Suspects (15 page)

LeBeau certainly knew. He was a homeowner who did his own repairs if possible. “Maybe Donna was a good housekeeper.”

Moody shrugged. “Well, it's a thought.” The DNA tests, sent out to a private lab, would not come back for weeks. If they needed to wait that long for an arrest, they would be in trouble.

LeBeau resumed his search and finally, going again to the wide middle drawer that he had already ransacked, resorted to a pair of narrow-lensed generic spectacles kept for such emergencies. These were much stronger than Dennis' prescription eyeglasses, and he blinked when he first looked through them.

He read through the report and asked, looking up over his miniature specs, “Who can we put in the house?” He peered at Moody in a personal way. “Did you get any sleep at all?” He stood up.

“Sure I did.”

“You went to Walsh's?”

“Had a nightcap and went right home. Little Daisy turned up there, Daisy O'Connor, eating dinner with a bunch. We had a nice talk.” As he rose from his chair he felt whether his weapon was clipped at the left side of his belt. He often removed it and stowed it in the bottom desk drawer when he was doing sit-down work, because however he adjusted its position on his belt it proved uncomfortable. Such a practice defied a regulation that was instituted in the early 1970s, a few years before Moody's career began, to the effect that all police officers must be armed at all times, a militant-radical group composed of black male criminals and white girls from wealthy families having invaded a precinct station on the South Side and wounded two desk cops with a spray of automatic-weapon fire. But that had happened so long ago that the regulation was nowadays ignored by many. LeBeau usually wore a shoulder holster with an elaborate harness, of which, however, nothing was visible unless he took off his suit jacket, which seldom happened except on the very hottest days, when the window air conditioners failed.

Dennis had strode ahead, and Moody had just begun to follow him when the phone rang.

“Are you the detective wanted to speak to me? I'm Paul Bissonette.”

“Hold on,” said Moody, then covered the mouthpiece with his hand while he shouted at LeBeau's back. But Dennis did not hear him and kept going. Moody moved his hand. “I believe Detective LeBeau talked to you yesterday morning, Mr. Bissonette. I was surprised when you left town later on.”

“Wasn't I supposed to?”

“Let me ask you something, sir: where are you calling from?”

“I'm in Miami.”

“Miami, Florida?”

“For a regional meeting.”

“That's your firm? Lawrence Howland, was he supposed to go to this meeting?”

“No,” said Bissonette. “Not Larry. This is on the managerial level.” He had the kind of matter-of-fact voice that Moody once would have believed unlikely for a homosexual to produce, but it had got so in recent years that you were sure only that a man who spoke effeminately was almost certain to be straight.

“Would you call Larry Howland a friend of yours?”

“He works for me. I don't see him socially.”

“You don't have him out to your house?”

“Not for dinner or anything. He may have brought me some papers when I was sick. But I don't remember even that. I think that was Reynolds.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bob Reynolds, somebody else on my staff.” Bissonette was silent for a moment. “No…”

“Did you ever meet his wife?”

“Aw, God,” Bissonette moaned. “What a terrible thing! And the little girl, too…. I can't remember ever meeting his wife. I don't fraternize much with my people, and we don't have office picnics or whatnot. The national office discourages that sort of thing. We feel we make up for it with nice bonuses for anybody who produces.”

“How is Howland at his work? It's sales, right?”

“About average. Maybe a little under.”

“He wouldn't know
your
family?”

“I've just got a wife,” Bissonette said. “Unless you mean my parents, who are both alive, and I've got an older brother, and a sister—”

“I meant your wife,” said Moody, who saw Daisy O'Connor enter the room and waved at her.

“Now, there again I'd say not likely. She rarely comes to the office.”

“Uh-huh. Listen, Mr. Bissonette, we'll want to take a look at Howland's files, his business papers, if they're at your office. Would you mind letting your people know, giving them a call?”

