“I followed you as far as the entrance to the park. But just as I got there, I had a series of calls that I had to take and respond—” He stopped suddenly. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. But you need to explain yourselves. You slipped away under cover of darkness and—”
Crawford laughed. “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never heard anyone actually say ‘under cover of darkness’ with a straight face.”
Neal went on doggedly. “Yesterday you two were adversaries. Tonight you were fogging up car windows. For thirty-three minutes, to be exact.” He shot a glance at Holly. “It’s unethical for you to be discussing his custody petition, and the only other thing you have in common is the shooting.” Back to Crawford, he said, “If your clandestine meeting pertained to that, I need to know.” He sneered. “Or were you just trying to get under her skirt?”
Holly’s body jerked as though he’d shot her. “How dare—”
“Your dead guy in the morgue wasn’t the shooter in the courtroom.”
Crawford’s blunt statement overrode Holly’s outrage, and, as he’d intended, it completely defused Neal. It robbed him of wind and left him looking like a guy who’d just realized that his solid footing was in fact a trapdoor.
Crawford kept his expression implacable, doing or saying nothing to ease Neal’s shock or to help him absorb it. The detective looked over at Holly. “What’s he talking about?”
“Precisely what he said,” she replied tightly, “and I’m afraid he’s right.”
Neal brought his attention back to Crawford. “When did you make that determination?”
“The instant I saw him in the morgue.”
“How?”
Crawford told him.
Neal appeared moderately relieved. “A pierced ear?” he guffawed. “That was your big voilà?”
“Small detail. Big voilà.”
Neal began to look more concerned and, as Crawford and Holly had done, began trying to construct an explanation. “Amid all the confusion, you just didn’t notice the hole in his ear before.”
Crawford explained how he could have missed seeing it when on the roof. “But I’m as sure as I can be that the man in the courtroom did not have a piercing. Your cadaver does. They’re two different men.” Remembering kicking the gunman, he said, “Look at Rodriguez’s left kneecap. If it has a bruise, I’ll admit to being wrong. If there’s no bruise…” He raised his hands palms up. “It wasn’t Rodriguez who had a bead on me.”
Neal wet his lips, cut his eyes back and forth between Crawford and Holly and ended on her. “You said you’re ‘afraid he’s right.’ That means you’re not sure.”
“Mr. Hunt tested my memory of the shooting from the time the gunman barged through the door.” She gave him a brief rundown. “I was spot-on regarding every other detail. When he mentioned a pierced ear, it prompted an immediate response, which substantiates what Mr. Hunt had discovered.”
“It was a trick question,” Neal argued. “You can’t back him up with one hundred percent certainty?”
She maintained her chilly tone. “This I am one hundred percent certain of. If I didn’t believe he was right, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Even if Neal was unwilling to take Crawford’s word for it, he seemed to regard the judge as unimpeachable. His face paled under the fluorescent lighting that hummed from the water-stained ceiling. He pulled a paper napkin from the table dispenser, blotted a sheen of perspiration from his upper lip, then wadded up the damp napkin and tossed it aside. “Why didn’t you tell me when we were in the morgue?” he asked Crawford.
“On the outside chance that I was wrong, I wanted Judge Spencer’s confirmation. I contacted her by phone, but she hung up on me. I had no choice except to ambush her tonight on the courthouse parking lot and insist that she listen to what I had to tell her. That was the reason for our secret meeting.” He paused, then said, “You owe her an apology.”
Looking a bit sickly, Neal said, “I apologize, Your Honor. The insult was aimed at Crawford, not you.”
“Then you also owe Mr. Hunt an apology.”
He knew Neal would rather have his tongue cut out, but the judge had pulled rank and given him little choice.
His eyes not quite meeting Crawford’s, he said, “The remark was uncalled for.”
“Your sincerity is overwhelming, Neal. Not that I give a damn about winning your approval. The only thing I’m after is Chet’s murderer. And it wasn’t Jorge Rodriguez.”
“When I inform the chief that our SWAT team fatally shot the wrong guy, he’ll demand to know why. Can you give me any kind of reasonable explanation for your screwup?”