Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (4 page)

“No,” she answered, her bow lips pursed. “You, Officer…”

“Detective.”

“You, Detective, haven’t done your homework,” she chastised. “I have no need of Edward’s money. It’s no secret that my maiden name is Barker, as in Barker Oil.”

Nelson said nothing, but his gaze hardened. He didn’t like being scolded, especially by a woman he judged wasn’t coming from any particular moral high ground. Despite her lack of grief over her husband’s death, I was beginning to appreciate Priscilla Lucas.

“Mother?”

We all looked up. Standing in the doorway was a young boy, maybe eight or nine. He had his mother’s blue eyes. I wondered how long he’d been there and what he’d already heard.

“Travis, really dear, now isn’t the time,” said Priscilla Lucas, her voice weary yet soft. “Watch the movie with your sisters. I’ll be with you as soon as our guests leave.”

“Who are they? Why are they here?” he asked, his young brow wrinkled with concern. I thought of my daughter, Maggie, and the night we learned that her father had died. Death was so unfair, especially for the children left behind.

“I’ll tell you everything in a few minutes, dear,” Mrs. Lucas explained, her voice strained but calm. “Now please, let us finish our discussion.”

“Is something wrong?” the boy asked, looking young and scared.

“Travis, I need to have you rejoin your sisters,” she repeated. Then she nearly begged, “Please, listen to me and do as I ask. It’s important.”

The boy sized up Nelson and me one more time. Then, reluctantly, he turned and walked away. Moments passed before any of us spoke. I was still lost in my own memories when Nelson asked Mrs. Lucas, “So, where were you this morning, about nine?”

“You don’t think I could do such a monstrous thing?” she demanded, for the first time appearing worried. It must have suddenly dawned on her that we weren’t there offering our condolences. The woman looked appalled and at a loss for words, not a good turn of events. Unless Nelson backed off, I had no doubt that at any moment she’d regain her composure and refuse to talk to us without her lawyer. From that point on, we were at the mercy of some well paid suit whose primary agenda would be to keep us away from his wealthy client.

Weary of Nelson’s theatrics, I attempted damage control. “Please understand, Mrs. Lucas, that it’s nothing personal. In the beginning, we ask everyone even remotely involved in a case that question. What we really need from you are a few facts, to draw a picture of the days leading up to the murders. Let’s start with where you were this morning.”

“Well, I’m happy to help. Edward and I have three children, after all. I do want you to find his killer,” she said, regaining her former placid expression. “I was here, in my home. You can verify that with the maid, the cook, and about six friends. I hosted a meeting that lasted nearly all day. We were planning the fall ballet ball. It has a Venetian nights theme, rather difficult to pull off, I must admit, and
Edward and I are…” She paused, hesitated, and then continued, “We
were
chairing. That’s why I called him this afternoon. I wanted to ask if that was a good idea, considering our marital situation.”

“And you called the police …”

“Because I couldn’t find my husband,” she said bluntly. “Edward is, was, always reachable. When he didn’t answer his cell phone and no one in the office could find him, I knew something was wrong. My husband may sneak away for a…shall we call it a recreational break? But he runs a substantial business. He does not just disappear for hours without leaving a number.”

“Why did you suggest the police check the beach house?” I pushed.

Priscilla Lucas sighed, creases tracing thin lines across her brow. “Edward is a creature of habit. His routines rarely vary. I know, I’ve always known that he takes them there, his women-of-the-moment,” she said, her voice smooth but unable to hide what must have been a long-lived anger.

“Did your husband have any enemies?” I asked.

“Nothing beyond the normal business rivalries.”

“Was there any reason for you to fear he’d been injured?”

“Just what I’ve told you, that I couldn’t find him,” she said, losing patience. “It may be difficult to believe, but in all the years we’ve been married, this is the first time I haven’t been able to locate Edward for any substantial period of time. That and I had a feeling, call it a premonition, that something was wrong.”

“Mrs. Lucas, does your husband own a gun?” I asked, wondering if she would admit knowing about the handgun at the beach house or have reason to deny it.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “Edward owns more than one. We argued about them often. I’ve never liked guns. I’ve always been afraid the children might find them. But Edward has a locked cabinet in our bedroom here at the house with two pistols, and he
kept another at the beach house, in a box in the nightstand next to our bed. Why do you ask?”

