Janice Johnson - Revelations

“Back to your father. We need to hit up his drinking buddies. Find out if anybody knows about the scrape on his truck.”

She nodded. “I can do that. I know his friends.”

“While you’re talking to Roarke, see if his story about the car that landed on his face has changed.”

Another nod.

“I’ll tackle Leroy’s neighbors. Talk to the widow, the EMTs. You never know. Someone might have noticed something.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Do we tell the lieutenant what we’re doing?”

“Not until we have something to go on. He’d say the whole idea is wacko and tell us to drop it.”

She laughed. “I told you I’d have let it go if you’d just said that in the first place.”

“The way you let the Lofgren thing go when I didn’t back you?”

His honest answer to their superior that he didn’t think the case justified reopening had been a betrayal, as far as Caldwell was concerned. Partners backed each other, she’d said. In general, Diaz agreed. Truth was, he didn’t think they’d find anything this time, either, in investigating the two deaths and the one near-miss. But Caldwell would feel better if she wasn’t left wondering, and that was good enough for him.

“That was different,” she said.

“This matters, too.”

Pushing her empty plate away, she cleared her throat. “I didn’t say it the other day, but I want you to know I appreciate you taking me seriously.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They were descending into Hallmark territory, which made him uncomfortable. If he’d talked about his feelings more readily, he might still be married. “Good cops have hunches. I figure this one might be legit.”

“Yeah.” She looked grateful. “I mean, I hope it’s not, but I’d like to be sure.”

Grateful. That stuck in his craw. Her bastard of a father had never respected her opinions or worth, so she was pathetically grateful when someone did. He almost liked it better when she snarled.

“You done?” he asked abruptly.

“What? Oh. Sure.” She drained her coffee and slid from the booth. “Pit stop.”

He made his own, taking a second to frown at himself in the blotchy mirror above the sink in the men’s room as he washed his hands. The face that looked back at him was older than he remembered being, grimmer. Every one of his thirty-six years showed today. He wondered how Ann Caldwell saw him, whether she ever…

No, damn it. He wasn’t going there. He didn’t want to know if she ever had moments like he’d had in the car, when she felt a flash of intense sexual awareness. Hell, he’d rather not know if she didn’t, either. A man had some pride.

NOT UNTIL late that afternoon could Diaz get over to Pearce’s house.

His widow answered the door, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed, her stare vague.

“Mrs. Pearce, I’m sorry to disturb you,” he began. “But I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“About your husband’s accident.”

“But…why?”

He came up with something slick about tying up loose ends, and she finally nodded and stood back.

The living room was dim with drapes drawn and only one lamp on. She sat in the large brown recliner that dwarfed her, and he guessed it had been her husband’s. A basket at her feet overflowed with crumpled tissues.

She wrapped an afghan around her shoulders as if she were chilled despite the warm room. “What do you want to know?”

Diaz flipped open his notebook and held his pencil above a blank page. “Were you home at the time of the accident?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I was sewing in a room on the other side of the house. I heard a few thumps and vaguely wondered what he was up to.”

“I understand he had somebody stop by to speak to him?”

“Did he? I guess he might have.”

“Were both ladders his?”

She nodded, her mouth crimping. “I told him to call a service. Those gutters were so high off the ground, but he was determined…” She groped for a tissue.

Diaz gave her a moment to blow her nose and compose herself. “Did you hear him fall?”

She sniffed and shook her head. “I…I had the sewing machine running. I thought I heard a bellow and I stopped to see if Leroy was calling for me, but then when he didn’t again, I finished the seam.”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” he said gently.

Tears overflowed. “I’d have held the ladder if he’d asked. He was so stubborn!”

That was one way of putting it.

“How did you learn that he’d fallen?”

Mopping her cheeks, she said, “The doorbell rang. It was Ron Blackman from next door. He said…he said there’d been an accident, that he’d called 911 already.” Her voice faltered. “That Leroy had fallen.”

By the time she got out there, neighbors had gathered and several had slid down the bluff to Leroy. She didn’t actually remember who was there.

“Except Ruth Blackman. She had her arm around me.”

“But you knew everyone there?”

“All I could see was Leroy, crumpled against a tree.” Fresh tears filled her eyes. “I kept thinking he’d swear and sit up.”

Feeling cruel for making her relive her husband’s accident, Diaz thanked her and made his escape. He was glad that in her grief she hadn’t noticed the tenor of his questions.

The Blackmans, an older couple, were home next door. Their house, too, backed on the canyon.

Mrs. Blackman offered him coffee, which he accepted, and they talked readily about the tragedy.

“I heard him yell.” A tall, gaunt man with stooped shoulders and close-cropped white hair, Ron Blackman shook his head. “I was on the computer doing some research on a company I’m considering buying stock in. It took me, oh, a couple of minutes at least to get up and go out to the back deck.”

“As stiff as your back is,” his wife put in, “it might have been longer than that.”

“You saw him right away?” Diaz asked.

“I might not have noticed him at all, if the ladders hadn’t been lying on the rhododendrons.”

“Were you the first to see him?”

He considered. “Well, I don’t know. I heard a shout from the other side of the Pearces’. Jack Gunn. I guess we met at the top of the bluff. Got there about the same time.”

“So you were the first two on the scene?”

Unlike Mrs. Pearce, he was putting two and two together and making four.

“Do you mind my asking why the questions?”

Diaz shook his head. “You’ve probably answered every one of these questions already. I apologize, sir. But even a simple accident gets investigated pretty carefully when it’s a police officer who died.”

His expression cleared. “I understand.”

Diaz got the Blackmans to come up with a list of who had gathered in the Pearces’ narrow backyard. They hemmed and hawed and went back and forth before agreeing, with only slight hesitation, on a final list of names.

“I wish we knew whether he had just reached too far, or whether something distracted him.” Diaz closed his notebook. “Someone said they thought they’d heard him talking to someone a little earlier.”

“I did think I heard him talking,” Ruth Blackman said, a little timidly.

“Really?” Diaz hid his intense interest, keeping his tone casual. “Do you remember how much earlier?”

“Well…right before. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it. The day was a little chilly and damp, so not that many people were outside working, but the mail had come in the past hour. I said hello to Margie across the street when I fetched ours.” She added apologetically, “I can’t swear it was him. Somebody might have been talking in another yard.”

“You didn’t hear a second voice?”