“What time did you speak to him yesterday?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Five, maybe.”
“Can you check? It’s important to narrow down his time of death. Maybe you have the exact time on your phone.”
She pulled her phone out of her handbag. Gabriel couldn’t help but notice her screen saver was a family portrait.
“It was 4:53,” she said. “That’s when he called me.”
That tightened the time of death by ninety minutes. Of course, that was only true if she was telling the truth. It would not have been difficult for her to have killed her husband an hour earlier, then used his phone to call her own to make it seem as if he were alive at 4:53.
Jessica Sommers certainly looked sincere. On the other hand, Gabriel knew from hard experience that was the worst way to assess a witness’s veracity—by the way he or she looked. Sometimes he thought the most effective interrogations could be done blindfolded.
As if she could read his mistrust, she said, “Ask Reid.”
“Is Reid the man who is here with you now?”
“Yes. Reid Warwick. He’s my husband’s partner on the deal that caused him to go to Washington.”
“And is the boy with you your son?”
“Yes. Owen.”
Gabriel knew that as bad as it was breaking the news to this woman that her husband had been murdered, it was nothing compared to what she was about to go through in the next few minutes when she had to tell her son that his father was dead.
“Why don’t you break the news to your son, and I’ll take a moment to talk to Mr. Warwick. After that, I’d like you to come back with us to the police precinct. You might be able to give us some helpful background information about your husband.”
As she walked away from the detective and back to Owen and Reid, Jessica prepared herself to share the news with Owen. But when the moment arrived, she was unable to say the words.
“What?” Owen finally said.
She glanced at Reid; from the look in his eyes, he already knew.
“Let me give you some privacy,” Reid said.
After he departed, Owen’s patience ran out. “Just tell me, Mom.”
“He’s . . . dead,” she said through tears. Then she added, “James,” as if that part weren’t clear enough.
She threw her arms around her son, burying her face into his shoulder. Owen usually resisted any physical intimacy, but this time he put his arms around her.
When they finally parted, she saw he was crying too. It had been a long time since she’d seen Owen shed a tear.
“How could this have happened?” she asked.
Owen didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. How could he? He was seventeen years old, struggling to survive his second bout with leukemia.
She blinked hard. The second time her eyes stayed shut. When she opened them again, she looked past Owen and blinked twice more.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
The bystanders had finally been rewarded for their perseverance. The techs were wheeling her husband’s body out of the building.
Reid was going to leave. He figured that Jessica would have her hands full with the police, and it wouldn’t even register with her that he’d bolted the first chance he got. After all, he’d called her, which was more than his lawyer had said he should do.
“Sir,” he heard a voice call to him. The tone was such that it could only be a cop speaking.
Reid acted as if he hadn’t heard it, but a step later he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned, he saw the boy-cop again.
“Lieutenant Velasquez would like to talk to you for a moment,” the boy-cop said.
“I have a business thing I’m already really late to—” Reid stopped his excuse. The detective who’d broken the news to Jessica was approaching.
“Reid Warwick?” he said, extending his hand.
Reid shook it. “Yes.”
“I’m Lieutenant Velasquez. I’m sorry for your loss, but I wanted to ask you a few questions. Ms. Sommers told me that you and her husband were business partners, and so I was hoping that you could fill me in a little on what you were working on.”
Reid’s mind whirled, trying to figure out how to get out of this.
“Mr. Warwick?” Lieutenant Velasquez said, as if he thought that Reid’s failure to respond had to do with his being in shock, rather than cold calculation.
“Yes, I’m sorry. It’s . . . I just can’t believe it. James and I were together just the other day.”
“I understand how difficult that this must be for you. I’m not sure if Ms. Sommers told you this, but we have reason to believe that Mr. Sommers was murdered. The first few hours in the investigation are critical, and we need to re-create his whereabouts over the last few days. Who he met with, what he was doing, that kind of thing.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t right now. I have another appointment, and I have to be there. Give me your card and I’ll call you later.”
Reid moved to the right and took a step forward.
Velasquez blocked him with an outstretched arm. “Sir, I’m certain that what you have to do is very important. But I’m equally certain it’s not as important as finding out who killed your friend and bringing that person to justice. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time, but I do need for you to answer some questions now. The first one is for you to explain to me the business transaction you were doing with Mr. Sommers. I understand it required that he go to Washington last night, but it seems as if that didn’t happen. Do you know why that is?”
Reid was boxed in, and he knew it. He was regretting not following his lawyer’s advice from the get-go.
“Here’s the thing, Detective . . . I can’t go into any of that because I have pretty hardcore NDAs—nondisclosure agreements—with my clients. So even just telling you what I was working on would
