“Even if the woman was Whitney, we have no reason to go busting in there to look for Lieutenant Lake.” He addressed Portia. “Would you issue a warrant on what we have?”
She looked at me. “Eat, drink, and be merry? You known damn well I couldn’t.”
I asked him, “You find Lake’s car?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t in The Cloisters parking lot. We’re watching that place round the clock.”
“What about Whitney? What’s he saying?”
“Nothing—yet. He wasn’t at The Cloisters—at least his car wasn’t, and White said he wasn’t.”
“He’s there. Lake’s there.”
The lines around Haskell’s eyes bunched. He said, “As an ex-cop, you know we make enemies. If somebody harmed Lake, and God forbid that’s happened, it could be someone holding a grudge from ten years ago—someone who just got out of prison and just got access to him. We’re looking into that, too.”
Another devil’s advocate. My words of protest stuck in my throat. My heart begged, Lake. Please be safe.
“Go on home. Get some rest,” Haskell said. “I’ll personally call you the minute we hear anything.” He looked at Portia. “Maybe I can find a less exacting judge to get us in.”
“Hope you do,” she said, and squeezed my arm. Her deep empathy brought tears, and I rose and turned away before the commander saw gushers streaking down my face.
50
From my office window, I watched the dawn come up. Red sky at morning. . . Moriah take warning.
Pearly Sue came in at eight. She’d just flown back from Arkansas. I didn’t want to talk to her. I wanted to sit in my chair and stare at the telephone, just as I’d lain in my bed and stared at the ceiling with my cell on my belly, until I couldn’t stand it, and got up and got dressed and came here—to sit and stare at the telephone.
“Any word,” she said, tossing her bags in a chair near my desk.
“No.”
“Sorry, Dru. But I know Lieutenant Lake will turn up.”
“You psychic?” I should apologize, but I didn’t have the energy.
Pearly Sue meant well. Fortunately, she’s literal and impervious to sarcasm. “My mama says I’m psychic sometimes,” she said. I shook my head. “Maybe Lieutenant Lake went undercover?”
“Maybe.”
“He wouldn’t tell anybody if he did, would he?”
Me. But then, maybe not me. I hadn’t been close to Lake since coming back from that dreadful time in the desert. Close. We’d lost that closeness. My fault, of course. The happy times I’d spent with Lake seemed wasted. I felt a fraud, a shell of a person, feeble of emotions, selfish and shallow.
Lake, please come back. Please be safe. Please be alive.
“Would he?” Pearly Sue persisted.
“His commander,” I said. “I talked to him. Lake isn’t undercover.”
Pearly Sue’s mouth turned down, a real female mime.
I asked, “How was Arkansas?”
She perked up and plopped into a chair. “Real interestin’. I found out Bradley Dewart Whitney was not like anyone I ever knew.”
“Tell me,” I said, staring at the phone.
“Well, I began at his school. He was in ninth grade in Little Rock. The first time he ever went to school. Can you imagine?”
“No.”
“His ninth grade teacher is retired, but everybody knew where Miss Rory lived. This neighborhood is poor, but the people keep it up. You got to admire that when folks haven’t got two nickels to buy bubble gum.”
“Um-hummm,” I said.
“You know, I never knew a lot about Arkansas. They’re more like we are than I thought.”
What, I wondered, had she thought the people were like: tiny and blue and naked?
“Well,” Pearly Sue went on, “Miss Rory lives in this li’l ol’ house three blocks from the school. She made me cake and tea. Isn’t that nice?”
Pearly Sue’s habit of slowly getting to the point was a good way to get answers, but she was driving me plain up the wall. “Very,” I said. Be safe, Lake.
“We talked a long time about Bradley. She said he was never Brad, or Braddy, but always Bradley. If someone shortened it, he’d look at them with his gray eyes and correct them. They never did it again, Miss Rory said. She said with his ways, he had no boy friends. But he could sure turn on the charm with the girls when he wanted to, she said. Well, you know, Miss Dru, he is good-looking.”
“Maybe.” In a slimy sort of way.
