At the sheriff’s office downtown, Carrie was manning the tip line.
She’d taken six or seven calls. A couple of them were clearly bogus. One had Steadman held up in a high school with a cache of ammo. Another had seen his Cadillac speeding away and caught his plates, info they already had. A cabbie had called in, saying he’d dropped off someone resembling Steadman at an unspecified street corner in Avondale. That one they sent a team to check out. Several others called in from the Hyatt, having witnessed the shooting in the lobby. One caller had Steadman going from room to room on the thirty-third floor, terrorizing guests. Another had him sneaking away, dressed in a waiter’s uniform.
When the lines went quiet, Carrie logged online and checked out Steadman’s website. She watched a clip of him from Good Morning, South Florida describing the pros and cons of Botox. Steadman was handsome. Sharp cheekbones. Intelligent blue eyes. Stylishly long brown hair. He had a successful business. And a fancy Palm Beach address.
Not exactly the profile of your usual fleeing cop killer. The guy even spent his vacations fixing cleft palates and helping to build schools in Nicaragua. Lots of group shots with happy villagers. Some of the photos were taken by his daughter. It was hard to connect that image with that of some crazed killer who had put two shots at point-blank range into a policeman.
A light flashed on the message board and Carrie picked up. “Sheriff’s office. Officer Martinez tip line. This is Carrie Holmes …” she said into the headphones.
“I have some information on the killer,” the caller said.
“All right, go ahead …” Carrie grabbed her pen.
“I didn’t do it. Any of it. I swear, it wasn’t me.”
Carrie’s heart came to a stop, as if an electrical wire sent a jolt through it. Silently, she snapped her fingers, trying to catch the attention of one of the other detectives to get on her line.
She put a hand over her speaker. “It’s him!”
“What do you mean by any of it?” Carrie said back, hoping to engage the guy. She pushed the record button. She also routed a message to Akers’s secretary: Get him over here!
“There’s more …” the caller said, his voice trailing off. “You’ll see.”
The whispers of “It’s him! Steadman!” crackled around the floor and a crowd of detectives gathered around Carrie’s desk. The chief of detectives, Captain Moon. Carrie’s boss, Bill Akers. Even Chief Hall, who had just come back from the shooting scene. Carrie’s heart began to beat loudly and she could feel everyone in the room silently urging her with looks and signals to keep Steadman on the line. Three minutes, Carrie knew from training. Three minutes and they should be able to triangulate a fix on where he was.
“Who am I speaking with?” she asked him. “I’ll need your name and some proof of who you say you are. You can imagine, there’s a lot of people calling in on this …”
“I think you know exactly who you’re speaking with,” the caller said. “Martinez had a bullet wound in his left temple and another higher up on the skull. His driver’s window was down. He probably still had my driver’s license in his hand … You want my Social Security number? I think that’s sufficient.”
Carrie’s adrenaline shot through the roof. She knew she had the killer on the line.
She tried to get him to keep talking. “You said any of it, Dr. Steadman. And you said, ‘there’s been more.’ Has there been another incident?”
Steadman didn’t answer. Instead, he waited a few seconds and changed the subject. “Are you a detective, Carrie?”
The question took her by surprise. She glanced around, at the elapsed time on the screen. Going on a minute. Why not tell him the truth? Sometimes people in these situations just needed someone to talk it out with. “No. I work in community outreach,” she said. “I just agreed to man a phone. It’s actually my first day back from being away for a while.”
By now several of the staff were listening in on the call.
“Well, I bet the community outreach department has a lot more company at the moment than it’s normally used to, right, Carrie?” Steadman said with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” Carrie said, holding in a smile herself. “This is true.”
A minute fifteen.
“You mind if I ask you something?” he asked. His next question threw her for a loop. “You have kids, Carrie?”
More than threw her for a loop. Where was he going with this? It was almost like he somehow knew what was going on with her. Today of all days, bringing up kids. She hesitated for a second, not sure if she should give away anything personal like that, but Bill Akers nodded for her to keep engaging him. Ninety seconds.
“Yes,” Carrie answered. “A son. He’s nine.”
“I have a daughter myself,” Henry Steadman said. “Hallie. Super kid. She’s an equestrian. She almost qualified for the junior Olympic team last year. She’s finishing her first year of college. At UVA. She’s the world to me. Just like yours, I bet?’
