Once in a Blue Moon

Once in a Blue Moon

         Chief Sam MacKinnon of the Bay Area Police drove through the gates in the brick wall and up the driveway to the rambling house nestled in towering pines at the edge of Taylor Lake. He was thinking of how many times he'd been there on happier errands.  He pulled his white Chevy SUV up behind two parked black-and-whites, a plain white Ford Taurus belonging to the only detective in the small suburb, and the county EMS van. There were no garish revolving red lights. Unless it was a real emergency or hot pursuit, his police force didn't use lights or sirens in exclusive Bayview Estates lest it disturb the wealthy suburban air with the sounds of reality.  

         He walked through the open front door and immediately spotted the crowd around the swimming pool through the glass wall of the living room. They surrounded a naked body of a woman on the decking next to the pool. As he walked up, the crowd parted to let him through, murmuring their greetings.

         At first, he didn't recognize the naked body because of all the blood, but his reasoning told him the horribly mutilated form had to be the lady of the house: Cindy Rutledge--wife of his friend and attorney, Jim Rutledge--and the biggest nymphomaniac on the north shore. He sighed, and said softly to himself, "Well, Cindy, I reckon your sins finaly caught up to you."

          A detective looked up from where he knelt near the body, taking specimens for evidence and said, "Gonna be a tough one, Chief."

         "Why's that?" the Chief replied absently, responding as though he thinking of something else.

          "The way Cindy's been picking up guys around the clubs, coulda been anybody."

          "I know it. Lots of potential suspects." The Chief sighed and his gaze wandered over the lake and forrest dotted with luxury homes that filled his view as though he could spot the killer somewhere in that vast expanse of Texas suburbia. "Well, do what you can with the forensics though I doubt we'll find much of use. I reckon the killer knows about as much as we do about crime scenes and alibis."

         "What do you mean, Chief." The detective was puzzled.

          The killer is probably a former prosecutor for the Houston DA--her husband, Jim Rutledge. But we'll play hell proving it.

****

         "Bay Area Police Department, can I help you?"

         "Chief MacKinnon, please. Jim Rutledge calling."

         "Hi, Mr. Rutledge. This is Joyce. . . Joyce Phillips. You handled my divorce two years ago?"

         "Of course, Joyce. I remember you. How's it going?"

         "It ain't. That lousy Ex of mine is two months behind in his payments, but I notice he's got a new boat to run around the bay on and. . . "

         "Joyce, I'll be glad to talk about it at my office. I'll tell Sadie that you're gonna call, and we'll see what we can do, OK?"

         "That'd be great, Mr. Rutledge, you dont know. . . "

         "Joyce, excuse me, but could you put me through to Sam."

         "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Rutledge, I'll put you right through."

         There was a short pause and Jim Rutledge spent it by taking a deep breath. What he was about to do would dredge up a lot of memories that probably should be left alone. But he felt he had to go through with his plan in order to get some peace of mind.

         "Chief MacKinnon."

         "Sam, it's Jim Rutledge." He heard a half-suppressed sigh at the other end of the line.

         "Lo, Jim. Reckon I was kinda expecting your call."

         "Tomorrow will be a year since Cindy's murder, Sam."

         "I know it...and I hate to tell you I still ain't got anything to tell you."

         "Sam, you know I'm not trying to bug you, but I guess its become an obsession with me, to find that guy. I keep thinking about it, and. . ." he paused. "Anyway, I just want to make sure the case isn't closed, that someone is still trying to find him."

         "Hell, man, if there was a single lead, any new thing at all, you know I'd. . . " He trailed off with his silence highlighting the futility of the task.

         "Sam, I've got an idea. Something that hasn't been tried."

         "Jim. Maybe you should let us handle the investigation. I'm not talking now as police chief. I'm talking as your friend."

         "No, dammit. Not as long as that sonuvabitch is out there." Rutledge's voice rose and he realized he was about to lose control. He deliberately calmed himself and lowered his tone. "You don't understand. She was my wife, and I've got to try. . . "

         "OK. OK. What's your idea?"

         "I've just put a full-page ad with Cindy's picture in every one of the Bay Area weekly newspapers. I'm offering a $25,000 dollar reward for information about the murder. And flyers will be plastered everywhere in the Clear Lake/NASA area. Maybe somebody saw the guy with Cindy. I just wanted you to know, because the police number will be the number to call."

