investigator.
Back outside, Officer Gavin waited at his unit with Sally Newcomb. He gave Ramona the microcassette containing Newcomb’s tape-recorded witness statement.
Ramona pocketed the cassette and asked Newcomb to stay with Officer Gavin until the detectives arrived and they could ask her about Jeannie Cooper’s personal life.
Newcomb’s expression turned somber. “Do you think she was murdered?”
“We have to look at all the possibilities.”
“I saw the marks on her face, but I just thought that Jeannie had mutilated herself again,” Newcomb said. “She always does that when she gets depressed. And besides, as far as a personal life goes she hasn’t had one since she started her own landscaping company in the spring.”
Ramona smiled. “That’s exactly the kind of information that could be very helpful to us.”
Radio traffic on her handheld told Ramona that the detectives and crime scene unit were five minutes out. She used the time to start questioning the residents in the other apartments. Two hours later, she had a homicide with no witnesses, no apparent motive, and no suspects. She huddled with her two detectives, Beatty and Olivas, while the MI and crime scene techs finished up inside the apartment.
“We could expand the canvass,” Beatty said, “but I don’t think it would do any good.”
“Agreed,” Ramona said, “although I think come morning we should talk to the business owners in the neighborhood to find out if they saw anyone hanging around in the late afternoon.”
“I’ll do it,” Olivas said, sounding dour, which was more his prevailing outlook on life than an attitude in need of adjustment.
“Okay.” Ramona handed Beatty a notebook she’d found in Cooper’s truck. “There’s a list of her clients and jobs in there. Make some calls and talk to the people she has been working for.”
Beatty, a thick-set, middle-aged man who suffered from serious allergies, sniffled and nodded. “Sally Newcomb told me who Cooper used to work for.” He consulted his notes. “His name is Daniel Peck. Owns a company called Milagro Landscaping. I found his home phone number and address in the telephone directory.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ramona said.
Beatty rattled off Peck’s phone number and address.
Ramona wrote them on her notepad. “Did Newcomb know if Cooper was seeing anyone six months to a year ago?”
Beatty put his finger to his nose and sniffled. “She doesn’t think there was anybody special, and she couldn’t give me any names of who Cooper had seen in the past. But then, I got the feeling from Newcomb that she may have been interested in reeling Cooper in for herself.”
“Interesting,” Ramona said. “Note that in your narrative, so we can follow up on it if need be.” She nodded toward the apartment. “This homicide has some wrinkles, but by the way the murder was committed, I don’t think jealousy or lust was the motive. The perp forced the pills down Cooper’s throat, which suggests he was angry at her for some reason.”
“Are you thinking the perp is male?” Beatty asked.
“The bruise marks on Cooper’s neck suggest that,” Ramona replied.
“For a female, Newcomb has large hands,” Beatty noted.
“I’m not ruling her out,” Ramona said. “The sloppy attempt made to mask the killing as a suicide tells me that the killer knew the victim. I’d like both of you to take another look inside the apartment. Find me something that will link the victim to a suspect—a romantic entanglement, an illicit relationship, a conflict with a neighbor, former colleague, or ex-lover—whatever. You know the routine.”
“Maybe we’ll find some love letters or a diary containing revealing and damaging tidbits,” Olivas said as he started toward the apartment.
“You really think so?” Beatty asked with sarcastic enthusiasm as he caught up with his partner.
“Nah,” Olivas grumbled. “Nothing is that easy.”
Pino flipped open her cell phone, dialed Daniel Peck’s number, and got his answering machine. She left a message, went to her unit, and drove to Peck’s residence, a post-World War Two pueblo-style house in the Casa Solana neighborhood, which had been the site of a Japanese-American internment camp during the war.
Lights were on inside the house, so Ramona parked and rang the bell. A deeply tanned man in his early fifties with short-cut gray hair answered. He wore a short-sleeved V-neck undershirt that revealed a Marine Corps tattoo on his left forearm. He had pleasant features and crinkly blue eyes.
Ramona flashed her shield and ID. “Daniel Peck?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Lieutenant Pino and I need to ask you some questions about Jeannie Cooper.”
“I haven’t seen her since she quit working for me to start her own business. Did she overdose and get taken to the emergency room again?”
“No, she’s dead.”
Peck looked stunned. “She finally went and did it.”
“No, she was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“It appears that way.”
“Poor Jeannie,” Peck said with a sigh. “She was such a gentle, lost soul, except when she got too manic or too down in the dumps. Then you must be looking for Craig Larson, right?”
“Why do you say that?” Pino asked.
“Because I’ve been watching the TV news story about his escape today from that prison guard he almost killed. My company did landscape and garden maintenance at the Bedford estate. Jeannie and Larson had a thing going right up to the time he went to trial for embezzling all that money.”
“You know that for a fact?”
Peck nodded. “I saw it with my own eyes, and Jeannie told me all about it.”
“What reason would he have to kill Jeannie?”
“You’ve got me,” Peck answered.
There was no way Peck could know about the murder of Riley Burke at Kevin Kerney’s ranch or the discovery of the abandoned pickup truck Larson had used to abduct Lenny Hampson from his Springer auto body repair shop. Ramona doubted he was deflecting suspicion from himself. Still, she needed to rule him out as a suspect.
“Can you account for your time since about four this afternoon, Mr. Peck?” she asked.
“You bet I can, Lieutenant. I kept a six-man crew working at a landscaping installation job until six-thirty and then went directly from there to a chapter meeting of Veterans for Peace.”
“I’ll probably want to talk to you again.”
“Maybe we can have that talk over a drink, Lieutenant.” Peck took out his wallet and gave Ramona a business card. “Once you’ve cleared me as a suspect, that is. I’ve been told that I clean up nicely. Best to call me on my cell phone.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Peck,” Ramona said stiffly.
She headed back to the Cooper crime scene. If Peck’s hunch about Craig Larson was right, he might still be in the city. By radio, Ramona put the word out to intensify the search for Larson.
Russell Thorpe immediately responded to her advisory and asked for a back-channel update. Ramona filled him in on the connection between Larson and her murder victim.
“My, my, he’s been a busy boy today,” Russell said.
“It’s not confirmed that he’s the perp.”
“Did you find the red Jeep?”
“Negative,” Pino replied.
“Is your victim’s vehicle missing?” Thorpe asked.
“Negative.”
“Interesting,” Thorpe said. “Let’s debrief when you wrap up your preliminary.”
“Ten-four, your place or mine?”
“At Chief Baca’s ten-nineteen.”
“Affirmative.”
It was going to be a long night, and although Ramona stayed focused on the tasks ahead, she couldn’t help
