“No, thanks.”
Lois sort of smacked Jolene on the back and the gesture turned into a short shoulder rub.
Jo reached for Lois’s hand and shook it. She said, “Also, your daughter has agreed to be our best woman.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
“We have.”
“But she can’t leave the state.”
“Her parole will be over mid-February.”
For a moment Lois felt sad because she’d be in Florida by then. But gradually a sense of pride welled up. Ruby was going to be successful after all.
*
On the following Monday morning, Morgan woke with the beginning of a cold. She walked around the house getting ready for work as if she was on autopilot. Driving through town, she noticed that the street lamps were still decorated with red bows and the store windows looked festive. She didn’t really consider whether she felt well enough to work until she pulled into the parking ramp, parked her car, got out, and felt the bitter cold wrap around her. She rushed toward the building and, once inside, took a moment to recover before she got in the elevator.
When she pushed her way through the door to the homicide office, Redick motioned to her and said, “Ruby Burnett got here an hour early.”
Morgan shrugged. “Just let me get my coat off. I’m ready.”
“There’s more.”
“More?”
“She brought her mother.”
“But she’s not a minor.”
“She insists that the old lady be in the room with her,” Redick said. “I didn’t see what harm it could do.”
“Might be better this way,” Morgan said, thinking out loud.
“They’re in room B.”
“Good. We can record in there. It’ll be interesting to see Lois Burnett’s face when we ask about the M-16.”
Redick waited until she shed her coat and gathered her notebook and pen. Then he asked, “You feeling okay?”
“Think I got a cold starting. Nothing serious.”
Redick appeared concerned. “You sure?”
“Positive. I’ve been out in the elements too much lately. I don’t get sick very often.”
He waited a moment, and when it was clear she didn’t intend to elaborate, he asked, “How do you want to work this interview?”
“Probably should start with Tia Johnson’s murder and move forward. When I drop the bomb about the M-16, I’d like to be in there alone.”
“Right. I’ll go in with you and stay until you give me a signal. Then I’ll go out to get a round of coffee.”
“I hate to get tough with the old woman. She’s a family friend. She was my mother’s friend. I really can’t believe she had anything to do with this.”
“You can’t let that stand in the way,” Redick said.
“I know.”
“We’re just excluding her as a suspect, right?”
When Morgan didn’t answer, Redick said in a low tone, “Want me to do the interview?”
Morgan shook her head. She picked up a box of tissues from the corner of her desk and led the way to interrogation room B.
When Morgan and Redick entered the room, Lois and Ruby Burnett were seated on two sides of a small metal table. Ruby’s head rested on her arms as if she were asleep. Lois, who still wore a coat, had her arms folded across the front of her as if she were cold. When Lois saw Morgan, she smiled.
She and Redick pulled out the remaining chairs and sat. Morgan placed a fat file in front of her and opened it, sifting through several documents. It was the file on the sniper killings. As she lingered over photos of crime scenes and bodies, the only sounds were the rustling of papers.
Finally Redick said, “How long did you know Tia Johnson?”
Ruby rubbed her eyes sleepily. “We were cellmates. I told you that.”
His tone was harsher when he said, “We need to go over it again.”
Ruby sighed and looked at Lois, who said, “Tell him what he wants.”
“We planned on rooming together when we got out. Tia got back into the life, and I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to live with her. So I contacted my family.”
“The life? What life do you mean?” Redick asked.
Ruby stammered. “You know, drugs, prostitution.”
“Are you staying clean?”
Ruby squared her shoulders and said, “I do a random drop when I meet with my parole officer. You can check that if you want to. I haven’t even had a glass of wine.”
Morgan was watching Ruby and saw her look away. She was lying. This didn’t please Morgan. She didn’t care if Ruby used or not, but something Morgan wanted to be right was wrong.
Redick said, “If you’re all that innocent, why did you need to bring your mother along?”
Lois cut in. “She needed a ride. I needed to see for myself what you wanted with her.”
Morgan spoke to both of them in a friendly tone. “Look, we don’t care if you’re using or even selling drugs. We’re homicide officers. We’re investigating Tia’s murder, which happens to be similar to at least three other killings in this area. Ballistics links those murders to three in Indiana.” They hadn’t gotten the reports back on Ben Curry yet, but she’d seen the wounds. She was sure there was a connection.
Ruby said, “I don’t know nothing about that.”
Morgan caught Redick’s eye, then looked toward the door. His chair scraped the floor and he stood. “I’m going to get some coffee. Anybody else use some?”
Ruby said, “Two sugars.”
Both Morgan and Lois shook their heads.
When Redick was out of the room, Morgan started spreading the photos on the table. Ruby looked at them with interest, but Lois was gazing somewhere over Morgan’s shoulder. She didn’t glance down once.
Ruby said in wonder, “Tia’s death is linked to those other men?”
“The same rifle was used on all of them,” Morgan said. She pulled the picture of Tia Johnson’s swollen and bloody body out of the file and set it on top of the others.
Ruby’s reaction was immediate. She covered her mouth to stifle a scream.
Lois glanced at the picture and looked away.
