Veil of Night: A Novel

Chapter Twenty-two

THE ALARM WENT OFF AT SEVEN-THIRTY. JACLYN STRETCHED an arm from beneath the covers, fumbled for her cell, and silenced the noise. The feel of the phone in her hand reminded her that she hadn’t called her mother the night before. Hastily she thumbed in Madelyn’s number, blinking her eyes to focus them on the keypad.

“What’s going on?” was Madelyn’s greeting.

“I’m in a hotel,” Jaclyn said, and yawned. “The detective thought I’d be safer if no one knew where I was, so I packed a suitcase and he brought me here. I didn’t get checked in until around four-thirty. As soon as he left, I fell into bed.”

“Safer?” Trust Madelyn’s mom instinct to seize on the most trauma-inducing word.

“From whoever took those shots at me.” Jaclyn sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. “The good news is, I’m officially off the suspect list. The bad news is, the man I saw at the reception hall is probably who killed Carrie, and now he thinks I can identify him.”

“Oh my God.”

“There’s more good news/bad news. Good: the detective said he’s pretty sure he knows who did it. Bad: he doesn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant, so he hoped when he brings his photographs I’ll be able to put my finger on a guy and say ‘this is the one.’ I can’t, though. I honestly didn’t pay enough attention,” she said unhappily. She certainly wished there had been something outstanding enough about the guy that she’d memorized his face, so she could get this over with.

“But … I thought you and Diedra both said the person who tried to shoot you could be a woman.”

“Or a small man,” Jaclyn pointed out, then closed her eyes as she thought about the man she’d seen in the parking lot at the reception hall. Nothing about his face stood out, but she had good spatial memory, and she had a very clear sense of how tall he’d been in relation to his car. The man she’d seen hadn’t been short; if anything, he’d been pushing six feet tall, if not taller. “I don’t think it was the same man I saw that day.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“I suppose he could have hired someone,” she said uncertainly. “Either that, or the shooting didn’t have anything to do with Carrie.”

“The odds against that would be astronomical. I agree with Peach; it has to be connected to Carrie.”

“Or someone else whose wedding I did, and the bride hated everything.”

There was a moment of silence, then Madelyn said, “Oh my God,” again in a very unhappy tone. “There was a call yesterday … if it was a woman who shot at you, then I think maybe I told her where you’d be last night.”

“What?”

“Someone called the office yesterday; Diedra answered the call, then transferred it to me. The woman, whoever it was, said she was an old friend of yours from college, that you’d talked recently and were supposed to meet for drinks after work but she’d forgotten the time. She rattled off a name, but we were so busy yesterday I didn’t really take note. I told her you had a rehearsal yesterday, then you were going straight to a wedding and I told her where it was, and that it would be late when you got finished so probably there was a mix-up on dates. I gave her your cell number, to call and reschedule. Did she call?” Madelyn asked hopefully.

Jaclyn pinched between her eyes. “No, no one called. And I haven’t talked to any old college friends.”

“I almost got you killed,” Madelyn breathed with horror, and her voice wobbled with tears as she continued, “Surely we can have the call traced, find out who it was—”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll call Detective Wilder. Mom, don’t cry. You didn’t almost get me killed. Whoever shot at me is the one to blame, not you.” Because this was her mother, tears welled in her eyes, too. “Please don’t cry, or you’ll have me boohooing, and then we’ll both have swollen eyes today.”

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

Soothing Madelyn took several minutes, during which they both cried. As soon as they disconnected the call, though, Jaclyn dug Eric’s card out of her bag and dialed his cell.

“Jaclyn. Is something wrong?”

Startled, she took the phone from her ear and stared at it as if it were inhabited by aliens. It was one thing for her mother to answer the phone with a question, because after all she would recognize the number and know who was calling, but she’d never called Eric before. Cautiously she put the phone back to her ear. “How did you know who it was?”

“I recognized the number.”

“I’ve never called you before.”

“No, but I’ve called you. Remember the occasion? I was inside you almost before your back hit the mattress.”

A tidal wave of heat washed over her, because, yes, oh God yes, she remembered. She might want to forget, but in that moment physical memory was stronger and her flesh relived the feel of him pushing into her, thick and hot and deep. She vividly felt his arms around her again, his chest hair roughly rubbing her nipples, his hands gripping her bottom and lifting her into each thrust. Every muscle inside her tightened as if she was holding him again, clamping down around him as she came. Her nipples tightened on their own, standing out as flushed and firm as if he’d been sucking on them.

