It was coming up on midafternoon on Thursday, and Detective Kyle Lasko was not having a good day. Yesterday, on the first full day of a homicide investigation, he should have been out tracking down witnesses and people who’d given preliminary statements to the uniformed officers at the crime scene. Instead he’d wasted the better part of his day trying to wrest a confession from his prime suspect, the drunken bum Jack Stoneman. After spending hours in the box, Stoneman had finally lawyered up, leaving Kyle with nothing. In other words, it had been a total waste of time.
He’d spent today dragging his weary ass all over the Valley of the Sun conducting interviews. Although everyone had been on East Lincoln Drive at the same time and at the same location on the night of the murder, they came from different corners of the Phoenix area, stretching from Fountain Hills on the east to Sun City on the west. Fortunately for Kyle, even though he worked for Phoenix PD, he was able to take his city-owned vehicle home to Mesa overnight. That way he’d been able to start his interview chores from home rather than having to go into the city to check one out.
Before he ever left the house, the morning had kicked off with a mixed-bag phone call from Captain Anthony Robard, the guy in charge of Major Crimes.
“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Captain Robard said. “Which do you want first?”
“Good news, please,” Kyle replied.
“We just heard from the crime lab. They got a complete profile off the cartridge in the murder weapon.”
“And?”
“Our shooter is none other than Jack Stoneman.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“I just got off the phone with the county attorney. He says DNA and footprints aren’t enough—too circumstantial. Without a confession he wants more—something that puts Stoneman at the scene of the crime when the shooting took place.”
“In other words, he wants me to pull an eyewitness out of my hat?”
“Something like that,” Robard agreed.
Kyle sighed again. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll be doing witness interviews today. With seventeen people on the list, it’s going to take most of the day. Stoneman travels by bus, so I’ve got people checking security video on transit vehicles and neighborhood-surveillance videos as well. Stoneman claims he left the archbishop’s residence at around four o’clock in the afternoon. I want to know how and when he came back.”
“Sounds like you’ve got things handled, then,” Captain Robard said, “but just so you know, Chief Adolfo is all over my ass on this one, texting me practically minute by minute to see if we’re making progress.”
This wasn’t news as far as Kyle Lasko was concerned. “Got it,” he said.
His first stop was on East Peso Place in Fountain Hills with a couple named Wayne and Connie Carlson. Their Hyundai Sonata, with Wayne at the wheel, had been the first vehicle struck by the speeding Town Car when it roared into traffic. Wayne answered the door sporting a pair of shiners. Kyle held up his badge.
“This about the other night?” Wayne asked, and Kyle nodded. “Come in, then, and don’t worry about the black eyes. The air bag got me, but without it things would have been a lot worse. Have a seat. My wife’s in the shower. I’ll let her know you’re here.”
When Wayne returned to the room with his wife in tow, her face was in much rougher shape than her husband’s, due primarily, Kyle supposed, to the difference in their heights. He was more than six feet tall. With Connie almost a foot shorter, her face had taken the full brunt of the exploding air bag.
“Sorry about the way I look,” Connie apologized self-consciously. “I didn’t bother trying to put on makeup. It really doesn’t help much. Wayne says you’re here about what happened the other night.”
“That’s right,” Kyle agreed. “I know you gave statements to the uniformed officers at the scene, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go over it again while I record what you have to say.”
“Feel free,” Connie said quickly. “We want that guy caught.”
It took a few seconds of juggling before Kyle got his iPad set up. Once it was, Connie looked at him expectantly. “What do you want to know?” she asked.
“Tell me everything you can remember about that night.”
“We have some friends who just moved into an assisted-living place over on Seventh Avenue,” Connie answered. “We were on our way to see them when the crash happened. We were driving along, minding our own business, when wham, this other car comes barreling out of nowhere and slams right into us. They hit the back end of our car and sent us spinning. When the air bags deflated, we were up against the curb, facing the wrong way, with Wayne yelling, ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ ”
“The car came to rest on which side of the street?”
“Westbound, but we were facing the other way, the way we’d just come.”
