Tradition of Deceit (11 page)

“No. The kids do the actual filing. It's unlikely they'd remember anything, and I'm not asking them. I do not want them involved, even a little bit. They got their whole careers ahead of them.”

And Fritz Klinefelter believed that meddling in this investigation—even something so mild as trying to remember who Officer Rick Almirez had written up recently, and why—might end those careers before they even entered the recruit academy.

“Watch yourself, McKenna,” Klinefelter said grimly. “We already got one dead cop.”

Jesus, Rick,
Roelke thought as he drove west from Milwaukee.
What the hell did you stumble into? And why didn't you tell me about it?

They'd had opportunities to talk. Roelke often spent the night at
Rick's apartment after band practice. They'd wasted the usual
amount of time grumbling about work stuff—repeat-offender drunks, cranky sergeants, a change in the overtime policy. Rick had not hinted at anything more dire. Maybe he was trying to protect his friends, Roelke thought. Maybe he'd sniffed out something dangerous, and he didn't want me or Dobry anywhere close to it.

But Rick hadn't said he was about to ask Jody to marry him, either. Roelke remembered Dobry's disappointment when he heard that news:
He decided to pop the question, and he didn't tell us about it?

By the time Roelke left the interstate, his head hurt. His eyes were gritty. His nerves felt pan-fried and crispy. All he wanted to do was go home, take a hot shower, and hit the sack. But as he neared Eagle, it occurred to him that he hadn't heard from Banik or Bliss since he'd asked each to keep him posted. Could be that a message was waiting at work.

Roelke drove to the EPD. The squad car was gone, thank God. He wasn't up to chit-chat. Inside, he found two message slips in his mailbox. The first:
Libby called. Urgent. Trouble with J.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered. He did not have time or energy to deal with new problems. But …
Trouble with J
. The hard times Libby and her two kids faced after an ugly divorce were the reason he'd left the Milwaukee PD in the first place. Justin was a great kid who had a lot of problems, all—in Roelke's opinion—stemming from the fact that his father was an asshole.

Roelke called his cousin. She answered on the first ring. “Roel­ke? I know what happened. Are you okay?”

“I'm holding it together.”

“Come over for supper.”

“Can't. What's going on with Justin?”

Libby exhaled audibly. “He's got a huge social studies project about ethnic heritage to do. Dan promised to take him to the Milwaukee Public Museum tomorrow after school, but he canceled. Justin is hurt and angry and taking it all out on me and his little sister.”

“Put him on. I'll talk to him.”

“What I really need is for you to take him through the exhibits at the museum.”

“Libby, I
can't
.”

“Why not? Chloe said you were spending most of your time in Milwaukee.”

“You talked to Chloe?” Roelke tried to figure out why that bothered him.

“She's going back to Minneapolis, by the way.”

He didn't have to figure out why
that
bothered him. Holy toboggans, what the hell was
wrong
with him? His best friend was dead and he'd just sent his girlfriend packing.

“So, will you take Justin through the museum? Just the history part.”

“I'm not the best person to spend time with Justin right now.” His voice was husky.

“Justin needs guy time. He needs
you
. Look, we can meet you there. Just give him an hour, okay? I wouldn't ask if I didn't really need your help.”

“I know you wouldn't.” He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

After finalizing logistics Roelke hung up and looked at the second message slip.
Dobry Banik called. No message.
Dobry probably wanted to be sure that Roelke knew about the gun coming from Evidence. Well, he'd touch base with Dobry tomorrow.

Roelke rubbed his forehead. After what he'd learned from Fritz, he'd also warn his friends to watch their backs. I need to take better precautions myself, he thought. He'd spent the past couple of days in jeans and flannel shirts. Time to add his bullet-resistant vest.

He opened his locker. The photograph of Erin Litkowski, the woman who'd gone into hiding to avoid her whacko-brute husband, caught his attention again. Something niggled at the edge of his mind. He frowned, struggling to grasp it. Then he snatched the photo.

For the first time, Erin reminded him of somebody else. He flipped through a carousel of mental images. It wasn't that long ago that he'd seen
someone
who
…

Knowledge came like a punch to the gut. This morning, at Kip's, two waitresses had been getting ready for first shift. One had looked familiar. She had short, straw-colored hair, not the red curls in the photo. But the face—the face was older, but the same. He was sure of it.

Erin Litkowski was back in Milwaukee. Erin Litkowski was working for Kip at the Bar.

