Chapter 43
When Conor and Jojo looked up Cynthia Cruz’s address, they discovered that she had several real estate holdings—four single-family rental homes, a couple of duplexes and a condo in addition to their home. Her husband’s name was on none of the deeds, not even the house where they lived.
Their residence was set at the back of a yard so big people driving by were glad they didn’t have to mow it. It was a log cabin, not authentic, a reproduction built by a company that erected prefab log homes that looked like a giant child had built them with a Lincoln Logs set.
Jojo supposed the people who lived there wanted to look and feel like pioneers because inside the homes were as sparse and utilitarian as the homes of the Amish.
But forgoing modern conveniences was how the Amish thought God wanted them to live—simply and without pretension.
Jojo wondered how out-of-towners who’d bought the cabins sight unseen for the rustic look felt when they discovered there was no indoor plumbing.
This one was not a basic shoe-box-sitting-on-a-prairie. It was landscaped with shrubs, flower gardens, trees, and had a back yard as big as the front, large enough to accommodate a whole herd of children. But as far as Jojo and Conor could determine, the couple was childless.
As Conor lifted his fist to knock on the door, Jojo said quietly, “We really should take this show on the road. We’ve got this shtick down.”
Conor looked puzzled.
“You haven’t noticed? We do the same thing every time. You’re always the one who knocks and …” She saw he wasn’t tracking. “Never mind.”
“I don’t think I’d call it a shtick,” he said, “just a good working relationship.”
Jojo could tell that he regretted the words the moment they left his mouth, and he busied himself with knocking on the door to cover up his reaction. But the man had a problem that Jojo could relate to.
With his ruddy complexion and freckles, he blushed easily.
She’d spent her entire youth with a pink face, either coming back down from a blush or on her way up.
She still blushed now and then, but it wasn’t as uncontrolled as it had been when she was young.
As uncontrolled, apparently, as Conor McCaffrey’s was.
“Who is it?”
Conor looked at Jojo and she managed not to grin because that was part of the shtick, too. “My name is Lieutenant Conor McCaffrey with the Pennsylvania State Police, and I’d like to talk to Cynthia Cruz. Is she available?”
The door opened. An attractive woman in her mid-forties said, “I’m Cynthia Cruz. What can I do for you?”
“Would you mind if we came in for a few minutes? We’d like to talk.”
She looked genuinely confused. “Talk about what?”
“Please. We need to sit down with you for a few minutes.”
Mystified, the woman invited them into the living room. On one side was a door to a glassed-in sun porch and the sun was shining today. Cynthia saw that Jojo had noticed. “Would you like to sit out here? Can I get you something to drink?”
Conor and Jojo sat down on the sun porch.
“We won’t be here long. We just have a few questions.” As always, Conor went right for the throat. “I understand that you have been in a relationship with David Blackburn and?—”
He only got that far before the woman gasped and put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
“What? What are you talking about? Why would you say a thing like …?” The woman began to tremble, her eyes wide, brimming with tears. “I need for you to go.”
She’d sat down, but she stood back up. Conor and Jojo did not.
“Please sit back down, Mrs. Cruz. We need to talk,” Conor said.
“We don’t need to talk about anything because you’ve come here under some kind of misapprehension. I don’t know where you, how could you have …?”
“Mrs. Cruz, we have witnesses who can confirm your relationship with David Blackburn. If you’d like for us to haul them out.”
Cynthia Cruz sat down hard on the love seat, put her hands over her face, didn’t cry, but her shoulders shook. And she wouldn’t look at them.
“Mrs. Cruz, we did not come here to upset you and I’m sorry that we have.”
Her head snapped up. “You accuse me of having an affair and then you’re sorry you upset me?”
“Were you having an affair with David Blackburn?” Jojo fired the question like a rifle shot.
“Yes. Okay, fine. I was having an affair with David Blackburn. Is that against the law? Have I broken some county ordinance and you’ve come here to arrest me?” She held out her wrists. “Here, put the cuffs on me and drag me away.”
“Does your husband know about the affair?”
“No.” She said it too fast and then her composure broke, and she began to cry. “He didn’t, not until after David was killed.” Then she sobbed brokenheartedly, and Jojo did as she had done at previous interviews. She got up, went to the woman, sat down, and put her arm around her shoulders.
“I met David when I went to buy homeowners insurance on our house.” She smiled broadly. “There were pictures on the wall of him as a hunter. He’d killed a deer. And I commented that he looked like Robert Redford on a safari. I mean he had those dashing good looks, blond hair, and big brown eyes.”
