The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “I don’t want ice cream.”

  “Then let it melt.”

  He got in the truck and turned to face me, sitting with his back against the door. He flipped the plastic dome off his own sundae and began eating with a pink plastic spoon. He didn’t say anything.

  I was too mad for silence. “What did you mean by that crack about my being good at manipulation?”

  “I meant it as a compliment. It’s why you’re such a good reporter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can make people want to tell you things. Look at the way you handled Bo Jenkins.”

  “Bo was holding a pistol to my head! I would have told him anything he wanted to hear. Besides, even then, I didn’t lie.”

  “Good cop, bad cop.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s basically how we worked Bo, Nell. You offered him some accommodation, acted like you cared about him. I represented authority, punishment. Between the two of us, we reassured him. He let you go. You distracted him. I grabbed him. It worked.”

  I looked at the ice cream sundae I was holding. It really was melting. All of a sudden I was hungry. I popped the clear dome off the top gently and picked up my own pink plastic spoon. The ice cream was delicious.

  “Mike, how did we change the subject from your mother to Bo Jenkins?”

  “At Mom’s you were the good cop, and I was the bad. It’s the same thing.”

  “Bo was threatening me! And you! And the baby! Your mother wasn’t. She didn’t deserve to be tricked.”

  “She wasn’t tricked. She knows me. She knew what was going on.” “She didn’t act like it.”

  Mike took three bites of his sundae before he answered. “Look, Nell, you and I are in the business of gathering information. Or, at least, I was when I was a detective, and I plan to be a detective again. My job is to get people to tell me things. Most of the people I talk to are not criminals. But they may know something that helps me find out who the criminal is. Maybe it’s something little—say, the day a coworker was late to work. Now they may not want to tell the police that, because they have to work with the guy, and they want to get along with him. They probably believe he’s innocent anyway—the ‘ol’ Joe wouldn’t do a thing like that’ syndrome. I have to make them believe that we’ve already got the information from somewhere else and I only need confirmation. Or that Joe told us himself. Or that the information doesn’t matter anyway. I have to give them some excuse to tell.”

  He stabbed the pink plastic spoon in my direction. “And reporters do the same thing. I’ve watched you!”

  He was right, of course. I’d done it to the Salvation Army officer, Captain Eisner, as recently as Sunday morning. I’d expressed strong admiration for the work the shelter did. I’d promised I’d write a story telling of the wonderfulness of it all. That flattery and the offer to write a story were expedient. They got Captain Eisner opened up, talking. The ploy had worked.

  But I’d really meant all that. I do admire the Salvation Army. I would do a story on the shelter.

  “Mike, I don’t lie to people! I don’t pretend to be angry when I’m not. I don’t use that fake anger to make them tell things. I wouldn’t do it to my own mother!”

  “Yeah. Well.” Mike ate more ice cream. “I guess this was one of those ends-justifying-the-means evenings, Nell. You’ve got to remember what your goal is. After what Shelly told us, the next step to finding out what happened to my dad was to know why he and Mom had separated. Nobody knew that but her. And she didn’t want to tell me, or she would have done it a long time ago. I know her. I knew that she’d have to give herself an excuse for telling me. Now she can tell herself, ‘I just got so mad that I blurted it out.’”

  “Mike, couldn’t you have just told her why you needed to know?”

  “I didn’t want to get her hopes up.”

  “Get her hopes up? What are you talking about?”

  “My dad’s death.”

  Mike finished off his sundae, carefully put the plastic lid back on the empty dish, and wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. I was staring, holding my plastic spoon in midair.

  “Mike, you’ve got me completely confused,” I said. “What hopes could she have about your father’s death?”

  “Don’t you see? If my dad was murdered, he didn’t kill himself.”

  “Kill himself!”

  “Yeah. Mom and I have both spent the past two years convinced he committed suicide.”

