Until the Final Verdict (3 page)

“I'
LL HAVE A TALL DECAF,
”
Kathryn Mackay told a skinny young woman with a purple, green, and yellow buzz cut.

“Gimme a venti dark roast, please.” Dave Granz studied the pastry display and reconsidered.

“Since when did you start drinking coffee at tenthirty at night? It'll keep you awake.”

“Prob'ly, but drinking decaf's like washing your feet with your socks on—what's the point? Besides, after what we saw thirty minutes ago at the morgue, I won't sleep anyway.”

He paid for their coffee over her objections, and motioned to a lone table at the rear. “Let's sit there so we won't be overheard.”

The same table Robert Simmons and I shared our first
time together,
she thought, then added silently,
What a screw-up.

“Overheard?” She glanced around the empty Starbucks and picked a table by the front window. “No one comes here after the mall closes. Wonder why they stay open until eleven.”

“Dunno.” Granz dropped into a chair across from her. “She was black. Think it was a hate crime?”

Mackay sipped her decaf. “No, there were no racial slurs—no swastikas, no white-power symbols, no
n
word scribbled on the walls.”

“Racists leave their calling cards out in plain view, for the shock value, hoping some ignorant editor'll plaster the pictures all over the front page of the paper, get some free publicity.”

“If it wasn't racial, what was it? Sex?”

Granz contemplated. “No, the crime scene was too sterile for a crime of passion. She was executed.”

“I agree.” Mackay nodded. “Sexual sadists usually disfigure a woman's distinctively female features—the breasts or vagina, the inside of the thighs, maybe the face. There was none of that. How does her husband check out?”

“Name's Alejandro Sanchez, an ER doc at Española Community Hospital. As soon as we cleared the crime scene this morning, we drove to their home, but he wasn't there. We contacted him at the hospital to notify him of his wife's death.”

“What time?”

“About fifteen minutes before noon.”

“How'd he take the news?”

“He asked about the details like he was gathering
information to treat a patient in the ER. Afterward, we offered to drive him home, but he said he wanted to finish his shift and could drive himself. Weird reaction under the circumstances, if you ask me.”

“ER docs are trained to stay calm in a crisis. He was probably dealing with it on pure instinct.”

“Maybe, but I have a feeling about him. Call it a hunch.”

“Where did he say he was late yesterday?”

“He started a twenty-four-hour ER shift at noon.”

“Did you run him through National Crime Information Center computers?”

“NCIC turned up nothing.” He shoved a sheet of paper across the table. “We need to toss their house.”

Mackay glanced at the search warrant. “You're the affiant?”

“I can swear to facts that establish probable cause to search as well as any of my detectives, besides it gives me an excuse to see you.”

“Run through your PC with me.”

“The spouse is always a suspect until eliminated.”

“That won't get you in the front door.”

“Whoever killed Tucker knew she was working late, and there was no forced entry. Her husband would know when she was working, and he could easily dupe her keys to the court building and her chambers without her knowledge. Nelson says her throat was cut with something very sharp. Could've been a scalpel. Sanchez is a doctor.”

“So was Berroa. Maybe he dropped by Tucker's office.”

Granz shook his head. “Berroa's in Mexico by now.
No way he'd chance going back to the joint. Besides, the court building was locked—how would he have gotten in?”

“Maybe he learned a trade at Soledad.”

“No way. It all points to Sanchez.”

“It's pretty thin, but if we lay it out to the right judge, it might fly. What about her family?”

“None locally. Her parents live in Texas. They told Waco cops Sanchez is originally from Mexico.”

“Makes it easy for him to flee. That'll help convince a judge.”

“Detective Miller's standing by Tucker's home, waiting for the warrant.”

Mackay scanned the warrant and supporting affidavit and signed it. “Who're the on-call judges?”

“Jesse Woods and Reginald Keefe.”

“Keefe's a civil lawyer, a political hack, his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor, and he's ornery as hell to boot. Woods is an ex-prosecutor and damned smart. He'll cut us some slack on close calls.”

“I didn't figure it was that close a call. I called Keefe.”

“Jesus, Dave, are you a masochist? The only thing Keefe hates worse than cops and prosecutors is being contacted after hours. Why'd you call him?”

“To piss him off.” He stood and started to slip on his black leather jacket, still wet from the rain. “Let's go do it.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into his chair. “Can we talk for a minute first?”

“Sure, Babe.” He studied her solemn expression. “What's wrong?”

“Seeing Jemima Tucker on that stainless steel autopsy table, and remembering our phone conversation before we went to the morgue, I got to thinking—that could easily have been one of us.”

“Nice thought. Do we have to discuss this right now?”

“Yes. Life is short, and for the past couple of years mine has felt incomplete. Each day slips away and leaves a void behind that even Emma can't fill—and shouldn't have to try. Someday she'll go away to college and I'll be alone. I don't want that.”

