Tradition of Deceit (8 page)

“What did you hear?” Roelke asked.

“That he got shot and killed.”

“Well, I'm trying to find out what happened to him.” Roelke's knee began to bounce beneath the table. “And I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure,” Sherman said. No hesitation.

“Real early yesterday morning, someone saw Officer Almirez sitting at the bar in the Rusty Nail, drinking beer. He was on duty.”

Sherman frowned. “That doesn't sound right.”

Roelke felt a surge of raw affection for this lost soul. “No, it doesn't sound right. I really want to know if Officer Almirez was talking to someone in particular, and what they talked about. I asked to the bartender, but he ain't sayin'. Can you check around for me?”

“Sure.”

Just like that. In the old days, Sherman had come through for him many times. It had been little things, mostly—what kid broke the butcher shop window, who was selling pot, who was bragging about a new color TV right after the electronics store got ripped off. Sherman was familiar, no threat to anyone, just a homeless guy nobody paid attention to. But while Sherman had his share of problems, his hearing was just fine.

“Thanks,” Roelke said. “Do you think they'll let you into the Nail?”

He nodded. “I go there sometimes.”

No surprise there. The Rusty Nail's barkeep was the type who'd take a dollar from whoever walked in the door. Roelke pulled out his billfold and extracted a twenty. “Don't spend this all on booze, hear me? And listen, I don't know what this is all about. Back off if somebody pays attention. There might be drug dealers involved or something. You understand?”

Sherman nodded, looking unperturbed. Maybe he wasn't able to fully grasp the situation, the potential. Or maybe after his time in Vietnam, Milwaukee drug dealers just weren't that scary.

“Thanks, Sherman. I'll find you again in a day or so.”

“Okay,” Sherman said. “Don't forget to ask about the buns. And before we go, how about a milkshake?”

Roelke caught the waitress's eye and ordered. Sherman waited patiently for his shake. When it arrived, he dug in with the fervor of an eight-year-old on his birthday.

I hope I'm doing the right thing, Roelke thought. A bad cop might prove more dangerous than any drug dealer. But there was no going back now.

Ten

Chloe said good-bye to
Jody soon after Lucia Bliss arrived. “I've got to get going too,” Lucia said. She stood, wiping her palms on her trousers. “I'm just so damn sorry.”

She and Chloe walked down the hallway and outside without speaking. Awk-ward, Chloe thought. She wanted to ask if Lucia had been giving Roelke lusty looks on Friday night, but it didn't seem like the time. She wanted to ask what Lucia had said in the parking lot that sent Roelke back onto the road, but that didn't feel right either.

Chloe was about to turn toward her car when she heard the other woman sniffling. Chloe swore inwardly and tried to think of something to say. “I … I'm sure Jody was glad you came.”

Lucia blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “I didn't have a clue what to say to her.”

“Just knowing that good cops like you are trying to solve Rick's murder must provide some comfort,” Chloe said. “You must be a good cop. You're a sergeant, right? It can't have been easy to earn that. Being a woman and all, I mean.”

“Well … it was tough,” Lucia admitted. “It's hard to say who was harder on me, my dad or my fellow cops.”

“Your dad didn't want you to have a career in the police force?”

“My dad told me when I was six that I would be the first female police officer in Milwaukee. When I missed that by a few years, he decided I'd be the first woman district captain in Milwaukee.”

“Ah. No pressure, though.”

“Right.” Lucia almost cracked a tiny smile but seemed to think better of it. “See you around.” She lifted a hand in farewell.

Chloe looked around, giving Roelke another few seconds to drive back into the parking lot. He didn't appear.

“Well, this completely sucks,” she muttered. She was tired, she was hungry, she was sad, and she didn't know how to get back to the freeway. Most of all, she was hurt that Roelke had taken off like that.

After making arrangements with Sherman, Roelke drove back to Jody's apartment. Bliss's car was gone from the lot. Chloe's, too. I can't think about that right now, he thought again. After hearing Bliss's
news, he'd needed to
do
something. Now that he'd gotten his top-
performing informant of old on-task, he felt calm enough to talk to Jody.

She answered the door looking weary but composed. “Hey, Roelke.”

“I don't have to stay if you don't feel like more company.”

She took his hand and tugged him inside. “You were so close to Rick that having you here is good, somehow. You know?”

“Yeah.” He did know.

They sat in the living room. “It was sweet of Chloe to come.”

“She wanted to,” Roelke said. “Listen, Jody … I need to ask you again about that phone call you got from Rick.”

She spread her hands, looking puzzled. “I've already told you everything. We couldn't have been on the phone for more than a minute or two.”

