“Oh, my God, it’s true.”
The high-pitched voice came from behind Sawyer, prompting her to spin around. The woman looked harried, as if she’d jumped straight out of bed before coming. She wore denim jeans. Her cotton shirt was wrinkled and had a stain on the collar. Her face was pale, and sweat glistened across her forehead.
“Was Nick really murdered?” the woman asked. “I mean, is he really dead?”
Sawyer nodded. “I was told it happened last night.” Before Sawyer could say more, two attendants rolled a body bag atop a gurney out of the house. The officer standing guard lifted the tape so they could get through. After they passed by, Sawyer looked at the woman and offered a hand. “I’m Sawyer Brooks, crime reporter with the Sacramento Independent.”
They shook hands.
“Linda,” she said. “Nick Calderon’s ex-wife.” She shook her head and said, “Nick could be an ass, but I never wished him dead.”
“Are you okay?” Sawyer asked.
“Surprised . . . shocked,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.” The woman looked closely at Sawyer. “Are you doing a story about Nick?”
“Sort of,” Sawyer said. “Do you have time to talk?”
“There’s a coffee shop not too far from here.” Linda gestured at a black Toyota Camry parked down the road. “If you want to follow me there, I’ll let you buy me an iced latte and ask all the questions you want.”
Caught off guard by her ready agreement, Sawyer said, “Maybe you should talk to the investigator first.”
“To hell with them. After hearing from a friend that something happened to Nick, I made half a dozen calls. They wouldn’t tell me anything. Every one of them took my name and number, but nobody bothered to call me back. They know where to find me. Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, they were sitting at a square, wobbly table on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Linda dropped at least ten cubes of sugar into her latte and stirred while Sawyer took a sip of her iced mocha. It hit the spot.
“So tell me what you know,” Linda said.
Sawyer related what she’d heard about the person seen coming and going.
Linda’s eyes grew round. “A wig? Really?”
“Have you read about the Black Wigs?”
Linda sucked her latte through a straw, then said, “Is that the same group of women who cut off that guy’s one-eyed rattlesnake?”
Sawyer nodded as she struggled not to laugh at the woman’s phrasing.
Linda smiled. “Yes. I’ve heard of them. You think they went after Nick?”
“I don’t know enough yet to come to any conclusions, but it might be helpful if you could tell me a little bit about him.”
“Like his childhood and stuff?”
“Yes,” Sawyer said. “That would be a great place to start.”
“Well, jeez. It’s a sad story, and it all began when a newborn baby was found in a dumpster.”
Sawyer’s chest tightened. Every state had a safe haven law, which meant any person could safely relinquish their baby without risk of prosecution.
“Nick only talked about his past when he was drunk, which was often enough, I guess. I always got the feeling that he regretted being a bully. He said it was the only way he knew how to survive. I didn’t really understand why he felt such anger until later when I caught him having an affair.”
“Is that why you divorced?”
“That’s part of it,” Linda said. “I never should have married him. He beat me, gave me so many black eyes it’s a miracle I can still see.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I always thought his anger was due to his traumatic upbringing, being abandoned and all that, but that wasn’t the whole story.”
Sawyer waited.
“Our marriage ended after I returned home early from work and found two naked, sweaty bodies in my bed! That’s when everything started to make sense. My husband, a proud and outspoken homophobe, was gay. The hypocrisy.” She shook her head. “If only he had told me. Maybe I could have helped him.”
“You had no idea?”
“No.”
“How do you think you could have helped him?” Sawyer asked.
“I think his anger stemmed from his own inner conflict with same-sex attraction. Nick and I hadn’t been intimate in years. If he’d tried to talk to me, maybe I could have helped him see that the world was changing and that it wasn’t too late for him to live his best life by being who he wanted to be.”
“Any ideas on who might have wanted your ex-husband dead?”
Linda appeared to ponder the question before shaking her head. “Sorry. No.”
“What about family and friends?” Sawyer asked.
“No family, of course.” Linda sighed. “No friends either. I never even learned the name of the man I found in my bed.”
“Where did your ex-husband grow up?”
“In Sacramento. At a home for troubled children. He despised almost everyone—the other kids, the staff—and yet . . .” Her eyes widened, and she wagged a finger at Sawyer. “He did stay in contact with a couple of the boys from the home.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ve never been good with names.”
“You said Nick was a bully. Any idea who he might have bullied?”
“Sorry. No idea. I’m not any help at all.” She glanced at her watch. “I should go.”
They exchanged phone numbers in case Sawyer had more questions or Linda thought of anything else she might have forgotten.
As Sawyer watched Linda Calderon walk off, her intuition sounded an alarm, telling her that the Black Wigs had nothing to do with his death.
CHAPTER THREE
Sixteen-year-old Tara Alcozar and three of her closest friends—Rachel, Laura, and Mandy—sat cross-legged on the white shag rug in her bedroom. In the center of their human circle was a plastic bin filled with black wigs and eye masks.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Rachel said.
Laura rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a weasel. We’re not going to hurt him. We’re just going to scare him, show him what it feels like to be powerless.”
Tara nodded. “He deserves it after what he did to Pamela.”
“Pamela has had a crush on Kyle since the beginning of time,” Rachel said. “I saw her coming on to him at the party. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.”
The party had taken place two months ago at Trey Matthews’s house, the most popular guy at Rocklin High School. All five of them had told their parents they were sleeping at Pamela’s house. Since she was their designated driver, Mandy had stayed away from the spiked punch while Tara, Rachel, Pamela, and Laura had gotten wasted and spent most of the night dancing and flirting with the upperclassmen.
“Pamela just wanted to make out with Kyle, not screw him,” Tara explained to Rachel. “But he took her upstairs into an empty room and locked the door. They kissed. When he slipped his hand under her shirt, she told him to stop. But that only made him more aggressive, and he wouldn’t let her go. He held her down while he pulled up her skirt. She said she became numb and it was horrible, and that when he was finished, he zipped up his pants and walked away.”