by Rex Burns
“He wanted to go into politics—the City Council was the first step—and he could have been a great leader. We would have to be very strong, he said.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because of his plans—the politics. We couldn’t let anyone even think we were lovers. And someday”—she gathered herself together again—“someday we couldn’t even be lovers anymore. That’s why we had to be strong.”
“Tell us what happened Wednesday afternoon, Sonie.”
Wager leaned forward to study her face and eyes and to hear the soft voice better. As she began to answer, the radio pack in his holster gave a loud pop and his call number and pulled her face toward him, startled at the reminder of who these two men were and what they represented. Keying the reply button two quick times, he muffled a curse and stepped around the partition into the shadowy display area.
“Ten-six-nine,” he answered with his call number. “Go ahead.”
“Lieutenant Wolfard wants you to report by telephone as soon as possible.”
“Will do.”
“He wants to know when.”
“As soon as possible, God damn it.”
He turned off the radio, another violation of regulations, and returned to the office in time to hear Sonja Andersen say “That was the last time I saw him.”
There were a few more questions, mostly designed to establish names and locations that could be used in further investigation. Her previous job was as an account processor for Reliable Savings and Loan. She had lived in Denver for almost five years. Her home was Chadron, Nebraska—a farm about twelve miles north of town. She lived alone in Denver. No, she did not have any other boyfriends.
“What did you do Wednesday night after work, Sonie? The eleventh.”
“I went home.”
“Did anyone come over to visit? Did you talk to anyone on the phone?”
“No.”
“You were home alone all evening?” asked Wager.
“Yes.”
“Horace Green didn’t come over to your place between nine and two in the morning?”
“No.” She looked puzzled. “He had I don’t know how many political things to do. He couldn’t come by.”
“Did he come by often?”
“Sometimes. Not often. It’s a long drive.”
Maybe she meant miles, but Wager figured the real distance Green had to travel had been psychological—certainly the distance from wife to mistress, perhaps the distance from black to white. And he wondered if Sonja Andersen knew just how long those distances could be or if, because she loved, she assumed he did, too. Or if she really loved as she said she did and as she wanted Wager to believe.
On the way out, they found Ray Coleman staring silently through the plate glass at the empty parking lot and the traffic flickering past on I-25 beyond.
“Mr. Coleman, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Sure. You guys come up with anything yet? About Mr. Green’s killer, I mean?”
“Not much, so far. But maybe you can help.” Wager opened the door and motioned for the young man to step outside. “Did you ever hear any rumors that Councilman Green was stepping out on his wife?”
Coleman’s eyes slid away toward the traffic, and he fingered the thin line of hair on his upper lip.
“Did you, Mr. Coleman?”
His face darkened with embarrassment and the finger moved off the mustache to scratch at the corner of his full lips. “You mean …” he finished by jerking his head toward the office.
“What can you tell us?”
“They had it on, I guess. Thought nobody knew.”
“Green and Miss Andersen?”
“Yeah. She was all over him from the first day she was here.”
“Who else knew about it?”
“I don’t know. I sure wasn’t going to tell anybody. I felt … I don’t know, it just didn’t seem right, you know? Here he is, somebody the people really respect—a city councilman, a deacon in the church, and he’s sneaking around with this woman. A white woman.”
“How long did it go on?”
He shrugged, but it was more with disgust than carelessness. “A year maybe. Maybe longer. First time I heard it, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But she was having him, anybody could tell.”
“A lot of people knew about it?”
“The whole store, that’s all.”
“What about his wife?”
“Mrs. Green? You mean did she know about it? I sure didn’t tell her, man! I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Did Mrs. Green ever visit the store?”
He looked down at the pointed tips of his glossy shoes and flicked a piece of gravel with his toe. “A couple times, yeah. But she didn’t come down a lot.”
“Did she ever meet Miss Andersen?”
“Sure. She had to. The bitch’s been running the place for two years, now.”
“How did they act together?”
“Act? I guess that’s the word for it, all right.” The head jerked again. “On her part, anyway—smiling like a damn Halloween pumpkin and taking Mrs. Green on a big tour of the store.”
“They were friendly?”
“If you want to call it that. Sonie was as nervous as a whore in church, but Mrs. Green was cool, man. If she knew anything, she wasn’t letting on.”
“Did Green care for Miss Andersen?”
“Care for her? I don’t know. I don’t know why he did it in the first place. I mean, she’s not all that good-looking, and she’s white, you know? I mean, what the hell did a man like Horace Green want with that? I just don’t understand it, that’s all.”
“Did a lot of people feel that way?”
“What way?”
“Angry at Green for having a white mistress.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t talk about that to nobody. And I don’t know if angry’s the word. Sad, maybe. There was no reason to do it—a white woman, for gosh sakes.”
“Did anyone ever mention the affair to you?”
“Pee Wee told me about it.”
“Who’s that?”
“Pee Wee Crawford. Him and James Mellor work in shipping.”
Wager remembered interviewing them briefly on his first trip to the store. “You talked it over with them?”
