Blackbird (14 page)

There was nothing wrong with Andy Jamison’s alibi of being at the InfoMart in Dallas when his wife was murdered, except that it was an alibi. Other people said he was there, but so far there was nothing solider, like footage from
surveillance cameras or cellphones that had a clear shot of him. He was still the victim’s spouse, which meant he was at least a person of interest until something ruled him out absolutely. I tried to picture him swinging a framing hammer to drive bridge spikes through his wife’s wrists and heels, then walking away and leaving her to die in the freezing rain. I couldn’t get it to feel right, but I couldn’t make it go away either.

Bertie, her reading glasses threatening to slip off the end of her nose, stuck her head in the door and signalled for me to pick up the phone.

It was Benny, and I told him he was in harness.

‘This is happy news,’ he said. ‘How am I to be earning
mi avena
?’

‘I need to talk to you about Deborah Gold.’

‘Now, my friend, I am not so happy.’

‘It’s mainly for background right now, Benny. Whatever you know – personal, professional, gossip – anything could help.’

‘If we must, then I will be doing my best.’

He told me he was taking his wife Irena out for dinner and a movie this evening. I recommended Mexican food.

‘My personal favourite,’ I said.

‘
Ai!
’

They were headed out to Pier 27 for their famous All You Can Eat Catfish Nite.

We agreed to meet at his office the next day and I hung up picturing the two of them, like teenagers in love, their minds free of Roman horsemen and frozen heads, motoring out to the lake in his restored red and white ’67 Corvette.

FOURTEEN

Signing the last of the reports Bertie had brought me, I took Cass Ciganeiro’s call from the
Gazette
. She was an alpha wolf of a reporter with a reputation to live up to, one who never asked idle questions, and she was on the hunt. In spite of that, though – and not that I necessarily thought it would be a good idea to tell her so – I had always liked her, and trusted her as much as anybody in my job could trust a reporter. She was smart without abusing it, passably honest most of the time, and serious about doing her own job right. In return I think she trusted me as much as a reporter trusts anybody, at least partly because I tried never to stiff her if I could help it. This allowed me to tell her small temporary lies when I needed to, and get away with it about half the time. When she asked what was new, I told her there was next to nothing right now but she’d be the first call I made when I had anything.

She told me what to do to get her up on my monitor and me on hers, which to my surprise worked on the first try. When she was sure I could see her, she flipped me off, her usual fair warning that she was on the clock and we were on the record. She wore dark horn-rimmed glasses and a white, short-sleeved safari shirt, and still had that slightly
horsy, sexy-looking, sceptical face that the paper sometimes ran next to her byline. She seemed to have lost a few pounds and done something different with her hair, both of which made her look more scholarly. I adjusted my position to centre my face on the screen.

‘You’re not getting enough sleep,’ she said.

‘You could be right,’ I said. ‘But there’s something I need from you.’

‘Better be gentle with me, darlin’,’ she said. ‘I ain’t in much of a mood.’

‘Sure that’s what you really want?’

‘Ooh, a take-charge guy. That could be even better.’

‘First of all, do you have anything on Dr Gold I can use?’

‘Not much. She’s had a lot of low-grade skirmishes with various folks over the years, other shrinks and what-have-you. Business-wise, I hear she was a great rainmaker. She gave us a few interviews for the Sunday supplement, and you know about the criminal cases she testified in here and there. I think that was thinning out, though. Judges had a tendency not to call her after they had her in their court a time or two.’

‘What’s the story there?’

‘Just flat didn’t like her, for one thing, and didn’t trust her testimony. A few of ’em hate expert witnesses on principle, mostly the same ones you piss off – so take your pick. What’s your angle on the investigation? Revenge? A lynching?’

‘It’s too early for an angle.’

‘Cops always have angles.’

‘Not me, at least not yet.’

‘I’m writing this down: not a premature angulator. Anything else?’

‘Yeah, what about hate groups, militias, income tax rebels and people like that who’ve made news lately? I mean anything you’ve got that didn’t make it into print and we didn’t get a call on.’

‘You’re talking about a lot of mouse clicks. I’ll need some time, and you are most definitely gonna have to pay me back for this.’

Bertie held up three fingers as she dropped a fresh stack of reports, memos and requisition forms into the basket at the front of my desk.

