Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity Read Free Page A

they?” I asked.
    “Meet Edward Travis Lucas the third,” Captain Williams said.
    He needed to say nothing more. The Lucas family, real estate developers for more than three generations, had their name on half the buildings in Galveston along with a healthy chunk of Houston. In its present condition, I barely recognized the man’s plain face framed by graying, mousy brown hair from the frequent photos in the
Houston Chronicle
society columns. I vaguely remembered a wife from those same photos, taken at the poshest parties. The woman I remembered looked nothing like the deceased on the bed. The wife was pretty, petite, and dark-haired. This woman was at least a decade younger than Lucas, tall and slim, with short blond hair. Athletic—from the muscles jutting down her thighs and calves, I guessed a runner.
    “Not the wife,” I said.
    “We found her ID in her purse. The dead woman is Annmarie Knowles, a lawyer at Lucas’s Galveston office,” the captain said. He picked up a framed photo from the nightstand, of the dead man standingbeside the brunette I remembered, surrounded by three apple-cheeked kids. “My guess is this is the wife.”
    “Does she know?”
    “Yeah,” said Nelson, reinserting himself into the conversation. “We sent a squad car to tell her an hour ago. Our guys said she took the news with less emotion than the dry-cleaning being late.”
    “Any leads? Anyone hear or see anything?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” said the captain.
    “This time of year you could fire a bazooka off around here and no one would hear it,” explained Nelson. “On weekdays ninety-nine percent of these houses are empty until summer.”
    “Do we know how the killer got in?”
    “No forced entry,” Nelson said.
    “The killer followed or brought them here? Entered when they did?” the captain asked.
    “That would be my guess,” I said. “Absent any evidence of a break-in.”
    “So you figure they knew him?”
    I thought about the bodies, about the type of mind that would fantasize about killing in such a ritualized way. “Probably not,” I said. “You never know this early in the investigation, but even though he didn’t force his way in, I doubt—”
    “I’m thinking the guy had a key.” Nelson interrupted, pulling up on the worn leather belt that held up his shapeless gray slacks. It was obvious that he hated having me on his case. Despite the cartoon, my sex had little to do with it. Nelson and I both knew why I’d been called in on the carjackings and why I stood across from him now; his boss didn’t trust him to solve the tough cases. Every cop has a jacket, a reputation. O. L. Nelson’s was that he’d earned a detective’s slot based on seniority and little else. He did nothing to challenge that image when he righted his buckle over his bulging waistline andspeculated. “I figure Lucas’s old lady gave the killer the key, set the whole thing up. The way I’ve got this thing pegged, this has the look of hired talent.”
    Then, slowly, as if explaining algebra to a second grader, Nelson looked at me and went on. “Little woman finds out hubby is screwing the hired help. Maybe he talks divorce. Maybe he and the wife have a pre-nup and the old lady figures he’ll find a way to leave her high and dry. Bye, bye checkbook. Hello full-time office job. She doesn’t like the prospects, so she puts out feelers, a little dough, and poof. Her problem vanishes.”
    “Why the elaborate staging of the bodies?” I asked. “Why the crosses?”
    “Camouflage,” he answered. Although I’d posed the question, he flashed the captain a knowing glance. “The guy wants us to think he’s some kind of psycho to keep us from connecting the murders to the wife.”
    “Possible,” I said.
    “You look doubtful,” the captain said.
    “Take a look at their hands and feet,” I suggested.
    Nelson bent down to get a better look at the rash of small cuts on both victims, as the captain shot me a questioning