“I—” she said, then fell silent because there was nothing she could say, no rebuttal she could make. What had happened, happened. She squeezed her eyes shut and her legs tightly together, trying to make the ache go away.

“Yes,” he said roughly, his tone making it plain he was reliving his own moments. “You.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. She’d never understood the charm of phone sex until that moment, and this was a damn poor time for it, too. “Ah … someone, a woman, called Mom yesterday and said she was an old college friend and we were supposed to get together for drinks—” She was blabbering. She stopped, took another breath. “Anyway, Mom told her where I’d be last night. And, no, I haven’t been in touch with any old college friends about having drinks.”

“Caller ID?” he asked sharply, evidently making the transition from pleasure to business a lot more smoothly than she had.

“No, it was on the office phone. Mom said something about having the call traced. We don’t have caller ID on the office line.”

He muttered something that she doubted was complimentary, then said, “Okay, find out what time the call came in. We’ll get the ball rolling with the phone company.”

“It was a woman. That knocks a hole in your theory about the gray-haired man trying to kill me, doesn’t it?”

“No, in fact, it doesn’t. Look, I really need you to look at some photographs. If you can’t come here, tell me where you’ll be and I’ll bring them to you.”

A sense of alarm seized her at the words “come here.” Surely he wasn’t—

“Ah … where are you?”

“At work.”

Her face heated as she thought of what he’d said. Had anyone heard him?

“Don’t worry, no one’s near enough to eavesdrop,” he said in amusement. “Can you come now?”

She didn’t know what devil seized her, but she did know that payback was sweet. “Almost,” she murmured, and listened to the sudden fumbling and background cursing as he dropped his cell phone.

Garvey approached Eric’s desk, some papers in hand. “The senator’s alibied tighter than Dick’s hatband,” he said in disgust. “He was at a fund-raiser, with Mrs. Dennison, in Savannah last night. It lasted until midnight. He couldn’t be in two places at once.”

“He might not have done it, but he had it done,” Eric growled. “The fucker screwed up. If he’d just left it alone, we didn’t have enough on him to get a search warrant, but he was afraid Jaclyn could identify him. Now we’re going to look real hard at his girlfriend. Jaclyn just called; a woman pretending to be an old friend called her business yesterday, and her mother told the woman where Jaclyn would be. That was a puzzle, figuring out how anyone knew where Jaclyn would be at any given time, but the answer was simple.”

“The girlfriend.”

“Yep.” Eric pulled up some information on his computer. “Atlanta P.D. sent over their ballistic report. They found one bullet in the Jag’s upholstery; the other one went through the passenger door. The weight of the bullet is consistent with a nine millimeter. Ms. Taite Boyne is registered as the owner of a Glock 26, which is a subcompact nine millimeter.”

“If she’s smart, that pistol is at the bottom of Lake Lanier.”

“Problem is, she thinks she’s smarter than everyone else. People like that make stupid mistakes. We’ll trace the call to Premier’s office, see what pops. Maybe she used her cell phone.”

“She can toss that, too, say it was stolen.”

“Pistol and cell phone both come up missing? I’d say that’s suspicious behavior. Anyway, she might have been smart enough to use a calling card, so we can’t bank on the call leading directly to her. But the Atlanta P.D. didn’t find any shell casings at the scene last night, which means they ejected inside the car. There may be scorch marks, gunpowder residue in the car, on the steering wheel from contact with her hands. At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see if she has an alibi for last night.”

Garvey rubbed his hands together. “I love it when all the details fall in place,” he said happily.

“Jaclyn is on the way in, to look at photographs.”

“Identifying Dennison won’t count for much, with him being all over television these days. Seems like he’s running an ad every fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve got another angle I’m going to try. Jaclyn doesn’t know cars. She seriously doesn’t know cars. About all she can tell you is if a vehicle is a car, or a pickup, or an SUV. But she’s really, really good with details, so she might have noticed something particular about the car, even without knowing what make it is.” He’d come in early, started compiling stacks of photographs of cars, of both the kind the senator drove and the kind Taite Boyne drove. He’d noticed a striking detail about the car that the senator drove, and there was a possibility Jaclyn had picked up on it.

