Justice in Slow Motion (Drexel Pierce Book 3)

by Patrick Kanouse

  “He’d text her and say things about her flirting and calling her a whore. She couldn’t talk to another man without him commenting on it. Even his friends. And then things like her shoes made her look too tall or her pants made her look too fat.” She shook her head. “Terrible things.” She reached down and pulled her phone out of her purse. She tapped the screen and scrolled through the messages app, mumbling “Hold on” as she did. She scrolled a bit more. “Here. Here. She forwarded me this.” Tammy held up the phone for Drexel to see but turned it away quickly. “He said to her, ‘I can’t believe you acted like that. I was trying to make a nice night for you. To do something to show I appreciate you and think you’re amazing. ‘Cause you are. But then you chatted up that guy at the bar. I hate that you won that show. Now everyone thinks they own you.’” She held the phone up. “See. And he goes on. Calls her a whore and worse.”

  Drexel nodded and held up his hand. “Can I have that phone? I’d like to get those messages. Or if it’s okay with you, you can print them off and provide them.”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll print them.”

  He smiled. “So you said Vickie eventually found the courage to leave him?”

  “She found the courage to talk about leaving him. She’d gotten so scared she installed an app on his phone so she could track where he was.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Something called Early Warning.”

  “When did she do this?”

  “A few months ago. She wanted to know where he was. She was trying to avoid him, but she couldn’t do it entirely.”

  He wrote a note to make sure he got the information from Vickie’s phone. “So was there anything in the past weeks that may have been a trigger for Hank?”

  “Yeah. Like always it was another man she was talking to. She told me they were having dinner at Hussain’s. She liked that place a lot. And David—the owner—came to the table. He put a hand on her shoulder and she smiled. She said once they got to the car, Hank exploded. She showed me the bruises on her wrist where he had grabbed her. When she showed me, I told her she was going to end up dead if she didn’t leave.”

  “So she hasn’t filed for divorce yet or left him. Not even a restraining order.”

  Tammy nodded. “She wanted to get everything in order. She was talking to a lawyer.” She made a small fist and shook it as if remembering something. She opened her purse, a white smooth leather with gold snaps. She pulled out her wallet, flipped through several of the compartments, and then handed Drexel a business card. The black card had half of the scales of justice in gray on the right side. The firm was Bess, Beem, and Fen. Javier Diaz, attorney at law. “She was seeing him. She said she needed me to know. She was a bit cryptic, but I understood it that Hank owed a lot of money, spent too much. He used her winnings for a car. She didn’t want to have his debts. More importantly, she didn’t want him having anything to do with Fling. She didn’t think she could do anything until all of that was set.”

  “Do you think Hank found out about Vickie’s talking to a lawyer?”

  She placed both hands over her purse. “Maybe. Vickie didn’t say anything like that. But I know he’s followed her before.”

  “Followed her?”

  “Yeah, like—you know—in the movies. Tailed her. Kept eyes on her.”

  “Did Vickie talk about any threats or anyone following her, outside of Hank? Any fans getting a little too obsessed?”

  “She was a chef, not an actor.”

  Drexel shrugged. “May not matter to some. Just checking every angle. I caught someone having a bit too much interest at the restaurant, and when I went to talk, he fled.”

  Tammy shook her head. “If that was happening, she never mentioned it.”

  “You said Hank was jealous. Did he ever have any reason to be?” He saw the look in Tammy’s eyes. “Not saying it justifies anything he did to her. Just asking.”

  She twisted her mouth and looked down. “Eventually, yeah. She wasn’t happy. So she found love where she could find it. It was after he accused her over and over of sleeping with every man she talked to. She was like, ‘If I’m going to be beaten for talking to someone, why not fuck ‘em too.’ I don’t think she was proud of it, but I couldn’t blame her.”

  “Did she say who?”

  “No. She never said their names. She only told me she had fooled around.”

  “What about drugs? She ever indulge?”

