"You son of a bitch! You call yourself a friend!"
"Take it easy, Cam. I did what I had to do. Your dad killed your—"
"Bastard!" A vicious right cross, with all the power of the rancher's compact muscular body behind it, slammed into Chris's unprotected jaw. The force of the unexpected blow knocked him to the ground. Stunned, he lay there, helplessly peering up into a vaporous grey mist. Dimly, he heard the sound of a truck door slamming, followed by a diesel engine starting up. Groaning, he rolled over and propped himself up on his knees. As his head stopped spinning, he managed to stand up and totter unsteadily the short distance over to the Durango.
This sure as hell was not what he had expected when Cam had called and asked to meet on this desolate stretch of road south of the city limits. "That way we can talk without being overheard by anybody," Cam had said.
With careful fingers, Chris tenderly touched his jaw. It ached like hell, but he could move it, so hopefully it wasn't broken. Holding on to a door handle he spat out blood. But no teeth. Thank God. His vision cleared and his eyes snapped into focus. Opening the door, he climbed into the driver's seat and sat behind the wheel, thinking. That had been a sucker punch. Not worthy of the man he had thought Cam to be. Sure, Cam would have been beside himself with grief over the last couple of days as the unspeakable thing his father had done became public. But to throw a sucker punch!
A challenge for a fair fight, okay. But not this. At least Cam had used his fist, not a baseball bat. Holding his aching jaw with one hand, Chris turned the ignition key. He should check himself into emergency and have his jaw X-rayed. But that would make it official and lead to an internal investigation. He would go home and check out the damage in the mirror, then brazen it out at the office.
"Those doors are a bitch, aren't they?" Patterson's tone was light, but his expression was questioning. "A guy can't help running into them."
Forcing himself not to finger his aching jaw, Chris replied, "This was no door. It was a sucker punch."
"Some punch." The detective stared at Chris. The bruise had yet to blossom into its full glory, but it was conspicuous enough to have raised eyebrows and excited whispering as Chris walked to his desk.
"Assaulting a police officer means jail time," Patterson observed, almost offhandedly.
"I'm not going to lay charges. It was personal."
"It wouldn't, by chance, have anything to do with your rancher friend killing his daughter-in-law because she couldn't have children, would it?"
"Drop it, Ken. I said it was personal."
"Okay, okay. But you better hope the boys and girls at Internal don't get wind of it."
Justified or not, Chris was irritated by Patterson's probing, and decided to do a little of his own. It took him a moment to remember the name, then he asked, "How's your friend, Ms. Gelinas? Still seeing her?"
"Of course."
"She's over at the McKinley firm, isn't she?"
"That's right. You're the man of the hour with them. Arresting Adrienne Vinney's killer. She was awfully well liked. Irene really admired her."
"What does Irene do there? Legal assistant?"
"No. She's in charge of their supply department. Computers, stationery, you name it. She's thinking about a career change, though."
"Oh?"
"Would you believe an instructor in the martial arts?"
Although he didn't say so, Chris had no difficulty believing it. From what he remembered of that formidable lady she could easily fill that role.
"There's one outfit that's been after her for months to join their staff. I think she's going to make the move before too long."
"She must be the genuine article, then?"
"She's no Ann Marin, if that's what you're thinking. If TLC ever took Irene on, he'd be in for one hell of a surprise. I think she sometimes wishes he would."
Before Chris could follow up on this, Mason, hot and perspiring from the noonday sun, stopped on his way to his desk and stared gleefully down at Chris's swollen jaw. "What the hell happened to you? Her husband catch you in the act?"
"I ran into a door."
"Sure, and pigs can fly." Mason took off his black owboy hat and wiped drops of sweat from his forehead with the palm of his hand. Looking over at Patterson, he said, "Now that the Mounties have solved that big cattle case of his, maybe Crane will pay some attention to our case. You know, the guy who gets off by killing and cutting up women."
Beyond compressed lips, Chris made no reply. Clearing her throat as she joined the impromptu gathering, Gwen said, "Speaking of our serial, the lab found a brown fibre caught in a wheel of the chair. It matches fibres from the towel Klasky was wrapped in. Of course, that doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already. I know," she went on before Chris could say anything, "evidence is still evidence."
"Exactly. Every piece counts. As I've been known to say from time to time." Chris acknowledged her little sally with a smile. It made Patterson grin too. What a pleasure these two were to work with! He would see they stayed together as a team. He could have wished Gwen hadn't told him about Patterson being gay. It certainly didn't seem to interfere with his work as a Homicide detective. There could be a risk of blackmail, but today that wasn't a real factor. People would just shrug it off. But maybe Chief Johnstone wouldn't be so understanding. And Gwen was a lesbian. Funny, but somehow that didn't seem to signify. For one thing, she wasn't in the closet.
While Chris hadn't said anything in reply, Mason's heavy-handed sarcasm had hit a nerve. It was true he had allowed himself to be diverted from the case of the serial killer by involving himself in the mutilated cattle affair to help out his rancher friends and, let's face it, to impress Sarah. Well, he had solved that case all right. Mark Leonard was arrested and charged. First-rate deductive detective work there. But that same detective work had led to Cameron Taylor killing himself. A fate the rancher, with his grandiose obsession with family traditions, unquestionably deserved. But—a stab of pain shot through Chris's jaw—it had put an end to his friendship with the Taylor family. A friendship that meant a great deal to him.
"It hurts, doesn't it, Chris?" Gwen lingered for a moment after the other two drifted away. "And I don't mean just your jaw. I think I know who did this to you. It was that rancher's son. Wasn't it?"
"Yeah." Chris paused, then added defensively, "He took me by surprise."
"He would have had to," Gwen comforted him.
Still smarting from what Mason had said about allowing himself to be diverted from the serial killer investigation, Chris picked up the threads: What manner of man were they dealing with? And was it necessarily a man? A woman, a strong woman, was physically capable of doing what had been done to the victims. There was no trace of semen at any of the scenes. In fact there was no trace of anything, except for the body of the victim. A fibre had been found in the Devonian Gardens case, but that had only confirmed that the wheelchair was the one that had been used to transport the physiotherapist's body. The third victim of the pre-Vinney era had enhanced her natural attributes with breast implants. The killer had been enraged when he'd discovered this, slicing the offending breasts open and tearing out the sacs. Vinney had had breast implants also, but her killer hadn't touched them. That and the cross being on the "wrong" hand were what had suggested her murder was the work of a copycat.
Forsyth. Chris hadn't seen him since his arrest. Patterson had conducted the interrogations, which, attended by Myrden, had gone precisely nowhere. It had been Chris's suggestion that Patterson should be the one to interrogate Forsyth. Partly, he now admitted to himself, because he was reluctant to deal with the man who had once been a good and close friend. Maybe that had been a mistake. Knowing he was the one who had put him behind bars, Tom would bitterly resent him. There just might be a way to put that resentment to good use.
Since he had been charged, he could not be compelled to undergo further interrogatation, or "interviewing," as the police euphemistically called it. Myrden would certainly advise against it. But Tom always did have a high opinion of himself and his own cleverness.