Cast of Shadows - v4 (20 page)

Weiss took two aggressive steps forward and his right arm snapped like a whip over the table, snatching Canella’s bag and pulling it toward him. Philly, now resigned to honesty in dealing with the enraged greenskeeper, made no attempt to stop him, a gesture he hoped would win the man’s confidence.

But he had forgotten, somehow, about his gun.

“What the
fuck
?” Ricky took the .38 out and held it in front of him, pointing the barrel toward the ceiling. Philly could tell by the assured grip of Weiss’s long, thin hands that he’d handled a firearm before. “What the hell is a reporter doing with one of these?”

Philly cursed aloud. He was so stupid. When he had been a cop, he never would have made that mistake.

The door opened behind him. “Ricky!” A woman shrieked.

“Shut the door, Peg!” Weiss yelled.

She did, quickly, closing both the screen and the wooden door behind it. A plastic bag from the drugstore swung from her wrist and a can of shaving cream inside it banged against the door frame. “Ricky, what’s happening?”

“Shut up, Peggy! I’m thinking!” He kept the gun pointed up and away as he brought his hands to his head.

“Who is
he
?” Peg asked. She squeezed hysterical tears from her eyes. “Where did that gun come from?”

Ricky twitched at the first question. He pulled Canella’s wallet out and pried it open with the end of the .38.

“My name is Phil Canella,” he told them. “I’m a private investigator from Chicago.”

Weiss nodded and showed his driver’s license to Peg, who was at his side now. “Okay. Why did Judge — Doctor, whatever — why did Forak hire you?”

“His name isn’t Forak. His name is Dr. Davis Moore. And he didn’t hire me. His wife did.”

“To do what?”

“To find out if he was having an affair.” Now that Mrs. Weiss was here, Philly was hopeful they could talk their way to a resolution. He wondered if he could ask for a glass of water. His throat was burning.

“An affair?” Peg muttered. “Ricky! Put that gun down!”

He ignored her. “That lady. She wasn’t his wife?”

“No.”

“Put the gun down, Ricky!”

“Who was she?”

“A colleague. Possibly his mistress. I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find out.”

“Do you think she’s in on it?” Ricky asked. “The mistress?”

“Put the gun down, baby!”

“In on what?” Weapon pointed at his face or not, Canella was collecting information on his case.

“He’s a lunatic,” Ricky said. “But you know all about that, I bet.” Psychologists, Philly thought, would accuse a man like Ricky Weiss, waving a gun around on a Thursday afternoon and calling another person a lunatic, of projecting.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jimmy Spears,” Ricky said. “Forak’s going to kill him.”

“What?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Ricky! Give me the gun!”

“I’m not lying,” Philly said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your guy. Forak. He wants to kill Jimmy.”

Canella almost laughed. “Kill Jimmy Spears? That’s crazy.”

“He told me himself.” This was a lie, but a lie to which Ricky thought he was entitled, since he was holding the gun.

“Look, I’ve never met Davis Moore, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to kill some second-string football player—”

“Put down the gun, Ricky!”

“ — and I don’t think you mean to hurt anyone, either.”

“You’re a liar,” Ricky said. “He sent you to do me so he could go ahead and kill Jimmy and there wouldn’t be anyone left to know about it and go to the papers or the cops.”

“I’m not lying to you, Ricky.”

“Ricky, get rid of that thing,” Peg said. “Put it down and let’s talk about it.”

“I don’t mean to hurt anyone,” Ricky said. “I don’t.” But he didn’t put down the gun, which was now pointed uncertainly at Philly’s chest.

Canella could feel the desperation and fear emitted in hot waves from the trembling Peg. He sensed the situation had turned unpredictable, and that whatever Ricky Weiss knew about Davis Moore had made him desperate. It was no longer safe to be here. He made a decision.

Run for it.

When Ricky saw Canella turn, his spinning brain increased its workload by many revolutions per minute. His internal tachometer was redlining. He needed to know more. If he escaped and told Moore that Ricky had figured out the doctor’s plan to kill Jimmy Spears, Moore would just send someone else to do the job right. He had to stop Canella, but Peg had stepped away from the door, and once this man was outside, sprinting to his car, what could Ricky do except run him down and tackle him, which wouldn’t be easy? Someone was likely to see them fighting from the road, especially with Peg screaming the whole while. But even if they didn’t see, what would Ricky do then? Drag Canella back to the trailer? Tie him up? He wasn’t a kidnapper. He couldn’t take care of a dog, much less a hostage. But he had to stop him.

His brain, running too fast now, too hot, and — in Ricky’s defense — without his explicit permission, knew of only one way.

Ricky squeezed the handle of the gun without really aiming it. Peg cried out in harmony with the report. Phil Canella’s head jerked back toward him and blood appeared in chunky patterns across the screen door and on the back of his hand, which he had used to push it open. His body contorted in a spasm, his shoulders turned back toward the gun, and then collapsed in an inanimate free fall straight down to his knees and then forward like a tree, his head hitting the aluminum stoop, his feet still inside the trailer, his body propping the door ajar.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Peg sobbed.

Ricky brought the .38 slowly to his hip and let it fall to the floor, where it made a hollow, impotent sound like a plastic tumbler dropped at a picnic. He was processing everything very quickly. He hadn’t meant to shoot Canella, but he accepted the fact immediately and was already dealing with it. He would need to get rid of the body. He would need to clean up the trailer. He would need to do something about Davis Moore, the only person, as far as he knew, who could link him to this dead man when somebody noticed him missing.

