Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: Secrets Girls Keep: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 2) (9 page)

Before the other seniors had reached the bottom bench, Rudy was down and running in the shadows for the restroom. He cut inside the girls' restroom and decided he would wait inside the farthest stall. Why? He reasoned that Franny was a leader. Which meant she would come through the door first and that she would seek the farthest stall. It just seemed to make sense. Besides, if it was anyone else he would just have to settle for her. Either way it happened, it was all good.

He was back against the wall of the stall when the door creaked open. In one move he was on her, pressing the knife blade against her throat, demanding her absolute silence. He told her to sit on the toilet and urinate. He stood behind her with the knife drawn tightly against her throat while she complied. One by one they heard the other stalls flush and the occupants wash and leave. Soon the restroom was quiet. He dragged his prey to the light switch and darkened the restroom. Then he shut off the exterior light as well. In the darkness, he walked his hostage out of the restroom and back along the fence, out of view of anyone in the stands.

He pushed her under the stands. She struggled, trying to run past him, and he seized her arm and flung her back, further under the stands. She fell backwards and as she was falling she violently struck her head against a lower portion of the bleachers. Then she didn’t move. Her eyes were half-shut.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he said in disbelief. He had brought her here to rape her first. He was suddenly frightened and a terror swept through his body.

But before he ran, he jammed his hand into his front pocket; he removed the prize and inserted it inside her mouth. Then came the glue.

He was gone in four minutes altogether. Three minutes and fifty-eight seconds, actually, according to the digits on his watch.

His bicycle slipped backward from the rack and he pushed forward and was riding along the dark street moments later.

A hue and cry went up from Hank, who returned from purchasing a large black coffee and realized Franny wasn't among her friends. He didn't see that Jana had already gone to the security officer at the far end of the stands and was speaking animatedly with him. Had he been watching, he would have spotted the security officer suddenly throw Jana to the ground and cuff his hands behind him with plastic handcuffs.

But Hank was already headed for the opening under the bleachers.

So he saw nothing of the arrest of Jana and nothing of the police officers who arrived moments later and replaced the plastic cuffs with stainless steel ones.

Then Hank was screaming and men were rushing toward his cry.

E
dward Ngo invented
what he called the 12:1 Rule of detective work. His Rule said that twelve minutes inside the police station, at his desk in the homicide bureau, was the equivalent of one minute at a crime scene. Sixty minutes in the office went by in five minutes at a homicide. So when the shift changed at six p.m., the robbery-homicide dicks who'd been stuck in the office headed for Stuyvesant's Tavern on Clark Street. By midnight the murders had all been compared, theories had been exhausted in long, heated exchanges, and all the bad guys were under arrest--so it was time to go home for six hours of sack time until the day shift fell in again the next morning. The days were an endless stream on RH; there was never a day off. Another of Ngo's sayings, oft-repeated around Chicago's Loop Precinct: Homicide is a killer. Meaning RH was a meat grinder. A dick was allowed three years in RH before being rotated out for a breather in vice or burglary. Too many dead guy pictures and a detective would start showing up at the head shrinker's office, scoring depression tabs or getting dried out in rehab. And the lieutenants knew productivity fell off after thirty-six months in RH dramatically. On the day Franny Arlington was found under the bleachers at Wendover Field, the back of her head bloodied, Edward NGO had just eighty-eight days left of his three years. And more than anything, he wanted the bleachers homicides solved before he rotated out.

He ate, slept, and talked nothing else during the twelve hours shifts he shared with Andy Valencia, his partner of five years. At lunch break, over fish tacos or beef teriyaki, they talked the bleachers. At night at Stuyvesant's he talked the bleachers with anyone still willing to listen. At home weekends with his wife--who was divorcing him but didn't have first and last month's rent saved up yet--he talked bleachers even though Charlotte had quit listening long ago. And at night he dreamed the dreams of a homicide investigator who has seen two too many high school girls with her throat slashed ear-to-ear and one too many high school girls with a closed head injury. They were awful dreams, full of wails and cries for help and dark faces without features that grinned at him out of the shadows.

And Edward Ngo was onto a full-blown course of Zoloft for clinical depression. Of course you weren't supposed to ingest alcohol when taking the drug, his shrinker had cautioned him, but the nightly 12:1's were an exception that Ngo had carved out for himself. A dick couldn't be expected to just drop out of 12:1's. It just wasn't done. You were expected to be there; you were expected to participate; you were expected to keep sane with the help of your brothers' sharing and your own. Ngo saw it as no different than group therapy and so he declined his shrinker's invitation to engage in an official, non-alcohol group. Cops just didn't do such things. They couldn't. If they did, word might get out just how insane homicide detail had left them. So it was 12:1 and done, home by twelve-thirty and dreaming the bad dreams alone in a bed vacated by a spouse counting dollars and days until she could escape from you. Which left only your buddies at the station.

