“So did I.” The tiny Asian woman’s dark eyes flashed. “He called in sick and didn’t have the decency to call me and let me know.”
“Don’t look now but looks like the press got wind of this,” Puddy said, pointing to three news vans stopped on the street. “You want me to chase them away?”
Sean shook his head. “Just keep them back. I don’t want them seeing this note.” His eyes held a look of warning as he glanced around at the other officers. “If this note gets out, somebody’s losing their job, you all got that?” The officers nodded, watching as the reporters tried to get closer to the crime scene.
For once, Ryan wasn’t thinking about the press. She was thinking about the note that Suzie Chin had started to bag. She was also thinking about Cleeves’ numerous gunshot wounds and the AK-47 sitting on his lap. She peered through the crowd starting to form. The killer could be out here, right now, watching.
“What about the witness?” Sean asked Shep.
Shep pointed in the direction of the complex. “Crack whore. She told Puddy she might have seen the body getting dropped off. Puddy got me, but when we went back she had already disappeared into the development.”
Sean began barking orders to the officers. As the others dispersed, he added, “Shep, the sergeant wants you and Ryan at the station.”
Shep pointed to the street where his Corvette was parked. Ryan heard her name as she walked behind Shep to the car. She looked up to see Chance Halley waving at her from the opposite side of the street. Ryan acknowledged him with a nod, too absorbed in her own thoughts to pay him any attention.
Shep stopped and blew Chance a kiss. Chance stepped back quickly behind a cameraman.
“Isn’t Halley the one that gave you the idea that you might be connected to this?” Shep opened the door for Ryan, squinting in Chance’s direction.
She shivered and immediately began trying to dry her arms and legs with her hands. Shep grabbed a towel from the trunk space and handed it to her.
“Chance asked one question at the press conference. I put the rest together myself.”
“Did he say where he got his information?” Shep asked as he backed out onto the street.
“No. Why?” Ryan put the towel over her head and began squeezing the water from her hair.
“He comes up with this idea out of the blue connecting you to two homicides, and then someone leaves a note for you proving his idea was right.” He turned left on Magazine.
“You think Chance is the killer?” She stopped drying her hair long enough to laugh.
“Maybe he’s tired of trying to get on the news. Maybe he’s trying to make it now. Where did he get his information?”
“You’re the detective. You figure it out.” She handed him the towel. “And you don’t really believe Chance Halley is a killer.”
“No, not really.” He tossed the towel in the back and then glanced over at her. “I just don’t like him for some reason. And what kind of a sissy name is Chance anyway?”
“He’s a little slick, but I don’t think he’s a killer.”
“Slick?”
“Yeah, kind of like you.” She smiled faintly, anticipating Shep’s reaction.
“He is nothing like me,” Shep answered, his lip curled almost in a snarl.
Sergeant Mitchell was waiting for them at the front door of the station. Ryan followed him into the interrogation room and sat in the center chair at the table. The sergeant sat across from her, and a moment later, Lt. Powers joined them.
Lt. Powers was a towering, dark-skinned black man, somewhere in his early fifties. He had large features and exceptionally white teeth. He reminded Ryan of a bull, so much so that she secretly called him El Toro.
Looking around, Ryan could see how a suspect might be nervous in a similar situation. The walls were stark white and bare. The floor had plain gray industrial carpet, which Ryan knew was more to prevent a suspect’s head from cracking open if it should somehow happen to hit the floor than for its aesthetic value. The two men across the table from her worked for her father, yet they still managed to appear threatening. She could only imagine what it would feel like to be an actual suspect.
“Chapetti, you can sit in on this for now, unless I see a reason to make you leave,” the sergeant said, pointing to a chair at the end of the table. Shep nodded and sat.
Lt. Powers leaned down on the table with both hands. El Toro was getting ready to charge. Ryan would have confessed had she committed a crime. “Sean filled us in on his theory about the other murders this week being connected to you. He said that the body tonight had a note addressed to you, and you got a call from somebody who might be a suspect.”
