“Okay, now I get it, Sheriff. I see where you’re going with this. I left the Navy, went to work for some secret government organization tied to the Illuminati, trained as a ninja assassin, and set up a law office here in Bridgeford. Then your theory is that I waited for Richard Kostas to come in so I could murder him. Is that what you’ve got?”
Sheriff Tompkins squinted hard at me, leaned back, and crossed her arms.
I said, “Here’s your problem. I’ve got no motive to kill Kostas. None at all. Okay, you might figure that there was opportunity. That’s obvious. I don’t have an alibi on the day he died, but that’s not enough to make me anything more than a person of interest, and you know it. Certainly not a real suspect. By now, you sense I had nothing to do with his murder. Randomly knocking off new clients is … well, it’s bad for business. So let’s get past all that and start figuring this out together?”
Sheriff Tompkins said flatly, “Until I have an arrest, nobody gets cleared. That’s the investigative procedure. Got any other reasons why you shouldn’t be considered a suspect?”
“Yeah, but you won’t like it. You see, I don’t think Richard Kostas was shot. You asked me why anyone would want to shoot him. You didn’t exactly say that he’d been shot. Remember, I was with you last night. You called me down to the water just after your divers pulled him out of the bay. The coroner zipped up the body bag real fast. If he’d been shot, the coroner would have spent more time on the victim. Extensive photographs, measuring bullet wounds, and the like. It’s not like we were in public. He had time to work the scene. And besides, you sure didn’t act like he was shot.”
The sheriff rubbed her eyes. “I’m listening.”
I leaned against the table and put both hands on the cold metal surface. “The police notify the media right away when there’s a shooting. Helps the public come forward and warns them that an active shooter is on the loose. And if you hadn’t given a statement, then some reporter would have slipped a twenty to an ambulance driver, a deputy, or someone who was there to get the scoop. So if Kostas had been gunned down, you’d have said so at the news conference. No sheriff wants to get broadsided later on.”
The sheriff raised her chin. Her face was stone, her eyes hard. I figured that she wanted to remind me that I was still sitting in her interrogation room.
I said, “If I were the suspicious type, I might think that you just wanted to see my reaction when you suggested that Richard Kostas had been shot. Maybe I’d look confused … or maybe satisfied knowing your staff was on the wrong track. Some reaction to let you know I had killed him, but fortunately, I’m not the suspicious type.”
Sheriff Tompkins drew in a deep breath and drummed her fingertips on the metal tabletop.
I said, “Right now, you’ve probably got no idea how he died, but it wasn’t an accident. Not natural causes. I still think suicide, but you wouldn’t be working this hard if you thought that. You know more than you’re letting on.”
“Okay, Mr. Seagraves, let me fill you in. We found broken cattails and two sets of footprints in the mud where we think his body entered the water. Not fishermen’s boots. Regular shoes that nobody would wear in those wetlands. Men’s shoes size 12½ and women’s size 7.”
“Go ahead and ask me, Sheriff. It’s got to be eating you alive.”
“Ask what?”
I removed my left shoe and held it up so she could see inside. “Size eleven wide.”
She set her jaw and said, “I’ll note that in my report.”
I waved my hand to clear the air around me. “Sorry, but I’ve been wearing them all day.” I put my shoe back on and tied the lace as we sat in the stillness between the cinderblock walls.
“You’re already twenty-four hours into this murder investigation,” I said. “If the police don’t nab a suspect within forty-eight hours, he’s got a fair shot at getting away. A vice president of Benton Dynamics dead in the Chesapeake. A guy with a top-secret security clearance who probably worked on nuclear submarines. You might have the rest of those forty-eight hours before the FBI steps in, assumes jurisdiction, and bumps you off this case. You need a quick arrest.”
Sheriff Tompkins said, “Not a quick arrest, Mr. Seagraves. I want justice, pure and simple. I want the person who did this.”
“Me, too. Let me try and help. There’s more going on than meets the surface. You reached out to me because Kostas clipped my business card to a paper calendar that you found in his car. Kostas would’ve been totally digital, but he kept a paper calendar that no one could hack into, no one could track. Let me see it. Whoever killed Richard Kostas is probably right there in his calendar.”
6
Sheriff Tompkins left me so long in Interrogation Room 2 that I wondered if she had forgotten about me, but that was just wishful thinking. She was probably behind the two-way mirror weighing her options. The sheriff might return with her file for the Kostas murder as I had requested, but she was just as likely to come back and read me my
