Back on Murder

by Mark J. Bertrand

  You have to admire the move. The lieutenant understands how the game is played. He wants to unload me, and by ditching Lorenz in favor of Theresa Cavallo yesterday afternoon, defying his instructions, I’ve given him the perfect opportunity. Such a little thing, but it was all he needed.

  “I want to talk to the captain,” I say.

  He’s so quick to agree I know there’s no hope. Still, we troop over to Hedges’s door, rapping softly until he invites us inside.

  “It’s you,” he says, rising to his feet. “Off to your new assignment?”

  “Sir, you told me I could work the case. That’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t want another special assignment. I’m tired of being farmed out like this. If you’d just let me get on with the job, like you said you would – ”

  “Listen, March. I have given you a shot, and from what Lieutenant Bascombe tells me, you haven’t made the most of it. I told you to get along with Lorenz, but you can’t seem to do that.”

  “What’s more important, getting along or getting a result?”

  He ignores the jab. “I’m also very concerned with your cavalier attitude toward the lieutenant’s direction. He and Lorenz were relying on you to follow up with Narcotics – isn’t that right, Lieutenant? – and instead you disappeared all day. I need my people to pull their own weight, March.”

  “Please,” I say. “Reassign me, put me on another case, whatever. But don’t loan me out again. That’s all I ask.”

  Hedges glances down, embarrassed, and Bascombe shuffles his feet behind me, no doubt worried the captain will cave in.

  “You did good work at the scene,” Hedges concedes, “and I was really hoping it wouldn’t be a fluke. But this idea of yours about Hannah Mayhew? That’s guesswork, not police work.”

  “They’re comparing the samples as we speak. If they don’t match, fine. We can cross that one off. But if you get rid of me now and the samples do match, how’s that gonna look?”

  Hedges chuckles. “In that case, I’d feel pretty stupid. And if it happens, you can come on back. I’ll owe you a big apology, and so will the lieutenant here – isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Bascombe says. I hear the smile in his voice.

  “In the meantime,” the captain says, “if this is the angle you’ve decided to pursue, I think it would be best to do it on Wanda Mosser’s time, not mine.”

  “And she’s agreed to that?” I ask, grasping at straws.

  He answers me with a smile. “Everybody’s off-loading their dead weight on Wanda. She’ll be happy to see a familiar face. Especially one as motivated as you are. And I tell you what, if things work out over there, and you find at the end of her investigation that you’re still feeling repentant, you come back to me and we’ll talk.”

  “Let’s talk now.”

  Coming around the desk, he starts patting me on the shoulder, easing me toward the door, where Bascombe, noticing my free side, starts patting that, too. The captain’s happy to have one less problem to deal with, while the lieutenant can take pride in a well-executed maneuver. While Lorenz kept me pinned down, he went around the side and flanked me. But no, who am I kidding? I flanked myself.

  So now I’m on the threshold, feeling like a paratrooper about to jump, knowing my chute was packed by people who don’t care how hard I land.

  So that’s that.

  I’m out.

  CHAPTER 8

  Free fall. There’s something exciting about it, like finding out you have cancer and you’ll be dead in six months. It’s a bummer, sure, but liberating, too. All the things you were afraid to do back when there was too much to live for, suddenly they’re fair game. I think about that scenario often, usually at night, with Charlotte sleeping at the far edge of the bed and the ceiling fan crawling through its circuit.

  If you knew you were going to die, what would you do? Fight to hang on a few more months, or throw yourself into a task that really means something?

  I dial Charlotte’s number, expecting to find her at the computer in her home office, doing whatever it is corporate attorneys do. Instead, I hear footsteps on pavement and road noise in the background.

  “Where are you?”

  “Rice Village,” she says. “I decided to do a little shopping.”

  “Good therapy, huh?” I glance at my watch. “Can we do lunch?”

  “Is something wrong, Roland?” she asks with a note of concern.

  “Kind of. I’ll tell you when we meet.”

  She goes through her mental list of restaurants, cross-referencing whatever’s nearest, finally suggesting Prego. The drive takes me fifteen minutes, then I burn another five navigating the warren of streets around Rice Village, trying to remember the exact location. By the time I park and walk inside, Charlotte’s already secured a table and started scrutinizing the menu. She’s always taken her food quite seriously. A couple of shopping bags are stacked at her feet.

  “So why the midday rendezvous?” she asks. “It’s been a long time since we’ve done something like this.”

  “You know about the missing girl, the one on television? Hannah Mayhew?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, they’ve put me on the task force.”

  She swishes the ice in her water glass. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “It’s definitely not good.”

  The waiter comes and we order. I don’t feel much like eating, but I get the lentil soup. Charlotte changes her mind a couple of times, finally landing on the grilled red snapper, joking that if I’m taking her to lunch for a change, she’s going to get something expensive.

  If we’d had this conversation the other night, instead of arguing over our tenant, the tone would have been quite different. That seems like a decade ago, but it was just Friday night. I blew my big break almost as soon as I got it, and over the stupidest thing. All I had to do was go to Geiger’s office immediately, but instead I’d tagged along with Cavallo for no better reason than that she was easy on the eyes.