“The murderer used your husband’s gun to shoot him through the forehead,” Nelson said, not even feigning sympathy.

“Oh,” she said, stunned, the remaining color draining from her already China-doll face.

Before she could recover, Nelson shot out another question, “And where were you last night, Mrs. Lucas?”

“Last night?” she asked, abruptly looking away from us and staring at her hands, folded on her lap. They trembled slightly as she toyed with an impressive emerald-cut diamond solitaire. “Why should that be important? Edward and Ms. Knowles were murdered this morning.”

“We have reasons,” Nelson answered, smiling.

This time, I didn’t interrupt. I wanted to hear her answer as much as Nelson did. Priscilla Lucas hesitated, obviously considering her response. For my liking, she paused too long, leading me to wonder why, unless she was trying to hide what we’d been told via phone on the drive into Houston. Annmarie’s neighbor had ID’ed her photo. Mrs. Lucas was the woman arguing with Knowles the night before. The woman who’d left in a huff.

“Last night I was out until about nine, and then I came home and discussed today’s menu for the meeting with the cook. You can verify that with her, if you must,” she said, defensively. “Edward was home, going over paperwork from the office when I got here. I didn’t feel well. I had an excruciating headache. I went straight to bed.”

“Where were you earlier in the evening?” I prodded, needing to pin her down for the period of time the two women were heard arguing. “Say, between seven and eight.”

For a moment, the room felt uncomfortably silent. Priscilla Lucas hesitated, once or twice appearing to be ready to talk. Finally, she
rose to her feet, her smile as painted on as the hand-stenciled ivy covering the sunroom walls.

“That’s something I’m not free to discuss.” I wasn’t surprised when she said, “This interview is over.”

“Mrs. Lucas,” I said. “Detective Nelson and I know you were at Annmarie’s condo arguing with her last night. You were seen leaving by a neighbor. What you need to tell us is why you were there. What was the quarrel about?”

Beautiful, cultivated Priscilla Lucas, mainstay of Houston society and a woman used to controlling not only her emotions but, by virtue of her vast fortune, the actions of others, frowned, and I noted what might have been her first tears of the day collecting in her eyes. Were they for her dead husband or for herself?

“Lieutenant Armstrong and Detective Nelson,” she said, her voice stoic and exuding perfect politeness. “Please leave, and direct all further inquiries to my lawyers. Right now, my children are in the other room. My father and the therapist will be here soon, and I need to tell my children their father is dead.”

D
etective O. L. Nelson and I left the Lucas house and parted for the night. We’d cover our phones for the weekend, but for now the uniformed officers, the lab techs, and the coroner were in charge, processing the evidence in hopes of finding leads. It was late when I arrived home, and the house was dark and quiet, everyone asleep. In bed, I mentally retraced my steps, back to the beach house and over and over again through the bedroom door to the foot of the canopied bed, where in my half-dreams the two bodies remained frozen in time.

I thought of the Lucas children and the conversation that must have taken place after we left: their mother, grandfather, and a therapist attempting to explain the incomprehensible, that their father was brutally murdered, that they would never see him again.

About three that Saturday morning, I gave up on sleep and went to my workshop over the garage. In college, I had a double major, psychology and art. After graduation, I thought I would use art to work with abused children. Obviously my life took a detour. These days my psychology training is an asset in my profiling. As for my art? Well, that, too, has taken a rather dark turn.

In the workshop, I grabbed a brown cardboard box off the shelf. It was from the Houston M.E.’s office, and inside was a human skull mounted on a sturdy wooden base.

I admit it’s an unusual way to relax, but in my off time, especially when I’m mulling over a case, I do facial reconstructions on unidentified remains. Maybe it’s not as odd as it sounds. I’ve always found sculpting in clay soothing, and unlike live models, the dead don’t complain that I made them look ten pounds heavier or didn’t get their smile right.

