Back on Murder rm-1

by J. Mark Bertrand

  “This is it,” she says. “The phone she was getting calls from the day she disappeared.”

  “If he left it behind, then there probably won’t be any prints.”

  She opens an evidence bag. “We’ll check anyway.”

  “Yes, we will,” I reply, dropping the phone in.

  Brad Templeton tracks me down not long after, his voice brimming with excitement, like he thinks the Hannah Mayhew murder investigation is something I personally engineered to help with his book deal. He keeps pumping me for information until he finally realizes I’m about as responsive as a cpr dummy.

  “You are gonna give me something, right? We do have an understanding, don’t we?”

  “This isn’t the time, Brad.”

  I have to give him something, though, so I pass along Wilcox’s name, suggesting he cozy up to my ex-partner, who’s now taking the lead on Keller and Salazar. I’m trying to keep a hand in there, but IAD is a clannish outfit and since their search yielded the potential murder weapon — at least, the part of it that wasn’t swapped with Thomson’s pistol — they call the shots. For now, anyway. I haven’t given up on that one, though anything I do at this point will have to be very discreet.

  “You’re pawning me off on Wilcox,” Brad says.

  “I’m leading you to water,” I tell him. “It’s up to you whether you drink.”

  As soon as I’m off the phone I grab my things and tell Cavallo we’re going back to the scene. Now that the immediate aftermath of the storm is behind us, people might remember things they didn’t before, and the ones who weren’t around during the initial canvass might turn up. We’re almost to the door when Jerry Lorenz steps through, blocking the path.

  He looks Cavallo up and down, giving me an approving nod.

  “Congratulations,” he says. “You sure landed on your feet.”

  I’m not sure if he’s referring to my pretty new partner or to my case. Judging from his smile, a little of both. The strange thing is, he’s utterly genuine, offering apparently heartfelt congratulations, no hard feelings in spite of our run-in on the still-unsolved Morales case. He has no idea, since I never briefed him, on how much further I took that case, or how close Wilcox now is to busting it open.

  I expect Cavallo to recoil from him, or at least to steer clear, but she pats him on the shoulder as she passes. “Congratulations yourself.”

  Out in the hallway, I ask, “You know that guy?”

  “Who, Jerry?”

  “Jerry Lorenz, right. He’s the one I had so much trouble with.”

  “Who, Jerry?” she says again, unaware of how annoying this repetition is.

  “Lorenz. I know I told you his name.”

  She shakes her head. “I never put it together. You don’t get along with Jerry, huh? Everybody gets along with Jerry.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “How do you know him?”

  She starts to answer, then stops herself, so I repeat the question. Reluctantly, she says, “He’s in my Bible study.”

  “Your what? Jerry Lorenz is in a Bible study? You’re jerking my chain — ”

  “No, really. He is. There’s a group of us that meets about once a month. You should come sometime.” She frowns. “Or maybe not.”

  “Why were you congratulating him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just now, you said ‘congratulations yourself.’ ”

  “Oh that. I meant the baby, obviously.” She stops in her tracks, realizing I have no idea what she’s talking about. “His wife just had a baby. A little boy. Don’t tell me you work with the guy and you don’t know that?”

  I shrug. “I guess it never came up.”

  We drive back to the derelict house, Cavallo taking advantage of the time to theorize on what it means that I take so little interest in my colleagues’ personal lives. Ignorant of Lorenz’s baby, unaware that her fiancé is overseas. She wonders aloud what else I don’t know, and how with so little curiosity I can honestly call myself a trained observer.

  “I’m only interested in people when they’re dead.”

  I mean it as a joke, but it doesn’t come out funny. She grows serious, remembering whose death sparked my interest in the current investigation.

  The fresh canvass yields nothing, but we do find a small crew of construction workers across the street, trying to square away the damage left by the hurricane. The toppled trailer has been righted and now awaits replacement. In the interest of thoroughness, we have a chat with them, only to discover that half the men present aren’t on the list the contractor finally handed over.

  “They might not be on any lists,” Cavallo says afterward, meaning like so many in the industry, they might be illegals.

  When we’re done, I take her over to the Morgan St. Café, where the power’s finally back on, treating her over iced coffee to the story of Vance Balinski’s curbside assault. I show her Thomson’s sketchbook and the enlarged cell-phone photo, and seeing her interest is piqued, I take her back to the studio for a look at his intimidating series of busts. Locking up, I’m surprised to find Balinski himself in residence next door, a fat bandage on his nose, a line of stitches running along his bottom lip.

  “I’m clearing my place out,” he says. “I can’t get any work done here now, not after what happened.”

  His own studio is a tidy, squared-away affair, a couple of large abstract paintings along the wall, a table and stool, an easel for work in progress, and at the back an assortment of finished pieces. I can only see the one in front, which looks to me like a solid field of orange with two fuzzy reddish lines running vertically, dividing it into thirds. It doesn’t look too hard to do, but I refrain from saying so.

  “When Thomson gave you that box,” I ask, “did he explain why?”