Thirteen

On Tuesday morning Roelke
drove back to Milwaukee, still
brooding. Erin was back in the city. He'd spent much of the night trying to make sense of that, and his brain felt ready to explode. Erin had gone to some lengths to disguise her appearance and identity, and Kip had referred to his employees as Danielle and Joanie. If Erin didn't feel safe in Milwaukee, why would she return? Roelke had contact information for Erin's sister, but he didn't want to call her—at least not until he talked to Erin and found out what was going on.

I really need a place to stay in Milwaukee, he thought, as he tried to slide a Styrofoam cup of bitter gas station coffee into the little plastic cup holder without sloshing it. Maybe he could crash on Dobry's sofa tonight. But … no. How would Tina Banik react to a silent and angry houseguest? Plus, Dobry was working graveyard shift. Too awkward.

Roelke rolled his shoulders, trying to ease aching muscles. He'd managed to catch Dobry on the phone the night before, right before his friend left for his shift. “They know where the gun that killed Rick came from,” Dobry had muttered. “And it's bad, Roelke.”

“I know. I ran into Bliss at Jody's place, and she told me. Hear anything else?”

“No.”

“Dobry, you knew more about Rick's calls and stuff than anybody. Can you think of
anything
Rick saw or did that might have threatened another cop? Drugs, anything like that?”

“I have been racking my brains ever since Rick got shot, and I've—got—
nothing
. I can't think of a single damn thing that would make somebody want to … do this.”

“Yeah,” Roelke said grimly. “Me either. Does the name Erin Litkowski mean anything to you?”

“Um … don't think so. Should it?”

“No reason it would. It was someone I met briefly years ago. Listen, watch your back, okay? And tell Bliss that.”

“You, too. You going to keep poking around?”

“I don't know,” Roelke had said, tasting something acidic in his mouth as he lied to his friend. But there was a bad cop in the district. The less said, the better.

It was too early to visit the Bar, so he stopped first at the district station and managed to catch Olivette in the parking lot. “Hey, Olivette, I was wondering if you'd had a chance to—”

“Oh, Roelke,
hon
,” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. While he tried to interpret this unprecedented affection she whispered, “Don't come around here again. Captain Heikinen called me at home this morning and wanted to know what we'd been talking about.”

Roelke's bones grew cold. “What did you tell him?”

“That you were all torn up and it helped to trade stories with an old friend.” Olivette stepped back again, but hung on to both of Roelke's hands, as if offering moral support. “Look, it may not mean anything. He chewed out a couple of rookies yesterday during second shift roll call—had them quivering like jelly. I'm sure he's getting screamed at by the chief. I'm sure he's furious that he doesn't know who killed one of Milwaukee's finest Saturday morning. Still …”

“Still, I need to stay off his radar,” Roelke finished. “Thanks, Olivette. We're done.”

“
I'm
not done,” she said indignantly. She rattled off a string of numbers
.
“Got that?”

Roelke mentally repeated the call box ID numbers several times, imprinting them on his brain. “You're a peach, Olivette. Thanks.”

“You take care.” For an astonishing moment she looked misty-eyed. She turned abruptly and marched toward the building.

Roelke drove to a coffee shop in the next district, where he was unlikely to be recognized by anyone. The menu offered nothing more nutritious than homemade kringle, croissants, and other pastries—Chloe would love this place, he couldn't help thinking—but their coffee was perfectly brewed. He slid into a corner booth and flipped his cup over for the waitress:
Fill 'er up and keep it coming.
Once settled with a single plain doughnut and a steaming mug, he whipped out his index cards.

He wrote
Captain Heikinen
on one card, and
Questioned Olivette re: her conversations with me
on the line below. What the hell was that all about? Captain Heikinen, like Sergeant Malloy, was an old-school copper with no tolerance for whiny rookies or crooks. They expected their guys to handle themselves on the street but not think too much about decisions being made by their superiors. When Roelke worked at the district, he'd never done anything good enough or bad enough to get called to Heikinen's office.

Finally Roelke wrote,
Heikinen involved in the sweep of Rick's FI cards downtown?

On another blank card he wrote down the mark numbers Olivette had supplied. The location of each call box in the beat was still branded in his brain, and he compared them with what he'd learned about Rick's shift. There were two kinds of calls: Rick's marks, when he'd called
in
to the station from a known location; and the outgoing calls, when someone in the Communications room at the station had called
out
to send him to a known location.

Roelke used a red pen to follow Rick's route on his neighborhood map, noting the times for each. He traced the routes with his finger, picturing Rick patrolling the familiar streets in a logical pattern, interrupted whenever he was sent to respond to some problem.

There was nothing in the data he had to account for Rick's time between his call to Jody and his two a.m. sighting at the Rusty Nail. But just a few blocks away from the call box he'd used at one a.m., in the next district but easily accessible, was Kip's place. The Bar.