“You remember back when I used to babysit for Matt?” Morgan asked.
Lois and Ruby both nodded.
“I saw an M-16 in your house. I wasn’t snooping. Matt knew where it was and got it out one night.”
“That was a long time ago,” Lois said.
A long silence clanged in Morgan’s ears. Her swollen sinuses hurt. She felt sick at her stomach. At length she said, “Do you still have the rifle?”
Lois shook her head slowly. “Sold it. We needed the money to fix one of the cars. Been ten years or more.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Morgan saw Ruby staring at her mother. She didn’t need interrogation training or experience to read that look. Morgan said, “Let me explain something. This is my job. Most of the victims of this killer are criminals of the worst kind, but it’s not my job to consider that fact. You need to understand that I won’t give up until I make an arrest, and I will make an arrest…” She started to say, “even if the killer was my own mother.” But she stopped herself.
Lois insisted again. “The weapon is gone—has been gone for years.”
Ruby pushed her chair back and stood. “I think we’re through here.” She pulled her coat off the back of her chair and turned to Lois. “Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”
Morgan watched them both. “You’d help me if you could, right?”
Ruby said, “Of course.”
“Well, I have one more question.” She turned to Lois and tried unsuccessfully to meet her eyes. “I saw you getting into your truck a couple of weeks ago. We were going to see Ben Curry, the latest victim, to check on something related to one of the killings.”
A flush rose on Lois’s face. She asked, “Where was that?”
“On Kennedy, downtown. The Leland Apartments.”
“I don’t rem
ember being in that area,” Lois said. “What day was it?”
“December fifth, the day my mother died.”
Silence yawned between them. Lois seemed to be considering this. Then she said, “I can’t remember. Is there anything else?”
“We may need to talk to you again. Don’t take any long trips.”
Neither Ruby nor Lois answered. They left with Ruby leading the way.
*
Lois slept restlessly on her final night at home. The last time she looked at the clock it had been 3:42. After that she must have gone to sleep and stayed asleep. She woke to someone pounding at the back door. It was daylight outside. She squinted at the clock.
Sophie sat up. “Who can that be so early in the morning?”
Lois was groggy. “We could ignore it.”
“Best not. Whoever it is sounds frantic.”
Lois rolled out and grabbed her robe. She wondered if it was the police with more questions. She hadn’t told Sophie much about the conversation with Morgan Holiday. Slinging her housecoat around her shoulders, she slipped her feet into a pair of canvas shoes that served as slippers. Then she padded down the hall and through the kitchen. The pounding came again.
In the mudroom, Daisy was awake and trembling. She wasn’t used to sleeping inside every night, and she wasn’t used to loud noises. Lois scratched her behind her ears. “Don’t worry, old girl.”
Then she peered out the side window and saw her neighbor, Randy Harris. She turned around and went to the broom closet and took out the M-16. Maybe it was overkill, but she refused to take any more crap from this guy. She pulled the door open.
“Is Daisy here?” Harris shouted.
“Jesus, Randy. You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”
“Where’s my dog?”
Lois narrowed her eyes. “Daisy’s been sick. I took her to the vet, and I’m caring for her. In fact, I’ve done more for her in the last week than you have in her entire life.”
“She’s here?”
“That’s right, and she’s staying here.”
“Daisy’s coming with me. Now.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lois saw Sophie standing in the kitchen doorway, a ball bat resting at her side. The window on the aluminum storm door was fogging over. Lois pushed it open a little more and through her teeth said, “She’s staying here.”
“Listen, you old bat. You don’t scare me.”
Lois pulled the M-16 from behind the back door and rested it against her hip. “Why don’t you just run along home, Randy? That would be the best thing you could do at this point.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Lois considered his question for a moment. Then she drew up her chest and said, “Yeah, I am.”
Randy stared at the weapon. “That thing’s so old it probably won’t fire.”
“You want to take a chance?” Lois realized that Sophie was behind her with a firm grip on the bat, but she didn’t see Daisy at her side until Randy grabbed her. He pulled her through the door and she yelped.
“Get out of there,” he shouted. Then he kicked her in the side. When she fell, he shoved her with his boot heel.
Lois could see droplets of blood in the snow as Daisy raced toward the back fence with Randy close behind. She didn’t remember running through the door. Her first conscious thought came as she raised the rifle, aimed just over Harris’s shoulder, and the barrel exploded. When the air before her cleared she saw him on his knees in the snow. Daisy had taken off.
“I’ll get her,” Sophie said, running toward the street in just her nightgown and rubber boots.
Lois approached Randy Harris carefully. He was moaning but he wasn’t bad hurt. She jabbed him with the barrel of the M-16 and said, “Get up, you son of a bitch. You ain’t hurt.”
Mesmerized, he brushed the side of his face and examined his bloody palm. He sobbed, “I’m shot.”
“You fell, you dumb-ass. That hand got scraped when you fell. If I’d meant to hit you, you wouldn’t be talking to me now.”
“You crazy bitch. You shot me.”
Lois’s voice was calm now. She’d made her point. “Go on home, Randy. Daisy’s my dog now.”
