it sounded in Walt’s ears like a starting pistol. He abhorred the idea that the investigation had just become a race, but there was no denying it.
He shot off an e-mail to Boldt, hoping to give him a heads-up. His office would be the next to be contacted. He called his PIO into his office.
As the office’s public information officer, Deputy “Even” Eve Sanchez had the looks and the brains to be a crowd-pleaser. She was bilingual, beautiful, and young. The cameras liked her and so did Walt.
He briefed her on Gale and detailed the “potential land mines.” They’d spoken about the case periodically over the past few days, but not with the specifics of his suspicions and the Boldt interviews with Boatwright and Wynn—all information she needed. They would take a public position of “ongoing investigation” and therefore “no comment.” But McClure’s office needed to be warned, and Tommy Brandon and Fiona both needed debriefings with Eve. They scheduled to meet twice daily and he promised updates as he had them. For the time being he would not take any questions or interviews, but when pressed by her, agreed to join her at a press conference the following morning at ten a.m. She would meet him at his house later in the evening to prep him.
With Sanchez gone, he called Royal McClure to warn him and asked Nancy to bring Fiona and Brandon in as soon as possible.
He searched e-mails and his own notes about the case, mentally reviewed discussions he’d had with Boldt, and tried to see loose ends that needed tying off.
One that came to mind was the emergency room admissions for the night of Gale’s death. If they offered anything promising, he’d want to lock them down. The Louisiana list server for anyone affected by the Gale prosecution loomed large. It was just the kind of thing a reporter would scoop him on. He fired off a second e-mail to Boldt asking if he could pull strings as he’d offered.
He hung up from another call with Nancy—requesting the emergency room log for the night in question—and felt dizzy.
He needed food. He needed time.
He ordered takeout, called Lisa, and asked her to stay with the girls.
Nancy entered his office waving a sheet of paper.
“Emergency room records,” she said, placing it before him.
Walt straightened the sheet and read. Two admissions, one a child with a broken ankle, the other an ax wound to the leg. He stared at the page, unable to divorce himself from his father’s jabbing sarcasm about how unreal his son’s job was when compared to one in a major city. Each hospital in Seattle probably saw a dozen emergency room admissions a night, some several dozen.
“This is it?” he said.
“You’re looking at it.”
“Not much help.”
“No, I didn’t think so.”
He ran his hand through his hair.
“One of the guys was going to look into the convenience stores and drug stores—Chateau, and the Drug Store, in particular—and see if anyone remembers anything on that night. Can you chase that down?”
“Not a problem.”
“Wait!” he said, holding the page now, wishing he could choke it. “Midnight to midnight,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“He was found on the fourteenth, and we bagged him on the fourteenth. But Royal couldn’t give us a predictable time of death. Temperature drops too much each night. He was guessing he’d been there at least a day, and that seemed supported by the degradation—the predation to the face and limbs. So, let’s say he went lights-out the twelfth or thirteenth.”
“O . . . k . . . a . . . y?” she said cautiously, accustomed to being his sounding board and knowing to stay out of his way.
“Which is why I asked for the twelfth,” he said, shaking the sheet of paper. “But it’s a midnight start. It’s a true day, and if Gale was killed—”
“Late night the twelfth,” she said, unable to help herself.
“Exactly. Then we should be looking at the thirteenth, not the twelfth.”
“I’ll call.”
Impatience got the better of him over the next twenty minutes. He would try answering an e-mail, only to find himself holding down the backspace key and starting over. He looked over his “hot list” of follow-ups to accomplish before the press conference, but felt stymied.
His computer rang a tone. He saw notice of an e-mail from Boldt and read it. The detective had managed to contact a man in the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, a deputy A.G. by the name of Robert “Buddy” Cornell. Cornell believed he could