  Balinski moves the paintings on the wall over to the stack in back. “Honestly, we were both pretty baked at the time. He’d been kind of morbid recently, I don’t know how else to describe it, even more obsessive than usual about things. Something had set him off, but I don’t know what. We’d been to a couple of bars, and on the way back over here he said he wanted to give me something. I thought it was a gift at first, and I was telling him he didn’t have to do that, but he said if he didn’t, they might find it. He said they were keeping tabs on him now, because he wasn’t reliable.”

  “Who was keeping tabs?”

  Balinski shrugs. “Joe never talked about things, and when he did, you couldn’t really ask for more detail, you know? He just said what he said and you listened. That’s what I did, anyway.”

  “So he never said who was keeping tabs on him?”

  “Well. .” He glances around the studio as though he’s misplaced something. “That night he was kind of tripping. He said he’d gotten into something, and they started out dirty but went in clean. He kept repeating it, like he thought I was arguing with him. ‘No, we were dirty at the beginning, but not going in. Going in, we were clean.’ And he was really proud of it, too, whatever it was.”

  “Did he say what he was going into?”

  “I don’t know what he said, man. It’s not like I was paying close attention or anything. It was all kind of confusing. He was dirty but really he was clean. Whatever. The guy handed me a box full of blow. Then he shot his own head off. It’s not like he was sane or anything.”

  We leave him to do his work. Back in the car, Cavallo asks for the sketchbook again, flipping absently through the pages.

  “He meant the Morales house, right?” she asks.

  “Going in clean? I guess so. They went into the house clean, whatever that means.”

  “They went in for the woman. For a righteous cause.”

  I nod. “Maybe.”

  “But that’s not why they went in the first place.”

  “They started out dirty, going for the money or maybe drugs, but they were clean when they went in, meaning their aims changed.” Castro’s computer-gener
ated crime-scene sketches come back to me, the abstract figures transected by red lines. “According to one of the crime-scene investigators, the guys who hit the Morales house showed some tactical sophistication. Maybe they did a little recon first, got the lay of the land — ”

  “And saw the woman tied to the bed.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “And instead of scrubbing the mission, they went in anyway. Not for the loot, but to rescue the victim.”

  “Something like that.” I shake my head. “Only it’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? The place they decide to stick up just happens to be the one where this woman’s being assaulted? They interrupt the crime in progress, decide to intervene. Seems like a long shot. Besides, these guys aren’t the type. We’re not talking about heroes here. Just the opposite.”

  “Yeah, but isn’t that the point of the whole dirty-clean thing?”

  There’s something to it, I realize, but Cavallo’s already put a human face on Lorenz. I’m not going to let her humanize Keller and Salazar the same day.

  “The point is,” I say, “she’s dead. Whoever she is. And maybe she wouldn’t be if they hadn’t gotten involved. Maybe they’re the ones who put the bullet in her.”

  The last time I was at Cypress Community Church, the parking lot was near empty. Now every space marked out on the vast plane of blacktop appears to be filled, with overflow lining the street. Cavallo, dressed head to toe in black, sits beside me in the passenger seat, rubbing her hands nervously against her thighs.

  “I don’t think I can face her,” she says.

  Maybe she means Hannah. Maybe the mother. I don’t know and I don’t ask.

  “If what Bridger says is right,” I say, “there was nothing you could have done. Hannah was dead before you even started to look.”

  She nods, but it’s one thing to see the sense in an argument and another to really believe it. The girl’s death has hit her hard, and Cavallo’s not the type to let herself off the hook. I can relate. I feel the same. For me, though, the territory is more familiar. To loved ones, the only promise I can fulfill is to deliver up a suspect. Cavallo works a job where it’s still conceivable to bring the runaways home and set the captives free.

  We hike across the boiling pavement, blending in with the other mourners streaming between the rows of cars and trucks, of station wagons, minivans, and sport-utility vehicles, each one gleaming hot in the sun. In parts of the city, the power is back, though more for a visit than a permanent stay. It still flickers back and forth, forcing me to run my generator most nights, though it’s never enough to get the house truly cool. I’ve grown accustomed the past few days to always sweating, always feeling dirty, none of us being quite as presentable as we are when the electricity’s on. I am not as impervious to heat as I’ve always assumed.

  As the entrance gets closer, I remember the blanket of cold air that descended the first time I was here. Pulling the glass door open, I can almost feel it. But no, as I pass over the threshold in Cavallo’s wake, the air is only marginally cooler inside. No respite awaits us inside the church, not even this.

  The crowd carries us along through the soaring atrium, and I find myself wondering how many of these people actually knew Hannah. There are surely too many. Glancing around, I observe what I always do at funerals, a throng of people behaving only marginally more sober-minded than usual, most of them dressed for comfort in everyday clothes, a few dressed more formally — usually older, usually present in some quasi-official capacity. The teenage kids in front of us wear jeans and striped rugby shirts, while the women behind us, chatting among themselves, are in blouses and khaki capri pants and sensible flats.

  I feel a hand on my elbow and, turning, find Gina Robb staring up at me through her cat-eye glasses. She tugs me out of the crowd and beckons Cavallo to follow, guiding us through the side exit toward the church offices. Her demeanor is grave, her eyes raw from crying, and whenever she tries to explain herself, her throat seizes up. So she relies on hand gestures to convey the fact that someone wants to see us.

