The Strategist by John Hardy Bell

She paused to search her memory for anything else. “The only thing she complained about was work.”
    “What did she do?”
    Camille got stuck on the work ‘ did ’. Julia was already being spoken of in the past tense and it made her want to scream again. “She’s a lawyer.”
    “Criminal?”
    “Corporate. Defending big companies against lawsuits, stuff like that.”
    The detective was scribbling notes at a furious pace. “And what was it that she most often complained about? Colleagues? Clients?” 
    “The first and only time I heard her complain about work was during the drive home from the airport yesterday. It wasn’t anything specific. It just sounded to me like she was tired of being a lawyer.”
    “Are you sure there wasn’t anything else to it?”
    Camille hesitated. She had asked Julia the same question. Every instinct she had at the time told her that something wasn’t right, and she pushed for answers. But the more she pushed, the further Julia retreated. In the past, the only time Julia put up a wall was when it came to talking about her relationships, especially the bad ones. Camille had wondered if that was the case here too. Even though the subject seemed to bother Julia to the point of not wanted to say a single word about it, she never gave even the slightest impression that it was anything approaching life and death status.
    Camille cleared her throat and continued. “Julia isn’t a complainer, not about work or anything else. So when she started talking the way she did, I just got the sense that it was her way of telling me there was something else bothering her.”
    “So what was bothering her?”
    “She didn’t say. But we were supposed to have dinner this evening to…” Camille’s mouth started quivering and she had to stop.
    Detective Sullivan immediately stopped writing, slipped her notepad into her jacket pocket and put a hand on Camille’s shoulder. “We can stop for now. I know this is incredibly hard on you and there is still a lot to process. Trying to recall too much right now may even be counter-productive. With so much else on your mind, you might miss certain details of a conversation or an encounter that you otherwise wouldn’t. If you’d like, we can resume this after you’ve had some time.”
    Camille nodded and was about to communicate her thanks when a male voice stopped her.
    “Detective Sullivan.”
    Both Camille and the detective turned around to see a tall, stoutly built man in an ill-fitting shirt and loosened tie standing at the crest of the hill staring down at them.
    Detective Sullivan dropped her hand from Camille’s shoulder and used it to wave at the man. Her posture was decidedly more rigid now. “Detective Graham.”
    As he descended the hill toward them, Camille could see something of a subtle smirk peeking out from under a thick, gray goatee, though she hoped she was reading that wrong.
    “Is this the witness that Officer Davies was talking about?” he asked Sullivan without looking in Camille’s direction.
    “She’s not a witness. She was a close friend of the victim,” Sullivan corrected.
    “People who are closest to the victim often make the best witnesses,” Graham countered in a condescending tone. Then he turned to Camille. “Detective Walter Graham,” he said as he stuck out a catcher’s mitt of a hand.
    Camille tentatively took it. “Camille Grisham.”
    An instant gleam of recognition cut across Graham’s face that Camille didn’t like in the least. Such recognition meant he knew one of two things about her, neither of which she was ready to talk about.
    “Paul Grisham’s kid. I thought you looked familiar,” he said with an affected smile that was almost comical in its insincerity. “I worked with your old man for a long time. Hell of a cop. I always hoped we could partner up on the detective beat one day. But he was smart enough to take the early pension. I bet his golf game is out of this world by now.”
    “I