Dee Henderson: The Witness

He took a right at the next light. Three hours, he’d give Amy three hours with Marie while he cleared away what he could on his desk and left the manhunt in the hands of his deputy chief, and then he was going to go knock on a hotel-room door. Amy wasn’t coming in from the cold, but she’d stopped running. That was enough for now.

Thirty hours without sleep-Luke rested his head against his arm and hoped someone took mercy on him today and kept new crises for tomorrow. He needed shut-eye time and soon. Amy answered the hotel-room door on his third knock.

“No food this time, but an offer to take you out for a bite if you would like,” Luke said softly, studying a face so stressed he knew her time with Marie had not gone well.

“I don’t think I could eat right now,” Amy replied, studying his face as he was studying her and relaxing as she absorbed the fact he had zero desire to push her right now. She stepped back to let him enter the room. “You figured out the message.”

“Yes.”

He looked around the room, but other than signs she’d stretched out on one of the beds to catch a nap there was nothing in the room to show it as being occupied. He took a seat at the round table, and she paused by the ice bucket to retrieve a couple sodas keeping cold in the melting ice before sitting near him rather than across the table. He accepted the one she handed him, relieved it was caffeine free. “Thanks.”

“Would it help if I turned in the ledger and told the New York cops everything I can remember from that night?”

He blinked. “Yes,” he replied simply.

“Then set it up for me, please. One of Jonathan’s guys can pick up the ledger for me if I give him detailed enough instructions on how to find it.”

“Give me four or five days. We’ll make sure you have a lawyer of your own in on the discussions so they can’t bring you into the trial without your testimony being screened off and aliased.” He reached over to touch her face, seeing ten years of age in the last few days. “I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry about Tracey.”

Tears drenched his hand, but she held his gaze. “It may have been the same shooter that killed Greg. I’m sorry; I just don’t know for certain.”

She didn’t know; she really didn’t know who had shot Greg. “We’re close enough on his trail-we will find him. Caroline can make the case in court. She’s good on the stand, solid, credible, and she did see him. Please don’t feel guilty for not remembering the face of who killed Greg.”

“It was dark that night and wet, and I should have seen enough to remember because he chased me for blocks, but I never saw enough to remember a face…” Her emotions were tumbling on him, the calm of this lady long ago broken.

Luke slipped a hand around her neck and moved to bring her into his chest and hold her.

“Marie didn’t blame me. She just wanted me to come home.”

The sobs broke his heart, and Luke closed his eyes. “You can safely come home, Amy. We’ll make it safe,” he whispered.

Too much grief, too many hurts, too much running. She had come to a full stop with him, and he knew the running was over. He shook a bit, knowing the grief she carried and the risks that would now bottle her into one place. “I’ve got a place arranged in the next county over with a sheriff friend who will help us out. You and Marie can spend as much time there together as you like and not worry about here.”

“What if this shooter leaves town and no one pays for killing Tracey? How does that get absorbed and swallowed and lived with? I want to stay and walk the streets and find him and make sure he can’t get away…”

Luke wondered all those things too, how long it would be before he could find justice for them, where this would end. God had let a wonderful lady get shot and killed, and there was a bitter taste to accepting that fact.

He rested his head against hers and let Amy cry, and his heart broke with the pain she was in. There were no words he could say, no certainty he could offer. Just a promise that she was no longer dealing with this alone.

“I DON’T KNOW, CHIEF. I must have contaminated the murder scene that night,” Connor said, entering Luke’s office with a file in his hand from the second murder scene. “The hair they took off the bookkeeper’s sleeve turns out to be that of the reporter Sykes. I did a couple shoving rounds with him in the parking lot that night when they surrounded the car, and it must have been on my jacket when I got upstairs. They had his DNA in the system from a bar brawl a few years back, the one where they were trying to figure out who bit someone’s ear.”

“Sounds like Sykes.” Luke skimmed the lab report Connor had brought him and then tossed it on the stack of paperwork already on his desk. “Don’t worry about it. Write up what happened that night, ask the local station for an uncut copy of their interview with me in the parking lot since you’re probably in the background on that tape, and leave it for the district attorney to deal with when this case eventually gets to trial. It’s not the first time a trace fiber got explained to a jury, and it won’t be the last.”

“Thanks.” Connor hesitated in the doorway.

Luke looked up to study his detective more carefully. “You want to shut the door, go ahead,” he offered softly.

Connor shut the door and slid into a seat across from the desk. “I’d like a slice of time off.”

Luke didn’t let himself react. He’d been expecting something of the sort for a few days now. “How much time and when?”

“Tomorrow after the funeral. Maybe a week, maybe two.”

“Granted.”

Connor lifted his hand. “I’m not… I’m not walking the line to resigning like Marsh is. I know I’m not. But I look at those photos of the knife attacks and I see Marie being one of them and I…” He shoved his arms back across his chest and just took a deep breath.

“You’ve talked to the chaplain?”

“And the department shrink. Thing is, in the old days I would have thought it was something to mention to Tracey and maybe have her push me out of it, and she’s not around and that makes it come full circle with the pain.”

“I know.”

“Are you worrying about Amy this way?”

“Yes.”

“So I think I’d better take some time before I have to catch a new case and have to work it along with Tracey’s murder… you’ll be shorthanded with Marsh off and Caroline not coming back…”

“I’ve been shorthanded before, and that’s a problem for this side of the desk, not that side, so don’t worry about it. You’ll take a week, two, and if you need more you’ll say so. I want you around for the next decade. I’m not worried about the next month. I’ve been a cop a long time, and I haven’t seen murders like those two more than a couple times in my career. It was evil in action and it’s sticking. Give it time to slide to the side.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

“You’re escorting Marie to the funeral tomorrow?”

“Yes. Marsh wouldn’t hear of riding with us, with Daniel. He’s coming, but coming alone.”

“Sometimes the drive is the only thing that lets the thoughts settle. You’ll be with him for the service and the graveside-he’ll know he’s not alone.”

“Most of the department is turning out,” Connor said. “Amy?”

“I don’t know. I’m still working the problem.”

“If I can help, or Marsh-”

“I’ll ask,” Luke promised, pleased at the offer. “It isn’t that Amy doesn’t want to desperately be there, but bringing trouble to her sister’s funeral-I think that would kill her if it happened.”