Page 12 of Head Room

“Colonel Crawford clearly didn’t accept that his friend committed suicide.That would leave that the dead man isn’t the sergeant.Or that the dead man is the sergeant and was murdered.”

Richard gave no response.

Then, as if it were a change of subject, I said, “The colonel’s certainly impressive.”

“Even more impressive when you know his background.I looked up his career.Still,” Richard said, “the boots were definitely the kind Frank Jardos wore, confirmed by two friends.Even the colonel acknowledged the sergeant never wore any other brand.”

I eyed him.“That sounds like this department doesn’t give the colonel’s assertion that the dead man wasn’t the sergeant, that the sergeant is missing, credence.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Right.Especially not in the colonel’s hearing.So, sending him to me was to placate him, get him off your back—”

“No, no.The sergeant — Sergeant Shelton — didn’t think Colonel Crawford would like our timeframe.The postmortem exam and all.You could act faster.You’re used to deadlines.Working on a tight timeline for TV news.”

“Tight timeline?TV news?”I scoffed.“Try a wedding.”

He grinned.“I know.I got the invitation.Thanks.Looking forward to it.”

News to me.I hadn’t included him on my guest list, but since my list consisted of Tom, Tamantha, and me, it was ruled ineligible and replaced by lists from Tom, Tamantha, and my mother.I couldn’t complain — much — since it meant including Diana, Mike, Jennifer, and more friends, as well as my siblings and their families.

Heck, I didn’t object to Richard coming, either.Though he must have been on Tom’s list.

And if Richard was on the list...Shelton, too?Almost certainly.

“Great.Glad you can come,” I said with a warmth I was sure would please my mother.

I drove toward the fire scene, my thoughts leaving the wedding zone for the more familiar territory of a potential investigation.

There was a nuance to Shelton’s citing the timeline that had nothing to do with his implicit dig about him being busy with important things while mere TV journalists could waste their time playing around with what could turn out to be nothing.

He also meant my cohorts and I could explore based on an assumption that the dead man wasn’t Frank Jardos, in line with Colonel Crawford’s theory, while the sheriff’s department remained largely constrained until official results came back.

But was that assumption by the colonel reasonable?

I’ve heard investigators say they prefer to complete their investigation before they talk to the primary suspect.

That’s not unreasonable for those investigating, say, white-collar crime.Especially for those examining complex information.As one said, they don’t want to sit down with a suspect who knows all the facts of the situation when the investigator knows nothing.

Yet that was pretty much the situation with the deaths we’d looked into.We didn’t have the luxury of gathering, organizing, and making sense of information before talking to suspects.We dealt with them on the fly.

Although in this case, we had a shortage of people to talk to, what with the dead body most likely belonging to the person the colonel wanted us to talk to.

Talking about the colonel...

I hit a number in my phone’s contacts.

“Elizabeth!”Wardell Yardley answered.“Don’t you have a wedding to get ready for?”

That’s Wardell Yardley, a network reporter only those courting deliberate ignorance wouldn’t recognize.He recently left a long stint as White House correspondent to hot-shot from story to story.

That let him pursue what he wanted most — to know everything about everybody, not an entirely uncommon trait in journalists.

“Don’t you have a job to do?”

He laughed.He has a good laugh.

“You know, Dell, now that you’re out of the White House press corps, where you didn’t have many reasons to laugh on-air—”