Devil's Bridge (8 page)

I left the boxes on the kitchen floor in front of the sink when I heard Lee Petrie’s voice. He’d been working the Crime Scene Unit longer than I’d been on the job.

“Open up a trash bag before you even try to kiss me,” I said, stepping out into the hallway to remove my vinyl gloves and replace them with a fresh pair, holding the dirty ones out in front of me till Lee’s partner got ready to receive the garbage.

“That bad?”

“That good, actually. The deceased is a longtime local. Got recruited a few years ago to do some of Hal Shipley’s cash pickups—from the grateful worshippers and the ne’er-do-wells who think Hal’s influence can help sway bribable politicians.”

“I heard this one was easy. Gunshot wound to the back of the head. Prime suspect already in the wind, but with enough connections to locals and to law enforcement that you’re likely to find her before too long.”

“Slam dunk, like the sergeant says. Come right inside and pay your props to Wynan Wilson,” I said, stepping back so that Lee and his partner could enter with their camera equipment. I asked the sergeant to wait for us outside the front door.

“Where are the Baskervilles?” Lee asked. “I can sure as hell hear the hound.”

“That’s the vic’s daughter, Angela Wilson. She’s next door till I get there. Found the body and didn’t get along with the girlfriend at all. She pointed the finger at Takeesha from the minute she walked in.”

“What do we have?” Lee said as he crossed the threshold.

“I guess you’d call this Wilson’s living room. I haven’t poked at anything in here yet,” I said, looking around at the sofa, love seat, table lamp, and large-screen television.

Lee walked behind me into the bedroom. I stood at the foot of the bed while he approached the body for a closer look.

“Damn, this one really is the big sleep, isn’t it?” He was taking in the blood that had blown out the front of Wilson’s forehead along with gray matter and skin particles that had plastered themselves on the wall. “Any sign of a bullet?”

“Didn’t look. I’m guessing from the size of the exit wound that it blasted through and lodged into the wall, behind that flap of scalp that’s stuck to it. Left the digging to you guys.”

Lee leaned in to study the deceased’s head. “I’ll start with some photos. Where’s the doc?”

“A few minutes behind you.”

“I’d really like to roll this dude over. Hope the ME moves her ass.”

“When you’re doing the pictures, would you get me some close-ups of those scrapes on the torso?”

“You got it,” Lee said, studying the mottled wall above the body. “She sure took away his pain.”

“Pain? What pain did he have before his head exploded?”

“‘Livin’ la Vida Loca.’ The crazy lover who takes away your pain, like a bullet to the brain. You know, Mike. Ricky Martin.”

“I get the crazy-lover bit. Seems to be the case here.”

“Ask Alex. She does a killer imitation of Ricky’s dance moves. She loves that song.”

“She does?”

Amazing the things you learn about someone you think you know so well, when you hear about her from the perspective of others.

“Yeah. She rocks it. You must have been working the night of Nan’s birthday party. A few too many Dewar’s and Alex was putting on a show with Ryan Blackmer. The girl has moves,” Lee said. “What other rooms we got?”

“Bathroom. Seems the sergeant and his rookies were eager to get in the game. He tells me nothing was touched, but I’m not betting on it. And a tiny kitchen. That’s where I struck oil.”

I waited while Lee checked out the bathroom and then crossed back to the kitchen. I couldn’t dance to save my life, yet I knew Coop liked it almost as much as she enjoyed cross-examining every lying scumbag she’d ever faced.

“Roach traps? You moved them to get to the oil?”

“Took them out from under the sink. You can still see the footprints of each of them from the liquid that leaked onto the cardboard and left a stain.”

We were both on our knees, my flashlight beaming into the dark hole. “I took these five boxes out and left the rest in place. The first three? Enough
cucarachas
to line up head to toe, string them to Jupiter and back.”

“No kidding? I’ve got to text Alex a picture of the roach mortuary.”

“She’s sound asleep, Lee.”

“Tomorrow, then. That girl’s lived a charmed life. I think she saw her first cockroach when she showed up at the scene of a homicide we had together in the projects ten years ago. Like they didn’t migrate to the fancy part of Westchester where she grew up. Lucky thing.”

