Cat's Claw (12 page)

“Aw,
hell,
” Charlie growled. “How do they get stuff like that?”

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “The free press is a damn nuisance, isn’t it? So don’t be surprised if there’s a reporter and a cameraman lining up outside the door when your client surrenders.” I paused, giving him a chance to put in a word or two of denial. He didn’t, so I went on. “There’s something else you should know, if you don’t already, Charlie. Larry Kirk is dead.”

“Dead?” An audible gasp, then a roar. “
How? When?
”

“Gunshot wound to the head. This afternoon. Ruby Wilcox’s sister found him in his kitchen. The first uniform on the scene called it in as a suicide. But I knew the guy personally and I have my doubts. I’m sure the police are keeping other possibilities in mind.”

“Aw, jeez!” Charlie said. I flinched at the ringing smack of a hand slapping the desk, hard. “I am flat not
believin’
this!”

“I know,” I said sadly. “I can’t quite get my mind around it, either. Kirk was one of the good guys, in my book, anyway.” I paused, and then decided to trade on our friendship. “I also had a hard time believing that George Timms would break into Kirk’s business, but I guess that’s true, huh?” I lowered my voice. “Just between us, why did he do it, Charlie? He needed to get his computer back, maybe? Something on it he’d forgotten about? Or maybe a little under-the-counter extortion?”

Now that the surprise was wearing off, I was starting to conjure possibilities, and blackmail wasn’t out of the question. Most people keep private documents on their computers and some people probably spend a fair amount of time visiting questionable websites. Child porn sites, for example, where they download photographs. But they don’t think about these ugly things when the computer crashes or it picks up a virus or some kind of malware and they take it in for repair. Maybe there was something on Timms’ computer—websites, photos, documents—that he desperately needed to hide. Maybe somebody had discovered whatever it was and was demanding something in return for not spilling his dirty little secret to the public at large.

“Absolutely not,” Charlie hooted. “And you know better than to ask that question, China.”

Now I knew for certain. It was blackmail—or, more precisely, felony extortion. Which raised the question: was it Kirk who was blackmailing Timms? That didn’t fit with my experience of Larry Kirk, but extortionists don’t necessarily look like criminals. Extortion is a white-collar crime, and often a crime of opportunity. An otherwise decent guy, in temporary need of some cash (to meet his wife’s divorce demands, for instance), inadvertently stumbles onto something criminal on a customer’s computer. So this decent guy feels justified in shaking down the customer for whatever he can get, threatening to expose him if he doesn’t fork over. In Timms’ case, the threat alone might have been enough to push him into breaking into the place in order to get his computer back—although if he’d given the matter some thought, he might have figured out that the extortionist could easily make a copy of the incriminating material. Or maybe they struck a deal, but the extortionist upped the ante, which pushed Charlie’s client into—

“And for your information,” Charlie growled, “I am no longer representing George Timms. The man was due in my office at two thirty this afternoon, and the surrender was scheduled for two hours later. He didn’t show up here. Didn’t show at the station, either. Dawson has called in an APB.” His voice hardened. “Timms probably threw one of his famous parties last night and blew off his appointments today. Life is too short, China. Timms can find himself another attorney.”

A
no-show
? “Uh-oh,” I said. My skin was prickling. “Kirk’s dead, your client is nowhere—sounds like trouble to me.” Of course, Charlie didn’t need me to tell him this. And he was right. I knew better than to ask him what he knew about the blackmail. That was privileged. And attorney-client privilege extends beyond the termination of the attorney-client relationship.

“My
former
client,” Charlie reminded me. He made a low sound in his throat. “Timms may be one of Pecan Springs’ stalwarts, but the guy is a first-class jackass.”

“And Kirk is dead,” I said again, more emphatically. “Are you making the same connections I’m making, Charlie? What if Timms—” I swallowed. “What if he decided it would be expeditious to simply kill the extortionist? What if—”

I stopped. I was way out of line here. And anyway, what I was thinking didn’t make any sense. The cops had the goods on Timms—enough to arrest him, anyway. With charges already pending against him, it would have been stupid to go after Kirk. Unless, of course, Timms was so angry that he was past making sense of anything. That happens sometimes—more often than we might like to think. Many of the defendants I’d represented had done whatever they did in what’s called the “heat of passion”—more like a lightning storm of passion, if you ask me.

“I don’t want to hear any more what-ifs,” Charlie said bleakly. “Officially, I don’t give a damn. I am done with Timms. I am off his case. Period. Paragraph. End of story.” The receiver went down, hard.

I stared at my cell phone for a moment. I could imagine that Timms might have done one or two things that he shouldn’t, and that his bad judgment might have opened him to an extortion attempt. But it was still hard for me to believe that he had actually burgled a business. And as for killing Larry Kirk, that was even harder to believe. But somebody had broken into the computer shop. Larry thought somebody was stalking him. And now Larry was dead.

But this was getting me nowhere, and there was something else I needed to do. I punched in Sheila’s cell number. I knew she’d still be at the scene, and she wouldn’t be thrilled by an interruption. By now, she undoubtedly knew that Timms was a no-show. But she probably wasn’t aware that Jessica Nelson knew that Timms was going to be charged in the break-in case. The arrest—when it finally happened—would take place in the glare of the media spotlight. Or as much spotlight as can be mustered in a small town like Pecan Springs.

Chief Dawson wouldn’t be any happier about this than Charlie had been. But she ought to be prepared to meet the press.

Chapter Five

When Sheila went through the gate into the Kirk backyard, Officer Kidder stepped out in front of her. “I need your name on the scene log-in sheet, Chief Dawson.” The rookie extended a clipboard.