Bissonette's voice acquired a stubborn note. “It's not my decision to make, Detective. It's head-office policy to keep all files confidential.”

“This is a criminal investigation, Mr. Bissonette. We can get a court order for anything we need.”

“I'd lose my job if I handed over the files just like that.”

“Worse can happen if you defy the law,” said Moody.

“I didn't say I would disobey the
law
. What I said was I could not grant your
request
. Of course I'll obey a search warrant.”

Moody was annoyed with this man. He asked harshly, “When you coming back here?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Give me your number.”

Bissonette did so and named a hotel Moody had never heard of, but neither had he ever been to Florida, which deficiency he knew he should do something to correct, because sometimes he talked of retiring there, far from the winters he could hardly bear nowadays.

Daisy O'Connor had stopped to read the notices and orders on the bulletin board outside the captain's office. She came to Moody now that he had hung up.

She was one of the few officers, male or female, who looked like the attractive figures on the recruiting poster the department had circulated through the public-school system in recent years, which had in fact been the work of an ad agency, using professional models: two whites, male and female, and a black man and a black woman.

“Listen, Nick,” Daisy said and paused while Phil Meader, another detective, passed nearby, leering at her. “I just stopped by to say I was out of line last night. I apologize.”

“Did I run into you someplace last night? I thought I went straight home from work?”

“Sure,” Daisy said, reaching out as if to pat his shoulder but instead hesitandy plucked at her own regulation gold tie clasp that held the uniform navy-blue tie against the shirt of the same hue. “Well, anyway, Mom wants to have you over for dinner, sometime soon. She'll be in touch. Okay?”

Moody was moved. “That will be nice, real nice.”

“Okay,” Daisy said, with a radiant smile. “Okay, Nick.” She turned and walked out in the spit-and-polish way the uniform brought with it for the right person, her navy-blue cap foursquare atop the short blond hair.

“You took your own sweet time,” LeBeau chided when Moody finally reached the car and climbed in on the right.

“You found them? What'd you do, leave them here?” He meant Dennis' proper, full-sized, gold-rimmed glasses, which his partner was wearing while consulting his notebook.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Daisy O'Connor showed up. Didn't you pass her?” He then told LeBeau about Bissonette's phone call.

When they reached the eleven hundred block on Laurel, Dennis was careful to park the car in a place where old Mary Jane Jones would not see it unless she came out to the curb and scanned the length of the street, but the effort would be futile if she looked out the window while the two of them were striding along the pavement. Moody wondered whether the extra walk was worth it.

Everybody living on both sides of the street all the way to the corners had already been questioned by either of them or, in the case of the more remote neighbors, by some of the several additional detectives assigned by the captain for this purpose. The Kellers, the old couple who lived to the immediate west of the Howland residence, had in interviews with the detectives denied seeing or hearing anything untoward next door during the probable time of the murders, but could not resist the blandishments of the media since letting the latter onto their property when Lawrence Howland was taken downtown.

“Crys says they were saying all kinds of stuff to Binnie Baines.”

“Channel Five?”

“That tall one with the hair and big lips. I slept through it. I was out when I hit the pillow.”

“What kinda stuff?”

“Crys says they claimed they heard funny sounds and looked out and saw a car leaving.”

Moody groaned. “This is the crap I won't miss when I retire. So we'll ask them about it now, and it won't turn out to be anything at all: you can make book on it.”

He looked over at the Howland place as they went up the walk to the Kellers'. The patrolman on duty inside was probably sitting before the TV set.

LeBeau's finger was steering toward the doorbell button when the door opened as if by itself and the large blob of Mr. Keller appeared behind the screen.

“I'm way ahead of you,” he said heartily. “Knew it was only a matter of time you'd be back.” He swung the screen door open. “Your name begins with a B. I recall that, and you”—he meant Moody—“you're Detective, uh, uh…”

“Mr. Keller,” Moody asked, “have you still got that card I gave you first time we talked?”

