Текст книги "Fangs Out"

Автор книги: David Freed

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Twenty-four

Rosario and I occupied a corner booth at La Jolla’s Su Casa, an unpretentious, windowless bunker of a restaurant renowned for its verde crab enchiladas and camarones al mojo de ajo—jumbo shrimp sautéed in garlic butter and white wine. I’d ordered my usual chile verde burrito, but after two baskets of homemade tortilla chips, salsa, and multiple refills of spicy pickled carrots, I was about ready to call it a night. Not Rosario. She was still sorting through events of the day, eyes gleaming, eager to ponder the jigsaw puzzle that her homicide investigation had become.

“You know what I’m wondering?” Rosario asked, sipping her second margarita.

“Tell me.”

“How big it’s gonna get.”

“Excuse me?”

“I meant this case.”

“The case. Right.”

Rosario licked the salt from her glass. “Why? What did you think I meant?”

“The case. Obviously.”

Her lips curled in a wry smile. She knew exactly what I meant.

I reached uncomfortably for another pickled carrot.

After hiking back down the trail and dropping me off at my Escalade, Rosario had driven home to change for dinner. I’d done the same, stopping off at the YMCA in La Mesa where I’d paid the ten-dollar day rate to shower and try to look presentable. Now here we were, me in a semi-clean polo shirt and Levis, and her wearing a floor-length, leopard print sundress with spaghetti straps that were made to be slowly untied. The look was decidedly un-detective-like.

“We ran the VIN,” she said. “The truck belonged to Sheen’s cousin, Charles Walter Lazarus. He’s a mechanical engineer. Used to work for Castle Robotics. Sold the vehicle to Sheen three months ago, after he got a job in D.C. Sheen also owns the MINI you went riding in, along with an Audi turbo and a ’65 Mustang. He never filed an ownership change on the truck.”

“Wanted to avoid paying state sales tax, probably.”

“It happens.”

Deputies, she said, had reached Charles Lazarus by phone earlier in the day at his home in suburban Maryland, where he’d just returned from a month-long business trip to Europe and Asia. His alibi, according to Rosario, was solid; Lazarus could account for his whereabouts literally minute-by-minute over the previous week, thus ruling him out as a suspect in the trashing of my airplane or in any recent San Diego County murders.

“So, you’re back to square one,” I said. “You don’t know who shot Sheen. And you don’t know who stabbed Janet Bollinger.”

Rosario sat back, pondering what I said. Her arms were draped across the top of the booth, affording me an excellent view of her impressive superstructure that I tried to ignore as I reached for another carrot. If this was a date, it was among the strangest I’d ever been on.

“I keep coming back to Walker,” she said. “He had ties to both Sheen and Bollinger. Plus, he keeps an airplane out at Montgomery Airport. I checked. He rents a hangar there. He would’ve had easy access to your airplane.”

She theorized that Walker had borrowed Sheen’s pickup and driven it to the airport that night.

“Trucks come and go at airports all the time,” Rosario said. “He figured a truck would draw less attention on the flight line than a car.”

“Walker paid me to fly down here and do some work for him. Why would he want to monkey with my engine?”

“No clue.” Rosario tapped some ice from her drink into her mouth and chewed it. “But I do know he would’ve had ample reason to want to shoot Sheen. Sheen was sleeping with his wife. Men have been killed for a lot less.”

Her dangly silver earrings sparkled seductively in the candlelight.

I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead. Hub Walker was the last man I wanted to suspect of anything.

We sat for awhile without speaking.

“It would help if we recover a bullet,” Rosario said finally. “At least a shell casing.”

“It’ll be a relatively small bullet,” I said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I heard it.”

“You heard Sheen get shot?”

“Pretty sure.”

Rosario was incredulous. “And I’m only hearing this now? I thought we…” She paused in mid-sentence as our grandmotherly waitress arrived with our meals.

“Muy caliente. Very hot. Please be careful.” She set two platters heaping with steaming Mexican food on the table. “Is there anything else I can get you? Another margarita for the lady? More club soda for the gentleman?”

“No gracias,” Rosario said.

“No, thanks.”

“Enjoy.”

Rosario watched me ladle an ulcer-inducing amount of salsa while ignoring her food.

“Did I hear you right? You say you heard Sheen get shot?”

