Out Of Time (9 page)

And had they helped Peyton Tillman along in his death? It hit me then that I was, at best, a colossal idiot. Peyton Tillman had no more slit his wrists than I was Madonna. I had found no note, no words of remorse or apology. I returned to the kitchen, packed the alligator and cow mitts back into their drawer and wiped the knob off carefully. I found the outside lights to the patio located on a switch behind the refrigerator and flipped them on with my clean elbow. Bright lights flooded the grotesque patio scene, making the dead judge look like a character from a play, a Roman senator playing out his final act.

With more illumination, I had better luck examining the body. The cuts on his arms were not only deep, they were also methodical and evenly spaced. How could a man bleeding profusely from one wrist have the time and strength to scar himself so precisely on his remaining arm? I examined his neck. No signs of ligature, no scrapes or cuts. I ran my fingers lightly through his hair, knowing Bill Butler would have killed me if he could have seen me. The back of the skull curved smoothly except for a knot toward the base of the neck. I could not look closer without moving the body, and even I knew I’d gone far enough.

Task finished, I crept back to the kitchen and picked up the phone. I used a paper napkin as a shield, though I doubted the killer had called out for pizza. Bill answered on the third ring.

“It’s Casey,” I said. “I’m at Peyton Tillman’s house. Someone’s killed him. He’s in his hot tub. I slipped in the blood because it was dark, and I might have puked a little bit. Otherwise, I haven’t touched a thing.”

To his credit, not a breath of disbelief tainted the silence that followed. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll get the address and call the CCBI. Just sit down and wait. And, Casey, don’t say a word to anyone until I get there. Okay?”

I don’t know if it was the unexpected kindness in his voice, the fact that I liked Peyton Tillman or plain old PMS. Whatever the reason, when I returned to the deck I sat down and cried while I waited. The adrenaline was wearing off and the enormity of what had happened was beginning to sink in.

A good man had died. And a woman would die soon if I could not find out what secrets had died with him. It seemed an impossible burden, and I was sorry I had accepted it. Maybe Peyton Tillman would be alive if I had said no.

What the hell. There was no one to see me. I went ahead and let myself get it all out before anyone else arrived. The truth is, I believe in crying when there’s good cause. But I do confess that when I cry, I like to cry alone.

The CCBI is the City-County Bureau of Investigation, a special joint task force that looks into ae bell homicides, or, in the case of big deal citizens like Peyton Tillman, suspicious deaths. The fact that they were on their way proved that Peyton had been a judge; it didn’t prove they believed he had been killed.

Cops around Raleigh have better sense than to tear down the quiet streets of Cameron Park with sirens blaring at eleven o’clock at night. Instead, at least ten cars arrived silently en masse behind a cruiser with flashing lights. They pulled over to the curb surrounding the park in a weird coordinated maneuver that made me think of secret government organizations and people disappearing from the face of the earth. I shivered and realized I was still wearing no more than my bathing suit and a pair of sweats. I rubbed my arms, not caring that I was smearing Tillman’s blood even more, and leaned out over the railing of the deck watching the official figures approach, their shadows descending down the hill—to give me a hard time. I couldn’t pick out Bill Butler in the crowd. Too bad. I needed a friend. Even one I couldn’t seem to get along with.

A beefy uniformed guy arrived first, huffing and puffing from the effort. He was very pink under the glare of the patio light and his light-blond hair was buzzed against his scalp in a crop of stubby bristles. He looked like one of the three little pigs, only in uniform. He was still huffing and puffing as he stared at the pool of smeared blood and the nearby vomit. Then he glanced at the dead judge and gave me the
once-over. I figured he was deciding whether to have a heart attack or comment on the mess. “You the one called it in?” he finally asked.

No, I wanted to say, I’m just a friendly neighbor who took this rare opportunity to sneak over and wallow in Peyton Tillman’s hot tub—and blood—without permission. Instead, I nodded silently and he ignored me in favor of pulling out a flashlight. He proceeded to inch his way around the far side of the house, casting a small spotlight on the damp stones, as if they might tell him something.

The others arrived within the minute. They were thinner and a lot more serious-looking than the first guy had been. Most of them ignored me. Two headed my way: Bill Butler and a brunette I didn’t know. But I disliked her on principle since she was very tall and thin. Worse, her hair had been twisted into a casually elegant knot, the kind of style that would have made my own over-processed strands stick out like some bloodless victim of Nosferatu’s.

“Casey, this is Anne Morrow,” Bill said. “She’s in charge of the investigation. Tell her everything you told me on the phone and answer any questions she might have.”

“Aren’t you going to handcuff me and read me my rights?” I asked hopefully.

