32
“What a day,” Victor said when he finally got back to Laura that night. “We really thought he was going to take a plea, but he backed out at the last minute.”
“Lehman? What did he say?”
“Nothing. He demanded to talk to his lawyer in private and that was it, man. Never came back. Is Cruller pissed!”
Roger Cruller was the county attorney.
“I knew—knew—he was going to confess. Why else did Glass call this whole fucking dog-and-pony show? And then, nada.”
Laura wondered about Lehman’s attorney, Barry Glass, who had a reputation for winning big cases. Why had he called the meeting if he didn’t want to work out a deal? Only if Lehman himself got cold feet.
“And the bad thing? We don’t have enough to arrest him at this point. The forensics on the computer could take months. You should hear the lame shit his attorney tried to feed me—like the screenplay? He said it was in the refrigerator because, get this, he wanted to protect it in case there was a fire.”
She let him rant for a while before changing the subject. “Did you run my guy’s name through NCIC?” she asked.
“I’ve been so busy, I must’ve forgot. You still want me to do it? I’ll get to it first—”
“That’s okay, we ran him at the PD here. He doesn’t have a criminal record.”
“Well, I guess that’s it.”
“Maybe not.”
He ignored that. “I have some news you might be interested in. Timmy Judd’s in intensive care. He tried to kill himself today. Drank some drain cleaner. They don’t know how he got it. But you know he’s gotta be suffering.”
Laura thought about Shannon Judd, only seven years old, having the presence of mind to make her way into the crawl space underneath her house—the house she had lived in all her short life—to hide from her own father. The pain and fear she must have experienced as her life drained away along with the blood from two gunshot wounds.
“Hope it destroys his throat, his esophagus, his digestive tract—I hope he gets cancer.”
“He’s feeling it, that’s for sure.”
They were both silent for a moment.
Laura sensed that whatever rift had been between them was healing. She might as well make him even happier. “I’m thinking about coming back soon.”
“Oh?”
“I want to get into his house, but I don’t have enough to get a warrant.”
“Come on, do you really think he’s the one? I’m telling you, Lehman was this close to telling it all.”
Laura mentally shrugged. “I would like you to do one thing for me. The photographs I took at the crime scene that first morning—of all the people hanging out there? Could you FedEX them to me?”
“I came straight home from Bisbee. I’d have to go back to the squad bay to pick them up, then Fed Ex—“
“I know he was there, in Bisbee. I saw him. You did, too.”
“Where?”
“He was the pianist at the Copper Queen Hotel.”