         "Oh my Lord, Jim. You're gonna stir up all that muck again." The Chief's voice betrayed his annoyance. "You know we found out Cindy was...er. . .dating. . . most of the single young bloods and half the married men around here. The damn investigation caused three divorces, one shootin' and three domestic disturbances, and what did we get? Nothing! The semen samples didn't match anybodys DNA that we knew dated Cindy. . . "

         "I know, I know. Call it an old man's foolishness, but all those affairs of hers don't mean anything now."

         "Jim, there was lots of calls for a couple of months when the thing was fresh in people's minds. Then the calls just petered out. Anyone who wanted to volunteer information had his chance when it was big news."

         "That's just it! Maybe someone saw her with the man and didn't see anything about the murder. Or maybe the ad and the reward will work."

         "Lemme tell you something one more time. Better than ninety per cent of the time, the murderer is connected to the victim, usually a boyfriend. . . or a husband."

         "I know you checked me out." Rutledge laughed uneasily.

         "Jim, if you hadn't been able to prove with them charge slips that you were in San Antonio that night, you'd a been the prime suspect. Now all we got is some unidentified DNA and your next door neighbor's report about someone sneaking around the place and a boat taking off from your dock at high speed about 3:00 a.m."

         "I never could understand why the boat couldn't have been traced or something."

         "Too many boats around here. Within ten miles of your place, we got the third largest fleet of private boats on the Gulf of Mexico."

         "But how many of Cindy's . . . friends. . . had a big fast boat," Rutledge asked.

         "Coulda been a boyfriend we don't know about or, more likely, a one-night stand that got out of control. Cindy just picked the wrong guy. Probably bound to happen, the way she ran around. But if a murder like this, with no leads, hardly any evidence, and no suspects, doesn't get solved pretty quick, the chances are almost zero that it'll ever be solved."

         "Yeah, the famous 48 hour theory, but couldn't this ad trigger someone's memory?"

         The Chief felt he had to give the man some hope. He said gently, "Once in a blue moon, you get lucky. Somebody  walks in with the solution, but. . . "

         "Sam?"

         "What?"

         "You know what tomorrow night is?"

         "Yeah. The anniversary of Cindy's murder. So?"

         "That's not all, Sam. Tomorrow night is the second full moon this month--a blue moon. "

         "Rutledge, you listen to me. . . ," the Chief sputtered.

         "Bye, Sam."

****

         "Rutledge calling again, huh Chief? " said Sgt. Lonnie Brooks when Sam MacKinnon put the phone down and absently began to drum a pen on his messy desk, crowded with papers, remains of fast food dinners, and newspapers.

         "Yeah," MacKinnon sighed.

         "Must be rough, him being a friend an all, and you can't help him find his wife's murderer."

         MacKinnon snorted, "Oh, I got a pretty good idea of who the killer is!"

         "You're kidding?"

         "Nope. I think Jim did it. I just can't prove it."

         "But. . . you just told him you were his friend?"

         The Chief sighed. "I know. Thats the worst part. I've known Jim since we were mean little kids in elementary school, chasing the girls with frogs. I'd hate to prove myself right. . . but that don't mean the law don't come first. If I can prove he's guilty, he's going down."

         "How do you know he's guilty?"

         "Son, when you've been in this business for as long as I have, you get to know when somebody is pissin' on your boots and callin' it rain. Oh, he's dirty all right. I got this gut feeling about it."

         "Nothing more than a gut feeling?"

         "Well, there was the condition of the body. A slashed throat and twenty-some-odd stab wounds to the body.  That's usually the sign of a passion killing. Someone who cared about her a lot. Or hated her a lot.  Maybe both. Rutledge fills the bill on both counts in my book."

         "But a boyfriend. . . "

         ". . . might do the same," The Chief finished. "But everybody round here knew what Cindy was. She didn't have no real boyfriends, just guys lookin for a quick roll in the hay."

         "What about a serial killer or sex killer?"

         "It's possible, but the killing doesn't fit the typical profile.  No mutilation of the genitalia. No ritual. Besides, the boat means the mystery man lives around here, and there hasn't been another case like it. No, Jim Rutledge is still my prime suspect."

         "Mind if I review the file. The murder happened before I came on board."

         "Help yourself. Maybe a fresh eye will see something new. But old Jim's pretty smart, and he tried a passel of murder cases when he was with the Houston DA's office. If he did it, he sure covered himself with lots of great alibi evidence."

