Random Victim (12 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

No Need To Ask

Leal pulled up in front of Hart’s apartment building late Sunday morning and debated whether to honk the horn or just trust
that his partner, ever observant, would be watching for him. Screw that, he thought, and tapped the horn twice. Everybody
who isn’t up by now should be. He stretched and settled back in the seat, reflecting on what had turned out to be a pretty
damn good couple of days for him.

He’d spent most of Saturday looking at new cars, and finally found a used red Pontiac Firebird in fairly decent shape with
a reasonable price tag. Plus, when the dealer found out Leal was a cop, he offered to slip in a few extras, like a CD player
and a free recharge on the air-conditioning. Leal had also managed to tag up with Sharon at her place again, after she’d recovered
from her night session interviewing felons and witnesses, and they’d ended up in bed again. They’d started early enough this
time to preclude any beeping interruptions and he’d ended up spending the night.

I’d better be careful, he thought, and he glanced out the window. Or this could develop into a habit. But maybe that wouldn’t
be so bad, either.

Hart was still conspicuously absent, and Leal tapped the horn again. What the hell was keeping her? He looked up at her picture
window and saw her wave, using an “I’ll be right there” gesture. Leal nodded and settled back again, thinking that next week
he’d pick up his new wheels and drive to Sharon’s in style. No more using this beast, he thought. It had felt good to relax
with Sharon for a couple of days. Ryan had been right to suggest the time off. It was great not having to think about the
goddamn Walker case, or that fucker Brice and his horseshit theories, or that ass-kisser Ryan with his nose so far up Brice’s
butt that he was probably having trouble breathing.

He saw Hart jogging across the lawn, carrying a blue windbreaker and a spiral notebook. She had on a beige sleeveless blouse
and black slacks, the big Model 19 bouncing in the holster on her hip. Leal hit the door lock and she jumped in looking, he
noticed, raring to go.

“Hi,” she said, looking him over. “Am I dressed okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “How were your days off?”

“Oh, pretty good. I got a real heavy workout in Friday and did some posing routines. Yesterday I took a light one and did
some work on the case.”

“Huh? What was that?”

“I ran a check on Simon Ellias, the poet,” she said, turning to look at him. “Guess what?”

He shrugged.

“He doesn’t exist,” she said.

Leal squinted at her. “Run that by me again.”

“I ran a Soundex on him and came up with zilch in Willow Springs,” she said, opening her notebook. Leal could see pages of
notes in her neat cursive. “Remember that’s where the book said he lived?”

Leal nodded.

“So I went to the library and traced him down.” She paused and smiled. “Well, actually, this real helpful librar- ian did,
but I found out his real name. Are you ready for this?”

Leal nodded again.

“Randall S. Pecker. No lie. That’s it.” Her grin looked a mile wide. “Simon might be his middle name. I guess we can surmise
why he used Ellias, right?”

“I guess,” Leal said, smiling.

“And,” she said, paging through her notebook, “I also called that agency where Walker’s former housekeeper worked and persuaded
them to give me her address. They wouldn’t do it over the phone so I went there and flashed my badge.”

Leal felt proud of her. She’d done some good legwork on this and he told her so.

“Thanks,” she said. “But I gotta tell you, Sarge, I could’ve used this baby instead of burning up a half a tank of my own
gas driving back and forth.”

She said it good-naturedly, but Leal realized she’d felt slighted that he’d taken the squad. He suddenly remembered that she’d
asked him if she could use it Friday when they were driving back. She must have been planning this all along, he thought.

“Yeah, well, sorry about that,” he said. What the hell, he thought, might as well level with her. “Actually, I had a date
and my personal car is a wreck. I had to use the squad.”

“Oh,” Hart said, her eyebrows rising. “I see.”

“But I bought a new one, yesterday.”

“Great,” Hart said, prying open the glove compartment. “Anyway, I think I can find Ellias’ address on this.” As she pulled
out the folded maps the opened box of prophylactics fell out onto her lap, spilling a few folded foil pack-ettes. Leal silently
cursed himself for having forgotten about them being in there.

