Mistaken Identity (12 page)

With the Nikkormat in front of her face, Judy snapped photos of both ends of Trose Street, until she realized Mary hadn’t gotten out of the truck. She sidestepped to the half-open window. “Mare,” she whispered. “Mare, come on out.”

“No.” Mary sat in the backseat. “I’m not coming.”

“What? What do you mean you’re not coming?”

“I’m not coming. Which word don’t you understand?”

“Are you kidding?”

It was a good question, and Mary wasn’t exactly sure. “I’ve never been to a crime scene before. I don’t want to go to a crime scene now. Why do you think they put up all that yellow tape? Because crime scenes are not good places to go.”

“Mary, it’s your job.”

“No shit.” The associate’s head popped from the window and she blinked against the rain. “I know it’s my job, why do you think I hate it? If my job was making chocolate eclairs, I wouldn’t hate it.”

“Are you crazy? Get out of the car.”

“If my job was buying clothes, I wouldn’t hate it. Or reading books. Also I like to eat. Maybe I could get a job eating. Are there jobs like that, Jude?”

“What’s the matter with you? You want to get fired?”

Mary brightened immediately. “Why didn’t I think of that? Then I could collect unemployment, like the rest of America.”

“Carrier! DiNunzio! Let’s go!” Bennie shouted, the impatience in her tone impossible to miss. She was already climbing the front stoop of the rowhouse.

“Come on, she’ll fire me, too.” Judy opened the Ford’s door and grabbed the sleeve of Mary’s suit. “You’ll be fine, you’ll see,” she said, yanking out her friend and slamming the door behind her. They walked together to the front door, outdistanced by Bennie, who had slipped inside the entrance and already had her finger on the buzzer under a dented aluminum mailbox.

“We caught a break,” Bennie told them. “The super lives on the first floor.”

“How do you know?” Judy asked.

“It says so.” Bennie pointed to a nameplate:
J. BOSTON, SUPER
.

“Ace detective work,” Judy said, but Mary wasn’t laughing.

The super was short and wore a dirty T-shirt, baggy pants, and a grizzled, apathetic expression. When he spoke, a scotch-scented wind wafted toward Bennie. “No, I didn’t hear nuthin’ the night Ant’ny got killed,” he rasped in a voice sandpapered by cigarettes.

“But you live downstairs,” Bennie said. “You heard the gunshot, didn’t you?”

“The cops already axed me that. I told ’em, I don’t hear nothin’ at night.”

“Even a gunshot?”

“I didn’t hear nothin’. So I’d had a few. That agains’ the law?”

“Did you ever hear Connolly and Della Porta? Talking, arguing, anything?”

The old man’s watery eyes lit up. “Anything? You mean
anything
?”

“Fine. Anything.”

“No.” He burst into laughter that ended in a hacking fit. Judy and Mary exchanged glances, standing in the hallway in front of his apartment. The television, specifically Oprah Winfrey’s theme song, blared from behind a white door grimy with fingerprints. “I hardly ever saw ’em. They was never around. Him bein’ a cop and all, I figgered he was busy.”

“Did they have a lot of visitors?”

“Hell if I know. I stay in my place. My brother-in-law, he owns this dump, he likes it that way. Any way he likes it is fine with me.” The super squinted. “You say you’re a lawyer? All a youse are gal lawyers? Do they have that?”

Bennie let it go. “Does that sign out front mean that Della Porta’s apartment is vacant?”

“Hell, yes. That apartment’s nothin’ but trouble. I could show it all day, ain’t nobody gonna rent it. Nobody want a place with a man got shot, even furnished and all. Plus he’s askin’ too much.”

“The apartment’s been vacant since the murder? With the original furniture?”

“Sure. Got everything ’cept the rug. I throwed that out when the cops was done with it.”

Bennie sighed. Trace evidence would be long gone. “Is the furniture the same as it was? You didn’t rearrange it, did you?”

“I don’t get paid enough to move nothin’.”

“I need to see that apartment. Can I borrow the key?”

“What the hell.” The super fumbled for his pocket and dug around inside. “Who you think cleaned that mess upstairs? Yours truly. Who you think took up the g-d rug, had blood all over it? Yours truly. Who sanded the floors? Repainted the bloody wall? Packed all their shit up and put it in the basement?”

“Yours truly?” Judy said, and the super grinned in toothless appreciation.

After they got the key, Bennie charged up the stairway with the associates to the second floor. The stair was long and skinny, covered by a dirty red runner, and on the second floor was a door without a sign or number.

Bennie unlocked the door. “Keep your eyes open,” she said, stepping inside the apartment. “Take note of the layout of the place. Look at the orientation of the rooms, the furniture. Check views from the windows, lighting. Try to remember what you see, no matter how insignificant it seems now. Got it?”

“Yep,” Judy answered. She snapped a photo, but Mary lingered at the threshold, unnoticed.

Bennie scanned the apartment. The large room had two windows that faced the street, a northern exposure, and contained a table with four chairs to the right, making up a dining area on the east side. On the left side of the room a couch sat flush against the wall and in front of it was an oak blanket chest. A Sony Trinitron sat on a TV cart between the windows and an oval mirror hung on the wall. Bennie made a note of the brighter squares in the textured wallpaper where pictures had been hung, and there was a light square in the center of the floor where a rug had been. “Take a picture from this spot, Carrier,” Bennie said. “Take a bunch.”

“Gotcha.” Judy clicked away as Bennie crossed the room to the couch.