“He left a message on my machine,” she told him, wondering when Sean had started calling her theory his own.
“Good. Maybe we can pull something from it to figure out where he called from.” Lt. Powers glanced doubtfully at Sergeant Mitchell.
The sergeant jotted something down on the notepad in front of him and asked, “Anybody you prosecuted particularly nasty lately?”
“Just Tyrone Cleeves. And you saw what happened to him.”
The sergeant continued to write. “Are you dating anybody right now?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’re a little old for me, Sarge. And I don’t think my father would approve.”
The sergeant’s cheeks turned red. “We’ll see if anybody you prosecuted got released recently, but we also need to rule out the possibility that this is a domestic situation. I need to know if there’s anybody you can think of that might want to impress you — somebody who might think he’s doing you a favor by killing the defendants on your old cases.”
She lit up a cigarette, contemplating her answer. Lt. Powers looked at the cigarette in her hand and then at the No Smoking sign on the wall across the room. She followed his eyes.
“Oh, sorry. This is a no smoking building, isn’t it?” She looked around nervously for a place to put the cigarette out.
“We won’t tell if you don’t,” Lt. Powers said and then pointed at Shep. “Get an ashtray.”
Ryan waited several seconds before she answered. “I’m not seeing anybody. My last relationship ended three months ago.”
“Who was that?” Sgt. Mitchell resumed the questions while Lt. Powers began pacing behind him.
Shep walked back in and set an ashtray down in front of her.
She took a long drag of the cigarette and then answered. “Chad Lejeune.”
Sgt. Mitchell nodded. “He’s that personal injury lawyer, isn’t he? He’s got those rap commercials on TV.”
“That’s him,” she answered, and then sang the chorus of the rap jingle. “When you get hurt bad, just call Chad.” The jingle had been performed by a local rap artist so famous he had already been murdered by the time the commercial aired.
The sergeant looked her as if she was crazy. “Yeah. Okay. So, did you break up on good terms?”
“Not really.” She exhaled and flicked an ash. It missed the ashtray and landed on the table. Lt. Powers frowned slightly. Ryan blew the ash to the floor.
Powers reached across the table and Ryan jumped. The lieutenant patted her hand in a way he must have thought was comforting. “Ryan, this may be difficult, but we’ve got to ask these questions. Anything you can think of might help.”
“I can’t think of anything.” She took another drag from the cigarette and hoped none of the men would mention her smoking to her father.
“Was Lejeune ever violent?” The sergeant leaned forward slightly, as if inviting Ryan to confide in him.
She shook her head. “Chad wouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?” Lt. Powers asked, crossing him arms across his chest, looking down at her. While it wasn’t exactly Good Cop/Bad Cop, Lt. Powers and Sgt. Mitchell had a system that was effective.
Ryan wondered which answer she should give them. Chad preferred slapping and punching to shooting and strangling? Chad only had the balls to go up against w
omen? She shook her head and finally answered, “It’s just not his style.”
The sergeant looked at Lt. Powers, who nodded back at him.
The sergeant continued. “Whose idea was the breakup?”
“Mine.” She flicked another ash. This one made the ashtray. “I broke up with him.”
“Why?”
“I caught him with his paralegal.” She looked up, directly at the sergeant. “And this was an hour after he couldn’t rise to the occasion with me, so to speak. So it’s difficult to imagine why he would be killing people now to get back in my good graces. I mean, sorry I couldn’t get it up, but here’s a dead body to make up for it? That doesn’t make sense.” She crushed the cigarette violently into the ashtray.
“We have to check him out,” Lt. Powers said, not quite meeting her eyes with his own, “but I don’t want to overlook any other potential suspects. Have you dated anyone since then?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly.”
“Have you been, er, intimate with anyone?” Sgt. Mitchell asked delicately, and Ryan knew then that news of her social life had hit the gossip circuit. Lt. Powers finally sat down next to Sgt. Mitchell. Ryan was relieved. His pacing and hovering were disconcerting.
