'I'll buy a ticket to watch when you tell him that. But between now and then, he's nixed us staying at your place overnight. Even with HPD officers posted as guards, which he thinks he could get, he's not comfortable with you being where Starks could so easily find you.'
'So where are we staying?' Caroline asked.
'Ski's gonna book us rooms at a hotel. Says since you and Sheriff Drummond are such close personal, social friends, he's sure he can get him to approve the expense.' Ski had said nothing of the sort regarding Caroline and the sheriff, but Dodge threw it in out of jealous spite.
'Soon as Ski's got the rooms reserved, he'll let us know where to go. He'll try to get a hotel close to Delray. And, Berry, he wants your, uh,
'Loud and clear. And I can see the advisability of staying in a hotel, but I've got to stop at my house first.'
'How come?'
'I've got to pick up something to wear.'
'What's wrong with what you've got on?'
She and Caroline both looked at him like he was an imbecile.
Resigned, he said, 'Five minutes tops. Deal?'
'Deal,' Berry said.
'Tell me how to get there.'
Traffic increased as they approached the city. Seemingly half the population of Houston was pouring back into town after being away on weekend excursions. Dodge was itching to smoke and was relieved when Berry finally told him to take the next exit off the clogged freeway.
The neighborhood into which she directed him was well tended and bespoke affluence, and, when she pointed out her house to him, he was even more impressed. He could never have provided his daughter anything as grand as what she had acquired on her own. Of course, Caroline could have finagled a good deal for her on the house, but still.
He felt humbled, intimidated, and inadequate as he followed the two of them up the walkway to the front door. Needing to reassert himself, he slid his handgun from the holster at the small of his back. 'I'll go in first.'
'I need to disengage the alarm.'
'Remember what happened to Davis Coldare.'
Without further argument, Berry gave him the code, then she and Caroline waited on the porch while he went in, disengaged the alarm, and, following his nose from room to room, flipped on switches and flooded the one-story house with light. Satisfied that Starks wasn't lying in wait for Berry's return, he replaced his pistol in its holster and gave them the all clear to come inside.
'Make yourselves at home.' Berry headed down the hall toward her bedroom.
'Five minutes,' Dodge called after her.
If circumstances had been different, he would have liked to explore his daughter's home. You could tell a lot about a person--things he would like to know about Berry--by the stuff in her house, how it was maintained, how it was arranged. Just this brief exposure to her place indicated that, when it came to neatness and home decor, she took after Caroline a whole lot more than she did him.
He was about to remark on that to Caroline when Berry screamed.
CHAPTER 19
IN THE STREET IN FRONT OF BERRY'S HOUSE, SEVERAL EMERGENCY vehicles were causing other cars to detour. The lawn had been cordoned off with yellow tape. Onlookers were standing in groups outside the barricade, speculating on the nature of the emergency.
Ski waded through it all, showed his ID to the uniformed cop standing sentinel at the front door, and was told to go on in, that Detective Rodney Allen of the Houston PD was expecting him.
He stepped into a foyer that had a limestone tile floor and a tall, healthy ficus tree in the corner. Ordinarily it would have been an inviting entry. But now, with the discovery of Sally Buckland's body in the master bedroom closet, the house had become a crime scene, its warm domesticity destroyed by everything the term entailed.
CSU personnel and a photographer were milling around in the living area. Upon seeing Ski, one of the men wearing latex gloves asked, 'You looking for Detective Allen?' and when Ski nodded, he hitched his head. 'In the kitchen.'
'What are you doing?'
'Waiting for the coroner to finish in the bedroom so we can have it.'
Ski glanced down a short hallway from which came the murmur of voices, then went in the direction the man had indicated and found his way to the kitchen. Dodge was standing with his back propped against the granite countertop. Beside him was a good-looking black guy with a shaved head and well- defined pectorals, a bodybuilding type.
Alert, every muscle in his compact body contracted, the black guy looked ready for anything.
Dodge looked ready to kill somebody.
Caroline and Berry were seated on one side of a rectangular dining table with a rustic finish, making it look like it had been salvaged from a French farmhouse after World War I. Caroline's arm was protectively draped over Berry's shoulders.
Sitting across the table from them was another man. When Ski entered the room, he looked at him from over his shoulder, then scraped back his chair and stood up, extending his right hand.
He was tall and middle-aged. His slight paunch was the only soft thing about him. He had the world-weary eyes and toughened bearing of a large-city homicide detective. Years of seeing the worst of mankind's handiwork had left an indelible stamp on his face. His handshake was strong and dry, his palm as hard as a hoof. The white squint lines extending from the corners of sharp blue eyes contrasted with his sunburn, which Ski figured was perpetual.
'Rodney Allen.'
'Ski Nyland.'
'That's Detective Somerville.'
The black guy bobbed his sleek head to acknowledge the introduction but didn't say anything.
'Have a seat,' Allen said.
As Ski sat down, Berry met his gaze only momentarily before lowering her head. To the detective he said, 'Thank you for inviting me to sit in.'
'He was your guy before he was ours. If in fact the individual who killed Ms. Buckland was the same man who shot the kid in Merritt last night.'
Ski said, 'Oren Starks certainly should be a person of interest to you.'
'Person of interest, my ass,' Dodge muttered. 'He's a fucking woman killer and kid killer.'
He had called Ski immediately after notifying 911 of the gruesome discovery in Berry's closet. Ski had been waiting for a judge to grant a search warrant for Sally Buckland's house, which was on the other side of Houston from Berry's place. Despite the flashing emergency lights on his SUV, and the speed at which he'd driven, it had taken him over half an hour to get here.
During that time, Allen and Somerville had arrived to investigate the apparent
