Tomahawk (39 page)

The room ended in four smaller spaces the size of junior officers' staterooms. Ogen opened a heavy door and motioned him into one.

Inside, the walls and ceiling were completely covered with dirty acoustic tile, the white kind, with small black holes. A fake-walnut table squatted between gray steel swivel chairs. When he sat in one, it sagged backward. He wondered how many murderers had sat in this broken chair, this squalid room. With the door closed, it was quiet now, so quiet that he could hear his lungs pumping air in and out, his heart pumping blood.

Ogen said, “The patrol officers who found the body were out of second district, Georgetown. Idaho Avenue, if you know that area. There's not much that'd interest you on the PD-two fifty-one.”

“What's a PD-two fifty-one?”

“Incident report. I went down to do the death report
and take pictures and so on. We've been working it since then.” He examined Dan's uniform. “What are you?”

“Navy officer. Why are you investigating this? I mean, why the District police? Isn't the canal federal property?”

“Yeah, it's a national park, but we have jurisdiction till it gets into Virginia. You can call the park police if you want. But I'm afraid you're gonna be stuck with the Municipal CID on this one.”

“I didn't mean that.”

After a moment, Ogen said, “Good.” He seemed neither hostile nor polite, but he was definitely listening to everything Dan said—so closely that it wasn't a conversation, but something else. The detective creaked his chair around and put a form on the table between them. “This is a one nineteen, a background statement. I need to ask you about her habits and so forth.”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay, Miss Kerry R. Donavan. Your relationship to her?”

“Fiancé.”

“Give her a ring?”

“Yeah.”

“Set a date?”

“No. Was the ring—”

Ogen consulted a list. “We didn't recover one. She lived with you, correct?”

“That's right.”

“How long?”

“Three, four months.”

“Did she use drugs?”

“No.”

“Sexual habits?”

“What do you—oh. Normal. I mean, heterosexual. Look, you said you talked to Haneghen. Didn't he tell you any of this?”

“I'm talking to you now. Where did she work?”

“At a charity organization. Ninth and G. I think the House runs it.”

“Yeah, the House. Who were her friends there?”

He named those he'd met at the Day House and at the
kitchen. Ogen listened expressionlessly. “Peace activists?” he said at last.

“Right.”

“That would explain the felony trespass on her record.”

Dan said that was correct, and that she'd been awaiting sentencing for another trespass charge and one of sabotage. Ogen scrutinized his hands while he explained. When he was done, the detective said, “What are you doing hanging around these people, Lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant commander. I was in love with her. They were her friends.”

“Now, she used to live with Haneghen, right? At this commune, or whatever it is?”

He said that was right.

Ogen said, “Did you have the impression this ex-friend resented you takin' her away from him?”

“No. He was always … well, not exactly pleasant, but he seemed to accept it.”

“But maybe deep down he didn't?”

“I don't think you're going to get very far with Carl Haneghen as a suspect,” Dan told him.

“We had a judge kill an eighteen-month-old last year. His secretary-girlfriend left her with him. She wouldn't stop crying. So he threw her against the wall. You'd be surprised at the kind of people who commit murder.”

“I don't think it would be Carl,” he said again. “And anyway, you said it was probably more than one person.”

“I don't recall saying that.”

“That's what you said on the phone. Who do you think killed her?”

“That's what we're trying to find out. But you're right, from the scene and the way we found her it was probably multiple assailants. Let's go over this again. You were in Canada. Did you talk to her on the phone while you were there?”

“Yes.”

“Everything normal? No mention of threats or scenes or anything out of the ordinary? Think back.”

“All she said was that she missed me, and she told me about some minor things that happened down at the kitchen.”

“Any mention of anyone giving her trouble, possible admirers, stalkers?”

“No.”

“So then she goes down to the towpath. She's riding your bicycle. Your place is how far from the canal?”

“Mile and a half. All downhill.”

“She go there often? That a normal thing for her?”

He remembered a raucous October night, moonlight on a black domino…. “We met near there. We went there to run. She was getting into biking. Yeah, it was normal.”

“Anybody else ride with you?”

“Her other friends aren't into exercise.”

“So you know that area?”

“I've run it forty, fifty times.”

“Isn't it cold to be out running, biking?”

“You generate a lot of heat.”

“The patrol guys figured it happened at dusk. Would she be going down there then, or coming back?”

“Most likely coming back.”

“Did she often go out after dark?”

“She said once—not long after we met—that she wasn't going to let fear rule her life.” Dan straightened again, feeling the horror grip him so hard he felt faint. He wanted to get it over with and leave. “Do you want me to identify the body now?”

“Her parents did that. They came yesterday and took it back north.”

“She's gone?”

Ogen nodded, still watching him.

Dan sat with his hands clenched together. The cold air was damp and close, and carried still somehow some presence or vibration of all the evil that had crouched and lied in this cubicle. “Do you have any idea at all who might have done it? I asked you that when we talked on the phone, but—”

“Like I said, we're working on it.”

“You and who else?”

“Just me, so far.”

“How many other cases are you working?”

“We had two hundred and thirty homicides last year.
Over fifty so far this year. Divide that by fifteen detectives. But we're working it.”

“Have there been any other murders down there?”

“There are murders everywhere,” said Ogen. “You saw the map. Right now, there's a war on over crack and PCP territories. If you want my instant take on it, you were my first suspect, then her friend Haneghen. But now I figure it's either some sleazebag that fell in lust with her on the breadline, or else there're some loosely organized gangs that work the back streets in Georgetown at night. One of them might have found their way down to the towpath. I'm going to call pawnshops, bike shops, see if anybody's seen a silver Motobecane.”