         Detective Brooks went to the filing cabinet and rummaged around until he came up with a bulging accordion file labeled "Cindy Rutledge" and brought it over to his desk. His desk and the Chief's butted up against each other in the small office so that the men faced each other. Brooks took out a folder labeled "James Rutledge" and began to sort through the pages of interviews, copies of checks, receipts, credit card bills and hotel bills.

         As he started lining them up by date, he asked, "What about the neighbor's statement. Wanna fill me in while I look through this mess?"

         The Chief put his boots up on his desk and pushed himself back in his chair almost prone. He laced his hands together behind his head and remembered:

          "Yeah. Ms. Juanita Mae Williamson, a widow lady in her mid-sixties. Maybe has some trouble sleeping at night like she said in her statement--but if you ask me, she's more likely just a Nosy-Parker about her neighbors. Anyway, she said she heard a boat come up Taylor Lake from Clear Lake at high speed and then dock at the Rutledge place next door about 2:30 a.m. Said she then heard voices out in the pool area where the body was found."

         "Voices?

         "Two. A man and a woman. From the pool area. She recognized the woman's voice as the deceased. Nothing on the man. Both of them were drunk, in her opinion."

         "She see anything? If she's as nosy as you say then she'd probably try to look. . . "

         "Precisely. But she couldn't see the pool area from her house. The pool is in a "U" formed by the living room, dining room and kitchen connecting the two bedroom wings. She also claimed to have seen someone sneaking around the front door just before the boat took off, but said no car came up the driveway, so who knows? That was about 3:30 in the morning. Said she checked her watch because she was going to give Rutledge a piece of her mind about the late hour partying. Didn't hear any screams from the deceased. Thus sayeth the deponent." He paused.

          "We figured the guy with the boat picked her up at one of the waterfront bars that have boat slips for people that want to pull in off the water to party."

         "2:30 arrival--The girls all get prettier at closing time," sang Brooks and grinned.

         "Yep. But Cindy was the real thing. Honey blond hair, beautiful face and figure. Any guy in a bar would have jumped at the chance to take her home."

         "Must be half a dozen or more of them waterfront bars around Clear Lake," said Brooks.

         Both men silently considered their city's territory which included only a portion of the Clear Lake shoreline. Actually, Clear Lake was neither clear nor a lake. It was part of an estuary system off of Galveston Bay which included connecting tidal waterways that surrounded it--Taylor Lake, Armand Bayou, Nassau Bay, Egret Bay were all separate lakes or bays off the main body of water.

         "And dozens of marinas," continued MacKinnon after the pause. "And even more homes with private docks like Rutledge's place on Taylor Lake. The guy coulda picked her up anywhere, of course, but we found her car parked at the Clear Lake Sand Box Club--and you know what that means."

         He grimaced while Brooks rolled his eyes. The Clear Lake Sand Box Club was a huge place with six outdoor volleyball courts near the waterfront docks and four large rooms for drinking, games, watching sports, and dancing. Large crowds of people passed in and out of the club every night, both by car and boat. The place was a favorite of both young executives from the nearby NASA headquarters, yachties from the surrounding marinas, and bohemian residents of the waterfront communities.

         For a detective, trying to find one unidentified man from among all the throng that hung around the most notorious party-girl of the area, the Sand Box was a nightmare.

         Brooks broke the silence. "Shoot! No way of telling who she might've hooked up with. Could have been several hundred people in there partying at any one time that evening."

         "Yep. We asked everyone we could find that'd been there that night, of course. And all the help and the regulars that the management put us on to. You'd be surprised how many people knew Cindy--and an amazing number knew her in the Biblical sense--but no one noticed her being with anyone special that night.

         "Only one odd thing. A bartender remembered Cindy asking about some guy sitting by himself, drowning his sorrows at the end of the bar. But he didn't know the guy, never saw him before. Said he looked like an average Joe and wouldn't remember him if he saw him. For some reason he had an impression that they guy was military, even though he was in civvies He got busy with last call and didn't see if Cindy hit up on the guy."

         "Great witness." The young detective laughed. "I saw her with Mr. Average Joe, your Honor." He grimaced. "Could be anybody."

         "And some of these gals like Cindy will jump in anyone's boat to cruise down to another joint on the lake. Then they might take off with someone else from there."

         "Yeah. Especially if he's got a bigger. . . ," Brooks paused for the joke and grinned, ". . . boat."  He knew the circuit as well as anyone, having bartended at some Clear Lake joints while putting himself through the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Houston.

