by Joel Goldman
Chapter Eighteen
Carter pointed toward the elevators. Joy looked at me as we waited for one of the doors to open, her eyebrows raised in a silent question I answered with a shrug. Her shoulders deflated, and her eyes lost their luster. She tired easily, no matter how much rest she got, always needing more, raising questions we couldn’t answer.
How do you live when you know you are dying? Do you ignore what’s happening inside you, conceding nothing? Do you conserve your strength, spending it only on the things that matter the most? Do you do the most and best you can and not worry about the rest? Joy’s answer was yes to all of that. I didn’t know how she did it.
Staley ignored us, earbuds plugged into his phone, listening to music and texting. I leaned toward her, a hand on her shoulder, whispering, “You okay?”
“Sure,” she said. “You?”
“Marvelistic.”
“We’re both lousy liars.”
“Long as we know it. Hang in there. This won’t take long.”
“Take as long as it takes. This is the most comfortable hospital bench I’ve sat on all day.”
“You’re too good for words.”
“I know,” she said, smiling and stroking my face with her palm. “Don’t forget you said that because I won’t.”
Officer Fremont motioned to Carter from the nurse’s station, and Carter joined him. Fremont said something I couldn’t make out, but Carter’s grimace said it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Bad news?” I asked when Carter returned.
Carter bent over, tying a shoelace that wasn’t untied, pretending he hadn’t heard me. The elevator arrived, and we stepped on, the doors closing, the car giving us a jolt before it began its descent. I leaned against the handrail, closing my eyes and clenching as the day rattled my cage.
“Still with the shaking,” Carter said.
I took a deep breath as the tremors passed. “Yeah.”
“Be better off home in bed.”
“Lot of ways to be better off.”
Carter nodded, watching the numbers for each floor flash by. “I get what you do. The whole protect-the-weak-and-innocent bit.”
My torso pretzled, my chin planted on my shoulder for a three count until the spasm let me go. “Keeps me busy.”
“Trouble is, you start out from the wrong place. You want people like Roni to be innocent so bad you quit thinking like a cop. You push things the way you want them to go instead of going where the evidence takes you.”
“You’re kidding yourself if you think anyone starts in neutral, not even a good cop like you. It’s not a level playing field for people like Roni. Somebody has to push back.”
“There’s a difference between pushing and getting in the way.”
“Meaning I’m still a pain in the ass?”
He smiled as the doors opened. “Big time.”
“Good to know.”
Roni was sequestered in a first-floor conference room in the administration wing of the hospital, a cop on the door, this one not going anywhere. She was sitting at a long oval table, rotating her swivel chair side to side while plugged into her phone and texting, a mirror image of Brett Staley, the two of them leaving an electronic trail for Carter to follow.
Cops believe in causation, not coincidence. If Roni Chase had intentionally caused a disturbance so someone could kill Frank Crenshaw, Brett Staley climbed to the top of the shooter short list when he showed up at the hospital, his timing too good and any alibi he may have too pat. The shooter would have to have been someone Roni trusted, and who would she trust more than the man who was saving up to buy her funeral dress? It made sense if she was guilty.
Carter and I were coming at the case from opposite directions. He suspected she was guilty, and I hoped she was innocent, the truth hidden somewhere between certainty and doubt.
She looked up when we entered the room, taking off her earbuds and sliding her phone into her jean pocket, gathering her jacket around her like a protective shield, her face brightening for an instant when she looked at me, then darkening when she focused on Carter.
“So,” she said, “can I go home now?”
“Soon, I hope,” I said. “Detective Carter says you and I can talk, but only if he gets to watch and listen.”
“Can he do that?”
“Depends on how hard he wants to play this. He can hold you for questioning here or take you downtown. He knows that if he doesn’t let you go home in the next five minutes that you’re going to call a lawyer and if you don’t know who to call that you’re going to ask me to call someone, and he knows that whoever I call is going to turn his long day into a shitty night. Either way, he knows he’s not going to get diddly-squat out of you tonight. Except for what you’ve already told him, which is that you had nothing to do with Frank Crenshaw being murdered in his unguarded hospital bed.”
Her grin split her face. “So,” she said to Carter, “am I under arrest?”
Carter, hands planted on his hips, blasted me. “That’s what you call getting her to cooperate?”
“Here’s how it is. You want anything else out of her tonight you’re going to have to give us the room. I’m not promising anything after that, but I’m sure as hell not going to serve her up to you for a midnight snack.”
Carter glared. I stared, and Roni waited, wisely swallowing her grin.
“Motherfucking pain in the ass,” Carter said, wagging his finger at me. “That’s what you are—a royal, motherfucking pain in my ass.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, pointing to the slack-jawed uniform cop standing in the door. “I’ll have him call you when we’re ready.”
Officer Fremont knocked on the conference room door. “Detective Carter, the ATF agent is waiting for you upstairs. I told him you were interrogating a witness and I didn’t know how long that would take. He said to tell you he wasn’t much interested in waiting around. Guy’s a fed through and through, thinks his shit don’t stink.”
