"Not really… What does Bekker have to do with this? Is he a suspect?" She was focusing on Lucas.
"Sure. You always check the husband when a wife gets murdered," Lucas said.
"So you don't really think he did this?"
"He was in San Francisco when his wife was killed," Lucas said. "This one is so much like it, it almost has to be the same guy."
"Oh." She was disappointed and bit her lower lip. She wanted the killer, Lucas realized, and if she had her way about it, she would have him dead.
"If you think of anything, give me a call," Lucas said. Their eyes locked up for a second, a quick two-way assessment. He handed her a business card and she said, "I will." Lucas turned away, glanced back once to see her looking after him and drifted out toward the living room.
The cop with the hammer was talking to a uniform, who had a middle-aged woman in tow. The woman, wearing a pink quilted housecoat and white sneakers, was edging toward the archway that opened into the living room. The cop blocked her with a hip and asked, "So what'd he look like?"
"Like I said, he looked like a plumber. He was carrying a toolbox or something, and I says to Ray, that's my husband, Ray Ellis, Mr. and Mrs., 'Uh-oh,' I says, 'it looks like that Armistead woman's got troubles with her plumbing, I hope it's not the main again.' They dug up the main here in this street, the city has, twice since we been here, and we only got here in 'seventy-one, you'd think they'd be able to get that right…" She took another crab step toward the arch, trying to get a look.
"You didn't like Ms. Armistead?" Lucas asked, coming up to them.
The woman took a half-step back, losing ground. A flash of irritation crossed her face as she realized it. "Why'd you think that?" she asked. A defensive whine crept into her voice. She'd heard this kind of question asked on L.A. Law, usually just before somebody got it in the neck.
"You called her 'that Armistead woman.'…"
"Well, she said she was an actress and I said to Ray…"
"Your husband…"
"Yeah, I said, 'Ray, she don't look like no actress to me.' I mean, I know what an actress looks like, right? And she didn't look like no actress, in fact, I'd say she was plain. I said to Ray, 'She says she's an actress, I wonder what she's really involved in.' " She squinted slyly.
"You think she might be involved with something else?" asked the cop with the hammer.
"If you ask me… Say, is that the murder weapon?" The woman's eyes widened as she realized that the cop was holding a hammer wrapped in a plastic bag.
"Before you get to that," Lucas interrupted impatiently, "the man you saw at the door… why'd he look like a plumber?"
" 'Cause of the way he was dressed," she said, unable to tear her eyes away from the hammer until the cop dropped it to his side. She looked up at Lucas again. "I couldn't see him real good, but he was wearing one of those coveralls, dark-like, and a hat with a bill on it. Like plumbers wear."
"You didn't see his face?"
"Nope. When I saw him, he was on her porch, with his back to me. I saw his back, saw he had a hat."
"Did you see a truck?"
She frowned. "No, now that you mention it. I don't know where he come from, but there weren't no cars on the street, just Miz Armistead's Omni, which I always notice because Ray had one almost like it, when he was married to his first wife, silver, except it was a Plymouth Horizon."
"Did you see him leave?"
"Nope. I was washing up the dishes."
"All right. Thanks," Lucas said. Nothing. She'd probably seen the killer, but it wouldn't help. Unless…
"One more question. Did the guy have plumber's tools or any kind of tools, anything you could see… or did he just feel like a plumber?"
"Well…" She didn't understand the question. "He just looked like a plumber. You see him on the sidewalk, you say, 'There goes a plumber.' "
So he might have been a plumber. Or he might have been an actor…
Lucas stepped away, to the arch into the living room. One of the lab cops was videotaping the body and the living room, his lights bleaching out Armistead's already paper-white face. Lucas watched for a moment, then walked outside. The uniform had stretched crime-scene tape around the house and its hedge, and a half-dozen TV cameras were parked just off the curb. He heard his name ripple among the reporters, and the floodlights started flicking on as he walked down the porch steps to the street.
"Davenport…" The reporters moved in like sharks, but Lucas shook his head.
"I can't talk about it, guys," he said, waving them away.
"Tell us why you're here," a woman called. She was older for a television reporter, probably in her early forties, about to fall off the edge of the media world. "Gambling, dope? What?"
"Hey, Katie, I really want to leave it to the Homicide people…"
"Anything to do with those guys selling guns…?"
Lucas grinned, shook his head and pushed through to his car. If he stayed to talk, somebody would remember that he was working on the Bekker case and would add it up.
As he drove away, he tried to add it up himself. If the first murder was hired by Bekker, what did the second one mean? There had to be a connection-the techniques were identical-but it was hard to believe that Bekker could be involved. Swanson and the other investigators had been leaning on him: if he had some relationship with this woman, past or present, he'd hardly risk killing her. Not unless he was stupid as well as crazy. And nobody said he was stupid.
Lucas stopped for a red light, one foot on the clutch, the other on the gas pedal, idly revving the engine. The first killing had the earmarks of an accidental encounter. A doper goes into a house in a rich neighborhood, looking for anything he can convert to crack. He unexpectedly bumps into the woman, kills her in a frenzy, runs. If it hadn't been for Bekker's reputation with his relatives, if Sloan hadn't made the call to Bekker's former Army commanding officer, the killing might already have been written off as dope-related…
But this second killing looked as though it were planned: the hammer, newly bought and then left behind. Nothing missing from the house. Not like a doper. A doper would have grabbed something. Nothing missing from Bekker's house, either…
Lucas shook his head, realizing the red light had turned green, then yellow. He was about to pop the clutch to run the yellow, when a black Nissan Maxima, coming up fast from behind, slid a fender in front of him and stopped. Lucas jabbed the Porsche's brake pedal, and the car bucked and died.
"Motherfucker," he said, and pulled the door latch-handle. The other driver was faster. As Lucas pushed open the door, a tall blonde hopped out of the Nissan and walked through Lucas' headlights, a tight smile on her face. TV3. She'd been around for a couple of years and Lucas had seen her on the Crows case.
"God damn it, Carly…"
"Stuff it, Lucas," the woman said. "I know how you worked with Jennifer and a couple other people. I want on the list. What happened back there?"
"Hey…"
"Look, my fuckin' contract is up in two months, and we're talking, me and the station," she said. "I'm asking sixty and it's like, Maybe yes, maybe no, what've you done for us lately? I need something: you're it." She posed, ankles crossed, fist on her hip.
"What's in it for me?" Lucas asked.
"You want somebody inside Three? You got it."
Lucas looked at her for a moment, then nodded. "I trust you just once," he said, holding up an index finger. "You burn me, you never come back."
"Fine. And it's the same with me. You ever burn me, or even get close, and I'll deny everything and sue your ass," the blonde said. They were both in the street, face to face. A black Trans Am slowed as it passed around them, and the passenger window rolled down. A kid with carefully coiffed hair and a hammered forehead looked out and said, "What's happening?"
"Cop," Lucas said. "Keep moving."
"We're cool," the kid said, then pulled his head inside, and the car accelerated away.