neutralize the moment, he told her about Tracy’s autopsy.
“All the same,” he said, “Richards knows better than to give out information like that in an ongoing investigation, I don’t care who’s doing the asking. This is precisely why we don’t push the ME’s office to give us the written report right away.”
Next morning, Dwight found himself ramming home those same facts to Deputy Mayleen Richards, who stood before him contrite, apprehensive, and so humiliated that her face was a dull brick red from the hairline of her forehead all the way down her neck to her collar as he blasted her for last night’s indiscretion. “You know the first forty-eight hours are the most critical, and that the longer we can truthfully say we don’t have an official cause of death or any other findings, the better for developing leads. When it gets out that she was pregnant—and yeah, dammit, thanks to you, it’s probably all over the whole county by now—you think any man’s going to admit he even had a cup of coffee with her?”
“Sir, I don’t think any of our people will talk,” she said tremulously.
“You think not, huh? And what about their spouses or dates? You trusting enough to think they’re going to sit on something this juicy?”
“I— No, sir.”
Her eyes met his steadily. He’d give her points for that. And she didn’t make excuses or cry. More points.
“Okay, Richards. That’s it. Now get over to her computer and get me some names before the innards of that machine go missing, too.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m still on the case? You’re not going to bust me back to uniform?”
“If I was going to bust you over one screwup, you’d be sitting in a patrol car doing speed checks out on the bypass right now,” he told her. “Just don’t expect me to go this easy if you mess up again.”
“No, sir.”
Out in the squad room, Jack Jamison gave her a sympathetic look. “You okay?”
Her smile was radiant. “I’m fine.”
Raeford McLamb glanced up from his computer screen where he was checking pawnshop records for any of the items stolen in the past week’s break-ins and grinned at Jamison. “Getting married must be making him soft.”
“Oh, he took me to the woodshed, all right,” Richards assured them, “but he didn’t fire me.” She picked up a notepad from her desk and tucked it in the pocket of her black wool jacket. She never carried a purse if she could help it and all her jackets and slacks had as many pockets as a man’s suit. “Anybody wants me, I’ll be in the DA’s office.”
“While you’re there, ask them for her cell phone number,” said Jamison, turning back to the pile of paper in the box on his desk. “That wasn’t in the car either and I bet you a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts she had her boyfriend on speed dial. Oh, wait a minute. Never mind. Here’s her bill with the itemized calls.”
He pulled up a reverse directory on his computer screen and keyed in the first number. It was immediately identified as a daycare facility here in Dobbs.
Across the hall, Mike Castleman, with his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, rolled his chair over to the doorway and said, “Y’all seen Whitley this morning? DA’s office is on the phone. He’s supposed to testify on Thursday, but he hasn’t shown up for the briefing and Woodall’s pissed.”
When the others shook their heads, he spoke into the mouthpiece: “Sorry, ma’am, but nobody’s seen him today. Did you try his pager? . . . Aw, now, Miss Helen, I wasn’t implying you’re dumb. No, ma’am. Honest. I was just trying to be helpful.”
He was still using all his considerable charm to placate Woodall’s testy secretary as Richards headed upstairs to the DA’s offices on the far side of the courthouse.
Minutes later, Dwight Bryant emerged from his office and nodded approvingly as Jamison explained that he was going down the list of the most frequently called numbers on Tracy Johnson’s phone bill and trying to put a name to each of them.
“I don’t have this month’s bill, but I’ll put in a request for it.”
“Where’s Jones?” Dwight asked. Deputy Silas Lee Jones was old and lazy and had never been worth a damn so far as he’d ever heard, but the man would do to check out bystanders at the crash site and see if anyone had picked up Tracy’s Palm Pilot.
“Must be with Whitley,” Raeford McLamb said, cracking wise. “He’s missing, too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Julie Walsh as she watched Mayleen Richards’s fingers flash across the keys of Tracy’s computer. “Whenever she had to give me her password, she’d change it as soon as she got back to the office.”
“She told you her passwords?”
“Sure. She’d call and have me pull up a file or something, but the next time, it’d be a different code.”
“Like what?” asked Richards, knowing that most people don’t bother to get too complicated.
“It was all to do with her daughter and numbers. Last time, I think it was M-E-I-six-eight-ten. Another time, it was one-two-three-four-M-E-I.”
A deceptively fragile-looking young white woman, Julie Walsh was eager to help, but she had not worked there long. She had passed the bar exam last spring and only joined the DA’s staff the past summer. “Tracy sort of mentored me here, but we weren’t real close. I mean, we ate lunch together if we were both here at the courthouse, but she was older and what with the baby and all . . .”
Her voice trailed off. She tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear. Beneath her watchband, a tendril of tattooed flowers encircled her wrist so daintily that it was almost unnoticeable. On this chilly day, she wore brown corduroy gauchos, high-heeled brown leather boots, a man-styled white shirt, and a bright yellow zip-front sweater. There was a simple gold stud in one earlobe, a cluster of small gold bells cascaded from the other.
“Boyfriends?” asked Richards.
“Well, there’s an attorney over in Widdington that I’ve gone out with a time or two, but—”
“Not you. Her.”
