The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(37)

Coleman




The victim’s daughter came into the office, her eyes telegraphing that she had some news. It took her a while to get to it, and maybe I should’ve been more patient with her, but I was having a rough morning. I’d just found out that Miles was flunking math, which was infuriating to me because it had been his best subject when we lived in D.C. Now he had two Ds in pre-algebra. Meanwhile, the PTA ladies had asked if given my line of work I could chaperone for the seventh-grade dance, but I had to say no because I had a district meeting that night. I was pretty sure I had blown my last chance with them. I would never be admitted to their tribe. And to make things worse, Vasco was pressing me about this hit-and-run. He was getting bad press about a police-beating incident earlier that spring, and he was desperate for some good news. All of this is to say that I had a lot on my mind when Nora Guerraoui came to speak to me that morning. She shifted in her seat, drained the glass of water she’d asked for, clicked and unclicked the clasp of her bracelet watch. I thought about the pile of paperwork on my desk, all those silver Fords waiting to be checked and cross-checked. “What can I do for you, Ms. Guerraoui?”

“Please, just call me Nora.”

“What can I do for you?”

More fiddling with her watch. Another minute passed. “So I came across some information?”

“All right.” Let this be good, I thought.

“I don’t know if it’s relevant to the case.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is? We can decide if it’s relevant later.”

“My dad was having an affair.”

Oh, that.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“These things happen.”

“But you knew?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Texts on his cell phone.”

“It wasn’t locked?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s dumb.”

Love ain’t smart, I wanted to say. I’d seen it before, people doing the dumbest things you can imagine, out of love or lust or whatever you wanted to call it, all along thinking they were going to get away with it because they were special. And thank God for that, or they’d never get caught.

“Who is this woman?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why?”

“Safety. Privacy. Plus, I have a duty to preserve the integrity of this investigation.” A knock on the conference-room window made me look up. It was Murphy, holding up a bottle of cold lemonade. Want one? his lips mouthed. I shook my head no, though my throat felt dry. The weekend before, I’d driven Miles to the baseball game Murphy had told me about, in the community park. Murphy was there with his son, Brandon. I didn’t know if he had prepared Brandon beforehand, but that kid went right up to Miles and started talking to him. Miles had grown about a foot over the previous year, and that had made him awkward, almost like his brain hadn’t caught up with his body. His voice had grown deeper, too, and he wasn’t used to the sound of it, which might have had something to do with his being so quiet all the time. But he followed Brandon to the field, and the more time passed, the more loose-limbed he got. After a while, Murphy came to sit next to me on the stands. We talked for a bit. That’s all we did. We just talked. But leaving the field, I felt a little weird about the whole thing. You sure? Murphy mouthed from the other side of the office window, holding up the lemonade again. I nodded. Yes, I’m sure.

“Is that woman involved?”

“No,” I said. The woman in question—remarkably young, unremarkably pretty—had a solid alibi. She’d cut herself that night while trimming her plants and had been getting two stitches in the ER at the time of the accident. When I interviewed her, all she could talk about was how the old man loved her, how he was going to leave his wife for her, how they were getting ready to move in together. I couldn’t see a motive. It was a dead end, as far as I was concerned.

“Please tell me her name.”

“I can’t do that.” I could tell she was going to try finding out anyhow, which I couldn’t blame her for, but I didn’t want this to get messy. “Nora,” I said, as gently as I could, “what difference would it make if you knew? It wouldn’t change anything about what happened. It’s better not to know.”

“Better for whom? It’s not better for me, I can tell you that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Who is she?”

“I can’t say.”

“But if it’s true that she’s not involved, what harm is there in telling me her name?”

“I’ve already explained why I can’t do that.” She was trying to get me into an argument, maybe coax me into saying more, but I resisted. Again she clicked and unclicked her bracelet watch, it was a nervous tic. “And still no new witnesses?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Something isn’t right. If this was just an accident, why didn’t the driver stay at the scene and wait for the police? Why didn’t anyone see anything?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“What if I offered a reward? Would that help?”

Sometimes it helped, sometimes it created noise. People who were hoping for a reward could get creative with details. But it was going to take me weeks to check all those silver Fords, and a reward would speed things up considerably. This was my chance to turn things around. “How much were you thinking?” I asked.