We had Donny Baynes’s complete attention now. He slammed the drawer shut.
“I did not know Salma. That’s a fact.”
“Never met her?”
“No,” Donny said. He wanted no part of being questioned by Mike Chapman. “Alex, I don’t know what gives you the idea-you couldn’t possibly think I held out on you about something.”
“I’m not sure what to think.”
“Why? Where did this come from?”
“Did you ever meet Salma Zunega? Not ‘know’ her, Donny. Just meet her is all I’m asking,” I said.
“Look, can we talk one-on-one?”
“I’ve got no secrets from Mike.”
Donny Baynes hesitated before answering. “What do you have, a photo of me on a rope line at a fund-raiser with Ethan’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t have anything at the moment except a hunch that you are so close to Ethan you must have been in Salma’s orbit every now and then. What am I going to find if I dig a little deeper? Are there photographs? You tell me.”
Mike was letting me take the lead, seeing that Donny was more comfortable trying to angle his way through this with me.
“I didn’t know her, Alex. Can I swear I was never in the same room with the girl? No, I can’t do that,” Donny said. “Because I didn’t have any clue that my good friend Ethan Leighton had gone off the deep end without a life vest. He’s been in one political race after another. There are always attractive young women around in campaigns. It never seemed to get to him, and why would it? He had Claire at home. He had a relationship with his wife that we all envied.”
“You and I stood on the beach together Wednesday morning, with bodies washing up on shore and hundreds of victims whose lives had just been turned upside down. You were furious when Mercer Wallace arrived to tell us that Ethan had crashed his car-and by the way, had a lover, and a child he’d fathered with her. Did you fake that?”
“I didn’t fake anything,” Donny said, pulling on the cord of the venetian blinds. “Ethan kept that side of his life so compartmentalized, I would have given everything I had to believe that Mercer was mistaken. Ethan’s got a public persona that’s different than his private one-sure-but this crazy-ass part of him? I didn’t know it existed.”
“I’ll ask you again, Donny. When you heard about Salma’s death on Thursday-when you sat at my conference table and saw Polaroid photos of the young woman who was hoisted out of the well-did you recognize her?”
“Now you’re asking a different question. Recognize her? Did she look like someone I’d ever seen before? You’re asking that?”
“Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear, Donny. I’m asking that.”
“She looked familiar. She’s a pretty girl.”
“You should have seen her before she went bottoms up in the well, man. She looked a hell of lot better.” Mike had focused his attention on a photo on the wall of Baynes shaking hands with Mayor Statler. “You keeping Hizzoner up to speed on the boat people? He knows what you’re doing over here?”
“Yeah, he does,” Donny said, happy to field a question on another issue.
“Today. You see him today?”
“Last night, when I knocked off,” he said, laughing a bit as he straightened out his blotter. “Jeez, Chapman, I’ve got to answer to you now? Something’s wrong with that picture.”
“City Hall?” I asked. “Did you go to City Hall last night?”
Donny was trying to read my expression. “You don’t mean to imply I should have told you I was going there, do you? Statler called. I walked over and gave him a quick update, Alex. You’ve got nothing to do with the pieces of the case that my guys are working on.”
I was determined to get back on course and stop Mike’s interference.
“I’m glad you went,” I said, thinking of the plastic bag in Mike’s jacket pocket. “Go back to Salma, Donny. I wasn’t done with that.”
“Not much more to say.”
“She looked familiar to you, have I got that right?”
There had been no photographs of the elusive Salma in the newspapers, and it was impossible to believe the battered face of the woman in the well, represented in crime-scene photos, would be recognized by anyone who had only met her in a crowd.
“Yes. Vaguely familiar.”
“Did you ever talk with her?”
“I wish we could sit down with Ethan,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I’m sure he’d confirm I didn’t know her.”
“Next time you have dinner with Ethan,” Mike said, stepping all over my words, “maybe he can refresh your recollection.”
“I’d say that’s a few months down the road, Chapman. I’ll be arm’s distance from him, just like everyone else in law enforcement. He’ll straighten this out. This situation makes him look awfully screwed up, but he’s a good man at heart.”
“Damn. I was counting on you to nab me an invitation to that fancy private cabal.”
“Just what would that be?” Donny asked, bracing his arms on the edge of the desk.
“That gentlemen’s social club you boys got going. By invitation only. Seems totally unfair that Coop can’t buy herself a seat, but I had high hopes of joining you. Don’t you want to tell us a little something about it?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“I haven’t had anything to do with that group in years,” Donny Baynes said as he sat down in his high-backed leather desk chair. “So far as I know, it doesn’t exist. Who’s been feeding you that crap?”
“Kendall Reid,” I said.
Donny cradled his forehead in his hands, elbows on his desk. He took a few seconds to collect himself. “Reid’s a thief and a liar. I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to do by dragging me into this.”
“He says you know-maybe you were even there-the night Ethan met Salma.”
“Look, if she’s the girl I think, I never put her together with Ethan. She was probably at fund-raisers. But I always figured she was Kendall Reid’s girl. Maybe he was just the beard for Ethan. Maybe that’s how stupid and naive I am.”
“What about this men’s club?” I asked.
“I just told you it’s defunct. Can’t have anything to do with this.”
“You also told her you didn’t know who Salma was, when it turns out you might,” Mike said. “It’s a good time to spill your guts and let us decide.”
The task force prosecutor was silent.
“Don’t try to filter the facts, Donny,” I said. “You’re too tight with Ethan to make the judgment calls. Let us help you decide.”
“This is harmless, Alex. I promise you it was harmless,” Donny said. “The Tontine Association. That’s what it was called.”