First, he would need to calm Peg down. She would help him clean up the blood, and help wrap the body in cheap guest sheets, which she bought with her Wal-Mart discount, anyway. He would get rid of it alone. The less Peg knew about the details, the better. He wouldn’t ask friends to help. On TV, that’s how people were always getting caught. Somebody asks somebody else to help him and the second guy gets caught and cuts a deal with the cops. He wouldn’t be stupid that way.

He thought he might need a good saw.

“Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why. Weird.”

Instead of watching television, Martha would often watch Justin read. Sitting on the couch, with Justin in the big red chair opposite, his seat and hers angled acutely toward the TV, she would drink coffee or hot chocolate, or tonight, with her mother visiting, a glass of Fumé Blanc.

“It’s not weird, Mom,” Martha said, whispering unnecessarily. When Justin was into one of his books, really inside the pages as he was now, the words being silently dictated to his head in a hypnotic patter, his eyes pinched together so tightly that Martha had taken him twice in the last year to see if he needed glasses, she could have fired the antique rifle Terry had left behind when he and his mistress moved to New Mexico, fired it into the ceiling, and not been able to make him flinch.

“He should be reading Harry Potter. Or the Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew, even,” Martha’s mother said. “That psychiatrist is filling his head with ideas. He’s too young for ideas, and he comes up with too many on his own already.”

“You’re being silly.”

“The point is, I don’t think it’s helping. He should be playing sports. Baseball. Football. Hockey. He has problems socializing. Relating to people. Other kids.”

“The other kids don’t challenge him. The other kids bore him. That’s why he acts out.”

“Nonsense, Martha. Do you know what your father would say about all this?”

“He’d say,
Nonsense, Martha
.”

“That’s right, nonsense. He doesn’t need to be challenged by the other kids. He needs to have fun. His little brain isn’t ready for all this grown-up thinking. The telescope and the astronomy, that’s all right. But this other stuff.” She shook her head. “You’re going to make him into something. Turn him into something.”

“Turn him into what, Ma?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Then say it.”

“The fires, the stealing, the acting out.” Now her mother was whispering. “Those are all early signs, you know. What do they always say about the bad ones? After they’ve been caught by the police? They say, ‘He was smart. He kept to himself.’ ”

“You’ll fall in love with any cliché, won’t you? You know, they say those things about the CEOs of software companies, too.”

“Bundy, Gacy, Ng — all intelligent. They all had too many thoughts in their heads.”

“Charles Ng? Ick. You should never have gotten a satellite dish, Mom,” Martha said. “Justin’s not crazy. He’s smart. Way smart. I’m not going to ignore that. I’m going to encourage it. In an anti-smothering, noncrazy-mom, totally normal way.”

Her mother shook her head. “Buy him a math book, then. I don’t trust philosophy any more than psychology. Philosophy is ideology, and ideology leads to narrow minds.”

“That’s Dad talking, all right.”

“You know what I mean. Ideas come with responsibility, and he’s too young to know the meaning of that. In what cubbyhole of his mind is he supposed to stick a Greek philosopher?”

“Do you even know what Plato was all about?” Martha asked.

“No. Do you?”

“A little. What I remember from college. And from the back of Justin’s book.”

“You know a
little
. So he knows more than you now?”

“About Plato?” She looked into Justin’s intense eyes. He was nearly halfway through the book. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“Here’s a tip,” Mom said. “Never let them know more than you. About
anything
.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“You know I’m not.”

“Terry’s been gone a year.”

“Don’t want to talk about it, Mom.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Well, there you go.”

From the atmosphere, Rita’s could have been one of two dozen North Side Italian restaurants: thirteen tables, eclectic chairs, young staff, short menu, large portions, three-fork
Sun-Times
review in a black frame on the wall. When Big Rob and Sally walked in, the place was already nearly filled with lunching employees from neighborhood galleries and design firms.

“You’re really going to buy me a meal,” Sally said with mock disbelief as he held her chair. “This is a first.” Big Rob didn’t explain, but as he sat down across from her she thought the smile on his face seemed false. He had brought a yellow file folder with him, and he set it down next to his plate.

Big Rob waited until the server had recited the specials and returned for their order before beginning. He didn’t whisper. Even though the distance between tables was less than ten inches — measured each morning by the owner with a piece of custom-cut crown molding left over from the remodeling of her den — this space somehow felt as private as an office.

“Phil Canella’s dead,” he told her.

“What?” Her disbelief was genuine this time.

“On a job. In Nebraska. Chasing a cheating husband.”

Sally reached across the table and touched his arm. “Oh, my God, Biggie. I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close. You were on the Chicago PD together, right?” He nodded, and she understood now the formality of the setting was part of his mourning process. By giving her the news this way, in a nice restaurant instead of his hot, cramped office, he was showing respect for his friend. “When did it happen?”

“He went missing a few weeks ago. Police haven’t found his body, but, you know…” His face went blank as he tried to choke off an unwelcome emotion. “I went down there for a few days to help out if I could. The town where Philly was last seen, Brixton — their force is a little understaffed for this kind of thing.”

“Was there anything you could do?”

Biggie shrugged. “He was staying at a Marriott in Lincoln. I went through his things, looking for anything that might tip us in the right direction.” He held up the yellow file folder. “I found these in his room.” He handed it to Sally.

Barwick opened the folder. She covered her mouth with her right hand. “Oh. Jesus. God. No.
God, no.
”

Inside were many of the photos Sally had taken of Justin Finn over the years. The posed shots she had taken at Martha Finn’s request and sold to Gold Badge Investigators.

“How? How did he get these?”

“According to his e-mail he got them from his client, Jacqueline Moore. She lives up in Northwood.”

Sally continued to leaf through the photos, their familiarity shocking under the circumstances. “I didn’t have any idea who the client was on the photo job. Scott Colleran never told me.”