Hidden Summit

there would have been many other individuals who would have been suspect.
    As the police had told Conner a long time ago—everyone in this case was dirty. But as far as what they could prove in a court of law, only Regis Mathis had committed murder.
    Conner was a little uncertain how to handle the flood of news where Leslie was concerned. In the end he told her to get out her laptop and log on so they could look at some of it together, while he was still in town to help her understand the details and what he knew about the stories. They sat at her kitchen table, and he ran the search, bringing up pictures and articles from the Sacramento newspaper.
    Most of the pictures that would be used as evidence, such as the blood splatters in the car that were illuminated by the luminol the police used, were not available to the press, but there were photos they couldn’t control. The Dumpster where the body had been dumped, for example, with the long streak of blood running down the side and the yellow crime-scene tape stretching across the area. The covered body on the gurney that was being loaded in to the ambulance.
    “Where were you?” Leslie asked.
    “I had just walked out the back door of the store,” he said. “I heard the car door, noticed a man walking around the front of the car to the passenger side. He was pulling a gun out of his pocket at the same time he opened the passenger door and he shot him in the head. I ducked behind the Dumpster. It was fast and brutal. Over, body dumped and car backing out of the alley, in a couple of minutes or less. I looked in the Dumpster first—the man’s hands and feet were bound with duct tape, a strip across his mouth.”
    “And you called the police right away?”
    “My cell phone was on my belt,” he said. “The dispatcher asked me if I could check for a pulse. He was very dead.”
    And of course there was a picture of the skeletal remains of a once large and prosperous hardware store.
    “Do they know it’s you? That you’re the witness?”
    He shrugged. “Of course they know—my name appears on the warrant. Before this is over, my picture will be in the paper. If there’s a leak in the D.A.’s office, they might know where I am. Either way, the burned building is a message sent to anyone who might be considering testifying against Regis Mathis. I had a more direct message, left on my voice mail at home. Just in case I wondered if they knew where I lived.”
    “And if you didn’t testify? Would you be forgotten?”
    “There are way too many unknowns,” Conner said. “I called the police within minutes of the murder,” Conner said. “If no other witness appeared, would they consider their warning had scared me off? Or would they try to ensure I remained scared off? Because what I saw, Les, was horrible. If that happened to a member of my family, I’d hope to God someone had the balls to step up.”
    “Of course you have to,” she said.
    “And the hard part for you, Les, you have to act like you didn’t even notice any of this has been happening. At least until the trial is over.”
    She laughed softly. “Do you think I’d have trouble doing that if it means keeping you and your family safe?”
    “If you get overwhelmed or freaked out, you can talk to Brie.”
    “But I’ll talk to you, too. Won’t I?”
    “Sure we will.” He put down the laptop screen, blocking the stories and images, and gently traced the line of her jaw. “Yes, we’ll talk. Probably every day.” He leaned toward her to give her a light kiss. “Let’s be done with this for now. Let’s sit on the back porch and talk about regular things. Let’s pretend life is normal.”
    He pulled her to her feet and walked her outside. They sat side by side in chairs as the sun sank and the sky above the trees grew lavender. He asked her about high school and her friends when she was younger. She told him about a best girlfriend who moved away when they were both sixteen, and it had been so traumatic, she had cried for days. And there were the sorority sisters in college—they stayed in touch, got together every year or so. She’d had a close friend during her marriage, but they’d grown apart as her girlfriend had children and Leslie didn’t. And, Leslie admitted, it was her own longing for a family that kept her away.
    He wanted to know about boyfriends, and she told him there had been a couple of pretty unexciting ones. And then he wanted to know who the first one had been,