No one liked to talk about a potential murder. Even the most innocent of innocents seemed to go guilty. They might not be guilty for the reason the police showed up, Jake mentally smiled as he considered it, but they were guilty of something. Or thought they were. Somehow the crucible of a police badge brought out the tells of a guilty conscience like invisible ink held over a hot light. This Willow Galt was Exhibit A.
She’d led them into her living room, walls so spotlessly white Jake could almost smell the new paint job, furniture so new Jake imagined the plastic packaging might have been removed moments earlier. Galt had cleared her throat, then patted her hair, must have glanced at the desk phone three times already, then pulled out a cell from her back pocket. She clattered it onto a polished glass coffee table, gestured them toward matching flowered wing chairs, then perched, fidgeting, on the edge of a matching couch. Throat, phone, hair, fidgets. Tells.
They’d given her the barest of outlines. An unattended death in the neighborhood, they were going door to door, alerted by a 911 call. So far, the woman had not answered any of their intentionally unthreatening questions with anything but questions of her own. Who? When? How?
Once inside, Jake knew, she’d be more likely to talk. Something about being confined face-to-face with the cops—even in your own home, or especially there—put the pressure on.
So Jake took his time settling in. D did, too. Silence often guilted an interviewee into talking, filling the space to wallpaper over their awkwardness. The silence trick was so clichéd, employed by every fictional TV cop, he didn’t know why real-life interviewees didn’t notice it. You don’t have to talk, that was the lesson. But no one seemed to learn it. Lucky for Jake.
He sized up the scene. Home alone. But wearing a wedding ring. No animals, no signs of permanence. No family photos, or stacks of old magazines, or collections or clutter. Maybe that was hidden.
Willow Galt’s feet were bare, her toes in the thick pile of the creamy carpet, her legs tanned, some kind of floaty drop-shouldered white top over flowered shorts. Kind of California, he thought, but hard to pinpoint women by their clothes. Jane wouldn’t have worn this outfit, though. She was a black T-shirt and jeans person. He’d see her in a few hours, their dinner plans on hold until he and D made more headway in this case.
The woman finally stood again. “Water?” she asked. She picked up the cell phone, jammed it into her back pocket again. “I could go to the kitchen and…”
She glanced toward the back of the house, as if yearning to get away. The moment she moved out of earshot, she’d be on that phone, Jake predicted. Who would she call? Maybe they should let her do it.
“No, thanks.” Jake took out his notebook, rifled through the blank pages as if he were looking for something important—another TV trick people never seemed to connect with real life—simply to let more seconds tick by.
“Me either.” D waited, too. “Thanks.”
She sank back onto the couch. Put the phone back on the table. Scratched her arm, so fiercely it left red welts, as if raising some anxiety to the surface.
“Are you sure we’re not in danger?” she finally said.
“To be honest, Ms. Galt, I don’t know.” Jake tried to lower what Jane called his police barrier, hoping to engage this woman, and, he had to admit, upset her at the same time. Sometimes it was effective to reassure a person. Sometimes it was better to put them off balance.
“You called nine-one-one, on that cell, was it?” He pointed. “We are grateful for that, ma’am. Thank you. Can you tell us exactly what you saw?”
Jake had no idea if she’d really called, but from the upstairs bedroom she’d have a perfect view, even with all the trees. Plus, this was no time to dance around the topic. A person was dead, and he needed to find out why. Was this Willow Galt in danger? Well, good question. How would they know? That’s why they were here.
“I didn’t…”
Jake watched her body lean away from them.
D cleared his throat. “We can get the ping from the transmission towers, ma’am,” he said.
“I know on TV they talk about those ‘burner’ phones.” Jake tried to sound sympathetic. “The bad guys use them, right? The prepaid phones? So the TV cops can’t trace them?”
D interrupted, picking up the cue. “But that’s TV, ma’am. In real life, we’re smarter than that.”