“Single discharge, approximately 800 meters down range, approximately ten minutes after we parted company. Definitely sounded smaller than the .45 he was carrying. Nine-millimeter would be my guess.”

The burrito was excellent. I ate probably faster than I should have. It was impossible not to.

“For a flight instructor,” Rosario said, “you seem to know an awful lot about guns.”

“Like I said…”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re into TV.” She picked at her enchiladas, eyeing me suspiciously but also intrigued. “Ever used to watch Miami Vice back in the day?”

“Occasionally.”

“Best cop show ever.”

“I beg to differ. Andy Griffith was the best cop show ever.”

“Andy Griffith wasn’t a cop show,” Rosario said.

“Andy played a cop, did he not?”

“A little before my time but, yes, I seem to recall he did.”

“And do you concede that the word ‘show’ in the The Andy Griffith Show connotes that it was, in fact, a show?”

“I’ll concede that.”

“I rest my case.”

She smiled and watched me eat. “Unfortunately, I don’t have Andy Griffith. But I do have all five seasons of Miami Vice on DVD. You interested in maybe grabbing some ice cream at my place after this and checking out a little Crockett and Tubbs action?”

Airplanes rarely crash because of pilot error. They crash because of multiple pilot errors, small mistakes that become larger ones, until the only option left is to bend over and kiss your keester goodbye. The same can be said of monogamy. Drop your guard, surrender yourself to an extracurricular distraction, and before you know it, you’re grocery shopping for one and trolling the listings on Match.com. It was a mistake to say yes to Alicia Rosario’s invitation to dessert in the same way I knew it was wrong to have asked her out to dinner, but I did it anyway. Blame it on her sundress. I was dying to find out where she stashed her off-duty weapon.

* * *

She lit candles. We sat with our shoes off, on a buff-colored chenille sofa, in the living room of Rosario’s tastefully contemporary Pacific Beach townhouse, pounding down Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra while watching Miami Vice on a sixty-inch big screen. Armani-clad detectives Tubbs and Crockett were busting their humps trying to stop villainous arms dealer Bruce Willis (when Willis still had hair) from selling a shipment of stolen Stinger missiles.

The episode brought back fond memories of the time I flew into Zagreb with three other Alpha operators posing as Canadian arms dealers to meet with a former Croatian cabinet official who was offering to the highest bidder a batch of U.S.-made, Rockeye cluster bombs. The money exchange was to take place in the luxury suite of an über-stylish hotel built some eighty years earlier as a refuge for passengers from the Orient Express. Our orders were to take the Croat into custody and spirit him out of the country for criminal prosecution, but he had other plans. When he pulled a pistol and broke for the elevators, another go-to guy I’ll call “Barnes” snapped his neck like a chicken. We chucked the guy’s body out a sixth-floor window, left a conveniently pre-typed suicide note on his nightstand, and jetted home business class.

Good times.

I was thinking how fulfilling it felt, my mind drifting, when I realized that Bruce Willis was dead, Miami Vice was over, and Rosario was stroking my right thigh.

“Welcome back.” Her dark eyes gleamed. “Have a nice trip?”

She was exotic-looking and alluring, and I’d be lying if I said my neuronal impulses weren’t sparking with the kind of thinking that got Bill Clinton in big trouble.

“I’ve never been with a cop before,” I said.

“Then that’ll make two firsts tonight.”

She clicked off the TV, set my half-eaten bowl of ice cream on the coffee table, and softly pressed her lips to mine.

Time and reason quickly blurred in a frenzy of hungry mouths, groping hands, and clothing that seemed to shed itself. There was nothing romantic about it. It was foreplay in the same way Olympic wrestling is romantic. The stall warning horn inside my head was blaring and I didn’t care. My big head was on autopilot. And then, just like that, I came to my senses. Maybe it was the firmness of her touch, so different from Savannah’s, or the way Rosario’s skin felt under my own fingers – some nonverbal, subconscious something. All I knew was that I suddenly felt as if I had no business being there, on that couch, with Detective Alicia Rosario.

“I can’t, Alicia. I’m sorry.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

I stood, hiking my jeans back up, and re-buckled my belt.

She sat back, naked from the waist up, and stroked the back of her neck. Her breasts glistened in the candlelight. They belonged in an art gallery. I stooped onto one knee and tied my shoes.