“What you're telling me is that you don't have any idea who killed her, and you don't think you're going to find out.”

“A lot depends on luck. Sometimes somebody'll decide to open his mouth. We'll keep the case open till we solve it. But the question in my mind right this second is, how are you doing with this?”

“Not too well. What do you expect me to say?”

“It's tough coming to terms with a murder.”

“I don't intend to come to terms with it,” Dan told him.

Ogen re-examined his face. “What's that mean?”

“I plan to find out who did it.”

“With or without us?”

“Either way.”

“You're not trained for this, Mr. Lenson. Get it off your chest if you want. But after that, why don't you go dive in a submarine, or whatever your job is, and let us handle this?”

He knew it was unfair, that this detached, inscrutable man was his defense against chaos, but he was too angry to think it through. All he saw was a disorganized, dirty office, a too-small staff overwhelmed with a tidal wave of crime. He didn't think calling pawnshops was going to find Kerry's murderer. He stood up. “I'm going to be calling you every day. She's not gonna be one of these cold cases. Find out who killed her!”

“Thanks for the direction, Lieutenant. And for coming in,” said Ogen. At the door, they didn't shake hands.

He started the car, then snapped the key to off instead of putting it into gear. His thighs shook. He felt like throwing up. Drive like this and he'd run somebody down. He wanted to kill, but not at random. Could anybody have been more innocent than Kerry? Could anyone have loved her neighbor more?

At last he got enough control to turn the engine on again and pull out. He drove aimlessly, drifting westward through noonday traffic. In front of the White House, barricades cut the flow to one lane. Trucks were parked along the wrought-iron fence. Police waved him on as drivers craned their necks. Only when he found himself on the Whitehurst did he understand where he was headed. He came back to himself then and gripped the wheel and took the roundabout exit onto M. He found a parking spot under the loom of Georgetown University's stone towers, locked up, and headed downhill.

The wind was cold, but there were people out hiking and jogging, older couples bundled, young guys striding along in running suits and earbands. A woman on a bicycle, but not her, not her … He pushed himself into a walk along the frozen canal. Gravel and then frozen mud and then gravel again crunched under his shoes. He glanced down, to find their glossy surface filmed with snow and ocher dust.

He kept looking downhill, into the trees and brush that fell away down to the roof of the Canoe Club and from there down to the river. Once he saw a scrap of yellow, and slid down the bank to it. But it wasn't a police tape. Just an old candy wrapper, bleached pale with time and exposure.

At last he came to the mile marker, a wooden obelisk beside the trail. He stood looking around, shivering as the wind nosed under his reefer and nipped at his ears.

A willow across the canal stood dark and sere, branches frozen into the immovable surface. The sky was close and almost black. Somewhere here . .. She'd gotten tired, ridden out to the four- or five-mile mark, then stopped to rest before heading back. And meanwhile it had grown late, or maybe she'd had trouble with the bike.
The chain tended to desprocket. He'd been meaning to look at it, but he'd kept putting it off.

No. No, goddamn it! He pulled his cap off, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, screwed it back on against the insistent wind. He couldn't make it his fault. He insisted on making himself accountable for things that weren't his fault and sometimes not even his business. But someone else had done this. She'd screamed to this unfeeling sky, suffered, and died.

Innocent.

And doomed, like all innocence. Like his was dying now.

Everything was going to be all right? What a puerile, childish faith.

Looking around one last time, he turned back toward the bridge, walking into the oncoming wind, air, welcoming its icy sting on his exquisitely tender frostbitten cheeks.

When he got to the Dorothy Day House, dusk was falling. The windows glowed. He stood looking at the porch swing. It seemed like a long time ago, but it had only been last fall.

He went up the creaking stairs and knocked, listening to children shrieking inside. After a while the porch light flashed on and Ken Zinkowski peered out. He seemed not to recognize Dan at first. Then he unhooked the outer door. The warmth felt good on his face. He hung his cap and coat and followed Ken's limp down the hall and into the common room.

It was dinnertime, and he knew some of the faces around the big table, and others were new. There were as many kids as ever, the smaller ones howling and food-smeared. Stone-faced women held newborns to opened blouses. A grizzled man in a wheelchair gave Dan a salute, a blanket where his legs should have been. The same oldster he'd noticed on his first visit stared with rapt patience into space.

He found Haneghen organizing mismatched bowls into rows on the porcelain-topped kitchen table. A Mexican woman was slamming out tortillas on a flour-dusted slab.

The ex-priest gave him a sad smile and asked if he was staying to dinner.

“If it's all right. Thanks.”

“Ken had a talk with the guy he works for at the Safeway. They're going to let him take the damaged produce. Some of it's bruised, but it's all fairly fresh. All we have to do is go by Tuesdays and Fridays and pick it up.”

“That should help. Something different from beans and rice.”

“Well, that's what's cheap,” Haneghen said. He began ladling tomato soup into bowls, and Dan started carrying them out.

He found a seat between the vet and one of the women. The vet said he'd been in the Happy Valley with the 101st. He'd lost his legs not to a mine but to diabetes. He lived on the street, had a habit, would probably go back to it; but he had to have a fixed address while he was getting treated for tuberculQsis. The woman was a war refugee from Guatemala, living here till she could pick up welfare benefits. A heavy-shouldered woman with a Brooklyn accent asked Dan who he was and why he was with them. She reached across the table to flick a finger off his uniform.