“No. I’ll help you,” I heard myself saying. “We can swim.”
I headed out of the still quiet mall, trying to think of a way to keep my leg hidden from Joel at the pool. Maybe I could get a wetsuit. I scoffed at myself for even thinking like that and tried to focus on how grateful and relieved Joel had looked when I offered to help him train at the Y. Morning rush-hour traffic whooshed by on nearby I-95. An inch of snow covered my Miata, and I brushed it off with my hand, thankful it wasn’t snowing any longer. My drive took me past a run-down area with single-family homes built in the fifties and sixties, and it triggered a memory. On impulse, I pulled into the neighborhood, remembering it from having dropped Weasel off one afternoon when his truck battery died. I didn’t remember the house number, but I thought I would recognize it. South Pacific Street gave way to Bora Bora Place and I slowed. The houses looked amazingly alike: small, dingy, and unvalued, like the outgrown plastic soldiers or naked dolls at the bottom of a toy box. Tiny, winter-browned yards fronted houses clad with faded aluminum siding. Here and there, cheery curtains brightened a window or a coat of red enamel highlighted a mailbox, but the overall effect was dreary with a capital “D.”
I almost cruised past Weasel’s house but recognized the tree stump in the yard at the last moment. Pulling to the curb, I cut the engine and stared at the house. No curtains shielded the living room windows, but a sheet draped a window I figured was Weasel’s bedroom. Nothing moved and no lights glowed in the house. What was I doing here? Just because Woskowicz couldn’t get hold of Weasel didn’t mean anything was wrong. Weasel was a big boy; maybe he was playing hooky. Still, since I was here, I might as well knock on the door. I swung my legs out of the car and zipped my jacket against the damp cold. A Siamese cat sitting in the neighbor’s driveway eyed me as I walked toward Weasel’s house.
“Pretty kitty,” I said.
He turned and walked away, tail held straight in the air.
Passing Weasel’s one-car garage, I stood on tiptoe to peer into the frost-rimed windows. Weasel’s black truck sat in the garage, ragged Confederate flag sassing me through the back window, toolbox locked in the pickup bed, mud flaps with the girly silhouette hanging limply. Uneasiness prickled my skin. What was Weasel’s truck doing here if he’d gone somewhere to visit his family? He probably flew, my logical side said. It didn’t feel right, though. I continued toward the front door, more cautiously now. I had no real reason to think something was wrong, but I did. And I’d learned in my twelve years as an air force cop not to ignore my instincts. I glanced in the living room window as I passed it, but saw nothing except a saggy sofa and a big-screen TV.
Standing to the right of the door, I reached over and knocked loudly. The rickety house seemed to shudder with each blow. Nothing. I hammered with my fist, loud enough to startle the Siamese into hiding under the station wagon in his driveway. I tried the doorknob. Locked. I had three choices: (A) I could go home and mind my own business, hoping Weasel would show up at the office in a day or two, hungover from a three-day binge or depressed after his Aunt Laverne’s funeral. (B) I could call the cops and ask for a health and welfare check on Billy Wedzel at 3462 Bora Bora Place. Or, (C) I could poke around a little more and see what I turned up. I voted (A) the most logical course of action and (B) the most efficient, but I went with (C).
I traipsed around to the back, the snow crunching softly under my boots. The one window on the side of the house was set high and frosted—a bathroom, I concluded, unable to look in it. The backyard was tiny, fenced, and held a rusty charcoal grill, a cracked concrete patio just big enough for the one webbed chair that sat there, and a newish red wagon tipped on its side. The latter surprised me and I wondered if Weasel had a kid, or maybe a grandkid. I was no better than Woskowicz, I decided. I knew almost nothing about Weasel’s personal life or situation, even though I’d worked with him for a year.