“So that was the good news Fremont gave you,” I said. “Don’t worry about us. We can come back tomorrow if that’s more convenient for you.”
Carter aimed his finger at me again, his caramel complexion purpling. “You keep pushing and you’re gonna push too far.”
Chapter Nineteen
Roni clapped her hands. “Dude, that was sweet!”
I sat in a chair across the table from hers. “You have no idea how much trouble you could be in, do you?”
Her mouth and eyes stretched wide. “Me? I told you, I didn’t do anything!”
“Listen to me. I’m not your lawyer. I know a fair amount about criminal law because I put a lot of crooks away, but I’m not an expert on criminal procedure or the rules of evidence and I’m lousy at reading juries. So I can’t help you shape your testimony so that you slide by on some narrow ledge between innocent and guilty. Nothing you tell me is privileged. I get called before a grand jury or summoned to testify in court, I’ll have to tell them everything you tell me.”
Her cheeks lost their pink. “What are you doing? Are you trying to scare me?”
“Just shut up and listen. Don’t talk until I’m finished. Here are the known facts. Yesterday you shot Frank Crenshaw, and then you came to the hospital to see him and were told you couldn’t. You came back tonight, after visiting hours, and raised a ruckus when you were told the same thing you were told the day before. Then you made enough noise that the cop guarding Crenshaw came running, giving the killer a clean shot at him. Quincy Carter is no dummy. It isn’t hard for him to connect the dots and tie you and the shooter together like a tag team setting up the hit on Crenshaw. Then your boyfriend shows up, saying he thought it’d be fun to hang out at the hospital.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Maybe not on your dance card, but that’s how Carter sees him.”
“I can’t help that. Sometimes, he drives me crazy.”
“And now Carter is going to turn him inside out to see i
f he might have finished what you started at LC’s. Case like this, the first one to make a deal serves the shortest sentence. Carter won’t care which one of you flips, so long as one of you does. So you telling Carter and me that you had nothing to do with anything won’t cut it.”
She went from pale to red hot in a flash, coming out of her chair, planting her fists on the conference table.
“I shot Frank Crenshaw to save my life and yours, and I haven’t kept a meal down or slept since. I don’t know who killed him, but it wasn’t Brett. He was hanging out with my mom and grandma tonight until he came over here. So, fuck you if you don’t believe me!”
“He’s not your boyfriend, but he hangs out with your mother and grandmother?”
“Sometimes he is my boyfriend. Just not when we fight.”
“Then what was he doing hanging out with you and your family?”
“My grandmother likes to have people for Sunday-night dinner. She invited him.”
I liked that she was mad. I liked that she didn’t curl up into a ball and cry, and I liked that she didn’t tell me to call a lawyer. I didn’t like that her family was Brett Staley’s alibi because families are the first to lie to protect loved ones, and, if Staley was spending his evening with her mother and grandmother, odds were he’d get the family treatment.
“What time did he leave your house?”
She straightened, throwing one hand at the walls before wrapping her arms around her chest.
“I don’t know. We had dinner and sat around talking and watching TV. I said I was going to see Frank, and he tried to talk me out of it because they wouldn’t let me see him yesterday. We got into it, nothing serious, just yelling like we do all the time, and he says if I go, he isn’t going with me, like I even invited him. So I left him there.”
“You want me to call a lawyer?”
She dropped her arms to her side, her initial outburst spent. “How can I need a lawyer when I’m innocent?”
“The system doesn’t always get it right.”
“But if I get a lawyer, it will look like I’ve got something to hide, and I don’t. Besides, I can’t afford a lawyer. It costs a lot of money to take care of my mom. She didn’t have health insurance when she had her stroke. She’s in a wheelchair, and her speech is pretty garbled.”
“I’ll find someone who will work with you on the fee.”
She came back to her seat, folding her arms on the table. “Why are you doing this for me?”
I smiled. “Like you said, you saved my life.”
She reached across the table, taking my hand in hers. “Well, at least I did one thing right.”
I patted her hand, letting go and easing back in my chair. “What about the lawyer?”
She chewed her lip, focusing on the table, then swiveled in her chair, looking out the windows to the west. The torch at the top of the Liberty Memorial was lit, a ring of fire glowing in the dark. She wheeled around, facing me, hands in her lap, her face cool and calm.
“I’m not guilty of anything, and I’m not going to act like I am. Tell Detective Carter I’ll answer his questions.”
I nodded. “You know it’s not always enough to be innocent. Sometimes it’s smarter to be innocent and have a lawyer to make sure you stay that way.”
“I’ve got you. That makes me smart enough.”
“Okay, then. Let’s run through it a few times. Make sure I know what you know.”
She was a solid witness, recalling details as we went through it until she had it nailed down, serious until I gave her a taste of a bad-cop interrogation, leaning on her. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling, gave up, and dissolved into laughter.
“Hey, I’m not practicing my stand-up routine, here.”
She wiped tears from her eyes and sat up straight. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it. I promise to be really scared when Detective Carter asks me how I’m going to like being a girlfriend on a chain gang.”
“All I said was that you could go away for a long time, maybe the rest of your life.”