Jake didn’t exactly relish the playacting that police work sometimes entailed. But human nature was tricky, and human emotions, and reactions, and what it took to get a person to talk. To tell the truth. In reality, prepaid cell phones were a bane. Cops could trace the pings from cell towers, and could tell which was closest to where the call came from. But the person who activated the phone didn’t have to give a real name, and as a result, no name was attached to the number. Even if the cops could find where the phone was purchased, the trail ended there. Bad guys could use those prepaid cells and the good guys would never find them. Via those phones, at least.
If Willow Galt used a prepaid, why? And why not simply say, Yes, I called?
“But I thought…” Her voice trailed off, and she examined her phone again. Her blouse shifted across her shoulders, the red welts on her arms like stripes under the loose white fabric. “If someone used a cell phone that…”
“It’s TV,” Jake said. Bingo. She’d called. She’d seen something. So why not say so? “Think they’d really make a phone we couldn’t trace?”
She could google this the moment they left, but they weren’t leaving quite yet.
D shook his head, agreeing with Jake, equally amused by the silly TV viewers. “I mean, an untraceable phone? That’d be, you know, illegal.”
That was pushing it. But Jake could always pretend it was a joke, if it came to that. It was all about getting this Willow Galt to talk. Especially after this perplexing five minutes of hesitation and reticence. What was the deal with the phone?
She picked up her cell again. “Um…” she said.
“Okay, terrific. Is that what you used?” Jake nodded. Gotcha. “It doesn’t matter, and I’m not sure why you’re concerned. We don’t care how you called, ma’am. We do care what you saw. What you heard. What was that? Exactly?”
Almost eight o’clock now, on this soft August evening. The Galt residence—where was the husband?—had no air conditioner running. Jake looked past an open dining room, two candlesticks, white candles with white wicks on a dark oval table, four chairs, then French sliding doors open to a backyard, floor-to-ceiling screens gridding the green lawn beyond.
“I heard the dog barking,” she answered. “Barking and barking. Popcorn never barks, so I looked out the window.”
Jake waited, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts. She and Avery Morgan were not strangers. How else would she know the dog’s name?
“And I saw—” She stopped. Clasped her hands in her lap, the knuckles whitening against her tanned fingers, that gold band shining on her left hand. She shook her head, as if answering herself. “Nothing. Just the dog. And I guess a, a dark shape. In the pool. Is Avery—” She stopped again.
“Avery?” Jake asked, this time out loud.
“Morgan,” she whispered. “Is she okay?”
Jake waited, and D waited. At some point, he’d tell her, but she didn’t need to be told everything. It was their job to get information, not give it.
“The doctors are there now,” Jake said. True enough.
“You’re homicide,” she said, her eyes widening. “And that means Avery’s…”
“I’m sorry.” Jake shook his head. “For your loss. Were you friends?”
“We—no. Acquaintances.”
Willow Galt hadn’t asked, “Was it Avery?” Hadn’t asked, “Who was it?” Or even “Where is Avery now?” Which meant she knew who was in the pool. Which meant she wasn’t telling everything. Another concept TV viewers never seemed to grasp. It was really difficult to lie. Difficult to remember what you were supposed to say, and what you already said.
“Will you show us where you looked out the window?” Jake stood. “We need to see that.”
“Now.” DeLuca stood as well.
Willow Galt’s blonded hair swung partway across her face as she got up from the couch, and she looked at the floor, not at them. Another tell.
She pointed the end of her cell phone toward a stairway. “Upstairs,” she said.
“Was Miss Morgan a good swimmer?” Jake asked as she led them up the carpeted stairs. No art on the walls. Again, fresh paint.
“Swimmer? I know she didn’t like—oh.” They arrived at the landing. Three doors, one, leading to a bedroom, open. She pointed, then turned back to them. DeLuca was a full head taller, and she looked up to ask. “Did she drown?”
“We don’t know, ma’am,” DeLuca said.
