New Blood

by Shane Lusher

  I put that on a back burner. If Vic were in some way tied to Colby’s murder, then it was periphery. At least that was the way it seemed, and that was the way I wanted it to be just then. He’d given me the only possible lead, which may or may not have been a distraction, but it was what I had to go on.

  Then again, he could have been leading me away from himself. By providing Wayne Trueblood with motive — the life insurance — I was less apt to look at Daniels.

  I Googled a quick number and picked up my cell. Glancing at the time — six-thirty — I hit ‘connect’.

  She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” I said. “Am I speaking to Diane Trueblood?”

  “It’s Diane Ligezinski again, but yes. Who is this?”

  “My name is Dana Hartman,” I said. “I’m a special investigator working for the sheriff’s department in Tazewell County, and-”

  “Is this about Wayne’s daughter?” she asked. “It’s about her murder, isn’t it? I’ve been following it online.”

  It struck me that she sounded much more elderly than she should have. If she were Wayne’s age, of course. I clicked over to my search results. No date of birth.

  “Yes, ma’am, it is,” I said. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Why would I know anything about that?” she asked. “Maybe you should speak to my lawyer.”

  “Ah-Ms. Ligezinski-”

  “It’s Miss,” she said. “Don’t throw that women’s lib crap at me. I’m not married, never would get married again, so I’m a Miss. There is a point to the English language.”

  “My apologies, Miss Ligezinski,” I said. “But I highly doubt that you would need a lawyer to talk to me. For one thing, I’m not a deputy-”

  “You’re not? Then what the hell are you doing calling my number and saying you are?”

  “I’m a consultant, working for the sheriff,” I said.

  “Prove it,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Prove it.”

  I looked around Tad’s office. That was a good one. I could be anybody. And she knew that.

  “Um. Would you prefer if someone from the sheriff’s office contacted you first?”

  It was weak, but what the hell.

  “No,” she said. “I want you to drive up here and show me some identification. I don’t speak to people on the telephone anyway.”

  “Ah, Miss Lige-”

  But she had already hung up. I wondered what I was going to do for about half a second and then dialed the number again.

  This time it rang considerably longer than before, nearly eight or nine rings, and I’d resigned myself to just leaving a message, then resigned myself to the idea that maybe there was no voice mail, when she picked up.

  “What?” she said.

  “Miss Ligezinski, this is Dana Hartman, again,” I said.

  “I know who you are. I do have caller ID.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Please don’t hang up. If you want me to come up to Joliet with identification, I can do that. Just let me know what time would be good for you.”

  There was a short breath, a snort, on her end of the line, and for a moment I thought she’d gone again.

  “Miss Ligezinski?” I asked.

  “Just hold your horses,” she said. I heard paper being shuffled in the background. “I have to find my goddamned calendar.”

  I waited, and after a minute or two, she said, “How about October 12th?”

  I laughed, thinking maybe she was joking, but she didn’t respond. “Wait, Miss Ligezinski-”

  “Just call me Diane,” she said. “You keep pronouncing it wrong anyway.”

  “Diane, then,” I said. “It would be really great if you could talk to me earlier.”

  I thought about when I would be able to drive up to Joliet. It was only two hours away, but I had the deposition in the morning, the meeting with Percy, and then I had to figure out what was going on with Erin, because Friday afternoons and evenings were in my time slot.

  I’d need at least five hours to get up there, talk to her, and then get back.

  “Earlier when? Like now?” she asked.

  “No, not now,” I said. “How about tomorrow?”

  “Can’t,” she said. “Golf.”

  “Alright then,” I said, and tried again. “All day?”

  “Jesus, you’re annoying,” she said. “Can you play golf?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You any good?”

  “No.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said. “I’ve got a tee time at nine tomorrow morning. Be here at quarter to nine.”

  She gave me directions to the golf course, at a place called Cambridge Estates.

  Rather than simply telling me how to get there once I’d reached Joliet, she asked for my address and then literally told me where I needed to go every step of the way. Take Royal Avenue around the park to Court Street, follow that out of town through Tremont, get on I-155 north, etc.

  I wondered if she was reading everything off map search, but I didn’t dare interrupt her. It made me impatient, but it also gave me an indication of the kind of woman I was dealing with. Precise, controlling, and not one to beat around the bush.

  Maybe I was finally learning something about people.

  We hung up and I checked out Cambridge Estates. It was a senior living community; one-story condos surrounding a golf course, with two swimming pools, a health club, an activities center, two bars and a restaurant on the premises.

  Everyone got around in golf carts, and except for the lack of a supermarket, I thought, no one would really have any reason to leave.

  The next on the list was Darcy Stamm. I found her quickly, in the online archives of the Peoria Journal Star, which had covered the Trueblood homicide as well.

  I’d already seen her once, at the arraignment, but I scanned through the photographs nonetheless.

  Darcy was a woman in her early twenties, with long, blonde hair and a thin face with a nose that turned up slightly at the end.