  Not that I can tell Charlotte that. My account of the events is selective, but by the time I’m done she gets the point.

  “So you’ve screwed up your last chance?”

  “Pretty much.”

  She takes a bite of snapper, and I honestly can’t tell if the contemplative look on her face has to do with my predicament or the taste of the food. I stare into my soup, moving the spoon in tiny circles.

  “Roland,” she says, “have you thought about chucking it in?”

  “Retirement? I don’t have the time in.”

  “No, not retirement. Just quitting. If they’re not going to let you work Homicide, why don’t you find something else? I mean, it’s not like we’re living off your salary or anything. Maybe it’s time to make a course correction.”

  “Can we not talk about me quitting?”

  “But if you’re miserable with the job, I don’t see why – ”

  “There’s still a possibility,” I say. “If I can connect the murders with this girl . . .”

  “Roland, you know what I’d like? Just listen for a second. You’ve been thrashing around for a long time, like you’ve got some kind of clichéd inner demon. And we both know why. What I’d like is for you to let go. Leave the department. In fact, we could both get a fresh start. We could move somewhere else. We could sell the house and do some traveling – we always said we would someday. Why not do it now? What’s the point of being unhappy? We have the money, Roland, so let’s – ”

  It’s a good thing I’m not hooked up to an EKG, or the whole restaurant would be deafened by the shrill, beeping pulse. As it is, my fist puts a decent bend in the handle of my spoon.

  “We’re not going to sell that house,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice calm. “Never. And I’m not leaving the job. That’s not why I wanted to talk.”

  “Then why did you?”

  I drop the spoon in the bowl and sit back. Honestly, I don’t have an answer. There was a r
eason, some deep and primal instinct that pushed me at a moment of crisis to reach out. But Charlotte and I, we don’t function that way, not anymore. Especially not now.

  “I just thought . . . I wanted to let you know what’s going on.”

  “Great,” she says. “Now I know.”

  She keeps eating, using her fork like a trident on the helpless fish, all joy in the process now gone. When the waiter swings by with offers of espresso and dessert, I shake my head and ask for the bill. Charlotte and I part ways on the sidewalk after a desultory kiss.

  An hour later, on the far side of town, the wind blows Cavallo’s twisted locks across her eyes. While she grapples with her hair, I flip through photos of Hannah Mayhew’s abandoned car, a white Ford Focus hatchback. I match the painted lines in the photographs with the parking space divisions at my feet, working out the car’s exact placement. A makeshift shrine by the nearest lamppost, wilting flowers, candles, and sun-baked greeting cards, helps to mark the spot.

  As far as crime statistics are concerned, Willowbrook Mall ranks second in the city behind the notorious Greenspoint, mainly people breaking into parked cars or simply stealing them. Fortunately Hannah’s Focus wasn’t one of them, or we’d have even less to work with than we do. Along with the shots of the car, I have grainy stills from the video surveillance footage.

  “Those haven’t been released to the media,” Cavallo says.

  According to the time stamps, the Focus arrived at 12:58 p.m. Twelve minutes later, a gray shadow emerged from the driver’s side – presumably Hannah, but the action transpired too far from the camera for decent coverage.

  “While she was sitting there, she made a call from her mobile to the prepaid number. The connection lasted about thirty seconds. She was probably calling to say she’d arrived.”

  “And then the van pulls up?”

  I flip to the next still, in which a white panel van blocks the view.

  “One theory is, she got in the van. It was moving slow, and kind of stops right there, but you can’t tell from the footage if she got in. A group of people passes by right then. She might have blended in with them and gone inside the mall.” Cavallo fingers through my stack, sliding out another photo. “As they get closer, you can see one of the girls kind of looks like her. So that’s another theory.”

  “Any footage from inside the mall?”

  “Nothing we can confirm as her, no. You’d be surprised how many five-foot-four teenage blondes there are in the mall at any given time, and how hard it is to tell them apart on surveillance tape. She had a shiny pink purse, pretty distinctive, and we haven’t spotted anything like that.”

  “No witnesses have come forward?”

  She laughs. “Over fifty have. She was spotted in the parking lot, inside Macy’s, Sephora, and Williams-Sonoma. She was all over the food court. Sometimes with other girls, sometimes alone. She was arguing with a boy – sometimes a white boy, sometimes Latino – and she was holding hands with at least two different guys.”

  “She got around.”

  “Yeah, you could say that. There was even a witness in the Abercrombie changing room who heard a girl crying in the next stall. She couldn’t see this girl, but she’s pretty sure it had to be Hannah Mayhew. They’re all sure.”

  “And they just want to help. I know how it works.”

  Go to a neighborhood like the Third Ward, and no matter what happens – somebody can walk up to a dude in broad daylight and put a gun to his head – nobody sees anything. But out in the suburbs, everyone sees something. As they say, the crazies come out of the woodwork – only the crazies are normal enough. They’re just starved for attention, captivated by their proximity to the girl on tv.

