"Hey, Wick." Oren bustled in. He was dressed for home in knee-length shorts, sneakers, and a University of Texas T-shirt, but he was still all cop; a case binder was tucked beneath his arm. His pager was clipped to his waistband. "How was your drive up from Galveston?"
"Long."
"Don't I know it." Oren had made the round trip the day before. "Get checked into the motel all right?"
"Is that rat-hole the best the FWPD can afford?"
"Oh, and you left such luxurious accommodations in Galveston."
Wick laughed good-naturedly.
"Grace take care of you?"
"In the process." She came in with two tall glasses of tea and set them on coasters on the coffee table. "The girls said for Wick not to dare leave without saying good-bye."
"I promise I won't. I'll even tell them a bedtime story."
"A clean one, I hope," Grace said.
He shot her his most wicked grin. "I can edit as I go."
"Thanks for the tea," Oren said.
"Close the door behind you, please."
This was a familiar scene. Before moving to the coast, Wick had often spent evenings at the Wesleys' house. It was a happy house because Grace and Oren's happiness with each other permeated the place.
They'd met in college and married upon graduation. Grace was a student counselor and vice-principal at a public junior high school. With each year her responsibilities increased and became more complicated, but she never failed to have a hot evening meal for her family and mandated that everyone be there for it.
Their home was noisy and active with the girls and their friends trooping up and down the stairs, in and out of the kitchen. Neighbors stopped by with or without an invitation, knowing they'd be welcome. The house was as clean as a U.s. Navy vessel but cluttered with the trappings of a busy family. When Grace was at home, chances were very good that the washing machine would be chugging. Reminder notes and snapshots were stuck to the refrigerator with magnets. There were always cookies in the cookie jar.
Wick had been a guest so often he was considered one of the family and pitched in when it came time to do the dishes or take out the garbage.
He teased Grace about doing her best to domesticate him. The joke wasn't far off the mark.
Following dinner and cleanup, it had been his and Oren's habit to seclude themselves in the living room to discuss troublesome cases. Tonight was no exception.
"I've got a video I want you to see."
Oren inserted a tape into the VCR, then carried the remote control back to the sofa and sat at the opposite end from Wick. "Recorded this afternoon."
"Of?"
"Dr. Rennie Newton."
The video picture came on the screen. It was a wide shot of an interrogation room. Wick had watched a hundred such video recordings.
The camera, he knew, had been mounted on a tripod situated behind Oren. It was aimed at the chair occupied by the individual being questioned. In this case it was the woman in the photos Oren had shown him yesterday.
Wick was surprised. "She's a doctor?"
"Surgeon."
"No shit?"
"I called her after leaving your place. She came in for questioning today."
"In connection with the Howell homicide?"
Once he had agreed to come to Fort Worth, Oren had given him the basic facts of the case, scarce though they were.
"She agreed to being videotaped, but she also brought along her attorney."
"She's no fool."
"No. In fact she was ... well, you'll see."
Dr. Newton's lawyer was standard issue.
Height, average. Weight, average. Hair, white. Suit, gray pinstripe. Eyes, wary and cunning. It took only one glance for Wick to assess him.
He then directed his attention to Dr. Rennie Newton, who didn't come even close to standard issue. In fact if someone had ordered him to conjure a mental picture of a surgeon, the woman on the tape would not have been it. Not in a million years.
Nor was she typical of someone being questioned about a felony offense. She wasn't sweating, nervously jiggling her legs, drumming her fingers, biting her nails, or fidgeting in her seat.
Instead she sat perfectly still, her legs decorously crossed, arms folded at her waist, eyes straight ahead and steady, a portrait of composure.
She was dressed in a cream-colored two-piece suit with slacks, high heels in a tan reptile skin, matching handbag. She wore no jewelry except for a pair of stud earrings and a large, no-nonsense wristwatch. No rings on either hand. Her long hair was pulled into a neat ponytail. He knew from the surveillance photos that when it was down, it reached the middle of her back. Pale blond, which looked as genuine as the diamonds in her earlobes.
Oren stopped the tape. "What do you think so far? As a connoisseur of the fairer sex, your first impression."
Wick shrugged and took a sip of tea.
"Dresses well. Good skin. You couldn't melt an ice cube on her ass."
"Cool."
"We're talking frostbite. But she's a surgeon. She's supposed to be cool under pressure, isn't she?"
"I guess."
Oren restarted the tape and they heard his voice identifying everyone present, including Detective Plum, the second plainclothesman in the room. He provided the date and the case number, and then, for the benefit of the tape, asked Dr. Newton if she had agreed to the interview.
"Yes."
Oren plunged right in. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about the murder of your colleague Dr.
Lee Howell."
"I've already told you everything I know, Detective Wesley."
"Well, it never hurts to go over it again, does it?"
"I suppose not. If you've got a lot of spare time on your hands."
Oren stopped the tape. "See? There. That's what I'm talking about. Polite, but with a definite attitude."
"I'd say so, yeah. But that's in character too.
She's a doctor. A surgeon. The god complex and all that. She speaks and folks sit up and take notice. She isn't accustomed to being questioned or second-guessed."
"She had better get accustomed to it," Oren mumbled. "I think there's something going on with this lady."
He rewound the tape to listen again to her saying,
"If you've got a lot of spare time on your hands."
On the tape, Oren gave Plum a significant glance. Plum raised his eyebrows. Oren continued. "On the night Dr.