         MacKinnon continued, "I'm surprised we don't have more homicides or accidental deaths out of those waterfront joints. At closing time you got guys with those damn Cigarette boats and Scarabs and whatall, just sitting in slips with the engines running, waiting for the chicks to pass by and maybe pile in for a ride out on the water.  With everybody drunk. Or drugged up."

         He shrugged. Both men knew that the area had several deaths every year from boats running over each other in the dark after closing time. The situation out on the water was impossible for the shore-bound police to control. And there were so many little suburban towns around the Bay Area area that there was no over-riding single jurisdiction to control the boaters once they were on the water.  

         "Yeah, I bet the guys give 'em the old 'Hereafter' routine." Brooks grinned, knowing the Chief would go for the joke.

         "You mean the "out of gas" gag when they get in the middle of the lake?" asked MacKinnon.

         "Nope. The 'Hereafter' routine. It goes like this: If you're not here after, what I'm here after, you'll be here after I'm gone." Brooks grinned.

         MacKinnon laughed. "There's plenty of that going on too, I reckon, although I expect for most of those girls, it's just an excuse for what they plan on doin' anyway." Then he sobered up and said, "Seriously, I don't know why we don't have more rape reports. . . " Both officers paused and pondered the way of the singles scene in the Bay Area. Brooks was the first to shake it off.

         "Getting back to the file. I see that Rutledge flew over to San Antonio on Southwest Airlines for a convention on the previous day, a Tuesday, and came home on the 9:45 flight on the following morning."

         "That's right. He walked in on us in the middle of the investigation. We didn't know where he was and couldn't contact him. We verified both flights. He was on 'em at the time stated."

         "Wonder how come he didn't drive to San Antonio instead of flying? Hell, it takes less than four hours to drive the two hundred and fifty miles. By the time you deal with going to the airport, an hour flight time, waiting for your luggage, and maybe renting a car, you don't really save any time. It's a lot cheaper--and its handier to use your own car too."

         "Well, money and time might matter to po' boys like you and me, but it don't come into it with a rich attorney like Rutledge. But I checked that out. His car was in the shop. He'd been driving a rental for a week because his wife wouldn't give up her Lexus. And he didn't want to pay the mileage on the rental for four hundred miles from Houston and back. He left for Hobby Airport that Tuesday morning and that was the last time he saw her alive. He says."

         Brooks considered the Southwest Airline schedule. Southwest became famous and successful as an inexpensive commuter airline between all of Texas large cities--Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and the state capital in Austin. Southwest flew almost hourly between these cities, its planes turning around on an endless circuit like a bus.

         "Couldn't he have flown back, done her, and flown back? Southwest has flights almost every hour up to midnight."

         "Except Southwest was booked solid that week with people going to the convention in San Antonio. He couldn't have flown on any of the other flights between San Antonio and Houston but the ones he had reservations on."

         "What about the other airlines?"

         "We checked them all. No record of him flying on them. Besides they don't have schedules that would allow him to fly back to Houston and return to San Antonio to make his Southwest flight by the next morning. Another dead end."

         "Well, a dead end is of some help. According to my Criminal Investigation professor, anything that rules something out is valuable in developing the theory of the case."

         "You know something Lonnie? You ain't nearly as dumb as you look."

         "Gee, thanks, Chief."

         "Any time. What's your next bright idea?"

         "Hmm. OK, how about this? Here's a receipt for a car rental in San Antonio." He held up a receipt and credit card slip. "Maybe he drove back here, killed her, and returned to San Antonio."

         "Check out the mileage. He only put a hundred and ninety miles on the car. Look at the map, Sherlock. That'd only get him less than half-way on a round trip between San Antonio and his house. Remember, the mileage would be about two-hundred and fifty miles each way. He couldn't have driven to his house and back. That'd be about five hundred miles."

         "Maybe he rolled the mileage back."

         "We had the mileage odometer checked by the rental guys. They're experts because sometimes they get a client who tries to defraud them by rolling back the miles. Nope, that was another dead end."

         "Why'd he rent a car in San Antonio anyway?"

         "He said he likes to be able to move around, go to his favorite restaurants and see the city. San Antone's a fun town for a married man alone on a business trip."

         "Wouldn't it have been easier and cheaper to grab a cab?"

