Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (10 page)

That reminded me of Mom’s admission that she sometimes talked to my dad, and I chuckled. I had time to call home before dinner. The first thing Mom said was that Maggie had been in a blue mood all day. “She needs you here. She seems to be struggling with
things but won’t talk about it with me. Sarah, I love Maggie like my own child, but she’s not. And I can’t be a substitute for her mother.”

“I know, Mom,” I said. “But I can’t come home. Not yet. Put her on the telephone. Let me talk to her.”

“Sarah Jane…”

“Mom, please,” I said, not in the mood for an argument. “Just put Maggie on the telephone.”

When she picked up, Maggie sounded even less pleased with me than Mom.

“I really wanted you to come home tonight,” she said.

“I wanted that, too. But I can’t,” I said. “What’s wrong, Magpie?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and I thought she probably didn’t.

“You know I love you, that I’d be there if I could.”

At first quiet. Then, “I changed my science project,” she said, her voice still sad. “I’m doing it on singularity.”

“Singularity,” I said. “And that is?”

“The center of a black hole. The vortex,” she said. “Some scientists think it rips apart stars and gobbles them up. But others think the stars get caught in the vortex and it crunches them down to space dust and spits most of it back out. But it’s destruction for any star that gets too close.”

“Wow,” I said. “And it’s called…?”

“Singularity,” she said, again. “I’m going to call my project the monster void that devours stars. Strings says it’s more exciting than a lunar eclipse.”

“I think he’s right,” I said. “And what’s he doing? Still the dinosaurs?”

“Yeah, still the dinosaurs,” Maggie scoffed. “He’s going to prove it’s possible that they exist somewhere. I haven’t changed my mind. It’s dumb. But I’m helping him on the computer. He talks about dinosaurs all the time, how we’re going to go dinosaur hunting together when we’re grown up and we’re both archeologists.”

I laughed again. Maggie sounded more like herself, but not over whatever was needling at her. Something was still wrong. “Is that all that’s bothering you, that Strings is droning on about his dinosaurs and that I’m not there to help with your science fair project?” I asked.

Maggie was quiet, too quiet.

“I guess,” she said, but, of course, that wasn’t true. Her voice had that familiar melancholy that always found its mark, the ever-expanding section of brain cells where I stored my anxiety and guilt. If Bill had been there, she wouldn’t have missed me so. I knew that, and part of me wanted to get in the Tahoe and drive home. But I couldn’t. If we were dealing with a serial killer, it wouldn’t be long before he killed again.

“Maggie, I’d rather be home with you. I really would. But I can’t come home tonight. It’s important that I’m here.”

“I know, it’s just that, sometimes I wonder…” she said.

“Wonder what?”

“Why can’t you be like other moms and get a job in an office or something? One where you’re home every night?”

I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was ask again, “What’s wrong, Magpie? Is everything all right in school?”

Again, Maggie was silent.

“Maggie, listen, I love you dearly. You are, barring no one, the most important person in the world to me. If I could, I’d drive home this very minute. There’s nothing I’d like more than to be with you. But I can’t. For at least one more day, I’m needed here. But I will be home soon, probably tomorrow.”

“For how long before you have to go away again?” she asked.

Dodging a question I couldn’t answer, I suggested, “Let’s do something special this weekend, a whole day together, just the two of us. We’ll leave Gram at home and make it a mother-daughter day. All right?”

It was a tempting offer, but Maggie wasn’t in the mood to jump at anything that let me off the hook.

“Cross-your-heart promise?” she said, doubtfully.

“Cross-my-heart promise,” I repeated. “Now put Gram back on the phone, honey. Sleep tight.”

“You, too,” she said, her voice sad and distracted. Whatever bothered Maggie when we’d begun talking was still there.

“Sarah Jane, when
are
you coming home?” Mom asked.

“As soon as I can. Probably tomorrow night.”

“The truth is that I’m worried about Maggie,” she said, her voice low so Maggie wouldn’t hear. “It’s not just that she seems sad. She’s doing odd things.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing dangerous or bad, just odd,” Mom said. “Like what she’s done to her room. I asked her why she wanted the Christmas lights, but she just said she wanted to look up at night and see stars. She’s strung them all over the ceiling.”