It must have hit her then that he was gone and she lost her breath. “He’s dead. Somebody shot him.”
Then she did cry all over again. When she got herself under control for the second time, Conor pressed harder.
“How long has the affair been going on?” he asked.
“About six months or so.”
“And you think your husband didn’t know?”
“He didn’t know then, but he knows now.”
She dropped her chin down. “What am I going to do? David’s gone.
We were making plans to be together. He hated it here.
He hated the cold. He wanted to live in Florida.
And I’ve always wanted to live in Florida.
And we were … now I have nothing.” She looked from one to the other.
“Nothing. I think Adam’s left me for good. ”
“How did he find out?”
“He came home and found me crying and wanted to know what was wrong. And I’d had a Valium, maybe more than one, and a drink and I don’t know.
Somehow, I blurted out the wrong thing and then he started cross-examining me, started asking questions about this time and that time.
And I told him, he knows now.” She took a shaky breath.
“Look, why are you here? Why is it a matter for the Pennsylvania State Police that I was having an affair and that the love of my life is dead?”
“We’re looking into the lives of all of the victims of the shooting.”
“What for? They’re dead.”
“We’re trying to find out who killed them.”
“Some guy with a rifle. Why is that news? They’ll find him. He’s some loony tune somewhere who has absolutely no reason for what he did. He just went out and massacred people.”
“That’s one theory,” Conor said.
His words stopped Cynthia in her tracks. “One theory of what?”
“One theory about the killer. There are others.”
“What others?”
“It’s very possible, maybe likely, that whoever shot all those people had one victim in mind and shot the other people to cover it up,” Jojo said.
Jojo might as well have slapped her. Cynthia looked from Jojo to Conor in shock and then back to Jojo.
“Somebody killed all those people. Killed David because they were mad at somebody else. That’s crazy. How do you know?” she asked.
“We don’t know. That’s why we’re asking questions.”
“But why are you here?” Then her eyes grew wide with understanding as Cynthia Cruz put it together.
“So you came here to talk to me about David. Why?” She stopped.
“You think he might have been the intended victim? David? Somebody wanted to kill David?” Her eyes opened wide.
“It couldn’t have anything to do with us, with what we were doing.
Why would anybody want to kill David because we were having an affair? ”
“And you say your husband didn’t know you were having an affair?”
“No. He didn’t know.” She stopped. “You think Adam … You think Adam got up on top of a building and shot a bunch of people because I was having an affair?”
“We don’t think anything. We’re just asking questions.”
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Adam didn’t have any idea. We were careful. Nobody knew. Nobody saw.” Then she stopped, probably realizing that somebody had seen and told the police. “Who told you that they saw us? Who knew about us? Who was it?”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” Jojo said, “but it doesn’t make any difference who reported it. We’re simply here to find out if your affair could have been a motive for David’s murder.”
“I don’t know how it possibly could have been.
My husband didn’t know. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared enough to shoot the man.
If I’d mattered to him, I wouldn’t have been having an affair.
” She shook her head and burped out a bark of sardonic laughter.
“My husband didn’t give a rip what I did or didn’t do.
He was never home, spent all his time out hunting.
He wasn’t exactly devastated by finding out I was having an affair.
And now he’s left me. So you’ve wasted your time and mine by coming here. ”
“You knew David well. Is that right?”
“Of course I knew him well. I loved him. He loved me.” She paused.
“And he showed it—brought me flowers and candy and told me every day how much I meant to him. I know that’s not supposed to be the scenario, that all we wanted was to hop between the sheets and play bump and tickle.
It was more than that for David and me. It was more than just a quickie.
We wanted to make a life together. We were going to … And now he’s dead.”
“We’ll need to talk to your husband,” Conor said.
“My husband, why? I told you he didn’t …” She must have realized protesting was futile. “He has a hunting cabin in the woods, it’s his mistress. He hasn’t been home since … lives in the cabin, I guess.”
Conor and Jojo got back into his cruiser. She reached back and stroked Trident’s head, scratching under his chin. He’d been such a good boy. They’d taken him with them to all the witness interrogations, and he sat patiently in the car waiting for them.
“What do you think?” Conor asked.
“I think she believes her husband didn’t know she was having an affair.”
“And the key words in that sentence were …”
“She believed.”
“Maybe he did know. Was that knowledge enough motive for murder?”
“We’ve said it before,” Jojo said, shaking her head, “people have killed other people for less.”