“Was it something I said, or did?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m just dealing with some personal issues right now.”

She clutched a tasseled throw pillow to her chest.

“You mean ex issues.”

I didn’t respond.

Rosario sighed. “Story of my life,” she said.

“Let’s talk tomorrow, OK?”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

I knew it wasn’t fine. I stood, pulled on my shirt, and leaned down to kiss her good night. She raised her chin and offered me her cheek. I could taste the salt of her tears.

“Thanks for dessert.”

“Thanks for dinner.”

The street was quiet, the chill night air a tonic. I sat in my luxury SUV outside Rosario’s place for a long time with the windows down and thought about how far I’d come from nights in my not-so-distant past when I would’ve made any accommodation, told any lie, to maneuver someone like her between the sheets. Chalk it up to maturity? Declining testosterone? Who knows? It dawned on me as I drove away that I never did determine where she stashed her off-duty weapon. I wasn’t sure whether to feel proud of myself or disappointed.

It was too late to call Savannah and too early to turn in the Escalade. I’d do both come morning.

Mission Boulevard was dotted with budget motels, the kind with towels you can see through and walls so thin you can listen to the porn flicks the guests next door are renting. Tired as I was, I would’ve settled for a room in any one of them, but every vacancy sign was preceded by an illuminated neon “No.” I pulled into a sparsely occupied parking lot a block from the beach off of Reed Avenue, behind a sign that said, “The Beach Cottages, Day Week Month.” There was another, smaller sign below it that said, “Tenants Only. No Overnight Parking. Violators Will Be Towed.” I rolled up the windows, leaned my seat all the way back, and dozed off.

* * *

I was dreaming about machine guns when I was awakened by a loud banging sound. The sun was up. A pudgy San Diego police officer was looking down at me, rapping on the glass with his baton. I raised my seat back and rolled down the window.

“Top of the morning, Constable.”

He was Latino, young, squared away. “Did you not see that sign?”

“What sign would that be?”

“The one that says no overnight parking,” he said, pointing.

“I did.”

“And you parked here anyway?”

“It was late. There was no room at the inn. I just needed somewhere to catch a couple hours of rack time. I’m out of here right now, if that works for you.”

I’m pretty sure it had been awhile since he’d had to roust any scofflaws camped out in $70,000 SUVs.

“Just don’t let me catch you overnight here again.”

“Roger that.”

I watched him walk back to his patrol car.

It was 6:20 A.M. My phone rang. The man on the other end spoke with an impenetrable Indian accent. He said his name was “Khan,” then repeated it when I said, “Who?”

“Jahangir Khan. Your student.”

Not merely my student. My only student.

“Jahangir. Of course. How could I forget? What’s shaking, buddy?”

He apologized for calling so early, but said he was anxious to know when I would be returning to Rancho Bonita so he could resume his flight training.

“As you are no doubt remembering, Mr. Cordell, I am keenly interested in obtaining my official pilot’s license certificate because you see, sir, it is of the utmost interest to me that I—”

“—I get it, Jahangir,” I said, cutting him off before he got really cranked up. “I’ll be back this week. I’ll call you. We’ll get it going, OK?”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cordell, thank you. You are a most kind and generous man – and, might I say, a fine pilot. If I could one day be only half as skilled as you are, sir, I will regard myself as a lucky man. You know, in the city where I am from, very few people will ever know the joy of flight, being in the air, above the teeming masses, and I—”

It was way too early in the morning to be that enthusiastic about anything, including flying.

“You’re breaking up, Jahangir,” I said, running the phone up and down my beard. “I’ll call as soon as I get back. You take care now, buddy. Talk soon. Peace out.”

I rubbed my eyes, yawned and stretched. Almost immediately, my phone rang again.

“I didn’t have much to do last night after you left,” Alicia Rosario said, “so I started reading up on your friend, Hub Walker.” Her tone was all business, tinged with the bitterness of a good woman scorned. “He carried a German Luger pistol in Vietnam.”

“His father fought in World War I. He inherited the pistol from him.”

“The Luger’s not exactly standard U.S. military issue.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Walker, by chance, hasn’t shown you the pistol, has he?”

“What reason would he have had to do that?”

I waited for Rosario to respond. She sneezed.

“Gesundheit.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Must’ve caught a bug from somebody last night.”