  “Seems like you’re putting her on trial.”

  “If Hank did this, he’ll say whatever he can to excuse it or justify it. So that means knowing everything about your friend, including the unsavory details.”

  “I know she smoked some weed every now and then. I think she took Adderall sometimes. I don’t know any more than that.”

  Drexel nodded. He gave her his card and thanked her for coming in. She gave him her contact information and a final statement before turning around and walking out. “Hank did it. I know he did it.”

  He rubbed his chin and breathed deeply twice. No one much liked Hank. And neither did Drexel.

  Chapter 8

  As Drexel watched the footage from the business across from Fling in four-times speed, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked back to find Daniela. She held up the laptop found in Vickie’s office, the long sleeve on the upraised arm dropping enough to expose the tattoo that started at the wrist. He had never made out what the design was. Her hair was an unnaturally bright red, cut in a pixie cut with the bangs lifted back. She wore black jeans with a black button-up shirt that had a band collar. She sat down in the chair Tammy had abandoned and laid the laptop on the desk. She held a plastic evidence bag to her side.

  “Hey boss,” she said.

  “Morning. What’ve you got for me?”

  Daniela whistled. “You want the recipes for her restaurant? I think they’re all there.”

  “I probably can’t afford the ingredients, let alone make any of it.”

  Daniela bobbed her head in acknowledgment of both facts. “Most of it is locally sourced,” she said, as if that eliminated the price barrier or the need for cooking skills. “But seriously, she has thousands of recipes here. She wrote them down and took photos of many. Entered others directly.”

  He nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Did you know she was filing for divorce?”

  “I just heard.”

  “The initial drafts are in here. Nothing signed from what I can tell, but she put time into it. Also, plans for the restaurant—blueprints, draft menus, testing names. All of that. But pretty mundane stuff really.”

  “Anything in her browsing history worth looking at?”

  “She searched for escaping domestic abuse and variations on that. Places like Safe Place and the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network and Chicago Abused Women Coalition. She also did some searches on a variety of foods. Her most recent interest seems to be Spanish cuisine. Then some searches on Barcelona and Valencia. Could be for travel or part of the cuisine searches. And lastly some searches around Obamacare.”

  “How recent are those?”

  “This past week.”

  “How hard was it to break the password?”

  Daniela snorted. “Come on boss, not hard at all. But,” she held up a finger, “I know what you mean. Her password was ‘foodie.’ Not hard to crack at all if somebody wanted to look at her computer.”

  “So someone could’ve gotten into it by knowing her and guessing. Can you tell if someone else logged in?”

  She opened the laptop, typed in the password, and clicked to a file on the desktop. “I captured a screen of what the desktop looked like before I put this file here. But this is the access log.” The file opened up in a text editor. “Who logged in and when. If someone other than Vickie was looking at her computer, it was with her password. So I can’
t tell if anyone else was doing it.”

  Drexel looked at the file. The last login was at 12:45 a.m. on July 1. If that was her, it was minutes after Esme and Alex left the restaurant. “What about an app on her phone called,” he looked at his notes from the interview with Tammy, “Early Warning?”

  “I thought that was a weather app, like if a tornado was approaching it would give an early warning.”

  “Meant to give you an early warning if bad guys show up. Assuming they have their phones with them.”

  Daniela nodded. She held up the plastic bag with the phone. “Got gloves?”

  He opened the middle drawer and pulled out a pair of baby blue nitrile gloves from the box in there. He pulled them on and then pulled out a third, which he laid on the desk. She opened the bag, and he pulled out the phone and sat it on the flat glove on the desk. He tapped the home button and entered the six-digit PIN Daniela provided. He found the Early Warning app in a grouping of apps named “Weather.” The icon featured a storm cloud with a lightning bolt striking a small silhouette of a city. He tapped the icon and the app opened to a map showing North America. Two blinking blue and red dots appeared near Lake Michigan. The map then zoomed quickly in, close enough to still show both dots. The blue one was the station. The red one was in Wrigleyville. The app had a few icons, one of which showed a list. He tapped that and a phone number appeared.