Hart carefully placed the box back in the glove com partment and said, “So I guess there’s no need to ask how your date went,
huh?”

Leal was silent on the drive to Willow Springs. Hart’s verve and initiative had left him feeling guilty, but what the hell,
he told himself, I deserve a day off once in a while, don’t I? It helped me come back renewed. But his argument flattened
before the scrutiny of his own conscience. The fact of the matter was, his partner, the rookie, had acted while he just laid
back. Or got laid, whichever way you looked at it. The wordplay brought a smile to his lips.

“What are you smiling at?” Hart asked.

“Oh, just thinking what a great detective you’re turning into.”

Hart smiled back, then pointed. “There’s our street.”

Randall S. Pecker, aka Simon Ellias, lived in the bottom half of a brown two-flat near the Des Plaines River. The house was
wood frame over a solid-looking brick and mortar foundation. Hart pointed to the doorbell and Leal nodded. The faint noise
of a stereo could be heard inside. She pressed hard on the bell, and suddenly they heard the heavy barking of what had to
be a sizeable dog.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice said from the other side of the door.

“Police,” Leal said, holding up his badge case in front of the peephole. The interior door opened and a bearded man of medium
height stood behind the screen door. His shaggy hair hung unkempt almost to his shoulders, and he was wearing a plaid flannel
shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Leal placed him at about forty. The dog, a rottweiler, continued barking until the man called
its name.

“May I see your identifications again?”

Leal and Hart held up their badges and the man’s eyes narrowed slightly as he read them.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“We need to talk you about Miriam Walker,” Leal said. “Can we come in?”

Pecker looked stunned, then recovered, opening the door. The dog, ever vigilant, growled slightly. “Shadow,” he said. The
growling stopped.

The inside of the house was filled with stacks of wood, half-finished paintings, crude statues, and rolls of paper. Off to
the side a computer was on a desk playing a CD of classical music. Leal saw Hart staring at some of the paintings, abstractions
of the human form, that were leaning against one of the chairs. A small television set sat on a coffee table in the center
of the room.

“Pardon the mess,” Pecker said. “I’m right in the middle of a few projects.”

“Simon Ellias projects?” Leal asked.

Pecker smiled. “I see you’ve done your homework, Officer.”

“What do you have all this wood for?” Leal said.

“I’m a cabinetmaker. I work in my shop out back.”

Hart pulled the poetry book from her purse.

“Did you write this?”

Pecker wiped his hands on his shirt and accepted the book, immediately opening it to the title page and reading the inscription.
His mouth hung slightly open as he looked up and asked, “Where did you get this?”

“From Miriam Walker’s private effects,” Leal said. “Why don’t you tell us about your relationship with her?”

Pecker licked his lips and went over to shut off the CD. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”

They sat at his table, a heavy wooden piece with ornately carved legs. Pecker offered them coffee, which they both declined.

“I was wondering why no one ever came to talk to me,” he said, finally. “I thought about going to the police my self, but
then again, illicit lovers really don’t have a right to inquire, do they?”

“You were having an affair with her?” Leal asked.

Pecker nodded. “It was much more than that. The word ‘affair’ sounds so meretricious.”

Leal frowned. “So how did you meet? And how long had you been seeing her?”

Pecker sighed. “Do I really have to go into that now?”

“Now or later,” Leal said. “Your choice.”

“Simon,” Hart said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I know you must have cared for her very much. We need your help if we’re
going to find the people who killed her.”

When he looked up his eyes were glistening. He quickly recounted the beginning of their relationship, as he put it, from their
initial meeting when he did some cabinetwork at an abused women’s shelter that Miriam had sponsored. How Miriam’s interest
in the arts lead to a drink, and the drink to a subsequent dinner.

“She was very unhappy at home,” he said. “And we shared so much in common.”

“She ever talk about her husband?” Leal asked.

“Only occasionally. About what an insensitive bastard he was. Her marriage was practically arranged by her father, you know.”

Yeah, I’ll bet, Leal thought. But he said, “So was she going to divorce her husband?”

“That was problematic,” Pecker said. “You see, Miriam came from a very wealthy family, and had just received control of her
inheritance from a trust. She was worried that under the community property laws, she’d lose half of what she felt was essentially
her money.”

