Back on Murder (31 page)

I give my car a little gas. “No, thanks. I’ll be in touch to arrange an interview in due course.”

“An interview?”

“You worked closely with my victim. Standard procedure.”

He sighs. In the rearview I can see him kneading his brow. “They’ve still got you working the suicides. If I’d have remembered that . . .”

“What?” I ask. You wouldn’t have shot Thomson? You would’ve made it look gang-related, like my attempted murder, instead of staging a suicide?

“Nothing. Pull over. I want to talk.”

We race past the I-10 exit, switching lanes to avoid a stack-up on the far left. Everything slows down, lights are flashing, shattered glass kicks out across the interstate. A pickup with a dislocated fender hugs the concrete median, and up ahead a little Honda looks like somebody set off a grenade in the trunk.

“Nasty,” Keller says.

I hang up the phone. A second later he calls back.

“What’s the problem, March? You were only too happy to barge in on me the other day. Now you’re running scared. You got a problem with me or something?” Baiting me. He’s too far back for me to make out his expression, but I can imagine the sneer on his lips. “The thing is, I’ve been hearing these rumors about you. They’re saying it won’t be long before you’re out on your ear. Bouncing from one detail to another, that’s what they call terminal velocity. Means you’re about to hit the ground. Hard. I’d hate to see that happen to a guy of your caliber, March.”

“Really.”

“I was thinking . . .” He chuckles. “I’ve got an opening on my team . . .”

I push the end button. We’re coming up on Cavalcade. Near the exit he moves to the right and puts his blinker on. I watch his car until it disappears down the ramp. Just as I begin to breathe easy, the phone rings again.

“One more thing,” he says. “If you don’t want the job, there’s no hard feelings.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

“Fine. Tell that pretty wife of yours I said hello.”

This time it’s Keller who hangs up, leaving me to contemplate the fact that Cavalcade will take him to Studewood, five minutes away from my house. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there. But then, I wouldn’t have thought he was stupid enough to kill a cop, either.

CHAPTER
20

Thanks to Keller’s veiled threat, I turn up late to my lunch with Cavallo. While evicting the tenant might not rank high on my list of marital duties, protecting my wife does, even though I’m pretty certain the man’s just yanking my chain. I find Charlotte upstairs in her office, drinking cold coffee and staring at a column of text on her computer screen. Moving closer, I can read the lines, a stack of whereas, whereas, whereas down the left-hand margin, waiting for her to come up with the wording of each petition.

“You wanna trade jobs?” she asks.

“No thanks. I prefer getting shot.”

She blinks affectionately. “What are you doing home?”

I make up some excuse about forgetting something, then head out the door, casting a glance up and down the street. No sign of Keller, of course, and no sign of Tommy’s car, either, which is a shame. As much trouble as he is, I wouldn’t mind him being nearby right about now. Still, there’s no danger. Keller’s just pushing my buttons.

Cavallo chooses the 59 Diner across from Willowbrook Mall, triggering my speech about eating at chain restaurants when there are perfectly good hole-in-the-wall establishments nearby.

“Not out here,” she says. “And anyway, at least it’s a local chain.”

In my book, the 59 Diner actually located on Highway 59 makes perfect sense, and has the added benefit of being a little broken down and slightly greasy. The slicked-up suburban version leaves me cold. There aren’t even any rips in the vinyl upholstery of our booth. The menu isn’t tacky to the touch. When our waitress arrives with spot-free water glasses, I frown, which only invites Cavallo to observe there are 59 Diners all over the place. On Interstate 10, for example.

“Across from ikea,” she adds.

“Yeah, thanks. Listen. I’m sorry for leaving you to go it alone on the task force.”

“What are you talking about? We have enough dead weight as it is.”

“So you didn’t take a sick day when you heard the news?”

“Sick with relief, you mean?” She gazes into the distance. “It’s just this case catching up with me. You heard the Fontaine kid’s parents got a lawyer? They’re talking about suing the city now, which means the da wants to put a charge on the boy after all. If they would just let it drop, they’d be home free. But you can’t expect people to skip a potential payday anymore, even if their kid’s slinging.”