“What happened then? What did you see?”
“I didn’t see the shooter, if that’s what you’re asking,” Connie replied, “but I did see a woman. Our headlights were still on, and I was pissed that she just walked past us like that, as though nothing had happened, and she didn’t have a care in the world. In all that chaos, most people would have had the common decency to at least stop and offer to help.”
A woman, Kyle thought. So who was this unconcerned female passerby? An accomplice, maybe? Since she showed up as soon as the air bags deflated, she was, at the very least, a possible witness.
“Can you describe her for me?”
“An older woman, Anglo, I think,” Connie answered. “I’d say she was a little taller than I am—five-five or so—with blond hair. I remember she was wearing pants—like jeans, maybe—and a long-sleeved sweater or jacket. It could have been red or maybe purple. Under the streetlamps it was hard to tell. And she was carrying a light-colored bag of some kind—not a purse. This looked more like a beach bag or maybe one of those grocery store totes but without a name.”
A beach bag? Kyle wondered. Why would someone be carrying a beach bag around in Phoenix in November?
Kyle turned his attention to Wayne. “What about you? Did you see her?”
“Nope,” he answered. “I was too busy getting out of the car so I could come help Connie. By the time I got around to her side, I didn’t see anyone else.”
When the interview ended, Kyle stayed focused on the woman Connie had described. She was a potential witness, and Kyle was determined to find her. The presence of that beach bag was something that stood out. Back in the car, he dialed into headquarters and asked that the guys canvassing for surveillance video to be on the lookout for someone with a light-colored beach bag and a red or purple sweater.
And now, much later in the day, that tiny possible lead was still all Kyle had managed to turn up. The four people in the overturned minivan, all of whom lived in Venture Out, an RV resort in Mesa, had been too traumatized by the wreck itself to have seen much beyond what was happening inside their own vehicle. None of the four had seen the shooter, nor had they spotted a woman of any kind at the scene, let alone one carrying a beach bag.
The information that the shooter had been wearing a ball cap had come from surveillance video off a camera situated in the gatepost at the archbishop’s residence, which had captured the whole incident. Unfortunately, none of the people Kyle talked to that day—two witnesses from Apache Junction, one from Tempe, and two from Chandler—had caught a glimpse of him, nor did anyone other than Connie report having seen the woman and her bag.
The next guy on Kyle’s list, number thirteen of the seventeen, was one Humberto Martinez, who lived in Glendale on the far side of Phoenix proper. Back in his vehicle, Kyle was headed west on State Route 60 when a call came in. “Please hold for Chief Adolfo,” he was told.
Kyle felt a clutch in his gut. Another call from the chief was not a good sign.
“How the hell did a retired news anchor named Ali Reynolds, who evidently regards herself as some kind of half-assed private investigator, get mixed up in your homicide?” the chief blustered at Kyle once he came on the line.
“She’s a friend of Archbishop Gillespie’s,” Kyle answered. “I interviewed her briefly yesterday. Before any of this happened, the archbishop had asked her and her husband to investigate some threats the archbishop has been receiving—”
“I know all about those threats,” the chief interrupted, “and since I’ve been following your investigation, I know you already interviewed her. But here’s what I really want to know: Why the hell did she turn up at the jail a little while ago, accompanied by Jack Stoneman’s defense attorney, and why the hell was she allowed to speak with your suspect inside an interview room with no recording equipment running? Can you answer me that?”
Kyle was dumbfounded. “Ali Reynolds has been in touch with Stoneman’s public defender?”
“Who said anything about a public defender?” Chief Adolfo grumbled in return. “I’m telling you Gavin James is a big-shot attorney here in town, and apparently he’s handling this case pro bono. So what’s going on here, Lasko? Did you leak information to this Reynolds woman?”
“I didn’t tell her anything out of line,” Kyle said, “but I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“You’d better,” Chief Adolfo shot back, “and that’s an order!”
Kyle Lasko was furious. He had told Ali Reynolds plain as day to back off and stay out of his investigation, yet here she was seriously undermining his case. It was time to read her the riot act! Once off the phone with the chief, Kyle scrolled through his recent-calls list and located Ali’s number.
