“Call it a little extra incentive I brought to the party. Reach back there in the back seat and grab that file folder. I was going to save this for the plane trip, but since you're interested…”
Lucas reached into the back of the small car and almost spilled the pages of the computer printout from the manila folder.
“Go ahead, take a good, long look,” she said as if it were a dare.
Lucas stared down at a list of other deaths caused by arrows across the nation, going back several years. Many were crossed out as if unimportant, but others were not. “Damn, this is impressive. Is this what got to Bryce and Lawrence? Why didn't you show it to me before?”
“I didn't have it before.”
“Randy Oglesby?”
She nodded.
“You just waved this in front of Bryce, and that's all it took? I don't buy it.
“ They had found a dark little parking spot inside the towering parking garage fronting the terminals. She pulled the key and looked him in the eye.
“I can play hardball, too. I'd warned Lawrence earlier. I made it clear that if we weren't allowed to pursue leads on this angle of the investigation with his approval, then this and all my notes that are currently sealed and safely put away would go directly to Commander Andrew Bryce. Phil called my bluff and so…”
“Lawrence's boss. You cut the man deeply with your… blackmail.”
“Call it what you like.”
He laughed inwardly. “I kinda like calling it what it is, blackmail.” She laughed now. “The man left me very little choice, and you… you weren't any help. Now tell me, honestly, why'd you go over there to Mootry's? What got you moving? And why didn't you call me to help? With my badge, I could've gotten us past the guards easily enough.”
“I didn't want you getting into trouble.”
“Bull. Typical male crap. You thought because I'm a woman I'd slow you down somehow.”
“Whoa, wait up now!”
“Isn't that it?”
“No, I-”
“That maybe I couldn't climb a fence or run fast enough. But if I'd been with you, there would have been no call for climbing in and out of windows, running or hitting some poor schlepp over the head.”
He held up his hands as if under arrest. “I just wanted to check things out for myself. You should be grateful.” He was instantly sorry he'd used the word, but it was too fast off his tongue and too late to exchange if for another.
“Grateful? Grateful… Just like a man.”
“For all you knew, I had canned any thought of getting involved. I had turned you down, remember? And meantime, you're working to tie me to the case anyway, so what is that if it's not typical female… procedure?”
She hesitated a bit, pursed her lips and took in a deep breath. He smelled less of alcohol today and more of cologne. “All right, but on the plane, I want to hear everything in detail.”
“Everything?”
“
“Everything you saw, heard, touched, felt, smelt, and tasted out there. I know you're an intuitive cop, a good investigator. I don't want any secrets between us, Lucas.”
“All right. Then afterwards, you can tell me all about Conrad.”
“Conrad's got nothing to do with the case. That's private life, and it remains private. Let's go.”
They located a burly skycap, and he found a maintenance crewman to take them and their bags on a cart across the airport taxi strips to a row of Quonset huts and hangars set apart from the commercial passenger terminals. Some of the huts and hangars here housed UPS, FedEx, Flying Tigers Cargo, and other businesses, but there was one large hangar marked U.S. Army Corps. It was here they were deposited.
They easily located the pilot waiting for them, and after quick introductions, boarded the plane. The pilot wasted no time in getting clearance, and they were airborne within minutes, while passenger planes were jammed like so many pachyderms along a water route.
Stonecoat hadn't flown too often, and each time he did it was both an exhilarating experience and one that filled him with awe. He still could not believe that a building could fly, and the military jet was the size of a small office building. It was equipped with a small conference area complete with table and comfortable chairs-unusual for military transport, but on boarding, their pilot had explained that the local FBI often engaged their services, so the plane was modified for in-flight conferencing.
“Hell,” he had bragged, “we once had none other than Dr. Jessica Coran aboard.”
“Who?” Meredyth had replied.
“You know, the federal M.E. who solved the Queen of Hearts killings over in New Orleans? We were part of a search party for an escaped madman who was believed to be in the Oklahoma vicinity at the time. The feds got him, too.”
After takeoff and leveling, they availed themselves of coffee, the cushioned chairs, and the conference table.
“So, tell me about Mootry's,” she pressed Lucas.
“But I already told you everything.”
“I want a play-by-play; every detail. Detective.”
He corrected her. “I'm no longer a detective, Doctor, and you know that.”
“If you don't mind, I chose your help on the basis of your record as a detective, Detective, and if it helps my confidence in you to call you a detective, then I'm going to go right ahead and do so, Detective.”
“Helps you, huh?”
“Yeah, me.”
He dropped his gaze, guffawed, and said, “All right.”
“Now give me every detail; leave nothing out.”
He began at Judge Mootry's gate and told her how he had gained entrance. He found talking to her was easy, even cathartic somehow.
She eagerly hung on his every word, fascinated by his having lain down in the exact spot where the judge had died in order to get a fix on the room.
Then he explained why he had taken the two glasses from the kitchen.
“Let me get this straight, Lucas,” she stopped him.
“You took the two goblets believing you'd find no prints on them? You took them anyway?”
“I did.”
The look of sheer incredibility on her face spoke volumes. “Amelford and Pardee may've seen them, too. May have assumed the same as you, but they left them. But not you… “I had my reasons.”
Her look said, I'm sure you did. But she remained silent.
“Well, would you like to hear them?”
“If I don't, I'll go on wondering what made me believe you were some sort of Cherokee Sherlock Holmes. Please, do go on.”
He explained his convoluted reasoning. “Whoever killed Mootry knew him.”
“You got that from the no prints on the glass?”
“If no prints show, yes. The killer knew Mootry well.”
“Well? How well?”
“Perhaps intimately.”
“Intimately sexually or intimately intimately alone?”
“Intimately enough to have had a drink with him before tucking him in, I believe.”
“Whoa-up there. You mean, from what little you evidenced there, you somehow have come to the conclusion that Mootry trundled off to bed with the killer in the house with him, knowing he was not alone.”
“I believe so, yes.”
The look of incredulity began to cloud her face again.
“Well, I will say the case has to date lacked a certain imaginative input by the detectives working it.”
