Ryan grinned at him and licked at an immense cone of tutti fruiti.
“Have a double-decker, on me, Frankie,” he said as Leal walked across the street.
“What kind of bullshit is this?” Leal asked. He nodded a hello to Smith.
“Orders,” Ryan said, dabbing at his mustache. “The boss called. Doesn’t want us to go in yet.”
“Why’s that?”
Ryan grinned again. “Because he wants to be in on the entry team.”
“Great. And when the fuck will that be?”
“Relax, Frankie.” He rolled his tongue around the side of the cone. “We got a surveillance team on the house.”
“How do you know they aren’t out having ice cream, too?” Leal said, sitting down in a huff.
Ryan snapped his fingers and a young girl dressed in a white shirt with an embroidered horse on it came over.
“Please get my friend here one of these,” he said, holding up his cone. He made a show of reaching in his pocket for his wallet, removing a five, and winking. “And I’ll need a receipt, too, please.”
The girl hurried off and Leal said, “Don’t you think she’s a little bit too young for you?”
“Hey, old enough to bleed, old enough to breed, I always say.”
Leal frowned, thinking of his own daughters and hoping that they never met someone like Ryan. He took out his notebook and a pen and placed it on the table.
“All right, as long as we’re here fucking off,” he said, “we might as well do some planning.”
“What’s to plan?” Ryan said. “We hit the house and break down his front door.”
“Uh-uh,” said Leal. “We’ll do it MEG style.” He drew a quick diagram of the house, and made notations where he wanted each officer to go in. Then he checked in with the surveillance team, asking if they saw any activity.
“Negative, Sarge,” came the reply.
“All right,” Leal said, turning to Smith. “Joe, you and I will go into together, all right? Our objective is to get to the bathroom as quickly as possible in case Walker is home.”
Smith nodded, smiling. “So nothing gets flushed, right?”
“With a two-level house like that,” Leal continued, “you can’t rule out a bathroom on the lower level as well. If it is there, it’ll probably be right below the one upstairs.”
“And how do we know where that one is?” Ryan asked.
“Simple, you just look for the standpipe coming out of the roof.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “I can see your time in narcotics really sharpened you up.”
Leal glanced at his watch and frowned.
“Why the hell does Brice want to be on the entry team?”
Ryan shrugged. “Maybe he misses it, being saddled to a desk all day. The LT is a hands-on type of guy, though. I know this for a fact.”
“Oh yeah?” Leal said.
“I remember being with him on a barricaded suspect call once,” Ryan said. “He was the sergeant and I was still a patrolman. This asshole barricaded himself in this trailer in Stickney. Every once in a while he’d peek out with a rifle. Hadn’t fired it, but he’d threatened a couple of people.” He licked some more of the ice cream cone.
“So we got this fucking trailer surrounded, see, and this candy-ass lieutenant, who didn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground, is running the show, trying to talk this guy out with a bullhorn. The guy keeps giving him the finger, and the lieutenant is getting madder and madder. Meanwhile, they got the old thirty-seven millimeter gas gun all ready to go, but the lieutenant’s afraid to make a decision.”
“Sounds typical,” Leal said, thinking of Brice.
“Anyway, Brice is off to my left behind a squad, and next to me is this rookie, been on the street only a couple of weeks.” Ryan paused to grin. “This kid calls over and asks Brice what he should do, ’cause he has to take a shit real bad. Only he’s saying he has to go ‘number two.’ Now by this time, it was getting a little bit dark, and I’m thinking that we’re probably gonna be there all fucking night, when Brice tells the kid to just go squat in the bushes and take a crap.” Ryan swirled the cone against his tongue. “ ‘Just squat down there,’ Brice tells him. So just when the rookie drops his pants, old Brice whips a rock over at the kid’s squad and says, ‘Look out, he’s got a silencer.’ ”
Ryan paused to laugh, and Leal and Smith were chuckling, too.