“Detective Lasko here,” he said when she answered. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
Her reply wasn’t the least bit ruffled. “I’m someone charged with keeping Archbishop Gillespie safe. You happen to believe that you’ve got the right guy locked up, but I respectfully disagree.”
“Respectfully my ass,” he growled back. “A little while ago, you showed up at the jail accompanied by Jack Stoneman’s attorney.”
“News must travel pretty fast around your department,” she observed.
“You bet it does, especially if Chief Adolfo is involved. May I remind you, Ms. Reynolds, that interfering with a homicide investigation is a felony. So here’s the deal: If you so much as step near this case again, you can expect to be arrested and charged. Do I make myself clear?”
“Abundantly,” Ali told him.
With that off his chest, Kyle ended the call and kept on driving despite the overwhelming feeling that this interview, too, would most likely be a wasted effort.
Humberto Martinez lived in a working-class neighborhood off Fifty-seventh Avenue on West Myrtle. Arriving there, Kyle was dismayed to learn that Humberto was at work as a groundskeeper at Camelback Golf Club on the near east side of the city. Rather than wait for him to come home, Kyle headed back the way he had come, burning up his steel-belted radials rather than shoe leather.
After stating his case to the pro in the golf shop, Kyle was issued a cart and directed to a tastefully camouflaged equipment shed off to the side of the course between the ninth green and the tenth tee box. He found Humberto inside the shed, enjoying a short afternoon break at a grungy picnic table.
“This about the other night?” Humberto asked.
Kyle nodded. “What can you tell me?”
“It was after work, and I had stopped off for a beer on my way home,” Humberto answered. “I was headed for the 51, driving west on Lincoln, when suddenly all hell broke loose, and there were cars flying in every direction. Luckily, I managed to stop my pickup without hitting anybody or getting hit myself. I jumped out and went running to see what I could do. A couple of people were trapped in a minivan, and I helped them get out and stayed with them until the EMTs arrived. Someone told me that the driver of the Town Car was already dead. I thought he died in the wreck. I didn’t find out until later on the news that somebody’d shot him.”
“I know there was a lot of uproar at the scene, but did anything strike you as odd or out of place?” Kyle asked.
“Only the woman,” Humberto replied.
“What woman?” Kyle wanted to know.
“This woman was strolling along on the sidewalk just as pretty as you please, walking past all that mess like nothing had happened. Most people would have offered to help or else turned into a looky-loo, but not her. She just kept on walking. It was like multi-car wrecks happen every day and aren’t worth a second glance.”
“Can you describe her?”
“Older woman, I’d say—an Anglo with short, light-colored hair.”
“Silver? Blond?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“How was she dressed?”
Humberto shrugged. “Like she was out for a walk is all. Long pants and a sweater of some kind.”
“What color sweater?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Humberto said. “I’m color-blind.”
“Which direction was she going?”
“She was walking east on the north side of Lincoln.”
“Anything else?”
“She was carrying a bag of some kind.”
“Like from a grocery store?”
“No, most of those have the store’s name on them. This was a light-colored bag with no logo,” Humberto answered. “It struck me as odd.”
Me, too, Kyle thought. All his instincts had shifted into high gear. Somehow or other this unconcerned passerby with her light-colored bag had to be involved in all this. He just didn’t know how.
“Thank you, Mr. Martinez,” Kyle said. “You’ve been a big help.”
He took the cart back to the pro shop and then got on the phone with the desk sergeant at Major Crimes. So far his video-surveillance canvassers had come up empty.
“Tell them to keep looking,” Kyle directed.
“Any idea when you’ll be back?” the desk sergeant asked.
Kyle glanced at his watch. It was after four, and traffic was getting worse all over the valley. “Beats the hell out of me,” he muttered. “I headed out this morning with a list of seventeen witnesses needing to be interviewed, and I just crossed off number thirteen. My next stop is in Peoria. You can expect me when you see me coming, and not a moment before.”