfortable and somewhere I can find you; I’m not going to let events change that if it’s something we can control. If you want Caroline to see the scenes, we’ll need to set something else up for a period of time while she’s gone.”

“Jonathan’s guy can babysit me for a few hours, and I promise to not duck out on him.”

“Good. Where is Caroline?”

Amy nodded to the window. “See that small hill beyond the fence? She spotted quail out there. You arrived and she headed out to take advantage of the window of time while you were the one babysitting me to watch them.”

“Somehow her impression of our relationship isn’t exactly how it tends to run, but I get your point.” He walked over to the window and followed Amy’s directions to study the land. “I never did figure out how Caroline survived in the city. She’s in her element when the land is open and the sky expanse is above her.”

“She enjoys the city too, but in a different way.” Amy got up from the couch to join him. “You look tired, Luke.”

“I am. The press has been intense as they look for facts. They think these killings are related to the will, Henry’s past, and your sisters’ new money.”

“I know. There’s some security in the fact they aren’t yet focused on the idea I might be alive. You’re keeping the press far from Marie and Tracey?”

“Yes.”

“They know they can’t try to come out for a while? that it’s best we stay apart for now?”

“Yes.” He reached out a hand to rub her arm, reassuring with a touch. “Your sisters need your phone number; it’s hard on them, not being able to talk with you.”

“Not yet.”

“You could call them when they are at Marsh’s place. We can arrange it so it’s a step removed from where people might normally be probing.”

“I’ll think about it; that’s the best I can offer. Phones worry me, Luke; too many conversations go farther than you hoped.” She forced a smile. “You’ll have a long day tomorrow. You’d best be getting home to get some sleep.”

“I should.” He considered her. “You want a hug?”

She slid into his arms. “I do.”

It felt good to hold her, to know that somewhere in this she was at least beginning to trust him. “I hate leaving you out here, way too far away for my tastes.”

“It’s going to end one day.”

It was the first time she sounded confident about that fact in her own mind. Luke noted the change and tightened his arms for a moment before stepping back. “I’m not kissing you today either; I’ll never get out of here if I do.”

She laughed. “True. I’m walking you to your car.”

He settled his arm across her shoulders. “I’d like that.”