“Yeah.” Lee was right about Coop’s charmed childhood. I had wasted way too many hours wondering how her background and mine could possibly find common social ground.

“How about the next two boxes, Mike?”

“Hundred-dollar bills, my man. Lots of them. Maybe more once we toss the place.”

“Bingo! I thought the broad killed him for his money.”

“Maybe so. But she didn’t get all of it—that’s for sure.”

“We’ll start shutterbugging. Why don’t you go to the wailing wall and calm Wilson’s daughter down?”

“Have a heart, Lee. It’s her pops lying here with a hole in his head.”

“You want me to snap the green before you go next door?”

“Keep it where it is for the moment. I want to see what the daughter knows. I want to see if she claims the missing loot was her father’s or the property of the not-so-right reverend. Give me thirty minutes.”

Lee and his partner were setting up their equipment as I walked out the door of Wynan Wilson’s small crib. His daughter, Angela, was in the adjacent apartment. I didn’t need a floor plan. I just followed the sound of the sobs.

The door was unlocked. I knocked lightly and twisted the knob. She and the neighbor, a slight elderly woman in a blue chenille robe, were sitting on the sofa. There was a cup of tea on the table in front of Angela, but it was still full.

“Hello, ladies. I’m Mike Chapman,” I said, extending my hand with the gold and blue shield of the NYPD detective division to show my proper ID.

“We’ve been expecting you,” the older woman said.

“Thanks. And thanks for taking care of Ms. Wilson,” I said, before turning to the dead man’s daughter. “I’m so sorry for your loss. And for the fact that you had to see your father this way.”

Angela Wilson nodded, blowing her nose at the same time as she tried to get her emotions under control.

I had a habit of running my fingers through my hair, sort of subconsciously, so that I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. Coop thought it was a nervous reaction, that it made witnesses think I was working my first homicide or something. I didn’t know how to stop doing it, since most of the time I didn’t know that I was. But now Angela Wilson was watching the top of my head instead of making eye contact.

“Tea, Detective?” the neighbor asked. “Or something stronger?”

“No, ma’am. Nothing, thank you.”

“Then I’ll excuse myself, Detective. It’s Angela you want to see.”

The women hugged each other and the older one left the room. I pulled up a small armchair across the table from Angela and started to talk. I asked her how she was feeling now, and whether she’d taken any pills or had anything to drink. Neither, she told me.

Her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was puffy and tear streaked. I riffed for a while about how difficult her work must be, the fact that the sergeant had told me she was an only child, and my big lie to her that someday the image that had been created tonight—the sight of her father’s head blown to bits in his own bed, the crimson fluid spattered around him—would fade to a distant memory. That would stay with her as long as she lived.

“May I ask you some questions, Angela?”

“Certainly, Detective. I’ll do my best to answer.” She was wringing a handkerchief with both hands.

“Mike. Please call me Mike,” I said, with a glance at my watch. It was after midnight. “Did you work yesterday?”

“I did. Yes, I did.”

Her shift was twelve hours, from eight
A.M.
to eight
P.M.
, caring for a woman in her late nineties—who was in good health, she said, though too frail to manage at home by herself.

“Had you planned to visit your father after work?”

“No. I hadn’t expected to do it. I was going to meet a friend of mine for a late supper, around ten o’clock, at a restaurant just two blocks from here.”

“The friend, may I ask his name?”

“A woman. We went to high school together. We have dinner once a month. She’s a nurse at Columbia Presbyterian.”

“Sorry to interrupt you,” I said, after she spelled the friend’s name for me.

“It’s okay,” Angela said, sniffling into her handkerchief. “I called my father, probably around four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“On his landline, or does he have a cell?”

“No landline anymore. He’s got a cell phone.”

“What’s the number?” I hadn’t seen one anywhere in the apartment. I texted Lee to look for it immediately and when Angela gave me the number I texted the lieutenant to have TARU—the Technical Assistance Response Unit—start tracking it.

“Anyway, I hadn’t seen him in almost a week. I called to ask if he needed anything, but he didn’t answer.”

“What about Keesh? Wouldn’t she get what he needed?”

“Keesh doesn’t live here. Least not most of the time. And the reason it was so good for me to come by is that my father said that she was out of town for the week.”

