He shook his head. “She didn’t have a car. That was one of the things that was odd about her. She was always on foot. She said she had to lend her car to her sister.”
I thanked him, a little too curtly, and left a business card. I said other deputies would be in touch.
He stared at me hard, like a young man challenged over his woman. And then his face changed, reddened, fell apart. I thought of the word
“The night before she left, she said she wanted to run away.” He sobbed. “She asked me to go with her. I should have done it.…”
I let him cry. I put a hand on his shoulder and felt a deep emptiness in my middle.
Chapter Twenty-two
The next morning, I was standing in the little rotunda of the Arizona capitol, under the restored copper dome, waiting for Brent McConnico. The capitol was modest and charming, the best effort of a frontier state that probably had fifty-thousand people and not much money when it entered the union in 1912. It compared favorably with the “new” building attached to it, a monument to 1970s architectural ugliness.
The night before, I’d typed up what I had learned so far about Phaedra. Soon I would have to take it in to Peralta. But I wasn’t ready yet. Something made me want to talk to Susan Knightly before Peralta’s detectives descended on the case.
Behind me was a hubbub of voices as people spilled out of a conference room. Brent McConnico was walking slowly down the corridor, deep in conversation with another man, his arm around the man’s shoulders. He smiled toward me and raised a finger: Just a moment. Then he broke away and strode over, extending his hand.
“David,” he said. “So good of you to work around my schedule. I have just about fifteen minutes; then I’m in appropriations hearing hell for the rest of the day.”
He led me up a wide flight of stairs and into a deserted alcove overlooking the rotunda. “That was once the governor’s office,” he said pointing, “before they moved it into that monstrosity behind us.”
“I remember coming up here with my Cub Scout troop,” I said. “I think Paul Fannin was governor then.”
“Ah yes, good old Paul,” he said. “A great Arizonan.”
I made some apologies and got to the point, explaining why his cousin’s murder might not be a closed case. His face changed subtly, and he listened intently.
“Oh, come, come, David,” he said. “Surely you don’t believe this man, this retired detective? Sounds like he’s doing some overdue ass covering.”
“I might think so, too, Senator, if it weren’t for some new evidence we’ve run across.”
“Call me Brent,” he said quickly. “What evidence? What are you talking about?”
“We’ve interviewed a neighbor who knew Rebecca, and she said Rebecca had a secret lover.”
“A secret lover?” He laughed a little too loudly. “Where on earth did that come from? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
I just looked at him earnestly.
“And even if it were true,” he said, “what does that have to do with anything?”
“The lover might have killed her. We know now her murder didn’t fit the Creeper pattern.”
“Oh, David, that’s quite a stretch, I think. You’re a little obsessed with this, don’t you think?”
“Brent, your cousin was about two months pregnant when she was murdered.”
The blood ran out of his fine bronze tan. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. I shouldn’t have tried to tell him this in between meetings. He walked a couple of feet to a marble bench and sat, staring out into the rotunda. A babble of voices traveled upward.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it must be a shock.”
He stood and walked away. “I can’t discuss this anymore today,” he said.
“I just need to know-”
He turned violently, his face red. “You need?” his voice was strident; then he lowered it. “You need?” he hissed. “You’ve caused my family quite enough pain with this…this ego-aggrandizing fishing expedition, Deputy!”
He turned and strode angrily off. I guess we weren’t on first-name basis any longer.
I walked the two blocks through the lushly landscaped capitol grounds to the visitors’ parking lot, wondering how I might have handled that better. The case wasn’t merely a historical inquiry; it was a real murder, with real family members left behind, people who’d been hurt. I climbed into the Blazer, took the sunshade out of the windshield and the towel off the steering wheel, and started the engine. That was when I saw a man in a charcoal gray suit walk quickly out of one of the side entrances and head toward a parking area. It was Brent McConnico.
He climbed into a silver BMW convertible and sped out of the lot, a cellular phone stuck to his face. I was already moving, and I fell in behind him about half a block back. I can’t say why, but something in his movements wasn’t right. And a BMW was a strange place to be holding an appropriations committee meeting.
He drove up Seventh Avenue to the on-ramp of the Papago Freeway, blowing past the homeless person selling papers at the light, heading east. I had to speed up to avoid losing him. He was moving, doing at least eighty. I closed the gap, so I was maybe six car lengths behind him in moderately heavy traffic. His Arizona personalized plate said YALE N 3.
At the Squaw Peak Parkway, he turned north. I followed behind, maintaining a steady ninety-five as we left behind the mere mortals in the slow lanes. I hoped the Blazer’s engine, emasculated for California smog regulations, would hold together. The sun glinted off the BMW as we entered nicer and nicer neighborhoods, then rolled past expansive houses sitting on the sides of cliffs and mountains.
He turned east again on Shea Boulevard and pulled into a little strip mall. I drove on past about a block and doubled back, parking at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant across the street. He didn’t have a clue what I drove, anyway. He was sitting in the parking lot with the engine going. He sat like that for maybe ten minutes. Then a black Mustang with dark-tinted windows pulled in beside him and a man I’d seen before got out and climbed into the passenger side of the BMW.
The last time I’d seen that short, muscular man, he was pointing a machine gun at me.
My heart was pounding. I could unholster the Python and walk across the street, Dirty Harry-style. Or I could call for backup.
I did neither. This was all just too damned strange. I picked up the cell phone and called Lindsey.
“Hi, beautiful.”
“Dave, you made me day.”
“Guess what I’m doing?”
“Uh, writing about the effect of the Great Depression on the Rocky Mountain states?”
“Close,” I said. “I’m watching the majority leader of the state senate talking to the man who tried to blow me away at Metrocenter the other night.” I read her the license plate of the Mustang and heard her emphatically typing it in.
“Hang on,” she said. “The system’s been down all day. Are you safe? They can’t see you?”
“I’m across the street.”
“You want backup? I can roll PD.”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Okay, we have liftoff,” she said, then read me the information. I wrote it down and then watched them inside the BMW. Brent McConnico was gesturing violently as the small, muscular man sat impassively.
“Thanks. You’re my hero again.”
“I’m speaking in cliches,” Lindsey said. “But be careful.”
“I will. We’ve got plans tomorrow night.” I hung up.
Across the street, the muscular man, whose name was apparently Dennis Copeland, got out of the BMW and closed the door. Then McConnico waved him back to the driver’s side, rolled down the window, and spoke again.