She blew out a breath and gestured them into the bedroom—white again, closet door closed, mirror over a white dresser, nothing on the top. Queen bed, Jake calculated, white bedspread, meticulously made. Opposite of Avery Morgan’s rumpled Bohemian quilts and pillows. Three windows across the back wall.
Jake questioned the woman with a cock of his head. Out those windows?
“Yes,” she said.
Jake looked out and down. He could see a bit of the pool, dark blue now in the quickening twilight. Didn’t see the EMTs, nor Kat, just a square of dark water, a patch of concrete, and the leaves of a too-close maple.
“Oh,” he said, turning back. He’d remembered another puzzle piece he needed—the property records. “That place has got a plaque on the front: ‘The Morgan House.’ She’s Avery Morgan. Was it a family home, Ms. Galt? Did she own it?”
“I don’t know who owned it,” she said. “We just moved here.” She gestured to a stack of brown cardboard boxes. “As you can see.”
“From where?” DeLuca asked.
“I’m originally from Iowa,” she said.
He and DeLuca let that evasion go. For now.
Jake clicked off a few photos, the through-the-looking-glass images of the ones already in his phone. DeLuca was scanning the room as Jake finished. Signaled him with half a shrug. Nothing. In plain sight, Jake could imagine him saying. In plain sight did not help much if you were trying to figure out what someone was thinking. Nothing was in plain sight then.
“We need to find a next of kin, I’m afraid,” Jake said. “Can you help us?”
“Avery wasn’t married.” She looked at her own ring. “That I know of.”
“So you’re married, Ms. Galt?” DeLuca had also noticed the ring on her finger. “When will your husband be home? We’ll need to talk to him, too.”
Silence. Sometimes police work was flash-bang, with squealing tires, drawn weapons, gunshots, adrenaline. Sometimes, like now, it was patience. But always, it was human nature—the turn of a head, a scrap of paper, a wrong word. Everything Jake saw and heard got tucked away, and mentally filed and remembered, rearranged and rethought for every moment of every day until one puzzle piece snapped all those random moments into the picture someone was trying to prevent him from seeing.
It was too early for that now. He and D were still collecting pieces.
Unless Willow Galt suddenly confessed, or ratted out her bloodthirsty husband or the drug-crazed boyfriend, the hidden blackmail note, the long-lost homicidal sister from Dubuque. On TV maybe. But that wasn’t going to happen here.
“Husband?” Willow Galt was saying.
Jake’s turn to be silent. He could wait.
“Yes,” she finally said. “Tom.”
“We’ll need to come back to talk with him, and you, again,” DeLuca said.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Jake asked. They’d been at the Galt house for half an hour now, and with every moment, it seemed, Willow Galt was closer to tears. D’s inquiry about a husband had pushed them even closer. But maybe she was upset about the death.
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
Fifteen minutes later, armed with Galt’s phone number and a promise that she’d call them if she remembered anything else, they once again stood on her front stoop, the door closed and locked behind them.
“Why didn’t she just tell us she’d called nine-one-one?” DeLuca asked. “She’s a piece a work. Geez, it’s already dark. I need coffee before we head back to the scene.”
“We’ll find out,” Jake said. “She’s hiding something, that’s for sure.” He took an appraising look across the neighborhood, interior lights now blinking on as the evening closed in. Streetlamps glowing. The famous Reserve maples rustling in the quiet. Two cop cars still stationed in front of the Morgan House. “The Galts are new to The Reserve, though. That’s a good thing. Maybe they’re not so invested in the local code of silence.”
“Sure wish that dog could talk.” DeLuca opened the cruiser door.
“Don’t need a talking dog.” Jake slid into the driver’s seat. “If those surveillance cameras at the Morgan place were recording on other days, we should know exactly who came and went. And when.”
“That’s a start, I guess.” DeLuca yanked on his seat belt.
Jake keyed the ignition. “And a hell of a lot more reliable than a talking dog.”