“It’s definitely worth pursuing,” Frank said.
“I knew you’d start to see it our way!” Pete said. “You need any more help, you let me know. No need for you to go it alone from here.”
“Sure, Pete,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
He hung up and forced himself to think of Seth Lefebvre.
26
Wednesday, July 12, 12:30 P.M.
Lake Terrace Condominiums
She was waiting for him outside the building, leaning against the wall near the bottom of the staircase. The veil was gone, but he recognized her by her shape and the dress she was wearing. She was a good-looking woman, with long dark brown hair and beautiful sea green eyes — a winter sea, he thought. There was not the slightest bit of warmth in them at the moment. They bore the marks of her recent grief, but she regarded him coldly. She was lean and strong — the muscles of her calves and arms were so well defined, he wondered if she lifted weights. She wasn’t mannish, but there was physical power in her build. She looked as if she was sorely tempted to use some of that power to punch him, as if keeping her arms folded tightly across her chest was all that prevented her from doing so.
“You took advantage of my inability to deny my son’s request at his father’s funeral,” she said by way of greeting. “I don’t appreciate that. I know how the game works, and that children are certainly not off-limits, but still—”
He held up a hand. “Hold on — your son approached me, not the other way around.”
“After you played up to him the other day.”
“I didn’t set the guinea pig loose. I didn’t even know you were living here or that Lefebvre had a son. Meanwhile, your boy is up there waiting for me and you don’t dare disappoint him. Not today.”
Her mouth leveled into a thin, tight line.
He sighed. “Maybe you’ll feel a little less hostile toward me if I tell you that I have no plan to use your son as a pawn.”
“Don’t bother, because I won’t believe you. Any more than I believe the crap you’ve given Yvette about believing in Phil’s innocence.”
“I do believe in his innocence.”
She rolled her eyes. “Try that on someone who’s never been a cop. I’ve been there, remember? And I know you can lie like the devil — the laws are set up so that you’re free to tell anyone just about anything in order to learn what you want to know. So bullshit Yvette if you like, but it won’t work with me.”
“You’ve been a cop, so you know what it’s like to bust your ass for someone who is determined to give you nothing but grief.”
“Cry me a river. Listen, I know you don’t want to talk to my son. Not really. He wasn’t even around when the trouble started. He can’t help you. So — let’s leave him out of it, all right?”
“I’m here because he wanted to talk to me. I’m not out to hurt him. Whether you like it or not, he’s learned something about his father today and—”
“Exactly my point — can’t you just let him think of Phil as the hero he was? Do you have to take that away from him?”
“Who says I am trying to?”
“Don’t give me that act!” she said furiously. “The Las Piernas Police Department has not sent you here to be helpful — I know, I worked for them.”
“You should consider rejoining the force. You’d fit right in — not twenty-four hours after I got back from the mountains, the guys I work with had all the answers, too.”
“Don’t ever compare me with those assholes again!” she said.
This is going nowhere, he thought. Sooner or later, he’d need to talk to her about Lefebvre, and he wasn’t exactly doing a fine job of building rapport. He slowly let out a breath, tried to recover his temper. “All right, I won’t compare you to them,” he said, keeping his voice even. “I know the department hasn’t been great where the family’s concerned. But if I’m going to clear Phil Lefebvre’s name, I’ll need your help.”
She gave him a look that said she had no faith in him whatsoever, but said, “You have questions for me, ask away.”
“Look, we’re off to a bad start here—”
“We haven’t got any kind of start at all, because nothing is building from here — you understand?”
He didn’t say anything. After a moment, he saw the tension in her shoulders ease, saw them lower as she relaxed slightly — as if the effort of maintaining this level of anger with him had gradually become too much for her.
When he saw this change, he began. He asked a few easy questions — yes or no questions, ones to which he knew she would always answer yes: She had been promoted to detective faster than any other woman before, right? Commendations during her patrol work? Then worked in Narcotics? About two years as a detective?
It was an old technique, one she undoubtedly knew of — the person being questioned says “yes,” and each time he or she says it, becomes a little less resistant, a little more open to the questioner. Elena unfolded her arms, and he was beginning to think all the fight had gone out of her, when he said, “You were partners with Hitch?”
Her eyes flashed and the arms came back up across her chest. “Yes,” she said bitterly.
So much for the “yes” theory, he thought.
He heard a door open, then heard Yvette say, “You will wait in here, Seth.”
The door closed again, but he realized that he might not get a chance to talk to her alone again for some time, if ever, and that Seth was growing impatient. He took the plunge. “It seems no one in the department knew you had a relationship with Lefebvre…”
“Which is probably why I’m alive.” She glanced over at him and relented. “Look, no one knew I had a relationship with Phil because we hardly got a chance to know it ourselves. In one twenty-four-hour period, Phil became my lover, Seth Randolph was murdered, Phil disappeared, and everyone started saying that he killed Seth. One day.”
“You were only together—”
“Yes. One afternoon.” She swallowed hard. “You don’t know how much I wish I could say it was more, but…”
He thought for a moment that she might cry, but she held the tears back. She moved to the stairs and sat down.
He sat next to her and waited, taking his chances on Seth’s patience.
When she started talking again, her voice was steady, but she spoke in the distracted manner of those immersed in memories.
“That night I’m out on a routine surveillance job and the radio starts going wild. What I’m hearing — what I’m hearing on that radio is unbelievable. A call from the guard on Seth’s room about a one-eighty-seven, and then he keeps saying, ‘It’s not my fault — it was Lefebvre.’”
She closed her eyes. “At first, I thought he meant that Phil was dead — that someone had killed both Phil and Seth Randolph.” She opened her eyes again and said, “Well, I guess I was right. But I didn’t know that then. I just knew that every damned unit in the city was headed over to the hospital and that the hospital was cordoned off. I talked Hitch into going over there. It got worse and worse by the minute. The more I heard, the more I kept hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare.”
She paused and cradled her forehead in the palm of one hand. “I was so scared for Phil — I think some part of me knew that something horrible had happened to him. But I didn’t want to believe that, so I kept telling myself, ‘Phil will straighten all of this out. They’ll reach Phil at Matt’s house. He’ll be there by now.’ But he wasn’t. And Matt was lying to them, but I didn’t know why.”
“Why did he lie?”
“He didn’t know what to believe, but he knew something had gone wrong — terribly wrong — for Phil. Me, at first I kept my hopes up. Not Matt. Matt didn’t know who to trust inside the department, and he didn’t have enough to go on to take it to someone outside the department. Later he tried, but no one would take him up on it. Phil looked too guilty.”