Cop Town (35 page)

They should all consult with Dr. Philip Van Zandt. He was more of a Masters and Johnson man. Which was why Kate was smiling when the elevator doors opened.

And then her smile dropped.

Maggie Lawson stood in front of her. She had obviously been crying. There was a cut underneath her eye. Bruises ringed her neck. She said nothing, but there was such an air of desperation about her that Kate could almost chew it with her teeth.

Kate asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Jimmy’s gone.” She blurted out the words like she’d been holding them in for a long while. “He’s missing.”

“Missing?” Kate stepped off the elevator. Mr. Schueneman, the night doorman, eyed her with great disapproval. She wondered how long Maggie had been waiting. She worried that she looked as obvious as she felt. And now she was worried about Jimmy.

Kate said, “Tell me what happened.”

Maggie took a deep breath before answering. “I got home last night. Jimmy wasn’t in his room. His car wasn’t outside. He wasn’t at the station. He’s not on duty. None of his friends know where he is. Don’s girlfriend hasn’t heard from him since Monday. He’s not at his usual bar. We can’t find him. We’ve looked everywhere.”

Kate tried to focus her weary mind. There was something practiced about Maggie’s tone, as if she was reciting a prepared speech. “We?”

“Terry. Me. We split up.” She kept looking away, not meeting Kate’s eye. “The other guys are looking for him, too. Terry put out a BOLO on him. That’s—”

“Be on the lookout,” Kate said. “Has Jimmy disappeared before?”

“Never.”

“He didn’t call or leave a note?”

“No.” She looked over Kate’s shoulder. “He didn’t leave anything.”

Kate tried to put together her thoughts. Part of her was still asleep in Philip’s bed. “Are you sure he hasn’t gone off with someone?”

Maggie shook her head. “There’s nobody.”

Kate wondered if this was true. If Jimmy Lawson had a man in his life, his family would be the last to know.

Unless there was another reason.

Kate felt her brain finally wake up. “The Shooter.”

Maggie looked at her now. There was real fear in her eyes. This must be what she was worried about. Not that her brother had run off, but that someone had murdered him and they hadn’t yet found the body.

Kate said, “We’ll find him, okay? I’m sure he’s fine.” She took Maggie by the arm and led her toward the bank of elevators behind the front desk. “I just need to change, all right? But I’ll make you some coffee and we can talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Maggie followed her onto the elevator. “We just need to find the Shooter. We have to stop him.”

Find the Shooter, not find her brother. She was all over the place.

The doors closed. Kate studied Maggie in the mirrors. She looked awful. Her hair was a mess. Her lipstick had faded. Her uniform was
clean, but it was wrinkled, like she’d pulled it from the bottom of her closet.

Maggie said, “I’ve already checked the Golden Lady. That’s the—”

“Strip club where the four previous victims ate their last meals.” The bell dinged again. Kate got off the elevator. “What did they say?”

“They haven’t seen Jimmy.”

They were back to Jimmy again. Maggie didn’t know whom she wanted to find. “Did you ask about the victims?” Kate turned when she didn’t answer. Maggie was standing in the middle of the hall. Her hand was resting on the chair molding. “Maggie?”

“What?”

“The other victims. Ballard, Johnson, Keen, and Porter. Did you ask about them at the strip club?”

“Yes.” Maggie pushed away from the wall. She was like a toy car. The only way she could move was if Kate wound her up with a question. “The club manager keeps a running tab so the boss knows who got comped. All four of the victims were there the nights they died. Everyone had the same meal: hamburgers and fries. Those are the only foods on the menu.”

“That matches what the medical examiner found in their stomachs.” Kate slid her key into the lock. “The club manager was certain that Jimmy and Don didn’t go there the night that Don was murdered?”

Maggie had stopped listening again. She was visibly lost in her own thoughts. Her eyes tracked back and forth. The poor lighting in the hallway darkened the bruises around her neck.

Kate opened the door. “Come in.”

Maggie didn’t go in. She was too distracted by the décor. Having seen Maggie’s house, Kate could understand.

What she could not understand was the strange smell of cigarettes. No one had ever smoked in Kate’s room.

Maggie asked, “Should I take off my shoes?”

