Cat's Claw (38 page)

So the mother had left the child with a family friend and gone across the border alone. She was trying to make arrangements with a
coyote
—a man who smuggled undocumented immigrants from Mexico into the U.S.—to smuggle her son into Mexico, using a route that would avoid border checkpoints and nosy border agents. She would be taking a terrible risk, for the
coyotes
were notoriously unreliable, often leaving their charges to die alone in the desert.

When Blackie and Mike had gone to the barrio, they had spotted the child playing outdoors. As sheriff of Adams County, Blackie had worked closely with the El Paso police on a couple of cases. Now, he telephoned the El Paso police chief, who sent a team to the house, along with an agent of the Texas Department of Family and Child Protective Services. The child was picked up without incident. The next morning Blackie and Mike and the little boy, in the custody of a female FCPS agent, flew back to Austin. The reunion of father and child at the airport, with Blackie and McQuaid as the boy’s “rescuers,” had headlined the six o’clock news on all three network channels in Austin that night. When the mother came to the friend’s house to pick up her son, she was arrested and charged with abduction.

“I was scared, too, China,” Sheila replied soberly. “Actually, I’m glad I had a couple of investigations to work while that was going on. If I hadn’t been so busy, I’d have had more time to worry about what the guys might be doing.”

On the lake below, Blackie was maneuvering his boat to the dock. McQuaid got out and tied the bow to a piling. China waved to them, then turned to Sheila. “Now that Jackie Harmon has been officially charged with Larry Kirk’s murder, are you going to tell me why she killed him? The story in last week’s
Enterprise
wasn’t terribly informative. Just the who, what, when, and where. Hark skipped the why.”

“She had a pretty powerful motive, China. Harmon had a million dollars’ worth of insurance on him—one of those corporate-owned life insurance polices. COLIs, they’re called.”

“A ‘dead peasant’ policy, you mean?” A look of disgust crossed China’s face. “I remember when the Texas legislature approved that practice. Pretty ugly business, seems to me. An open invitation to all kinds of corrupt practices.”

“It was certainly ugly in this case. Kirk worked for Harmon before he and Dana were married, and apparently signed a consent form for the insurance without being aware of what he was doing. But he wasn’t just an employee there. He and Jackie Harmon were lovers before Dana came on the scene, and Harmon harbored plenty of resentment over being replaced in his affections.”

“‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’” China said softly.

“Something like that. When I talked to Dana Kirk about this after Harmon’s arrest, she told me that Harmon threatened to ‘claw her eyes out’ for ‘stealing’ Kirk. Harmon even wrote a couple of threatening letters to her. Luckily, Dana had saved them. The prosecution can probably make good use of them. And Dana will be a strong witness.”

“But their affair must have been several years ago,” China said. “You’d think Harmon would have gotten over the jealousy by now.”

“You’d think,” Sheila agreed. “But some people can carry a torch for a long time, especially if their feelings have been injured. Anyway, after the separation, Harmon seems to have hoped that they could get back together again, and Kirk seems to have encouraged her. Maybe he was hoping to get her to cancel that policy. Or maybe he was just lonely. But then he broke it off, and it drove her over the edge. Being rejected a second time was more than she could take. She started hanging around his place—”

“So she was the stalker Larry emailed me about,” China put in. “The same person that the Little Old Ladies’ League reported seeing in the alley. Gotta give those ladies credit, Sheila. It may look like they have their noses in their sewing, but not much gets past them.”

Sheila smiled. “She’s the one. We found her initials on Kirk’s calendar. He was keeping track of the times he saw her, maybe with the idea of using the information in his effort to get a restraining order.”

“Ah,” China said.

“She was smart enough to figure out that the best time to fire a gun in that quiet neighborhood was when the garbage truck went through. And smart enough to make the murder look like a suicide—and send a phony suicide note to her victim’s wife. But one of the garbage pickup crew saw her leaving the house and gave us a positive identification. When we looked at that suicide note in the context of the emails Kirk wrote just before his death, it was clearly a fake. And she forgot—or never knew—that he hated guns, and that he was a southpaw.”

“The suicide exclusion on the policy had lapsed, I take it,” China said.

