Maternal Instinct (11 page)

They had just pulled out of the garage, Hugh behind the wheel.
Granstrom
hadn't expressed any interest in driving these past few days.

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "Yeah, I said something! Do you need to get your ears checked?"

"I'm sorry." Her gaze drifted away.

Before he lost her, he said loudly, "I don't buy Gann having shot that last victim."

She didn't react for a discernible moment. Then her head whipped around. "What?"

"You heard me. Everything fits except the last victim. Jerome What's-his-name."

"Ryman," she said automatically.

"Whatever." He stopped at a red light. "Think about it. Why would Gann start down the hallway, shoot one guy, then turn around and go back to the elevator, where he does himself? Why not take out a few more people, since he's in the mood? Why the half-assed conclusion to his spree, part three?"

Her face showed that he'd engaged her interest. "He wanted to scare everyone enough to keep them in their offices?"

"Why? He killed himself almost immediately. He didn't need privacy to meditate first. If he had wanted to be sure they didn't pop out to stare, a shot down the hall or into the ceiling would have done the trick."

Granstrom
nodded, some color touching her pale cheeks. When had she gotten so pale? Hugh wondered, suddenly realizing she'd looked like a damn ghost all week.

"I've actually been thinking about this, too," she agreed. "Mainly because I'd like to know where the gun disappeared to."

The bullet embedded in Ryman's skull was a .38 caliber, like the one that had ended Gann's life. Unfortunately, ballistics was confident they had come from different guns.

"Haven't you heard the theories?" Hugh asked. "Starting with police incompetence? We did find it, just tagged it wrong. Or dropped it down the sewer drain by accident, or left it in a drawer in one of our desks, or… But, no, here's the good one. Somebody suggested that a ghoulish office worker snatched it up as we herded them out. A little souvenir."

"Yuck."

"Yeah, kind of a nasty thought," he agreed. "What's more, I don't know about you, but I resent the suggestion that we didn't watch people as we ushered them out. Not one of them would have had the chance to stoop and pick up something like that. Even had it been in plain sight, which it wasn't. You and I were there first. I didn't see a gun. Did you?"

She shook her head thoughtfully. "Unless someone grabbed it before we reached the fifth floor at all."

"Why
would be the big question, wouldn't it?"

"Like you said, a souvenir."

He muttered an imprecation under his breath. "You saw those people. They were scared to death. I don't see any of them dashing out to grab a gun that had just been used to kill someone."

"No." She frowned ahead for a moment, then turned a remarkably intelligent gaze on him. "So what's your theory?"

"That we have an opportunist. Someone who hated Ryman, or just wanted him out of the way. Maybe someone who had never even thought, I want to kill Jerome Ryman. But suddenly this madman starts shooting." Hugh was getting into this, his voice gaining animation. The audience helped. "Our soon-to-be murderer is carrying—maybe even has a permit, let's check," he added, before returning to the story. "They all scuttle into their offices when the elevator opens at the fifth floor. This guy—let's say guy just for simplicity—is gutsy enough to peek out. The madman puts a bullet in his head. Our guy thinks, If Ryman were found shot now, everyone would assume… And he's right."

"That would take incredible nerve," Nell pointed out.

"So? You don't murder someone if you don't have nerve."

"True." She contemplated him with that same penetrating look. "Have you tried this theory out on anyone else?"

"John." The memory stung.

"And?"

"He thinks it's far-fetched."

It was the first time since they were little kids that his big brother had actually ridiculed an idea of his.

When he'd finally seen that Hugh was serious, John had just shaken his head and said, "For God's sake, this isn't an Agatha Christie novel. In police work, the likeliest villain always did it. You know that." He'd taken a long swallow of beer and shaken his head once again with incredulity. "You're talking an incredible series of coincidences, Hugh. Somebody hated the guy. The somebody had a gun, saw Gann kill himself, had the presence to seize the moment, and was a good enough actor not to stand out afterward. And, oh, yeah, nobody saw him, nobody realized he was moving around when everyone else was hiding, Ryman didn't open his mouth and say, 'Pete! Why are you pointing a gun at me?'"

"It might be," Nell
Granstrom
said now, tentatively.

For reasons he didn't want to examine, Hugh felt himself tighten. He kept his voice impassive. "What's your take?"

She didn't even hesitate. "That you're right."

He breathed again, relieved more than he ought to be by her support.

"Why?" he asked.

He liked the way, when she frowned thoughtfully, her forehead puckered. He was reminded of the mobility of a young girl's face, mirroring her every thought. Hugh doubted that
Granstrom
knew quite how expressive her eyes often were, flashing fire and brimstone or secret guilt or worries she never shared with him. He wondered if her abstraction these past days was really pique at him having called her on flirting, or whether something had happened at home. What if her daughter was pregnant?

Hell, what if
she
was… Nah. He shook off the thought before it completed itself. Most women were on some kind of birth control. And if not, what were the odds? Anyway, she hadn't said anything. She was irritated at him, not scared.

Now she said readily, "Partly because you and I
were
the first ones on the scene. Even then, I looked for other guns. Because I didn't see a second one, I assumed Gann had killed Ryman with the same one he used to commit suicide."

