Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

Detective Hatch demanded of me, “What happened?”

Choosing my words carefully to keep Hatch from learning that I was here to try to find out who killed Ingram-and possibly inviting a charge of interfering with a police investigation-I stuck to the barest of facts. “Roland Gray phoned to invite me out to coffee. I met him here.”

“You and that writer hooking up?” Weaver asked bluntly.

“Certainly not.” I said that with a touch of heat. I was hiding my reason for being here, but I didn’t want anyone to think it was romantic. “It was just for coffee. Roland Gray was a guest on my television show earlier tonight. I’m worried about his injury. Where did the medics take him?”

Hatch retrieved that standard law enforcement notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. “My questions first. So you agreed to meet Gray for coffee. Who picked this place? You?”

“No, he did. What possible relevance-”

“I’m asking the questions. When you got here, what did you two talk about?”

This was dangerous ground; I had to step carefully. “We were only here for a few minutes. The waiter had just brought our coffee. We didn’t have time for more than a sip.” I let my eyes light up with what I hoped looked like a sudden memory. “Oh, Roland told me he was getting a headache. He started rubbing his forehead. I asked him if he was all right, but that’s when the window cracked. At first I thought someone threw a rock, but then I saw Roland had been hit. Things happened so fast. As I said, I thought that-”

“Yeah, a rock.” Hatch’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “But it was a bullet. Tell me who wants to kill you.”

“What?” My heart lurched with a sudden rush of fear. I froze, unable to think.

“Kill her?” Weaver said.

The sound of Weaver’s voice penetrated the shock that had momentarily paralyzed my brain. “No one has any motive to kill me.”

“Think about it,” Hatch said. “Wednesday night somebody offed a judge at that celebrity thing. Not much more than twenty-four hours later another judge is sitting near where somebody gets shot. Two nights, two judges in the same contest. Maybe the shooter wasn’t aiming at Gray, but at you.”

“We better find out where that third judge is,” Weaver said. “A Frenchwoman. What was her name?”

“Yvette Dupree,” I said.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No, but if one of your officers didn’t get her contact information at the gala, I’m sure Eugene Long knows.”

“Have somebody put a guard on her until I can question her.” Hatch turned back to me and gestured toward the table. “Show me exactly where you were and where Gray was.”

I sat down in the chair I’d occupied. As my mind worked to recreate the scene, my initial fear began to recede. I was sure I hadn’t been the target. While I couldn’t explain why in any rational way, it was a powerful conviction.

“Think about it,” I told Hatch. “Keith Ingram’s throat was slashed, and whoever killed him took a huge risk by doing it in the middle of five hundred people. Even acting under the cover of smoke, it was an enormous gamble. That was an intensely personal murder. Nothing random about it. I’m convinced that whoever killed Ingram intended to shoot at Roland Gray. You should be looking for a link between those two men.”

Hatch’s features twisted into a sneer. “If you’re such a great detective maybe you should be leading this investigation instead of me. Where’d you earn your badge, at the Betty Crocker Police Academy?”

I decided that the “better part of valor” at this moment was to be quiet. Hatch and I locked eyes.

He broke the silence. “As I said before, show me exactly where you and Gray were sitting.”

Tapping the tabletop, I said, “I was here. Roland sat across from me.”

Hatch took Roland’s place and fixed me with a skeptical stare. “Do you always sit up straight like that?”

“Yes, I do. My parents brought us up to have good posture. What you’re really asking is: Was I leaning forward so that my head was close to Roland’s. The answer is no, I wasn’t. And he wasn’t leaning toward me.”

I motioned to Hugh Weaver. “Roland was sitting about the way Detective Hatch is. How far apart would you say our heads are?”

Weaver squinted. “Three feet, give or take a couple inches.”

Hatch looked disappointed. I didn’t know whether he was upset because I hadn’t told him anything helpful, or whether his sour expression was one of the interrogation techniques cops used to get the person being questioned to keep talking. I stared back at him and kept my mouth shut.

A Scientific Investigation Division tech who had been kneeling in front of the bar called, “Hey, Detective.” He summoned Hatch with a wave.

“I bet he found the bullet,” I said.

Hatch told me to stay where I was. He and Weaver went over to talk to the SID tech. The tech photographed the front of the bar, then, with great care, he began digging an object out of the wood. In less than a minute, he’d extracted it. With a ceiling light directly above him, I could see that the object was a bullet.

I watched the two detectives examine it, after which the tech dropped it into a clear plastic evidence bag, sealed and initialed it. If they were following procedure, the bullet would be taken to Ballistics for microscopic examination.

Hatch and Weaver came back to my table.

“What kind of a bullet is it?” I asked.

Weaver said, “Sniper-”

“Shut up! What’s the matter with you?” Hatch said.

Weaver’s face turned crimson. While he kept his hands down at his sides, I saw his fingers curl into fists.

I stood up and grabbed my handbag. “I’ve answered your questions, Detective. Now, I want to know where the paramedics took Roland Gray.”

Hatch and I stared at each other.

He blinked first.

St. Clare’s Hospital was the city’s newest facility and covered half a block on Colorado Boulevard between Sixth and Seventh Streets. I’d never been there, but a recent article in the Los Angeles Chronicle had listed its emergency room as one of the best in the state.

It was nearly two in the morning and there were plenty of parking spaces available in the hospital’s visitor lot. I picked a spot beneath the nearest security light. Before I got out, I stuck to my woman-alone nighttime habit of scanning my surroundings for potential danger. Seeing none, I climbed down to the pavement, and looked around again. Still nothing to cause my mental alarm to go off. I locked the Jeep and hurried toward the entrance to the emergency room.

In contrast to other emergency room reception areas I’d been in, these walls were painted a cheerful yellow, the lighting was bright but not harsh, and there was only the faintest trace of disinfectant in the air. Half a dozen people occupied chairs around the room. Some sat in tense postures, others seemed sunk in weary resignation.

One man was at the reception counter, bent across the expanse of Formica, speaking quietly to a young woman wearing a floral print medical smock. Even though his back was to me, there was something familiar about his stocky frame, the short, curly hair, and the tweed jacket.

Approaching the reception counter on his right side, I saw the young woman smile at him. He scribbled something on a slip of paper, handed it to her, and she took it. It struck me that this exchange was more social than medical.

“Excuse me.”

She looked up at the sound of my voice, and the man turned toward me. Now I saw why he’d seemed familiar: This was the man who’d appeared at the entrance to the ballroom Wednesday night, asking to speak to Roland.