Retirement Plan (8 page)

“Any ID?”

“I checked his pockets. They’re empty.”

“So maybe he was robbed”

“I don’t think so. Take a closer look at the entry wound.”

Morgan knelt. The toes of her shoes were covered with mud—great. She looked closer at the body, then said, “Well, it’s pretty damn big. Are you sure this isn’t the exit?” The wound, just below the left ear, had caused quite a bit of damage. No stippling. Not a close shot. Something seemed familiar.

“It looks like the entrance wound of an assault rifle,” Rachel said. “I haven’t seen anything like this since that guy on the west end a couple of months ago. Irving, wasn’t it?”

“Ingram.” Morgan’s voice was flat. Now she knew why she was the primary.  Kneeling beside the body, she patted her pants pockets. Next to her, the slow-moving water reflected the gold of the early morning sunlight. Flies circled and landed on the open wound. “You have any extra gloves?”

Rachel turned to her kit and rummaged around. She passed the rubber gloves to Morgan, who snapped them on. “You have all the photos?”

Rachel nodded.

“Then give me a hand, let’s roll him over.”

There was mud on his face, what was left of it. He was exposed from the waist down.          

“How you doin’ down there?” Henry called from above.

Morgan shaded her eyes and squinted up at him. “Did anyone look for a casing?”

“Aw, they’ve searched up here and got nothing. I didn’t want to push it because the ground is so soft, they could mess up our evidence.”

“Good thinking. What about the kids?”

“I talked to them—got IDs. They didn’t see nothing. Just the guy’s ass shining up at them.”

“Were they down here?”

“They told the uniform they weren’t.”

“Get someone busy making casts of the footprints we can find—all of them.”

Henry nodded, then pointed downriver. “See that over there? It’s a boat dock, with a bait shop beyond that.”

“You think the shot came from that direction?”

Henry sighed. “He would have been silhouetted in the light from behind. Would make an easier target.”

“We’ll need help getting him back up there.” Morgan turned to Rachel and asked if she’d called body pickup.

“Waiting for you.”

“Go ahead then.”

Rachel ripped off her rubber gloves and pulled her cell phone off her belt.

Morgan heard male voices and looked up again. A uniform was talking to Henry.  She called to him, “What’s up?”

Henry turned her direction and said, “We’ve found the guy’s shirt and his wallet.  He wasn’t robbed. Money’s still there—a hundred and thirty-three dollars.”

“Any ID?”

“Yeah, just a minute.” Henry turned and said something to the uniform. Then he called down to her. “Looks like his name is Jon Woods. Calumet City, Illinois.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” Morgan asked.

The question was rhetorical, but Henry shrugged and shook his head. “We also got blood spatter up here.”

So the tech had been right. He would have been standing with his back to the river, his shirt off, and his pants down—that is, if the shooter had been up on high ground too. She looked downstream. She could see the boat dock. A shooter could have gotten him in his sights from there. In fact, the exit wound, large as it was, might indicate that the shooter was positioned below the vic. Morgan called to Henry, “Is anybody running the name?”

“Working on it.”

Morgan turned to Rachel and said, “Stay with him until body pickup gets here.”

“That’s my job.”

“I’ll make sure a couple of uniforms stick around to help get the body up the bank.”

“I think we’ll manage, but thanks.”

“Anything else?

“There’s some lividity and rigor has started. Probably happened over two hours ago. I’ll know more when we get him back to the morgue.”

Morgan nodded. She could hear Henry in the distance as she started walking downstream toward the bait shop and the dock that jutted out over the glistening water.          

*

With gray cement-block walls and a smooth concrete floor that had been swept and mopped to a shine, the crowded, brightly lit room contained a marriage of bad odors. The most prominent were cooked cabbage, cigarette smoke, and stale sweat—and of course the random dirty diaper. People sat at cheap red picnic tables, some in silence and others talking quietly. This day two babies were crying. Usually at least one baby screamed through the whole hour. About a half-dozen dark-skinned children ran between the red tables laughing and shouting. Ruby lit her third cigarette off the end of her second as she sat alone at a table, watched the locked door, and waited.