Edward Ngo had been flown to America by Catholic Social Services at the age of thirteen. He was raised protestant but he wound up with the Catholics after all. He grew up as a member of Father Bjorn's All-Saints Church, although he attended so rarely the priest didn't recognize him under the bleachers when he and Michael Gresham had approached the tall African detective. But Ngo recognized Father Bjorn. Knew exactly who he was and knew why he was there: Jana Emerich was Bjorn's natural child and his guilt was as deep as a mountain of bullshit in a feed lot. While Ngo couldn't say so, he knew all about guilt. Recruited by BOKO HARAM into its killing corps in a kidnapping at age eight, Ngo had killed mothers and fathers and children all over northeast Nigeria under the orders of killers not much older. The motivation had been simple: either you kill who we tell you to kill or we kill you. Ngo had learned at the age of eight that he was without principles: he opted to kill rather than be killed. So he understood Father Bjorn's guilt when he came under the bleachers after Amy’s death; he understood what it meant to feel like your own flesh and blood had murdered an innocent. They were brothers under arms--one by proxy and one in fact. It didn't matter: killing was killing and Father Bjorn knew it.

Late Friday night, after Jana had been thrown to the ground and handcuffed by the uniforms, he had been driven to Loop Precinct and delivered into the interrogation room to await Ngo and Valencia. The two detectives were nursing their second whiskey at the 12:1 when Ngo's cell phone vibrated. He fished it out of his coat pocket and read.
Another dead girl Wendover Field. Jana Emerich in custody. Come now.

Twenty minutes later, Ngo and Valencia were pulling their unmarked into reserved parking out behind the precinct.

The son had remembered the lawyer's words, spoken that night at Michael Gresham's house when he first went to live there: "If the cops want to talk, call me first."

So when the offered him a soft drink in the interrogation room he declined. When they offered him a cigarette (even though he was hooked), he said no. When they told him that if he cooperated they would take him home, he said no. He remembered the look on Michael Gresham's face when he said the words "Call me first," and he meant to do just that.

"Why did you kill her?" Ngo asked Jana.

Jana leaned away from the table. He placed his elbows on the hardwood and slipped his thumbnail under his front teeth. Then he said, "I want my lawyer."

"Your lawyer can't save you. But you can by talking to us."

"I want my lawyer."

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Do you like girls?"

"Do you like sex with dead bodies?"

"What does it feel like when you kill someone?"

"We can tell the District Attorney you cooperated."

"We can make them go easy on you."

"You need medical help. A year in a hospital and you walk out a free man."

"Do you want coffee? A Coke?"

"Do you smoke?"

Through the barrage, Jana's answer remained the same.

"I want my lawyer."

Finally, Ngo and Valencia left the room and stood in the hallway to regroup.

"He wants his lawyer," Valencia reminded his partner.

"He really wants his freedom," Ngo said. He remembered what restraint against one's will in a strange place felt like. "Let's try that angle."

The two men re-entered the room and took seats across from Jana.

"Jana, we are ready to release you to go home," said Ngo.

The boy's eyes opened wide. "Really?"

"Really. We just need your statement first. Just tell us what happened and we'll take you home."

"My lawyer said I shouldn't speak to you."

"Well, your lawyer doesn't know us. We want the real killer. If you didn't do it--and we don't think you did--we'd like you to help us catch whoever did do it. Can you do that? Just a good citizen statement?"

"Just tell what I saw? I already tried that with the security cop and he threw me on the ground."

"Well, we're not here to throw you on the ground. In fact, we're sorry that even happened. It wouldn't have happened if we had been there."

"If you say so."

Ngo leaned back and folded his arms.

"Now, were you talking with Franny at the game?"

"Yes."

"And someone said you were sitting next to her. Is that correct?"

"Yes. She came up the stairs and came over by me. I didn't ask her or anything. She just did it."

"Which made you happy, I'm sure."

"Yes."

"And you would have been the last person who wanted to see her harmed, correct?"

"Of course I didn't want her harmed. I didn't want Amy Tanenbaum harmed either."

"Did you follow Franny to the bathroom?"

"No. I started to, but then I thought I better wait in the stands."

"Was anyone else with you?"

"My lawyer's investigator was watching me. He was behind us."

"Really? What's his name?"

"Marcel something. I don't know his last name."

"Why was Marcel there?"

"He was sent with me by my lawyer."

"Were they afraid you were going to do something wrong?"

"No."

"Then why?"

Jana smiled. He looked up at the camera and slowly said, "They weren't afraid of what I might do. They were afraid of what you might do. Like try to say I hurt someone else."

"They told you that?"

"They said you would stop at nothing to convict me. They didn't want me to go to the game. But I raised hell with them and got to go. But Marcel had to tag along."

"Was Marcel with you all night?"

"Except for when I went into the restroom. He waited outside."

