Big Silence (22 page)

“Maybe,” said Lieberman following his partner to the door.

Kearney turned his head and looked at a plaque on the wall. Lieberman had the feeling that the younger man wasn’t thinking of the glory days when the plaque had been awarded to him for being the outstanding detective on the force for that year. Lieberman felt Kearney was looking through that plaque into forever and the way things might have been. With all he was carrying, Lieberman would have been willing to talk to Kearney about his problems, but it wouldn’t happen. Kearney wouldn’t open up, probably wouldn’t even admit it to himself. Maybe a time would come.

When they were back in the squad room, Rene Catolino was having a cup of coffee at her desk with Detective Lorber, the weight lifter, who had come in and was listening, smiling, and trying to hide his feelings of lust for his fellow officer.

“So,” said Catolino, “this guy calls and says he’ll tell me where the perp is hiding if I promise he’ll remain monogamous. So, straight-face, I said, ‘Sir, that is completely up to you.’ ”

Lorber laughed, loud, much more than the tale was worth.

“I’d say the odds are even that Muscles will get through to our tough lady,” Hanrahan said as they moved toward the squad room door.

“I’ve got more faith in her,” said Lieberman. “I’ll say he has one chance in a hundred.”

“Of getting to her?” asked Hanrahan.

“Of getting
away
from her.”

It wasn’t until they were in the car, Lieberman driving, that Hanrahan said, “I got a tip yesterday, a little vague like the Chinese gentleman who gave it to me …”

“From racy to racist,” said Lieberman.

“I’m beginning to think there are no limits to the tortures the Oriental mind can think up,” said Hanrahan.

“Sounds like one of Cary Grant’s lines in
Gunga Din”
said Lieberman. “God, I love that movie. So, your Chinese informant …”

They were heading toward Lake Michigan on Devon. Traffic was late-morning normal and slow so they could have made good time, but Lieberman was crawling, as if he were in no hurry to get where he had to go.

“I’ll cut to the heart,” said Hanrahan. “I’m gonna need a few hours on something soft where I can take a nap somewhere quiet real soon. I called a detective I know in Washington.”

“Cunningham,” Lieberman guessed.

“Cunningham it was,” said Hanrahan, realizing that in his state of exhaustion, he was starting to talk like his father. “Well, I ask Cunningham, who I’m pleased to say was on the midnight-to-nine A.M. shift, if he’d check out a few things. He says ‘Yes,’ and calls me back in a couple of hours while I’ve got my head on my desk and my eyes closed imagining Kim coming back with that Korean gun and shooting Clark Mills.”

“Didn’t happen,” said Lieberman.

“I know. I was dreaming. Cunningham tells me that Matt Gornitz Firth had no friends at all in the neighborhood where he lived with his mother. He had gone to private schools since his parents divorced when he was twelve. So, I call the private school Matthew is about to graduate from, but I wait till this morning. I talk to the headmaster. They call them ‘headmasters’ in those schools, Rabbi.”

“I know,” said Lieberman. “That’s because they’re in charge of your head.”

“Reasonably funny,” said Hanrahan, “but I find it hard to judge. I’m a wee bit on the weary side. Well, the headmaster knows every kid. Only one hundred fifty students in the school. We had a couple of thousand at Chicago Vocational when I went there. Principal couldn’t have known anybody, probably didn’t want to.”

“Proceed,” said Lieberman. “You’re wandering a little, Father Murphy.”

Lieberman turned north on Sheridan moving slowly past the line-up of bookstores, fast-food delis, and pizza parlors, CD shops and other businesses that catered to the faculty and students at Loyola University, which stretched to the east right to the lake.

“Headmaster asks questions about Matt Firth, gets me to promise to call him as soon as we know anything. I promise and scrawl a note to myself to keep the promise. It seems Matt doesn’t have many friends at his prep school though the headmaster assures me that everyone there who isn’t an atheist is praying for him. So, I push him on the friend business and find out that not only does our kidnap victim have a friend, his roommate for four years, but the roommate did not return to school today when everyone was due back.”

“Roommate have a name?”

“David Donald Wilhite,” said Hanrahan as Lieberman made a left through traffic onto Lunt and slowed down even more as he searched for a parking space.

“Interesting,” said Lieberman.