Sophie was half-an-hour late. Ruby had convinced herself that Sophie wasn’t coming, and she felt like a fool sitting alone. In the seven years Ruby had been incarcerated, her mother hadn’t as much as sent a Christmas card, but Sophie, though she’d never visited, had written several times, and she sometimes sent a little money.

In all this time, Ruby’s only communication had been with her ex-boyfriend and her ex-cellmate. Brian had called often when he first got paroled. Then he met another girl on the outside and that was the end of that. Tia Johnson, who’d shared a cell with Ruby for almost three years, wrote and called her several times for fifteen months after she earned parole. Tia had to use the name of Ruby’s mother when she contacted Ruby. Ex-cellmates were forbidden contact.

In the beginning, Ruby had planned to throw in with Tia. They’d get a little two-bedroom apartment and go to AA Meetings and work, and they’d take more classes at City College. Ruby was proud of the fifteen college hours she’d earned in the prison’s education program, but over the years funding had been cut, and the prison no longer offered enough classes to make up a two-year degree. Ruby had also enrolled in Gateway, the drug-rehabilitation program, several months ago; she’d started this to look good to the parole board. But something had snared her, and now she planned to keep going to meetings after she was released.

However, lately, as Tia Johnson had become more invested in things on the outside and less interested in things on the inside, her calls had grown shorter and further apart. Then the last time Tia called, she’d been strung out. She denied it, but Ruby could tell. Women who went back to drugs eventually resumed the crimes that accompanied drug use. Ruby had often seen inmates return to prison despite their best intentions.

The security door buzzed, then a tall, slender woman came inside. Her short pewter-colored hair was, as always, curled in a ruthless perm. She looked around the room as her eyes adjusted to the bright lights. Ruby waved, and Sophie walked toward her.  

Sophie awkwardly climbed over the red bench that was attached to the picnic table and sat down.

Ruby said, “They have some coffee if you want some.”    

Sophie shook her head. “I see you’re still smoking.”

Ruby looked at the cigarette between her fingers as if she was surprised it was there. Had she written to Sophie that she intended to quit? She couldn’t remember. What she did remember was the last time she saw her mother and Sophie. They’d told her they would testify against her. She’d stolen their joint-savings passbook, forged a signature, and disappeared with roughly sixteen thousand dollars. The state could send a

handwriting expert from its own forensic lab to testify against her. In the end, with the help of the public defender, she’d negotiated a plea. Due to mandatory sentencing she received fifteen years, including the time she’d already served in jail. It had been heroin that time.

Ruby shrugged. “Everybody said they were quitting when the price went up last time, but I suppose this is better than the other shit I’ve put in my body.”

Sophie placed both elbows on the table and stared at her. “You look older.”

“I am over forty, now.”

After an uncomfortable silence, Sophie asked, “What do you want, Ruby? What can’t you put in a letter?”

As if the absurdity of the whole thing suddenly hit Ruby, she stammered, “I guess I wanted you to see that I’ve changed.”

Sophie snorted.

“I’m in a program now. I really want to stay sober. I have a thousand plans—”

“Is one of those plans to pay your mother and me back for draining our savings?  Or how about the TV—jewelry—or, for that matter, anything of value that we owned?”

Ruby put her head in her hands. At length she said, “You guys are all I’ve got.”

“And what, pray tell, makes you think you’ve got us?”

The space between them seemed vast, yet when Ruby answered, it was in a whisper. “Family is a place where you go, and no matter what, they always have to let you in.” Hot tears seared her cheeks. The trouble with sobriety was she felt everything.

Sophie reached into her purse and passed a tissue across the table.

“Thanks.” Ruby blew her nose and said, “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

Sophie sighed. “So you’re getting out soon?”

Ruby nodded, the soaked tissue wadded in her hand. “I’m up for parole in three months. I need a place to go to start out.”

“What about a halfway house or something?”

“I did that last time, remember? I had a friend, a cellmate, who went to one last year. We were planning to get a little place together and try to live right. But she’s using again, and I’m afraid if I take that path I’ll be doomed,” Ruby said. “I’ve been going to college here, and I want to keep on. I’m in the Gateway Program, and I want to stay sober. I want to find a job. You guys will be the first people I pay back—I want it that way. I really mean it this time.”