She sighed, knowing how the recitation of her late night activity over the previous three months was going to sound to the men. She didn’t expect them to understand. “In February I saw Anthony Espinito for a couple of weeks.”
“From PID?” Shep asked.
Her eyes darted to Shep. “PID?”
“Espinito is with PID,” Shep said. “He’s been with them for at least two years. You didn’t know that?”
“No,” she answered softly, feeling stupid. “I thought he was in robbery in Mid City.”
“He was. Until PID took him. Did he also tell you he was married?” Shep asked.
“No, although I did find that out. As a matter of fact, I answered his cell phone when he was in the bathroom and it turned out to be his wife.” She stopped for a second. “PID, huh? Well, that would explain his bizarre interest in daddy.” She propped her chin on her hand, her elbow on the table, and sighed again. She had been fooled twice by Espinito. Being exposed in front of her father’s men gave her a feeling she didn’t like.
“Babe, we really don’t need to know the details, but what happened with the, uh, relationship?” Sergeant Mitchell asked.
“After I talked to his wife, I kicked him out. Literally. He probably still has the bruise on his ass to show for it.”
The sergeant scribbled on the pad again. “Did he try to contact you after that?”
“For about two weeks. He called a bunch of times, apologizing, asked if we could get together and talk. I kept hanging up on him and he finally stopped.”
“Put him on the list,” Lt. Powers said, his eyes almost glowing.
“He is a white cop,” Shep said, leaning his chair back on two legs.
Ryan frowned at Shep, unsure of why she felt compelled to defend Espinito. “But he’s not fat. He actually has a very nice body.”
“Way too much information,” Shep answered, letting the chair fall forward.
Lt. Powers glanced at Shep, but continued with his questions. “Have you dated anybody else since then?” Ryan could tell he was hoping the answer was no. She was mighty sorry to have to disappoint him.
“Well, I wouldn’t say we actually dated, but I did kiss Joel Marks last month in his car after he gave me ride home from Dominick’s.”
“Marks, the homicide detective from the Third?”
She nodded again.
“And by kiss, you mean a quick good night peck?” Lt. Powers asked. Again, Ryan could tell he was hoping for a different answer than she was about to give him.
“More than a peck. Nothing under clothes, though. We didn’t get naked or anything like that, but we did make out, I guess. And same thing with Bobby Taylor two weeks ago. He also gave me a ride home from Dominick’s.”
“Taylor from Robbery?”
“Yeah, unless of course he’s really PID, too. And then last weekend, Monte Carlson. Also a ride home from Dominick’s.”
“Where do I sign up to give you a ride home from Dominick’s?” Shep asked.
“I take it Chapetti’s not going to be on this list,” Lt. Powers said, sounding relieved, as he patted her small hand with his huge paw again. His attempt to soothe her was no more comforting the second time. “What about somebody you’ve turned down? Maybe you hurt somebody’s feelings?”
“I turned down Chance Halley yesterday. But I seriously doubt he has the balls to kill anybody.”
The sergeant jotted something down. “Might not hurt to check him out. After all, he is a reporter.”
“And Big Mike asked me out a few weeks ago, but he was pretty drunk at the time.”
“Big Mike?” the sergeant asked.
“You know, Boudreaux, the ex-Saints player,” Shep said, his tone barely short of disdain.
Ryan scowled at him. “He took it like a gentleman and hasn’t mentioned it since.”
“Nobody else?” Lt. Powers asked. “Nobody bothering you, nothing like that?”
She shook her head. “I know that I annoy a lot of people in the courtroom, but I can’t think of anyone in particular.”