Rick Almirez, you son of a bitch
, Roelke thought.

A week ago, Roelke would have sworn on all that was holy that if Rick learned that Erin Litkowski was back in Milwaukee, he would have been on the phone to Roelke, his best friend and former partner, about five seconds later. Now? Roelke wasn't ready to swear a damn thing.

Chloe was so worried about Ariel that she actually hit the highway before dawn. I should never have left the Cities, she thought, as she tried to slide a Styrofoam cup of bitter gas station coffee into the little plastic cup holder without sloshing it. She felt as gray at the morning sky. She'd spent a restless night trying to guess why the police would arrest Ariel, and imagining the petite ballerina sharing a cell with street-hardened druggies or hookers.

Chloe wanted desperately to talk with Roelke about this police stuff. Just sharing what she knew would have helped. Having him come along would have helped a whole lot more.

He's doing what he needs to do right now, she reminded herself. She thought of Rick's words, and her heart began to ache.
Don't give up on that guy.

“I won't,” she promised Rick. “But do me a favor, okay? Don't let him give up on me.”

Roelke found Sherman huddled on the sidewalk near a heating grate, his breath frosting white in the air. “Once the sun comes up I can't lie on the grate anymore,” he said. “They make me sit up.”

Cops, Sherman meant. Roelke had listened to many good people explaining why having homeless people lying on their walkways was bad for business. He also knew that people like Sherman didn't have a whole lot of options if they wanted to survive a Milwaukee winter.

“Okay, Sherman,” he said. “Let's get you a hot breakfast.”

Back at the diner, Roelke ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, and coffee. Sherman sighed with happy anticipation. Then he said, “I found out some stuff about the guy.”

Every nerve quivered to attention. “What guy?” He had to be sure.

“The guy Officer Almirez talked to in the Rusty Nail,” Sherman said patiently. “His name is Mr. Lobo.”

That struck Roelke as odd. “Lobo?”

“Mr. Lobo. Yes. He doesn't live around here.”

“Where does he live?”

Sherman shrugged. “Nobody knows. Mr. Lobo just got out of Waupun.”

Roelke's jaw went tight. Waupun was a maximum-security prison northwest of Milwaukee. If the mysterious Mr. Lobo had been incarcerated there, he might be the kind of SOB willing to kill a cop. Maybe he had some old score of his own. Maybe Rick had spotted a familiar face at the Rusty Nail that night, and sat down to see if Lobo seemed poised to go straight or not.
It would be just like Rick, Roelke thought, to offer some friendly advice to someone he'd helped send to prison.

Of course … maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe the cop who'd stolen the gun from Evidence had hired Lobo to pull the trigger.

Roelke leaned across the table. “Is Mr. Lobo the person who killed Officer Almirez? Does he know somebody on the police force? I mean, does he have a friend on the force? How did he get the gun? How—” He stopped abruptly when he noticed growing panic on Sherman's face. Sherman would answer any question to the best of his ability, but he couldn't handle more than one at a time.

The waitress arrived with their food. Roelke gave the man time to dig into his meal before starting again. “Sorry. I didn't mean to rush you.”

“That's okay.” Sherman was eating with mechanical efficiency.

“So … are people saying that Mr. Lobo killed my friend?”

“People think maybe he did.”

“What else did you hear?”

Sherman looked at Roelke sadly. “Mr. Lobo is gone again. Nobody knows where he went.”

Roelke felt better and worse at the same time. It fit, in a way. After a quick talk at the Rusty Nail, Rick and Lobo might have agreed to meet for a more private conversation at Kosciuszko Park. If Rick thought the guy was trying to go straight, he might have turned away at the end of that conversation, allowing Lobo to shoot him in the back of the head. Once the job was done, Lobo would make himself scarce. Rick had been dead for three days. Lobo could be
anywhere
by now.

Sherman said, “I bet if you talk to someone at Waupun you could find out more stuff.”

No, no,
no
, Roelke thought.

Sherman drained his orange juice. “You know somebody at Waupun?”

“Yeah. I know somebody at Waupun.”

“That's good.”

But I have no intention of going to Waupun, Roelke added silently. “Did anyone say what this Lobo guy looked like?”

“He looks like Officer Almirez.”

Latino, then. Roelke nodded slowly. His beat in Milwaukee's Old South Side had once been home to the most densely populated community of Polish-Americans in the state, but urban renewal and highway construction had pushed some of them out to the suburbs. New immigrants had moved into the gaps—Bolivians, Guatemalans, Mexicans …

Roelke's eyes narrowed. He'd picked up a bit of Spanish before leaving the city. And he was pretty sure that
lobo
was the Spanish word for wolf.