She was up and seemed recovered, stretched out on the couch in the gathering room. The fire was on, and she had a blanket over her legs, and on TV, Robin Williams was hilarious at the Met.
“What happened?” I sat in a chair nearby. “How did your car get here’?”
She had glasses on and was reading some sort of manual that had been published by the FBI. “Your answering service called,” she said. “This guy who was driving my car arrived at your office downtown and your assistant never showed up. What’s his name, Danny? So the guy in my car calls, and next thing the phone’s ringing here. I had him drive to the guard booth, and that’s where I met him.”
“But what happened’?” I asked again. “I don’t even know the name of this person. He was supposed to be an acquaintance of Danny’s. Danny was driving my car. They were supposed to park both vehicles behind my office.” I stopped and simply stared. “Lucy, do you have any idea what’s going on? Do you know why I’m home so late?”
She picked up the remote control and turned the television off. “All I know is you got called out on a case. That’s what you said to me right before you left.”
So I told her. I told her who Danny was and that he was dead, and I explained about my car. I gave her every detail.
“Lucy, do you have any idea who this person was who dropped off your car?” I then said.
“I don’t know.” She was sitting up now. “Some Hispanic guy named Rick. He had an earring, short hair and looked maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. He was very polite, nice.”
“Where is he now?” I said. “You didn’t just take your car from him.”
“Oh no. I drove him to the bus station, which George gave me directions to.”
“George?”
“The guard on duty at the time. At the guard gate. I guess this would have been close to nine.”
“Then Rick’s gone back to Norfolk.”
“I don’t know what he’s done,” she said. “He told me as we were driving that he was certain Danny would show up. He probably has no idea.”
“God. Let’s hope he doesn’t unless he heard it on the news. Let’s hope he wasn’t there,” I said.
The thought of Lucy alone with this stranger in her car filled me with terror, and in my mind I saw Danny’s head.
I felt shattered bone beneath gloves slippery with his blood.
“Rick’s considered a suspect?” She was surprised.
“At the moment, just about anybody is.”
I picked up the phone at the bar. Marino had just gotten home, too, and before I could say anything, he butted in.
“We found the cartridge case.”
“Great,” I said, relieved. “Where?”
“If you’re on the road looking down toward the tunnel, it was in a bunch of undergrowth about ten feet to the right of the path where the blood starts.”
“A right port ejector,” I said.
“Had to be, unless both Danny and his killer were going downhill backwards. And this asshole meant business. He was shooting a forty-five. The ammo’s Winchester.”
“Overkill,” I said.
“You got that right. Someone wanted to make sure he was dead.”
“Marino,” I said, “Lucy met Danny’s friend tonight.”
“You mean the guy driving her car?”
“Yes,” and I explained what I knew.
“Maybe this thing’s making a little more sense,” he said. “The two of them got separated on the road, but in Danny’s mind it didn’t matter because he’d given his pal directions and a phone number.”
“Can someone try to find out who Rick is before he disappears? Maybe intercept him when he gets off the bus?” I asked.
“I’ll call Norfolk P.D. I got to anyway because somebody’s got to go over to Danny’s house and notify his family before they hear about this from the media.”
“His family lives in Chesapeake,” I told him the bad news, and I knew I would need to talk to them, too.
“Shit,” Marino said.
“Don’t talk to Detective Roche about any of this, and I don’t want him anywhere near Danny’s family.”