“But the kid had his shotgun propped up next to him and grabs for it, and the thing discharges into the air. Well, the lieutenant thinks we’re under fire and finally gives the command to use the gas. The kid wound up with pants full of shit, and the poor dumb asshole had to dive through a glass window ’cause he’d barricaded the doors to the place.”
“I think I remember hearing about that,” Leal said. “Wasn’t there a fire, too?”
“Yeah,” said Ryan. “The fucking trailer burned down. Man, those things go up like Christmas trees. But I did learn one thing. If you have to go, go now, or forever hold your pants.”
“And your shotgun,” Leal said.
The waitress reappeared with Leal’s cone. She dropped the receipt and change in Ryan’s hand and Leal was just about to take a bite when he heard one of the other officers say, “Hiya, boss.”
“What the hell is this? A goddamned party?” Brice’s gruff voice carried over to them. “Doesn’t anybody do any real police work anymore?”
Ryan and Smith stood up quickly and dumped their cones in the trash. Ryan then grabbed the one from Leal and dumped that one also.
Brice walked up to them and glared.
“This a fucking Sunday social?” he said.
“We were waiting on you, boss,” Ryan said. “Figured the men could use a little break.”
“Listen,” Brice said. “When I run an operation, it’s done by the book. No false moves.”
Leal glanced obliquely at Ryan, who still had some vestiges of pink ice cream on his mustache.
“Everybody in position?” Brice asked.
“Roger that,” Ryan said. “We were just going over the house diagram.”
Brice stared at him a moment more, then raised his radio to his lips. “This is Lieutenant Brice. Get in position. We’ll move on my command.”
They went to their vehicles and slipped on the Kevlar vests with POLICE printed in white block letters across the front and back. Everyone was grimly silent as they drove up to the adjacent houses, which in this neighborhood were a good fifty yards away. Cutting across lawns on foot, they moved to the far side of the evergreen shrubs along Martin Walker’s driveway, then strode quickly to the front door. Brice opened the screen door, and rang the doorbell. “Police,” he yelled. “Search warrant.” He motioned to Smith who was holding the sledgehammer. Smith set his feet and slammed the hammer into the solid oak door as though he was swinging for the fences. The door buckled and slammed inward.
“Police,” yelled Leal as he went through the door. He and Smith made a quick but cautious trek to the upstairs bathroom and listened as, one by one, the rooms were cleared. At the end it was apparent that they’d hit still another empty house.
“Now what?” Smith asked as they stood in the confines of the bathroom.
Leal looked around, popping open the medicine cabinet. “We’ll let the dog do his stuff, and the ETs. Maybe we’ll find something, but I think this dude felt the heat and booked up days ago.”
Smith nodded. “If only we’d moved quicker.”
“No false moves,” Leal said, placing a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Remember?”
Brice surprised everybody by finding four folded packets of cocaine in the top dresser drawer in the master bedroom and spotting a counterfeit soft drink can with a hinged top with more drugs in the kitchen. One of the ETs did a quick field test before bagging and tagging it. They watched as he broke the sequential glass cylinders and the resulting liquid turned a bright blue.
“Looks pretty pure,” Leal said.
“Gr
eat,” Brice said. “We got that fucker by the balls, now. All we gotta do is wait till he’s picked up.”
Leal went to the living room and wanted to look around, trying to remember how the room looked the night he and Hart were there. Something was different, but he couldn’t place it. But in the dim lighting and with the drapes drawn, he couldn’t see much.
“Hey, Sarge,” one the ETs called from the center of the room. Look at this.” He swung a black light in an arc over the rug and two spots glowed. “Know what this looks like?”
Leal grunted. He knew all right. It looked like blood.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Heart-to-Heart Conversations
Leal had tried to call Sharon again after he’d gotten home. It was after seven, and the weight of the exceptionally long day was starting to wear on him. He’d popped a beer, ate some chicken, and settled down in front of the TV. He looked at his clock. Nine thirty-five. That meant ten thirty-five in New York. No sense calling her this late, especially when she had to get up early. Maybe she’d shut off her phone. Maybe that’s why there had been no answer on either of his previous calls.
