Tough Customer

CHAPTER 12

BEFORE BERRY AND CAROLINE COULD ABSORB DODGE'S shocking statement, their attention was drawn toward the sound of loud and uncontrollable sobbing. A middle-aged couple were seated on a bench against the wall. A younger man wearing a clerical collar was hunkered in front of them, speaking softly, his arms embracing their shoulders in a group hug.

Out of respect, Dodge spoke softly, but his voice vibrated with barely contained fury. "Mr. and Mrs. Coldare. Their sixteen-year-old son, their only child, was shot and killed a few hours ago. By Oren Starks."

Dizziness and nausea swept over Berry. She swayed. Dodge caught her arm. "Hey, steady."

"Sit down," her mother said.

Berry, looking at the grieving couple, gave her head a hard shake. "I'll be all right. They lost their son tonight."

Across the large room, Ski emerged from a smaller office. His and Berry's eyes connected immediately and held as he wove his way through the maze of desks. When he reached her, he said, "I owe you an apology."

"What for?"

"For not taking you seriously enough. I thought that too much was being made of Starks, his threats. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Berry tamped down a surge of emotion, which would have to be dealt with later. But not now.

He continued, "Anyway, thank you for coming. I thought if you listened while the girl gave her--"

"Girl?"

"I haven't had time to fill in the details," Dodge informed him.

Ski bobbed his head once. "Davis Coldare was with a friend when he was shot. She's okay. Shaky, but uninjured. She picked Starks out of a group of pictures. No question, she said."

"He got away again?"

"The boy fell dead at the girl's feet. She ran for her life. Called 911 from the motel office."

"Motel?" Caroline asked.

"A hasty-tasty." Dodge compressed his lips with regret. "Coupla horny kids just looking for a mattress."

Ski said, "By the time the first responders arrived, Oren Starks was long gone."

"What provoked the shooting?" Berry asked.

"Not a damn thing."

"He just shot this boy for no reason?"

"Wrong place, wrong time for Davis Coldare." He spoke in a tight, angry tone similar to Dodge's.

"My God," Caroline whispered. Berry couldn't bring herself to say anything.

Ski said to her, "I thought if you listened to the girl--Lisa Arnold is her name--if you listened in while she gives us a recorded statement, you might pick up something about Starks. Hear something that might help us. I don't know. Worth a try."

"Of course. Whatever you think."

Apparently he thought she needed assistance walking, because as they retraced his path through the squad room, he kept his hand on the small of her back. "Get her some coffee, Andy," he said as they passed the wide-eyed deputy that Berry recognized as the one who'd been at the lake house the night of the shooting. "Do you take anything in it?" Ski asked her.

"Cream. Milk. Whatever."

"Some of that half-and-half stuff," he told the younger deputy. "Ms. King?"

"I'll get hers. I gotta go smoke anyway." Dodge peeled off with the deputy.

Ski escorted Caroline and Berry into a small room. She missed the warmth of his hand when it was withdrawn.

He motioned them toward a rectangular table that had brown metal legs and a chipped, particleboard top. "Sit there. Or you can watch through the window if you don't mind standing. The sound will be piped in, so you can hear her from anywhere in the room."

Caroline sat down at the table. Berry moved to the window. In the adjoining room, seated at a table identical to the one in this room, was a girl who appeared to be in late adolescence. With her was a woman, older by perhaps fifteen years. "Is that her mother?"

"Stepmother."

"Her father?"

"Split last year, whereabouts unknown. Neither seems very happy over having to live together, but they don't have options."

"Where's her real mother?"

"Nobody knows that, either."

Lisa Arnold had a voluptuous figure, made obvious by her braless tank top and short skirt. She wasn't the all-American, rosy-cheeked, and wholesome type but the kind of girl that was just as easily stereotyped.

Despite her hard-core appearance, however, there was an incongruous vulnerability that touched Berry. Although her eye makeup had been heavily applied, tears had left muddy tracks of it on her cheeks all the way down to her chin. Fresh tracks were being formed now as Berry watched her blubber, her whole body shaking as she wept.

The stepmother sat with her arms folded across her waist and stared into near space, looking bored, sleepy, or stoned, but definitely unmoved by her stepdaughter's distress.

Their general appearance, mode of dress, and body language were vastly different from those of the shattered couple who'd been praying with their minister.

