Page 70 of A Deeper Darkness
Hart got on his walkie, taking off at a jog toward the visitor’s center. She could hear him yelling into the mouthpiece: “He’s here, he’s here.”
Sam realized what they were talking about at last. She blamed the Ativan for making her dopey. She hadn’t been talking to some beatnik reporter or war protestor.
She’d just had close and personal contact with their number-one suspect.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Arlington National Cemetery
Dr. Samantha Owens
Fletcher was very unhappy with Sam. She’d apologized about fifty times, but he was still rigidly upset, the lines of his face tight and drawn, his shoulders combatively forward as he towered over her.
“Why didn’t you signal, or call out? My God, Hart was right there.”
“I’msorry. I told you, I didn’t know it was him. He looks different than the photo. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, to start, and he had a beard and long hair. He wasn’t dressed like the other soldiers. And I wasn’t… I was… Well, hell, Fletcher, I loved Donovan, too. I was saying goodbye to him, not looking for a killer. That’syourjob.”
That calmed him down. Fletcher ran his hands through his hair. “I know, I know. I understand. Run me through it again. Anything you can think of. What exactly did he look like? What was he wearing? Did he smell like cigarettes?”
She went through it again and again, leaving out only the little bit of information that he’d handed her a card. She was being an idiot. She knew that. But she wanted to see what the numbers meant before she shared with them. Whitfield, if that was him, had approached her for a reason, and as much as she wanted to see Donovan’s killer caught and punished, something told her there was more to Whitfield’s involvement than met the eye. Donovan trusted Xander. His feelings on the man’s character and integrity were clear in the journal. She decided she would honor those thoughts until Whitfield proved himself a villain, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Fletcher stowed his notebook in his back pocket. “All right. You did good. I know you want to get to the reception.”
“Not really,” Sam said. “But I don’t think I have much of a choice. I’ll be at Eleanor’s if you need me.”
“You need a ride?”
Sam looked at the string of cars leaving the cemetery and realized that, yes, she did need a ride. She’d come over with a friend of Susan’s, not wanting to intrude on the family in their limousine, and the woman had obviously forgotten her, or figured she was catching a ride with another, and left.
“Come on,” Fletcher said.
She followed him to the nondescript unmarked. Hart was already leaning against the car, waiting. Fletcher barked instructions as he walked around to the driver’s side.
“We’re going to give Dr. Owens a ride to the reception. Then I’m going to go talk to Taranto. You stick around the reception, see if Whitfield shows his face again, comes back to show his respects to the wife privately. And get someone you trust to watch this grave site overnight.”
“Got it.”
They climbed in, Sam in the back feeling strangely like a fugitive, especially considering her white lie to the detectives. She debated telling them about the card again, then stopped. She was breaking every rule she knew, but something told her to hold off.
Donovan, you’re going to be the death of me.
Fletcher got on the phone to someone named Danny, asked him to track down the real reporter and get Fletcher on his schedule ASAP. He hung up after a few minutes and looked in the rearview mirror.
“So, Doc. We have another piece of the puzzle. Want to hear?”
“Lay it on me,” Sam said.
“Woman who lives across the street from the scene where Hal Croswell was killed? Name’s Margaret Lyons. Goes by Maggie. Three kids. Disappeared off the face of the earth the same day we found Croswell’s body. Hasn’t shown up for work, kids haven’t shown up for school. Turns out she served in the same region in Afghanistan as Donovan’s crew. What do you make of that?”
Sam didn’t hesitate. “There are two possible scenarios that come to mind. Either she’s the killer, and you got too close and she split, or she’s a victim, like the rest of them.”
“Mighty convenient that Croswell was killed in a house that Lyons knew was empty. She was the one who told us the owner travels all the time. She’d be in a position to know.”
“That’s true. But I thought you had Whitfield pegged as the main suspect?”
“We have several leads we’re pursuing right now.” He emphasized theseveral,which made Sam think he still wasn’t sharing everything he knew. Either not sharing, or at a loss and not as good a detective as she needed him to be. She tucked that into her head while he continued.
“It’s possible that Maggie Lyons is in it with Whitfield. Her husband, drunken lout that he is, claims she came back from Afghanistan preggers, and insists the kid isn’t his. He divorced her over it. We got a brief look at her financials last night, and she’s got a steady stream of income that’s unaccountable. Just a little extra each month. It helps keep her afloat.”