  Drexel tapped the phone number, which exploded in a list of addresses.

  “Looks like the list when the phone number was recorded with the location at that time,” said Daniela.

  Drexel tapped one of the addresses in the list, which flipped back to the map, zoomed to a location, pinned the red dot on the screen, and displayed the address, date, and time. He tapped the back icon. He looked through the list. The app recorded at the top of every hour. He scrolled through the list to July first. Entries for every hour from midnight on. He tapped the entry for one a.m. The map zoomed to an address. He flipped through his notes from his interview with Hank. He found Adam Thompson’s address, which matched what the app displayed. The entry for 2:00 a.m. showed the same address. “So his phone was at his alibi’s address at least.”

  Daniela shrugged. “Seems that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I haven’t met this Hank guy, but I bet I could figure out a way to fool this if I wanted to.”

  “Assuming you knew you were being monitored this way?”

  She smiled. “Do you think Hank’s one to not go through his wife’s phone and see who she’s talking to?”

  He bit his lower lip. “I’ll grant you that.” He lifted up the phone. Daniela opened the evidence bag, and he dropped it in. He said, “Can you give me the logs for that app?”

  She nodded.

  “Thanks. I’m going to visit her lawyer. Can you also get the recording of the 911 call from yesterday?”

  “Sure thing boss.”

  “Great and thanks.”

  Daniela turned and walked past Victor’s door to the stairwell.

  He then called the Medical Examiner’s office and spoke to Noelle, who said the morgue was backed up. She would not be able to do the autopsy until the fourth or fifth. He scratched his head and called the 911 central office a few blocks south of Comiskey Park—he would never be able to call it US Cellular Field. He spoke to the day manager there and asked for the number of operator 4621. The manager said that was Yolanda Twiley. She would be back in for work that evening but gave Drexel Yolanda’s home number. Drexel dialed the number.

  “Hello?” asked the voice that picked up on the fifth ring.

  “Yolanda Twiley?”

  “That’s me. Who’s this?”

  “This is Detective Drexel Pierce. Homicide. I’m calling because I wanted to talk to you about a call you had at 1:54 a.m. on June 17th this year.”

  “I take a lot of calls in a shift, detective, but what can I help you with.”

  “I’m hoping you remember this one. Here, let me read some of it back to you.” He read from the transcript. “Do you remember this call.”

  “Yeah. Yes, I do. Those’re calls you don’t forget. That woman, Vickie you said, was terrified out of her mind. The transcript doesn’t capture the emotion or the sounds. Did you listen to the recording?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do it.”

  “Is there anything on that call that’s not in the transcript?”

  “Other than all the other sounds. The banging on the doors, the screaming. No.”

  He spoke to Yolanda for a few more minutes before hanging up. He wrote an email to the 911 office and requested the audio recording of all the calls he knew about where Vickie called for help. He also asked for the 911 call from the night before—texting Daniela he had handled that. Drexel then pulled up the notes of the June 17th responding officer, Janet Donovan. Her report was the official Chicago Police Department’s summary of the events of that night. He clicked open the Chicago PD directory on his computer, found Officer Donovan’s contact information, and called her.

  “Officer Donovan,” said the voice that answered.

  “Detective Pierce here with Central.”

  “What can I do for you detective?” Sounds of traffic and people. A rustling or crackling of paper.

  “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “Grabbing a quick bite to eat, so no.”

  “Sure, thanks. Look, I’m calling you about a 911 call you responded to a couple of weeks ago. I’m hoping you remember it. The caller and victim was Victoria Lopez. A domestic abuse—”

  “I can stop you there, detective. I remember that call. Very clearly.”

  “Okay. Great. So I read your report, but I’d like to hear from you.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Yes. She was found yesterday morning.”