He also had a lot of head shots of gray-haired men, including two of the senator, one from each side. He didn’t know which angle she’d seen him from, and one side of a person’s face could be markedly different from the other side. If she picked him out, that was a bonus. Let a defense attorney argue that she’d seen him in political ads; that was the district attorney’s worry. The important thing to Eric was collecting enough evidence that they could persuade a judge to issue a search warrant on that car.

Jaclyn walked in a little after nine. Eric watched heads turning her way. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, because she wasn’t. Objectively, he supposed most people would say she was attractive. She sure as hell attracted him. But what set her apart was her effortless, long-legged stroll, those dynamite legs, and a classy sense of style. Jaclyn couldn’t look cheap if she tried. Everything about her was meticulously put together without being fussy. He hated fussiness, hated a lot of jangling things hanging off a woman. From the gold studs in her ears to the tiny gold chain around her right ankle, she was restrained and classy. It was funny how the very things that attracted him to her were what he most enjoyed messing up; maybe it was the challenge of getting her clothes off and her hair down, her nails digging into his back. Oh, yeah.

He stood up as she approached, directed her to the chair beside his desk. If he’d pushed it a little last night, he thought, they’d have ended up in bed, but what he wanted wasn’t just sex. He wanted Jaclyn to decide that she wanted him. He wanted her to consciously, deliberately decide to give them a chance, because otherwise he’d always feel as if she had one foot out the door and was just waiting for him to do something wrong so she could leave.

Garvey came up as Eric turned to get the stack of photographs he’d put to the side. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said to her. “That was a close thing last night.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Garvey. Yes, it was. That was the most frightened I’ve ever been.”

“We’re making progress in the case. With luck, this will all be over pretty soon.” He pulled up a chair and sat down—evidently he wanted to be involved in the process.

“I hope so.” She glanced at the clock, then at Eric. “Ready?”

He gave her the head shots first. She flipped through them, taking maybe two seconds on each one, then shook her head and set them aside. “Nothing, but let me look through them again in a few minutes. Sometimes my impressions need to simmer.”

“Take your time.”

She gave a tiny smile. “Today? Time is the one thing I don’t have.”

Next she went through the photographs of cars in the same measured way. She went all the way to the end of the stack, but instead of setting the stack aside the way she had with the head shots, she went back to the beginning and started again, a tiny frown knitting her brow. She went more slowly this time, her head tilted to the side.

Eric and Garvey sat silently, watching and waiting. Eric almost stopped breathing. He was putting a lot of faith in her attention to detail. She might not know cars, but she knew style.

She pulled a photograph out of the stack and tossed it on the desk. “This one,” she said. “The car was like this.”

He glanced at the photograph. He wanted to smile with satisfaction, but he kept his expression noncommittal so he didn’t inadvertently influence her. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. It had that same doohickey sticking up on the hood.”

Eric picked up the photograph. The car she’d selected was a Mercedes S-Class, the S600, which ran about a hundred and fifty thou. Only the S-Class vehicles had the Mercedes emblem standing on the tip of the hood; on all of the other models, the emblem was made into the grill.

Senator Dennison drove a silver S600.

He gave her the other stack of photographs. These had been harder to come by, because they were photographs of the taillights of several different makes and models, taken at night. “Do any of these taillights look like the ones on the car you saw last night?”

“You’re asking a lot,” she murmured. “I was scared out of my head. I barely remembered to look for a tag number, and fat lot of good that did.”

“Just see if anything rings a bell.”

She did the whole methodical thing again, but when she reached the last one she shook her head. “Sorry. Nothing there.”

That had been a long shot anyway. Still, she’d pulled out a piece of information that might sway a judge. She hadn’t identified the senator, but she’d identified his car.

She picked up the head shots again, went back through them before finally shaking her head. “I don’t recognize anyone.”

Eric took the pictures back. “That’s okay. Thanks for coming in.”

She stood, gave him a quizzical look. “That’s it? You aren’t going to tell me if that hood doohickey means anything or not?”

He smiled. “It means a lot.” It also meant a lot that she was being cordial, that she was keeping her hostility firmly under wraps in front of Garvey.

“Good. I’d hate to waste a trip here when I have a million other things I have to be doing. I have to run now. Have a nice day.”

Everyone in the room watched her leave. Garvey heaved a sigh. “If it wasn’t for my blushing bride, I’d give you a run for your money with that one.”

Eric snorted. “Your blushing bride would cut your nuts off.”

“I know. That’s what I meant.”