many law enforcement officials used a nearby college or university in faxing information back and forth. The report wasn't as detailed as it might have been, but close enough attention was given to Alisha Reynolds's death to sort out a few things in Lucas's mind. The woman's death was ruled a murder in the first, and it had taken place at Palmer's home just after the breakup of a party that evening. Alisha Reynolds had actually been cut down by a steel-shafted arrow fired from a crossbow through a closed window.
“The dead woman's name-Alisha Reynolds-corresponded with the would-be in-laws, who became suspects in Palmer's death the next year,” said Meredyth, her voice like a narrator of some dark documentary. “Very little was done in the way of background on her here in Houston. She was an Atlanta socialite, expecting to marry well, and all seemed right with her world when a mindless random act of violence took her.”
“Could there have been a jealous suitor? Someone smart as well as enraged? Someone who wanted to make it look like a maniac had done Palmer and his intended in, in order to cast the shadow of suspicion away from himself? Perhaps another doctor who worked alongside Palmer at Georgia Baptist Memorial Hospital in Atlanta? Did Palmer engage in crossbow hunting? Did anyone, friend or acquaintance, ever take up the weapon?” All these questions escaped Lucas's mouth, and he could see that she could see that his mind raced with curiosity over the oddities here.
Just how much of me are you wanting to take, Dr. Sanger? Lucas wondered. He had on occasion used a crossbow himself on deer hunting excursions, but she probably had unearthed that bit of information as well.
The high-tech crossbow weapons of today were damnably, horribly accurate and cleanly deadly.
In what seemed an attempt to explain why the similarities in the cases had been overlooked, she said, “In one of the earlier case files, some fool with no knowledge of crossbows quickly characterized the arrow as having come from a spear gun, and so the word spear gun had continued to be carried over from protocol to protocol until the M.E. got hold of it and declared it an arrow from a crossbow.”
'The M.E.?”
“He's something of a hunter himself. He'd seen crossbows and crossbow arrows before.”
“And you?”
“Yes, I had. The M.E.'s my uncle, and he's been retired, encouraged to take a pension. He hunts with a member of a hunt club.”
“Ahh, I see, and so that's how you got started on this trail?”
“That and the fact I knew Alisha Reynolds when I was a child, growing up. I summered in Georgia, where my mother lived at the time. I was going to be one of Alisha's bridesmaids. Her parents were like my own for a time, and when they were under investigation for Palmer's murder, it brought it all back like a nightmare that never left us.”
“Funny, you don't look old enough…”
She smiled at the compliment. “In any case, I never forgot how awfully she died. When Palmer was killed, I was away at college and hadn't heard anything of it, but when Mootry was killed, I was reminded of Alisha, so I went back in time, searching in Georgia first, and getting very little help. It was, after all, a dead file.”
“No wonder you want an Indian on the case,” he managed to mutter to her now.
She managed a light laugh, which brightened the dark room. “Whatever can you mean by that, Lucas?”
“An Indian knows the difference between a spear and an arrow, and besides, an Indian never forgets an enemy.
” She indulged him with a broad smile now. “Truly, I hadn't given it any consideration.”
“So were any of Alisha's former lovers or suitors ever traced? Anyone jet to Atlanta to check firsthand on the situation there?” He riffled through the additional pages she'd provided but found nothing of great import on the Atlanta murder.
“With so little in the file, your guess is as good as mine,” she replied, “but it appears the detectives in charge didn't follow Atlanta up, or someone didn't get back with more than what you have there in your hands, Lucas.”
“Appears that Palmer's murder here in Houston PD's jurisdiction was given far more attention than the dead socialite in Atlanta.”
“It was already old news. He had moved on to wooing women here in Houston high society.”
Stonecoat nodded. “And since he had become so prominent here-”
“He was originally from here and had returned to get away from the morbid curiosity surrounding the death of his fiancee in Georgia.”
Lucas nodded and said, “Since he was so big here, his case file actually carried an asterisk, indicating that it required a box of its own.”
“The single folder I pulled is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg,” she agreed, adding, “the HPD swarmed over this case, turned it into a special task force operation with forty detectives working around the clock. Palmer's family was well connected. They even got TV time on America's Most Wanted, but nothing-absolutely nothing-came of it.”
Lucas may've heard vague rumblings about the case, but in Dallas at the time, he'd had his own problems as a first-year cop in a mean town. He was filled to overflowing with an unbridled energy that kept his paperwork cryptic and his time on the street twice that of any other cop. He and Jackson hadn't yet been teamed, and no other cop in the precinct could stand being around him. He was too gung ho, the others said of him. He had made few friends in or out of the department. He was hard to get to know because he was always so fired up and anxious. Soon it was rumored he was doing drugs, which he wasn't; but he was called in for a spot drug test. He passed with flying colors. Still, not even his captain could keep him in one place long enough to explain the simplest of regs to him. He couldn't sit in a chair without rocking, couldn't stand in a doorway without bouncing off the facings. When he had been on his back, facing rehabilitation and a grand jury probe and his superiors, the worst part of that hell was being immobile.
“Yeah, I seem to recall something about the case when it broke,” he managed. “It might be interesting to see the episode that aired on it.”
“I've seen it, and it is; in fact, I had a copy made. I'll gladly share it with you.” She went on to explain, “The HPD detectives working the case had spared no one in '86: not Palmer's shrink, not his personal physician, not his attorney, not his servants; they even went so far as to question the doctor's minister at his church. My uncle used to joke that they even brought in a psychic to talk to Palmer's dog. They were that hard up for a lead that had never been forthcoming.”
“Your uncle sounds like a smart man.”
“He thinks he got on everyone's nerves too much.”
“Oh?”
“He was-still is-something of a perfectionist. Things never sat well with him with the Palmer case.”
“Retired, you say? So, where'd he retire to?”
“South of Galveston on the bay. Has a great place. Visit there whenever I can, but he doesn't like me just dropping in.”
“Oh, why's that?” Lucas didn't expect an answer, and his thoughts were running toward the old guy's having plenty of girlfriends in.
“He's writing up his memoirs and it's making him a real bastard. Ask him to tell a story and he's masterful; ask him to put it in permanent ink and he chokes like a dog on peanut butter. I got him a tape recorder for his birthday and told him to just speak the damned book and let someone else transcribe it. I hear now it's going well, but for a time, God!”
When she finished, he said, “It's hard for a man to speak his heart.”
“More Indian wisdom?”
“Fact, is all. Like the detectives at the Thirty-first who joked about dropping a match on the Cold Room. It's easier than speaking their hearts about cases they couldn't solve.”
“Well, sure… The place houses mistakes, oversights… doubts and regrets.”
“Being the designated curator of such a museum isn't likely to win me any friends. The other guys are already calling it Indian Affairs.”
“As opposed to Internal Affairs?” She smiled and laughed.
He joined her, his laugh so loud that someone in the apartment overhead beat the floor to silence him.
“So what will it be, Stonecoat? Are we a team or aren't we?” she finally asked point-blank.