“Long ago. If she had managed to pull it off, the insurance company would have paid the full death benefit, no questions asked.”

“A million dollars,” China mused. “Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Very tempting.”

“That’s a good way of putting it, China. And as far as motives go, it’s hard to say which was most compelling. Her desire to get even with him for dropping her—twice
—
or her need to get her hands on that insurance money. We’ve learned that her business was in trouble. The bank was calling one of her notes. She was strapped for cash.” She shook her head. “Those COLI policies are an open invitation to trouble.”

China chuckled. “The prosecution is going to have fun with that one.
Juries love to be entertained by stories of greed and passion—it’s even better when there’s a little sex and some corporate scandal thrown in. But juries hate circumstantial cases, and I’m sure her defense attorney will go for reasonable doubt.”

“He can try. But the partial print on the cartridge—
her
print—isn’t circumstantial. That’ll be a pretty tough challenge for the defense. And the garbage crew’s identification puts her on the scene at the crucial moment.”

“Facts can be difficult,” China agreed. “But good defense attorneys love a tough challenge. Don’t count her side out. It’s not game over until the buzzer sounds.”

“Yeah, right,” Sheila said wryly. “But Jack Bartlett is continuing to dig. He may turn up even more hard evidence before this thing goes to trial. He’s a good guy, China. Strong instincts, logical mind. He handled the blackmail case very well.”

She felt a strong sense of relief when she thought about that part of it. There had been some whispering in the department, but there hadn’t been the strong political backlash that Blackie had predicted. Bartlett seemed to know how to deal with his fellow cops. They respected him. And Sheila had even gotten wind of some compliments tossed in her direction for giving him the lead on the Kirk case—and the credit for solving it.

“Are you going to press charges against Henry Palmer for his role in Timms’ blackmail?” China asked.

Sheila frowned. That hadn’t been cleared for public release yet. Palmer was still in the hospital, recovering, and the case was still under investigation. “How’d you hear about that?”

“Charlie Lipman told me. He said he’s been retained by Palmer, but he hasn’t heard the charges.”

“You and Charlie Lipman.” Sheila shook her head. “Between the two of you, I doubt that anything happens in this town that you don’t know about.”

“Between me, Charlie, and Hark Hibler,” China amended with a grin. “So where is the investigation?”

“Bartlett’s working on it,” Sheila said. “There’ll probably be a plea deal. Palmer is cooperating. And we were able to find a list of the blackmail victims on Hatch’s computer.” She grinned. “You’d be surprised at who they were. Several of our town’s upstanding citizens.”

“Hark will be publishing the list in the paper, I suppose,” China said, straight-faced, without a hint of sarcasm. “I’m eager to read it.”

Sheila hooted. “Don’t you wish—you and Hibler. He likes nothing better than scandal in high places. But that list will never see the light of day. Lipman will use it as leverage to do a deal with the DA. You can bet that Howie Masterson won’t want to see it entered into evidence at trial or on the front page of the
Enterprise
. Timms wasn’t the only one of Masterson’s friends whose name was on it.”

“Not to speak ill of those in power, of course.” China eyed Sheila. “Now that we’re talking about powerful people, what’s this I hear about Clint Hardin leaving? My spies tell me he’s taken a job down at Rockport.”

“Your spies are right,” Sheila said with a grin. “And ain’t that just too, too bad? Turns out that he wasn’t just fishing for redfish on his vacation. He was trolling for a new job. And he got it, too—the chief’s job at Rockport. I’m sure he’ll love it there, China. When he’s not pushing stacks of paper around on his desk or taking credit for the good work of other people, he can get out on the Gulf and go fishing.”

Sheila was amazed at how lighthearted she felt about this new development. Maybe her problems with the job had less to do with the paperwork and more to do with Hardin. When she’d heard he was leaving, it
was as if a giant weight had rolled off her shoulders. She even felt okay about the paperwork—not good, of course, but okay. And she had decided that she would try to spend more time out in the community, partnering on investigations. Less desk work, more real police work.

“In my experience, it’s usually leftovers from the previous regime who cause the biggest problems,” China said knowingly. “I’ve heard it called ‘old think.’ Some people have a hard time adapting to new ways of doing things.” She paused. “How are you going to fill the deputy chief’s position?”