Howell was murdered, you were at his house, correct?"
"Along with two dozen other people," the attorney chimed in. "Have you questioned them to this extent?"
Ignoring him, Oren asked, "Did you know everyone at the party that night, Dr. Newton?"
"Yes. I've known Lee's wife for almost as long as I've known him. The guests were other doctors with whom I'm acquainted. I'd met their spouses at previous social gatherings."
"You attended the party alone?"
"That's right."
"You were the only single there."
The lawyer leaned forward. "Is that relevant, Detective?"
"Maybe."
"I don't see how. Dr. Newton went to the party alone. Can we move on? She has a busy schedule."
"I'm sure." With a noticeable lack of haste, Oren shuffled through his notes and took his time before asking the next question. "I understand it was a cookout."
"On the Howells' terrace."
"And Dr. Howell manned the grill."
"Do you want the menu, too?" the attorney asked sarcastically.
Oren continued looking hard at Rennie Newton. She said, "Lee fancied himself a gourmet on the charcoal grill. Actually he was a dreadful cook, but nobody had the heart to tell him." She looked down into her lap, smiling sadly. "It was a standing joke among his friends."
"What was the reason for the party?"
"Reason?"
"Was it an ordinary Friday night cookout or a special occasion?"
She shifted slightly in her chair, recrossed her legs. "We were celebrating Lee's promotion to chief of surgery."
"Right, his promotion to head of the department. What did you think of that?"
"I was pleased for him, of course."
Oren tapped a pencil on the tabletop for a full fifteen seconds. Her gaze remained locked with his, never wavering.
"You were also under consideration for that position, weren't you, Dr. Newton?"
"Yes. And I deserved to get it."
Her attorney held up a cautionary hand.
"More than Dr. Howell did?" Oren asked.
"In my opinion, yes," she replied calmly.
"Dr. Newton, I--"
She forestalled her lawyer. "I'm only telling the truth. Besides, Detective Wesley has already guessed how I felt about losing the position to Lee. I'm sure he regards that as a motive for murder." Turning back to Oren, she said, "But I didn't kill him."
"Detectives, may I have a private word with my client?" the lawyer asked stiffly.
Unmindful of the request, Oren said,
"I don't believe you killed anyone, Dr.Newton."
"Then what am I doing here wasting my time and yours? Why did you request this"--she gave the walls of the small room a scornful glance--"this interview?"
Oren stopped the tape there and consulted Wick.
"Well?"
"What?"
"She denied it before I accused her of it."
"Come on, Oren. She's got more years of schooling than you, me, and Plum there added up.
But she didn't need a medical degree to guess what you were getting at. Driving a herd of longhorns through that room would have been more subtle. She got your point. Any dummy would have. And this lady doesn't strike me as a dummy."
"She and Dr. Howell had a history of quarreling."
"So do we," Wick said, laughing.
Oren stubbornly shook his head. "Not like they did. Everybody I've talked to at the hospital says she and Howell respected each other professionally but did not get along."
"Love affair turned sour?"
"Initially I posed that question to everyone I interviewed. I stopped asking."
"How come?"
"I got tired of being laughed at."
Wick turned and quizzically arched his eyebrow.
"Beats me," Oren replied to the silent question.
"That's the reaction I got every time I asked.
Apparently there were never any romantic fires smoldering between them."
"Just a friendly rivalry."
"I'm not so sure it was all that friendly. On the surface, maybe, but there might have been a lurking animosity that ran deep. They were always at each other's throats for one reason or another. Sometimes over something trivial, sometimes major. Sometimes in jest, and sometimes not. But their disagreements were always lively, often vitriolic, and well known to hospital staff."
As he mentally sorted through this information, Wick absently popped the rubber band against his wrist.
Oren noticed and said, "You were wearing that yesterday. What's it for?"
"What?" Wick looked down at the rubber band circling his wrist as though he'd never seen it before. "Oh, it's ... nothing. Uh, getting back, was Howell's appointment gender based?"
"I don't think so. Two other department heads at Tarrant General are women. Howell got the promotion Newton felt she deserved and probably thought she had sewn up because of her seniority status. She'd been affiliated with the hospital for two years before Howell joined ranks."
"She would resent the hell out of that."
"Only natural that she would."
"But enough to bump him off?" Staring at the static picture on the TV screen, Wick frowned with a mix of skepticism and concentration. He motioned with his chin for Oren to restart the tape.
On it, Oren asked, "Did you go straight home following the party, Dr. Newton?"
She gave a clipped affirmative.
"Can anyone corroborate that?"
"No."
"You didn't go out again that evening?"
"No. And no one can corroborate that either," she added when she saw that he was about to ask. "But it's the truth. I went home and went to bed."
"When did you hear that Dr. Howell had been killed?"
That question caused her to lower her head and speak softly. "The following morning. On television news. No one had notified me. I was stunned, couldn't believe it." She laced her fingers together tightly. "It was horrible to hear about it that way, without any warning that I was about to receive terrible news."
Wick reached for the remote and paused the video. "It appears to me she was really upset about it."
"Yeah, well ..." Oren gave a noncommittal harrumph.
"Have you asked the widow about their relationship?"
"She said what everyone does: mutual respect, but they had their differences. She said Howell actually got a kick out of pestering Dr. Newton. He was a jokester. She's all business. She was a good foil."