The sergeant stood up. “That should be enough to get us started. I’ll be questioning Lejeune and Espinito. We’ll talk to the others to potentially exclude them. I’m going to get a printout from the phone company of all the calls made to your house this last week, to see if we can get a number to trace. The caller’s number shows up on the phone company’s list, whether it shows up on caller ID or not. And there’s going to be a marked unit following you, so don’t be concerned when you see it parked outside your house. Now, would you mind waiting in the hall while we get Chapetti’s statement? He’ll bring you home afterward.”
“Can I wait in daddy’s office?”
The sergeant looked at Lt. Powers again, who nodded. Ryan got up and glanced at the sergeant’s notes on the desk. She wondered how long it would be until her father saw them and went ballistic.
She sat in her father’s chair and looked through his desk, hoping Sean had left the PID file where she could find it. A few seconds later, she found the unlabeled file. It contained the police report from Smith’s arrest, including the medical reports from Charity Hospital, where Smith was treated for minor scrapes and bruises. Some big takedown. Ryan had suffered worse injuries stumbling down the sidewalk after a late night at the Hole.
A letter from PID was behind the police report. The letter didn’t say much, just that a complaint had been made by L’Roid Smith.
She put the file down and her mind went back to Anthony Espinito. She had met him at Cooter Brown’s, an uptown bar she frequented with Edie. Espinito claimed he recognized Ryan from court, and when he showed her his badge, she hadn’t doubted him.
She had been so desperate to get past the disastrous relationship with Chad that she had been an easy mark. She thought Espinito’s interest in her family, particularly her father, was a little unusual, but figured he had ambitions of climbing the ranks one day.
She was hesitant to get involved with him, especially when she thought he might be using her just to further his career. She was just so drunk, and he was so good looking, she couldn’t seem to tell him no. And they hadn’t had sex, just fooled around a little, and then he left.
She was surprised to hear from him two days later, and they spent several evenings together over the next couple of weeks. She should have been suspicious that he never tried to have sex, and was never able to stay the night. She had assumed he was taking things slow because he respected her, or, at the very least, feared her father.
Until his wife had called and busted him. She remembered the look on his face when she had handed him the phone.
Ryan wondered what information Espinito could possibly have thought she would have given him about the captain that would have been usefu
l to PID.
She looked through her father’s desk to see if there was another file, some PID investigation that would solve the mystery of exactly what Espinito had been after. A minute letter she had her answer.
Inside a second file was a letter from PID, advising that the captain was being investigated for a battery on Chad Lejeune. A week after Ryan had broken up with him, Chad had been attacked in his home, the intruder leaving him with a permanent limp from a torn ACL and fractured right kneecap.
Ryan wondered why Espinito or PID would suspect her father of having anything to do with Chad’s beating. She had intentionally not told her father, nor anyone else in her family, what Chad had done to her. Not that she remembered it all, but she recalled enough that she knew what they would do to Chad if she mentioned even the small part she could remember. And in the end, Chad had been taken care of without the intervention of her father or brothers.
So PID thought her father had beaten Chad, and that was the reason Espinito had pretended to be interested in her. She had felt bad enough when she thought he was just cheating on his wife. She felt even worse now, knowing that Espinito had only pretended to like her so that he could extract information from her about her father. Especially when she knew one-hundred percent her father had nothing to do with Chad’s beating.
She heard voices down the hall and quickly put the files back in her father’s desk. She wondered how effective an investigation against Chad was going to be when her father was being investigated by PID for beating the man.
A second later, Shep walked in. “Sean brought the witness in. She saw a man get out of a black car, but she took off before the guy could see her, so she only saw him from a distance. Her description matches what we already have. Sean’s cutting her loose, unless you want to talk to her.”
Ryan shook her head. “Would you mind bringing me home now?” She needed time to contemplate the fact that PID was after her father for Chad’s beating. And to determine what, if anything, she was going to do about it.
She followed behind Shep to the front desk, and stopped when she saw the witness, a hooker she had previously prosecuted. She was a stout woman, and looked more like the checkout girl at the Wal-Mart than a prostitute. She smiled a silver-toothed grin when she saw Ryan.
Gumbo Justice Page 11