He decided to drink another beer to celebrate the successful completion of the search warrants. Man, they were really close to cracking this one. The biggest case of his career.
Too bad I don’t have anyone to share it with right now, he thought.
He leaned back as the ten o’clock news came on. No word about the Walker case, he noted, suddenly wondering when he was going to see the new commercial he was in. He closed his eyes just for a minute as the weatherman talked about some storms possibly moving this way. The next thing he knew when he opened them it was two in the morning and the television was playing some old movie. Getting up, he felt incredibly stiff and sore, especially his neck. After shuffling to the bathroom to urinate, he tossed his clothes off and went straight to bed.
The sound of the alarm at six thirty brought the dull pain in his head bubbling to the surface. It felt like someone had used his temples for an anvil. Even the steady stream of hot water from the shower did little to alleviate it. Black coffee and aspirin for breakfast helped a little, but on the drive in he regretted not eating something more substantial. When he walked in the office he found a bright-eyed Smith pinning up all the search warrant photos from each respective location on the bulletin board.
“Ryan called,” Smith said. “He’s running late.”
At least somebody feels worse than I do, Leal thought. He sat at his desk.
“Man, Sarge, you look terrible. Want some coffee?” As Smith poured the coffee he gestured toward the board.
“Those were developed last night,” he said. “They put a rush on them.”
Leal looked at each one of the pictures, sipping his coffee and suddenly recalling the uneasy feeling he’d had the day before in Walker’s living room. They’d found tapes and DVDs in the television cabinet, but no tape player on the shelf. Only twin wires hanging down behind it. It could have meant that Walker had taken it in for repairs. After all, he had another VHS player in the bedroom. But there was something else that still bothered him, something else missing, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He searched his memory for the sight of the room the night he and Hart had visited Walker.
He sipped the coffee that Smith had prepared and together they looked at the rest of the photos.
Leal tapped the photo of the bedroom.
“Here’s something else that bugs me,” he said. “No pillowcase.”
Smith rubbed his forehead.
“Maybe he put it in the wash?”
Leal frowned. “That’s something we should’ve checked. Too late now.” He studied the photo some more. “But look at this, Joe. Nothing else is out of place. Even the tapes here are evenly stacked.”
“Yeah, his drawers were lined up inside, too. No wonder he fired his housekeeper.”
Leal grinned. The second cup of coffee was starting to do the trick.
“So what do you make of it?” Smith asked.
Leal shook his head. “Don’t know yet.”
The door opened and Ryan walked in holding his head. He virtually collapsed in his chair and said, “Oooh, fuck me.”
Smith got up and poured a cup of coffee for Ryan, putting in extra cream and sugar. He handed it to him and said, “Here, Sarge.”
“Thanks, Joe,” Ryan said, still holding his head. “Brice wants to see us. He wants us to bring Murphy up to speed today.”
“No fucking way,” Leal said. “He’s trying to close Hart out of this investigation, and I’m not standing for it.”
“Right. She deserves to be in to the end,” Smith said.
“All right, all right,” Ryan said, rubbing his temples. “Let me talk to him. As soon as I have this coffee.”
As Ryan, the master of compromise, sat in Brice’s office he felt as if the pounding in his head would never stop, but he knew neither would Leal’s bitching if Hart got dropped. Maybe he was jocking her. Regardless, on the way up the stairs, Ryan had decided on a tactic that he felt would work. First, he brought up that Smith’s wife was ready to drop any day now, and Murphy would be needed to replace him more than Hart, who was expected back soon.
“Smith’s been holding his vacation so he can stay home with her and the kid,” Ryan said.
“You look like shit,” Brice said. “What’s the matter? Somebody piss in your beer last night?”