  One of the images showed her standing with her father, his arms around her. She appeared to have been crying, the skin around her eyes puffy and red.

  In the photo with her mother, who was dressed in Tazewell County orange, Darcy wasn’t standing so much next to her as she was near her, as if the photographer had had to work really hard just to get the both of them in the picture.

  One of the articles in the Journal Star mentioned that she was a sophomore at Bradley University. Nothing more, just: “Darcy Stamm, a sophomore at Bradley University.” Full stop.

  There were more hits, which appeared from their summaries to be rosters of long distance races, but I ignored those.

  I picked up my phone and then put it back down. It was way too early for any self-respecting college student to be awake, especially in the summertime.

  I dialed the number anyway and left a message. I left my name, number, and the reason I was calling — “investigating your mother’s claim of innocence” — and hung up, hoping that my intuition from yesterday was wrong, which was that her father had tipped her off and that she wasn’t picking up because she knew why I was calling.

  Figuring that the tattoo parlor where Colby had gotten her illicit ink done would most certainly be closed until noon, and probably later, I looked up Jimmy Remmert.

  I found his telephone number and address—a house in Lake Windsor not far from Kelly’s, where he lived with his parents, if indeed James Remmert, Sr. and Paula Remmert were his parents—and pulled out that part of the murder book.

  His statement, confirmed by eyewitnesses, had been that he’d driven Trueblood to her car, which had been parked at the high school, and returned fifteen minutes later. Not enough time to kill her, put her out in the woods across the street from her house, and return. Not even enough time to hide the body and the SUV somewhere. If he’d done it, and left that hulking pink mon
ster parked out in front of the high school, it would have been noticed over the weekend, and at the latest on Monday.

  Besides, fifteen minutes was just enough time to drive her to the school, drop her off, and return. Remmert had also been the one to contact the police to tell them she was missing, which didn’t necessarily prove anything. He could have called it in to pull attention away from himself. But given all of the other circumstances, it was pretty obvious he hadn’t done it.

  I still wanted to talk to him. I decided that I could just stop by on my way out to Kelly’s to pick up Erin that afternoon.

  Then there were Jones and Pinnel, screwing in Metamora at the time of the murder. Rassi had been dead sure about them. I got both of their telephone numbers and addresses from the web and wrote them down. I noted that Jones lived at home with his parents. Pinnel lived in an apartment in East Peoria. They didn’t seem to be really good suspects, either, but I would call them later that day.

  I remembered then that I’d wanted to speak to the assistant state’s attorney who’d been in charge of the Maclaren case before that had gone belly-up. I’d completely forgotten about her. I Googled that one, and came up with a name. Tina Graciano.

  Another click, and I had her telephone number.

  Twenty-Eight

  “I can’t talk to you about Maclaren, Dana,” Tina said into the phone. “I’m sorry.”

  It was 8 A.M., and I was showered and shaved, sitting in my suit in Tad’s driveway with the windows down in the car. I still had an hour to drive the ten minutes it would take me to get down to Court Street, park and find the deposition room.

  “How are you holding up on that?” I asked. Graciano had the kind of disarming familiarity right from the get-go that most likely had inspired someone to hire her on as an ASA in the first place. She certainly gave one the feeling that you could speak to her about almost anything. That would be a good quality in a prosecutor.

  “Dana,” she said. “Dubois handed him to us. We didn’t vet him. That was the job of the sheriff’s department. How am I holding up? I’m pissed off, that’s what I am.”

  “Understandable,” I said. “Are you still on it, though? If we find whoever killed Colby Trueblood?”

  “We?” she asked. “Look, Dana,” she said. “Wayne Trueblood talked to Glenn, and Glenn is not happy about this situation. No offense, but it’s basically the worst possible thing Dubois could have done, bringing you in.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “Glenn told Dubois he would have to deputize you, give this thing some semblance of protocol, but Dubois refused.”

  I turned over the engine and switched on the air conditioning. The car shuddered, but kept running.

  “Seriously,” she said. “If you find anything, please don’t touch it. Give us a call, or get one of the sheriff’s detectives. Hell, call somebody in uniform. My point is, if we have a civilian walking around, and that civilian finds a suspect? You can forget about any kind of conviction.”

  I wiped at the perspiration on my forehead. The weather was much the same as it had been the previous day. The thermometer hung on the outside of the kitchen window said seventy-four degrees, which meant it would probably peak out around ninety-five later in the afternoon. There was still a lingering mist from the night before, and the grass along the side of the driveway glistened with dew.

  “Well,” I said after a moment. “What would you suggest I do?”

  “You want my honest opinion?” she asked.

  No, I thought. Lie to me. “Yeah?”

  “Stay home,” she said. “I hate to say it, but let Dubois figure it out.”

  “He didn’t seem to serve you very well last time,” I said.

  She laughed. “See you at nine.”

  I took off my suit coat and draped it over the passenger seat and thought about the deposition.

