No reason to lose sleep over it; she had too much to do. She decided to stretch her legs, so she got up and walked a short distance down the hall. “Still no word on Verdago?” she asked as she stepped into Alvarez’s much too neat office. How did anyone work that way, with everything stacked, filed, and color-coded? Even the top of her desk held only one open file and a bottle of water, its cap screwed on tightly, resting on a coaster near a cup holding several pens and pencils.
“Nothing.”
It was near four in the afternoon and outside, night had fallen. Pescoli had spent the last few hours on the phone, running down tips and reevaluating the reports from the crime lab that included any trace evidence that had been collected and processed. Fingerprints, footprints, and tire treads had been analyzed and compared, the preliminary autopsy, without drug information on the judge performed, bullet striations compared, and all of the judge’s personal life, from her telephone records to her bank statements, were already being pored over.
Every facet of the judge’s life, like that of Dan Grayson’s, was being dissected—professionally, personally, and privately—and laid bare.
The obvious link between the two victims was their work, the people they came in contact with and the scumbags they’d put away, but that was almost too easy, and nothing yet was fitting. As they’d discussed earlier, Alvarez and Pescoli were searching for any other connection between Dan Grayson and Kathryn Samuels-Piquard.
Socially, they would run into each other at occasional charity events, but they didn’t really travel in the same circles, primarily because Grayson didn’t seem to have much of a social life.
There was phone contact between the two, but usually during work hours, and the six times that Grayson had called the judge late at night in the last two years turn
ed out to be on the nights he’d requested search warrants and needed a judge’s signature. Samuels-Piquard had obliged. So far, they’d found no incidences when the judge had called Grayson, except at work, and those had been spotty and few.
Aside from searching for a connection between the victims, Pescoli was still looking into their personal lives, but so far, Grayson’s ex-wives and Samuels-Piquard’s family seemed clean. However, there was still Vincent Piquard, the judge’s ne’er-do-well, and lately invisible, brother. The cell phone number Winston had given her for him had been a bust; the elderly woman on the other end of the phone said she’d gotten the number only six months earlier and, sure enough, phone records had concurred.
Vincent was off the radar.
Even though his sister’s death had been splashed all over the news.
Odd.
Very odd.
Even if the siblings had been estranged, it seemed Vincent would have appeared, have talked to his nephew, or have contacted a lawyer about his part, if any, of the estate. Death of a relative usually brought out the rest of the family—the good eggs, the black sheep, and the bad seeds.
And then there was the missing Maurice Verdago. The more time that went by, the more Pescoli was thinking he might be the guy. His violent streak was a matter of record and though he’d never actually been convicted of a homicide, there was the Joey Lundeen cold case. Lundeen had disappeared nearly fifteen years earlier and had known Verdago. Maurice had been a suspect in his disappearance. Pescoli had already requested the records.
As if reading her mind, Alvarez rolled her chair away from her desk and said, “Verdago’s still missing, and no one in his family or close friends seem to know where he is. I checked.”
“What about his wife?”
“Nothing nice to say about him. Seems she wasn’t aware that Maurice had a woman on the side. Carnie Tibalt. Actually, her full name is Carnival, and Wanda, who didn’t know about his girlfriend until we started nosing around, went ballistic when she found out.”
“Oops,” Pescoli said. “Have you talked to either woman?”
“Only Wanda. I was the lucky person who asked her about Carnie after she told me she had no idea where her husband was. But she must’ve suspected he had something going on with Carnie because she didn’t argue the point or scream that it was impossible. What she said was, ‘That fuckin’ bitch!’ and hung up. Hasn’t answered her phone since.”
Pescoli actually grinned. “What about Carnie—geez, Carnival, really, who would do that to a kid?”
“I’ve heard lots worse.”
“Okay, me too,” Pescoli allowed. “Any luck with her?”
“Not much. She won’t even pick up the phone, and no one answers at her last known address.”
“Work?”
“Like Verdago, she’s gone. Worked as a barmaid over at the Long Branch. Picked up her last paycheck and disappeared.”
“What about vehicles? They’ve got to be driving something.”
“Maybe her car. The wife has Verdago’s old Chevy Blazer, so it’s out of play. Carnie has no car registered to her, but she drives an old Dodge van according to her coworkers at the bar. No one remembers much about it, so it must have Montana plates, nothing that stood out. All I know is it’s white or light gray or silver, depending on who you ask, and has a dent in the driver’s side door. About twenty years old.”
“Big enough to sleep in.”
“You still have to park it somewhere.”