I let the slap pass. “Why the interest in Walker’s Luger?”

“One of our forensics people recovered a spent 9-millimeter round last night from the Sheen homicide scene,” Rosario said. “I just got a call from the lab. They think they matched the make and model of the weapon.”

“Was it a Luger?”

“How’d you guess?”

Twenty-five

No county sheriff with career ambitions would ever rush right out and throw handcuffs on a Medal of Honor recipient suspected of homicide without careful tactical planning, especially in a military town like San Diego. You don’t simply cordon off the neighborhood, break out the bullhorn, and demand that the suspect surrender or else. You set about your work quietly and unobtrusively, hoping not to alert the breathless bobbleheads over at Action News, because if things go sour, you’ll never be elected sheriff again. Or anything else.

Detective Rosario’s plan, which her chain of command apparently had approved, was that I go in first. She was certain that Hub Walker trusted me by virtue of having saved his granddaughter from drowning, and by my having guided him to a safe landing on that fogged-in approach to the Rancho Bonita airport, when his airplane was running low on fuel. I could talk some sense into him, Rosario reasoned, and persuade him to surrender peaceably. He would have fifteen minutes to ponder his options before the SWAT team took over and took him by force. First, though, I’d have to sign a waiver absolving San Diego County of any liability in the event rounds start flying and I caught one or more of them.

Arresting a legitimate war hero for murder, discreetly or otherwise, had national news story written all over it. As soon as the story leaked, the military bashers would use it to perpetuate the myth that every veteran who sees combat comes home messed up in the head. Some do, but certainly not all. How much of Walker’s alleged bloodlust, if any, was influenced by his exploits in Vietnam forty years earlier was unknown. I’d once idolized the man. Now, I didn’t know what to think of him. The knot in my stomach was the size of a grenade.

“You do have health insurance, correct?” Rosario asked me as I waited in the backseat of her unmarked unit, two sun-splashed blocks up the street from Hub Walker’s house.

“I’m covered by the VA.”

“Good luck with that,” Rosario’s partner, Lawless, said derisively from the front passenger seat. He yawned, heavy-lidded, like he’d been up all night.

I asked if his wife had given birth yet.

“None of your business, Logan.”

“And on that cheery note…”

I opened the door and stepped out.

“Just be careful,” Rosario said like she meant it.

“Always.”

Two black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows hunkered on the opposite side of the street, facing in the direction of Hub and Crissy’s house – the SWAT team ready to roll in should my efforts to diffuse the situation prove unsuccessful.

Just don’t leave me hanging, boys.

* * *

The well-heeled residents of La Jolla tended their bug-resistant roses. They walked their little yapper dogs. They pulled out of their driveways in their fine, impeccably detailed Beemers and Benzes. No one said a word to me or looked my way as I strolled toward the home of their celebrated neighbor, a suspected murderer – no one except Major Kilgore, who watched me through parted blinds as I passed by his house, then crossed the street. I flashed him a peace sign. Kilgore just stared.

The brass knocker on the Walkers’ towering front door echoed like gunshots.

“Who is it?” Crissy called from inside after a few seconds.

“Logan.”

Locks were unlocked. The door cracked open. Crissy smiled at me as though relieved. She was wrapped in a Japanese print kimono, red, her hair up.

“You scared me. With all this stuff going on around here, you can’t be too careful, you know?”

I nodded.

Hub was at the airport, she said, doing some work on his airplane in preparation for a flight they were planning to take to Mexico the next day. She expected him back soon. Did I want to come in and wait?

I said I did.

Crissy made sure to double-latch the door behind me. “Coffee? I just made some.”

“Sure.”

I followed her into the kitchen, the scent of lilac soap wafted behind her.

“So, Mexico, huh?”

“Hub just wants to get away for a few days. Says things around here are getting too stressful. He’s right. Also, there’s a pediatric ophthalmologist I found online in La Paz. American guy. Very innovative. He’s supposed to know everything there is to know about Ryder’s eye condition. We’re taking her down there to see him.”

Mexico. Where investigators would have a tougher time finding Walker.

“Where’s Ryder?”

“Still sleeping,” Crissy said.

“Been a awhile since I was able to sleep this late.”

“You and me both. I can’t seem to sleep at all anymore.”

She poured me a cup.

