Marcie's Murder (5 page)

Hall sighed and went back down the corridor. He returned in a moment with the uniformed officer, a big, beefy specimen who
glared
at Hank as though daring him to try something.
The name
tag
pinned to his shirt said
Grimes
.
Probably an offensive tackle on the local high school football team. Lots of upper-body strength
, quick feet
,
and the mentality of a
mean
dog on a short chain. The officer unlocked the door and jerked his head, once, in the direction of the front. Hank walked between them
down the corridor and
through the metal door
. Hall pointed at
a messy desk
next to
a wall of battered green filing cabinets.

“
U
se my phone,” Hall
said
. “One call. Make it short.”

“On a budget?” Hank
sat
down in Hall’s chair.

“Make it short,” Hall repeated. He walked away and filled a paper cup at a water dispenser next to the filing cabinets.

Hank glanced at his wrist before remembering
yet again
that his watch was in a
n
envelope
locked away somewhere
.
A
big
clock on the wall told him it was twenty minutes before three in the afternoon. He picked up the phone and heard a dial tone.

“Do I have to dial for an outside line?”

“Just dial your number,” Hall told him.

Hank dialed. It rang three times and was answered.

“Stainer.”

“
Pack an overnight bag,
”
Hank said. “I need your help.”

7

Karen Stainer sat
in
the big front window of
Mary’s
Donuts on Bluefield Street and devoured her third blueberry muffin.
She pitched into her
second
super
-
size
d
coffee and watched the traffic. It was a pretty town, but Karen was feeling grouchy this morning and wasn’t in
the
mood for pretty.

She
’
d reached Harmony
at just before
ten o’clock last night after a five-hour drive
. She
arrived at the police station to find it closed, the window
blinds down
and the lights out.
Next door was
an all-night convenience store
. She walked in
and rapped her knuckles on the counter to attract the attention of the teenager
watching televi
sion behind a rack of cigarette
s.

“Hey! Clark Kent! Got a sec?”

The kid came over to the counter
adjusting his thick black-framed glasses
. “Good evening.”

“Charmed, I’m sure. Listen, is that the cop shop next door or am I
on
the wrong
planet here
?”

The kid looked out the window dubiously. “Yeah
it is
, but I think they’re closed.”

“Closed
.
Christ. What happens if somebody needs a cop
in this dump
?”

“Uh, they call 911?”

“Okay, so call 911 and tell them an insane bitch is trying to break into their police station.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Tell them I said if there isn’t a cop here in five minutes I’m gonna shoot the lock and kick the fuckin
’
door in. Got
it
?”

The kid nodded and reached for the telephone. Karen went back outside
.

Her husky Texan drawl, which made “here” sound like “h
ay
-yah” and “kick” sound like “k
ay
-yick,” would be charming if it weren’t coming from a mouth that looked like it might bite a chain in half at any moment. Karen was
thirty-seven
years old and a
sixteen
-year veteran of the
Glendale
P
olice
D
epartment. A Tai-kwon-do black belt with a mean streak, she was five feet, three inches tall, weighed one hundred and five pounds
,
and had fists like a pair of shoemaker’s hammers, small and very hard. Her face was sharp
-
featured, her blond hair was
shoulder-length and wispy
, and her eyes, a lovely pale blue shade, tended to fix on people in a laser beam cop’s stare.

She
wore a navy sport
jacket, a pale blue blouse, blue jeans and black cowboy boots.
Walking
back to the police station, s
he reached under her jacket and
removed the
holstered
handgun clipped to her
belt. She walked over to
her
red
1979 Pontiac Firebird Esprit
, which was
parked
in
one of the empty spaces in
front of the police station
,
and
set her gun down carefully on the hood of the car
. She
lean
ed
against the back fender.
Eight
minutes later a police cruiser pulled
up to the curb
and
two
uniformed officer
s got out.

The guy getting out of the passenger side spread his legs
and put his hands on his hips
impressively, but the guy from the driver side swung around the back of the cruiser and quickly took charge.

“You the one ask
ing
for police assistance?”

By this time Karen had pushed away from the fender of her car and was holding
up the
leather wallet
containing
her badge and identification. “
Detective
Karen Stainer
, Glendale, Maryland Police Department
. I’m here to see your prisoner. My
firearm
’s on the
hood
of my car
.”

