Storm Track

Dwight shrugged. “Always a chance. He seemed pretty shook when I told him last night. He was at the ball field when you and I got there and his car was in front of us all the way back to Cotton Grove. Of course, he could have got home, found something that told him where she really was, and roared back to Dobbs by ten-thirty. We’ll have to wait for the ME’s report. One good thing though—they ought to be able to pinpoint the time of death pretty close.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. The motel’s shorthanded right now since school started, so Tom and Marie were both working the weekend. He had a bowl of peanuts on the registration counter and she ate a few when she checked in. Tom thinks that was around four-thirty, quarter to five.”

He didn’t have to draw me a picture. Depending on how far along digestion was, the ME should be able to bracket the time of death rather narrowly.

“Tom had never met her, didn’t know who she was and he didn’t think twice when she paid cash in advance and gave him a phony name. Benton.”

“Her maiden name,” I said.

“Now how you know that?”

“She was an LPN at the hospital. Amy and Will got here after you left yesterday.”

That was enough. He knows Amy, knows where she works, knows how she picks up information and stores it like a squirrel laying up pecans for winter.

“Amy says she played around.”

“Any names?”

“Not recent ones,” I hedged as I nibbled more blueberries.

“Her sister swears she’d hung up her spurs and was walking the straight and narrow these days,” said Dwight, “but you wouldn’t know it from the way that room looked.”

He took another swallow of coffee. “Anyhow, Tom O’Day says she knew exactly where she wanted to be. Asked for a ground-floor room in back, said she liked it quiet and didn’t want stairs. It was the last non-smoking room left on that side. According to the switchboard records, she made only one outgoing call on her room phone after she checked in. Around five.”

“To her husband. I was sitting in front of Jason when he talked to her.”

“And the switchboard says she received an incoming call about ten minutes after that, someone who asked if Lynn Benton had checked in yet.”

“Male?”

“The operator thinks so, but can’t swear to it. She also says somebody called around three o’clock asking the same thing and that it could’ve been the same person.”

“Impatient lover just waiting to find out what room she was in before rushing over?”

“Sounds like it, since he knew what name she was using.”

“Nobody saw her at the drink machine? Filling her ice bucket? Letting strange men into her room?”

“If they did, they’re not saying.”

“I guess you’re pretty sure it was a man?”

“Dressed like that? Or rather, undressed like that? And she was pretty well-built. Taller than you. Probably stronger, too. Nurses do a lot of lifting and pulling. It would’ve taken somebody just as strong.”

“He could’ve caught her off-guard,” I said, picturing the scene. “He could’ve been undressing her, took off one of her stockings. Maybe trailed it along her neck.”

My mind flinched from the rest of the scenario. Lynn Bullock had thought he was making love to her. Instead—

Across the table from me, Dwight pulled a fig apart to reveal the soft fleshy interior and I wondered what he was thinking as he ate it. Ever look closely at a fig? It’s male on the outside, explicitly female on the inside. Erotic as hell, but I doubt if Dwight notices.

“We bagged her hands,” he said, “but if the killer came up from behind with that stocking and threw her down face-first, she may not’ve had time to do more than claw at the thing that was choking her. If that’s the case, we’ll only find her own DNA under her nails.”

“Poor Jason Bullock.” I sighed and got up to fetch the coffeepot for refills.

When I came back from the kitchen, Dwight was holding a couple of plastic evidence bags in such a way that his big hands concealed the contents.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“These really do stay confidential,” he warned me. “Ever see this before?”

Inside the first plastic bag was the top part of a gold-toned tie tack. Less than half an inch wide, it was shaped like a tiny American flag.

“Ambrose Daughtridge wears tie tacks,” I said. “And so does Millard King, but I never paid much attention to them.”

“What about this, then? We found it under the victim’s body. For some reason, it makes me think of you. Why?”

It was a silver ballpoint pen.

“Because I had one just like it on my desk at the law firm,” I said promptly. “You must have seen it there. John