‘Hi, Bertie,’ said Cass.

Bertie glanced at the monitor. ‘Hello, Ms Ciganeiro.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ I said to Cass. ‘As long as it’s no more than ten minutes.’

‘Fuck you.’

I punched line three. It was Casey, at the end of her rope: ‘Dad
deee
?’

‘Yeah, honey.’ I shifted in my chair, reaching for the papers Bertie had delivered and searching for a pen that still had ink in it.

‘It’s
Mom
,’ said Casey with a huge dramatic sigh. ‘You know how she gets – ’

I pictured those beautiful eyes rolling and thought about what it must feel like to know the universe can’t hurt you, and everybody but you is a practising idiot. Which, now that I thought about it, was uncomfortably close to the mirror image of my own way of looking at the world.

‘I think so,’ I said. I pawed through the top drawer of my desk until I found a Bic. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I’m absolutely at my wit’s
end
, Daddy.’ I heard her flounce into the swivel chair by the phone. ‘She’s just so
retro
! All I said was, like, I wanted to go to the Hat with Marlie and her brother this Friday, you know, for a Coke or something, and she’s like – ’

‘Call me?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘To ask if you can go to the Neon Hat.’

‘Just with Marlie, Dad. And her brother Jason.’

Marlie was Jana’s helper at Kiln-Roi, and Casey’s friend, a twenty-something who always had some kind of uproar going. The last I’d heard, she was divorced, and I happened to know she was an occasional customer of a pot dealer the area task force was watching. Jason was a blank, but I imagined jailhouse tattoos, a pony tail, maybe a tight black wife-beater with a white skull on the back.

‘Don’t they card?’ I said.

‘Oh, Dad.’

Okay, idiot question. ‘Did you say Friday night, hon?’

‘Yes, Dad, the day after Thursday.’

‘Well, hey, come to think of it that’s not such a bad idea. Some of the guys from the office are going to be there too. Maybe I’ll tag along.’

‘Uh.’

‘Hell, the more I think about it the better it sounds. We can all get one of those big tables over there by the dance floor. See and be seen.’

‘Well – ’

‘Friday’s karaoke night too, right?’

‘Uh, Dad – ’

‘Here’s my end of the deal: you and Danny do “Whiskey River”.’

‘
Dad –
’

‘Can Marlie and Jason sing?’

There was a silence. Finally Casey let out a huge breath and said, ‘The thing is, though, Dad, I’m not really that sure I should go. Steffie and Sara wanted to have a sleepover here, you know, with pizza and everything. Anyway, Marlie’s brother
is
kind of a freeze-frame when you get right down to it.’

‘You sure, Case?’

‘Um, yeah, I think so. In fact I’m positive. We can rent some movies and stuff.’

‘Is Mom okay with that?’

‘Yeah, she’s good. She was like, we’ll get some ice cream and Cokes to go with the pizza.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. We’ll miss you, sweetheart.’

‘You too, Dad – here, Mom wants to talk to you.’

Sounds of the phone changing hands.

‘Looks like I owe you one, officer,’ Jana said when Casey had moved out of earshot.

‘Happy to protect and serve.’

Hanging up, I caught sight of Mouncey and Ridout crossing the squad room toward me on their way from the parking garage, Mouncey carrying her usual can of Sprite. They’d gone out to talk to Andy Jamison and were probably here to debrief.

‘What have you got?’ I asked when they were in range.

‘Interview reports on your desk by a quarter to dark,’ Ridout said, stabbing a stick of Juicy Fruit into his mouth, ‘but I kinda like him for it. Guy with a perm’s gotta have a guilty involvement someway or other.’

‘Shee-ew,’ said Mouncey. ‘He nothing but a pussy. Want his woman killed, be hiring a bunch of college boys just like him to do it, wear they loafers without no socks. They fuck it right up and e’body go straight to jail.’ She dropped
into the chair in front of my desk and popped the top on her soda.

I looked from one to the other. ‘This is all you got?’ I asked.

‘Consensus so hard to find, troubled times like these,’ said Mouncey, sipping Sprite.

FIFTEEN

I noticed the intercom light on my phone blinking and punched the button. It was OZ, calling me to his office.

‘What’ve we got on Gold so far?’ he said as I took the chair in front of his desk.