  I must have stared at him like a ninny. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Suicide? Well, it made a crazy kind of sense. Both Mike and his mother had known Irish Svenson was worried about something. His mother had thought it was his marital problems. She had said, “I pushed him too hard.” She was blaming herself. And Irish had told Mike he needed to talk to him, and Mike hadn’t come home to Grantham on schedule. So Mike had blamed himself.

  Yes, they’d probably both be glad to discover that Irish Svenson was murdered. That would be preferable to believing he’d killed himself.

  Mike gathered the debris from the ice cream sundaes and put it in the parking lot’s trash can. Then he drove me home. He didn’t suggest going to his house, and I didn’t invite him into mine. I was still mad at him, and, although he’d justified himself calmly, I could tell he was mad at me. Our affair was over.

  He walked up onto the porch of my house with me, but without touching me. After I’d unlocked the door he cleared his throat. “Nell, I’m sorry I’m such a sneaky bastard,” he said. “But I’m thirty-two-years old, and I’m afraid my character is pretty well set.”

  “I knew you’d been trained to manipulate people,” I said. “You couldn’t be a successful hostage negotiator without that particular skill. I shouldn’t be surprised when your professional abilities overlap into your personal life. And you’re right, of course. About reporters. We’re professional manipulators, too.”

  “I could tell you I’d never trick you, never lie to you, if it would make any difference.”

  “No.” If a guy would lie to his mother, he’d lie to his girlfriend. I left that unsaid.

  Mike kicked at the door mat. “Well, we’ve still got to work together on figuring out the relationship between Bo’s death and my dad’s.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not sure what to do next. I’ll think about it and call you tomorrow.”

  I went in. Rocky was watching television in the living room. “You’re home,” he said. He leered just a little.

  “Yes, and I’m going straight to bed.”

  I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I wasn’t going to cry or anything, but I wanted to be alone to absorb the change in my life. Upstairs, I stood in the doorway of my room and remembered how I had jumped up and down on the bed that morning, happy with the knowledge that I liked Mike and he liked me. Words like “love” and “forever” had flitted through my mind. All sorts of bright tomorrows had seemed to be opening up. Now I saw nothing but darkness ahead.

  Before I got into bed, I dug out the book I call my favorite “sleeping pill.” Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. I have an old beat-up hardback copy that belonged to my grandmother. She and I both thought it was one of the funniest books ever written. When things are bad, Auntie Mame is guaranteed to cheer me up. But I fell asleep after only a few pages.

  At three o’clock in the morning I had the female equivalent of a wet dream. Mike was holding me, kissing me, caressing me, and his touch was so real that I woke up convinced he had somehow gained access to my bedroom.

  But I was alone. That time it took an hour of Auntie Mame before I fell asleep. When the alarm went off at seven, the light was still on, and the book was lying on my chest.

  I lay there, dreading the day. First, I’d have to deal with Ace-the-Ass and whatever crazy ideas he’d come up with.
Then in the afternoon, I had that appointment with Lee.

  Lee! I jumped out of bed. I’d forgotten about Lee. I’d decided not to mention her call to Mike. Then, later in the evening, I’d been so busy wallowing in my own misery that I had forgotten the appointment completely.

  I paced up and down the bedroom. Lee! Lee, with the young, breathy voice. Lee, who said she knew what Irish Svenson had been investigating just before his death. Who said Irish Svenson had been her friend. “The best friend I ever had.”

  My adrenaline kicked in. Lee! After what Mike and I had learned from his mother the night before, it was obvious who Lee might be. Probably was.

  Lee could well be Irish Svenson’s girlfriend.

  I could hardly wait to see her. Four o’clock seemed weeks away. I raced for the shower.

  I got to the office on time and read the paper, waiting for Ace to show up. I worked the crossword puzzle, waiting for Ace to show up. I made some phone calls, still waiting for Ace to show up. I called the AP office. He wasn’t there, either.

  J.B. was out on “my” police run, now that it was his. I could tell from the scanner that he was checking out a signal 82, an accident with injury, on the three-level overpass. The scanner was burping out routine messages, and my subconscious was tuning in to the local crime scene. I looked through some reports and waited for Ace-the-Ass to show up. And fumed. Where was the jerk?

