Capital Crimes Read Online Free PDF Page B

lady?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good, because I got a lot of shit to deal with and someone has to start making arrangements. It might as well be her.”
             
    “My God! Davida Dead?” Don Newell’s voice bellowed through the phone. “That’s fucking crazy! What the hell happened, Willie?”
    “You know how it works, Don. I wish I had more details but I don’t.”
    “Davida…oh, man, that’s—at least tell me how she died.”
    Barnes figured there was no sense being coy. “Twelve-gauge shotgun.”
    “Oh, man—a typical shotgun
thing
?”
    “It was ugly, Donnie.”
    “That’s insane…fuckingshit almighty—does her mom know?”
    “It’s being handled, Donnie.”
    “If Lucille Grayson hasn’t left for Berkeley, I’m taking her personally. Even if she has left, I’m coming down.”
    Newell’s basso was rimmed with a weird, almost hysterical tension. Even allowing for the shock, Barnes wondered what the connection was between a married Sacramento homicide cop and a gay representative. Now wasn’t the time to press.
    He said, “Donnie, everyone knows she had enemies in the capital. That egging may have been more than a prank. We could use you on home turf. Unless we get a quick solve down here, my partner and I will be coming your way soon, anyway.”
    There was a long pause. “Will, I’m not dumb and I know what you’re thinking because if things were reversed, I’d be thinking the same thing. There was nothing between Davida and me other than a casual friendship.
Nothing.
Get it?”
    “Sure do,” said Barnes, lying smoothly.
    “Why would there be anything, Will? Davida’s gay. Sure, once we were close—yeah, yeah I’ll stay out of your business but I will talk to Lucille. Two kids and now she’s lost both of them.”
    “Don, do me a favor, assemble everything on Davida that you can. When I see you next, it’ll be nice and official.”
    “It
is
official, Will. I mean it’s personal, but it’s official too.”
    “Ain’t that the truth,” said Barnes. “Now I need to get this out in the open, Don. You talk to her last night?”
    “Checked her cell?” said Newell. “Yeah, sure, I called her because we arrested a couple of White Tower boys for the egging. Brent and Ray Nutterly. But I know it wasn’t them who killed her because we put their asses in jail.”
    “What about their buddies in the organization?”
    “We were just starting to work that angle, as a matter of fact, because of other things.”
    “What other things?”
    “A couple of months ago, she got an anonymous threatening letter. Low-level stuff—you know, letters cut out of a magazine. We could never could trace it to anyone specific but I wanted to do more. Davida said no, didn’t want me making a big deal about it. She said too much of that kind of publicity gave the bastards what they wanted and made her look bad.”
    “Look bad how?”
    “She was big on her public image, gay and progressive but above the fray—her words. She also didn’t want anyone to think that she wasn’t accessible. Looks like she was too fucking accessible—I should have been more insistent! Damn it, just last night I told her to think about hiring a bodyguard. She blew me off.”
    “Tell me more about her political enemies.”
    “Enemies is too strong a word. I’d call them opponents. No one crazy enough to kill her, Will.”
    “Did she ever talk to you about specific people she was afraid of?”
    “First of all, we didn’t talk on a regular basis. Second, if she did, don’t you think I’da told you? Paranoia wasn’t Davida’s style. Just the opposite; she minimized danger. When this letter thing came up, she was blasé. To my eye, the woman was never afraid of anything.”
             
    While the Loo, the captain, and Amanda Isis fielded questions from the fire-stoking press and strident community activists ready to be outraged about anything, Barnes went through the evidence picked up by CSU. Doorknobs had