I could point out my misgivings about the way Fontaine was treated, but that would only get her wound up. And besides, I see her point.

“How’s Donna Mayhew holding up?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Doing a lot of media now. You saw her on cable last night?”

“I didn’t even know she was on.”

“Now she’s expressing concerns about the way the case has been handled. I think she’s mad they’re dragging Hannah’s name through the mud. That stuff about the drugs, the restraining order.” She slaps her laminated menu shut. “I’d be mad, too – but it’s not our fault.”

She goes on like this for a while, venting about task force woes. With the media pressure intensifying, more effort at the top seems to be going into damage control than finding Hannah Mayhew. The rumors are getting out of control, too.

“The team’s so porous,” she says. “Whatever you put into it leaks out by the end of the day.”

In the latest gaffe, some bored detectives who’d seen a documentary about forced prostitution started jawing on the topic of white slavery. By that afternoon the news wires were running a story, anonymously sourced, suggesting the task force was looking at this as a probable theory. Blindsided by the question during his cable call-in debut, the chief had responded that “every avenue was being investigated,” which had the unintended consequence of validating the rumor.

“So now, in spite of the fact that there’s absolutely no evidence, we have half our team suddenly playing catch-up on the white slavery angle. It’s ridiculous. I told Wanda I’m sick of playing this game.”

“And what did she say?”

“She told me to go to lunch.”

I crack a smile. “It sounds to me like you took off sick and ended up watching the news coverage all day.”

She nods. “And reading the Hannah blogs.”

The Hannah blogs? I don’t even want to ask. The life this circus has taken on makes my head spin. “This is the closest I’ve ever been to a case like this.”

“A missing persons case,” she asks, “or a media blender?”

“The blender. I worked Missing Persons awhile, remember?”

“The Fauk case,” she says. “That was pretty big at the time.”

I shake my head. “Not like this.”

The waitress, looking clean and wholesome, stuns us both with her high-wattage smile, then jots our selections down with a satisfied nod, like they reveal something deeply good in our respective characters. As soon as she’s gone, I roll my eyes, but Cavallo doesn’t respond. She’s glancing out the window at the lovely view of the parking lot and Highway 249, a lot of concrete washed in searing sunlight.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer at first. Her gaze has a soft and sightless quality, as if her eyes were the back of a silvered mirror. When she responds, it’s not with words. She digs in her purse and puts her warped copy of
The Kingwood Killing
on the table between us. The cover curls upward toward the ceiling. She’s not as conscientious with her books as Joe Thomson was.

“I finished,” she says.

What does she expect, congratulations? My collar tightens up all the sudden. That book to me is like a crucifix to a vampire. I can’t seem to look at it without a cringe.

“You should have told me,” she says, her tone pure grief counselor, her eyes piercingly sincere. If my hand was on the table, she’d no doubt give it a compassionate squeeze. “It makes sense now, your obsession with the case. Trying to make all the pieces fit. I’m sorry I wasn’t more understanding, March. You should have said something.”

I pick up the book, flipping the pages with disdain, then slide it back across the table.

“It must have been so terrible,” she says.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know,” she says. “About your girl.”

A twitch under the skin of my cheek, an involuntary tic I try smoothing away. She sees it and leans over the table with a pained smile on her lips. I glance away, ignoring her words.

But she won’t stop. The woman just won’t stop.

“This may sound strange, but now that I know, I feel like I get you. Before, I’ll be honest, you always seemed a little cold to me. I knew from Wanda you had a reputation, you used to be an up-and-comer, and I just thought, you know, your whole demeanor, it was bitterness. Angry at life. And that thing you said about God, wanting to kick him . . . now I understand.”

You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly. You sit there with that book at your elbow and you think that because of those words, you somehow know me, that there’s a bond running deeper now between us than anything we could have established through mere contact. You think my soul is in there, my key, the pattern hidden underneath the seeming randomness of my actions. But you know nothing at all. Nothing. And if you would just stop speaking –

“I’ll be honest,” she says. “It really broke my heart when I realized. Hannah, what she means for you, what they all must mean for you . . .” Her bottom lip swells. “And that girl tied to the bed, the missing body.”