“I was thinking over what you said about Ray,” Crissy said. “I don’t know if this matters but, for what it’s worth, I do know he’s extremely jealous of Greg Castle. Ray’s convinced he’s the real brains at Castle Robotics. Thinks he never gets any credit. If you ask me, he’d stop at nothing to get his hands on that company.”

“How do you know all that?”

“How do I know?” Crissy fumbled for a credible answer. “Ask anybody who knows him. They’ll tell you. Ray’s got a little bit of a nasty streak in him.”

I sipped my coffee.

“So, what was it you wanted to see Hub about?” Crissy said. “He told me he already paid you what we owed you.”

“I’d prefer to discuss that with him directly.”

“Sure, whatever.” She pulled the kimono tighter around her. “Well, like I said, he should be home any minute now, and I really do need to go get ready. I’ve got another big meeting at Animal Planet up in LA this afternoon.”

“Cat Communicator?”

“They’re making noises like they’re actually going to pick up the series,” Crissy said as she padded down a long hall. “Can you believe it?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I waited until I heard her bedroom door close, then called Rosario to tell her that Walker wasn’t home, but would be back soon. She put me on hold for nearly a minute.

“Change of plans,” she said when she came back on the line. “SWAT’ll move into position and take him down when he pulls into his driveway.”

“Works for me. Then I’m out of here.”

“Just do me a favor and stay put until we’ve got him, Logan. If he’s due back any minute and decides to resist, I don’t want you walking outside into the middle of a firefight.”

Getting shot before finishing one’s first cup of morning coffee is no way to start the day. I agreed to hang loose until Rosario called me back with the all-clear. Besides, I wanted the chance to confront Walker and ask him why he did what he did. Better, I figured, to pose that question after he was restrained.

“Just so you know,” I told Rosario, “there’s a little kid in here. Walker’s granddaughter.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. We’ll be extra careful.”

My phone beeped with another incoming call. I told Rosario I’d wait to hear from her and pushed the green button.

“You disconnected me yesterday,” Savannah said.

I had totally forgotten to call her back.

“There was nothing preventing you from calling me back, Savannah.”

“You mean other than phone etiquette? You cut me off, Logan. Etiquette requires that you should’ve called me back.”

“Duly noted. I’ll try not to let it happen again. Anything else?”

“I didn’t call to chew you out. I actually have some great news. I talked to the hospital. Mrs. Schmulowitz is being released today.”

Great news, indeed, but I wasn’t much in the chatting mood as I fretted about the pyrotechnics that I feared might ensue when Walker arrived home.

“I appreciate you letting me know, Savannah.”

“You sound distracted. I’ll let you go – oh, one thing before I forget. You know my client I told you about, the one who works at Animal Planet?”

“The panicky programming executive.”

“That’s a bit callous, Logan, don’t you think?”

“I have to go, Savannah.”

“OK, well, anyway, I mentioned that idea to him, the one Crissy said she was pitching, about the cat trainer. He said he’d never heard of it, or her.”

“Could be she’s dealing with some other panicky programming executive. There are probably lots of them in Hollywood.”

“My client says Animal Planet has no record of her ever having been in for any kind of meeting. The weird thing is, he really likes the idea. He wants her to come in and talk about it.”

I told Savannah I’d have to call her back.

The disquieting scenario that unfolded inside my brain made what had become a chronic headache only worse. Ray Sheen had been shot dead hours before Crissy Walker claimed to have left San Diego for an early morning meeting at Animal Planet in Los Angeles, and before her husband woke up. I wondered if the alleged meeting was intended as an alibi, to put time and distance between Crissy and Sheen’s murder. She certainly would’ve had her own motives to kill Sheen. He’d refused to terminate their affair, and had threatened to blackmail her when she tried to end it.

I gulped down the rest of the coffee, hoping the caffeine jolt would help clear my mind, and tried to focus.

Someone other than Sheen had to have driven his truck into the hills east of San Diego that night. Sheen, after all, was driving his MINI. Maybe he’d called Crissy after we crashed and asked her to come pick him up. Maybe she’d realized he was out in the boonies, where no one would see them, took matters into her own hands, along with her husband’s German pistol, and put an exclamation point on the end of her affair with Sheen – not to mention his life.

I still had more questions than answers. Who tampered with my airplane? Who stabbed Janet Bollinger? And why had Sheen come after me with such a vengeance?

