“I’m very sorry about your daughter. Please give your wife my sympathy.”
“I appreciate that, Amy. But sympathy isn’t going to do a hell of a lot for either of us right now.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“I don’t want another Baxter case here, Amy.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Dick.”
A pause. “I’m told that your brother was seeing my daughter.”
“He knew her, if that’s what you mean.”
“ ‘Knew’ her. That’s a nice euphemism.”
“He didn’t sleep with her.”
“Oh?”
“I asked him that directly and he said they hadn’t actually gone to bed.”
“There’s some fancy dancing. What the hell does ‘hadn’t actually gone to bed’ mean exactly?”
“He didn’t sleep with her.”
“Or so he says.”
“I believe him.”
“Of course you believe him, Amy. He’s your brother.”
Dick Fuller obviously needed somebody to take his anger and loss out on. Amy was handy. She doubted that Dick would ever ask the much harder questions of himself — what kind of father had he been? What had he really known about his daughter?
“I’ve taken myself off the case, Dick. I don’t want there to be any suspicion that this case isn’t being investigated properly.”
“I already knew that.”
“Oh?”
“I... I spoke to Chief Hadley a little while ago.”
“I see.”
Another pause. “He seems to think that you have quite a bit of influence over your deputy DA, this Dick Wilson.”
“He’s running the case, Dick. I didn’t even ask him to report to me. I want him to be independent in every way.”
She felt hurt and angry that Chief Hadley had questioned her integrity. She’d worked so damned hard to remove herself from the case... and that still didn’t seem to be enough.
“He’ll be completely independent of me, Dick. And that’s a promise.” Then: “My brother’s a suspect. But the investigation is just starting, Dick. We don’t know where it’ll lead. Your daughter may have had other friends.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means just what I said, Dick. We’ll have to talk to all her friends, see if she was seeing somebody you didn’t know anything about. That’s just good investigative procedure.”
“Anything to take suspicion off your brother, is that it, Amy?”
“That isn’t it at all. And I think if you were a little more rational right now, Dick, you’d understand what I’m saying.”
“A man your brother’s age starts hanging around a girl my daughter’s age... there’s going to be trouble. And that’s exactly what happened.”
“I’m sorry, Dick.”
“I hope he realizes he can be prosecuted for even being with her... whether they actually slept together or not.”
“I made him aware of that, yes.”
A long pause. “I wish you could hear my wife crying, Amy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person this distraught.”
Amy thought of the day her parents were killed. She knew exactly what Dick Fuller was talking about.
“I really am sorry about Darcy, Dick.”
He sighed. “I appreciate that. I—” He sounded calmer now. “I just don’t want another Baxter case here, Amy. No matter where it leads.”
“I understand that. And I’m going to make sure that the killer is apprehended very soon.”
“Even if the killer is your brother?”
“Even if the killer is my brother.”
Another pause. “You may not know this, but Chief Hadley is going to arrest him in an hour or so.”
“Arrest him? On what basis?”
She knew she was hurting herself with Dick. She sounded frantic, angry. Hardly the objective prosecutor she’d just claimed to be.
“He thinks there’s enough evidence,” Dick Fuller said. “He also thinks there’s a chance your brother may try to run. I guess he did that one weekend when he was arrested for reckless driving.”
That particular incident had taken place just as Amy was finishing up her B.A.
Richie had set a scoring record that weekend in the high school playoffs. He and his friends celebrated all of Saturday night and all of Sunday. About 2 A.M. on Monday morning, Richie’s car left the river road. The borrowed convertible plunged deep into the chilly black waters of the river. While Richie had his supporters — nobody had been injured, and the local Ford dealer promised to fix up the convertible for just cost — many townspeople demanded that he be punished. He could easily have killed somebody. Chief Hadley called Amy and told her he was going to arrest her brother. Richie had been standing next to her when the call came. He slipped out the back door and ran up into the timbered hills, where he hid out until later that night, only surrendering when Amy assured him that he wouldn’t have to spend any time in jail. A year before, a friend of Richie’s had gotten into some driving trouble over in Rock Island. Admittedly, the kid had a big mouth. They put him in a cell with six other prisoners. By dawn, Richie’s friend was dead. Richie had a terror of jail that was almost obsessive. He frequently had nightmares about being put behind bars.
“The Chief feels it’s necessary.”
“I see.”
“I know you’re in a bind here, Amy. I’d be a little more — sympathetic, I suppose — if it wasn’t my daughter we were talking about.”
“I understand, Dick. I really do.”
She was seeing Richie’s cottage. Chief Hadley’s car pulling up to the front door. The Chief getting out. Richie peering out the front window like a scared little kid. He’d be so scared, so scared...
“I guess I’d better go now, Amy. I just wanted to be able to tell my wife that you wouldn’t stand in the way.”
“You have my word, Dick.”
“That’s all I need, Amy.”
“I’m sorry, Dick. I really am.”
“I’m sorry for both of us, Amy. I lost a daughter. You may lose a brother.”
For several long minutes, Amy sat in cold silence, staring at the phone and thinking of Richie.
3
“We’ve arrested people on a hell of a lot less than this, Sam,” Chief Hadley was saying.
“Maybe you have, Chief. I haven’t.”
Hadley made a sour face. “Now don’t go and get all high and mighty on me, Sam. I know you think I’m an old hack who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, but the fact is, there’s already one hell of a case against Richie McGuire. And the last time we tried to arrest him, he ran away.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Still and all, Sam. There’re certain patterns to Richie’s life. I don’t want to risk him getting away.” Then he said the magic words: “Nobody wants another Baxter case, Sam.”
They were in the Chief’s office and had been for fifteen minutes.
When the Chief had first told him about arresting Richie, Sam couldn’t believe it. Richie was certainly a high-priority suspect right now — but arresting him?
Sam’s first impulse was to wonder who’d gotten to the Chief. Hadley had a lot of cronies in this town and Sam sensed that one of them had convinced Hadley to arrest Richie.
Hadley would never question the person’s secret motive. If Hadley owed him a favor, or thought he did, Hadley would do the person’s bidding. No questions asked.
Hadley’s phone rang.
“Hold calls,” Hadley said to his intercom.
A male officer responded, “It’s the Mayor, Chief.”