Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [67]
Shit! Erik thought. This can’t be happening.
But it was. It surely was. At that very moment, the cop started reading him his rights, just as they did on that Cops show on TV. Only now, Erik LaGrange was the “bad boy” they had come for, and there was evidently nothing he could do to stop them.
With Erik LaGrange secure in the back of the Crown Vic, Brian Fellows headed toward the front door of the house, where he met PeeWee coming back out.
“What have we got?” Brian asked.
“Plenty,” PeeWee said grimly. “I don’t think this is where he killed her, but you can bet Erik’s our guy, all right. I found a machete soaking in bloody water in the kitchen sink and what looks like bloody footprints on the living room carpet.”
“We’d better call in CSI,” Brian said.
“Already did,” PeeWee told him. “They’re on their way.”
Brian stood for a moment scanning his notebook. Nowhere in Sue Lammers’s statement was there any mention that the man unloading the body had walked with a limp.
But that was then, he said, putting his notebook away. Whatever’s wrong with LaGrange’s leg could have happened later.
Erik sat in the patrol car—at least he assumed that’s what it was—and tried to decide what to do. Should he demand an attorney? On television, the guys who started squawking that they wanted an attorney were always the ones who were guilty and who knew their way around the law enforcement jungle.
But what should Erik do? He wasn’t guilty. He still wasn’t sure what had happened. They’d told him that a girl was dead, but who was she and how could she have anything to do with him? And how had all that blood—it really was blood—got in the back of his truck? The Tacoma’s bed had been perfectly clean the last time he looked inside the camper shell. Erik had watched the guy vacuum it two days earlier, when he took it to the car wash at Speedway and Country Club. In fact, the vacuuming was the main reason he’d given the cleaning crew a nice tip.
And if he was going to call a lawyer, who the hell should it be? Before last night he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have picked up the phone and called Rob Whistler. Rob was a good friend of Larry and Gayle Stryker. For the past three years, Rob had held a seat on the board of directors of Medicos for Mexico. As far as Erik knew, Rob had no dealings with criminal law, but he’d know someone who did. He’d have connections and know the right person to suggest.
But considering the situation between Erik and Gayle at the moment, Erik didn’t think calling Rob was such a good idea. No, this was something Erik was going to have to figure out all by himself.
Just then the two cops returned from the house. As Erik watched them walk toward him, the grim set to their faces made the knot in his stomach grow even larger.
Detective Fellows leaned down and looked inside the car. “Let me ask you this, Mr. LaGrange. Do you own a machete?”
“Sure,” Erik admitted at once. “I brought one back from Mexico last year. I bought it from a dealer at one of the open-air markets. Why? What about it?”
“Where was this machete of yours the last time you saw it?” Detective Fellows asked. Despite the ominous words, his voice once again exuded nothing but kindness and sweet reason.
“In my bedroom,” Erik said. “At the bottom of my underwear drawer.”
“I see. And what time did you leave your house this morning?”
“I don’t know. Early. Five-thirty or six. Why?”
“And where did you go?”
“Up Finger Rock Trail.”
“Did you go by yourself or with someone?”
Even Erik could tell his story sounded lame. “By myself,” he answered.
“Did anyone see you up there?” Fellows asked. “Anyone who could verify that they saw you there?”
Erik thought about the other hikers on the trail—the ones he had deliberately avoided because he was so upset over what had happened between him and Gayle.
“I saw a few people,” he conceded, “but I doubt they saw me.”
“Anyone from around here who might have seen you go?”
Erik shook his head. “You’d have to ask them. When I left the house, it was early on a Saturday. If anyone else was up by then,