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"On impulse? A knee-jerk reaction?"
"Yeah. Like that."
"Don't let me put words in your mouth, Miss Arnold."
"I'm not. That's exactly what it was like."
"And you're sure it was this man?" He opened a manila folder he'd carried in with him and removed from it a blowup of Oren's employee photo from Delray Marketing. The girl nodded vigorously. "I'm positive."
Ski replaced the picture in the folder. "After he fired the shot at Davis, what happened?"
She began to cry in earnest again. "I don't know," she wailed. "I didn't even wait to see if Davis was okay. I just turned and ran. I ran to the office, where that sow was still looking through her stupid magazine. I yelled at her to call 911. I told her that Davis had been shot. The fat bitch says, 'I don't want no trouble.'"
Lisa Arnold spoke in a voice that was obviously an imitation of the motel owner. "I told her to get her fucking, fat--" She cut her eyes toward the video camera, then back to Ski. "Sorry."
"It's okay. Go ahead."
"Well, I told her to get her ass on the phone. But she just folded her fat arms over her big belly. So I grabbed the desk phone and called myself. I didn't even realize it then, but I'd dropped my purse when the gun went off. I didn't have my cell."
"The time between your 911 call and the first responder's arrival was less than five minutes," Ski told her.
"Five minutes?" she exclaimed. "Are you sure? It seemed like forever."
"What were you doing during that time?"
Her chin began to quiver, then her entire face collapsed. She sobbed into the tissue. "I should've gone back and checked on Davis. But I was too scared. I didn't know where that maniac was or what he was doing. I was afraid he'd come after me next.
"So I crouched behind the counter there in the motel office. That old bitch kept telling me that if her place got shut down on account of me, she was gonna kill me herself. I was screaming at her to shut up, to just shut up, but she kept cussing at me till that cop got there."
"You didn't see the man again?"
"No."
"His car? Which direction he went?"
"No." She wiped her face and took an uneven breath to steady herself. "I think you probably know everything else."
"Can we go now?" the stepmother asked.
Ski shot her a look that would have curdled milk, then to Lisa he said, "Thank you, Miss Arnold."
"Don't thank me. I feel awful for leaving Davis there."
"We'll have to wait for the medical examiner's official ruling, but I've seen a lot of gunshot wounds. It appeared to me that the bullet was fired directly into his heart. If so, he died instantly." Gently, he added, "There was nothing you could have done for him."
Ski attended to the business of seeing Miss Arnold and her stepmother out. He assigned a deputy to escort them home and to stay there on watch until further notice. He was afraid Oren Starks might decide to come after the eyewitness to Davis Coldare's slaying. He'd already told everyone within the sheriff's office that Lisa Arnold's name was not to be released.
Since the Merritt County S.O. didn't have a crime scene unit, they used that of the nearest office of the Texas Rangers. Ski called the ranger sent to investigate the motel room and asked for an update. He reported that he had finished his work there and was packing up his gear.
Ski said, "I'm having a man stay out there to guard that room. I don't trust the owner not to ignore the tape and go inside. She's got a rap sheet as long as my arm. I've arrested her twice for drug trafficking. She's partial to prescription drugs."
The ranger chuckled. "Yeah, she had some choice words about me messing up her swell place here."
"Let me know what you get."
"Sure will, Ski."
When he was finally able to return to the group in the interrogation room, their mood was somber. The coffee cups were empty. Caroline and Dodge glumly acknowledged him. Berry was sitting at the table, staring at the stir stick she was mechanically turning end over end. Ski pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.