  They say that the worst kind of witness is a helpful one, one who is willing to offer up information. Though my lawyer during the assault case had warned me off giving too much detail, that’s what I had done, and he’d had a heck of a time getting me off.

  I’d told them I was distressed, I was angry, and I felt that the doctor was being overly aggressive. The lawyer had been pissed off when I’d begun giving a full play-by-play, and at one time he’d pulled me aside and hissed, “Stop talking. You just answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

  Yes or No. I knew that the Roe case was different, since I didn’t have much to offer anyone. I also didn’t have anything to lose, as long as I kept my mouth shut.

  I put the car in reverse and dialed Kelly’s number.

  “Hey,” she said as I backed out onto Royal and headed toward the Lagoon. “How was your night?”

  “Good,” I said. “Had an unexpected visitor. Percy Trueblood.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How did that go?”

  “Strangely okay,” I said. “We’re best buds now.”

  She didn’t say anything, so I went on.

  “He wants me to help him on the Roe and Sweeney case.”

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “What’s your take on him again?” I asked as I merged onto Court and passed Lucky Tooth Dental. The place had always sounded like a Chinese restaurant to me.

  “He’s definitely reliable,” she said. “I just wouldn’t want to go out for beers with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not my type,” she said. She sounded distracted.

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just tired. The neighbor’s dog barked all night.”

  “Everybody else okay?” I asked.

  “Erin and Casey are still asleep,” she said. “Of course.”

  I pulled onto the square and into one of the diagonal parking spots in front of the courthouse. I turned off the car and got out, looking across the street at the Java’s.

  “What are your plans for today?” she asked.

  “Deposition,” I said. “Meeting with Percy, tattoo parlor maybe, Jimmy Remmert. I’ll have to check my calendar for the rest.”

  “The busy life of a detective,” she said.

  “Anyway,” I said. “I have to go up to Joliet to play golf tomorrow morning.”

  “Golf?”

  “Long story,” I said as I got out of my car and headed over to Java’s. “Meeting with Trueblood’s ex-wife. She won’t talk to me unless I play golf with her.”

  “Wow,” Kelly said. “You do get around.”

  “You know anything about her?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said. “That was before my time.”

  “Nobody ever talks about her?”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “So, I was thinking, if you all want to come up with me, we could spend tomorrow night in Chicago, go shopping, out to eat, whatever you want.”

  Kelly paused for a moment.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong.” She seemed to perk up. “Actually, it’s not a bad idea. I’ll ask the girls, but it’s fine by me.”

  “We’ll have to go early.”

  “How early?”

  “Tee time is at nine,” I said. “So we’d need to get out of here at the latest by six-thirty.”

  “That’s a bad idea,” Kelly said. “The girls won’t have a pulse by then. But wait.” There was the sound of her purse zipping open, and then pages being turned.

  “You know what?” she said.

  “What?”

  “If I can get my shift changed around, why don’t we go this evening?”

  By this time I’d gone into the Java’s and, telling Kelly to hold on for a moment, I ordered a filter coffee to go.

  “I’ll check my schedule,” I said as I got my coffee and paid.

  “This is the guy who only works once a week,” she said.

  We rang off, and I took my cup back across to the park in fr
ont of the courthouse.

  I sat down on a bench and blew on the steaming hot coffee. A flat-bed truck with sheets of glass loaded vertically on the back pulled into the space next to mine. Two men got out of the truck and busied themselves with undoing various straps.

  A sheriff’s car came around the park, driving slowly, and then idled into a spot reserved for bailiffs. I didn’t know the woman who exited the car, but she looked and me and waved, and so I waved back.

  Eight-thirty. Tired of sitting around with nothing to do, I tossed the rest of my coffee into a garbage receptacle and headed into the courthouse.

  I was only mildly surprised to see that the state’s attorney himself was present at the deposition. He was, after all, the county’s main lawyer, and would be in charge of providing the defense..

  When I was ushered into the room by the same bailiff I’d seen getting out of her car next to the park, Glenn Holzel was already seated at the head of the table, which contained bottles of mineral water and ice tea, and a thermos of coffee with a sad group of chipped white cups surrounding it.

  Tina Graciano was sitting next to him.

  “Dana,” she said. “You’re early.”

  There was no mention of our phone call. Graciano and Holzel stood up, and after we’d all shaken hands, we sat down.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate what you’re doing for Tad.”

  The condolences had come from Holzel, and I knew that the comment might very well be an ingenuous one, since Holzel had been one of Tad’s major political rivals. Yet the zeal with which he was running the case indicated that he’d been willing to set that political rivalry aside in the name of justice.

  At least that’s what I’d assumed. Both Holzel and Graciano seemed at a loss as to what to say for a moment or two. After a while, Holzel brushed something off his coat lapel and cleared his throat.

  “Dana,” he said. “I know that Tina spoke to you this morning, and I just want to reiterate what she said. We’re on shaky ground here with the public, and Tad’s case is going to be a jury trial. I know it’s probably too much to ask for you to completely refrain from looking into anything.”