“Then Miss Rory says one day he asked to stay after school. He made up something, she didn’t remember what. But she thought it was fake, and she didn’t know why, but she didn’t want him staying. She says by that time she got funny feelings about him. Anyways, he stays and he keeps watching her. He doesn’t do nothing, just sits at his desk with his hands folded, looking at her, staring and staring. He just keeps watching until she’s about to jump out of her skin. Then he gets up, and says, ‘You’re a sport, Miss Rory, a real sport.’” Pearly Sue looked at me with her head tilted. “What do you make of that?”
“What did Miss Rory make of that?”
“She was glad when he moved on.”
“Taking control,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s what he was doing, Pearly Sue,” I said wearily. “Taking control.”
“Well, later he had control.”
“Who says?”
“His gym teacher, Mr. Tanner. He’s still teaching at the school.”
I glanced at the telephone. “What’s Mr. Tanner got to say?”
“Bradley was good at sports, but there was something about him that Mr. Tanner said was odd. He thought Bradley would be a better ballet dancer than a basketball player.”
“He was years younger than the other boys.”
“Mr. Tanner said he seemed older than the other boys, more mature. I came right out and ask him if he liked Bradley and he said, ‘No, I did not.’ But he wouldn’t say why not.”
“Did Mr. Tanner know what happened to him after high school?”
“He said he didn’t, but I knew he was holding back on me. I kept asking more and more, and finally he told me that one time he was searching for a truant boy in a bad neighborhood—drugs and sex and stuff like that—and there was Bradley, walking along like he owned the place.”
“And? Did Mr. Tanner see where Bradley went? Who he met?”
“Nope. He said he just passed him by. But he remembered, because it was odd for a snob like Bradley to be down there. He never did drugs, or drink, that Mr. Tanner knew about.”
“Did you go to that neighborhood?”
“I surely did. But it was no use. Urban renewal. They tore down all the projects and built a fancy place called Broadhurst Village. It’s a place where there are shops, and restaurants, and a hotel, and high-rise condos. Very ‘in.’”
“Did you get anything from the Bradley’s uncle’s neighbors? What’s the uncle’s name?”
“Uncle Ted. An old man named Mr. Petri lived next door to Uncle Ted when Bradley lived with him. Mr. Petri had his eighty-ninth birthday last week.”
“Good for him. Is he reliable?”
“Sharp as you and me.”
“Okay, what’s Mr. Petri saying about Bradley.”
“He said the uncle called the kid Dewey.”
“His uncle called him Dewey? For Dewart?”
“I guess.”
“I thought he didn’t like nicknames?”
“He didn’t when he was in school,” Pearly Sue said. “Anyway, Mr. Petri said his wife was laid up with arthritis and Dewey would come and do for her until she died. He didn’t go to school then, because Uncle Ted said Dewey was smart enough, he didn’t need to. Well, Mr. Petri’s wife had a little money she put under a mattress. When she died, it wasn’t there. Mr. Petri said Dewey stole it. He called the police, but they couldn’t prove it. Before all this happened, though, Mr. Petri and Uncle Ted were friends, and Uncle Ted
told Mr. Petri that Dewey had one goal in his life: that was to get all his brothers and sisters together again, out of poverty. Then Uncle Ted died, and Dewey goes to the state to become a ward. Mr. Petri didn’t hear nothing until years later when the police came asking about a brother of Dewey’s.”
I asked, “Name of the brother?”
“Mr. Petri couldn’t remember. I thought it might be important, too, and I stayed there and drank cider till my kidneys was about to explode trying to help him remember, but all he kept saying was that the police wanted to know about a brother, and where they could find Dewey. Mr. Petri said he was against the police, and wouldn’t tell them what little he could. The police let on like it was about a robbery.”
My interest was piquing. “Did Mr. Petri tell you what he’d kept from the police?”
“That he knew where Dewey was from originally, because Uncle Ted was bald and the place was in the mountains. Bald Mountain.”
I had to laugh. “So you went to Bald Mountain. Who’d you talk to there?”
“The county sheriff and some people in the café. They remembered the family, and the bloody fight. They weren’t Whitneys back then. The sheriff said he heard tell some changed their names when they left, but they were born Whiteys. The dad was Earl Whitey.”
