Cody Walker's Woman

“Maybe I will at that.”

Keira asked, “Do you need to call your office first?”

Callahan shook his head. “I already thought of it, but I’m not on duty until tomorrow. Memorial Day weekend is always bad—lots of drinking, lots of bar fights, and lots of people on the road too drunk to drive and too stupid to know better. There’s also a big Memorial Day party at the VFW hall in town on Monday. That’s why I scheduled myself on duty for the whole three-day weekend.” He smiled wryly. “Mandy wasn’t happy about it, but...” He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

“Memorial Day,” Cody said thoughtfully. “Do you think it has anything to do with this?” he asked. “Do you think there’s something going down on Monday?”

Callahan considered the question. “Anything’s possible. But Steve indicated trouble wasn’t imminent when he spoke to me yesterday morning.” He paused, his face hardening. “But now he’s dead. So, yeah. Anything’s possible.”

He headed toward the bed, but stopped when Keira touched his arm. “What did you mean earlier when you said not quite?” At his questioning look she explained, “When Cody stated any proof your neighbor had, died with him, you said, ‘Not quite.’”

“Right.” His glance moved to Cody. “I didn’t tell you everything when we met outside this morning. It’s true Mandy and I couldn’t do anything to save Steve, but he managed to say something to me before he died.” The harsh lines of his face showed his frustration. “I just don’t know what it means.”

“What did he say?” Cody asked.

Callahan pinched his lips together with a forefinger and thumb as he contemplated how to put it. “It sounds funny, I know, but he said something like, ‘Vay-nee, vee-dee—’”

“Veni, vidi, vici,” Keira said, pronouncing the Latin words with a classical w sound instead of a v, then added, “It’s also pronounced with a v—veni, vidi, vici.”

“That’s it, that’s exactly what he said.”

“It’s Latin,” Cody explained. “It means, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Supposedly Julius Caesar said it.”

Callahan still looked puzzled. “I don’t get it. What’s so important about it that Steve would die trying to tell me?”

Cody raised his brows in a question to Keira. “Some kind of code?”

She shook her head regretfully. “If it’s a code, I don’t know what it is. The reference to Julius Caesar could mean anything—the Ides of March, Marc Antony, the Roman legions, crossing the Rubicon. Even the month of July or William Shakespeare. Or it could have absolutely nothing to do with Julius Caesar. Sorry.” She looked at Callahan. “Did he say anything else?”

“One other word at the very end, but I couldn’t really understand him. That’s when he—” Callahan stopped abruptly before continuing. “It sounded something like center or centaur, but I can’t swear to it. And neither word has a connection to anything as far as I can tell.” He thrust one hand into his jeans pocket and came out with what looked like an ordinary house key in his palm. “He had this in his hand.” Callahan stared down at it, his brows twitching together as he said in a voice from which all emotion had been wiped clean, “It still has Steve’s blood on it.”

Cody reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a couple of small plastic evidence bags, one of which he opened and held out for Callahan to drop the key into. “Probably too much to hope for a fingerprint other than yours and Tressler’s,” he told the other man, “but just in case...”

“Yeah,” Callahan said.

“No idea what door it opens?”

“Not a clue. His truck keys were still in the ignition, and what looked like a house key was on the key ring. But it wasn’t the same key as this one—that’s the first thing I checked.”

Cody looked the key over, then held the plastic bag out to Keira. “What do you make of it?”

She ignored the blood and examined the key closely through the plastic. “It’s a double-sided key for a dead bolt,” she said. “And the maker’s mark on the bow indicates it’s a copy, not an original key for the lock. That’s about all I can tell you.” She handed it back to Cody.