He leaned forward, still grasping her hand. “What
do
you want?”

“Another chance at being a family, if you'll—”

“Kate—”

“Let me finish, or I'll never work up the guts to say it again. What ruined our relationship was both our faults, and I've been afraid to get close again. But protecting myself is making both of us miserable, and being dead inside isn't a solution.”

She cleared her throat. “Were you serious when you asked me to marry you?”

“I was never more serious about anything in my entire life.”

“Then, I'd like to talk about it.”

“When?”

“Soon.” She laughed. “But not until we get our search warrant. Keefe's liable to lock us both up for ruining his Saturday evening.”

R
EGINALD AND
B
ONNIE
K
EEFE LIVED
in his family's old estate in Beach Flats, once an exclusive address, more recently the domain of drug dealers, thieves, hookers, and illegals hiding from the INS in rundown shacks where the idle rich once weekended.

Motion sensors detected the unmarked Jeep Cherokee as soon as it turned off the street into the chain-link–fenced entrance and ignited a bank of xenon floodlights. Closed-circuit cameras tracked it to a weatherproof, electronic guard station where Granz punched a button on the keypad marked
please announce yourself.

The squawk box answered, “Who's there?”

Bonnie Keefe had a sexy, thick southern accent and
a body that caused car wrecks when she walked down the street—and the way she dressed gave men plenty to gawk at. She was also a fine lawyer whose opponents in land-use cases called her the Georgia Cobra. In built-out Santa Rita County, her clients' goal was to bulldoze sensitive habitats in favor of tract houses or big-box chain stores. Her job was to make sure they got to do it, and she was very good at her job.

“Sheriff Granz and District Attorney Mackay, Mrs. Keefe,” he answered into the speaker.

“Come right in.”

The heavy, barbed-wire-topped chain-link gate rolled open. Granz eased the Cherokee up the gravel drive, which ended at a low, single-story cottage covered with wood shingles. Over almost a century, addon bedrooms, bathrooms, and entertaining spaces had created a hodgepodge of incongruent architecture that somehow worked. Heavy, untended native shrubs and redwood trees shaded the cottage, a detached garage, a swimming pool, and two tennis courts, creating a gracious but untamed environment that couldn't be duplicated by the best landscape architect.

Granz punched the doorbell. “I'll bet this place is worth at least five million bucks.”

When the door swung open, Bonnie looked like she'd just stepped out of the shower. Her shoulderlength blond hair was plastered to her head and her strikingly perfect face was devoid of makeup. She wore a clingy red silk robe with a plunging neckline.

“Sheriff Granz, District Attorney Mackay, come in,
please.” She stepped aside and raised her right arm in a welcome gesture that pulled the top of her robe partly open, exposing a large purple nipple. She pulled it closed with long, manicured fingers. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Mackay answered, “we'll only be a few minutes.”

“All right. Reggie is waiting for you right down the hall, in the kitchen.” She turned and walked across the living room, the damp robe stuck to her buttocks. “Then, I'll finish drying off.”

Judge Keefe sat at an old chrome-trimmed Formica dining table in the kitchen, sipping an Anchor Steam beer. He was dressed in a pair of faded Levi's and an open-necked denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Mackay grudgingly admitted to herself that he was a goodlooking man, in spite of the ugly scowl that distorted his face.

He glanced up, and slammed the bottle down on the table. “What the hell's so important that it couldn't wait until Monday?”

Granz pulled out a chair and sat down. “I need a search warrant.”

Keefe motioned Mackay toward an empty chair. “If he's going to make himself at home without an invitation, you might as well too.”

“Thanks, Judge.”

“Have you reviewed the warrant?” Keefe asked Mackay. “Granz doesn't get his search unless you've passed on it first.”

“I've signed off. There's PC to search the house.”

Keefe turned his hand over palm up and wiggled his fingers at Granz. “Then stop wasting my time and let me see the damn thing. Whose privacy do you want to violate this time?”

Granz slid the warrant across the table. Keefe grabbed it, glared at Granz briefly, then dropped his gaze to the paper. He read it, looked up, read it again, dropped the paper on the table, then pushed it back toward Granz with the tip of one index finger, like it was on fire. “Is this a joke? It says Jemima Tucker was murdered.”

“She was. Didn't you see the news on TV?”

“We went to a concert in San Francisco this afternoon. Didn't get home till a few minutes ago. When did it happen?”

“Sometime late yesterday afternoon. Her body wasn't found until this morning.”

Keefe reached for his beer, but his shaking hand knocked the bottle onto the tiled floor. It shattered with a loud bang, splattering everyone's legs with beer.

No one spoke for a few moments, then Keefe scribbled his name on the warrant and handed it back to Granz. “Please keep me informed about the progress of your investigation, Sheriff.”

“That's an unusual request, Judge.”

Keefe's voice was soft and low. “I'd really appreciate it.”