“Is there any danger? Am I…are we in any danger?” There was desperation in her voice. Karen backed from the table as if the picture laying there threatened her. Her right hand was high on her chest with her fingers touching her throat.
Tony was studying her face. He was trying to make sense of the change that had come over it, the change from fear to…what?
She looked like she’d just had a revelation.
“You guys!” Gary lurched into the doorway, leaning heavily on the jamb. He had on limp pale blue pajamas and a striped robe. His skin was gray and ashen. His eyes were red rimmed and painful looking. He coughed thickly, a deep chest rumble. Tony stood up, not to confront him, but to retreat from the spray when Gary sneezed repeatedly.
“They just have a few questions.” Karen went to her husband, seemingly unafraid of his disease. “It’s okay, honey.” She gave him her shoulder to lean on and led him to the table. Ray stood to gain some distance as well.
“What’s this shit about danger? Who’s in danger?” The question gurgled out of Gary’s chest. He spied the picture on the table and picked it up. “Who’s this?”
“Just a guy. They want to know if I’ve ever see him?” Karen sat close to Gary and patted his chest, trying to calm him. She still wouldn’t look at the photograph again.
“Well, have you?” Gary coughed out. He filched a sodden wad of tissue from the robe pocket and blew into it.
“No. Never.”
“There you go detectives. She’s never seen him. Who is he anyway?”
“Someone we came across in the course of the investigation,” Ray said, still not giving anything up.
“Is it possible he killed Deanna?” Karen lowered her head to her husband’s chest. She was letting him protect her now, Tony thought.
“There hasn’t been an arrest.”
“Well, there you go. Anything else?” Gary Hewes was doing all the asking and answering for his wife again. Ray looked to Tony and shook his head.
“Not right now. Thank you for the coffee. I hope you feel better soon, Mr. Hewes.” Both detectives moved toward the door.
“Hey, you forgot your picture,” Gary called after them. Tony scrunched his face. Hewes had sneezed and coughed all over it. He wasn’t going to touch it. No way in hell.
“You keep it,” Ray said. “We’ve got others.”
Tony was very careful not to touch his face with his hands and warned Ray not to either. “Plague house.”
Ray chuckled, but he didn’t touch anything but the steering wheel.
“I wasn’t going to touch that picture, no way,” Tony declared.
“Doesn’t matter. I was going to leave it there anyway. That was a very interesting encounter.”
“She lied.”
“Damn straight she lied, and she knows that we know she lied.” Ray was agitated, fired up enough to cuss. “I have some more questions for that woman.”
“Maybe the husband will croak.”
“Be serious, Tony.”
“I am serious, Ray. That dude’s in tough shape. Maybe a trip to the hospital, anyway.”
“She knows something. Something about Stuckey.”
“She saw him at the bar. Lakisha is certain.” Tony was flipping through his notebook, scanning pages near the front. Ray kept quiet, curious what the young detective was searching for, what he might have remembered.
“Got it! She lied all right.” Tony tapped his notebook. “Deanna and Karen were at the house one time, the boy’s place. Not long ago, either. Hong said he and Stuckey were playing video games. The women were looking for Scotty.”
“Any other notes? Did he say it looked like they recognized each other?”
“Nope.”
“You plan on asking him about it? Hong?”
Tony thought for a minute “I do…but I need some advice. How do I quiz the roommate without him getting more suspicious about Stuckey? He’s already making noises when I ask more questions.”
“He’s a good kid, this David Hong?”
“Seems to be. Yeah, he’s all right.”
“Let me talk to him. I’ve run into this before. Let’s give him a tour of the station, bring him in.”
“Arrest him?” Tony was a cop. That’s what ‘bring him in’ usually meant.
“Recruit him,” Ray said. “We need a spy.”
Chapter 28
Key’s Cafe on Raymond Avenue is a small place with big food. Tony and David Hong met Ray there after the lunch throng thinned out. The hot roast beef special was gone but there was still baked turkey with all the fixings, Thanksgiving in October. A practice run. David appreciated it.
Ray sipped his coffee, the cafe’s custom McGarvey blend, set the heavy cup down, and said, “We need your help, David.”
“This has to do with Sean, right? He had something to do with Missus F’s murder, didn’t he?” David herded the last of the gravy onto the last of his homemade roll.
“I’ll tell you the truth. At this point we’re not sure, not sure at all. Before I get into it we need to come to an understanding.”
Tony wondered how much of their suspicions Ray was going to share with this young man and what kind of understanding Ray was proposing.
David grinned. A drop of cranberry sauce was stuck in the corner of his mouth. “I ask too many questions, don’t I?”
“Curiosity is a natural thing,” Ray said, pointing at the corner of his own half-smile. Hong took the hint. “I question everything, but that’s my job. Detective de Luca is a curious sort too.”
“Look, ask me whatever you want. I won’t let on to Sean that I’ve talked to you. I don’t even like the guy.”
“Do you dislike him?” It was Ray’s show but Tony had to ask the question, had to butt in. If Hong had a score to settle with Stuckey he might remember things in a different light and that could lead them down a wrong path.
“No. He’s just a guy, a roomie. We don’t hang together. We just live in the same house. He’s not around much.” David shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“This is what it is, David. We have a few questions for you, very pointed questions, and as soon as we ask them a whole lot of things are going to start banging around in your head. I can’t tell you where we are in the investigation, but you’re going to think it’s heading in a certain direction.”
Hong nodded. He understood what Ray was getting at.
“Tony says you’re a good guy, that we can trust you. Can we trust you not to say anything to Stuckey about these things?”
“I haven’t yet.” David smiled again. There was a brief intermission while the waitress cleared the empty plates. She asked if they wanted more coffee and tempted them with the news that an apple pie had just come out of the oven. Tony and David gave in to that temptation.
“No, you haven’t. Tony?” Ray looked over seeking his partner’s approval.
“David, a while back you told me that Mrs. Fredrickson and a friend of hers, Mrs. Hewes came by the house looking for Scotty.”
“Yeah. Karen.”
“Karen. And you mentioned that Sean was there. You were gaming or something.” David looked out over the nearly empty restaurant, thinking. The waitress dropped off two enormous slices of steaming apple pie and topped off all their coffees.
“Sure. I remember. Now that you mention it, it was a little weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Sean, he was like, ignoring her. Karen. She’s hard to ignore.”
“Attractive woman.” Tony nodded in agreement.
“Scotty’s mom had gone straight back to the kitchen. I don’t know why, but Karen was just standing at the side of the couch scoping out Sean.”
“Scoping him out?”
“Staring at him.”
“Did they talk to each other?”
“No. I think she was about to say something but Scotty’s mom yelled at her from the kitchen and she never did. She went to the kitchen and then they split right away. Barely said goodbye.”
“And Sean never acknowledged her?”
“Like I said, he just played the game. In my opinion he was ignoring her, but he might have just been into it, you know.” Tony made some notes. Ray asked the next question.