She didn’t see any need to mention the
Kel-Tec P11 nine millimeter
backup that was
clipped
inside
her right cowboy boot.

“Stainer?” The driver
, whose name
tag
said
Orton
,
took her identification and examined it with the aid of a small flashlight from his pocket. The passenger
, whose name tag said
Collins
,
abandoned his authoritative cop stance
and
hurried past
her to
grab her gun.

Orton
handed
back
her identification and frowned. “What was that about a prisoner?”

“
Y
’all
got
a prisoner,
Lieutenant Hank Donaghue.
I
want to
see him. Pronto.
”

Collins reluctantly returned her
weapon
as Orton
unlocked the front door of the station
. He
turned on the lights and
directed her to
sit in one of the visitor’s chairs next to a desk
while Orton telephoned Deputy Chief Branham.

When Branham arrived he had his own look at Karen’s identification and then waved off the two
officer
s, who trooped out the front door to resume their shift. “We gave him his phone call this afternoon. I thought he called his lawyer.”

“I’ll try not to be too insulted by that,” Karen said.

“You work with him, do you?”

“
Sure enough
.”

“Doing what?”

Karen looked disgusted. “Homicide investigation. C’mon, he already told you
all
that
. D
on’t play fucking games
.
He’s a twenty-year decorated veteran who’s a genius on top of it and y
ou’re holding him
o
n a case of mistaken identity
.
You need to release him right now
and get your ass after the guy who actually
throttled
your vic
.”

Branham spread his hands. “That’s Chief Askew’s decision, and he can’t be reached until tomorrow.”

“Can’t be reached? What kind of bullshit is that?”

Branham paused for a minute. He ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, looked at his hands
,
and then
smiled faintly
. “It’s almost ten thirty
in the evening
and it’s definite
ly a
pleasure, Detective Stainer, but you’ll have to excuse us if we’re a
little small
-
town around here.”

“Sure, whatever. Just spring the
l
ieutenant and we’ll rock on
down the road
.”

The smile faded a little. “As I said, that’s Chief Askew’s decision and the earliest he’ll consider it is tomorrow morning. His wife was just brutally murdered, Detective. Surely you understand.”

“Yeah,
I heard,
but not by the guy in your cell.”

Branham
shrugged
. “You’re probably right. But you know how this works. One step at a time.”

“I want to
talk to
him.”

“Five minutes,” Branham said.
“No touching, no physical contact of any kind
,
don’t try to give him anything.”

She had to be content with standing on the other side of the cell door while Branham watched from the end of the corridor.
“Christ, Lou,
the other guy better look worse than you
do
.”

“Not worse, just uglier,” Hank replied. “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem. You know how I love to drive.”

“Was Sandy okay with
it
?”

Sandy was John “Sandy” Alexander, Karen’s fiancé. He was a
special
agent
in
the Glendale
field
office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So far their relationship had lasted almost three years, which was something of a record for Karen, and in May they
’
d
become engaged and
move
d
in together to see how it would go. It was a calculated risk, since they both owned firearms and neither was afraid to pull the trigger, but so far they were still living together and no one had been
killed or wounded
.

“He’s got plenty of stuff to keep himself busy,”
Karen replied
. “I barely see him these days. He’s taking a bunch of courses at Quantico.”

“Well, I appreciate it.” Hank
went over
the situation in more detail than he’d been able to give her
on
the telephone.
“Eyewitness inside the kitchen at the back of the bar saw a guy
who
looked like me pass by the window
close to
the time she was killed
,” he
finished
.
“
He went outside a few minutes later and saw me get in my car and drive away. I haven’t seen his statement, that’s just putting the pieces together. So there’s another guy in the mix who looks like me, because I didn’t go around to the back of the place.”

“They have any ideas who it might be?”

Hank shrugged. “They’re not interested. I look l
ike me, and that’s good enough
. T
he fact
their
witness failed to make a positive ID
isn’t slowing them down much at this point
.”

“Christ.” Karen shook her head. “So is the kitchen guy a witness or isn’t he? He saw you but he didn’t see
you
? What is this, amateur hour?”

Branham cleared his throat noisily at the end of the corridor.

“Patience is apparently a virtue,” Hank said.

Karen left the station unhappy and drove over to the Harmony Mot
or Inn
, where she checked in and got herself a room. She wandered down to Hank’s room but the door was locked and
sealed
, so she turned in and got some sleep.