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“I understand why you’re obsessed with her, but there’s no evidence she has anything to do with this case.”
“Outside our house on Saturday night, she stuck a gun in my face and said, ‘Where are my stones?’ I don’t think she meant her rock collection. She said she would have preferred to ‘suicide me.’ Exactly what happened with Pennington. I disarmed her but she fought and ran. She had a backup gun and shot Lindsey.”
Pham’s finely chiseled features exuded skepticism.
“Are you sure that’s what she said? You had a gun pointed at you.”
“Yes!” The agents looked at me again and I lowered my voice. “She said something else, too. That she made Peralta a promise and killing us was part of it.”
“Let’s talk privately.” He led me into a cubbyhole made by two six-foot tilt-up panels. Inside was another table where Lindsey and I had probably eaten Chicago dogs many times. Now it was covered with files surrounding a desktop computer. On the wall was an FBI seal and framed photo of the president. Were it not for these totems, I would have thought we were in a mortgage boiler room from the days of the subprime boom.
Pham sat forward on his chair, perfect posture, and waited until I took the seat across from him.
He slid a paper toward me. It was from the Department of Corrections and showed a woman with stringy long hair and cellblock eyes.
“Fourteen years ago, her boyfriend beat her little girl to death. She helped him bury the body in the desert. Shallow grave. She called the police and told them her daughter had been taken by a Mexican man. This was while you were away, but it was a big deal in the media. Peralta interrogated her personally, played it perfectly, got her to confess and testify against the boyfriend. He went away for life and she was sentenced to fifteen years as an accessory.”
I held up my palms: so what?
“Look at the sheet again.”
I scanned it. The woman’s name was Amy Sue Morris. But she didn’t look anything like the woman who had shot Lindsey.
“Women can redo their hair,” he said. “Here are the two salient facts. First, in the sentencing, she went nuts. Peralta was in the courtroom and she threatened to kill him and his family. Second, she was released a week before Christmas from the Perryville prison.”
“Eric, it’s not the same woman. The one who nearly killed Lindsey is after the diamonds. She wore Chanel Number Five. How many released prisoners do that? I smelled Chanel Number Five in Pennington’s office. She had been there.”
“You’re a perfume expert?”
He was almost making me start to doubt myself. But the woman I had tangled with had moves they don’t train you for in prison.
Pham cut me off. “I don’t want to get distracted here. The asset told me that the phone rang while you were in Pennington’s office, you answered it claiming to be Pennington. The man expects you to call him.”
I nodded.
“What did he sound like?”
“No accent. Baritone. No background noise. When I asked about Peralta, he said that he was ‘a different problem,’ that it was better for me not to know. Also, he told me that Mann’s window is closing.”
Pham stiffened. “He named Horace Mann?”
I nodded and he wrote it down on a legal pad.
“What about Pamela Grayson? Did that name come up?”
I shook my head. “But he also knew about the hitwoman. He named her. Amy Morris. That’s the same name that Phoenix PD identified when they raided a place up by the Biltmore this morning. She’s been wounded but she was gone.”
“Wounded?” Pham raised an eyebrow.
“I shot her last night but she was wearing body armor. I followed her to the house. If she doesn’t have anything to do with the diamonds, why did Horace Mann show up there this morning?”
“Because you called it in.”
“But…”
“You’re creating a feedback loop to bring everything back to the person who shot your wife. It’s understandable. You’re emotionally involved. You’re also blinded by it.” He tapped the corrections report. “That’s your female. Give that to Phoenix PD.”
“I know what I know.” Still, I forced my breathing to slow down and took a careful, objective look. It wasn’t her. The eyes, mouth, and cheekbones were all wrong, even if she could have changed her hair so radically.