“In your dreams,” he replied. “I have to get back to work.” Before I could think of a retort—or thank him—he was gone. It was a bad sign.

“Everyone’s a comedian,” I grumbled, aware that the slender detective was staring at me withstyg at me a carefully neutral expression on her face.

She took a seat beside me on the bench while a team of forensic specialists went to work on the patio, hot tub and judge. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said unexpectedly. “It’s so seldom that one meets a witness who admits to smearing the blood across the crime scene and puking on the remaining evidence. Most of the time, they don’t wait around for us to arrive.”

“Very funny,” I mumbled. “The two of you are a regular Abbott and Costello routine.”

“Actually, Bill Butler and I are not a team at all. In any sense of the word. Does that make you feel any better?”

“Am I that obvious?” I asked, pleased despite myself. They were no more than a pair of pals. The green flame in my heart subsided.

She shrugged. “It’s more what I hear about the two of you than what I just saw. I wouldn’t exactly call this a romantic setting.”

“Not tonight, anyway,” I agreed.

“You’re lucky you know Bill,” she said abruptly. “It’s going to make a very, very big difference in the way you’re treated. It’s none of my business, but I’d say you owe him one. Now, start from the beginning and tell me everything you know.”

I started from the beginning and told her everything I knew. For real. I knew the CCBI would never let me get within a mile of the investigation and I wanted whomever had killed Peyton Tillman caught. I told Detective Morrow just that.

“So you’re convinced he didn’t kill himself?” she asked.

“Come on, what do you think?” I waved an arm toward the corpse, which was being photographed by a pale man who looked more cadaverous than his subject. “I haven’t seen cuts so precise since I aced eleventh-grade shop class. And I think he may have a bump on the back of his head.”

“You think?” she asked icily.

“I have good eyes,” I confessed. “I didn’t touch a hair on his head.”

“I wouldn’t imagine you would,” she replied. “A cool-headed professional like you. I’m sure you were far too busy throwing up.” But then she smiled, and I decided that Anne Morrow was all right, even if she did weigh about twenty pounds less than me and have a good five inches more in height.

“When did you join the force?” I asked after she had probed ft. had proor more details on what I knew about Peyton Tillman.

“About six months ago. But I’ve been on the job for over eleven years. I put in most of my time up in Asheville. I’m from there and I joined the local state bureau right after college.”

“College?”

“B.A. in criminal justice from John Jay in New York City. MBA from Indiana. Went home to marry the boy next door. Divorced his ass, ditched the SBI and came here. First female detective in the history of this department.”

“An admirably succinct biography,” I offered.

“What’s your story?” she asked back.

“Poor white trash—but smart white trash—makes good. Leaves behind the Florida panhandle and heads north. I had an ass that I divorced as well. Found out that I start to shiver whenever I venture above the North Carolina state line. I guess I stayed here because I had nowhere else to go.”

“That’s as good a reason as any,” the detective said.

We were interrupted by a man who looked like Marcus Welby after a three-week bender. He even held a black medical bag. He looked like he needed toothpicks to prop open his eyes, but maybe staring death in the face all day does that to you. “You can move him now if you want,” he told Detective Morrow.

“What can you tell me right now?” she asked.

“Not much.” He glanced at me.

“You can talk in front of her,” Morrow said. I was pleased, and did my best to resemble a responsible law- enforcement colleague who just happened to be dressed in a bathing suit and covered with blood and puke.

“This hot tub business plays hell with my assumptions,” he explained. “I’m going to have to take the internal temperatures of organs before I can be sure. Timing on this one is going to be difficult.”

“But if you had to guess…?” She had asked the question many times before.

“Based on my scientific observation that he does not yet resemble a California raisin, I’d say that he’s been dead for at least an hour and a half, but no more than three. I can’t say with my usual certainty because blood flow was continued after death by conditions in the tub. He does have a bump on the back of his skull that I need to examine more closely. It may tell me more.”

“Understood,” she said, and the man was gone. Damn. Detective Morrow would have made a great queen. She was calm, in charge and to the point.

“So, do you think it was suicide?” I asked when she was done with her questions.

She snapped her notebook shut. “I don’t know what I think right now. But I’m going to have to ask you to take off your clothes.”

“What?” I stared at her.

“I need to bag your clothes. Seeing as how you did a belly flop in the most important part of the crime scene. DNA evidence is big these days. I suspect you have it dripping off you.”

“You keep saying, ‘crime scene.’ You don’t think it was suicide. You know it’s connected, don’t you?” I replied.

“Connected?” she asked.

“To my investigation into Gail Honeycutt.”