“Of course not.” Kate ignored the smell, which was probably coming from the girl next door. She told Maggie, “Make yourself at home.”

Maggie sounded suspicious. “How long have you lived here?”

“A year, maybe.” She indicated the overstuffed chair by the window. “Have a seat.”

Maggie stayed where she was. “Did your father help you get it?”

Kate told the first lie that came to mind. “My husband had an insurance policy.” She glanced at the photo of Patrick on her nightstand. And then she did a double take.

Patrick’s dog tags were missing.

They had been there when she’d left last night. Kate could clearly remember looking at the dog tags before closing the door. She leaned over to check behind the nightstand. The space was too narrow to see anything. She wanted to search under the bed, but Maggie already had reason enough to think that Kate was imprudent without seeing her crawl around on the floor in a dress. And no underwear.

Maggie asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Kate rubbed her arms to warm herself. The curtains were open. Kate could’ve sworn she drew them before she left last night. She got the same chill she’d experienced on her parents’ front porch: that now familiar, unsettling sensation that someone was watching her.

“Kate?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Kate changed the subject before the current one got away from her. “I was just thinking: If the Shooter had done something to Jimmy, we would know by now. You said it yourself: his M.O. is always the same. He kills them when they’re on duty. He makes them call in a meal break before their radios are unplugged. He knows that someone will eventually go looking for them. And by virtue of protocol, the first place to look is evident—the last ten-twenty they gave dispatch.”

“That’s not how it happened with Sir Chic.”

“Are you certain that Chic was killed by the Shooter?”

“Why else would he be killed?”

Kate could think of a lot of reasons, not least of all because he was a pimp. Still, she picked up from Maggie’s line of reasoning. “We can’t be
the only ones who figured out one of Chic’s girls saw something. Obviously, someone got to the Portuguese house before we did. Or after, since there was plenty of time for him to set up across the street. So, maybe he was following us.” Kate dropped that theory. She didn’t want to think about anyone following her. “Either way, the Shooter was certainly watching Chic when we were all upstairs in the front room. Remember how it happened? Chic held up the transmitter. Gail stuck her gun in his face. Chic was about to talk. You know he was. And the Shooter knew it, too. The transmitter was proof that a witness was there. All that was left was for Chic to tell us what she saw.”

“Jimmy’s transmitter.” Maggie had clearly forgotten all about it.

“You know, now that I think about it, what Chic said was strange.” Kate quoted the pimp’s words as best she could recall. “ ‘The dude my gal saw looked nothing like the brother that’s on the news.’ ”

Maggie didn’t offer an opinion. Her face was pale. Sweat dotted her forehead.

Kate opened the window a crack. Cold air whistled in. “Chic must have been referring to the police sketch Jimmy made. It’s been all over the news. It was on the front page of the evening edition. I don’t know the slang, obviously, but it seems to me that a brother is a black man. So, what is a dude? Is that a white man?”

Maggie rested her hand on the chest of drawers. She looked shaky. “It depends on who you’re talking to.”

Kate tried to walk her through it. “You told me that Gail said that white people kill white people and black people kill black people, so …”

Maggie waited.

“What do you remember from yesterday? I mean after I passed out.”

Maggie shrugged. “I remember everything.”

“Clearly? As in, what everyone looked like?” Kate crossed her arms. Thanks to the open window, now she really was cold. “Because I’ve been thinking—for the life of me, I couldn’t describe the Portuguese lady. We spoke to her for several minutes. We were in her house. But if you asked me to describe her features to you, I wouldn’t be able to.”

Maggie shrugged again. “And?”

“And if I had seen her at night and she came around the corner with a gun, there’s no way I could describe her face. So, maybe Jimmy—”

“That’s you, Kate. You’ve been on the job two seconds. You don’t know how to pay attention to things. You ran into a brick wall, for chrissakes.”

Kate replayed the words in her head. It wasn’t what Maggie had said, which was absolutely true, it was
how
she’d said it. There was none of her usual irritation. She sounded defensive. And despite the cold air, she was still sweating.

“You’re right,” Kate relented. “Maybe I need some coffee to wake me up.” She took the carafe and walked into the bathroom. She turned on the tap. And she tried to shake the feeling that she was missing something very important.