The sagging mesh on the screen door shivered slightly in the freshening wind as I pulled it open to knock on the backdoor. Cupping my hands on either side of my face, I studied the kitchen. Fridge closest to the door, then stove, then sink. A card table in the middle of the linoleumed floor held a laptop computer, open, a coffee mug beside it. The sight of the computer made me gnaw my lower lip. Who left a valuable computer in plain sight when they were out of town? No one. As I pulled away from the window, a flash of color by the arched doorway on the far side of the kitchen grabbed my attention. Scrunching my nose against the glass, I tried not to fog it up with my breath. My eyes adjusted to the dimness and I saw that the splash of red I’d seen was a sock, and the sock was on a foot that lay tremendously still. The rest of the leg and body lay out of sight in the hallway.
I simultaneously tried the doorknob and dialed 911. Before the call could go through, a sharp voice behind me said, “Put your hands up and turn around slowly.”
Twelve
I knew that voice.
Well, not that specific voice, but the type. Cop. Not wanting a bullet aerating my insides—I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime—I did as he asked. Spreading my arms wide at shoulder height, I turned around slowly.
“I was just calling you,” I said with a slight nod at the cell phone in my hand.
“Yeah, right.” The cop was tall, black, brawny, and skeptical. “We got a call from the lady next door to say there was a burglary in progress at this address. And I walk up to find you breaking and entering.” His partner, a thirtyish white guy with male-pattern baldness, came around the corner.
“I wasn’t breaking and entering,” I said angrily. “I can see a foot through the window. The man in there is hurt or dead. I was going in to see if I could give aid.”
The newcomer approached, and I stepped aside so he could peer through the window. “She’s right,” he told his partner.
“Cuff her.”
“But—”
The balding cop twirled a finger, and I obediently turned, putting my hands behind me. He snapped the cuffs around my wrists, the metal warm from being against his body, and the first cop lowered his gun and approached the door. He keyed his push-to-talk radio and called for an ambulance as his partner braced himself and kicked at the door near the lock. It splintered and gave way with a second kick. Observing their rough and ready entry, I thought morosely that my knee wouldn’t take that kind of abuse anymore.
They plunged into the kitchen, and I positioned myself so I could see through the door. The sickly sweet smell drifting toward me told me all I needed to know even before the black cop called to his partner: “He’s dead. Bullet through the head. Call Homicide.”
I’ve always been more of an “ask forgiveness instead of permission” person, so I sidled through the door, careful not to touch anything, to see if the body was really Weasel. The smell was stronger in the kitchen, and I breathed shallowly through my mouth, inching my way toward the middle of the room while the cops cleared the rest of the house. Water dripped from the faucet at two second intervals, plip . . . plip, and cubes tumbled from the ice maker into the bin, startling me. I stared down at Weasel, positioned as if he were running from the kitchen, with one thigh perpendicular to his body and his arms outstretched. I couldn’t say that I’d liked him, but I was sorry he was dead.
“Hey! You can’t be in here!”
The black cop advanced on me, making shooing motions. He stepped carefully over Weasel’s body and nudged me toward the exit.
“Officer—?”
“Bruden,” he supplied. “Now get your ass out that door before I kick it out.”
“Officer Bruden,” I said, moving slowly toward the door, his bulk crowding me along. “I think this death could be connected to the murder at Fernglen Galleria earlier this week. You might want to call Detective Helland—it’s his case.”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Helland’s voice said from the doorway. He didn’t sound grateful.
Eyes widening, I turned to catch the full brunt of his icy glare. No hint of smile lighten
ed the lean face, the strong jaw, the high brow with a shock of white-gold hair falling across it. “Let me tell you—” I started.
“I’ve been called out for exactly two homicides this year, Miss Ferris,” he said, moving into the kitchen, which suddenly felt crowded, “and you’ve been front and center both times. Should that make me suspicious?”
“No, I—”
“Because it does. I have to ask if your presence is more than coincidence.” He eyed me ruminatively while digging a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and slipping them on. “I’ll talk to you when I’m done here.” He nodded at Officer Bruden, who nudged me toward the door again.
“Can you at least uncuff me?”
Bruden looked at Helland, who nodded. Bruden unlocked the cuffs, and I made a show of massaging my wrists, which neither man appreciated because they’d gone back to examining the body. I exited before Helland changed his mind about the cuffs.