Ryan smirked. “Wouldn’t surprise me. And don’t forget there’s also the publicity mileage that the sheriff will get when he presents our esteemed female detective with the Medal of Valor.”
“Yeah, but the only problem is, she looks so much like a guy,” Brice said, snickering. He took out a cigar and bit off the end. “I’ll tell Murph to sit tight for another day or two. In the meantime, start checking around. Maybe Walker flew out of O’Hare or Midway. We got a subpoena for his credit card records, right?”
“Yeah, boss. And he’s got a safety deposit box, too. We gotta go through his papers more and take the list of stuff recovered back to the judge.”
“Okay, get to work on that, then.” Brice took out his lighter and held the flame to the end of the cigar. “You still sitting here?”
Ryan slowly got to his feet.
At the United counter at O’Hare Airport, Leal and Ryan managed to pull the clerk off to the side, much to the chagrin of her coworkers, who struggled to address the constant flow of people in front of them.
“Now this is very important, miss,” Ryan said. “Would you recognize this man if you saw him again?”
The airline clerk’s eyes widened as she shook her head.
“You know, we get so many people through here…”
Leal showed her the passenger list that the Chicago PD detective from the O’Hare detail had found on last Tuesday’s departures for San Juan.
Ryan held the picture of Martin Walker.
“Ring any bells?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed again as she scanned the photograph.
“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing back her lower lip nervously, “but I really can’t be sure.”
“That’s okay, honey,” Ryan said, giving her shoulder a reassuring pat. “What did you say your first name was?”
“Elena.”
“Okay, what’s your home phone number?” Ryan asked, his pen poised above his notebook. “You know, this might be on Most Wanted. I know John Walsh real good. You done any modeling, or anything?”
As they walked away, Leal shook his head. “You know, Ryan, if you spent half as much time working as you do trying to get laid…”
“Yeah, I know, I’d be a captain by now,” Ryan said, grinning. “But you can’t blame me for trying. After all, I don’t have Sharon Divine waiting to tuck me in at night, now, do I?”
Neither do I, thought Leal. “How’d you like a size twelve up your ass?”
“Not me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” Ryan smiled. “Come on, let
’s go fill the boss in. Who knows, maybe he’ll send us to Puerto Rico.”
“Yeah, right,” Leal said.
“The clerk remembers the guy. He tried to cancel the ticket on his MasterCard and pay for it with cash,” Ryan said. “But she wasn’t sure about the picture, though.”
Brice nodded. “Anything else?”
“No recent transactions beyond the ticket,” Ryan said. “Looks like he’s switched to cash to avoid a trail.”
“There is something the lab boys came up with, Lieu,” Smith said. “That section of carpet where they found the bloodstains was inconclusive. Definitely blood, but someone tried to wash it.”
“Yeah, I figured it would just be trace amounts,” Brice said. “No way to know how old it was, either, but it would’ve been nice to be able to match it up to Miriam Walker.”
“They also found a small shred of chewing tobacco with the vacuuming,” Smith said.
“Was Walker a dipper?” asked Ryan.
“I doubt it,” Leal said. “He was too much of a city rat for a habit like that. Are they sure it didn’t come from a cigarette?”
“I asked the same thing,” Smith said. “They said they’re positive it came from a wad.”
“Maybe they’ll be able to get some DNA traces,” Leal said.
“You got the subpoenas for the credit card records and the warrant for the safe-deposit box, right?” Brice asked. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Right, Lieu,” Smith said, setting the stack of papers on Brice’s desk. “You want to look them over?”
Brice nodded.
“What about his phone records?” Leal asked.
Brice considered this for a moment, then said, “Yeah, Monday’s soon enough for them. You guys been working pretty hard on this, so just take the rest of the weekend off. Keep your cell phones and beepers on in case he gets picked up.”
He seems to be falling back into his old, lazy habits, Leal thought. Now was the time to push. They were close.
Random Victim Page 20