“You didn’t mean it last time?”

Ruby shook her head, then met Sophie’s eyes. “No. I don’t think I did.”

“How do I know this isn’t another one of those times?”

“You don’t, I guess.”

People were starting to gather their things and leave. The visiting hour was over.

Sophie said, “I’ll have to think about this. And, of course, I’ll have to talk to your mother—although I think that should be your job.”

“She won’t talk to me.”

“I know.” Without ceremony Sophie stood and, holding on to the picnic table, she awkwardly climbed over the attached bench.

Ruby said, “Can I get a hug?”

Sophie seemed to stiffen, but at length she held out her arms.

Ruby wrapped her arms around the old woman’s neck and squeezed. She could feel Sophie’s rigidity, but it didn’t matter. She smelled the familiar soft-powdered scent and remembered how fiercely she loved her. She couldn’t recall a time in her childhood when Sophie hadn’t been there playing good cop to her mother’s bad cop. Now here she was counting on that again.    

Chapter Six

Lois had gone alone the last time. They’d been watching the latest subject for a while now. It had been October and Indian-summer weather, windy and warm. They’d mapped out Smallwood’s routine. The two best places for the hit were also the worst. He went to a neighborhood park around noon and sat on the same bench watching the same small children play, and then in the afternoon he stopped at the schoolyard.

The client had told them that he prowled around at night, and Sophie and Lois worked out a plan to follow him. Sometimes he used his car and sometimes he went on foot. But the destination was always the same, Carpenter Park. They’d watched him from the far reaches of the parking lot. Usually alone, he’d sat on the bank smoking cigarettes. A few times another man joined him. Twice it was a female—a young female—probably a prostitute. After money changed hands, she’d quickly gotten down to business. They didn’t observe a pattern with the girl. Sometimes she was there, sometimes she wasn’t.

Because they couldn’t count on him being alone, Lois had to wait for the right moment. She’d gone out there twice with the rifle and returned with it unused. Sophie found the change of pace, the mystery and intrigue of their new business, stimulating.  Lois found it less so.

Several days after the kill, Lois said, “We need to talk.”

Sophie looked at her carefully then. Lois appeared tired. Historically, whenever Lois said, “We need to talk,” the news was not good. “Let’s sit in the kitchen,” Sophie said. “I’m hungry.”

Only after Sophie had poured two glasses of milk and set a half-empty package of Fig Newtons on the table did she ask, “What is it?”

Lois left the milk untouched, folded her hands in her lap, and nodded. “The last job. There’s a complication.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t alone.”

“And you shot him anyway?”

“I didn’t know it,” Lois said. “I waited for over a half hour and he just sat on the bank and smoked one cigarette off the end of the other. I was positive no one was coming.”

“Oh, dear.”

“By the time I had the rifle in place, he was standing, looking toward the river—away from the road. I should have stopped right there. My gut told me to, but I just didn’t want to have to go back again the next night.” Lois let out her breath slowly. “I’m tired. I remember how to handle the rifle, and I’m still a good shot, but I’m an old woman. The cold and dampness make my joints ache. I usually have to pee at least once during the wait.” Lois shoved a whole cookie in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said, “You try that some time without leaving any evidence.”

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said.

Lois went on. “From where I was, I couldn’t see anyone else. So I aimed and fired. Hit him in the head and he went down. Then I heard a scream.” Lois whispered, “A woman’s scream.”

Sophie exhaled. “Damn.”

“He must have been standing in front of her. I only got a glimpse as she ran, but I’m pretty sure it was the hooker.” Lois picked up another cookie and stared at it. “She probably had blood and brains all over her. Anyway, she ran.”

“Maybe she thought she would be next.”

“If I were in her place, I’d just get the hell out of there,” Lois said. “Of course, she’d need to be killed too, with your standard contract killer.” She set the cookie on a napkin.

“We won’t hunt her down,” Sophie assured her. “I doubt if she’ll be any trouble unless someone offers a reward for information. I don’t think anyone will for this guy.”