“I find it so,” said Hanrahan, knowing he wouldn’t chase the voice of his father without at least two solid hours of sleep. “It gets even more interesting.”

“How?” Abe prompted.

“Got a description of Wilhite. Tall for his age, maybe a little overweight. Smart. Old man’s a stocks and bonds whiz-bang. I call the Wilhite house and talk to Mom. She sounds like prep school herself. She also sounds like she’s not all that surprised to hear from a cop. She says David was staying with a friend and told her he might be a day or two late for school because he and his friend and the friend’s mother were going on a short trip. However, Junior Wilhite has been known to listen to a different piper and lose his way a bit, according to Mom, who assured me her boy was as close to Mother Teresa as a human could get. I gave Mom a tale of terror befitting the Druids and got her to one-day a photograph of Junior Wilhite immediately. She added that she was sure Junior was fine, that he had called her last night. I told her for certain he was okay, and sure he was, I agreed with her.”

“Matt Gornitz,” Lieberman said, finding a space.

“That’s the name our David Donald Wilhite gave his mom, Rabbi. The friend he’s taking a trip with under the watchful eye of Matthew’s mother.”

“Proud of yourself, Father Murph?”

“A little, maybe, but we’ve got a way to go. I checked back with Cunningham. He checked Juvenile in five states. Donald David Wilhite has been in trouble with the law since he was thirteen. Got out of everything with good lawyers, maybe his parents paying a bit of a bribe here and there.”

“Trouble?” asked Lieberman.

“Joyriding in a stolen car, cocaine possession, assault.”

“The assault is interesting.”

“Remember, he’s a big boy. Smart. I’m thinkin’ maybe this situation is more perplexing than the Troubles.”

“You’re sounding like your father,” said Lieberman.

“I know. I need some sleep. I told you. There’s a kicker, Rabbi. When I figured we were done talking, Cunningham asks why I didn’t get this information from the other policeman. I ask, ‘What other policeman?’ and he says, ‘The one who called yesterday and asked the same questions.’ I ask for the cop’s name and Cunningham says he has it somewhere. Takes him a few seconds and he comes back with ‘August Vogel.’ Vogel left no number.”

“State attorney?” asked Lieberman.

“Nobody by the name Vogel,” said Hanrahan. “I checked.”

“Interesting.”

They were out of the car now and heading across the street for an apartment building. They were less than a block from where the body of Clark Mills had been found and maybe half a block or so from where Hanrahan had found the North Korean handgun.

Hanrahan didn’t ask questions as they moved to the apartment building. The hallway they entered was brightly lit by a twenty-four-hour bulb and protected by a video camera. Lieberman found the bell and pressed it.

“Who is it?” came a wavering female voice.

“Abe Lieberman,” he said.

“I’m not feeling well,” said Rita Blitzstein. “I had to stay home from work.”

Which was exactly what Lieberman had counted on. Had she gone to work, he had another stop to make that might have worked just as well.

“Just take a few minutes,” Lieberman said.

The wait was long with a hum on the intercom to let the two men know the connection hadn’t been cut.

“A few minutes,” she said, and the door buzzed and clicked.

The detectives walked up the two flights of stairs and found the door. Even though she was now expecting two policemen, she had not opened the door and didn’t do so till they knocked and again identified themselves. Only then did she open the locks and let them in.

She was a mess, hardly recognizable as the woman he had spoken to at the T&L. Her dark hair was uncombed. There was a definite smudge on her glasses. She wore a robe heavier than the weather and the heat of the apartment called for.

The detectives went in and looked around. The apartment was neat, expensively decorated in whites and blacks, very modern, not to either detective’s taste.

“Sorry about your illness,” Lieberman said, standing to face the woman. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just sick,” she said. “Sometimes a person is just sick.”

“Have you read the papers this morning, listened to the news, watched television?” asked Lieberman.

“No,” she said.

“Mind if I ask ‘Why?’ ”

“I’m sick.”

“Rita, Clark Mills, the man who threatened you on the street day before yesterday, is dead.”

Lieberman took the folded-up newspaper Kearney had given him and handed it to her.

“I was eating crackers,” she said, not seeming to absorb the information, not looking at the newspaper in her hand. “Would you like some?”

“No, thanks,” Abe and Bill said together.