“Do you know what phone he called from?”

“Well … not for sure.” She tipped her head, considering him pensively. “What's this all about?”

Roelke struggled to keep his rage—and what he now knew about the gun—locked down. “I have to do something,” he said at last. “So I just keep going over stuff.”

“Rick would be doing the same thing. You're both such
cops
.”

Roelke cleared his throat, willing the lump to subside. “When he called you at one a.m., he said his next stop was a bar. I've been trying to reconstruct his timeline, and as far as I can tell, he didn't do his first bar check until forty-five minutes later.” Not that tossing back a cold one at the Rusty Nail counted as a bar check, but that was not up for discussion. “Have you remembered the name of the bar he was going to hit after hanging up with you?”

Jody leaned back against the cushions. “I'm positive Rick didn't mention a name. Somebody called to him while he was talking to me. Rick answered. His exact words were, ‘I'm going to the bar as soon as I leave.' ”

Roelke felt a new flash of hot anger—this time aimed at himself. Jesus, he thought. How stupid can I be?

“I'm really sorry, but—”

“You have nothing to be sorry about. In fact, you've been enormously helpful.”

A little frown pulled lines into her forehead. “I have? How?”

Roelke was tempted to tell her everything. But if he did, he'd have to swear her to silence. The ugly fact that the killer's gun had come from the district's Evidence room wasn't public knowledge yet. And if he admitted to Jody that she'd given him the glimmer of a fresh idea to pursue, there was always the chance it might slip out.

She sat up straight. “Roelke? What's going on?”

“I swear I'll tell you, but only after I pursue a couple of things. It may all come to nothing.”

“Roelke,” she protested, “I deserve—”

“I gotta go.” He kissed her on the cheek before getting to his feet. “I may be hard to reach on the phone, but I'll stop back soon.”

She looked unhappy, but she let it go. As she closed the door behind him, though, she muttered something about “damn cops.”

Roelke strode away. The thing was, he'd missed something.

Back in the day, he and Rick never unwound in their own district. It was way too dicey to drink in the same place they'd been busting up fights. They'd ended up with a favorite tavern the next district over. After becoming friendly with the owner, they'd gotten to calling the tavern after him. “Let's hit Kip's,” they'd say. It was a classic Milwaukee tavern—small, nothing fancy, just good burgers and cold beer and a fish fry on Friday nights. The sign above the sidewalk was nothing fancy either. Nor was the name painted on it:
The Bar.

Roelke got into his truck and cranked up the heater, trying to think. Would Rick have had time to make a quick detour to the Bar after calling Jody, and before turning up at the Rusty Nail? Depending on where he'd called from—yeah, it was possible. It would have been a quick trip. It made no damn sense. But it was possible.

Roelke briefly considered driving straight over there but discarded that idea. A cop barging in to ask questions on a Sunday night might be noticed, remembered, discussed. Better to wait until tomorrow. He'd hit the place early, before things got rolling.

He suddenly realized how exhausted he was. Even anger's buzz was fading. He didn't relish the hour-long drive back to his apartment in Palmyra … but Rick's sofa wasn't available for crashing on anymore. The reminder was a weight against his ribs, a stinging in his eyes. Sometimes the pain of Rick's death was enormous and blunt:
my best friend is simply gone, forever.
Sometimes the pain came tiny and sharp:
I will never eat Rick's huevos rancheros for breakfast again.

Roelke waited until he felt able to suck air into his lungs again. Then he turned his truck toward home.

Chloe had fallen asleep on the sofa, but she'd left a lamp burning, and she woke when the apartment door opened. She sat up, rubbing her eyes as his footsteps sounded in the hall.

Then Roelke stood in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“I do have a key,” she reminded him mildly.

He didn't move.

“I wasn't even sure if you were coming home tonight,” she began but stopped when his fists clenched. Okay, for some reason that was the wrong thing to say. “I wanted to see you. I care about you, Roelke. That's what people do when they care. They show up.”

He didn't answer. She forced herself to wait, letting the silence stretch. At length he walked to a chair and dropped. He put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with his hands. She waited some more.

“I can't do this right now,” he said finally.

“Can't do
what
? I'm not asking you for anything. I just don't want you to be alone right now.”

He still didn't meet her gaze. “But I need to be alone. I have to do this thing in the city. For Rick.”

God, this was hard. She felt as if she were tiptoeing over broken glass. “What is it you're trying to do for Rick?”

“He was my friend, Chloe,” he said, with a blaze of heat.

I do know that, she thought.

“And he was a good cop. You don't know—he would never—look, we always watched out for each other. We have to take care of our own. There's nobody else.”