He bent a knee and pushed himself up. Without another word he limped toward home.
Lois searched the snow for the casing, but it had disappeared. Then she turned toward the house and met Sophie. “Is Daisy all right?”
Sophie nodded. “But we have another problem.”
Just then, Morgan Holiday crossed the street toward them, her hands shoved in her coat pockets. The instant Lois had heard Daisy yelp, she’d forgotten about everything. But it all rushed back as she pasted on a smile and called, “Good morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Morgan had never noticed the little diner on East 39th Street before. She swung her car into the alley and parked in a small lot just behind the building. The door to the kitchen was propped open about six inches, and the smell of fried onions floated on a warm current in the cold winter air. She waded through patches of gray slush back along the rutted alleyway. More than once, she had to reach for the rough brick side of the building for balance.
The Christmas decorations on the front window were old and dust-covered—a yellow-edged Santa, silver-and-green garland, and a string of white miniature lights that surrounded a neon beer sign. A bell tinkled as she stepped inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the empty counter and rows of dark wooden booths. The place seemed deserted except for an emaciated waitress pouring water into a Bunn-O-Matic. The woman looked over her shoulder and sighed.
Someone called out, “Back here.”
Henry sat in a booth at the rear waving a folded newspaper. She made her way toward him. As she slid onto the wooden bench, the table wobbled and Henry’s half- finished beer sloshed. He laid the newspaper down next to a teeth-marked yellow pencil, and she could see that he’d been working a crossword puzzle.
“Take your coat off,” he said. “Stay awhile.”
The room was stifling. Sweat ran out of Morgan’s hair and down the side of her face. At every significant moment in her adult life she’d been moist. If some kind of reincarnation existed, she wanted to come back as anyone or anything that didn’t sweat. She stood and shed her coat. The table wobbled, but this time Henry held on to his beer mug. He didn’t let go of it until she’d balled the coat up and slid back into the booth next to it.
The room was quiet and Morgan was startled when the waitress emerged next to them. She didn’t ask what they wanted, but looked back and forth between them.
Finally Henry said, “You want something to eat? They got good hamburgers here.”
“No.”
“Just two beers, then.”
The waitress faded away.
Henry turned back to Morgan. “So, what’s all the cloak-and-dagger about?”
Morgan cleared her throat and said, “I’ve solved the sniper case.”
Henry slapped his open palm on the table and his beer sloshed. “Well, I’ll be damn. That’s great.”
“Not so great.” Morgan’s hands were shaking. A mug of beer with a large head was slid in front of her.
Henry dug his wallet from his pants pocket. He held a five out to the woman, and when she reached in her apron for change, he said, “Keep it.”
The waitress gawked at them, then shrugged and left.
“Okay, sis,” Henry said. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
She didn’t know where to start. “I-I…”
Henry placed a cool hand over hers. “What is it?”
At length Morgan exhaled and began speaking in a soft monotone. “This morning on my way in to work, I drove by Ruby Burnett’s house. I had a hunch she was connected with the sniper case. I just wanted to talk to her again, but I stumbled into some sort of commotion over the neighbor’s dog.”
“That the domestic battery who lives behind them?”
“It is. I opened the car door in ti
me to see Lois Burnett taking a bead on him with what looked like a high-powered rifle.”
“Ha! Good for her.” Henry slapped the table again and they both steadied their mugs.
Morgan lifted hers. The beer was cold and sour. She took a longer draw and then said, “She shot at him. I was halfway up the drive when I saw him on his knees in the snow, and she was walking up on him like she was about to finish him off.”
They both looked around for the waitress. She was behind the counter with a newspaper open in front of her, not paying attention to them.
“An M-16 would knock that old lady on her ass,” Henry said dismissively.
“I saw her fire it, and she wasn’t the one on her ass.”
“Okay,” Henry whispered. “Why did you like Ruby for this?”
Morgan said, “When Tia Johnson’s body was found, our case sort of went off in a different direction.” She told him about the first interview with Ruby Burnett and how they’d decided that it was a dead end until she’d remembered that Lois had an M-16 years ago. “I brought Ruby in for questioning, but got nothing. I thought she was holding back something.”
Henry said, “Ruby was holding back, so you think Lois is a mass murderer?”
“I know it seems like a stretch.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, but what in the hell would motivate an old lady to kill…how many people is it now?”
“Four in Illinois. Two or three in Indiana.”
“I just don’t see why she’d do it,” Henry said, once again assuring her that he wasn’t saying she hadn’t.
“Maybe she lost her mind.”
“Good defense.”
“Could be vigilantism.”
“Well,” Henry said, “I could see taking out a couple of pedophiles and annoying husbands, but her neighbor, in broad daylight?”
Morgan finished her beer and rolled her cool fingertips on her temples, trying to push away a headache. “Maybe it’s one of those veteran things. She served in Vietnam and her grandson was killed in Afghanistan several years ago.”
Henry rejected this theory. “With the exception of the neighbor, it’s too methodical. I don’t see this as an irresistible impulse.”
Retirement Plan Page 28