She started laughing again. “I know. I know. I can’t help it. What can I say? You kind of scared me at first, but now you don’t. Is that a bad thing?”
My head tilted back, my chin elevating past the perpendicular, my neck telescoping and leaving me hanging until the spasm evaporated and I found Roni’s eyes again. They were narrow and sober, her lips pursed as if she had been twisting beside me. I took a deep breath, restoring order for both of us.
“Only if you don’t listen to me. That could really get you in trouble.”
She nodded. I opened the door and told our sentry that we were ready to talk to Detective Carter. A few minutes later, Officer Fremont appeared at the door. I looked past him at Joy, who was standing alone at the entrance to the administrative suite.
“We’re ready,” I said.
“Detective Carter said to tell Ms. Chase that she can go home. He’ll give her a call tomorrow and set something up.”
Roni and I exchanged glances. Her quick smile vanished when she realized the same thing I did.
“What about Brett Staley?” I asked.
“Detective Carter says Ms. Chase shouldn’t wait up for him.”
“What? No way!” she said. “He didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not leaving without him.”
“I’m sorry, miss. He’s already gone.”
“Gone! Where? With who? Is he under arrest?”
“You’ll have to talk with Detective Carter about that, miss.”
I grabbed Roni’s arm when she bolted for the door, clamping her to my side.
“Tell Carter I want to talk to him.”
“Next time I see him.”
“What do you mean next time you see him?”
“Detective Carter packed it in for the night. Said if you wanted to talk to him to call and leave a message. He’ll get back to you soon as he can.”
Officer Fremont walked us to the lobby and watched as we stood outside the hospital entrance. Roni called Brett’s cell phone and left a message when he didn’t answer, doubling up by sending him a text. She hugged me, and I made her take a blood oath not to talk to Carter alone.
She nodded, squinting, her brow furrowed, half-listening and looking over my shoulder as if Brett would emerge from the shadows. We were parsing the same puzzle, neither of us certain what had just happened or why, the worry lines around her eyes and mouth telling me the one thing that was certain: Despite her protests, she would let Brett buy her funeral dress, though not for a long, long time. I watched until she got into her Toyota Highlander and drove away.
Joy didn’t add much to what we knew. Soon after Carter and I left to talk with Roni, Fremont told her to leave. The last time she saw Brett Staley he was still sitting on the bench next to the fourth-floor elevators. She waited for us in the lobby until she saw Fremont and followed him into the administrative suite.
My movement disorder does more than put me through impromptu and involuntary gymnastic routines. It stresses the rest of my brain, sometimes gumming up the gears and making it impossible to concentrate, other times giving me jelly legs. When that happens, I’m no good to anybody. I closed my eyes on the drive home, my questions bogged down in neural quicksand. Joy held my arm as I stumbled into the house, staggering up the stairs and into bed.
“You’ll figure it out tomorrow,” she said, turning off the light.
“Too late. Whatever’s happened has happened.”
“It’s never too late, Jack Davis. Not for any of us.”
Chapter Twenty
Lucy called at seven-thirty Tuesday morning.
“I wake you?”
“Roxy and Ruby beat you by an hour and a half.”
“Simon told me you want to hire Roni Chase, give her a shot at one of our cases. Not that I’m surprised, but how’d that go?”
“Hard to tell.”
I gave her a rundown on my day and night.
“Some people are trouble magnets
.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Roni was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twice.”
“Not her, moron. You. That’s what you get for trying to fix the world one messed-up kid at a time.”
“I thought I did okay with you, but keep giving me grief and I may have to rethink that.”
“Wait until I tell you who called me yesterday.”
“Who?”
“It’s a beautiful morning. Go outside and play with the dogs, and I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”
Fall in Kansas City is a season of gentle regret, evoking good times past and trials yet to come as summer surrenders to September and October’s fiery leaves drape the city in a fragile rainbow canopy back-lit by the sun, low and sharp, nature’s high-definition broadcast. November’s cold, cleansing rain readies us for December’s frozen, pale shroud, the promise of spring faint, distant but certain.
I waited for Lucy in the front yard, the dogs swirling around me, chasing squirrels because that was their job. They were unburdened by the past, oblivious to the future, living in the moment while I straddled all three dimensions.
Lucy was wrong about one thing. I wasn’t trying to fix the world one messed-up kid at a time. I was trying to fix me, put the pieces back together that were shattered when Kevin and Wendy died. There was nothing gentle about my regrets, nothing soothing about my dreams. Memories of my children were a saw-toothed reminder of broken promises. If I could help Roni Chase and if I could find Evan and Cara Martin, I might save myself.
My cell phone rang. It was Roni.
“Detective Carter wants to meet me at my house at three o’clock. Can you make it?”
“Sure. Don’t start without me.”
Lucy pulled up just as I finished talking with Roni.
“Had breakfast?” Lucy asked when I got in her car.
“Coffee.”
“Good. We’re going to the Classic Cup.”
“Because?”
“Because we’re having breakfast with Ethan Bonner.”
“Jimmy Martin’s lawyer?”