  Then the gargle from the scanner caught my ear. “—uniform,” it said. “That’s right. ‘S’ and ‘A’ on the collar.”

  The phrase reminded me of a cartoon I’d seen years before. A hatchet-faced old woman, wearing a military-style outfit with “S” on one point of the collar and “A” on the other. She was snarling at a younger man. “It stands for ‘sex appeal,’ of course.”

  The joke was that the old woman was a member of the Salvation Army. Their uniforms have an “S” on one side of the collar and an “A” on the other.

  The scanner spoke again. “It was in the top of the trash can.”

  I leaned over the gadget and turned up the sound. A Salvation Army uniform had been found in a trash can. My heart began to thud. A discarded Salvation Army uniform. It absolutely had to be the stolen one, the one the murderer of Bo Jenkins had used to gain access to the Grantham Mental Health Center.

  I kept listening, but I was dialing the photo lab’s extension at the same time. This might be art for page one. The scanner began to talk again just as Bear Bennington answered. Instead of saying hello, I said, “Shhh. I’m getting an address from the scanner.”

  Bear waited while I wrote the numbers on a pad and reached for my city map to ID the location. Then I realized I knew that address. My yell must have blasted Bear’s eardrum to bits.

  “Bear, let’s get going! They’ve found that missing Salvation Army uniform at Mike Svenson’s house!”

  Bear and I beat Mike to his own house. When we pulled up, the street was almost blocked by a city Solid Waste Department truck, a patrol car, and an inconspicuous beige sedan that might as well have had DETECTIVES written all over it. Jim Hammond was just getting out of the sedan.

  He glared at me. “You again!”

  “Why, Captain Hammond, aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “I thought J.B. had taken over.”

  “He’s out on that 82 at the three-level.”

  “Well, stay out of our way.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain. Sir.”

  It was another lovely day in the Southern Plains’ loveliest month, October. Only a few clouds hovered in the northwestern quadrant of the sky. The cops and a member of the solid waste crew were clumped around a heavy-duty plastic trash container at the foot of Mike’s driveway. The three other members of the solid waste crew were sitting on the running board of the truck, smoking.

  Bear started circling around outside the police sphere of action, using a long lens. I knew his pictures would look as if he’d been right in the middle of the scene.

  I walked across the street, where a thin woman stood in the driveway, holding a broom. She had tightly curled gray hair and was wearing a loose red garment the ads call a “patio dress.”

  “You’re that young lady who was over at Mike’s house Sunday morning with Wilda and Mickey,” she said.

  Oh, golly. I’d run into the reporter’s dream. The nosy neighbor. Unfortunately, she’d been nosing into my business, though she had the story slightly wrong. She’d evidently seen me leave with Mickey on Sunday morning. But if she’d realized I’d been there all night, she wasn’t mentioning it. Thank goodness. I put on my best smile.

  “I’m a friend of Mike’s,” I said. “I work for the Gazette. What’s going on over there?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The garbage men looked in Mike’s trash and began to have a fit. Then the police car came. I don’t think it’s a body or anything. Not big enough.”

  In Grantham the refuse cans or bags are supposed to be on the curb by eight a.m. I doubted that Mike had put the uniform in his own trash, but he’d probably put his can out before he went to work. Since he was working the day shift, he reported at seven a.m. This meant the thief who took the Salvation Army uniform—the guy we assumed killed Bo Jenkins—had had several hours to add the uniform to Mike’s trash.

  Right then another patrol car came around the corner, moving fast, and skidded to a stop. Mike jumped out. He started toward Hammond, but like a good cop, he scanned the area, and he saw me. He stopped walking. Then he gave me a minuscule wave and went on.

  He and Hammond seemed to be quizzing the solid waste people. I stood there, chatting up Mike’s neighbor. Her name, she said, was Marceline Fuqua. She’d lived there forty years, she told me.

