“Where are we with the boyfriend?”
“I put in another call to the roommate. I may have implied that I’m writing a story for a newspaper, and I may have been intentionally vague about which one. We’ll see how much he likes to see his name in print. If I get him talking, he may be more loose lipped with me than a cop. We’ll see.”
Jay stares down at the medical examiner’s work.
Lonnie says, “She fought like hell.” She points to the M.E.’s notes about defensive wounds, the fact that there may be DNA under her fingernails.
“What about semen? He left that behind with the first two.”
“Yeah, but it rained Saturday, remember.” She taps her copy of the autopsy report. “No semen, no nothing.”
“So by the time they found her, early Sunday morning, most of the physical evidence would have been destroyed, no way to trace any of it.”
“Which makes this a hell of a lot easier to pin on Neal.”
“And also explains why they’re keeping the cases separate,” Jay says. “If they put the girls together, they have to test his blood against everything. If it’s not his semen in the first two cases, it makes it harder to prosecute for the third.”
Jay feels his cell phone buzz once in his pocket . . . his signal.
“That’s Rolly,” he says. It’s a little after six. He’s got less than thirty minutes to get across town. He pulls out his car keys. “You okay staying here?” he asks Lonnie, not wanting to assume, or to treat her like a babysitter.
“I can make some calls from here,” she says. “I’m just happy to have a gig again.” Then, just so they’re clear, she asks, “We are getting paid for this, right?”
“Yes,” he says, forgoing any mention of the fact that, for now, at least, any and all money on this case is coming out of his own dwindling bank account. Sam messengered the retainer to the office this afternoon, just as he said he would. Twenty thousand dollars in black ink, paid from an account at Sam’s bank. Jay, A.G.’s bitter words still in his head, put the check in his top desk drawer.
The campaign to elect Sandy Wolcott the next mayor of Houston, Texas, is in full swing, buoyed by the recent reports of the arrest of Hathorne’s nephew, the architect of his campaign. Gregg Bartolomo’s front-page article in this morning’s Chronicle was, in Jay’s opinion, irresponsibly vague about Alicia’s employment history, calling her a “volunteer campaign worker,” giving the reader the impression that she was working for Neal, who is now charged with her murder. There is likely to be champagne popping in some dark corner at tonight’s fund-raising event. Reese Parker ought to put Bartolomo on the payroll.
They rented La Colombe d’Or for the night. The valet is set up at the end of a long brick walkway. There’s already a line of cars in front of the hotel and restaurant, including a row of black Town Cars, all registered to Rolly’s Rolling Elegance, Inc., a trick he pulled once before on a job. “Wasn’t nothing to it,” he said to Jay when he reported in late this morning. He got his girl to call–a woman’s voice raising fewer red flags than a man’s–and offer free car service from an ardent supporter; and Wolcott’s people, violating a handful of state campaign finance laws, said yes. They might not get more than an hour or two out of it before somebody realizes it’s a Trojan horse, but that’s all Rolly and Jay need. One by one and across the city tonight, they climbed into Rolly’s fleet of cars. Wolcott staffers, guests, and VIP donors, they’re all getting custom service. Rolly, in a dapper black suit with pinstripes as fine as baby powder, made sure his pickup for the night included the candidate herself, rightly assuming that she wouldn’t take two steps without Reese Parker by her side. He pulled away from their headquarters on Richmond with the two women in the backseat and adjusted his rearview mirror so he could read on their lips whatever he couldn’t hear at a distance, asking as he did if the A/C was okay. Neither acknowledged him as he pulled into the street. Fine by me, Rolly thought.
Jay managed to arrive a few minutes before Rolly, parking a block over in the lot of a Walgreen’s and approaching the front of the famed hotel on foot. This was not the official plan, but Jay can’t help taking a look, wanting to see Parker’s organization up close, what he’s up against. Despite its Frenchie name, La Colombe d’Or was the early-twentieth-century home of an oil tycoon, Houston’s architectural legacy having been built with the bricks of new money. It looks to Jay’s eyes like an old schoolhouse, only one lit from inside by antique sconces and chandeliers. Beyond the two French doors, that’s where the magic is: a rush of chilled air, perfumed with roses and tall stands of white and pink lilies, and a plush Persian rug running from one wall of the foyer to the other. Wolcott’s many donors and supporters are lined up, checking in at a table clad in white linen. This is no coffee-and-doughnuts neighborhood social. This night is for high rollers only. Businessmen and developers, corporate lawyers on the payroll of the big petroleum companies, and contractors wanting a piece of city business, men and women who want to put their money on the right horse before the window closes. Jay wonders what one of those little nametags costs. Five grand? Ten? The phone in his pocket vibrates again, and Jay turns and goes back through the arriving crowd. As planned, he walks to the third sedan idling in the valet line, a black Town Car, and taps the back right-side window. When he hears the doors unlock, he opens the back door and slides in beside Reese Parker, just as Rolly pulls out of the line and away from the curb, starting south on Montrose. “What the hell?” Parker says.
“Just give me five minutes,” Jay says.