“Of course,” Carrie said, feeling a flutter go through her.
“Then you’ll understand what I’m about to say … though you probably won’t believe me. None of you,” he said, firmer, “since I assume there’s a bunch of you crowded around by now.”
Carrie didn’t answer, but she smiled.
“But I swear—on my little girl—’cause I still think of her that way—and right now she needs me more than anything in the world—that whatever it looks like, whatever anyone may think, I had nothing to do with what happened to that policeman today … I was back in my car, waiting for him to finish up my ticket, when a blue sedan pulled next to him and someone shot him through the window. It sped away and I went after it—to try and ID it—that’s all—which was the reason I left the scene. You understand what I’m saying, Carrie? This is exactly the way it happened. On my little girl!”
“That’s bullshit,” Captain Moon said dubiously. “Five different people saw him coming out of Martinez’s car.”
“And not to mention that I was the one who called 911 … It was a blue sedan. I don’t know the make or the model, but I do know something about it. It had South Carolina plates. You’ve got to find that car.”
“What make was it, Dr. Steadman?” Carrie asked, glancing again at the clock. They had been on two minutes now. “The car. Were you able to make out the plates?”
“No, not the numbers. But they were definitely South Carolina. I’m sure …” He stopped himself. “And I have no idea what make,” he said with a sigh of frustration. “I would only put you in the wrong direction …”
“Just keep him going, Carrie,” one of the detectives whispered, pointing to his watch.
“I hear you, Dr. Steadman. But all I can say is—and I think I’m giving you pretty sound advice here—whatever you’ve done or haven’t done, you have to turn yourself in. Everything can be sorted out then. I promise you, you’ll be treated—”
“I think you know exactly how I’ll be treated.” He cut her off. “You all know what happened today, as I was trying to head back peacefully to the scene. And at the Hyatt. You want to help me, Carrie, look for that blue sedan. The plate number began with AMD or ADJ … There must be security cameras around somewhere that would’ve spotted them. There has to be some way.”
Two and a half minutes.
“And remember what I told you. On my daughter, Carrie. I know you’ll know what I mean. I wish I could turn myself in. I wish …” There was a long pause and Carrie almost thought he was about to share something. He finally said, “Just look for that car. I think it’s already clear, whether I turn myself in or they eventually catch me, no one there will look.”
“Dr. Steadman …” Carrie pressed. “What did you mean by—”
The line went dead.
Carrie sat back and blew out a breath for the first time. Almost two and a half minutes. A phone number had come up on the screen, but it wasn’t for Steadman’s; it was for a completely different phone. A White Fence Capital. Steadman had likely stolen the phone from somewhere.
“Excellent work, Carrie,” Chief Hall said. “Certainly a lot of excitement, no, for what I understand is your first day back?”
“Yes, sir,” Carrie acknowledged. Though she found herself wanting to ask if they should follow up on the blue car.
“Well”—he squeezed her on the shoulder—“you did just fine …”
Then suddenly someone shouted from the detectives’ pool. “There’s been another shooting!”
Tony Velez, one of the homicide crew, ran up. “In Avondale! This must be what Steadman was just talking about. Victim’s name is Michael Dinofrio. His wife came home from exercise and found him dead at his desk. Two in the chest. His car’s gone. A silver Jaguar. And the kicker is … guess who Dinofrio was supposed to be playing golf with right about now …? At Atlantic Pines. Steadman,” Velez finished, looking around the table.
“I took a call from a cabbie,” Carrie said, suddenly remembering the location, “who claimed he drove someone resembling Steadman from the Clarion Inn near Lakeview to an address in Avondale …”
“That’s about a half mile from where Martinez was killed,” Bill Akers said.
Frantically, Carrie checked back on the call screen, locating the time of the call and drop-off point. 11:02 A.M. “33443 Turnberry Terrace.” She looked up. “That’s only a block away.”
Suddenly she knew what Steadman had meant when he said, “You’ll see, there’s more …”
Then Sally Crawford, who’d been tracing Steadman’s call, said loudly, “The phone Steadman just called in on … White Fence Capital. It’s a real estate partnership here in town.” She turned to face the chief. “Michael Dinofrio is the CEO.”
Carrie felt a flush of embarrassment come over her. If there was any doubt before about Steadman’s connection to these murders, there wasn’t one now.
The son of a bitch just called in on the second victim’s phone.