“Talk it over? No—Pee Wee came up one day and told me he saw them kissing. He couldn’t believe it. It shocked him, you know? So he had to tell somebody and he told me. I wish he hadn’t. I liked Councilman Green. He was doing things I want to do. I mean having his own business and being on City Council—not that other stuff.”
“Did James Mellor feel that way, too?”
“No. He just laughed. Said a man should be able to dip his wick wherever he wanted to. He likes white meat, he said—a touch of honey.”
“You kept working here, even though you didn’t like what was going on?”
“It’s a job, man. Jobs are hard to get. And Mr. Green was a good man—that’s what I can’t figure out. Except for this, he was a real good man.” He glanced at the passing cars. “She won’t be around much longer, anyway. I bet Mrs. Green fires her ass right after the funeral.”
0958 Hours
In the car, Stubbs whistled dimly as Wager steered through the still-heavy morning traffic on the major north-south interstate. “That kid sure doesn’t like whites, does he? I thought they were all drooling for honky quim. But I still can’t see that as motive enough to kill a man, Gabe.”
Wager had only been thinking aloud. “If Ray Coleman felt that strongly about it, why not someone who felt even stronger?” He’d seen it among the Hispanics: a pride that rejected, sometimes violently, everything Anglo—values, language, products, women, even a mixed-breed like himself. As a kid, he used to puzzle over the thin line between racism and that kind of pride.
“Like Mrs. Green?”
That, too, was possible. But it wasn’t exactly what he was trying to formulate. “Like someone who felt betraye
d by Green. Someone who wanted to punish him for not being perfect.”
“Or someone who thought the affair was over and didn’t want it to be? We’re getting a lot of motives and damn few suspects. A racist killing, jealousy, now some kind of weird justice. And everybody keeps saying what a good guy he was.”
“Don’t forget the vote-selling.”
“Jesus. His elements were mixed, all right.”
Whatever the hell that meant. Wager swung with heavy traffic around the Mousetrap and east on I-70 headed for Colorado Boulevard.
“Are you certain you want to talk to Mrs. Green now?”
“It’s not a question of wanting,” Wager reminded him.
“I guess not.”
Everyone did agree that Green was a good man. But even a good man could have a lot of shady areas in his life, things that at first seemed like harmless fun or, even if verging into the illegal, seemed like minor sins at first. Far less than what everyone else was getting away with. So why not give it a try? Perhaps Green was on that gentle road and someone saw it more clearly than he did and resented it. Or perhaps Green had looked up and seen how that road, without his really noticing, had slanted down below the level of the one he had long ago believed himself traveling. And so he wanted to get off. To get back up to the ideal level he and his people’s vision of him thought he should be on. And someone had not wanted him to.
“You want to do the talking or do you want me to?” Stubbs stared at the big home, dim and still behind the spruce trees.
“I will.”
Mrs. Green herself answered their ring. The initial shock had worn away and left her with the sunken, tired look of deep sadness. Although they had not called to say they were coming, she did not seem surprised to see them. She opened the door and stepped back, a hand loosely indicating the large living room. “Come in, Officers.”
“I’m sorry we have to bother you again, Mrs. Green. But we need a little more information about your husband.”
“I understand. Would you like some coffee?”
“No, ma’am.” Wager and Stubbs waited until she settled onto one of the straight-back upholstered chairs before seating themselves on a couch. Its heaviness anchored the room’s window-brightened lightness and seemed to suit what they came for. “Mrs. Green, exactly how well did you know your husband?”
Her eyes, red over the dark circles of flesh, stared at Wager for a long moment. There may have been a stir of anger, but it was quickly buried under pain and resignation. “He was my husband, Officer.”
“Yes, ma’am. But sometimes men have lives their families know little about.”
“Just what are you trying to tell me?”
After a moment, Wager said, “I’m trying to tell you your husband was unfaithful. I’m telling you this to find out if it’s a motive for his murder.”
This time the tears came, but the woman did not move. She didn’t even seem to breathe.
“It’s not something everybody knows or something they should know. But—”
“But you think I might have killed him.”
“I don’t think anything yet. I’m just trying to learn as many facts as possible.”
“You’ve learned that one. I don’t see what more you have to ask me.”
“You did know about it, then.”
“Of course.”
“Were you estranged by it?”
“‘Estranged’? Did we become strangers, you mean?” She thought that over. “I felt it. I certainly felt it, Officer. But we never talked about it. I kept hoping that if I said nothing, let him suspect nothing, he’d come to his senses. For the sake of the children, for the sake of what we shared together. ‘Estranged’? Yes. On those nights when he didn’t come home and I was alone, wondering—knowing—yes, I was estranged.”
“But you loved him, too.”
“Yes.”
“Did this happen often?”
“No. I mean I don’t think so.” The tears had stopped flowing, but the last of them trembled on her cheek as if she didn’t know she cried. “I really don’t know, anymore.”
“Did he ever say anything about a divorce?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“I’ve already told you, Officer, I said nothing.”
