homicide of Sally Buckland. During preliminary questioning, Dodge had apprised them of Ski's investigation in Merritt. Allen hadn't invited him here strictly out of professional courtesy. The detective was after information about the suspect he and Ski had in common.
Ski knew to be concise. He recapped the shooting at the lake house on Friday night. 'He was facing felony charges for that. But after last night, he's in much deeper.'
'The kid,' Allen said brusquely.
'Davis Coldare was fatally shot at a motel. Oren Starks has been identified by an eyewitness. He fled the scene, then abandoned his car several miles away and went on foot to a Walmart store. We've got him on security cameras.' He explained the shoe purchase and the reason for it.
Allen asked, 'What time was he in the store?'
Ski told him. 'But from there, he vanished. It's like he was raptured off that parking lot, so he must've been picked up and driven back to Houston, possibly by Ms. Buckland.'
'What makes you think that?'
'Because he used her cell phone to call Ms. Malone this afternoon, around four o'clock. The call originated near Minute Maid Park. Local officers were dispatched. But Starks knew to turn off the phone, the baseball game was just letting out, there was lots of traffic, and we don't know what he's driving. Could be Sally Buckland's car, or not. The trail's gone cold again.' He paused to take a breath. 'That's where we are.'
Allen said, 'Well, it wasn't Sally Buckland who picked him up from the Walmart and drove him back to Houston, because at three-something this morning she was long dead. Coroner's best guess, she's been dead at least twenty-four hours, probably longer.'
Ski's mind backtracked with the speed of a rewinding video recording. 'I talked to her by phone yesterday afternoon.'
'So did I,' Dodge said.
'Then she must have been killed shortly following those conversations,' Allen said. 'The autopsy might help nail down the time of death more precisely, but the guy in there now is a competent man, been in the ME's office for years, sees bodies all the time. He estimated she died sometime yesterday afternoon.'
Dodge cursed under his breath. 'She sounded edgy, nervous, in defense of Starks. I thought she was standing up for him because they were working together. I realize now she was scared.' He locked gazes with Ski. 'Starks was with her when I called.'
Berry hunched her shoulders and hugged her arms closer to her body.
'You're guessing,' the Houston detective said.
'I think he's right,' Ski said. 'My conversation with her was off somehow. I couldn't put my finger on it before, but now I get it. Either Sally Buckland was being coerced or she was saying what she knew Starks wanted to hear. She was trying to save her life.'
'She was shot in the left temple,' the Houston detective said. 'Practically at point-blank range. But not here. She was killed in another location and her body brought here.'
'How'd he get the body in here without setting off the house alarm?'
'We were getting to that when you arrived,' Allen said.
They all turned to Berry.
Speaking in a thready voice, she said, 'Oren had a habit of being here when I got home from work or after an evening out. I'd come in and turn off the alarm. He was always ... close. Hovering. Maybe he saw the sequence of numbers. I kept meaning to change the code, but then I moved to Merritt, and it seemed pointless.'
'He took a chance of being discovered by transporting the body here,' Ski remarked.
'The risk was worth it to him,' Berry said. 'He wanted me to find Sally. That was part of my punishment.'
After a short silence, Allen said, 'The murder scene will give us more to go on, but we gotta find it first.'
'We have,' said Somerville, whose bass voice was in keeping with his muscular build. He held up his cell phone. 'Just got a text. Detectives at Sally Buckland's house found blood in her bed. Lots of it. Soaked into the pillow. Also residue that looks like semen on the sheets. Which is consistent with what the coroner saw on the remains, on and around--'
'Thanks, Detective,' Allen said, cutting short the chilling report from his subordinate.
But enough had been said to make Caroline King go pale. Berry pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets. Dodge muttered under his breath, then said, 'I gotta smoke,' and left through the back door.
As Ski stared at the top of Berry's bowed head, he thought about what Somerville had told them and related it to the photographs taken of Berry in her bedroom and while sunbathing, how beautiful and unaffected she'd looked, how unaware and defenseless. He struggled to maintain a professional detachment, but it was impossible. He wanted to hunt down Oren Starks and hurt him. Bad.
He said, 'Detective Allen, when you get the ballistics report on the bullet that killed Ms. Buckland, I'd like to compare it with the one that killed Davis Coldare.'
'You'll have it as soon as I do.'
Berry said, 'Don't forget to tell him about the message.'
Ski looked at her, then at Allen. 'Message?'
The detective said, 'The body was zipped into a garment bag. One of those like my wife stores winter coats in. Rod inside, big hook attached to the top.'
Ski nodded.
'On the outside of it, there was a message printed in blood, apparently Ms. Buckland's.'
'What'd it say?'
Ski had addressed the question to Detective Allen, but it was Berry who replied in a bleak voice. ' 'Sally has you to thank.''
Shortly after that Sally Buckland's body was removed from the house to be taken to the morgue, and the CSU team went into Berry's bedroom to do their scavenging for evidence. Somerville excused himself to take a telephone call, and, when he returned to the kitchen, he informed them that Sally Buckland's car had been found in a vast multilevel parking lot in Houston's famed medical district.
'The entry ticket was in the console, stamped seven-seventeen yesterday evening.'
'Several hours after I talked to her,' Ski said.
'Security videos have this man--' Somerville held out his cell phone so Ski could see the freeze-frame photo that had been texted to the detective.
The image was grainy and blurred, but there was no doubt that the man behind the steering wheel was Oren Starks. 'That's him.'
Somerville then held his phone so Berry could confirm the identity. She rolled her lips inward and nodded.
'This was taken as he entered the parking garage,' Somerville continued. 'But Starks wasn't picked up on cameras inside any of the buildings in the complex.'
'He'd left another car parked nearby,' Ski said. 'Presumably the maroon Toyota.'
Somerville said, 'The patrolmen who discovered the car said there are traces of blood on the driver's seat and in the trunk. Looks like Starks killed Ms. Buckland at her house, brought her here in her own car, drove it to the garage, and abandoned it there, where it could have remained for a while without causing suspicion. Patients and family members sometimes stay for days in those treatment centers.'
'Starks made the swap inside the garage and drove the other car out,' Allen