On the counter to my left was a stainless steel toaster. On my right was a photo in a gilded frame of Hub and Ruth Walker embracing after her graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. Next to the picture was the butcher block carving set I’d admired four days earlier, when Walker had paid me the final money due me. There were slots for thirteen pieces of high-end, black-handled cutlery, eight of them matching steak knives. I noticed that two of the steak knives were missing. I slid one of the remaining knives out of the block.

The blade was about six inches long.

The edge was serrated.

I remembered the fatal stab wound Janet Bollinger had suffered to her abdomen. The edge was jagged. The kind of wound a serrated blade would’ve left.

Plenty of knives have serrated edges. The fact that two of them were missing from Crissy Walker’s carving set, I reminded myself, proved nothing. They were probably misplaced, somewhere in her kitchen. I began looking for them, if only for my own peace of mind.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I turned. Hub Walker was standing behind me. In his right hand was one of the missing knives.

“Crissy said you were out at the airport,” I said, closing a drawer and hoping my surprise didn’t register with him.

“I don’t know where she would’ve got that idea,” Hub said. “I’ve been out in the guesthouse all morning, trying to fix that drip you told me about.”

“With a steak knife?”

“Water supply line’s rusted out. Had to cut away some drywall to get at the angle stop. Just don’t tell my wife. She loves these knives. She should. They cost a small fortune.”

I stepped aside as Walker washed the knife off in the sink.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What are you doing here? I thought we were all settled up.”

“Where’s the other steak knife, Hub?”

He turned around and looked at me.

“There’s one knife missing from the set,” I said.

Walker toweled off the knife in his hand and fixed me with a frigid stare.

“What do you care where it is?”

Crissy strode into the kitchen just then. She was wearing black stiletto heels and an ivory pants suit trimmed at the neck and sleeves in mother of pearl. Slung over her left shoulder was a black crocodile tote easily worth more than everything I owned.

“There’s some of that leftover casserole Ryder likes,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “You can heat it up for dinner. I should be home around nine.”

Walker gestured to the carving set, but his focus remained intently on me.

“Mr. Logan wants to know where the other steak knife went off to.”

Crissy shut the refrigerator door.

“It’s probably in the dishwasher. Why?”

“It’s not,” I said. “Or any of your drawers. I checked.”

She set the water bottle down on the counter. Her eyes flashed fire.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Ray Sheen’s dead.”

Crissy gasped and covered her mouth.

“He was shot last night,” I said. “With Hub’s Luger.”

“That’s impossible,” Walker said. “My Luger’s in a locked box, in the back of my closet. I haven’t even looked at it since I got out of the Air Force.”

“You can tell it to the detectives. They’d like to talk to you both.”

“Why would they think I shot him?” Walker said, then turned and glowered at Crissy. “Just because he’s been having sex with my wife for years?”

She forced a laugh.

“Hub, you’re imagining things.”

“Stop, Crissy. Please. I’m not stupid.”

“You need to go to the doctor. You need help.”

“I read your goddamn emails!”

The blood drained from Crissy’s lovely face. “You did what?”

Walker fought back tears.

“Oh, Hub. I’m sorry. My God, I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It was just one of those things that got out of control. I never loved him. I love you. I tried to end it, but he wouldn’t. He threatened to tell you. You have to believe me. Please. I’m begging you.”

She reached out to him with both arms. He pushed her aside with the knife still in his hand, then turned to glare at me like I was Judas.

“The police sent you in here to flush me out, so I’d go peaceably, didn’t they?”

I said nothing.

He turned his back and stared silently out at the pool. “It’s crap. All of it. I don’t know who killed Ray Sheen, and I don’t know who killed Janet Bollinger. But it wasn’t me.”

He slid the knife back into the butcher block, leaving one slot still vacant. Then he turned and faced me once more, chest out, chin squared, like he was back in the Rose Garden of the White House, about to be presented the Medal of Honor all over again.

“Let’s go,” Hub Walker said. “I got nothing to hide.”

His beautiful wife gazed at him admiringly for a long moment with her eyes pooling. Then she reached into her crocodile shoulder bag, brought out a 9-millimeter German Luger pistol, and leveled it at me.

Crissy Walker, as it turned out, had plenty to hide.