Hugh nodded. "I assumed the same."

"But also…" she continued, hesitated briefly. "It doesn't seem to me that his colleagues liked Ryman. Have you noticed?"

Pleased, Hugh nodded. "Yeah. We haven't been asking the kind of question that would elicit comment on his character, but I've noticed some vibes. Sure. Even St. Clair," he glanced at her quickly but saw no reaction to the name, "expressed guilt and horror, but something slipped through when he said Ryman had already gone back to his desk while everyone else was still buzzing. Did Ryman sneer at the others? Or was he just so damn virtuous everybody was guaranteed to hate him?"

"Good question." Nell actually smiled at Hugh. Her thin face became a hell of a lot prettier. "Why don't we ask?"

"We're almost done with our interviews."

"Given that the murder weapon wasn't found, I think we have good reason to try to nail down everyone's movements." She turned a look of mock innocence on him. "Don't you?"

"Yeah." He grinned. "Hell, yeah. Let's do it."

"Then let's use this morning to finish the last few interviews for round one, and start round two this afternoon."

"If we can get lucky and everyone is available."

"Um."

To Hugh's exasperation, Nell had turned her head and was gazing blindly out the side window again, her attention span apparently exhausted. Or her interest in speaking to him exhausted, he didn't know which.

The morning was tedious. These interviews were with people who worked at the far end of the hall. A few had missed the excitement altogether. Others had joined the conclave in the hall, but fled back to their offices. The two gunshots had been distant pops to them.

They were apparently in a different department from Jerome Ryman, too. Publicity occupied this end of the hall.

"We're one of the lesser known insurance companies," a sultry brunette told Hugh and Nell, "but we're trying to change that. We've been primarily regional and employer oriented, not offering individual plans, but that's changing, too. Our new television campaign plays on the 'we're next door' theme, using Pacific Northwest backdrops. In fact, one commercial was filmed entirely in Port Dare!"

She told them more, none of which interested Hugh. His health insurance was through the city, of course. He didn't use it. Unless he got injured in the line of duty, he didn't plan to in the foreseeable future. Except for required physicals and inoculations, he hadn't stepped foot in a health clinic or hospital since … hell, since his mother had dragged him kicking and screaming after a concussion on the football field.

About all he watched on TV was sports and news, and although Greater Northwest was—according to this informant—aiming at the young singles market, he didn't remember seeing the commercials. But then, a commercial break was when he hit the kitchen for snacks.

After that interview, Nell spoke up in the car. "Let's find out more about Ryman's department. He didn't have an office to himself, so I assume he wasn't a big cheese. But was he up for a promotion?"

Hugh grunted. "Worth asking."

"That brunette not your type?"

"What?" He frowned at her.

"She all but asked you to come back after you'd ditched me."

"She wasn't that bad." He'd noticed a few lures, but, since he felt no stirring of interest, easily evaded the hook.

His partner leveled a look at him. "She trailed her fingers down your arm while batting her eyelashes. What does she have to do to
be
bad?"

Pleased at her grumpy tone, Hugh grinned. "Oh, she could have slowly undone a button or two while batting those eyelashes. She could have—"

"Forget it," Nell growled. "I don't want to hear it."

"We in a bad mood?"
He
wasn't. Not anymore, even if he'd started the day that way.

Her head turned sharply.
"We?"

"Figure of speech." She looked seriously perturbed, Hugh was surprised to see. "The royal 'we.' You know?"

The fierce stare didn't waver for an alarming several seconds. Then, abruptly, she shuttered it. "No. I'm not in a bad mood. Just…"

When she trailed off and went back to brooding, he silently finished the sentence.

Just … in a bad mood. Or an uneasy one. He didn't know which. But he was getting an uncomfortable feeling about it.

"Lunch?" he asked. Then had to ask again.

"What? Oh." She seemed to consult an inner voice. "I am getting hungry. Can we stop somewhere I can buy a salad? I'm sick of fast food."

Cops ate at greasy diners, not fern-bowered salad bars. But he wasn't about to cross
Granstrom
in her present mood.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Um…" She looked around, as if to see where they were.

Something else cops didn't do. An intense awareness of surroundings was a sixth sense essential to the job. Hugh was beginning to be glad they weren't on patrol right now. Whatever was eating at her was getting in the way of her readiness to respond quickly.

"How about
Dani's
? They have good soup, too."

It was a cute little touristy place in the antique district. In uniform, he and Nell would stick out like big-screen TVs surrounded by eighteenth-century samplers. But, hell, Hugh thought philosophically, both entertained and even educated the masses.

The menus at
Dani's
were made of delicate, tea-stained paper edged with a cutout border that reminded Hugh of those snowflakes every kid snipped out of folded paper to hang on the window. He opened the menu gingerly, afraid he'd rip it with his big, clumsy hands.

He ordered a turkey sandwich, chips and a brownie. Nell started with a basketball-size salad, added a scone, then a milkshake. He wondered if she was imagining her lunch was low-calorie. But then, skinny as she was, she didn't have to worry.

Not, he thought absently, that she was too skinny. She'd had curves enough.

Jolted by the memory of soft white breasts, Hugh scowled.