         "Not with that much mileage. Besides, the murder was placed by the M.E. at around 3:30 in the morning, about the time the neighbor said the mystery man's boat took off down the lake. He wouldnt have had time to leave a club at closing and drive back here by 3:30 a.m.."

         "Which brings up his alibi?"

         "Yep. Seems he went to a 'gentlemen's club' in San Antonio that night. He paid for two table dances at a place called P.T.s with separate tickets on American Express. We talked to the girls, showed 'em his picture and both confirmed he'd been there. He also paid for eight Margaritas on his American Express card. You can see from the receipt that he was closed out at 2:05 a.m., right at closing time."

         Brooks found the Amex document and held it up for examination. "Hmm. Big tipper. Really big. Chief, did you ever tip the bartender fifty bucks on a forty dollar tab?" he mused. Then Brooks sat up and burst out, "Say, the tip and the total aren't in the same handwriting as the signature!"

         "So what? He was drunk and in a dark place so maybe he told the bartender to fill it in. And the bartender wrote in the tip and screwed him. Maybe he thought it was a five dollar tip the guy wrote in. I've made that mistake in a clip joint myself."

         "Maybe so, but I bet you hollered about it later and got it fixed."

         "You're right about that. I remember one time I was on Bourbon St. in New Orleans and. there was this gal I met . . . "

         Brooks saw the Chief was going off focus and interrupted, "OK, Chief, maybe he didn't do it himself. As they say, there's a 'mountain of evidence' that says he wasn't anywhere near Taylor Lake that night. But somebody was in that boat. Suppose it might've been a hired killer?"

         "Well, the paid killer is a possibility,but remember the condition of the body. This was a passion killing, and paid killers like to keep things simple and clean."

         "Chief. . . You ever consider that your gut feeling might be full of it? That Rutledge might be innocent? I mean it looks like he's clean from here to Sunday, and then you got that guy in the boat at the right time. . . "

         Brooks let it ride. He'd pushed the Chief about as far as he thought proper.

         "Yeah, I've thought about it. His alibi is good. Too good. He's laughing at us."

          Brooks shoved his Stetson back on his head. If the Chief was sure Rutledge had done the killing, there must be something they were overlooking.

         "Well, like the man said, tomorrow there really is gonna be a Blue Moon. Maybe we'll get lucky."

         Chief MacKinnon got up and walked out of the room laughing.

****

         After two days passed without any response to his ads, Jim Rutledge realized that no one was likely to come forward with information about the mysterious stranger involved in his wife's death. He knew that it was probably too late, but he'd found himself driven to try and identify the man who'd intruded on his life the year before.

         He was just about to leave the office for the day when his secretary, Sadie Rosen, buzzed him and said, "Mr. Rutledge, there's a Mr. Scott Adams here who'd like to see you. He doesn't have an appointment."

         "What's he want Sadie? Can he wait 'til Monday? I planned to go home early."

         "He says it's confidential." It was apparent to Rutledge that Sadie had covered the mouthpiece of the phone and turned away from the reception area where the new client waited. "I think it's a criminal case," she whispered.

          Sadie sometimes over-dramatized things, but Rutledge had learned to trust her radar about clients and cases. He didn't handle many criminal cases since he'd left the Houston DA's office for the simple reason that there wasn't a lot of serious crime in the NASA area. Cindy's murder had been the only homicide in five years.

         He sighed and said goodbye to a quick dip in the pool with a gin and tonic. "Send him in."

         The man who entered his office didn't appear to be the usual riffraff that got involved with petty crime in the Bay Area. Rutledge prided himself on his ability to analyze his clients:their employment, marital status, personality-- and most importantly, their probable financial status--at a glance.

         Adams was neatly dressed in slacks, a short-sleeve white shirt, and tie. Rutledge thought he looked vaguely familiar, but Adams had the clean-cut good looks of an Average Joe. Besides, the Bay area was such a small community there was no telling where he might have run into the man. The glasses and plastic pen holder in his shirt pocket identified him as an employee of NASA or one of its contractors. They were synonymous with the engineers that populated the small communities surrounding the Johnson Space Center. He might as well have been wearing a uniform.

         Rutledge estimated him to be in his late thirties or early forties, and, judging by his lean body and deep tan, one of the fitness junkies that exercised incessantly on the jogging trails around the NASA perimeter. Sadie's radar may have warned of serious criminal matters; his own estimate revised it to a probable DWI by a good citizen who was so deeply ashamed of a lapse in judgement that he felt it required confidentiality. He'd probably be good for a couple of grand to get it plea-bargained to deferred adjudication. With no priors, it'd be a piece of cake.