“Here we go. Here’s the bloodstain.” Bennie strode directly to a discolored patch in the hardwood, which was glossy in uneven patches, the refinishing sloppy. Della Porta’s blood must have seeped through the rug. She remembered from the police file that the bullet had been a .22 caliber. It had made a small hole in Della Porta’s forehead and blasted through the back of his skull. The loss of blood had been significant.

“Jeez.” Judy walked over and took a picture. “No wonder the super hasn’t rented the place. Nobody sweeps blood under the rug.”

“Which way did the body fall? Where’s DiNunzio?” Bennie asked, and both heads snapped to the doorway where Mary stood rooted. “DiNunzio, what are you doing? Come over here.”

“Coming.” Mary walked over as purposefully as she could and looked down. On the floor was a dark brown stain shaped like France. Her stomach flipped over. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Della Porta was found face-up,” Bennie said. “Was his head tilted east or west?”

“East? West?” Mary couldn’t think clearly. A man had died here, shot in the head. She visualized a slug of hot lead tearing apart the soft wetness of his brain. Destroying what should have been inviolate.

“West is to your left, east to your right.”

Mary couldn’t take her eyes from the bloodstain. She’d seen the autopsy photos and the mobile crime unit photos. So much blood in a line of work that was supposed to be bloodless.

“Which is it? East or west?”

“Can I … check the file?” Mary slid the accordion from under her arm.

“No. You read it, didn’t you?” Bennie snapped, and Judy touched her sleeve.

“What’s the point, Bennie? It’s hard for her—”

“Quiet, please. Mary doesn’t need a lawyer, she is a lawyer.” Bennie was doing this for a reason, but she didn’t need to broadcast it, and she even knew the answer, which didn’t matter anyway. “DiNunzio, this is a murder case, so blood is a prerequisite. Don’t think of the body, think of the file. Think of the paper. It’s just another case. Now, was he facing east or west?”

“West,” Mary said, the answer materializing from a police photo she didn’t know she remembered.

“Good girl. What did the coroner have as the time of death?”

“The coroner said between seven-thirty and eight-thirty. It was in his report.”

“There you go. Now, Connolly told me she was at the Free Library on Logan Circle. She left at six-thirty and walked home. The shooter was somebody Della Porta buzzed in, and the murder took place almost immediately after. Della Porta was standing at the time and was shot point-blank. He crumpled and fell backward, face-up. It’s all consistent with the M.E.’s report, that’s what they’re going to say. You think I’m right, DiNunzio?”

“That’s what they’ll say.”

Judy looked puzzled. “You know what I don’t get? It’s a long walk here from the library, an hour or more. Why did she walk? There’s buses, cabs, everything.”

“I don’t know, maybe she likes to walk.”

“Then she has no alibi. If she left at six-thirty, she could still be walking home at the time of the murder.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Judy swallowed hard, then risked job termination. “Did she do it?”

“She’s our client, Carrier. Whether she did it or not is beside the point.” Bennie checked her growing annoyance. “Legal Ethics 101. It’s not prosecutors on one side and defense lawyers on the other, with equal and opposite functions. That’s sloppy thinking. The roles are different in kind. The prosecution is supposed to seek justice, and the defense is supposed to get the defendant acquitted.”

“You don’t think Connolly’s guilt is relevant? What about justice?”

“Connolly is my client, so I have to save her life. My job is about loyalty. Is that noble enough for you?”

Judy cocked her head. “So it’s a conflict between justice and loyalty.”

“Welcome to the profession.”

Mary heard the edge to Bennie’s voice and recognized it as anxiety. If Bennie and Connolly were the twins they appeared to be at the emergency hearing, Mary could imagine the strain Bennie was feeling. Judy, who hadn’t been at the hearing, was missing the point.

“Then I’m confused,” Judy said. “If we’re not solving a murder, why are we here?”

Bennie looked at Judy directly. “We need to understand the D.A.’s case and develop a credible theory of what happened that night. When we get into that courtroom, the jurors have to look to us as the font of all knowledge, so they take that confidence in us into the jury room. Shall I go on?”

“No, but—” Judy started to say, and Bennie waved her off.

“We don’t have time to discuss this any longer. Connolly has a right to effective counsel, so get effective. Take pictures.” Bennie glanced around the living room, bothered. Carrier’s question had been nagging at her from the beginning. Did Connolly do it? Bennie didn’t think so, but why? She suppressed the thought. “This place is too fucking clean. Let’s start with the kitchen, DiNunzio, and check through in an orderly way.”

“Okay,” Mary said, though Bennie was already at the threshold to the kitchen, hands on her hips.

It was a small galley kitchen with cherrywood cabinets, new appliances, and a fancy Sub-Zero refrigerator. Bennie opened the cabinets, which were empty except for one stocked with heavy white dishes. She double-checked the others, which were bare, then went to the window. “Who called 911 about the gunshot, DiNunzio?”

“Mrs. Lambertsen, from next door. She testified at the prelim. She also saw Connolly run by, and so did other neighbors. Three or four, I remember reading.”

Bennie nodded. “Assume 911 dispatch gets the call and radios it out right away. Who was the first patrol car to respond?”

“I have to check that.”

Mary slid out the accordion, pulled out a folder, and thumbed through it with Bennie at her shoulder. Yellow highlighting striped every page, evidence of DiNunzio’s careful work, and Bennie thought the associate would make a fine lawyer if she’d just get out of her own way. “Here it is,” Mary said. “Patrol Officers Pichetti and Luz.”

“Not McShea and Reston?” Bennie thought a minute. “Where were Pichetti and Luz when they got the call?”

Mary ran her finger down the page. “A couple blocks away, at Seventh and Pine.”

“What we need to know is where Reston and McShea were and why they were so close to Della Porta’s apartment.”

“The file doesn’t have a report from them.”