Flashpoint by Lynn Hightower Page B

Chita chimed in. They glared at each other.
    â€œMaybe she changed them. With contacts.” Celia Anders looked pleased.
    Sonora glanced at Sam. The old witness shuffle.
    Ronnie scratched his chin and looked at Sonora. “She’s very small. Shorter even than you.”
    â€œWow,” Sam said. “Pretty short, huh?”
    Ronnie grinned. “She looked kind of, I don’t know, fragile? But she never smiled. Oh, and her lips were scarred. Like she bit them a lot.”
    â€œShe talk to a lot of guys? Flirt a lot?”
    â€œNot with me. I thought she seemed kind of shy. I remember being surprised she was talking to that guy. In the picture.”
    â€œShe was dressed to kill,” Chita said. “Short black jean skirt, and cowboy boots, and a bodysuit. Lots of makeup and long earrings.”
    Ronnie nodded. “Yeah. She had on a short skirt. I noticed that.”
    Chita sounded deceptively sweet. “She’s come in before, dressed like that. I’ve seen her talking to the other one.”
    Sonora turned the picture around, her fingertips grazing the features of Keaton Daniels. “The other one? This one?”
    â€œYeah, him.”
    â€œThe woman in the picture. The bride here. You ever see her come in?”
    Chita frowned and shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
    Sonora passed the picture to Ronnie.
    â€œNo. Her I would remember.”
    â€œI just bet you would,” Chita muttered, and was politely ignored. Ronnie handed the picture to Sonora, but Celia Anders intercepted it and gave it a good look. Sonora thought of sticky fingerprints. It was high time for copies.
    Sam pulled his ear. “Did Mark Daniels or the blonde use the phone? Ask for change, maybe?”
    Negative. Blank looks. The witness fairy wasn’t going to come.
    Sonora climbed down from the stool, took her purse with her, found a quarter to call her answering machine and check out the phone. She listened. No emergencies. And the pay phone worked. She pulled out her notebook and jotted down the number. They could pull records from the phone company. She wanted to know if Keaton Daniels had been called from the bar.

8
    Sonora went into the Board of Elections building and took the elevator to the fifth floor, to Homicide. There were Nonsmoking signs in three places, one of them over a metal ashtray. Crimestoppers wanted-posters were pinned neatly on a bulletin board. There were no coats in the coatrack out front. There never were.
    A woman sat in the glass booth doing a crossword puzzle, and Sonora waved. The door on the left led to the Crime Scene Unit, the other to Homicide. Both warned against entry without proper police escort.
    Sonora veered right, walked past the worn-down interview rooms, smelling fresh coffee. The box outside the door of the brass’s office was full of soda cans. Homicide recycled. As always, she glanced at the poster board that listed homicides for the year, solved and unsolved. Most of the unsolved were drug drive-bys. Hard as hell to track and prove, and the only satisfaction was in knowing that the shooter had a good chance of showing up on the board as a victim sometime in the next few months.
    Mark Daniels was the latest entry.
    Everyone was in, and the energy level was high. A lot of people on the phones, and Sonora getting speculative looks. Daniels was a real whodunit, and the other detectives were being pulled off their cases to run down leads.
    This one would be a headliner.
    The message light on her phone was lit and blinking. Her desk, piled with forms, files, a Rolodex, an evidence bag, and a half-filled can of Coke, was placed in the center of the room, butted up to Sam’s. Every desk had a plastic-wrapped teddy bear on top—some new program or other. A grant for every cop to carry a stuffed animal to give to children trapped in the crossfire of adults who screwed up. Sonora tossed her purse underneath the desk and kicked it where it