Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [46]
It was a joke, and she laughed, but even the word misdemeanor, with its connotations of arrest and punishment, prodded her into a new spasm of panic.
The waitress came back with the bill, and Elizabeth paid in cash, overpaying somewhat, not caring.
“Keep the change. I’m sorry about the—you know.”
“Not a problem. Don’t you want that cinnamon roll?”
“Guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach.” The cliché came from nowhere, rescuing her from a self-conscious silence. She got up, grabbing her purse, trying not to look at the cops, feeling like such a fool.
After twelve years she was still this afraid. After last night. After the phone call an hour ago. After all she had done, all she’d been through—still the fear was with her, clinging like a shadow.
She left the coffee shop. Outside, she glanced through the window, and for a moment she was sure she saw one of the cops, the one who’d made the misdemeanor joke, watching her.
But maybe not.
It could have been her imagination.
She hated this life. Running, hiding. Hated it, and she was tired of it, too, just tired, worn out.
Her Chevette was parked on a side street, away from the main thoroughfare. She slipped behind the wheel and sat for a long moment, breathing harshly through her mouth, letting the fear subside.
After a while she slotted the key into the ignition cylinder and ran the battery, then turned on the radio. She dialed through the AM bands, wanting to hear a soothing voice, something to distract her. She found a news update. The time was exactly nine o’clock, and the ABC announcer was talking about a battle in Congress over Medicaid funding.
This was good. This was a safe topic, far removed from her life and her concerns. She listened, grateful for the illusion of escape.
There were more news headlines, then a spate of ads, then the stock market numbers at this hour, and after the ABC sign-off, the local news came on.
“The top local story, a possible break in the White Mountains Killer case ...”
Elizabeth sat upright, her fear forgotten.
This soon? Word had gotten out already?
It seemed impossible, too much even to hope for.
But ...
“Police sources say they may have apprehended the man who killed single mom Sharon Andrews in the White Mountains wilderness last April. There is, as yet, no official word ...”
They had him.
Somehow, only an hour after she’d left the satchel, they had arrested Cray.
“... a man believed to be in custody and linked to the crime that shocked southern Arizona. Reports are still sketchy, but it appears that a telephone tip to nine-one-one earlier this morning may have been instrumental in identifying the suspect....”
Her call.
There was no doubt, then.
It was incredible that they had moved so fast, but somehow they had.
The report ended with a request to stay tuned for further details as they developed, and then a political talk show came on, and Elizabeth switched off the radio.
She felt immensely better. She felt fine. She wished she could march right back into the coffee shop and finish that cinnamon roll she’d left uneaten.
Cray was in custody.
In custody.
Words that had haunted her, frightened her, for the past twelve years—but not this time.
“I won,” she told John Bainbridge Cray. “I beat you, you evil son of a bitch. I beat you.”
20
At 9:30 A.M. a meeting of the White Mountains Killer task force convened in an interrogation room at Tucson PD’s downtown headquarters. Captain Paul Brookings, commander of the Homicide Division, presided. He looked unhappy, but he always did.
“Got a shit storm coming,” he said by way of opening the conclave.
His gaze panned over the seven men seated around the long mahogany table and lounging on the metal bench against one wall. The bench was fitted with steel rings, suitable for securing handcuffed prisoners when the room was used for its primary purpose.
“So what else is new?” a detective named Rivera sighed.
Marty Kroft tossed a Styrofoam coffee cup at a wastebasket and missed.
The task force was decidedly informal in both its organization and its