         Rutledge cheered up. Adams looked like a nice guy, the type of client that any lawyer loved to have for a client. He could afford to delay his dip in the pool and cocktails for thirty minutes leading to a couple of hours work for a nice payday. He gave his most winning smile and offered his hand over the desk in the ritual greeting.

         "Jim Rutledge."

         "Scott Adams."

         Rutledge took another keen glance at the man as he gestured the man to a seat across from him. "How do you happen to come to us. Have we met? You look familiar."

         "No, I don't think so. I came to your office once before, but you were out. The legal matter I wanted some advice on was resolved, and I never came back."

         "Well, what can I do for you today?"

         "Um. . . Mr. Rutledge, I understand that anything I tell you cannot be revealed to the authorities without my permission, is that correct."

         "Well, within certain limits in the attorney's code of ethics, that's correct. Anything you telll me as an attorney is privileged information--unless it involves the commission of an on-going or future criminal act--but I don't think that will be a problem with you, will it?" He smiled.

         "Oh gosh, no. My problem is that I'm involved in a murder investigation. . . but I'm totally innocent."

         "Why don't you tell me about it?"

         "A little over a year ago, I met this woman at the Sand Box Club."

         Rutledge froze. His antenna went up after that surprising admission by his visitor as he settled back in his chair. He sensed there might be more than big money in this client as the man continued.

         "I was about to get a divorce. That was why I'd been to your office."

         "Really? I don't remember. . . "

         "You wouldn't remember me. We never met. After the night in question, I had some time on my own to think things over and realized that I had to make my marriage work. My wife and I got back together."

         "The other woman. . . ," Rutledge prompted, "you were saying. . . "

         "Sorry. That's how it got started. She came up to me at the bar and said she'd seen me leaving your office that day. She said I looked like I could use a new friend."

         "And you hadn't known her before? You just happened to meet in the Sand Box Club?"

         "I swear it. I don't go to clubs. I'm too busy with my work at NASA. That's the reason my wife and I separated. She said my job was taking too much time away from her and the family. She'd gone to her Mother with the kids, and I was lonely so. . . "

         "So you went out for a drink," Rutledge said. The man nodded "Nothing wrong with that. Go on."

         "She said she was having trouble with her husband. That she'd gone to your office about a divorce too. It sort of made a bond between us, you know, and the next thing I knew we were drinking and having a good time together."

         "Then what happened?" Rutledge was almost afraid to hear the next part of the story. He thought he knew where it was going. He began to sweat.

         "She said she'd seen me come up to the club dock in my boat, and that fast boats made her feel sexy. I told her she looked like she was used to fast things. Just joking around, you know? But she took me up on it. Insisted we go for a ride. The next thing I knew we were on the boat and headed for her place."

         "Where?" Rutledge choked out. He knew what the answer would be.

         "On Taylor Lake."

         Rutledge took a deep breath, calmed himself, and said, "Would you excuse me for a moment? I have to tell my secretary something before she leaves for the day."

         He moved around the desk and headed for the outer office. When he got there, he carefully shut the door between the two offices.

         Before he could speak, Sadie blurted, "Chief MacKinnon has been on the phone. I told him you were in with a new client, but he said it was important. Wants you to call."

         A sudden chill went down Rutledges spine. What could MacKinnon be calling about? He had a premonition that it concerned Cindy. He dismissed the thought. He had to get Adams to incriminate himself.

          "Sadie. Get Chief MacKinnon back on the phone. Tell him to get over here immediately, that it's an emergency. And turn on the recorder."

         Rutledge had a set-up to record everything said in his office. In a time when malpractice suits were a dime a dozen, he'd decided to make a record of his client conversations to protect himself. Maybe this conversation was going to put the mystery of Cindy's death to bed. He had a feeling that this was going to be the end of his nightmare.

         Without another word he turned on his heel and went back into his office for the rest of Scott Adam's story. He resumed his seat and said, "Now, Mr. Adams, let me recapitulate where we are in your story. You picked up a woman you didn't know in the Sand Box Club and left for her home in your boat. Now what time was this?"

         "About closing. Maybe 1:45, 2:00, something like that."

         "And you were both drunk."

         "Well, we'd been drinking. Maybe drunk is too harsh a word. . . "

         "Lets leave your mental state for the moment. You left on your boat. . . ?"