“Do you know who the other woman was?”
Her eyes moved from Wager’s to the double French doors that shut off one end of the living room from a glassed-in sun porch beyond. Through the second barrier of glass, Wager could see the bright warmth of flowers in a sheltered garden. “I figured it out.”
“Did anyone ever mention it to you?”
“You mean, how many other people knew about it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t know. I hope to God it wasn’t many. Not for my sake.”
“But nobody spoke to you about it?”
“No. They wouldn’t.”
“So you don’t know if anyone might have strongly resented your husband …”
The eyes turned back to his with a spurt of mocking, angry laughter. “I did, Officer. I resented it very strongly!”
“Yes, ma’am. But would anyone see it as a motive to kill him?”
“You think I wouldn’t?”
Wager and Stubbs held their tongues.
She stared at them with all the hatred she had stifled against her husband, because they insisted in poking into those places where hurt lay. And because they, too, were men.
Then her narrow shoulders quivered in a deep shudder. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. I thought about it—God forgive me, I thought about it in those long nights. But I loved him. And he was a good man despite that.” Her fingers folded inside each other and she studied them for several moments. “He didn’t love her. I think it was … the competition. He was one of the most competitive men I’ve ever known—he wouldn’t have been a good businessman or politician without that. But you have to understand something about black men, Officer, and white women; even when they won’t admit it—the men—it’s a way of getting even. It’s showing the white man who’s the more macho. It’s a mix of anger and fear that they have to face somehow. Even with black women … many black men feel angry toward black women because their families were dominated by women. It’s a way of asserting their manhood.”
Wager heard that tiny shift in her voice that told him she was no longer saying what she really felt but repeating something she had read or heard somewhere and elected to believe. Something she found comfort in thinking might be the explanation.
“You can’t remember anyone who might see the interracial thing as a motive for killing your husband?”
“No.”
“Mrs. Green”—Stubbs spoke for the first time—“have you had any more threatening calls?”
“No.”
And Wager had one last question. “When he didn’t come home on the night of the eleventh, you thought he was with Miss Andersen?”
She nodded, lips clamped against the woman’s name as she stared at her hands.
On their way past the end of the block, Wager lifted a hand in salute to the blue-and-white stationed discreetly on guard; a bored hand glimmered in return.
CHAPTER 10
SATURDAY, 14 JUNE, 1142 Hours
The funeral, Mrs. Green had told them, was to be on Sunday at 2 P.M. That way a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to take off work could come, and the expected long procession wouldn’t disrupt the weekday traffic. Services would be in the Baptist Evangelical Free Church where Green had been a deacon, followed by interment in the Fairmount Cemetery. Wager and Stubbs marked their calendars with the date and time, though Wager suspected they would be reminded of the occasion by the bustle among city officials who would attend and require extra police details. But right now the department’s problem was to get through the weekend with minimum damage to people or property from rioters. The best way to do that, Wolfard told Wager over the telephone, would be to catch the killer. But Wager’s report
was the same as when he talked to Wolfard two hours ago: nothing new yet. “What’s your next step?”
“I want to check out the furniture store manager.” Even though they were using the telephone rather than radios whose transmissions were aired everywhere in the city, Wager was habitually cautious with names and specifics.
“Give me an afternoon report.”
“Will do.” He hung up and shook his head at Stubbs, who waited with a small batch of papers in hand. “I don’t know why Wolfard just doesn’t come on down to the office.”
“He’s afraid he’d have to give himself comp time,” said Stubbs. “Here’s what I’ve got.” He had spent the last twenty minutes on the telephone verifying points of Sonja Andersen’s story with local sources; Wager had spent the time trying first to reach, and then persuade the sheriff of Dawes County, Nebraska, that he wasn’t trying to railroad one of the daughters of a local taxpayer.
“She rents a condo off East Hampden. The owner said she’s been there a little more than a year and hasn’t caused any trouble at all. As far as she—the owner—knows, Andersen pays her rent promptly and is an upright citizen.”
“She got horizontal a few times,” said Wager.
“Yeah. Too damn bad it had to be Green.”
“What?”
“Black cock. Once they have black cock, they don’t want anything else.” Stubbs’s head wagged at the loss. “Anyway, the bank where she worked before going to Embassy Furniture tells the same story—a steady work record, no disciplinary or money problems while with them, a trustworthy employee, nobody special she dated that they knew of. They offered her a raise when she told them she was quitting, but she said she wanted to try another field and liked the chance to become a manager.”
That description pretty much fit what Wager had learned from the sheriff’s office, and he traded that information with Stubbs: the second daughter of a farmer with a big spread of land north of Chadron. Married at the end of her senior year in high school and divorced two years later. Wanted, apparently, to get away from farm life more than from her husband. Moved to Denver to get a job and pretty much lost touch with most of the people in Chadron. The sheriff would be mighty surprised to find that she was part of anything shady or suspicious—her family was a good Lutheran family and hardworking. If she was into anything, it was because she moved down to Denver and not because of anything she learned at home.