  Not that they’re making things up. I’ve interviewed witnesses before with impossible stories, the details obviously culled from news coverage, yet they were convinced what they said was true. Most could probably have passed a lie-detector test. No doubt at this very moment a young woman sits in front of the television in her Abercrombie T-shirt, convinced she was close enough to Hannah Mayhew to hear her weep.

  “So you see where the manpower’s going,” Cavallo says. “We’ve got a small army checking out every delivery van and contractor in a ten-mile radius, and another one following up on every sighting that’s been reported.”

  “What about her friends at school? Her church?”

  “We got surveillance going on a kid at the school. Deals a little weed. Depending on who you ask, Hannah was either dating the boy or trying to convert him. His name is James Fontaine, and so far he’s the likeliest suspect.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Honestly? I don’t have a feeling one way or the other. Usually I do.”

  I hand the photos back, then walk a circle around the empty parking space, studying the pavement for I don’t know what. The wind ripples my pant leg. Overhead, the clouds are black-rimmed and foreboding.

  “Can I level with you?” I say. “There’s only one thing I’m concerned about, and it’s the dna sample. If we get a match back on that, it blows this case wide open and puts me back where I belong – ”

  “And if it doesn’t match?”

  “It will. You may not have a feeling one way or the other, but I do. The girl on that bed was Hannah Mayhew. I don’t know how she got there, but she did.”

  “You’re convinced.”

  “Absolutely. So just tell me when to expect the answer.”

  She shrugs. “Maybe a day, maybe a week. How am I supposed to know?”

  “You said you had juice.”

  “That doesn’t mean your hunch goes to the top of my list. Like I said, I’m not convinced, so you can’t expect me to put resources behind it, no matter how badly you want there to be a link.”

  My collar tightens around my neck. “If that’s how you feel, I can go back to the me myself and get it done. You should have let me do that in the first place.”

  “It’s not your case.”

  “It’s as much mine as yours now.”

  She crosses her arms. “No. It’s not.”

  We head back to her car, neither of us very interested in continuing the conversation. Teaming us up was Wanda’s idea. Maybe it was a favor to me – or maybe it was punishment, the hair of the dog, her way of teaching me a lesson.

  She starts the engine, letting the air-conditioning blow, then turns in her seat.

  “March, let’s get something clear.”

  “All right,” I say, not liking her tone or the intensity of her gaze.

  “You see this?” She makes a fist of her left hand and brandishes the engagement ring. “You appreciate the significance?”

  “Uh . . . yeah.”

  “It means that no matter what you and Wanda have cooked up between you, nothing’s gonna happen. You understand that?”

  “I’m a happily married man,” I say.

  Her eyes narrow in contempt.

  “Look,” I say. “You don’t know me. All I care about is getting those results back. If you’d just make that happen, you could get rid of me a lot sooner.”

  She puts the car in gear. “Anyway. You’re old enough to be my dad.”

  “What? No, I’m not.” I punch the window button, then lean my head out to yell. “Thank you, Wanda, wherever you are.”

  Cavallo smiles, but just barely. When we hit FM-1960, I point right and she turns left.

  “I need to get back,” she says.

  “Fine, but there’s a lead I want to follow up while we’re out here.”

  She sighs. “What?”

  “That youth pastor from yesterday. I want to swing by and rattle his cage.”

  “There’s no point.”

  “Just turn around, all right? Pretty please? You can drop me off. I’ll hitch a ride back with some uniforms.”

  She glides into the left-turn lane, tapping her fingers on the wheel. When the light changes, she whips the front around late, giving the tires a squeal, then pours on th
e gas. The woman always drives like she’s chasing someone. Or being chased.

  Finding Carter Robb is easier said than done. His office at the church proves empty, and the number I worm out of the secretary goes straight to voicemail. According to Cavallo, who’s decided to stick with me for the moment, he runs after-school programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, trading slices of pizza for a captive audience to evangelize. But Hannah’s disappearance trumps the usual schedule.

  “All he does anymore is make copies of the flyer,” the secretary says. “Then he posts them all over the place. Sometimes the youth group kids go with him.”

  “You have any idea where I could intercept him?”

  She fingers the beads around her neck in thought. “His wife teaches at Cypress Christian School – no relation to the church. There’s a coffee place across from there, Seattle Coffee. His home away from home, I think.”

  “I know where it is,” Cavallo says.

  This turns out to be only partly true, as she proves by hunting around for twenty minutes while I dig through the Key Map and try to navigate. When we finally locate the coffee shop, there’s no sign of Robb, so I persuade Cavallo to take me to the school where his wife teaches. We page her from the office, then wait.

  After a few minutes I check my watch.

  “You’re not like the other homicide detectives,” Cavallo says.

  “So you know a lot of them?”

  She gives me a look like I’m an idiot. “They’re mostly big talkers. Gift of the gab. But not you. You’re more of a brooder, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe I’ve got more to brood about.”

  “I always expect them to be depressed,” she says. “Doing that kind of work, seeing what they see. But I guess you develop an immunity. I don’t think I could.”

  “You might surprise yourself someday.”

  Cavallo starts to reply, then looks past me. “Here she is.”