In what the locals call Shortwest Knoxville, the city begins to fray around the edges, disintegrating into housing projects before it improves a little, not much, about two miles west of downtown. Sykes parks in front of a small rancher, vinyl siding, the yard a mess, the only house with empty supercans haphazardly parked near the street because Mrs. Barber is too lazy to roll them back to the house, it seems. The neighborhood has very few streetlights and a lot of souped-up gaudy old cars — Cadillacs, a Lincoln painted purple, a Corvette with those stupid spinning hubcaps. The crapmobiles of dirtbags, drug dealers, no-account kids. Sykes is mindful of the Glock .40-caliber pistol in the shoulder holster under her jacket. She follows the sidewalk and rings the bell.
Momentarily, the porch light blinks on.
“Who is it?” a voice slurs from the other side of the door.
“Agent Sykes, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.”
A burglar chain rattles. A dead-bolt lock snaps free. The door opens and a cheap-looking woman with dyed blond hair and makeup smudges under her eyes steps aside to let Sykes in.
“Mrs. Barber,” Sykes politely says. “I sure appreciate…”
“I don’t get what all the fuss is about, but go on.” Her housecoat is buttoned crooked, eyes bloodshot, smells like booze. “The basement’s thataway,” she indicates with a nod, fumbles to relock the door, has a very loud voice with a very strong twang. “Rummage through his junk all you want. You can load it in a truck and haul it the hell away for all I care.”
“I won’t be needing to load it in a truck,” Sykes says. “I just need to look through some police files he may have had in his office once.”
“I’m going back to bed,” Mrs. Barber says.
Lamont seems to have forgotten where she is.
It crosses Win’s mind that she’s delusional, believes she’s in her big office surrounded by her big glass collection, maybe in one of her big-ticket designer suits, sitting at her big glass desk instead of in a hospital gown, in a plastic chair, inside a hospital examination room. She acts as if she and Win are doing their usual thing, working a high-profile case, a bad one destined for a lot of complications and press.
“I’m not sure you’re hearing me,” she says to Win as a knock sounds on the shut door.
“Just a minute.” He gets up to answer it.
It’s Sammy, pokes his head in, quietly says, “Sorry.”
Win steps out into the corridor, pulls the door shut. Sammy hands him this morning’s Boston Globe, the local section. The headline across the top of the front page is big and bold.
ANY CRIME, ANY TIME
DA ENLISTS SPACE-AGE SCIENCE
TO SOLVE OLD MURDER
“Four things you should know,” Sammy says. “First, your name’s all over this thing, a damn road map for how you’re supposedly going to solve the governor’s whodunit. More accurate, her whodunit”—he looks at the shut door—“since he’s delegated it to her. Good luck if the killer’s still out there and reads all this shit. Second, well, the second thing’s sure as hell not good.”
“What?”
“Baptista just died. To state the obvious, now we don’t get to talk to him. Third, I went through his clothes, found a thousand bucks in hundred-dollar bills in his back pocket.”
“Loose, folded up, what?”
“Plain white envelope, no writing on it. Bills new-looking, you know, crisp. Not folded or nothing. I called Huber at home. The labs are going to process them right away, look for prints.”
“What’s the fourth thing?”
“The media’s found out about…” He again nods toward the shut door. “There’s like three TV trucks and a crowd of reporters out there in the parking lot and it isn’t even daylight yet.”
Win steps back inside the examination room, shuts the door.
Lamont is sitting in the same plastic chair. It occurs to him she’s got nothing to wear unless she can handle the warm-up suit she put on before he drove her to the hospital. After the assault, she couldn’t shower, he didn’t have to give her instructions, she knows the routine. She still hasn’t showered, and it’s not a subject he is entirely comfortable bringing up.
“The press has found out,” he says, sitting back down on the stool. “I need to get you out of here without them ambushing you. I’m sure you know you can’t go back to your house right now.”
“He was going to burn it down,” she states.
The gas can was full. It certainly wasn’t left there by her yardman.
“He was going to kill me and burn down my house.” A steady, firm voice, the DA working the case as if she’s talking about some other victim. “Why? To make my death look like an accident. To make it look like I burned up in my house. He’s no beginner.”
“Depends on whether it was his idea,” Win says. “Or if someone gave him instructions. In any event, disguising a homicide with fire isn’t very reliable. Most likely, the autopsy would have revealed soft-tissue injury, the bullet, and possible damage to cartilage, bone. Bodies don’t completely burn up in house fires. You know that.”
He thinks about the money in Baptista’s pocket, something telling him it’s not a good idea to give that detail to Lamont just yet.
“I need you to stay here,” she says, tightly gripping the blanket she holds around herself. “Forget the lady in Tennessee, what’s-her-name. We need to find out who’s behind this. Not just some little nobody piece of… maybe someone else who put him up to it.”
“Huber’s already getting the labs mobilized…”
“How does he know about it?” she blurts out. “I haven’t told—” She stops short, her eyes wide. “He’s not going to get away with this,” and she’s talking about Baptista again. “This is one case that isn’t going to be… I want you in charge of it. We’re going to bury him.”
He resists the obvious pun, says, “Monique, he’s dead.”
She doesn’t flinch.
“Justified or not, struggle or not, I killed him. It was a good shooting. But you know what happens. Your office can’t investigate it alone, will either have to transfer the case to another DA’s office or bring in the Boston Homicide Unit. Not to mention Internal Affairs doing its thing. Not to mention the autopsy and every other test known to man. I’ll be put on administrative duties for a while.”
“I want you on this right now.”
“Not even a mental-health day? That’s nice.”
“Go drink a few beers with the stress unit. I don’t want to hear about your so-called mental health.” Her face is livid now, her eyes dark holes of hate, as if he is the one who attacked her. “If I don’t get a mental-health day, I’ll be damned if you do.”
Her change in demeanor is startling, unnerving.
“Maybe you don’t grasp the magnitude of what just happened,” he says. “I see it all the time with other victims.”
“I’m not a victim. I was victimized.” Just as suddenly, she is the DA again, the strategist, the politician. “This has to be handled precisely right or you know what I’ll be known for? The gubernatorial candidate who was raped.”
He doesn’t reply
“Any crime, any time, including mine,” she says.
6
Monique stands in the middle of the examination room, the white blanket wrapped around her.
“Get us out of here,” she says to Win.
“It’s not us,” he says. “I can’t be involved….”
“I want you in charge of this. Now come with me,” she says, her face calm, masklike. “Get us out of here. Stay with me until I know I’m safe. We don’t know who’s behind this. I must be safe.”