I told him what we knew and what we didn’t, beginning with the forensics and ending with ‘glowen’ and the unexplained string of numbers, but leaving out my doodles.

OZ wrote the word – if that’s what it was – on his desk blotter with his gold pen, then had me repeat the digits, copied them under the letters, and added the underlinings and other marks as I read them off to him. He looked at the blotter. ‘Makes no damn sense to me,’ he said.

‘Me either,’ I said. ‘But we’re working on it.’

‘She had a husband, didn’t she? Old harness mule like me, I’d have to take a hard look at the fella just on principle. You giving odds?’

‘Not yet, but her dying was a windfall for him. She had control of his computer company. Now it’s all his again.’

OZ’s eyebrows went up a notch but he didn’t speak. He picked up his coffee and took a sip.

‘I had Mouncey and Ridout interview him,’ I said, ‘but
they came down on both sides of the fence, so I’m going to talk to him myself.’

OZ said, ‘Any other ideas?’

‘Too many,’ I said. ‘Somebody in the family, another psychologist, some anti-Semitic cult, a former patient, skinheads, survivalists, even the KKK. I’m working on whittling it down.’

With a distracted nod he set his cup down, saying, ‘Heard from Dwight Hazen again this morning.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Talked like he had Karo for spit and never said anything you could really hang your hat on, but if I didn’t misunderstand the sumbitch altogether he was saying if we don’t get this Gold thing cleared toot-sweet, balls are gonna roll.’

He didn’t waste any of our time explaining whose balls we were talking about. Not even Hazen had enough leverage to take OZ on directly, but I was another matter. It wasn’t news that politicians, who liked to talk about making arrests, had a lot less to say about making sure you had the right guy.

‘The elections are a year off,’ I said. ‘Could he be thinking that far ahead?’

‘When’s a politico not countin’ votes?’

‘So all he wants is somebody tagged for it,’ I said pointlessly.

OZ nodded without comment.

I said, ‘Did he have anybody in mind?’

‘Not that he told me about.’

We thought about this for a minute.

‘You suggesting I do it his way, OZ?’ I said. ‘Round up a fall guy?’

‘Nope. You offering?’

‘No.’

‘How long’d you box anyway?’

It took me a second to change gears. ‘Couple of years in school, then semi-pro for a while.’

‘What division?’

‘Light-heavy my last year.’

‘Ever lose a fight?’

‘One, on a cut. Fourth round, against a guy called Hammerhead Jones. He butted me, but the ref didn’t see it.’

‘Ever get paid for a fight?’

‘Not much.’

‘Let me see your hands. Both sides.’

I held my hands out palm up, then turned them over.

‘Bunged up pretty good, especially that right one – looks like a sack fulla hickory nuts,’ he said. ‘How long you in a cast after that graveyard deal – five, six weeks?’

‘Yeah, about that, why?’

‘Would you’ve killed that fella?’

I saw again the naked bodies of Kim and her mother on the shore of Fox Lake. Saw Bo’s brains spattered against dark green oak leaves a year later.

And saw the truth, like it or not.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Probably so.’

Another nod from OZ. ‘One of the boys that pulled you off told me they meant to let you finish it, but a couple of ’em couldn’t take it, watchin’ what you done to him.’

I didn’t respond.

He glanced through the glass panel beside his office door. ‘Well, would you look here,’ he said, his expression brightening. ‘Must be some new rookies comin’ in.’

I turned around and saw Casey and Jordan walking our
way across the squad room, plastic visitor IDs dangling from their necks.

‘Ain’t you ladies supposed to be in school?’ OZ said as they came in.

‘Hi, Mr Royal,’ Casey said, getting her phone out. ‘It’s teachers’ workday.’ She took a picture of me and one of OZ, then turned and got a couple of shots of the squad room.

‘What’s up, guys?’ I said.

‘I’ve got something to report,’ Casey said, grabbing quick shots of OZ’s desktop and the pictures on his wall. ‘But I get an A in Social Studies if I give a presentation.’ She gave me a too-bright smile. ‘You’re it.’

‘I’m your show-and-tell?’

‘Perfect,’ she said, snapping another shot of me, then holding the phone in front of my face to catch my response. ‘Tell us, Lieutenant, how long does it take to learn to detect information that way?’