Ski had come to stand beside Berry at the window. "You okay?" he asked in an undertone.

She nodded. "How did the two teenagers clash with Oren?"

"I'll let you hear it straight from the girl."

Dodge and the deputy came in bearing several foam cups of coffee, single servings of half-and-half, and packets of various sweeteners. Dodge tossed a handful of stir sticks onto the table, then reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a stack of paper napkins, which he set in front of Caroline.

She smiled up at him. "Thank you for remembering."

He gave her a crooked grin and grunted an unintelligible reply.

Ski went to the door and opened it. Looking back at Berry, he said, "This shouldn't take too long. I'll come back as soon as we're done to get your read on it."

He left. Berry went to the table and fixed her coffee. By the time she had carried it to the window, Ski was already in the next room, along with the deputy who'd met Caroline and Berry upon their arrival. He was making adjustments to a tripod-mounted video camera.

Ski said something to the girl, then patted her on the shoulder before rounding the table and sitting down across from her. Berry saw him slip his hand beneath the table, and an instant later she heard the hiss of speakers as they were engaged.

"Whenever you're ready, Miss Arnold," he said, his voice amplified. "Tell me everything that happened in as much detail as you can remember. I won't interrupt you unless I need something clarified. All right?"

"Okay." She blew her nose into a tissue, shifted in her seat, crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. "Do you want me looking at you or at the camera?"

"You can talk to me if that's more comfortable for you."

"Sure. I mean, I guess. Where do you want me to start?"

"What was your relationship with Davis Coldare?"

"I only met him this week. I'd seen him at school, but we didn't have classes together or anything. We never, you know, talked or nothing. I went to the baseball game last Monday night. He plays. I mean played." Here she gave an emotional hiccup.

"I forget which position he played. Second base, I think. Anyway, after the game, a bunch of us sorta met up out at the lake. Me and Davis got together and, you know, messed around a little. He was sweet. He asked could we go out tonight."

"You had a date to go to the drive-in movie."

She bobbed her head.

"Start from when you left there."

She sniffed. "Well, things had got kinda hot, you know?"

Ski nodded.

"So we decided to go to this motel where we could, you know, be more comfortable."

Ski nodded.

"When we got there, I went into the office and gave ol' lady what's-her-name the money, and she gave me a key to room number eight. We drove to it, got out, went up to the door. I gave Davis the key and said 'Be a gentleman.' Meaning, you know, that he should open the door for me at least."

"Um-huh."

"But he had trouble getting the key into the lock because he was holding up his jeans with one hand. They were, uh, undone, see?"

Ski gave another nod.

The stepmother made a snorting sound and rolled her eyes. The girl looked at her with loathing. "Oh, like you're so pure and all."

Before the stepmother could form a comeback, Ski said, "Please continue, Miss Arnold." His voice was soft but carried a ring of authority that prevented an argument between the two women.

The girl returned her attention to him. "So ... so Davis is having trouble getting the door unlocked. But then he does. He pushes it open and steps in and switches on the light. And there's this guy, standing beside the bed, looking as surprised to see us as we were to see him. We expected the room to be vacant, you know?"

Ski nodded.

"And then he just ... he just..." Her lower lip began to tremble, and a new batch of tears flooded her eyes. "Shoots the gun."

"Did he reach for the gun?"

She shook her head. "He already had it."

"Did he say anything before he fired it?"

She shook her head again. Her throat was working with emotion.

Ski leaned forward across the table. "Do you need to take a moment, Miss Arnold?"

"Jesus," the stepmother hissed. "Just tell the man what happened so we can get outta here. Will you do that, please?"

Ignoring her, Ski kindly asked the girl again if she needed time to collect herself.

She said no, that she was okay. He moved a box of Kleenex across the table closer to her. She pulled one out, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.

When she was more composed, Ski resumed. "He didn't speak to you?"

"No."

"Did you get a good look at him?"

"Well, yeah. Davis turned on the light, and there he was, facing the door, not six feet from us."

"You told me earlier that he was fully dressed."

"In khaki pants and a dark blue shirt."

"We found a pair of men's shoes on the floor beside the bed."