  “Shit.” A pause. “I sensed that’s where it was heading.” Another pause. “Standard dispatch call with a rush on it, right? Imminent danger. So we—my partner and me—hustle it over there. We get up to the second floor and find the door open to the apartment. We enter. Place is a wreck. Looked like somebody went around to all the flat surfaces and swiped everything off it. Some stuff was broken. Trinkets and a plate I think. We’re going in hot, too. Guns out. We’re calling out that we’re there. We’re clearing rooms. We get down to the master bedroom and walk in. The door is smashed in, but not broken through if you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “Clearly locked from the inside and somebody raring to get in. We call out. She heard us then. We convince her we’re the police, and she unlocks the washroom door. She’s dressed like she went to a party or something. We get her out of the bathroom. Jeff—my partner—starts to call the paramedics, but she—Vickie—tells him not to, so we don’t.”

  “Did she look like she needed it?”

  “No. No visible injuries. But she sure was scared.”

  “Sure. Sure. Go on.”

  “So we get her to the bed. She says thanks and I ask her what happened. She says she and her husband—I can’t remember his name—were at a party. He got mad at her for doing something, so they left early. He kept getting madder on the ride back. He lost it in the apartment. Started throwing stuff around. She got scared and locked herself in the bathroom. Then she says he’s a jealous sort and has a temper. Then a look came over her. I can’t describe it, but I’ve seen it before. The look that calling the police is only going to make this guy more mad. So she says thanks and asks us to leave. She’ll be okay. He’s never done this before. She was wrong. Usual stuff.”

  “So you knew.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, Jeff and I both knew. So we try to insist on sticking around. But she’s adamant. She pretty much pushes us out. So Jeff and I, we take our time interviewing the neighbors, hoping to catch a glimpse of this husband of hers.
But we didn’t.”

  “You tried,” said Drexel.

  “Didn’t do her much good it seemed. So he did it? He killed her?”

  “Not sure yet. She was found hanging at her restaurant. But it wasn’t a suicide.”

  Donovan said, “Damn.”

  “Anything else?”

  She paused. Drexel could hear the traffic. “Yeah. One thing. I didn’t put it in my report because I wasn’t sure she said it. I wouldn’t be able to swear to it in court, you know?”

  “I got you.”

  “Well, as she’s sitting on the bed and starts to push for us to get out, I’m almost certain I heard her say—real low, under her breath say—‘He’ll kill me if he comes back and you’re still here.’ Like I said, she was mumbling, so maybe I heard what I wanted to hear, but—. Well, that’s what I think I heard.”

  ***

  Bess, Been, and Fen occupied five floors of the CNA Center, the bright-red 44-story building often featured in Chicago skyline photographs, and a ten-minute walk from the station. Drexel removed his blue sport coat, flung his messenger bag across his body, folded the coat over the bag, and walked at a brisk pace.

  At the CNA Center, he rode the elevator to the sixth floor. A short hallway with a set of glass doors on which were embossed Bess, Been, and Fen greeted him. Drexel pulled the silver-colored handles and walked in. Large, leafy potted plants decorated the corners. Two gray fabric sofas sat along the walls leading to the reception desk, behind which sat two smartly dressed people, a man and a woman. The woman wore a headset with a thin extension for the microphone at her mouth. She looked intently at the computer screen in front of her. The man, wearing an identical headset, smiled and asked what the detective needed. He said he needed to speak to Javier Diaz and he was the police. The man invited Drexel to sit as he dialed Mr. Diaz’s number.

  As he waited, Drexel flipped through the CNN news stories on his phone, but he did not register them. Diaz was not long. He was tall and thin with a dark complexion. His dark hair was thick and combed back. His tailored, double-breasted suit was a dark gray but still somehow bright and welcoming. A pink button up shirt, light blue tie, and silver cufflinks completed the ensemble. He extended his hand. “Javier Diaz. How may I help you? I understand you are with the police.”