Whitey? Mr. White?
After a short breather, Pearly Sue went on, “The sheriff said when the retaliation killings happened, the young-uns scattered to the four winds. The only one he knew about was the sister. She moved to Missouri, across the border.”
Missouri.
I’d gotten into the story of Bradley’s background, and forgotten for a brief time about Lake. When the cell played the concerto, I grabbed at it.
“Yes.”
“Dru, it’s Haskell.”
“Bad news?”
“I don’t have any news about Lake, but Linda Lake and her daughter are fine. They’re up in Tennessee with relatives.”
“Has she heard from Lake?”
“Last she heard he called last Sunday night and told her to take a little vacation with Susanna because he was involved in an unpredictable case.”
Lake believed in the man in the stands after all. Lake, please be safe.
“That case is the Whitney case, Commander Haskell.”
“Something else,” Haskell said. “Remember the man who was blown up in your car?”
My heart shifted against a rib. Don’t let Lake be found in his car, blown up. “Brody McCracken.”
“We got the DNA results. He killed the Roswell and Dunwoody girls.”
“The gods of justice acted swiftly.”
“I’m as religious as the next man, but I’m not blaming the gods. At first it looked like he blew himself up setting the bomb for you. But the medical examiner found alcohol, cocaine, and potassium chloride in his blood. The latter did him in.” I felt another rib stab. Haskell continued, “We found a diary in McCracken’s home. He often refers to ‘a place of refuge and recovery.’ He writes that he failed the courses.”
“Failed the courses? The Cloisters.”
“His jottings are mostly nonsensical. They could mean anything.”
“Have you found out who really owns The Cloisters—the straw man’s real name?”
“I don’t know any more than you and Lake found out. But we will.”
“Look at that membership list.”
“Easier to get a list of Augusta National’s members.”
How was I going to get the APD off its collective ass and get in there? “Look Whitney’s child is missing. Why can’t we get inside his house at least?”
“We went in when he reported the child missing. Invited by him. He let us look around. The Cloisters’s different.”
My spirit felt like a ragged sail on a sinking ship. “He lied about where he’s from. He lied about his parentage.” I briefed him on Pearly Sue’s findings in Arkansas. “He changed his name from Dewey Whitey. Why?”
“It isn’t a crime to change your name. It isn’t even a crime to lie.”
“It is if you’re defrauding someone or impeding an investigation. The greeter at The Cloisters is a Mr. White.”
“Hardly an uncommon name.”
“Taken with the other facts—”
“Dru, I’ve talked to our lawyers. Without hard evidence that links Whitney’s life and background with The Cloisters, and with Lake’s disappearance, we can’t get into that place.”
“Risso got Lake into The Cloisters.”
“He got you, too, and you’re not missing. I’m sorry, Dru.”
“He’s got Lake. I know it.”
“If Whitney’s such a genius, he knows better than to mess with a policeman, a detective lieutenant who’s investigating his case. So my advice—hang tough. We’ll find Lake.”
I’ll find Lake. Alive.
* * * * *
At the outset of my conversation with Haskell, the office land line rang and Pearly Sue left to answer it. Now, having disconnected from Haskell, I sat back, my mind whirling on what-ifs. I wanted desperately to reverse time, feeling that my internal moorings were about to come loose and the only antidote for my sorry state of mind was action. I eyed the cell. Play the concerto, damnit! Then I heard Pearly Sue’s voice blare down the hall. “My Lord-a-mighty!” Pearly Sue spoke in exclamation points.
I got up, stepped to her office and stuck my head in the door. She spoke into the phone, “I cain’t tell you how grateful we are!” She scribbled on paper while she gulped out What?s and Oh really!s and Good!s. Finally, she sat back and finished the conversation. “I’ll mail you a check. Right this minute. Oh, yeah. Monday, first thing.”
Slamming the phone and swirling her chair to face me, she yelled, “Bingo! Mr. Petri remembered! He said he worried on it, and then he talked to a woman who was a neighbor before she went into an old folks’ home! He went to visit her. They talked and remembered.”