Another silence descended. Chloe nibbled her lower lip. Clearly she was still missing things, important things. “Is somebody saying Rick wasn't a good cop?”

He stared at the carpet.

“Please don't do this, Roelke. Please don't shut me out.”

He didn't answer. Instead, Jody's voice rang in her memory:
There are things they won't talk about. I don't mean secret stuff, I mean all the things they believe to their bones that no one can understand except another cop.

Chloe counted to a hundred, letting the seconds tick by. Then she stood. “There's a pot of sweet potato chili in the fridge,” she said quietly. “I know you like it, and you have to eat. Take care of yourself, okay?”

This time she didn't wait for an answer. She turned her back on the man she cared so much about, and left him alone.

That night Chloe took solace from the unconditional adoration of her cat, Olympia, but got little sleep. “Great start to the week,” she muttered as she drove to work the next day. She was sad, worried, and not looking forward to her day even a little bit. Monday morning staff meetings at Old World Wisconsin were the bane of her professional existence.

The huge historic site was closed at this time of year, but the pace didn't slacken. The permanent employees—a pitifully small band of about eight overworked souls—were expected to appear in the director's office each week. Chloe's relationships with other permanent staff members ranged from pretty good (Byron Cooke, curator of interpretation) to strained (Stan-the-Man Colontuono, maintenance chief) to god-awful (Ralph Petty, director). When she surveyed the assemblage this Monday morning, however, she was surprised to feel more affection toward her colleagues than usual. If these people were annoyed, frustrated, unhappy, resentful, or just plain pissed, they generally didn't hesitate to tell her
all
about it.

In other words, they were not cops.

Petty excelled at creating agendas that contained at least one item sure to spark trouble. This week's Petty Atrocity had to do with scheduling the interpretive staff—the underpaid and underappreciated seasonal frontline educators who interacted with the public. “We need to reduce the budget without reducing any services,” Petty announced.

Byron shifted uneasily in his chair. He was a young man with little wire-rimmed glasses, shaggy dark hair, and a passionate devotion to the site. “I'm not sure how to accomplish that.”

Petty looked over his own half-glasses at Byron, tipping his head in a manner that might have been necessary or might have been calculated to be as patronizing as humanly possible. “You will adjust the hours in each building to reflect traffic patterns.”

“It may not be quite that simple,” Byron said carefully. “I appreciate the necessity of controlling expenses, but before we commit to making cuts, I'd like to at least discuss—”

“There's nothing to discuss. I'm looking at trends. Clearly, there are periods of time when interpreters have nothing to do. I'm not willing to pay people to read romance novels and eat bonbons.”

Byron's cheeks flushed.

Oh, the hell with this, Chloe thought. “I expect a lot of the interpreters,” she announced.

Petty frowned at her. “This is an interpretive matter, Ms. Ellefson.”

Actually, Chloe thought, this is one more example of why you shouldn't be sitting behind the director's desk
. “It's also a collections matter,” she assured him, in her best
we're all in this together
voice. “When the interpreters don't have visitors, they dust for me. They vacuum for me. They black stoves and soak wooden vessels for me. They visually examine the most vulnerable artifacts in their buildings and report any problems to me.”

Byron had marshalled his own arguments. “They also use quiet time to help in the gardens. And they practice their skills. It's impossible for a beginner to become a competent spinner if she's interpreting for visitors every moment.”

“They warp looms,” Chloe added cheerfully. “They practice using drop spindles and making hair flowers.”

“They—” Byron began.

“That's enough!” Petty snapped. “Byron, I expect you to take a close look at your schedule for the coming season and report back next week with recommendations for cutting hours.”

“I will take a close look,” Byron promised. He flashed Chloe a grateful look.

Chloe rolled her eyes in response:
No problem. What a jerk
. Everyone understood that tight budgets meant cutbacks, but insulting interpreters in the process was despicable.

The meeting rolled on, with people reporting recent accomplishments. When Chloe's turn to shine came, she dutifully noted the collections work she'd accomplished: visiting a potential donor, completing the cleaning and inventory of another batch of woodenware in storage, meeting with a retired carpenter who had volunteered to reproduce an artifact wheelbarrow for use in the garden program. For good measure, she added a carefully-excerpted version of her trip to Minneapolis. “It's important to build bridges with other institutions in the Upper Midwest,” she concluded sagely.

Ralph Petty was frowning at her again. “You were at the mill over the weekend? I heard about the professor's death.”

“It's tragic,” Chloe agreed, for once with complete sincerity. “But fortunately, there's a broad coalition being formed to help develop and interpret the property. There are some wonderful opportunities for collaboration. The mill's history has relevance for the stories we tell here.”