  She pointed at Mike. “Known that boy all his life,” she said. “I took a casserole over when his mama brought him home from the hospital. Knitted him some booties.”

  I felt surprised. “Did Mike live here when he was growing up?”

  “Oh, yes.” She gave a kind of cackle. “The Svensons lived in that house until Wilda got rich and Irish got famous. Then they moved out west with the upper crust. But that was after Mike had left home. Wilda kept the house for rental property. Then, when Mike moved back, she gave it to him. He did the big remodeling.”

  That was sort of interesting.

  “He used to mow my lawn,” the woman said. “But he never would edge right around the flower bed. Wanted to use the Weed-Eater. It ought to be done by hand.”

  The solid waste truck was pulling away, going back to work and leaving the scene to the police. Mike and Hammond walked toward us. Bear stopped snapping pictures and came over.

  Mike barely nodded to me. It was pretty plain that we were no longer friends. But he smiled at Mrs. Fuqua.

  “Marceline, this is Captain Jim Hammond, one of Grantham’s top detectives,” he said. “Captain Hammond, Mrs. Fuqua usually knows what’s going on around here. Marceline, did you see anybody messing with my trash this morning?”

  Mrs. Fuqua leaned on her broom. “Nary a soul,” she said. “Nary a soul’s been over there. Except that painter.”

  One look at Mike was enough to tell that he wasn’t having anything painted. He and Hammond muttered at each other, then Mike turned back to Mrs. Fuqua.

  “You know I usually do my own painting,” he said. “What did this guy look like?”

  Her description, boiled down, was much the same as the description of Jesse James, the man who’d checked into the Salvation Army shelter Saturday night and had fled before dawn with a uniform. Thin, forty to fifty-ish, dark, slicked-down hair. Again, it crossed my mind that it sounded like a dozen people I knew. Including Ace-the-Ass, who never had showed up that morning.

  The phony painter had been driving a white van with a ladder and some paint cans in the back. It had a magnetic sign on the door which read JOE’S PAINT AND PLASTER. Mrs. Fuqua had gone outs
ide and looked him over, but she didn’t know one make of truck from another. And she hadn’t noticed the number on the license tag.

  Hammond glared. “Well, I think we can rule out coincidence in this. That guy didn’t pick your trash can at random, Mike. Not out of the thousands of trash cans in the city.”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah, he wanted to rub my nose in it.”

  I forgot I was a bystander and joined the conversation. “But, Mike, how’d he know how to find you?”

  Hammond looked at me frowning. “What do you mean, Nell?”

  Mike was looking at me, too, and he was getting a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth. A wicked sort of smile. I realized I was about to reveal more of my previous personal life than I’d wanted Hammond to know.

  I fought the urge to backpedal, to try to lie my way out. That was what Mike expected me to do, I could tell. I lifted my chin and reminded myself that I’m a reporter and reporters can go anywhere and call anyone.

  “Yes,” I said firmly, “the other night when I wanted to reach you when you were already off duty, I couldn’t find your phone number. You’re not in the phone book. How did Jesse James find out where you live?” I hadn’t lied.

  Mike and Hammond kicked that one around. City directory? Gas company? Lived in the neighborhood? There were lots of ways.

  I got Hammond to confirm that he’d put out a notice to all solid waste crews, both city and private, asking them to watch for the uniform.

  “I really thought we’d find it in some Dumpster,” he said.

  I had as much information as I was going to get there, and Bear was pacing, impatient to get on to his next assignment. So we left. Mike gave me another indifferent wave.

  Back at the office, Ace still hadn’t shown up. At that point I didn’t care, even if he did owe me lunch. It was close to noon. I went down to Goldman’s and ate lunch with Mitzi Johns. After lunch I wrote up the story about the stolen Salvation Army uniform being found in Mike’s trash. I left it in the crime reporters’ joint file for J.B. to add to his story on Bo’s death.

  By then it was too late for me to sit around and anticipate meeting Lee. It was time to go, if I wasn’t going to be late for our appointment.