She stares at him, then gives a slow nod of recognition. “You want to run DNA tests on Terry Burgos and the victims?”
“I do,” he answers. “And we’re not waiting two months, Ricki. You tell them what you need to tell them. Use the commander’s name. This goes to the top of the list.”
DOWN ON THE DOCK, Gwendolyn cranks a large wheel fastened to the boat. I offer to help but she defers, her face showing familiar strain. When the boat is down in the water, she looks back at me, like she’s giving me a second chance. She can probably read the expression on my face. “You don’t like water?”
Shelly eagerly turns to me as well, suppressing a smile, awaiting my response. She knows very well that I have a minor issue with swimming. The minor issue is, I can’t swim. My arms and legs move like they’re supposed to, but I sink, every time. Still, I’d be willing to hang glide over the Andes if it would loosen Gwendolyn’s tongue.
She starts the engine while we step in. The boat is really one long, flat deck, surrounded on all sides by a white leather safety railing and leather-upholstered seating, with the steering and controls off to one side. The deck rests on what, to my eye, are glorified skis. This is like a giant, waterbound sled.
“A pontoon,” she informs me, as she backs the boat out from under the canopy. “So you’re the one who charged Burgos,” she says. “And now you’re Harland’s lawyer,” she says.
The way she puts it together like that makes me uncomfortable. Not altogether different from how Evelyn Pendry said it. “I am. He’s doing well,” I add, though she didn’t ask.
“No doubt,” she mumbles. She moves the pontoon forward, and I sit in relative comfort as the breeze cuts the heat from the overhead sun. We scoot out to the middle of the giant lake, and she idles the boat, which should make the choppiness of the water more apparent, but maybe added stability is one of the benefits of a pontoon. I see lake cabins on both sides of the water, kids jumping off docks and playing on large waterslides. The shouts of people water-skiing or tubing, the grinding hum of motorboats, echo around us.
Gwendolyn’s reaction is consistent with Harland’s opinion of her. When we were investigating the Burgos murders, Gwendolyn’s name came up once or twice, only because there were so few people who knew Cassie. Gwendolyn, from what we’d heard, was the polar opposite of Cassie. Gwen was the spoiled, nasty party girl, Cassie, innocent and solitary. But I never laid eyes on her because she was out of the country the whole time.
Regardless, I have to say, I’m not seeing vile or spoiled in this woman. Time has worked its magic.
“You own a diner?” I ask.
She smiles gently. “The community is losing retail and restaurants. I like having a place where they can get together.” She nods, thinking about that.
I decide to take this slow. Gwendolyn’s expression turns placid as she lets the sun warm her face. This is her escape.
She offers me a drink from a cooler, but I decline. She takes a seat across from me. Shelly is next to me, keeping quiet. She rolls up her sleeves and the cuffs of her pants and closes her eyes to the sun. Shelly’s playing it right. This is supposed to be a casual discussion, and two-on-one makes people uncomfortable. She’s just going to listen.
The breeze carries Gwendolyn’s coconut tanning lotion to me. She has a Russian’s fair complexion and has obviously put the lotion to good use, her skin a dark pink.
Without the benefit of shade, the temperature is almost overbearing. I take off my suit coat, roll up my sleeves, and reconsider that drink offer.
“I like it here,” she tells me. “People say what they mean and mean what they say.”
I look at my briefcase and notice that I have no pen or pad of paper handy. I’m used to having someone else do the note taking, or a court reporter transcribing every word. But I’m sure as hell not going to pull out a notepad now. Notepads and tape recorders tie tongues. Instead, I rest my arms along the upholstery, put my head against the safety railing, and close my eyes to the sun. I could fall asleep out here. I could sleep for hours.
“Having money,” she says, “you don’t think about anything. There’s nothing outside your grasp. So you keep reaching, hoping for some kind of limit. You don’t find it, so you keep pushing until-until you’re over your head.”
“You were over your head,” I say. The boat rocks with a wave.
“Of course I was. I was drinking and doing drugs and sleeping around.”
I listen politely to the rich-kid-in-therapy story, the sad, wealthy socialite, dancing from party to party, jet-setting across Europe, when all she really wanted was to be loved.
“What about Cassie?” I ask, wondering if I should be interjecting here.
“Cassie.” Gwendolyn deflates, stares at the can of soda in her hand. “Cassie had a big heart. A very generous soul. But she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to be popular, or good, or what.” Gwendolyn chews on her lip, her face coloring. “She was scared to death.”
“I’m trying to get a feel for what was going on in her life back then, Gwendolyn. I need your help.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I would think you would know better than anyone.”
“As I’m sure you know, we didn’t prosecute Cassie’s murder, so we never got to the point that we were”-I note the look on Gwendolyn’s face-“we never delved that deeply. You know that we didn’t prosecute Cassie’s murder, right?”
She shrugs her shoulders.
She didn’t know that?
“Why didn’t you prosecute Cassie’s murder? I don’t under stand.”
I explain it to her quickly, the notion of holding one murder back, in case Burgos got lucky, to give us a second chance at him. The legal niceties seem lost on her, and I’m still trying to under stand how disconnected she was from this whole thing.
“Where were you when all this happened?” I ask. “We tried to get hold of you.”
Another shrug of the shoulders. “I didn’t know you were trying.”
“Where were you?”
“I could have been anywhere. Back then? It didn’t matter where I was. It was all the same place.”
I sigh. This is like trying to grab hold of sunlight. I need to get this woman off the psychiatrist’s couch and onto a witness stand. But I have no leverage here. She could flip me the bird. She could knock me off the boat and I’d drown.
“The Riviera, probably,” she says. “Or the Caribbean.”
“Then, how about this?” I try. “When was the last time you’d been in the city, before Cassie was killed?”
She poises a hand in the air. “It was probably a month or so before. If you told me it was three months, I’d believe you. If you told me it was three days, I’d believe you.”
“Three
“Oh, that’s a different question.” She wipes a stray bang off her
