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Savvy replaced her phone in her messenger bag. No, she wasn’t going to stay over at Hale and Kristina’s house. There was a nanny in place for the baby, and she couldn’t suffer any more of the dangerous thoughts that seemed to infect her reason whenever she was too close to Hale.
Dragging her attention back to the case, she glanced back down at the report again. There was nothing in it she hadn’t seen before. In her mind’s eye she thought about Owen DeWitt’s comment about Charlie with Kristina at the Donatella house. “He had her up against the wall. Banging her like crazy . . .” She checked again to see if the techs had found anything—blood, tissue, semen—other than that of the victims themselves, but there was no mention of it. The techs had taken fingerprints and had used luminol over most of the house, looking for blood traces from tissue or semen or actual blood from the perpetrator, but there wasn’t anything definitive.
Catherine had said Declan Jr. was too careful to leave any evidence.
Was he the man Kristina had been with, if she’d been with anyone at all . . . ?
Savvy thought about that hard for a few moments, testing her own gut feeling on the subject. She did believe Kristina was having an affair, whether Hale knew it or not. She also believed that affair had gone sour; Kristina had wanted out. She’d said as much to Savannah, and all her talk of sorcery, of feeling weird, and not being herself, seemed to add credence to that theory.
Lang had been gone for a while, and now he returned, running his hands through his damp hair as he retook his seat at his desk. “Cold rain,” he said. Savvy was considering how to tell him she’d talked to Hale, when he added, “Finally reached Curtis about those deaths outside the Rib-I last Thursday.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.
The guy who killed those two is a ghost. Meets ’em outside, then pops ’em. End of story.”
“Hmmm.”
“There was a gal inside the bar who saw Garth, the male victim, get in some guy’s grill about hitting on his date, Tammie, the female victim. Curtis asked for a description, but all she said was that she thought he was good-looking. Had a big smile. Tammie and Garth must’ve made up, because they were having sex in the parking lot when the killer attacked them.”
Savvy thought about her meeting with DeWitt. “A lot of restaurants and bars in Portland, and I was at the Rib-I two nights later, meeting with Owen DeWitt.”
“I know.”
They looked at each other. “DeWitt said some things about my sister,” Savvy admitted.
“Uh-oh.”
She smiled faintly. “Yeah. Like she was having sex with somebody up against the wall in the Donatella house on which the killer spray painted blood money. Said he saw her there with the same guy a couple of times when he was at the site, looking for some proof that it wasn’t his fault the dune failed. DeWitt’s like that. A blame shifter.”
“That’s why you wanted to recheck the physical evidence?”
She nodded. “I didn’t find anything. I don’t even really know if I believe DeWitt’s account.”
“Have you told St. Cloud this?”
“Not all of it. I asked him if he thought Kristina had a lover, and he acted like it was news.”
“You talked to him today?”
“Yep.” She related her conversation with Hale, and his expression darkened until she finished with, “We have a memorial service to plan together. I’m going to talk to him today, tomorrow, every day.”
“Don’t get in Hamett and Evinrud’s way. I’m just sayin’.”
“I’m just sayin’ that someone other than Hale killed my sister. I want to talk to DeWitt again.”
“Hell, no. Savannah,” he said, spreading his hands in a “What gives?” gesture.
“If Kristina’s death has anything to do with the Donatella homicides, that’s our case.”
“I’ll talk to DeWitt.”
“Okay, fine.”
She’d already moved on to another thought: Paulie Williamson, the ex-Portland Bancroft Development manager who’d moved to Tucson. Clark Russo had given her his number.
For a brief moment, she thought about telling Lang what Catherine had said about Mary’s son Declan. How he was coming after them, and Declan Sr., too. How he might have been “gifted” with Mary’s strange sexual lure. How the boys were so much more affected than the girls. Lang knew Catherine well. Knew about the woo-woo. He might give the whole thing some credence, even.