  Donna Mayhew’s office door stands open, but the entrance is blocked by a throng of attendants. Gina parts them wordlessly, conducting us inside until we are face-to-face with the bereaved mother. She stands, austerely composed, at the very corner of her desk, draped in swathes of black, with black netting over her face. In contrast to the casual mourners in the atrium, she’s like a figure from the distant past. Her hands, clasped tightly in front of her, are also gloved, prompting me to wonder where this funeral regalia comes from. I keep a black suit in the closet for funerals, but then I attend them with a fair amount of regularity. Of course, this is not her first bereavement. The woman has lost her husband and now her daughter, too. She is alone in the world, a feeling I can relate to only in part.

  “Detective,” she says, extending a hand to me. “They tell me it was you who found her body.”

  An awkward cough at the back of my throat. Do I correct her or let the error stand? Glancing around, I see men in dark suits, women with clenched tissue pressed to their eyes, a murmur of grief passing between them.

  Cavallo tries to say something. I turn, and find her face wet with tears, her lips trembling. Donna Mayhew opens her arms and the two women embrace. I glance away. In the corner, Carter Robb stares glumly back at me. We haven’t spoken since the day I summoned him to the scene. Then, I’d been unable to coax him anywhere close to the body, and he’d only agreed reluctantly to enter the derelict building for a look at the purse. Trying to confirm it was hers, he couldn’t stop choking on his words. He’d wanted to help, to do something, but that wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Mrs. Mayhew is saying. “This was not your doing. We all have to be brave in the face of it. The Lord gives and he takes away.”

  The words seem empty to me, and desolate, but her voice is anything but. There is a strength in her that wasn’t here before, back when there was still some chance of a happier outcome. She no longer agonizes over whether she’s meant to drink from the cup. Now she knows, and the effect of the knowledge is heartbreaking to witness. Some people, when they suffer, derive power from the ordeal, a certain dignity, and along with it the grace to bestow benediction, as potent as it is unlooked for. In response, the usual hollow assurances about bringing the killer to justice die on my lips, and sensing my inability, she nods, as if she wouldn’t want me to say such things, to commit myself to the impossible.

  “I wanted to see you both,” she says, “because I know some of the things I’ve said to the media must have sounded like criticism, and I want to say I’m sorry. It was not directed at you.”

  Cavallo tries to silence her with a lifted hand.

  “It’s all right,” I say. “You don’t need to justify yourself to us.”

  “I also wanted you to know that I’m done. I won’t talk to them anymore. I didn’t want to at first, and I only did it in the off chance it might help bring my baby home. But now there’s no reason, and I won’t talk to them again. I wanted you to know.”

  She speaks quietly, with a determination that doesn’t seem congruent with the subject, as if the decision she’s referring to runs much deeper than the one her words avow. An embrace of silence encompassing much more than television interviews, as if she’s sworn off saying anything ever again.

  Her gloved hand closes around mine briefly, squeezing, her eyes gazing at me through the netted veil. “I know you’ll do everything you can. Thank you.”

  I step back. She gives Cavallo a similar blessing, and then we both retreat out into the hallway, joined by Gina Robb and her silent husband. He comes close to me, leaning almost to my ear, speaking in a harsh whisper.

  “I want to talk to you later. I want to do more this time.”

  This time, as if there’s a second round to play and everything might still come right.

  We leave them, rejoining the other mourners. Cavallo wipes her eyes with the back of her hand,
pretending I’m not beside her, probably embarrassed by her show of emotion. We file into a wide, soaring auditorium, a stadium of worship with a semicircle of seats around a raised platform. Behind it, a multi-tiered choir loft and a backstop of abstract stained glass, but I’m not looking past the platform. My eyes get no further than the casket at its base. The lid is closed, and a large portrait of Hannah is erected on an easel behind it. A hush descends on everyone who sees it, the crowd growing still, struck by the reality of that small wooden box.

  Another casket flashes in my mind, another body. I see Charlotte pale with grief, the vein in her forehead throbbing, the bruises from the car accident still evident under a layer of makeup. My eyes sting.

  “I can’t stay,” I say, turning back, not waiting for any reply, hoping she won’t come after me, hoping she won’t try to follow.

  CHAPTER 25

  Hedges casts a disapproving eye over my cubicle, staring the way he might at a spelling error in the first line of a report. I weather the scrutiny. There’s nothing I can do about the mess. Casework grows like weeds all around me. My cup overruns, and so does my murder book. In addition to evidence recovered with Hannah’s body, the copious lab work that’s been trickling in all morning, and the first wave of file boxes couriered over from the former task force hq in the Northwest, there’s also a layer left over from the Thomson investigation, things I haven’t had time to box up for Wilcox. Aguilar has been detailed to help, and Bascombe checks in every half hour or so, looking at me the way a kid looks at a magician, wondering what’ll happen next time I reach into my hat. So I haven’t had a lot of time for tidying up.

  “Everything all right, sir?” I ask, hoping to move him along.