I’m going to say something, Theresa, if you don’t shut your mouth. You won’t like it, the words hitting you like a slap in the face.

“I thought, when they pulled you off, you’d be relieved to get back to Homicide. But now I see what you must be going through – ”

My mouth opens, the words lined up like the staggered cartridges in Thomson’s magazine, but before I let them off, before I give Cavallo what the drunk in the Paragon parking lot got, my hand snatches the book off the table and flings it, pages fluttering, across the glossy floor. She jumps. The guy in the opposite booth, reading the
Chronicle
in solitude, glances down at the book near his feet, then adjusts the paper so he doesn’t have to witness what’s developing next door.

Cavallo’s eyes flare. “What the – ”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Don’t smother me in this cheap psychobabble of yours, telling me what Hannah Mayhew represents for a person like me. Don’t even talk about . . .” I can’t even form it on my lips, the feminine pronoun. “Don’t even. That book,” I say, “what’s in there,” I say, “the whole stinking,” I say, “you can’t . . . I don’t even . . .”

Now her hand reaches for mine, pulls it halfway across the table, and even though she has to know what’s at risk, she leans closer.

“I know it’s hard,” she says.

“You don’t know – ”

“March, listen to me. You lost your daughter. I get that. But the way you’re reacting, it’s not right. What it’s done to you, it’s not right.”

“I lost . . . ?” I still can’t say it. “Lost isn’t the word. Lost is really not what happened. I didn’t lose anything. Taken, that’s what you should say. ‘I know what was taken from you.’ ”

“And that’s why you’re angry at the world,” she says, stroking my hand. “Angry at God.”

“God? I’m not angry at God, Theresa. What does God have to do with anything? I’m angry with the guy who decided to open the Paragon early that day, and I’m angry with all the people who decided to get drunk watching the national tragedy unfold on TV, and I’m really angry – I’m furious – at the woman they let leave there, they let get behind the wheel, and she wasn’t even paying attention when she hit them, and there wasn’t a scratch on her, Theresa – can you believe that? Nothing but bruises from the air bags. She walked away. I’d kill her now if I could, but – ”

“March,” she says.

“I’d kill her now, I really would. But she already saved me the trouble. With pills. Now you know what I’ve always wondered? If she was gonna do that, why’d she have to wait until after, huh? She could have done it the day before and saved us all a lot of trouble. And saved us all. A lot . . .”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize how painful this would be for you, or I wouldn’t have said a word.”

Not good enough, Theresa. You opened this can of worms. “And you think because you read about it in a book – ”

“The book has nothing to do with it,” she says. “I just didn’t know. The book is just how I found out.”

“Wanda never told you?”

She shrugs. “It’s been six years.”

“So what, I shouldn’t be so upset about it? I shouldn’t be struggling still, or having such a hard time?”

“That’s not what I said, March. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“And it’s seven. Seven years as of next week, remember? The big anniversary.”

Cavallo falls silent, gives me a look of pity. My forehead’s clammy. The small of my back, too. The people around us are making a point of not paying attention, which is good of them really. Indulgent. I start to wilt a little with embarrassment. Better to say nothing than to pour out all this raw, unedited self-revelation, especially in front of Cavallo, who doesn’t deserve it, and who still has to be convinced to do me an after-hours favor.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I’m sorry. The thing is, it’s not something I like to talk about.

There’s no point dwelling on things. And this time of year . . .” Across the table she’s nodding encouragingly, and I know something more is owed to her, some compensating confession. I’ve told her off, and to make up for that, I have to trust her with some confidence.

“March,” she says, “I completely understand.”

“The hardest part . . .”

Her eyebrows lift. “Yes?”

“It was Charlotte driving,” I say, my voice distant, “and she was injured, too. In the crash. The car, it hit them like this.” I form a T with my hands, like a coach calling a time-out from the sidelines. “So the passenger side . . .” My twitch comes back. I can’t say more about that. “But Charlotte, her head hit the window hard, and there had to be surgery, you know? I wasn’t there. I was still somewhere in Louisiana. They grounded all the planes, you remember, and so me and Wilcox arranged with this detective there, Fontenot, to get a car we could drive back to Houston. We put Fauk in the back in cuffs, then hit the road.”