She raised her voice so Maggie could hear her over the running water. “Jimmy has been through several traumatic situations in the last few days. He saw Don murdered. He was shot in the arm. Surely he was upset by what happened to you. Maybe he just needs some time alone? To collect his thoughts?”

There was no answer at first. Kate started to repeat the question, but Maggie said, “That’s not what Jimmy does.”

The carafe was full. Kate returned to the bedroom. “Is there a secret person he might be seeing?”

Maggie studied Kate carefully. “A secret person?”

Kate made herself busy with the Mr. Coffee. “I never had a brother, but all my girlfriends who do say they’re very secretive, especially when it comes to their love lives.”

“Did he hit on you in the car?”

“Jimmy?” The question was strange. Kate wasn’t sure how to answer it. “I think he was just breaking in the new girl. Isn’t that why Terry assigned me to him in the first place?”

“But he flirted with you?”

“Yes.” Kate turned on the machine. “Of course. I flirted back. He’s very charming when he wants to be.”

Maggie’s expression had gone blank. Before, she hadn’t been able to meet Kate’s eye, but now she seemed incapable of looking away.

Kate said, “Let’s work the case, all right? We’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. We were looking for information that leads to the Shooter. Let’s do the same thing today.”

Maggie’s head slowly began to nod. “We can’t find Jimmy, but if we find the Shooter, then we’ll know for certain about Jimmy.”

Kate was relieved she was making some sort of sense. “Is there something else bothering you?”

“What else would be bothering me?” Maggie went on the defensive again. “Do you have a problem with what I did to Anthony?”

“Absolutely not. You acted in self-defense. You saved us. All of us.” Kate had to stop so she could swallow down the emotions that wanted to come. She was standing in that phone booth at the Texaco again, overwhelmed with the need to apologize. “If anything, I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed Gail. I should’ve been more alert. I should’ve been able to help you when all hell broke loose.”

Maggie looked at the coffeemaker. “I should’ve checked the building across the street.”

“You did,” Kate insisted. “I saw you do it when we walked into Chic’s room. Both you and Gail looked at everything, including the building.”

Maggie obviously didn’t believe her.

“You told me the first day that you learn how to be a cop by watching other cops. I was watching you and Gail. You both looked at everything.”

Maggie obviously wasn’t going to be persuaded. She bought herself some composure by picking a piece of lint off her uniform. “The boss told us we could have a couple of days off.”

“So?” Kate was standing right by Maggie when Cal Vick told them as much. “You’re not taking off. I imagine Gail would be at roll call this morning if they’d let her out of the hospital.”

Maggie smiled, before she caught herself.

“All right.” The coffeemaker was finished. Kate poured two cups as she spoke. “The plan is to figure out the Shooter’s identity, right? I think that we should go back and talk to the Portuguese lady.”

“Why?”

“We can assume that the Shooter believed Chic was the witness, but there’s somebody else in that house who probably knows the whole story.”

Maggie seemed at a loss.

“Didn’t you get the feeling that the Portuguese lady is the type of busybody who sticks her nose into everybody’s business?”

“We’re acting on feelings now?” Maggie shook her head. “I can guarantee that woman has been interviewed and deposed by every piece of brass on the force by now. That’s how it goes when bad shit goes down. There’s probably enough paperwork by now to wallpaper this hotel.”

Kate put the carafe back on the burner. “You told me yesterday that people lie.”

“They do.”

“Then maybe the Portuguese lady lied to the police yesterday.” She tried to make it into a story. “Look at it this way: Something bad happened to one of Chic’s girls. She saw a cop murdered. She got scared. Where do you think she went first?” Kate answered her own question. “She went to her boss and she woke him up and she gave him that transmitter. And who let her through the front door at that time of night? Who unlocked the four locks and drew back the chain?”

“All right,” Maggie finally relented. “It’s a long shot, but that’s all we’ve got left.”

“Give me a minute to rinse off and change.” Kate collected a fresh set of undergarments. She felt a flash of guilt when she opened her closet door to retrieve her uniform. The rod bowed from all her dresses. Her shoes were boxed two high and three deep and spanned the width of the closet floor.