“Why did you and she get a divorce?” asked Garnett.
He shrugged. “She thought I had an affair.”
“Did you?” asked Garnett.
“Not exactly.”
“Affairs are like pregnancies,” said Garnett. “You either are or you aren’t. Did you have an affair?”
“I didn’t call it that. It was all over the computer. We didn’t even meet in person. It was in a chat room. Look, I don’t have to go into this now, do I?” He cast a quick glance at Diane.
“I need to know the name of the woman you chatted with,” said Garnett.
“Do you have to? I mean… I don’t really know her name. She called herself Justforkicks. And that’s all it was. Besides, it’s over now.”
“I see,” said Garnett. “Doing any more online dating?”
He shrugged again. “Occasionally. Nothing serious. It’s like safe sex. It’s all cartoons, anyway.”
“Cartoons?” asked Garnett. Diane didn’t know what he meant, either.
“Webcam. It’ll make you look like a cartoon character. It’s the software. Like anime-the Japanese stuff.”
Diane was completely lost and she suspected that Garnett was, too.
“I tell you what,” said Garnett. “Will you let us have a look at your computer?”
“I don’t know. This is just personal stuff. I don’t even leave my room. I don’t meet anyone.”
“Someone might have taken you seriously and thought your wife was competition to get rid of.”
“That’s crazy. It’s just…” He looked at Diane again. “It’s nothing more than what it is. The people I talk to don’t even know who I am.”
“What’s your screen name?” asked Diane.
“Do I really have to say?” he asked Garnett.
“Where are you staying?” asked Garnett.
“I have an apartment on Applewood Street, four seventy-two. I room with two other students. They just went home after exams.”
“You staying in town during the break?”
“Yes.”
“We may want to talk with you again,” said Garnett.
“Where is she?” Gil asked. “Can I see her?”
“She’s with the medical examiner,” said Garnett. “We need for you to make a positive ID. I can have a police officer take you there.”
He nodded, the realization of what he was being asked to do suddenly reflected in his face.
Garnett released Gil Cipriano to one of the officers at the scene to be driven to the morgue. Diane and Garnett watched out the window of the breakfast nook as he walked down the sidewalk in the direction of the patrol car, his shoulders slumped, his hands in his pockets, his head bent down.
“What do you think?” asked Garnett.
“He always speaks of her in the present tense,” said Diane.
“Yes. I noticed that,” he said.
“His knuckles were clean and unmarked,” she said.
“I noticed that, too,” he said. “What were all those drug questions? Did you find something to link her to the meth lab explosion?”
“No, not really, just a chain of thoughts.” Diane explained her results on finding words that rhyme with book. “Thin thread, I know, but worth a shot at asking.”
Garnett gave a slight laugh. “Slim, indeed. But you’re right. Mrs. Bowden could have heard wrong.”
Garnett’s phone rang. Diane stood up to go back to helping David finish processing the crime scene. Garnett put a hand on her arm.
“She’s been here at this crime scene for several hours,” he said. Garnett listened for several moments. “Yes, I can. I’ve been here, too.” Pause. “I understand. We have other staff who can come.” He paused again.
Diane wished she could hear the other side of the conversation. She was beginning to feel that she was the
“Of course it won’t be compromised.” He paused for several seconds.
Diane could hear someone on the other end but couldn’t make out the words. She could tell they were excited.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what she wants.” Garnett snapped the phone shut and turned toward Diane. “Things just keep getting worse.”
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but how have they gotten worse?”
“Someone just murdered Blake Stanton, the kid who tried to jack your car the other night. The mother thinks it was you.”
Chapter 23
“That kid? Someone killed him?”
Blake Stanton wasn’t her favorite person, but he was still just a kid who had a great many decades ahead of him.
“What happened?” She asked Garnett.
“I don’t know yet. The commissioner didn’t give any details.” Garnett shook his head at some unspoken thought and stood up. “I’ve got to go on this one. I’ll take Jin and Neva. They can process the scene. I can’t have you anywhere near it.”
“I understand that. David and I will finish up here. After that, I’m going home and turning off my telephones.”
“I hear you there.”
Diane refocused her attention on the Joana Cipriano crime scene. David had finished the living room and kitchenette and was now working on the bathroom. It wasn’t a big apartment-one bedroom, bath, living room, kitchenette with the small nook for a table. It was probably one of the less expensive apartments in the Applewood complex.
She and David went over all the surfaces in detail. They checked for fingerprints on the walls, the door- jambs, the bathroom fixtures, inside, outside, and the underside of everything that might have been touched. Thankfully, it was not a cluttered apartment. They vacuumed the entire house, using a new bag for each grid they had laid out on the floors. When they finished, Diane was confident they had all the evidence the scene would yield. They packed up the books and took them to the lab where they would be examined for any clue as to the motive for Joana Cipriano’s murder or who had murdered her.
It was the early hours of the morning when Diane arrived back at her apartment. She could get perhaps four hours’ sleep if she went to bed now. Jin and Neva probably wouldn’t get any sleep.
Blake Stanton. What was that about? The meth lab explosion? Was someone afraid he would make a deal with the DA for a lighter sentence on the carjacking, so they killed him to shut him up?
Diane tried to put the whole thing out of her mind when she crawled into bed. Before she fell asleep, her last thought was the hope that she would be awakened only by her clock. Before she even dozed off completely, her phone rang. For a whole second she gave serious consideration to not answering it.
“Fallon here.”
“Don’t think you are going to get away with what you did. I will never let you go. For the rest of your miserable life I intend to haunt your every waking moment. You will never get another minute of peace, you hear? Are you listening to me?”
Diane hung up the phone. Great, now Patrice Stanton had become her stalker. The phone rang again. This time Diane looked at the caller ID. Unknown. She unplugged the phone from the wall and went to sleep.
The clock went off too soon, awakening her from a dream in which she was plummeting toward earth with no parachute.