         "Right. She was giving me directions, and we wound up going under the bridge into Taylor Lake. You know where I mean?"

         "Yes, I'm familiar with the area," Rutledge said dryly.

         "Well, she directed me to this dock at her home. Real nice place on the water. I asked her about her husband, and she said he was out of town at a convention, so we walk up to the patio. The next thing I know, we're skinny dipping in the pool."

         Rutledge was breathing heavily, his face flushed, but he tried to keep any anger out of his voice. This guy Adams was going to bury himself, he thought. He'd worry about the ethics problem later.

         He didn't think any Bar Association in the country would fault him on this situation. Besides, no money had changed hands, and if lawyers knew one thing, it was about the all-important fee consideration between a client and an attorney. He smiled inwardly, but made sure his face took on the attentive air of an attorney--the blank stare of a shark swimming toward a school of unwary fish.

         "Come on, Mr. Adams, you have to level with me. Just skinny dipping?"

         "I'd really never cheated on my wife before. You've got to believe me." He paused, obviously disconcerted by the memory. "I don't want to blame my wife. I was the one at fault, even if I'd been drinking."

         "So you had sex with the woman, right?"

         "Yes."

         Adams looked ashamed. Rutledge knew he'd probably look that way on the stand when he was on trial for Cindy's murder. He decided to push him, see what he could do to get some admission on the tape.

         "And then she got nasty. Said you weren't a real man. Insulted your manhood until you got enraged and. . . . " He stopped when he found himself almost shouting at Adams.

         "No, no, nothing like that. She got out of the pool to fix us a drink. I was waiting for her to bring back the drinks when she came running back. Said she'd seen her husband sneaking up the driveway through the front window, and I had to get out of there."

         Rutledge stiffened. This created a problem he hadn't anticipated. But he knew any good DA would work over that testimonial remembrance as hearsay. Best to move him along. He'd come back to it later.

         "Then what did you do?"

         "What do you think? I jumped out of the pool, threw my pants on, beat feet down to the boat and took off."

         "If you didn't kill her. . . ," Rutledge asked, "why didn't you go to the police when the murder was announced? It was all over the papers and the TV news."

          "I had a business trip scheduled for the next day. I hopped a jet early the next morning. I was gone for quite a while and missed all the publicity." He smiled. "But when I saw your ad in the paper the other day, I recognized her picture, remembered what had happened, and called the police."

         "You called the police?." Rutledge was confused and suddenly sensed a deep abyss yawning beneath him.

         "Sure. I caught a glimpse of the guy that night through the sliding glass doors while I was running for my boat," he said casually. "I was in the dark, but I saw him in the lights of the living room. It was you!"

         Rutledge fell back in his chair as Adams walked across the office and opened the door.

         "Come on in, Chief. I'm sure it was him," he called out.

         Chief MacKinnon and Lonnie Brooks walked into the office. Both had solemn looks on their faces.

          "Jim boy, it looks like I'm gonna have to arrest you for the murder of your wife, Cindy. Anything you say can be used in a court of law and held against you. If you want a lawyer. . . well, hell Jim, you know your rights, don't you?"

         "Yeah. But what grounds have you got to arrest me? This guy's testimony. . . ?" he sneered and continued, "is the testimony of a prime suspect. Any DA in the country would get laughed out of court with a case based on a supposed eyewitness who admits he was drunk, scared, and running away in the dark. Besides, there wasn't a proper lineup."

         "Oh, I'm sure you're probably right on that stuff, Jim. But when Mr. Adams came in and picked you out of the Houston Bar Association handbook, we got high in the behind again on the investigation."

         Rutledge gasped, then gained control of himself. "Then you've doubtless confirmed that I've got an alibi that proves I was in San Antonio, so I couldn't have been the murderer." Rutledge leaned back in his chair and appeared to be in command of himself and the situation.

         "You know something, Jim? The trouble with an alibi that's got a mountain of evidence shoring it up, is that when you knock one or two little rocks out from the base, the whole thing comes down in an avalanche."

         "What do you mean by that, Sam?"

         "I mean that after Mr. Adams came in with his story, Lonnie and I started looking at each part of your alibi."

         "Such as. . . ?"

         "Well, your whereabouts for that night, for example."

         "I was at that club in San Antonio. People have already sworn to it."

         "Yep. But when we went back and asked, nobody could put you in the club after eight-thirty or nine."

         "I had all those drinks."

