Chapter 56
I WAS FEELING surly when I walked into the war room at 8:00 a.m. Twenty pairs of eyes followed me as I went to the fridge, grabbed a can of Red Bull, then took my seat at the conference table, the only piece of furniture remaining from when Private belonged to my dad.
I said, “Hello,” then rested my eyes on Justine, who was sitting across from me. I couldn’t read anything on her beautiful face.
I said, “I want to bring everyone up to date on Harold Archer. As some of you know, I went to his house at his request yesterday evening. I found him in his pool house with the body of his dead wife, Tule.
“Tule had been murdered; looked to me like she’d been killed in a rage. There was every manner and type of blood spray and spatter on the floor, furnishings, and walls. I saw a bloody kitchen knife, probably the murder weapon, next to the body. I couldn’t count the stab wounds, but there were a lot of them. Hal had showered and left his bloody clothes across a chair.”
I picked up the remote, and images of the crime scene went up on the wall-to-wall flat-screens around the room. It was all there: stark, bloody murder.
I said, “I called the police. There was nothing else I could do. Hal is in custody pending his arraignment tomorrow. He took my advice and lawyered up.
“Any questions so far?”
Cruz asked, “Did the wife have a weapon?”
“None that I could see.”
“Was Hal injured?”
“Not that I could see.”
Justine asked, “Did he tell you that he killed her?”
“I’m going to say no to that. Now, here’s the thing. We have to do what we can to give Hal’s lawyers something to work with. Mo-bot, I need you to turn up anything you can on Tule Archer—her past, her known associates, her record if she has one. Do some background on Hal too, while you’re at it.”
“I’ll have something for you in an hour,” Mo said.
I knew she would.
Mo-bot’s real name is Maureen Roth. She’s fifty, married with three kids, a serial slayer in the World of Warcraft, and mother hen to the younger operatives at Private. She’s called Mo-bot because of her almost robotic mind. She has an eidetic memory and can multitask like an air traffic controller on speed, doesn’t get frazzled or riled. I never had to think twice about Mo.
I concluded the Archer report, and Justine brought everyone up to date on the car-bomb situation, which had heated up considerably since Maeve Wilkinson’s death. When she was done, Cruz leaned forward and told the group that all was quiet on the Sumar front.
“Gozan and Khezir are staying put in their hotel room, watching sports and porn,” said Cruz.
The other senior investigators gave summaries of their cases, and then we were done. Notably, Del Rio’s seat was empty.
“I’ll be in court today,” I said. “If anything blows up—cars, cases, whatever—Justine is in charge.”
Mo-bot saluted Justine. There was a smattering of laughter and I asked again, “Any questions?”
There were none.
I had a wide range of questions that I kept to myself.
Why had Hal Archer gone lethal on his wife? What could I do to make peace with Justine? How would I do on the stand today when Caine called me to testify on behalf of my best friend, Rick Del Rio?