Shoot / Don't Shoot

“I need some information on the Rhonda Weaver Norton murder.”

“You might try reading the papers,” he suggested, attempting to ditch her in the time-honored fashion of homicide cops everywhere. Longtime detectives usually have a very low regard for meddlesome outsiders who show up asking too many questions about a current pet case.

“Most of what we’ve got has already turned up there,” he added blandly. “There’s really not much more I can tell you. Why do you want to know?”

“There may be a connection between that case and another one,” Joanna returned, playing coy herself, not wanting to give away too much.

As soon as Joanna shut up, Sutton’s tone of casual nonchalance changed to on-point interest. Rec­ognizing Sutton’s irritating lack of candor when it surfaced in herself, she wondered if the malady wasn’t possibly catching. Maybe she’d picked it up from the other detective over the phone lines.

“What other case?” Sutton asked.

Joanna became even less open. “It’s one Carol Strong and I are working on together.”

“Carol Strong?” he asked. “You mean that little bitty detective from Peoria?”

Little bitty? Joanna wondered. If Carol Strong had that kind of interdepartmental reputation, things could go one of two ways. Either Sutton held Carol Strong in high enough mutual esteem that he could afford to joke about his pint-sized counterpart, or else he held her in absolute contempt. There would be no middle ground. And based on that, Sutton would either tell Joanna what she needed to know right away, or else he would force her to fight her way through a morass of conflicting interdepartmental channels.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Joanna agreed reluctantly.

Neil Sutton audibly relaxed on the phone. “Well, sure,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? What is it you two ladies need?”

Joanna took a deep breath. Here she was, a nov­ice and an outsider, about to send up her first little meager hunch in front of a seasoned detective, one whose official turf she was unofficially invading. What if he simply squashed her idea flat, the way Joanna might smash an unsuspecting spider that ventured into her kitchen?

“What was she wearing?” Joanna asked.

“Wearing? Nothing,” Sutton answered at once. “Not a stitch.”

“Nothing at all?” Joanna asked, dismayed that the answer wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. “But I just watched the television report. I’m sure it said ‘partially clad.’ “

“Oh, that,” Sutton replied. “That was just for the papers and for the television cameras. She wearing a pair of pantyhose all right, but weren’t covering anything useful, if you what I mean.”

Joanna felt her heartbeat quicken in her throat. Maybe her hunch wasn’t so far off the mark after all. She tried not to let her voice betray her growing excitement.

“Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what the pantyhose were covering,” Joanna said.

“Oh, sorry,” Neil Sutton responded. “No offense intended. Her husband used her own pantyhose tie her up. Did a hell of a job of it, too, for a college professor. Must have studied knots back when was a Boy Scout. He had her bent over backwards with her hands and feet together. Must have left her that way for a long damn time before he killed her. Autopsy showed that at the time of death there was hardly any circulation left in any of her extremities.”

Sutton paused for a moment. When Joanna said nothing, he added, “Sorry. I suppose I could have spared you some of the gory details. Any of this sound familiar?”