She held up a well-manicured hand, but I didn’t hold her good grooming against her. “Stop right there, Casey. I have no idea what this is connected to and I’m not about to start guessing this early. I’d say that I’ll let you know, but you and I both know that I won’t. To be very honest with you, you’ve used up all of your goodwill and more here tonight. All I can tell you is that a lot of people might have wanted Tillman dead. It’s an occupational hazard of being a judge. Put away a bad guy. Bad guy gets paroled. Bad guy comes looking for you. Your investigation is very low on the list of possibilities. But I will consider it, I assure you. If you want my opinion, Tillman was seeing you because he was suffering from a bad attack of conscience. Period.” She waved over a detective who had been hovering on the edges of our conversation. “Can you get the boys to bring some large bags over?” she asked him. “I need her clothes.”

“What? I’m supposed to strip down right here?” I protested. Okay, so I had stripped for a lot of cops in the past. But it had always been voluntarily—and in the privacy of my own home.

“You can do it here or at the station,” she said calmly.

Funny what you can squeeze into when you have no other option. “I have a change of clothes in the car,” I said glumly, fairly certain the trunk held an oil-stained work shirt and torn gym shorts several sizes too small. I’d freeze my ass off changing, but that was good. It gave me a shot at fitting into the shorts.

“Go with her,” Anne Morrow told the other detective.

“I think you can trust me not to bolt,” I said sarcastically.

“I was more concerned about your safety,” she replied calmly before she nodded good-bye and headed toward the body.

Damn. I hadn’t considered that aspect myself. If someone had conked Peyton Tillman over the head, slit his wrists and left him to bleed to death because of me, who was to say that I wasn’t next?

I am often paranoid. But never without good reason. After I changed in the darkness and handed over my bloody clothes, I decide the smartest thing I could do under the circumstances was to nip over to the office and pick up my gun. I keep my Astra locked in the bottom drawer of my desk. The bullets are stored in the top drawer, right next to my supply of Tampax. Just knowing they’re there is an incentive to keep my PMS under control.

It was after midnight, and not even the whores on Hargett Street looked interested in staying awake. Downtown was dead in the chilly March night. A cup of hot coffee and a half dozen warm Krispy Kreme doughnuts would have hit the spot right about then. I needed something to replace all the starch I’d left on Peyton Tillman’s deck. But I was only a few blocks from the office, so I decided to pick up my gun before I headed for Person Street. Besides, approaching Bobby D. with a full box of Krispy Kremes is a dangerous maneuver. You’re likely to lose a hand.

Our office is located on McDowell Street, a few blocks from the convention center and within spitting distance of the Raleigh Police Department. Usually, the neon sign is blinking twenty-four hours a day, and the blinds are left open for anyone passing by to take a peek. But that night the sign had been switched off and the blinds were closed. It gave me a bad feeling. I parked out front and approached the door cautiously. Was Bobby sick? The door was locked—another oddity. As I slid the key in the lock and turned the handle, I heard a strange thumping from inside the office. It did little to add to my confidence. It was dark and I fumbled for the light switch.

Bobby was bound hand and foot to a straight-back chair teetering under his weight. A white cloth blindfold wound around his head and had knocked his toupee askew so that it sprouted from one side like a weed clinging to the side of a cliff. He was gagged with another cloth, and his face was a dangerous red beneath the strip of white. He’s not a gentle perspirer on the coolest of days, and, even at a distance, I could see that he had soaked his leisure-suit shirt through. The thumping I heard came from his attempts to stand up in the chair—something he has enough trouble with when he isn’t bound hand and foot.

“Whoa, Bobby. It’s Casey—take it easy.” What should have been a funny sight wasn’t. Bobby really did look about one minute away from a heart attack. I broke three fingernails untying the gag and blindfold. A small price to pay for the rare stream of thanks that issued from his freed lips.

“Jesus Christ, Casey—you saved my life. Anything you want, it’s yours. Just name it. You can take the whole fee on the Taylor case. What else do you need? God, I would have died if you hadn’t come along. I was seconds away from death. I tell you, I looked my future in the eye and saw nothing but black. Zippo. Nada. The Grim Reaper was knocking on my door.”

Another second of this and he’d start begging me to drop him off at church.

But Bobby was still Bobby. Soon his grateful ranting was replaced by a torrent of invective aimed at his attacker. “I’m going to kill whoever did this to me. That lousy creep. What a coward. Sneaking up on someone like that. I had a date, you know. Took me weeks to get her to agree. She’ll never believe me. I’ll rip him from limb to limb. Only I never saw whoever it was. He must have been huge. Incredibly strong. Thank god you weren’t here. You would have been killed. I tried to fight him off, but he overpowered me.”