By way of answer, Keller lumbered to the mantelpiece over a hearth on which stood a tall vase filled with multicolored paper flowers. He brought back the little white rectangle.

“That looks like it,” said Moody.

“This
is
it, sir,” Keller said smugly.

“Then how come you never called me when you remembered some new information, like I asked?”

Keller was staring at the card as if its legend were written in a foreign language. He had a thick head of coarse gray hair for a man in his early sixties. He said, “Your name's Moody.”

“Yes, sir. Why didn't you give me a call?”

Keller included LeBeau as, looking from one to the other, he said, “I swear I told you every single thing I know, if you mean what happened next door.”

LeBeau was flipping through his notebook. He looked up. “Why didn't you tell us what you told Binnie Baines on Channel Five last night?”

“What did I say to her?”

“Now, Mr. Keller,” Moody said, not unkindly, “don't ask me to put words in your mouth.”

Keller lowered his heavy head in deliberation. “I'm trying to recall. You know, they put that on tape yesterday morning. It wasn't anywhere near the time of the broadcast. And in fact, I never talked to Binnie herself. I don't know if you noticed, we're never shown in the same picture. The questions were asked by some little guy. But when they put it on the air, they show Binnie asking, and then me or my wife doing the answering. I guess they can do that on TV.”

All three men were still standing just inside the door, which here meant at the edge of the living room. The Keller house was a gabled two-story, older than the Howlands'.

“Okay,” LeBeau said impatiently. “It doesn't have to be word for word, but didn't you tell her you noticed something about three
P
.
M
. the day of the murders?”

Keller shook his head, while displaying a long-lipped moue.

“Something about a vehicle?”

Keller nodded but answered in the negative form. “No, nothing except what I told you fellows.”

“You told us you didn't see or hear anything,” Moody said sharply.

“Well, I mentioned that, uh, truck, didn't I?”

“Truck?” Moody raised his voice. “There was a truck there?”

Keller groped for the word. “Not a truck, but a—you know, one of those closed things, kinda high and so on.”

“Van?” asked LeBeau. “A van?”

Keller threw out an index finger. “I guess.”

“Where was the van?” Moody asked. “Parked there?”

“In the street.” Keller was not being cute. He was simply one of the many people from whom it took a strenuous effort to elicit any information at all, and when you got it, it was usually inconsequential.

“Driving by? Did you see the driver?”

“See,” Keller said, “my trouble's I don't really know what you mean by a van. It wasn't a car. It was what I would call a panel truck, I guess.”

“Was it special in any way? Anything about it you can recall? Sign or anything?”

“I didn't think you would care about the traffic that went by.”

“Why'd you mention the panel truck?” asked LeBeau.

Keller sighed as if in relief. “Because it was backing out of the driveway next door.”

Concealing his exasperation, Moody asked, “The driveway of eleven forty-three? The Howlands' driveway?”

“That's correct.” Keller frowned. “It could have been just turning around, though, you know?”

“Did you recognize the driver?”

“I didn't see much of him. When I looked was just when he was almost finished swinging around to drive that way.” Keller thrust a pointed hand eastward.

“How'd you happen to be looking out at that moment?” LeBeau asked. “You heard something next door?”

Keller grinned sheepishly. “This little TV guy—not Binnie—kept after us about didn't we hear anything and finally I said, well, maybe, and he said, better make it definite one way or the other, so I—”

“You didn't hear anything suspicious, did you, Mr. Keller?” asked Moody.

“No. I was just looking out because I do that now and again for no reason. I'm not nosy: I just like to see what's going on if any. You know, I worked five days a week for forty years. It's not easy to fill the time nowadays, so I'll look out on occasion and see what's going on outside.”

A stocky little white-haired, eyeglassed woman entered the room from the archway centrally located in the west wall and minced to her husband's side. She vaguely resembled a relative of Moody's when he was a boy, except Aunt Patsy would not have been caught dead in pea-green pants.