“Maybe she’s telling you the truth,” I said. “Maybe she just likes to look at them.”

“Could be, dear,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But something’s troubling that girl.”

“Kiss Maggie good night for me, Mom,” I said. “I’ll be home tomorrow, and we’ll talk.”

With fifteen minutes before dinner, I hung up the telephone and turned on the television until it was time to meet David. I tried to focus on a fuzzy sitcom, hoping the inane chatter would occupy my mind. It didn’t work. I couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie. It didn’t help to explain I needed the job to support us. I couldn’t lie to her. The absolute truth: if I wanted to, I knew I could find another job, maybe one that didn’t pay quite as well, but certainly one that allowed me to be home every night. Yet, despite the fact that I would do almost anything in the world to make my daughter happy, I knew
I wasn’t ready to change my life, even for her, not right now. Too much had already changed for both of us.

Minutes later, someone knocked on the door. David was early. I wondered, for just a second, if he’d ironed a shirt for the evening. But when I opened the door, he stood there, rumpled as ever, holding his suitcase.

“We need to head back to Houston, now,” he said. “It’ll be all over the news in the morning. Scroggins and Nelson are bringing in Priscilla Lucas, charging her with solicitation of murder.”

I
don’t understand how you can do this,” I argued, every muscle in my body tense with anger. “We had an agreement. You said you’d wait. Don’t you realize what we’ve got here?”

We were in Galveston’s courthouse, a forty-year-old building with diamond-shaped windows that was slated to be replaced by a new courthouse still under construction. I briefly wondered if the county would relocate both the outdoor monuments to the new courtyard’s plaza: a plaque honoring Norris Wright Cuney, a freed slave who in 1867 cared for victims of the island’s yellow fever epidemic, and a monument to the Confederacy, a robust soldier carrying a banner over the inscription GLORY TO THE DEFEATED. Inside his chambers Judge Wilford McLamore, a rotund light-skinned black man with one eye that turned slightly in, whittled at his gums with a flat wooden toothpick. We’d interrupted his dinner and he didn’t look pleased.

“Seems to me we’ve been through all this,” he insisted, brushing his teeth with his tongue then sucking back to reclaim a loosened tidbit. “What we’ve got are two viewpoints that don’t necessarily disagree. Agent Scroggins and Oliver here, sorry Detective Nelson,
have explained that you may have a lead to the actual killer. Well, bravo. But I don’t much see that makes a hill of beans difference as far as Mrs. Lucas and this arrest warrant goes. They’re not saying she killed her husband and that woman herself. They’re saying she hired someone—maybe your man—to do it. They’re not charging her with murder. It’s solicitation of murder.”

“What makes a difference is that we’re looking at a serial killer, not a hit man,” I said, straining but failing to regain my composure. “Serial killers do not kill for money.”

“Hit men are serial killers,” argued Nelson, his face tight and red with anger. He was furious. The Lucas case was the biggest collar of his career, the kind that could finally earn him the sergeant’s badge he coveted. He acted as if David and I were trying to snatch it away from him. “Hit men kill multiple victims over a span of time. Maybe this time the guy figured he might as well bring in some bucks doing what he enjoys.”

As I fumed, David took over.

“Judge, there’s a reasonable assumption the man who killed Louise Fontenot may also have committed the Lucas and Knowles murders. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that’s true,” he said, remaining remarkably cool, I thought. “First, we have no evidence anyone paid for the Fontenot murder, which raises the question, is this guy a hit man? I’d argue that it suggests he’s probably not. Louise Fontenot had no money. She had no family, no one to profit by her death. Why would anyone pay to have her brutally murdered? Second, we have no evidence linking Priscilla Lucas with the killer. In a courtroom, we’re going to need that link or we have no case.”

“We all know that, and we know that it’ll take time to develop that evidence,” interjected Scroggins, his balding head glistening under the fluorescent lights. “But in the meantime, we’ve already got a perfectly good circumstantial-evidence case against this woman. First, she had motive: they were divorcing and fighting over custody
of the children and the control of more than a billion dollars. Second, she refuses to tell us what she argued about with the dead woman the night before the murders, even to admit she was in her apartment. Third, she had the means, withdrew a hundred grand three days before the murder, and won’t account for what she did with it. Fourth, and this is something Nelson and I just tracked down late this afternoon, less than a month ago, she was overheard confiding to a close friend that she’d pay anything, give up her entire fortune, to get her husband out of her life, forever.”