The barren backyard was an unappealing place to wait, but I made myself comfortable on the webbed chair on the patio after brushing snow off it. Even so, dampness seeped through my uniform pants and I rose to pace the yard. Blythe Livingston arrived, as did a clutch of uniformed officers, crime scene techs, and someone from the coroner’s office. Neighbors peered from behind their blinds, and the woman next door, probably the one who’d called the cops on me, hovered near the fence that divided her yard from Weasel’s, cradling the Siamese in her arms. As I watched, she raised a cell phone and snapped a picture of me. Incensed, I started toward her, but she scurried inside, the screen door banging behind her.
Detective Helland emerged after forty-five minutes, gave some direction to the waiting patrol officers, and sauntered toward me.
“Now can I—”
He shook his head. “Come.” Taking me by the elbow, he led me around the house to the street side and down the driveway to a dark red Chrysler LeBaron. For one chilling moment, I thought he was going to recuff me, stuff me in the backseat, and haul me off to the station under arrest. Instead, he opened the front passenger door and said, “I need coffee. I know I can’t handle your story without more caffeine in my system.”
Keeping my mouth shut for once, I sat quietly as he drove smoothly to the nearest Starbucks. The gentle vibration of the car and the warmth blasting from the heater almost put me to sleep. I was more tired than I had realized. Not too crowded in the late morning, the Starbucks welcomed us with coffee-scented air and a cheery babble of conversation. When we ordered, Helland looked at me. “You’re the suspect—you pay.”
I was happy to pay, figuring he couldn’t be planning to toss me in jail if he was making me buy him coffee, could he? Wouldn’t that be seen as a bribe or a conflict of interest or something? And he’d paid at the food court two days ago.
Taking our steaming cups, we found a table for two behind a display shelf laden with CDs and mugs. Helland took the lid off his cup and blew across the hot liquid. I took two long gulps of my hot chocolate, needing the infusion of sugar and fat.
“Okay,” Helland said, sipping his brew. “Here’s where you convince me not to toss you in jail and throw away the key. What the hell were you doing in William Wedzel’s house, standing over his dead body?”
“I wasn’t even in the house when the officers arrived,” I protested. “Captain Woskowicz hadn’t been able to get in touch with him, so I stopped by on impulse. It was on my way home.”
“Do you do a lot of things on impulse?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. He seemed like the type who planned everything from A to Z, lived by to-do lists, and considered “spontaneity” a dirty word. I recognized that in him because I was much the same way.
“Not usually, no,” I admitted. “Unless you count joining the air force.”
“We’ll come back to that,” he said, “but for now I want to hear about Wedzel.”
I told him Weasel hadn’t worked his shift last night, that he’d emailed Woskowicz with some tale about a family emergency. “Only now I don’t think it was Weasel who sent the email,” I said. “When Woskowicz said he couldn’t get hold of Weasel and didn’t know if he was working tonight, I just decided to stop by. It didn’t seem Weasel-ish. He spends more time on his cell phone than I spend sleeping. His house was on my way home. When I saw his truck in his garage, I got worried for real and went around to check the back. I saw his foot through the window and had just called 911 when Officer Bruden jacked me up.”
“I’ll check on that,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Good.”
“Even if you did call 911, you could still have killed him. You might have been coming back to see if the body’d been discovered yet.” He kept his ice blue eyes on me as he took another sip of coffee.
“I couldn’t have killed him,” I said. “I was at work when it happened.” I crossed my fingers, hoping that was true.
“How do you know that?” he asked sharply, his eyes narrowing. “We don’t have a time of death.”
“He’s been dead awhile; I could tell from the smell.” At the memory, I swallowed hard to avoid gagging. “And his arm was limp when the officer checked for a pulse, so rigor had already gone off. That takes—what?—twenty-four to thirty hours, right?”
“Give or take,” Helland acknowledged.
The couple at the table next to us gave me an uneasy look and moved to a table at the far side of the coffee bar, muttering about “sickos.”