"Then you came back out?"

"No, there was a back door. He didn't know it. I just walked out and circled around him in the shadows."

"Where did you go?"

"Franny and I were going to meet in the parking lot. We were going to walk and talk."

"You weren't going back to the game?"

"No. She wanted to hear about California. My old state."

"So did you meet her?"

"That's just it. I went out by the ticket booth where we were going to meet. Except she never showed up."

Ngo shot a look at Valencia, who was frowning. There was a follow-up needed.

"While you were at the ticket booth, were you watching for Franny?"

"Uh-huh."

"Jana, think hard about this next question. Did you see anyone else come out of the field?"

"Yes. That's why I went to the security guard. I saw a kid come out in a huge hurry. He jumped on his bike and tore off. When Franny didn't show, I asked the security guard if he saw a group of girls walk by. He asked my name and I told him. That's when he threw me on the ground. Then the cops brought me here."

"Okay, okay, back up now. Who was the kid you saw leaving when you were by the ticket booth?"

"Rudy Gomez. He's in my College English class."

"Could you identify the boy you saw?"

"Rudy? Hell yes. What is all this about? Is Franny okay?"

"Franny is not okay. Franny was found dead."

A look of shock, then dismay, crossed Jana's face. The video camera recorded the sequence.

"What happened?"

"Under the bleachers. Same as Amy Tanenbaum."

"Oh, Jesus Christ!"

"Yes."

"Oh, hell no! And now you think I--"

"We're only asking questions. We don't think anything."

"Well, you've got the wrong guy. I was never with her except in the stands."

"We believe you."

Jana looked from face to face.

"No, you don't. If you can pin this on me, you will. I want my lawyer. That's the last time I'm going to say it."

"All right, we'll call your lawyer."

The two detectives left Jana alone in the room.

Again, they held a hallway conference.

"So?" said Valencia. "Do we charge him?"

"Uh-uh," said Ngo. "No case."

"That's what I'm thinking."

"We take him home. Then we go round up Rudy Gomez. You call the school and get Rudy's schedule."

"Load the kid up. I'll do it on the way."

"Here we go."

M
arcel Rainford was in a panic
. When Jana didn't emerge from the restroom, Marcel went looking. He ran out the back door and headed for the stands. Back up the stairs he climbed, up to the group of kids that Franny and Jana had been sitting with. For all he knew, Franny and Jana were close by, probably talking, or maybe necking by then.

But the kids shook their heads and looked at each other. None of them had seen Jana. And Franny had led the way into the restroom but no one remembered her coming out.

So, he sat down and phoned Michael. Michael told him that he had heard nothing from Jana, had no idea where he was, and became upset when Marcel admitted he had lost him. Marcel didn't blame him.

"I'm paying you to keep track of that kid," exclaimed Michael. "And you lost him? What the hell kind of investigator loses a seventeen-year-old kid without a car?"

"I don't know, boss. But I did, all right?"

Marcel explained the restroom setup and admitted he had assumed there was only one entrance. It had never occurred to me to check around back.

"Walk down and ask security if they've seen him. Meantime, I'll call the cops. Go now!"

Marcel jogged back down out of the stands and ran over to the security officer at the east end. He described Jana and asked for information. The security officer was only too glad to tell him that his protégé had been arrested in connection with the disappearance of Franny Arlington, who had been found under the stands. The cops were just then preparing to search everyone at the game as they emptied the bleachers. Just at that moment, the referees stopped the football game and the public address system began announcing an emergency. Everyone was asked to remain calm and to begin moving toward the exits. The police had quietly arrived and had set officers at field exit points. The officers were prepared to take down each name and address and phone number, and also inspect all purses and backpacks and coats. It was going to be a mess and Marcel immediately ran for the entrance, where he gave his information, submitted to a pat-down, and then was allowed to leave the field.

Two minutes later, he had the Ram truck headed for the Loop Precinct station. As he drove, he had the operator connect him to the station’s switchboard.

"Chicago Police Department. Loop Precinct. Sergeant Wilkins speaking. How may I direct your call?"

"I'm the legal assistant to Michael Gresham. I'm calling about Jana Emerich, a juvenile brought in an hour ago. I need to get him on the phone."

"Do you know what officer brought him in?"

"I don't."

"Spell first and last please."

He spelled as asked.

"I've got him logged into the station about forty minutes ago. It looks like he was logged back out about ten minutes ago."

"Did he leave there alone?"

"My records don't say."

"Did he make any calls before he left?"

"Let me see. No, but he could always have used his cell phone."

Marcel hung up and called Michael again. Michael still hadn't heard from Jana.

He headed back to the football bleachers. Maybe they dropped him back there, was Marcel's thinking, but they had not. He made his way through the remaining crowd and found not a trace of Jana or anyone who had seen him. Several of the kids Jana had been sitting near were questioned, but no one saw him return.