J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

Bascombe returns as I hang up, frowning at the intrusion. “Did they not put a phone in at your desk? I can call somebody and have it done.”

Leaving him to it, I drop in on my civilian researcher, who lights up the moment she sees me, an unusual occurrence. She hands me subscriber info on the phone, but that’s not all. The number belongs to a certain Sean Epps, age thirty, who has a DUI on file from eight months back. He’s a real estate agent with a Porsche Cayenne and a wife in Bellaire.

“I found all his contact info online,” she says. “And here’s an extra little nugget: the number you’ve got is billed to the office, not home-but it’s not the mobile number listed on his agency page.”

“Maybe he only gives it out to the women he sees on the side.”

She nods in agreement. “Anything else you need?”

“This is more than enough. Thanks for the help.”

With Lauterbach still thumbing through the Walker case file, I set up shop in Aguilar’s cubicle, dialing the office number for Sean Epps. The real estate agency receptionist answers with false cheer and a country twang, then tells me Epps is out at a showing and offers me his mobile number, the official one. I dial him up and he answers the line.

“Mr. Epps,” I say. “I’m Detective Roland March with the Houston Police Department. I left a message for you on your other phone, but I never heard back.”

“Ah,” he says. “I’m, uh. .”

“We need to have a face-to-face talk in my office. You know where police headquarters is downtown?”

“Can I ask what this is about?”

“It’s about your visit to Simone Walker’s house last night.”

Silence. In the background I hear road noise and the sound of an announcer’s voice on the radio.

“Mr. Epps?”

“When do you want to do this?” he asks.

“We need to do it right now. How long is it going to take you to get downtown?”

“Now? I don’t think I can-”

“Let me explain something, sir. If you’d called me back yesterday, we would’ve made an appointment at your convenience, but since you didn’t, it’s in your best interest to show some willingness to cooperate. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” he says. “Of course. I’ve just been really busy. I can be there in, like, fifteen minutes?”

“Make it ten.”

There’s always the risk of spooking someone, coming on strong like this, but my instinct tells me how to play the hand. His reaction to the news of Simone’s death was emotional, but given his marital status, I can understand why he’d want to conceal the relationship if he could. Now he’ll be wondering how to do damage control, trying to trade cooperation for my assurance that his extracurricular activities won’t get back to his wife.

I lean over the cubicle partition. “I’ve got a witness to interview. How much longer you think this will take you?”

Lauterbach looks up from the case file. “You really don’t see the connection? Boy, it’s staring me right in the face.”

“Good try. But if you don’t mind packing up. .”

“All right, all right. I can take a hint.” He puts his own file into an old-fashioned hard-sided attaché with combination locks on either side of the handle, then scans around to make sure he’s not forgetting anything. As he leaves, he tips an imaginary hat. “Just don’t be surprised if this one comes back to bite you.”

Sean Epps unzips a close-fitting, tab-collared leather jacket and perches lightly on the chair across the table from me, like he might be called away any second and doesn’t want to make himself too comfortable. He unclips a BlackBerry from his belt and sets it in front of him.

“That’s not the phone Simone Walker would call you on,” I say.

He glances down at it and shakes his head.

“You want to explain why you have two cellular phones?”

He shrugs. “One for business and one for personal.”

“Your wife know about the personal phone?”

He shrugs again.

“So tell me everything you know about Simone Walker.”

“Everything I know,” he says. “No problem. But before I do that, you have to promise me something. Can we agree up front that this is off the record? I want to be helpful, but at the same time I don’t want to hurt anyone, if you see what I mean.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Okay, then. That’s cool?”

“I’m a homicide detective, Mr. Epps, which is why I’m investigating Simone’s murder and not your marriage. So if you don’t mind, let’s get on with it.”

A wave of relief washes over him, followed by an ingratiating smile. He scoots his chair forward and leans over the table.

“Thanks,” he says. “The thing is, I have a great marriage. You can believe what you want, but that’s the truth. There’s other women, but they’re never serious. Simone was the same: it was no big deal. I met her at a cooking class I signed my wife up for. She worked at the store-for all of a week, I think-and we got to talking. It was my wife’s birthday coming up, and I thought she’d like this. But I’m talking to this girl, and she’s pretty cute and she seems up for it, and. . anyway, you know how it goes.”

“You asked her out?”

“Something like that. It wasn’t exactly a relationship. It’s not like we were dating. It was just convenient, you know. Easygoing. We hooked up a couple of times, no big deal.”

“If you didn’t date her, where did you go?”

An impish grin. “There are a lot of properties sitting on the market these days.”

“You took her to houses you were listing?”

“Good, huh? The thing is, for me, I like to keep a firewall between this kind of thing and my real life. I like to keep things in their place. So I never went to her house and, obviously, I never took her to mine. And when we were together, well, we didn’t do a lot of talking.”

“So what changed?”

His smile fades. “The thing with the baby.” He says the word and his lip trembles. “You gotta understand, me and my wife, that’s something we haven’t managed to do. We went to a specialist even, and he said my sperm count was low, that was the problem. Which I had a hard time accepting. All the things they can do now, the artificial stuff. . it’s not the same, is it? So Simone calls me and I’m thinking she’s just looking to hook up. But no, she’s pregnant. We didn’t use any protection-I mean, hey, I didn’t think it was necessary, according to the doctor.”

“When did you have this conversation, the one where she revealed her pregnancy?”

“The exact date, you mean?”

I stare at him.

“It would have been a few weeks ago. Middle of November, maybe?”

Around the time of her attempt to get money out of Jason Young. I check the date against the phone records and find several calls back and forth on Tuesday, November 17. He shrugs when I mention the date, but concedes that could be right.

“Me, I was kind of thrilled to hear the news. She was acting like it was some kind of tragedy, and if I’d just give her the money she’d take care of it. But I’m like, hey, this is a good thing. I’m gonna have a kid.” His eyes cloud and he wipes them with the heel of his hand. “She was saying she’d need five grand, and I’m like, it doesn’t cost that kind of money to get rid of a pregnancy. And anyway, I told her I was gonna pay support, that was no problem.”

“Did you give her any money?”

“What do you think? Of course I did. We met up and I gave her some cash, but she needed more so we went to the ATM. I gave her five hundred that day. Then I got a call over the weekend and she said she needed the other forty-five hundred.”

“Did she say why?”