Rita went to sit down on the chrome-and-white leather sofa. The detectives weren’t invited to join her but they did, sitting on furniture that was as uncomfortable as it looked.

“Rita,” Lieberman said gently, “do you know who killed Clark Mills?”

“No,” she said emphatically, shaking her head.

“Want to know how he was killed?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then maybe you’ll be interested in knowing that he was leaving the city today, if he had lived,” said Lieberman.

Rita looked up in disbelief from detective to detective. “That’s not true.”

“It’s true.” Hanrahan came in. “He called me last night, said he’d be gone today. I believe him.”

“So do I,” said Abe. “Can we get you something?”

“Crackers are dry. Maybe some water.”

Hanrahan rose and moved toward the kitchen that could be seen beyond the open door of the dining area.

“In the refrigerator,” she said. “Not the tap.”

“Your father was in the Korean War,” said Lieberman.

“Yes,” Rita answered.

“He bring back any trophies? Guns, flags, you know.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’m going to make a statement,” he said softly. “You don’t have to respond. I believe you or your father killed Clark Mills last night in the alley across the street.”

Hanrahan was discreetly taking his time in the kitchen. He had caught a sign from Lieberman, almost imperceptible, that he wanted to be alone with the woman.

“No,” she said. “Was he really leaving?”

“He was.”

“Oh my God,” she said, looking at the newspaper in her hand and scanning the article on Mills the paper was folded to reveal. “He had a family. He was famous.”

“He was a man,” said Lieberman. “He could have been better, but he could have been worse.”

She looked away and said, “Ten years ago I was raped. I didn’t report it. I was … I needed a lot of help and some hospital time. My parents were at my side, paid for everything. Eventually I came out and climbed back.”

“And I understand that you’ve done very well,” said Lieberman.

“I thought so until the other night,” she said. “Now I’m afraid to go out, afraid to go to work. He’s dead, but there are others. There’ll always be others.”

Hanrahan returned with a glass of water and handed it to the woman, who took it with a cracked-lip, vacant smile.

“Rita, I’m afraid we’re going to ask you to come with us to answer a few questions,” Lieberman said gently.

“I know the law,” she said. “I don’t have to go. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“We can get a warrant for you as a possible witness to murder,” said Lieberman.

Hanrahan continued to stand though he took several steps back to give the woman room. She downed the water in one long gulp and closed her eyes.

“I didn’t kill him,” she said.

“And you don’t and didn’t have a gun in this apartment?” Lieberman asked, knowing he was walking thin, but she was still only a possible witness. If he was going to charge her, he would need more evidence, and then he would come back with a warrant and deliver the Miranda.

“No,” she said, putting down the empty glass and looking at it.

“You know, don’t you?” asked Lieberman. He had not said what it was he thought she knew. It could have been a thousand and one things, but there was no doubt for either one of them.

“Nothing more to say,” she said. “Sorry he’s dead. No, he did this to me. He set me back a decade. I’m not sorry. He was just going somewhere else to terrorize other people and eventually hurt some woman like me. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

“Maybe you want to think about it,” said Lieberman. “Maybe you’ll be interested in talking to his mother. We’re going to invite her to come and take the body back to Georgia after the autopsy.”

“No,” said Rita. “Why should I want to talk to his mother? Everybody has a mother.”

“Suit yourself,” Lieberman said, rising. “Thanks for talking to us. If you don’t mind, Detective Hanrahan has a few more questions about what happened that night and some of the other people in the neighborhood who might have been confronted by Clark Mills.”

“I don’t know anyone in the neighborhood,” Rita said. “And this isn’t a neighborhood. It’s houses and apartments where people generally leave each other alone.”

“Indulge me,” Lieberman said. “Your father and I have known each other a long time.”

The woman did not see the look between the two men, but Hanrahan gave that almost imperceptible nod that showed he understood.

As soon as he was in the hall, Lieberman moved ahead quickly, down the stairs and across the street. Hanrahan’s job was to keep Rita Blitzstein talking and away from the phone. The second he was in the car Abe radioed for a phone number and then dialed it. There was no answer. He hit the button after six rings and called the station to ask that a couple of uniforms go to Robert Blitzstein’s office in his children’s furniture shop in Wilmette. They were to bring him in immediately for questioning in the Clark Mills murder. They were to keep him from making any calls, and no one was to talk to them.