“Most likely, we’ll do an inside search. Open it up for applications, and take the best. It’s a little early to see how that’ll turn out.” Sheila raised an eyebrow. “Funny you should mention leftovers from the previous regime. You may be interested to know that I’ve found a new home for my chair.”

“Your
chair
?”

“Yeah. You know that big executive chair I inherited from Bubba Harris? It’s been a huge pain since the moment I sat down in it. It’s designed for a big guy with long legs, not for me, and there’s no adjustment that makes it comfortable. I should have gotten rid of it earlier, but I was stymied. I couldn’t swap it out with anybody in the department. It was the chief’s chair. The
big
chief. If I gave it to somebody else, he’d be the chief.”

“The seat of authority, so to speak.” China rolled her eyes. “Belongs to he who can fill it.”

That made Sheila giggle. “So to speak. I’m trading with the new city comptroller, Steve Seymour. He’s as big as a grizzly bear, but the office chair he inherited from Emma Heartwell would just about fit Goldilocks. So we’re swapping.” She made a wry face. “Of course, there’s a three-inch stack of paperwork documenting the trade, which has to be approved by the city council. Ridiculous.”

China looked out across the lake. “Speaking of grizzly bears,” she said thoughtfully, “what have you heard about that mountain lion?”

“The report came back yesterday,” Sheila said. “The animal your neighbor shot is the one that killed George Timms, and there’s DNA evidence to prove it. Hark Hibler says there’ll be a story about it in the next
Enterprise
.” She grinned. “I understand that your friend Jessica Nelson is writing it. She’s practicing her human-interest skills from a different angle, I guess. I heard that she was interviewing both of the Banners.”

“Not that cat,” China said quietly. “The other one. The one that got away.”

“It got away,” Sheila said. “Totally, I mean. Parks and Wildlife decided not to spend the money to track it. After they looked at that rock you found—the one with the fur and the blood on it—and compared it to the wound on the cat’s head, they concluded that the cat that killed Timms was already dead. The DNA confirmed.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” China said. “I’ve thought a lot about that cat, the way she looked streaking across the road, all silvery in the rain. She seemed so mysterious, almost ethereal—but incredibly powerful at the same time.” She looked a little sheepish. “I talked about it with Ruby, and she said maybe I’d found my animal totem. Wild cats can show us how to understand the natural flow of our environment, she said. How to appreciate the strength and power of the natural world around us and find our place in the order of things. How to observe when observation matters, then act when action is called for.” Her laugh was slightly embarrassed. “You know Ruby. She’s a genuine mystic. For her, everything is a symbol.”

“Don’t knock it,” Sheila said seriously. “There may be something to that, you know.”

China nodded. “Ruby says that maybe the cat had something to do
with my going out to Timms’ place that morning, and finding him. And it’s certainly true that I thought about the cat as I was driving. I wanted to see her again—but I was afraid to. You know?”

“I know,” Sheila said. “I also know that if you hadn’t found Timms when you did, that part of the story might still be a deep, dark mystery. We wouldn’t know anything about Timms’ pornographic photographs, for instance, which were the reason for the blackmail and his break-in at the computer shop.” She smiled. “Interesting contrast, your methods and mine.”

China looked thoughtful. “You know, that’s true. I can listen to the neighborhood gossip, and people tell me things they’d never tell a cop. And I don’t have to follow as many rules as you do. If I want to find something, I can go look for it, assuming that I stay within the law, more or less. And assuming that the law doesn’t discover my illegal activities.” Her eyes twinkled. “You have to get a search warrant, or what you find won’t be admissible at trial.”

“Yes, but when I’ve got that search warrant and I’ve followed all the rules, I can arrest the bad guy and put him in jail,” Sheila replied. “You can’t do that, counselor.”

“Good point, Chief. But after you’ve arrested and jailed him and the prosecutor has brought him to trial, I can convince the jury to let him off.” A careless shrug. “Or rather, I used to be able do that. Not in my job description anymore.”

“Good thing for me,” Sheila said, meaning it. “If you were still in that job, we’d be adversaries. Maybe enemies.” She paused, thinking about that. “Not maybe, definitely. We’d definitely be enemies.”