I ignored them. “Weasel worked his shift as usual on Tuesday night, so he left—alive—at about seven in the morning. Woskowicz got the email about Weasel’s ‘family emergency’ before noon yesterday, because he came in and told me I was working the midshift. So, he had to have been killed some time Wednesday morning, when I was at work, in full view of dozens of people.”
“Hmph,” Helland responded, apparently unimpressed by my reasoning.
“Since I’m no longer a suspect, does that mean you’ll reimburse me for the coffee?”
My question surprised a laugh out of him. He looked almost human with a smile warming his handsome features. I felt a flicker of attraction.
He sobered quickly. “So what’s your theory? I know you’ve got one,” he added in a resigned voice.
“Weasel saw something Sunday night,” I said promptly. I’d had a lot of time to think about it while I was waiting in the backyard. “He saw Porter’s killer or something that would identify the killer.”
“You mean Gatchel?”
I gave him a look. He was being deliberately obtuse. “No. It wasn’t Gatchel.”
Helland let that pass, looking at me from under half-lowered lids. “So, if Wedzel saw something, why didn’t he speak up during the investigation?”
I’d thought about that, too, and had an answer ready. “Either he didn’t realize the significance of what he’d seen, or, more likely, he decided to capitalize on his knowledge.”
“Blackmail?” Helland’s brows drew together. “Blackmailing a murderer is a dicey game.”
“Obviously.”
The implication hovered between us, unnamed but very much present. I buried my nose in my cup and inhaled the chocolate smell before draining the last sweet drop.
“Shit,” Helland muttered under his breath, clearly pissed off that his closed murder case had just been reopened. He glared at me as if it were my fault. “You’ve got whipped cream on your nose.”
After Detective Helland dropped me back at my car with an order to sign my statement at the station later, I called Captain Woskowicz to let him know about Weasel.
“Damn,” he said after a moment’s silence. “What am I going to do about the midshift?”
Mr. Sensitivity. “Did Weasel have any family?” I asked, thinking about the wagon in the backyard.
“How the hell should I know?” Woskowicz said. “It’s the police’s job to notify them.”
“I know that,” I said, controlling my temper with an effort, “but I thought we might want to send a card or flowers.”
/> “Weasel wasn’t a flowers kind of guy,” he said.
He had me there, although I rather thought the flowers were meant for bereaved family members rather than the deceased. I let it go, planning to look up Weasel’s data when I got back to the mall. I’d buy a card, at least, and pass it around for everyone to sign.
“Now I’ve got to hire another officer,” Woskowicz grumbled, hanging up without saying good-bye.
I drove home slowly, battling fatigue. My body clock was all messed up. I wanted to power through the day, rather than taking a nap, though, so I could sleep normally tonight and get back on schedule. Fubar was nowhere to be seen when I entered the house, but a small rodent leg of some kind by the cat door told me he’d been by. Picking the leg up with a paper towel, I disposed of it outside, then came back in for a long shower and a change of clothes. As I pulled an orange sweatshirt over my head, I wished I had access to Weasel’s computer and phone records. I knew the police would check them and wondered if they held any clues to his murder. If, as I suspected, he’d been blackmailing Porter’s killer, how had he contacted him or her? Could he have been stupid enough to arrange for a payoff at his house, or had the killer tracked him down? Nothing about Weasel’s death was staged; the killer left him where he’d fallen, not bothering to “display” him as he had Porter. That led me to believe we weren’t dealing with a serial killer with some sick mental pathology; we were dealing with someone who was really pissed off at Porter and who needed to kill Weasel to tie up loose ends. Someone ruthless. Whoever it was hadn’t killed in a fit of passion—he or she had planned it, working out the logistics of getting Porter’s body to the mall and into the Diamanté window.
As I was trying to figure out what Weasel had seen Sunday night—surely not the murderer lugging Porter’s body through the mall or he would have called it in—the phone rang. Squeezing water out of my hair with a towel, I picked it up. “Hello?”
At first all I heard was nasal breathing. Then, “Is this Officer Ferris?” The voice was male, youngish, hesitant.
Die Buying Page 13
