down in Mobile.”
She pronounced Mobile like MO-beel.
“Alabama?”
“Yes, sir, Detective, Mobile, Alabama.” But just as she was beginning to relax, she reminded herself why she was here and stiffened up rod straight in her chair. “We aren’t here, though, to discuss home or my daddy.”
Fuqua ignored that. “You’re a West Point grad.”
“I am. Soldier’s the only thing I ever wanted to be. Even as a little girl, I pictured myself in uniform.”
That was my opening. “So you’d do just about anything to protect your career, wouldn’t you, Lieutenant Winston?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with that night.” She looked to Fuqua for help.
He obliged. “Never mind my colleague, Lieutenant. He has some very silly notions. It occurs to me that I failed to ask you what you were doing at the Gelato Grotto on the evening the Conseco woman was murdered. Would you mind telling me now?”
“I was hungry for pizza,” she said with another giggle, but this one caught in her throat. “It’s not all that far from the fort and some of the soldiers from this area are always bragging on it. We don’t get pizza like that at home.”
“So you went by yourself to the restaurant, not with other officers?” Fuqua asked.
I didn’t let her answer. “Bet you’re happy to be away from home. I mean, I’m sure you miss your daddy and the rest of your family, but it’s easier to be who you really are away from home. Am I right?”
She looked to Fuqua again, but this time no rescue was forthcoming.
“Why, Mr. Prager-I’m sorry, I never did get your rank-I could not possibly know what you mean.”
“Oh, sorry, it was a kind of don’t ask don’t tell thing, Lieutenant Winston.”
That did it. She held herself together, but there was real panic in her eyes. She tried playing for time, but I didn’t let her.
“Look, Lieutenant, all we’re interested in right here right now is the truth about what you were doing at the Grotto that night.”
“As I’ve previously told you, gentlemen, I was hungry for-”
I kept at her. “If you cooperate, we’ll walk out of here and you’ll never hear from us again. You can go on and have the career you’ve always wanted and deserve. Or if we don’t like your answers, we can all walk over to Colonel Madsen’s office and have a nice chat.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Please don’t make me do this,” I said. “Please.”
She jumped out of her chair. “Do what?” she asked, a slight quiver in her voice, the panic spreading. “I’m leaving now and I suggest you never contact me again concerning-”
Fuqua came once more to her rescue. “Please sit.” He waited for her to do so before continuing. “We know why you were there, Lieutenant. We know you went to meet Alta Conseco and we fully realize the pressures you are under. We understand that you could not have said these things in your statement, that to do so might have risked the career you love. And while we are not interested in you, per se, we do have an unsolved homicide to deal with. I would ask you to help us, to be fully honest with us in answer to our next questions.”
“Or what?” she asked.
“Or we’ll have to produce witnesses who will testify to having seen you with Alta Conseco in places your commanding officer would most assuredly not approve of, and then there are the pictures.” All of it was a bluff on my part, but especially the stuff about the pictures.
“I don’t respond well to threats.”
“Fine,” I said. “Forget the threats. Tell us the truth because it is the right thing to do and because you owe it to Alta.”
Tears rushed out of her, her body convulsing, but there was scarcely a sob. This had been a long time coming. Fuqua and I sat there silently and let it happen. When she was done, she was done. The lieutenant wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands, then her palms.
“I was in love with her, yes,” she said.
“Alta Conseco?”
“Yes.”
“And you went there to meet her?”
“Yes. I had seen very little of her since… since the incident and it was killing me. I told her no one would recognize her, that people had moved on.”
My turn. “So the Grotto was your idea?”
“Yes.”
“Did she come, eat with you, then leave or had she not yet shown up?”
“I was getting up to leave because she was so late. I wasn’t mad at her, just disappointed. I thought she had gotten scared about coming to such a public place and decided not to show. Then… that’s when she-”
“That’s okay, Lieutenant Winston,” I said. “You’re not a suspect and we really do understand how hard this is for you. What we’re more interested in is what you and Alta talked about. What did she tell you about the incident at the High Line Bistro? What did she tell you about why she and her partner were there in the first place and why they let Robert Tillman die?”
Winston sat there, squeezing her hands together so hard the blood went out of them. There are times you can literally see people struggling with themselves. This was one of those times.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice shaking. “I gave my word.”
I asked, “And you would sacrifice your career to keep your word?”
“If I had to, yes, sir, I would. How can you measure yourself if not by the value of your word?”
This wasn’t the time for more pressure. She would have shut down. Instead, I took a picture out of my wallet and slid it across the table to her. It was a photo I’d carried for nine years. I hadn’t looked at it for nearly as long. I saw the recognition in her eyes and there were more tears.
The lieutenant picked up the picture. “That’s Alta’s sister Carmella, Israel, and you,” she said. “I didn’t make the connection. Alta used to talk about missing her.”
“That’s right, Kristen, I’m Moe. I used to be married to Alta’s little sister. So do you understand why I’m here and why it would be okay with Alta to tell me?”
The lieutenant never looked up, but kept staring at the photo. “Maya, Alta’s partner, was being blackmailed. She wouldn’t tell me about what because she had made a pact with Maya that she would never tell anyone, that they would never even speak about it.”
“Blackmailed? Blackmailed by whom?”
“She never told me, but Alta said they had gone to the restaurant that day to confront the man who was doing it. Maya didn’t want to go through with it. She begged Alta not to, but Alta said she wouldn’t let Maya keep paying, that she would take care of things even if it meant killing him. That was Alta. She was really protective of the people she-” Winston put the picture down, finally.
I reached across the table and took her right hand in mine. “I’m sorry for the things I said before, but…”
“I understand. Just find the person who did this, please.”
“Is there anything else, any other details you’ve left out about any of it?” Fuqua asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Alta didn’t give me any details. It was hard for her to even tell me what she did. Her word meant a lot to her too.”
That’s how we left her, sitting at the table, collecting herself, her thoughts, and her feelings.
Fuqua waited until we exited the fort before giving voice to what we were both thinking. “It was him, Tillman, who was the blackmailer.”
“Looks that way to me, Detective.”
“But to let him die… What could he have been blackmailing her about to let things get to such a point?”
“There’s only one person who knows that answer,” I said.
I excused myself, telling Fuqua I needed a restroom break. What I needed was to call Pam. When I got her on the phone, I related to her what the lieutenant had just told us about Maya being blackmailed and that it looked like the late Robert Tillman had something to do with it. She said she didn’t know when she’d get back to my