"I didn't notice his feet. But his hair was all messed up. I noticed it was standing on end. And his eyes were sorta, you know, bugged out. Like maybe he'd been asleep, and we'd startled him awake, and he'd jumped up off the bed suddenly. Then when Davis came in, he pulled the trigger."

"On impulse? A knee-jerk reaction?"

"Yeah. Like that."

"Don't let me put words in your mouth, Miss Arnold."

"I'm not. That's exactly what it was like."

"And you're sure it was this man?" He opened a manila folder he'd carried in with him and removed from it a blowup of Oren's employee photo from Delray Marketing. The girl nodded vigorously. "I'm positive."

Ski replaced the picture in the folder. "After he fired the shot at Davis, what happened?"

She began to cry in earnest again. "I don't know," she wailed. "I didn't even wait to see if Davis was okay. I just turned and ran. I ran to the office, where that sow was still looking through her stupid magazine. I yelled at her to call 911. I told her that Davis had been shot. The fat bitch says, 'I don't want no trouble.'"

Lisa Arnold spoke in a voice that was obviously an imitation of the motel owner. "I told her to get her fucking, fat--" She cut her eyes toward the video camera, then back to Ski. "Sorry."

"It's okay. Go ahead."

"Well, I told her to get her ass on the phone. But she just folded her fat arms over her big belly. So I grabbed the desk phone and called myself. I didn't even realize it then, but I'd dropped my purse when the gun went off. I didn't have my cell."

"The time between your 911 call and the first responder's arrival was less than five minutes," Ski told her.

"Five minutes?" she exclaimed. "Are you sure? It seemed like forever."

"What were you doing during that time?"

Her chin began to quiver, then her entire face collapsed. She sobbed into the tissue. "I should've gone back and checked on Davis. But I was too scared. I didn't know where that maniac was or what he was doing. I was afraid he'd come after me next.

"So I crouched behind the counter there in the motel office. That old bitch kept telling me that if her place got shut down on account of me, she was gonna kill me herself. I was screaming at her to shut up, to just shut up, but she kept cussing at me till that cop got there."

"You didn't see the man again?"

"No."

"His car? Which direction he went?"

"No." She wiped her face and took an uneven breath to steady herself. "I think you probably know everything else."

"Can we go now?" the stepmother asked.

Ski shot her a look that would have curdled milk, then to Lisa he said, "Thank you, Miss Arnold."

"Don't thank me. I feel awful for leaving Davis there."

"We'll have to wait for the medical examiner's official ruling, but I've seen a lot of gunshot wounds. It appeared to me that the bullet was fired directly into his heart. If so, he died instantly." Gently, he added, "There was nothing you could have done for him."

Ski attended to the business of seeing Miss Arnold and her stepmother out. He assigned a deputy to escort them home and to stay there on watch until further notice. He was afraid Oren Starks might decide to come after the eyewitness to Davis Coldare's slaying. He'd already told everyone within the sheriff's office that Lisa Arnold's name was not to be released.

Since the Merritt County S.O. didn't have a crime scene unit, they used that of the nearest office of the Texas Rangers. Ski called the ranger sent to investigate the motel room and asked for an update. He reported that he had finished his work there and was packing up his gear.

Ski said, "I'm having a man stay out there to guard that room. I don't trust the owner not to ignore the tape and go inside. She's got a rap sheet as long as my arm. I've arrested her twice for drug trafficking. She's partial to prescription drugs."

The ranger chuckled. "Yeah, she had some choice words about me messing up her swell place here."

"Let me know what you get."

"Sure will, Ski."

When he was finally able to return to the group in the interrogation room, their mood was somber. The coffee cups were empty. Caroline and Dodge glumly acknowledged him. Berry was sitting at the table, staring at the stir stick she was mechanically turning end over end. Ski pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.

"That boy died because of me," she said quietly.

"He died because Oren Starks shot him in the heart."

She let go of the stir stick, propped her elbows on the edge of the table, and buried her face in her hands. "I'll never forget the sound of his parents' weeping. And it's my fault, my fault."

"How is it your fault?"

She said nothing.

Caroline was staring at her, offering silent compassion and support.

Finally Dodge cleared his throat of a terrible rattle and said, "She, uh, she thinks it's her fault because--"

"I called him."

Ski turned toward her. "Excuse me?"

She took a shuddering breath and squared her shoulders. "I called Oren."