Leal nodded. “So what was the plan? Keep meeting in secret?”

“Actually, things seemed to change the last few weeks before she disappeared,” Pecker said. “She told me that our problems
would soon be solved, that we could be together. She was ebullient, but she was also enigmatic.”

“Try that again in plain English,” Leal said.

Hart smirked at him.

“Well, she seemed happy, confident that the divorce wouldn’t be as much of an obstacle as she’d thought,” Pecker said. “But
at the same time she seemed very nervous. She wanted both of us to get HIV tests.”

“She say why?”

Pecker shook his head. “Only that if we were going to stay in a monogamous relationship, we should both be tested. We both
came back negative, of course. She then told me that we shouldn’t see each other until after the formal separation papers
were filed.”

Leal asked, “Was it because of something her husband did?”

Pecker shrugged. “I surmised as much, but I didn’t ask.” He brought his hand up to wipe at his eyes. “When I didn’t hear from
her, I assumed that everything was all right. Then I saw that she was missing on the news. I knew something had gone wrong,
but kept hoping that she was merely hiding somewhere for her own purposes. When they found her, I didn’t know what to do.
The police kept saying that it was apparently a random street crime.”

“So you just sat on your hands?” Leal said.

“What else could I do?” Pecker raised his head and Leal saw there were tears streaming down his face. Hart reached out and
patted the man on the shoulder. “What else could I do?” he asked again.

They spoke to Pecker for about twenty minutes more, assembling the dates and locations of their trysts, trying to get a picture
of Miriam Walker’s habits and routines during her last few months.

“Okay,” said Leal, once they were back in the car. “She was planning on dumping her old man, and was initially concerned about
losing her money…” He waited for Hart to pick up his trend of thought.

“But then she suddenly gets something on her husband that makes the divorce less of a problem,” Hart said.

Leal nodded. “So we gotta assume that she picked up on Martin Walker’s secret life. Only what could it be? Drugs? Hookers?
Why the concern about HIV?”

“Maybe he’s AC/DC?” Hart said.

Leal grunted, remembering Ryan’s comments questioning Hart’s sexuality. “That’s what we gotta find out,” he said, twisting
the keys in the ignition. “Let’s go talk to the housekeeper. Maybe she can give us more on the enigmatic Mr. Walker.”

Hart looked at him and smiled. “Nice word. For a cop.”

It was near noon by the time they pulled in front of the dull gray apartment building near the Cal-Sag Channel. Two children,
a boy in a blue shirt and pants, and a little girl in a dirty white dress were playing in the yard. They both stopped as Leal
and Hart approached.

“Does Mrs. Martinez live here?” Hart asked.

The girl nodded, showing them a gap-toothed smile, and pointed to the second floor. After walking up the sagging wooden steps,
Hart rang the buzzer and presently a heavyset woman in her forties opened the interior door. Her dark eyes flashed suspiciously
at the badges.

“Mrs. Martinez,” Hart said. “We’re the police. We’d like to speak to you.”

The woman tried a weak smile. “My English no too good.”

“Señora, no importa,”
Leal said.
“Hablo español.”

The woman seemed more at ease as Leal continued to chat with her so rapidly that Hart was left stranded trying to follow the
conversation through overheard cognates. She understood
Señora Walker
and
el señor
, but everything else was lost.

Mrs. Martinez bent her left elbow and patted the point of it with her right hand, saying something else. Hart looked to Leal,
who grinned.

“She says Miriam was always very nice, but Mr. Walker was a stingy bastard.”

“Muy tacano,”
Mrs. Martinez said, again patting her elbow.

“Did I hear you ask her something about a divorce?” Hart said.

“Right. They were sleeping in separate bedrooms,” Leal said. He said something else in Spanish. Hart heard the word
drogas
. She knew what that meant.

“Creo que si,”
Mrs. Martinez said.
“Pero no lo vi.”

She says she never saw him using drugs, but suspected it,” Leal said.

“Después de la señora despareció, el me dio calabazas.”

“Cuando?”
asked Leal.
“Immediamente?”