“Out of town?” Not the three words I wanted to hear about my suspect.

“Don’t get that worried look on your face, Mike,” Angela said. She was focused again on the top of my head. I must have had my hand in my hair. “She never goes far.”

“Where to?”

“I didn’t want to burst my father’s bubble. Keesh would just move in with somebody else who fancied her, brief as that might be. Somebody with a fatter wallet than my daddy.”

“Didn’t he know that?” I asked. “Wasn’t there a chance that he’d run into her on the street?”

“Daddy? I’ve got to back you up so you understand him. He only went two places when he left home—the community center and the liquor store. If Keesh stayed clear of both of those, she might as well be on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, ’cause Daddy wouldn’t see her.”

“But—?”

“I know. You’re going to ask me about food. Doesn’t he—didn’t he—have to eat?” Angela said without my prompting. “Yeah. Cans of soup, and mac and cheese for the microwave. Wash it all down with Rémy and my father had everything he needed. With Keesh? That’s all he got. Which is why I liked to check up on him. I’d go home when I got off work and pick up some homemade food to bring him.”

“And you did?” I asked.

“Yeah. I made meat loaf the night before—two of them—and some black-eyed peas. Called Daddy again around nine o’clock to say I was on my way. I was gonna heat it up for him, sit and talk for a while—” Angela said, choking up and covering her mouth with the handkerchief.

I waited while she composed herself.

“I called mostly to make sure that Keesh hadn’t come home a couple of days earlier than Daddy expected. Hadn’t come back to him, dragging her sorry tail between her legs.”

“Did he—?”

“No. No, he still didn’t answer. Went right to voice mail.”

“Did that worry you?”

“Not really. My father’s healthy as a horse. Excuse me. My father
was
perfectly healthy. When he didn’t answer it usually meant the TV was on and he couldn’t hear the phone ring. I put the food in a shopping bag and started over here.”

“But Keesh,” I said. “What if she had showed up?”

“Daddy would have called me. Right as rain. Two of us couldn’t be in the same room,” Angela said, dabbing at her puffy eyelids.

“What’s your beef with Keesh, Angela?”

She lowered both hands to her lap and looked at me like I was crazy. “You kidding me or what?”

“I just walked into this story tonight. Blank slate. Help me here.”

Angela’s expression turned to ice. “You need a guide dog for this, Detective? You always so slow on the pickup?”

“Maybe so.”

“My daddy was carrying on with a ho. Plain and simple,” Angela Wilson said, spitting each word out with equal emphasis. “Takeesha Falls is a full-on ho.”

“I’m—”

“She don’t care who she rubs up against, as long as there’s a cash bonus for her lovin’, using that word really loosely.”

“I’m confused a bit. I thought your father was a churchgoing man.”

“Church?” she said, waving the hand with the handkerchief over her shoulder. “Last time Daddy went to church was for my mother’s funeral, fifteen years ago.”

“Stay with me, Angela. This is helpful. All I know—all I was told by my boss—was that your father was a good man, a really decent guy, and that he worked—”

“Daddy hasn’t worked in five years, Detective,” she said, her annoyance temporarily displacing her emotion. “Lost his job driving a livery cab with a few too many arrests for being intox’d behind the wheel. And that was a good thing, getting him off the road.”

“Okay, but the information we had was that he worked at the church, for Reverend Shipley.”

“Ha!” Angela Wilson’s laugh split the quiet of the small space like a roll of thunder. “Don’t make me sick, Detective. That man don’t have no church. Some of you white boys are as dumb as you look. You, too, Detective? What church would that be?”

She stared at the top of my head while I tried to answer her.

“Well, he’s a preacher, isn’t he?”

“Without any brick-and-mortar place to preach. The man started life as a backup dancer for Little Richard, Detective. Put a collar on and made himself a minister, and nobody calls his bluff on that, ever. All he does is run some bullshit—excuse me, please, but I’m rather agitated—some bullshit organization that keeps his fat old face in the newspapers. Wants you to think he robs from the rich to give to the poor, when all he does is stuff his own pockets with his take.”

I didn’t have to ask questions. I just let Angela run with it.

“Was Daddy there? I told you so. The community center is where Shipley ran the show from. You know that. He controls all those protests against you guys. Against the police.”