“Is he gonna make it?”
Wilcox throws his hands up. “How do I know? The point is, you went there. You go to Huntsville, and forty-eight hours later, somebody tries to rub him off the board. Do you have any idea how that looks? With your reputation?”
“Calm down,” I say. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s not how it’ll look. And if I don’t come forward, if they find out I knew in advance what you were doing, do you know what they’ll do to me?”
I can feel a twitch in my eye, which I try to smooth with my fingertips. He really believes this. He really thinks I’m capable of putting a hit on someone, of solving the problem of Fauk’s appeal by putting a word in someone’s ear, setting murder in motion with the snick of a homemade shank.
“Get real,” I tell him. “If you think I had anything to do with this, you’re insane.”
“Cause and effect,” he says. “You go there, he gets stabbed.”
“Pure coincidence-”
“Coincidence! Right. I’ve got to tell them, March. I have no choice. I hope you can see that. If I don’t, I’ll look just as bad as you.”
I take a step back to let a uniformed sergeant slip by. He moves between us like a blind man, purposefully taking no notice.
“You’re making a scene,” I tell Wilcox. “Look, do what you have to do. I’m not going to argue with you. I went to the pen to see an informant. There were corrections personnel in the room. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
I turn my back on him and head for the parking garage. I don’t check my six until I’ve cleared his field of vision. Wilcox is a lost cause. He can’t see past his own suspicions and I’m tired of taking responsibility for them.
Down in the lot, I toss my briefcase onto the passenger seat and slide behind the wheel. I snap my seat belt into place, then turn the key. The engine roars to life.
Fauk has been stabbed. He’s in critical condition.
In my head I go over my conversation with Coleman, checking it for inconsistencies, for any line I might have uttered that could have been taken in the wrong way. Peter O’Toole asking his knights who’s gonna rid him of Richard Burton’s troublesome priest. But there was nothing like that. Besides, Coleman’s not the kind of inmate to shank someone, and he doesn’t have the juice to have it done by proxy.
I put the car in drive. I put it back in park. I sigh.
My eyes burn, the lids heavy with exhaustion. Eleven days. That’s how long I’ve been running on this thing, pulled from one break to the next, taking aim at suspect after suspect without much more than hunches to go on until now. There was a time when I cleared cases fast, when nothing slipped past me, when I could work the endless hours without them ever catching up. Not anymore.
Twenty minutes ago all I wanted was a night off. Now I’m afraid to let up for even an hour, afraid my suspect, the first person I can link to the murders through concrete physical evidence, will slip through my fingers if I don’t keep them clenched.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
It could be Wilcox ready for another. Bascombe wanting to grill me about Fauk. Charlotte ready to leave Ann’s and come home.
I check the screen. None of the above.
“Hello.”
“I heard about Charlotte. I’m really sorry. And this new homicide. . It looks like you were wrong about the serial killer.”
“What do you want, Brad?”
“I think we should talk.”
“About?”
“For one thing, I heard what happened today. Donald Fauk. The timing is pretty incriminating.”
“Brad,” I say.
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Goodbye.”
The phone buzzes again. I toss it next to my briefcase on the seat.
That’s another conversation I need to play back in my head: the call from Templeton when he discovered Simone Walker had been murdered at Joy Hill’s house. If he’d cooked up his serial killer theory with Lauterbach long before, why lay on all the innuendo about Hill? He’d all but labeled her a suspect, and I was gullible enough to follow his lead.
He’s right. We should talk. I need answers about his role in the investigation. And I want to know what was inside the fat envelopes Fauk mailed to him. He took so much trouble to avoid censorship. I need to know why.
I pick up the phone and call him back.
CHAPTER 23
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15 — 8:00 P.M.
Templeton chooses the rendezvous point, a window table at the Epicure Café on West Gray, a couple of blocks from his house. I arrive as a party of moviegoers push through the exit, heading a few doors down to the bright marquee of the River Oaks Theatre. Templeton waves. He licks some kind of pastry off his fingertips. As I approach, he extends his hand, which I ignore and not just for sanitary reasons. Maybe he’s ready to mend fences, but I’m not.
At the table beside ours, a hirsute man in a brown cardigan flips through the newspaper, tortoiseshell reading glasses across the bridge of his nose. The paper isn’t the Chronicle; it’s the New York Times. Pretentious.
“I didn’t order you anything,” Templeton says.
He pushes his plate to one side, drawing a foamy cappuccino closer. He’s placed an open notepad on the table. I can’t make out the upside-down writing without leaning toward him, and I’m too proud to do that.
“You lied to me, Brad. About Joy Hill.”
He does a quick breathing exercise to show me how serene he is, releasing a long, cleansing breath. “Everything I told you about that woman was true.”
“You said she was putting moves on Simone Walker, and that resisting those moves was probably what got Simone killed-” He starts to protest, but I cut him off with a swipe of the hand. “Maybe not in so many words, but you strongly implied as much. And all the while, you’d cooked up this alternate theory. You never believed for a moment in Hill’s guilt.”
He smiles. “I’m not the detective.”
“Here’s the thing. You knew-or thought you knew-that Walker’s killing was part of a larger series, and you didn’t say a word about it. Not only that, you intentionally put me on a false trail. I want to know why.”
“When we met at the Black Lab, I had no idea your case would have anything to do with Fauk. You’re the one who told me, remember?”
“You and Lauterbach have been working together for months.”
“I only met him in September. At your cousin’s conference. I already told you this. When I tried talking to you about it, you wouldn’t answer my calls. You didn’t bother until you wanted something from me.”
Everybody lies to the police. In interview rooms, I’ve gotten hardened murderers to open up by playing on their fear of losing control of how the facts will be spun. With the writer, there’s no technique required. He likes talking. He likes to nuance the details.
“Here’s the thing, March. I don’t trust you. If I held information back, it’s because I wasn’t sure exactly what you’d do with it. I’m not interested in helping with a cover-up. I admitted already that I’ve been in touch with Donald off and on. When I was writing The Kingwood Killing, he must have thought I was going to prove his innocence. When that didn’t happen, he made sure I knew how disappointed he was. But he kept in contact, and eventually some of the things he said started to make sense.”
“Like what?”
“For one thing, he made me wonder if I’d gotten Detective Fitzpatrick’s involvement wrong. The way I presented him in the book, he’s basically a buffoon past his sell-by date, trying to unload the Fauk case so he can retire. But he and Donald were pretty close at that point, and Donald says the serial killer angle was solid. They just focused on the wrong villain. Fitzpatrick’s only mistake was fixating on the Railroad Killer.”