“Look, had Sally been acting, I don’t know, weird lately?”
Natty glanced up. “Weird? What do you mean by weird?”
“Like she had something on her mind?”
“We were having a fling, Decker. She probably had that on her mind.”
“I don’t mean just that. The thing is, when she agreed to help me, I could tell there was something on her mind. And it wasn’t her relationship with you. I already knew about that.”
“What else could it be?”
“I just thought she might have mentioned something to you.”
Decker would have much preferred to come straight out and ask the guy, but he couldn’t. Right now, he didn’t know who was involved in what, and he didn’t want to give any of his suspicions away unnecessarily.
Natty rubbed the back of his neck and seemed to mull over the question. “She seemed a little jumpy lately. I just thought it was because you saw us together that day.”
“Well, you made it pretty easy for me. You just drove up and started yelling at me while she was in the car.”
At first Decker thought Natty might snap back at this comment, but he didn’t. Maybe Brimmer’s death and his wife’s kicking him out had changed the man.
“I was the big dog here, Decker, before you came along. I made detective grade before you, and great things were expected of me.”
“You did your job, Natty. You worked your cases, caught bad guys. Just like I did.”
“Come on. There was no comparison. You were born for this.”
“I’m not sure I was born for it, but right now it’s the only thing I have in my life.”
Natty looked pained by this simple, straightforward admission. “When your family got killed, I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t. Nothing like that had ever happened here. And then, and I’m ashamed to admit it, I relished watching you hit rock bottom. Every day you went lower and lower. And more to the point, you were no longer competition for me in the department.”
Decker said nothing to this. He could have erupted over this baldly cynical statement, but he chose not to.
“And then a funny thing happened. We weren’t closing nearly the number of cases we used to. And then the shooting at the high school happened. And we couldn’t make a dent in finding out who did it. And then you came and solved the whole thing.”
“I didn’t have much choice, Natty. Seeing as how I was directly connected to the ‘whole thing.’”
“But then you got the gig with the FBI and you were gone again. I did some cases with Mary and things were going okay. Maybe I’d get promoted up the ladder.” He paused and chewed on his tongue for a moment. “And then this thing with Sally started. It was stupid. We both knew it was, but we couldn’t stop.” He glanced up at Decker. “We only had sex a couple of times. I wanted to do it more. But Sally, well, she was funny about that.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation on any of this, Natty.”
“And then you came back to town and this whole shit with Hawkins started up again. When I saw you back, I just freaked. To be honest, I thought I was rid of you forever. And then there you were.”
“I came back to visit my family’s graves. I didn’t ask for Hawkins to walk up to me and say he was innocent. But for that, I’d be long gone from here, for at least another year.”
Natty cleared his throat and sat back. “I’ve been a cop longer than I haven’t been a cop. It’s become my whole life. I’m good at it, I think. But I’m not you.”
“No one ever said you were,” replied Decker. “And you wouldn’t want to be me.”
“Well, now Sally’s dead and my wife is gone. Luckily, the kids are pretty much grown. So, all I got is…this,” he added, looking around the room.
“When this case is done, Natty, I’ll be gone. You can have it all to yourself.”
Natty grunted and gave a hollow chuckle. “I’m finding out that my problems run a lot deeper than my jealousy of you, Decker.”
“Then face them and try to work through them. You’ve seen a lot of shit in your life. So have I. Life is never perfect. You make the most of what you have. You can sink into self-pity or you can rise above it. Why don’t you choose to rise above it, starting right now? And really think about my question about Sally. Was anything bothering her?”
Natty looked at him suspiciously. “Why do you keep asking that? Did you find something that…?”
“Sally had reddish hair.”
“I know that,” said Natty, looking confused.
“She ever wear a wig?”
“A wig? What, are you being funny?”
“No. A blonde wig, cut short.”
“No, why? Why would she wear a wig? Do women even wear wigs anymore?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some do.”
“Well, not Sally. At least not that I ever saw. She had really nice hair. Why are you asking me that? Did you find a wig?”
“In her closet.”
“What were you doing in her closet?”
“Lancaster actually found it. We were searching her place looking for a motive for murder.”
“But you were the target, not her!”
Decker shook his head. “The guy who shot Katz was the same guy who shot Brimmer. We recently found out he was a trained sniper. He had a laser scope that could have nailed me from a thousand yards away. No way the guy misses a shot from a twentieth that distance. Look at me, Natty. I’m the size of a barn. You could’ve made that shot with your damn pistol.”
Natty slumped back in his chair. “But why in the hell would anyone want to kill Sally? She was…she was a good person. She had no enemies.”
“That you know of.”
Natty glanced sharply up at him. “And what does the wig have to do with this?”
“The wig pretty much exactly matches Susan Richards’s hairdo.”
It took a few moments for this to connect with Natty. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that—”
“That Brimmer put on a wig to impersonate Richards? Yeah, I am. I think Richards’s body was in that suitcase. It was all a show for Richards’s neighbor. To make us think she’d done a runner. And then committed suicide.”
“You’re saying that Sally killed Richards? No fucking way. I’ve run into a lot of murderers, Decker. So have you. Sally couldn’t have hurt a fly.”
“I don’t think she killed Richards. She might not have even known what was in the suitcase. It might have been locked. But I think she was forced to impersonate Richards and leave in her car with the suitcase. At some point others took the suitcase and then left the body where we found it.”
“Why would Sally be part of something like that?”
“Maybe somebody was blackmailing her.”
“About what?”
“One guess, Natty.”
Realization spread over his features. “Our…fling?”
“Someone tells her they’ll spill the truth to your wife unless Sally puts on the wig. Otherwise, she’d be ruined professionally. They didn’t have to tell her that Richards was dead, or in the suitcase. She just had to drive it away in the car.” Decker paused. “So, that’s why I want to know if Brimmer was acting funny.”