A woman scavenging dried weeds to make wreaths had discovered the remains on the bank of a Houston bayou. Insects, heat, and humidity had eaten away the tissue, muscle, and flesh. Animals had scattered most of the bones. Little was found, only the skull, one thigh bone, and the delicate bones of an arm and hand. From the still-forming joint cartilage, the medical examiner estimated that the bones were of a small child, probably not older than five. Even with an entire skeleton, it’s difficult to determine sex at such a young age. One worn Superman tennis shoe found near the body initially suggested we were viewing the remains of a boy, an assumption that was later confirmed with DNA.

A week earlier I’d wired together a three-inch fracture, a patch of skull at the hairline nearly crushed by a powerful blow, the presumed cause of death. I’d then cut twenty-one rubber stubs to match the depth of the boy’s missing skin and muscle, a thicker stub for the cheeks, thinner on the forehead and the chin. Positioned on the skull, the stubs would serve as guides to the depth of the clay. Along with the boy’s DNA, the generous spread of his nasal aperture and the slight elongation of his lower face suggested he was black, leading me to choose clay the color of dry coffee grounds and two plastic eyes with irises so dark they swallowed up the pupils.

Throughout the night, I lost myself in my work, enjoying the quiet and the feel of the clay in my hands as I carefully coated the skull. Well after sunrise, seven hours after I’d started, I was finishing up, using a small trowel to reshape his lips. The boy had a wide mouth, and I fashioned a mischievous grin and a small nose wrinkled in laughter. I sized up my handiwork: full cheeks, thick eyebrows, and a crooked front tooth jutting out from under a frozen smile. He was a good-looking kid.

“I’ll call you Ben,” I said, wishing the boy could tell me who he was and who had murdered him.

How easily life ends
, I thought. If nothing else, the last year had taught me that.

“Mom?”

I didn’t respond.

“Mom,” she said again, only louder. “Gram says it’s time to get ready or it’ll be too late to go to the museum.” Peering in the workshop door, my eleven-year-old was scowling, a look Maggie reserves for me, I know, when I’m not being quite the perfect mother, which is often.

“Magpie, tell Gram I’ll be right there.”

“You better hurry,” she warned. “Gram’s pretty mad.”

“Hmmm,” I said. I walked over and planted a wet kiss on the top of her head, thinking of the Lucas boy from the night before. Then I held her tight.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, squirming.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” I said, as she pushed away. “But I guess if Gram’s upset, I’d better be on my best behavior?”

“She’s baking,” Maggie said, imparting what we both knew was a serious clue to my mother’s state of mind.

“Uh, oh, that’s not good.” I chuckled. “Tell her I promise that I’ll be right there.”

“She’s not going to believe me,” Maggie said, shuffling off.

Mom had the right to be miffed. I’d promised I wouldn’t let work interfere, that we’d make it to the museum before lunch. I knew I should go. But I hesitated. After all, Mom was already in a slow burn. Why not?

There was no predicting when I’d have time again, so I grabbed my digital camera and snapped four photos of Ben’s reconstructed face, and then downloaded the photos onto the computer screen. Within a few minutes, I’d e-mailed the lot, along with a summary I’d already prepared describing where the skull had been found, to Houston P.D.’s missing persons, my office at the Texas Department of Public Safety, and to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Virginia. I had no illusions. It was a long shot. No matter how many post-office walls this kid’s face was displayed on, there was little hope anyone would identify the child.

Finished, I put Ben back in the box, then hurried downstairs. I walked through the garage, past Mom’s beat-up Ford pickup, feeling vaguely uneasy. Maggie’s fearfulness did that to me. For the first ten years of her life as I sculpted faces on skulls, Maggie played at my feet, claiming leftover tidbits of clay to mold into flowers. Back then, sudden, violent death was something that happened only to strangers.

Then Bill died last spring, and now Maggie won’t even walk through my workshop door.

Knowing Mom would be on the warpath, I hurried through the garage door and past the corral, where Emma Lou, Maggie’s three-year-old, black-and-white pinto, slurped from her water trough. The filly rolled her head, eyeing me. She looked hungry. The half-dozen horses Mom boards were across the yard in the old barn and had
already eaten their morning oats and hay. Mom makes sure they have an early breakfast. But Emma Lou is Maggie’s job, and there wasn’t a feed sack in sight. The horse whinnied.

“Emma Lou,” I grumbled. “I’m already running late, girl.”