Chasing Venus (17 page)

“Got it.”
 
Reid cleared his throat and paused for a
beat before starting.
 
“The M.O. of
our next fugitive is simple and deadly,” he read.
 
“He hurts the ones he claims to
love.
 
And he’s been accursed of it
often enough—”

“Stop.
 
Stop
.”
 
This time it was Sheila’s voice in his
ears.
 
He raised his head to find
her shaking her head and wearing a
What
in the world is wrong with you?
expression.
 
“It’s
accused
,” she said, “not accursed.”

“Oh.”
 
He hadn’t even noticed the mistake.
 
“Sorry.”
 
He cleared his throat again.

“You know what?”
 
She kept her eyes on him.
 
“Let’s break for a bit.”
 
She sounded at her wit’s end.
 
She let go of the mike and turned toward
the audio engineer.
 
Through the
glass Reid watched her lips move, left out of that conversation.
 
No doubt it went something like
Maybe
Gardner’ll
get his act together later.
 
It’s
pointless to keep trying now.

Reid pulled off the
headphones and dumped them on the chair behind him, as disgusted with himself
as Sheila was.
 
She was right: it
was pointless.
 
He had no capacity
for work at the moment and he knew why.
 
For the first time in his career, for the first time in his life, he was
seriously considering harboring a fugitive.

Sure, he could quibble
with that statement.
 
Annie might
not be a bona fide fugitive.
 
As far
as he knew, a warrant had not been issued for her arrest.
 
But judging from her behavior, she
seemed pretty darn convinced that one would be, and soon.
 
And it would be for murder.
 
Probably for multiple murders.
 
Four, to be exact.
 
Did he believe she committed them?

It took him longer than
it had the day before to come up with an answer, but in the end it was same
two-letter verdict.
 
No.
 
No, he didn’t.

So.
 
Was his gut so golden that he could
flout the system and feel good about it?

He pushed the
headphones off the booth’s only chair and sank onto its cracked
Naugahyde
surface.
 
Didn’t he believe the system worked?
 
What would be so bad if she got
arrested, anyway?
 
She’d spend some
time in jail while the process played out.
 
Big deal.
 
She could get a lot
of writing done.
 
And if he
continued to believe in her innocence, he could make sure she retained superior
legal counsel.
 
If he were so sure
she was innocent, he could hire investigators to try to smoke out the real
killer.
 
Meanwhile she’d be safe and
he’d be playing within the rules, the way he always did.
 
The way he’d been raised to do.
 
The way that preserved his integrity.

He raked a hand through
his hair.
 
That all worked if the
system always did.
 
The problem was,
it didn’t.
 
It wasn’t foolproof.
 
Sometimes guilty people got off and
innocent people got convicted.
 
Somebody getting framed for a crime didn’t happen too often outside of
novels, but it did happen.
 
Annie
could be a victim of exactly that.
 
And if the real killer had framed her expertly enough, she’d pay and he
would go free.

Reid shook his head,
that same old fire igniting in his gut.
 
Because that was another way the system didn’t always work.
 
Sometimes killers went free.
 
For years.
 
Five years, in one notable case.
 
Reid kept shaking his head, a small but
rhythmic motion that built his resolve with every repetition.
 
He hated when killers went free.
 
He really hated when that happened.

“Reid?”

He jerked his head
up.
 
He hadn’t heard the booth’s
door open, or seen Sheila edge in.
 
She remained in the doorway, her brow furrowed, her hand still on the
knob.
 
She was wearing red, as she
often did, along with the usual assortment of silver bangles.
 
“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“Oh …”
 
He didn’t know what to tell her.
 
“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to talk
about it?”

“Not really.”

“Well …”
 
She didn’t seem to know what to say to
him either.
 
Then, with sudden
briskness, she stepped back and motioned for him to follow.
 
“There’s something you should see.
 
Come quick,” and she led him to a group
of staffers standing below a wall-mounted television monitor.
 
Their faces were raised to a fortyish
blond anchorman.
 
The words SPECIAL
REPORT! were
supered
across the screen.

“—still sketchy,”
the anchorman said, “but again, the Orange County sheriff’s department has
confirmed that bestselling mystery novelist Michael Ellsworth has been found
dead at his home in the tony
oceanside
community of
Corona del Mar.”

Reid watched live video
of the scene outside the property.
 
Sheriff’s deputies were cordoning off the area with sawhorses and crime
tape, keeping reporters and
photogs
and gawkers at
bay.

“Ellsworth’s
housekeeper found the body this morning.
 
Authorities will be conducting an autopsy to pinpoint the time of death
and have not released details on how the bestselling author was killed.
 
But they have confirmed that it is
murder.”

Sheila nudged him with
her elbow.
 
“The fourth one,” she
murmured.
 
“Can you believe it?”

“No.”
 
He didn’t need to lie.
 
“I can’t.”

“Reid?”

He spun around.
 
His assistant was calling to him from
her desk outside his office.
 
“You’ve
got a call.
 
He didn’t want to go to
voicemail.”

Automatically he began
to move in her direction.
 
“Who is
it?”

“Lionel Simpson.
 
FBI.”

Reid froze in
mid-step.
 
Decision time.