“You tell him you’d pay him to remember?”
“Yeah,” Pearly Sue said, her eyes shifting across my waist. “He asked. He’s poor.”
“People will lie for money.”
Pearly Sue’s slim hands twisted together. “I’m—I’m really sorry if it’s against the rules.”
“It’s not. And sometimes we have to go by our instincts. You got good ones. Now tell me what Mr. Petri remembered.”
“Bradley’s brother’s name was Harry. Harry Whitey. The woman remembered it was the FBI that came to talk to Mr. Petri.”
“What did the FBI want Harry Whitey for?”
“Mr. Petri thought that they wanted to talk to him about the armored car robbery.”
“Did the FBI tell Mr. Petri this?”
“No, but it was just a week after the robbery that the FBI came. The news was all over the TV. Mr. Petri said the robbers shot the guards and stole the truck. It was abandoned and set on fire.”
I thought about this. Were two old people giving free rein to imagination for money? Or were they telling the truth?
Pearly Sue said, “Mr. Petri said that since the police wouldn’t do anything to Dewey for stealing his wife’s money, he had decided not to cooperate.”
Giving her a big smile, I said, “I guess you know what you and Web investigate next?”
“Dope on armored car robberies.”
“Got it in one.”
51
Castleberry Hill looked as desolate as I felt. I hadn’t been here since a killer blew himself up in my car. I parked the Bentley on the street in front of Lake’s place. There wasn’t a soul out. I looked up to the third floor. The high, industrial-paned windows were raised. Green curtains flapped outward. I didn’t want to go inside. Not because I might find Lake a victim of homicide or a heart attack—the cops already had been over the place—but the recollections . . . I didn’t want to cry that much.
I pulled the bell and looked up with the futile hope that Lake had come home unaware that everybody in the city was looking for him. Some idiot once wrote ab
out hope springing eternal and this idiot believed in it.
Nothing had changed in the hall but the smell. It was hot and stunk more than usual. Black garbage bags sat under the mail table. It was fastidious Lake who usually took them to the Dumpster. Upstairs, I heard a door screech open. Footsteps descended. Then a black face peered around the landing.
“Morning,” Lou said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
I wondered if Lake had confided the reason for my absence. Probably not. Lake wasn’t the confiding type. “Working a case,” I said, climbing the steps.
“Lake said you been in California.”
“Lake’s missing,” I said.
He bowed his head to acknowledge that he knew. “He’s okay, Dru. I know it. I can feel it in these bones.”
“When did you last see him?”
“I told the police. It was Thursday afternoon.”
“What time?”
“Uh, ’bout three. He came home same time I did. We got our mail. I said, ‘You’re knockin’ off early. Holiday? No murders today?’ Lieutenant Lake laughed and said, ‘Murder never takes a holiday. Neither do I.’”
“Three in the afternoon?” I said. “Lake never gets home before nine or ten at night.”
Lou scratched his head. “He didn’t say why he was home so early. He seemed, oh, how should I say it, like the Cheshire cat.”
“Big smile?”
“No—like the cat that ate the canary. I got cats on the brain. I feed his cats—now you’re not around so much.”
I was in no mood for self-reproach. “Was it about a case?”
“If it was—he didn’t say, but yeah, that’s how he looked. Like he was getting ready to pounce on the suspect. You know that look.”
I sure did. “The cops take anything away?”
“Not that I saw. I just let them in.”
I turned my key in Lake’s lock, then looked back at Lou, who stood on the threshold. “I’m going to find him.”
He grinned. “I would, too, if I was you. Man loves you like that, you don’t let it ride.”
“No.”
Sensing that he wasn’t invited in, he gave me a thumbs-up and turned away. I flipped on the big fans, sending the motors roaring, the blades spinning. I gave a quick look into the bathroom. Neat, nothing out of place. In the kitchen, a donut bag lay in the wastebasket, a quarter of a peach pie the sole occupant of the fridge. Lake and his sweet tooth. Sickening anxiety rolled through my solar plexus.
The Last Temptation Page 24