“Come on,” I wailed. “That’s your evidence? Have you ever been through a nasty divorce, Ted? Ever wish your ex-wife was out of the picture? You arrest everyone who’s ever uttered those words and half the state of Texas will be locked up.”

“Lucas was overheard during one of her Junior League volunteer days at the downtown homeless shelter,” Scroggins continued. “And this wasn’t a whisper. She wanted to be heard. She wanted to get the word out. She was shopping for a killer.”

My experience, everything I believed in contradicted their theory, but I had to admit Nelson and Scroggins were painting a damning portrait of Priscilla Lucas.

Perhaps sensing my confusion, David asked, “Judge, how far do we want to reach here? Do we want to jeopardize our case by rushing to make an arrest? There’s no need for that.”

At that, the judge pulled his round body up onto two thick legs, and I sensed the argument had ended and we had lost.

“Why arrest Mrs. Lucas now?” David argued. “We have no indication she’ll flee. To the contrary, she’s a respected member of the community with family and business connections both in Houston and on the island. Why not continue investigating and wait until we’ve got solid evidence before we make an arrest?”

The judge seemed to consider that, searching all four of our faces for the answer. A frown pulled at his mouth.

“Well, Lieutenant Armstrong, Agent Garrity, this is all real interesting, but I left my wife and a slice of pecan pie at home and you’ve told me nothing I didn’t already know,” he said, finally. “These two officers have developed what I’d label sufficient probable cause. The district attorney agrees. The warrant stands. When there’s something new to report, call me, but not at dinnertime.”

It was nearly nine when the meeting ended, and I called home and checked on Maggie. Mom said she was sleeping. The only good news coming from tonight’s events was that I’d be home to surprise her at breakfast.

We left Galveston and took the causeway back to the mainland. In the distance, I saw the small towns that border the coastline, where residents live in an uneasy alliance with miles of petrochemical plants, so vast they stretch into the horizon. Jungles of gray-and-silver pipe illuminated by eerie yellow lights, their stacks belch steam into the air, some burning off escaping gases in flames that look like torches against the night sky. More than once in my memory, one or another of these plants exploded in a fury of destruction, leaving a charred skeleton, where search parties combed for the remains of the dead. Lawyers got rich suing for the grieving families, but little ever changed. On the Gulf Coast, livelihoods depend on the well-paid jobs supplied by these plants. Even if it were possible, few residents truly want them to leave.

On the drive into Houston, we silently licked our wounds from the battle we’d so miserably lost. I wondered where Priscilla Lucas’s children would be when she turned herself in. Would they see their mother on television, arrested for their father’s murder? Of course there was the hope, vague at best, that no one would tip off the television stations. But my guess was that Nelson and Scroggins wanted the circus, the excitement of a big arrest live on the morning news.

Before leaving Galveston, David and I had decided to have dinner in Houston. We’d settled on Campinetti’s, a neighborhood Italian place near the house he’d rented in the Heights, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods lying just northwest of downtown. As I drove past Houston’s tailored skyscrapers, some still lit for the night with cleaning crews readying offices for the next morning, I realized neither of us had spoken during the entire drive. I felt grateful for the quiet. Too many people were compelled to fill every available minute with useless words. That David was comfortable with silence spoke well of him.

When we arrived at the restaurant, just before ten, Papa Campinetti, a man stooped with age, informed us they’d stopped serving dinner and that the grill was shut down and cleaned, something we might have expected.

“I guess we should have had dinner in Galveston,” I said, as we walked back to the Tahoe.

“Why not my place? I’ll make pasta and pour you a glass of wine,” David offered.

“I should get home. I haven’t seen Maggie since yesterday morning.”

“She’s sleeping,” he said. “You have to drop me at my house anyway, and I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”

He was right. I couldn’t remember being so hungry, and Maggie wouldn’t know until morning that I’d come home early. I had no reason to hurry, but my hands felt a bit clammy when I thought about being alone with David.