*

“Have you heard?”
Simpson asked.

Reid knew there was no
point pretending he didn’t understand what the agent was referring to.
 
Reid would only raise Simpson’s
suspicions if he feigned ignorance on a major breaking crime story.
 
“I just did.”

“I’m on my way down
there.”

Reid nodded.
 
It was obvious from the background noise
on Simpson’s cell phone that he was at an airport.
 
“What do you know about the murder so
far?”

“It happened
overnight.
 
His throat was
slashed.
 
Annette Rowell was there.”

Boom
boom
boom
.
 
Reid was surprised by how forthright
Simpson was being.
 
Those last two
pieces of information were not public knowledge.
 
Maybe Simpson wanted to startle Reid
into a revelation.
 
After all, the
last time Simpson had seen Annette Rowell, who was with her?
 
None other than Reid Gardner.
 
Reid knew that was why he was receiving
this phone call so early in the investigation.
 
Simpson was trying to find Annie and
thought Reid might be able to help him do it.

Well, he was
right.
 
Reid could, if he
chose.
 
But that was an irrevocable
decision he wasn’t yet prepared to make.
 
So he remained in Q&A mode, the appropriate stance for a crime-show
host with an interest in a case but no inside information.
 
“How do you know she was there?” he
asked.

“Her stuff is all over
the guesthouse.
 
Lots of people saw
them together yesterday.
 
So much
for my request that she stay in Bodega Bay.”
 
Simpson snorted.
 
“You know she and Ellsworth were
supposedly good friends?”

“I know they went to
Maggie Boswell’s funeral together.”
 
So Annie hadn’t bothered to keep a low profile while in Corona del Mar.
 
Standard serial-killer behavior?
 
Not hardly.
 
“Do you have any idea where she is now?”

“No.
 
She was gone by the time the housekeeper
arrived at the property.
 
She fled
in a rental car, it looks like, an ’09 white Kia
Sephia
.”

Fled
.
 
That wasn’t a
verb one used to describe the actions of an innocent party.
 
Then again, innocent people didn’t
hightail it to parts unknown when their friends got their throats cut.

Simpson was speaking
again, over the noise of a public-address system announcing a flight departure.
 
“There’s something else you should
know.”

“What’s that?”

“Those dead frogs we
unearthed from Rowell’s back yard?
 
It turns out they were poisoned by curare.
 
You can test doses on small mammals,
gauge how much you need to off a human.”

Synapses fired in
Reid’s brain.
 
It was remarkable how
every single clue in this case drove investigators to one inescapable
conclusion.
 
Frogs poisoned by
curare are buried in shallow holes in Annie’s back yard.
 
Crimewatch
is tipped off to search there.
 
Annie is on the premises when the next
victim is murdered.

Combined with her
presence at the other murders and her fingerprints on one of the murder
weapons, one hell of a circumstantial case had been built against her.
 
And soon, Reid was sure, investigators
would have physical evidence linking Annie to Michael Ellsworth’s murder.

Reid gazed out his
office window, which afforded a view, if you could call it that, of the ramp
leading to the subterranean garage.
 
He wondered if Annie was still down there waiting for him.
 
Or if she’d thought better of it and
left.
 
Fled
.
 
“Have you issued
a warrant?” he asked Simpson.

“Yeah.
 
Along with an APB.”

No more gray areas
now.
 
Annette Rowell was officially
a fugitive.
 
The case was coming
together like a beautiful package, with every edge wrapped and the ribbon
prettily tied.
 
Hand-delivered with
the suspect’s name in big block letters so no one could miss it.

“She’s probably in
Mexico by now,” Reid heard himself say.

“Could well be.
 
But obviously, if you see her, if she
contacts you—”

Reid cut him off.
 
“Absolutely.”
 
Had he promised anything?
 
No.
 
Only by implication.
 
His
integrity, he told himself, was intact.

Simpson paused, then,
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, Reid.”

“It’s a little pat,
don’t you think?
 
Isn’t there
another—”

This time Simpson cut
him off.
 
“I don’t think so.
 
Believe me, I’ve gone over it time and
again.
 
I’m sorry.”

Funny.
 
Reid didn’t think he was the person
Simpson should be apologizing to.
 
It was Annie who deserved the fair hearing.
 
But apparently it was past the point
where she was going to get one.
 
At
least from the FBI.

“You’ll do a segment on
your next show?” Simpson asked.

That was
unavoidable.
 
Sheila would be all
over it.
 
And Reid had a pretty good
idea that Simpson would like her spin.

Reid ended the call
with assurances that
Crimewatch
would
do its part to aid in the fugitive’s apprehension.
 
Then he went in search of Sheila, who,
true to form, had already assigned a crew to Corona del Mar.
 
He wasn’t thrilled to hear they were in
the subterranean garage loading gear into the van.

“I’m going to have to
meet you at the location,” he told her.
 
To avoid any argument he immediately turned away and strode toward the
elevator bank.

“You can’t come with
us?” she called after him, surprise clear in her voice.
 
He kept walking but held his cell phone
in the air as if to prove he’d be reachable.
 
“I’ll call you when I’m on the road,” he
shouted back to her without turning around.
 
“There’s something I’ve got to take care
of first.”