“Thank you, Officer.” Sheila wrote her name, badge number, and the time, and ran her finger down the names on the list—Sergeant Clarke and Officer Kidder, detectives Bartlett and Matheson, Judge Porterfield, the two-man county crime-scene unit, Dana Kirk, herself. The scene log-in sheet was one of the first things Sheila had instituted when she took over the chief’s job. Officers weren’t supposed to leave anything at the crime scene, especially contaminants such as footprints, fingerprints, and DNA. But it happened. People dropped hairs, they sneezed, they touched stair rails and doorknobs. What they left behind could wreck an otherwise solid case. It was important to know who had been on the scene in the event there were questions later. And there almost always were. In an investigation, nothing was simple or straightforward.

“Thanks, Chief,” Kidder said, and took back the clipboard.

Sheila regarded her. The rookie barely made regulation height, but she was trim and athletic, with deep-set gray eyes and a pleasant smile—
a looker, young Mr. Cavette had called her. “You and Sergeant Clarke were the first to arrive?”

Kidder nodded. “We were on the east side of the campus when Dispatch gave us the ten-eighty-seven. The woman who called it in—Ramona Donahue, from down the street—was standing on the curb. The body is in the kitchen, on the floor. A male, gun in his right hand. Sergeant Clarke had me tape off the scene while she took Donahue’s statement. Detective Bartlett got here, gave it a look, and called out the county unit. They’ve started processing the scene.” She looked down at the log. “The others on-scene are on the list.”

“Thanks.” It was a concise summary. Sheila glanced around. She’d seen everyone except— “Detective Matheson? Is he inside?”

“Negative. He just went out to the street to work the neighbors, ma’am.”

“Good.” They’d probably need someone else for the canvass, too, although that could wait until Judge Porterfield ruled. If this turned out to be a clear case of suicide, neighborhood interviews might not be necessary.

“Hey!” The woman was heavyset, borderline obese. She was reaching over the gate, fumbling with the lock. “I’m Dana Kirk’s friend. We work together at the library. I need to talk to her. Let me in.”

Sheila nodded at Kidder, who stepped forward. She was brisk but polite. “Sorry, ma’am. You can’t come in here. And you’re not supposed to cross that crime-scene tape out front, on the driveway. So turn around and go back. Now, please.”

“But you don’t understand!” the woman protested frantically, pushing against the gate. “I’m Dana’s friend! Donna Givens. She’ll want me with her. She’ll need me to—”

Kidder interrupted sharply. “Do you have any information pertinent
to what’s happened here this afternoon, Ms. Givens? Anything the investigators need to know to do their work?”

The woman hesitated, her face a study in indecision. “No, I—” She swallowed. “No, not really. I just want to—”

“Then I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Kidder’s voice softened. “But if you have a business card, I’ll be glad to let Mrs. Kirk know you stopped by. I’m sure she’ll appreciate your concern.”

Admitting defeat, the woman fished in her handbag and pulled out a card. “Tell her I’m available whenever,” she said urgently, and handed it to Kidder. “And tell her that Mr. Vance would like her to phone just as soon as she can. He’s worried about—” She stopped, flushing. “Thank you, Officer. I appreciate it.” She turned and went back down the drive.

“Good job, Kidder,” Sheila said. Empathy was a powerful tool. Not all cops understood how to use it. She held out her hand. “I’ll be talking to Mrs. Kirk, so I’ll deliver the card. And it might be a good idea for you to station yourself at the tape line.”

Kidder nodded, gave her the card, and went through the gate. Sheila glanced around, looking for Detective Bartlett, and spotted him on the narrow wooden deck at the back of the house, talking to Maude Porterfield. A guy in a white jumpsuit with adams county crime scene unit in red letters on the back stood by the back door, waiting to go in. He was wearing a plastic cap, mask, gloves, and booties and carried a forensic case. In the backyard (fenced with a six-foot privacy fence), two white-uniformed med techs stood with their arms folded beside an empty gurney with a body bag on it. On a small concrete patio beside an ornamental pool thick with green pond lilies, a dark-haired woman in a skirt and sweater and low heels was huddled in a white plastic lawn chair. Sergeant Clarke crouched beside her. The woman was weeping, big, gulping sobs. The widow, no doubt.

Sheila regarded her. Maybe a little too histrionic for a woman who was seeking a divorce from a man who now lay dead on the kitchen floor? But you never knew about people. She caught the sergeant’s eye and motioned to her. Clarke got up and came over.

“Evenin’, Chief. Want me to go out and help Detective Matheson with the canvass?” Jeraldine Clarke was a short, muscular woman with boy-cut ginger-colored hair who went by the name of Jerry. She had grown up on a ranch where her favorite sports were calf-roping and bull-riding. Clarke said she liked it when somebody was stupid enough to resist arrest. Gave her an excuse to practice her skills.

“This is Detective Bartlett’s investigation,” Sheila replied. “He’ll let you know what he wants.” She ignored the look of surprise that crossed Clarke’s face. It was natural for an officer to think that when the chief showed up, she was there to kick butt or claim the case. “Kidder’s first body, was it?”

Clarke nodded. “She’s gonna be okay, ma’am. A little bit of a flinch, didn’t want to look, but after that she was fine.”

“Good.” Sheila knew from her own experience that the first dead body wasn’t necessarily the hardest—that was likely still to come. But it sounded like Kidder was off to a strong start. She nodded in the direction of the weeping woman. “Did somebody call Mrs. Kirk or did she just show up?”