         "No," the Chief said quietly, "actually you didn't. Both of the dancers we re-interviewed said you insisted on buying them drinks. Margaritas like you were drinking. One girl especially remembered it because she doesn't like 'em, and you got nasty about it."

         "So I bought them a drink. My bill. . . "

         "We wondered about that. But Lonnie here used to be a bartender. He says it's pretty common for drunks to run off and forget about closing their tab. That's why clubs have the credit card slip stamped in advance. Then, if someone leaves without getting their tab, the bartender rings it up at the end of the night--and adds on a tip."

"So what?"

"That's what made Lonnie take notice of the tab-- the size of the tip. The bartender really socked it to you. And we checked your Amex bill for the next three months. You didn't protest the tip because you knew it might bring up the fact that you weren't there at closing."

         "I signed it. . . " Rutledge refused to give up.

         Brooks interrupted, "...When you gave them your card. That club always has customers sign the slip first, and then they check to make sure the card is good. They checked that night at 7:30."

         "But it would still be awfully hard for you to convince a jury that I killed her. Regardless of the time I was at the club, and I dont concede a thing, how could I have gotten over to Houston, killed Cindy, and back to San Antonio in time to catch a flight home."

         "That was the biggest piece of the puzzle. Until I took my own advice that I gave to Lonnie--and looked at a map." He smiled.

         "It was easy to figure out after looking at the map," said Brooks. "You flew back to Houston. . .but not from San Antonio."

         Rutledges face turned pale. He collapsed backwards, feeling with his arms for the chair.

         "We knew you rented a car over there and had a good bit of mileage on it, but not enough to get to Houston and back. That kept us puzzled. But when I took a compass and map, and drew a circle around San Antonio with a eighty mile radius, I realized that Austin was within the range of the mileage on your car."

         "But. . . " Rutledge seemed incapable of further protests.

         "No buts, Jim," countered the Chief. "You cut out of the club in San Antonio early and drove eighty miles to the Austin airport. You caught the last plane out of Austin on Southwest and got into Houston Hobby airport about 12:00 a.m. Your rental car was already parked there. You had plenty of time to drive home, kill Cindy, and then catch the 6:00 a.m. flight back to Austin."

Brooks took up the narrative, "When you got there it was an easy drive back to San Antonio. Then you checked out of your hotel and flew back to Houston. It looked like the perfect alibi."

         "But we found the records of those Austin-Houston flights," said the Chief. "You paid cash, but they require ID to board, so we know it was you. Pretty cute. We never thought of looking for you to be flying out of another city."

         "There's no witnesses that'll stand up and put me at the scene, Sam. Adams is the only one who admits he was there at the time of her death."

         "Well, we got one other witness. Miz Williamson, your next door neighbor, saw someone sneaking around the front of the house that night, but there was no car in the drive. It didn't make any particular sense, kind of like the dog that didn't bark, until we remembered that only you would have known how nosy your neighbor was. Anyone else would have driven up to the house. It's a pretty good hike from the road, especially in the dark, but you knew she'd look out her window if a car drove up, so you parked out on the street."

         "That's all circumstantial."

         "Youre right about that--all circumstantial. But all that flying around and lying about it in sworn statements won't look too good to a jury--and I think theyll believe him." He turned to Adams and smiled.

         Adams had been standing unnoticed in the corner of the office since the entry of the Chief and Brooks. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat after the remark by the Chief. He was clearly embarrassed to be in the position of a key witness in a murder case.

         "Him?" Rutledge gestured at the mild-mannered Adams. "Why, he's the one. He admits he was at the scene and ran, " he sneered. "If he was innocent, he would have come forward. . . ."

         "Tell him Mr. Adams, about why you didn't speak up until you saw the newspaper ads and posters this week."

         "Well, Mr. Rutledge, I told you I hopped a jet the next morning for a business trip. That was true. And I was gone for quite a while so I missed the story about your wife's murder."

         "Tell him where you were, Scott." The Sheriff and Lonnie wore big grins under their Stetsons.

         "Well, I flew to the Kennedy Spaceport in Florida because I'm an astronaut. I flew on the space shuttle the next day, and then I was on the Skylab laboratory for several months doing some studies of the moon from space. I would never have known anything about the murder if it hadn't been for your ads this week, Mr. Rutledge."

         "Like I said, Jim Boy," said the Chief, while taking out his cuffs, "most times when a case gets stale, we never solve it. We only get a break like this about once in a blue moon."