Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  I flashed a smile. “I know you’ll be gentle and discreet. I just hope all the judges and senators and stuff that he knows don’t blind you to evidence.”

  “Contrary to public opinion we do not discriminate based on wealth or influence,” Finchley said stiffly. “Officer Neely will have something for you to sign later today, so if you would check back in?”

  I said I would, although I didn’t intend to: if they wanted me they could come looking for me.

  “By the way,” Finchley added, with the casualness they learn in police school as a dead giveaway that they’ve come to an important question. “We’d like to know where the missing evidence is. You had plenty of time to ditch it before you called us.”

  I smiled down at him. “Cheap trick, Terry. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You push on that button again, though, and my first call won’t be to my lawyer, but to some newspaper reporters. They’re going to want my story anyway.”

  “Your files, Warshawski. We’d like to take a look at them, see what light they shed on the murder.”

  It was my turn to scowl. “You’re going to have to get a warrant to look at any of my papers. And you’d better believe I’ll fight that hard. You have no way of proving my work is connected to Deirdre Messenger’s death.”

  “Probable cause. When you erase your hard disk before the cops can take the machine away—”

  “You took my machine? And this is how you tell me? That’s my livelihood. And you’re going to sprinkle dust all over it—I can’t even imagine what that’ll do to the keyboard—”

  “Nothing worse than the woman’s brains already did,” Finchley interrupted. “Anyway, we won’t keep the machine. Since Forensics saw it had been wiped clean, there’s no point to it. We’ll return it Monday. I want to know where your backup files are.”

  I stared at him blankly. Whoever killed Deirdre had wiped my disk clean. Nothing on it could possibly be of interest to anyone else. I hadn’t done any incriminating work lately. Unless it was connected with Lamia’s problems and whoever killed Deirdre was taking no chances. ...

  “My floppies?” I finally asked Terry. “Anything I’ve done lately would be on them.”

  “No floppies in your office.”

  I took a deep breath, hoping to steady my gyrating wits. Of course, I back up my current files every time I use the machine. Then I slip the floppy in my pocket. With the state the Pulteney was in I was more scrupulous than I might have been ordinarily. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember what I’d done last night. Had I made a copy? Had I taken it with me or not? My anxiety to be shed of Deirdre was great enough I might have left without it.

  “Well, Vic? Shall I get a warrant for your home? Or did you mail it to Dr. Herschel or your lawyer?”

  I had never heard Finchley speak with such contempt. A fireball of anger swept through me. I jammed my hands into my jeans pockets to keep from leaping over the table to punch him. No one ever got anywhere hitting a cop.

  “Try it, Detective. Try it and see how much cooperation you ever get from me again.” I was shaking so with fury that my voice came out in a harsh tremolo.

  On my way out I kicked a chair over and slammed the door shut. I walked the mile to the Pulteney churning between Finchley’s unspeakable attitude and the loss of my files. Income taxes were due in eleven days, I suddenly remembered. How could I possibly reconstruct my accounts for the past year from the chaos in my office?

  As I crossed Monroe Street my anger passed, leaving me prey to a dull sinking, of stomach and spirits. My affair with Conrad already had bristles to it. A major fight with Terry Finchley would turn it into an actual porcupine.

  I hoped Terry would get my machine back to me Monday—electronic equipment has a strange tendency to evaporate in the evidence room. I snorted derisively: good thing I’d hung on to Gabriella’s old Olivetti when I went electronic. I’d taken it to my apartment, not wanting to discard one of my mother’s few tangible legacies.

  I walked into the Pulteney with my chin out, ready to take on any cops who might be on duty. After sweeping through the building in search of Tamar they’d apparently decided not to post a guard. The only trace of their presence was a McDonald’s bag one of them had stuffed in a corner of the lobby. They’d padlocked the stairwells when they left, but I had my keys. I walked up to four and broke the police seal on my office door.

  15

  Senatorial Privilege

  In my shock at finding Deirdre I hadn’t noticed the condition of my office. Now, after a rough going-over by the forensic team, it was impossible to know how much of the chaos the murderer caused, and what the police had added to it. Of course, no one had cleaned up Deirdre’s blood. Great clotted clumps of it stuck out on the desk and on my chair, and the mark of my hand when I’d fainted was still visible in the congealed remnants of her brain.

  Papers seemed to lie everywhere. Someone had gone through ten years’ worth of records with a winnowing hand, tossing the chaff so that it landed on chairs, the floor, even the window ledge. And on top of it all lay the thick dust of fingerprint powder. My servants and protectors, mine and Deirdre Messenger’s, had sprinkled even my Nell Blaine poster.

  I gave a convulsive sob. “Ti calmi,” I said aloud, using my mother’s voice to push back an emotional storm. I took on Gabriella’s fierce eyes and surveyed the wreckage. I might not have much time: I didn’t know if the police would be returning.

  Anyway, some atavistic fear made me want to run from the room where the newly slain had lain. The skin behind my ears tickled, as if Deirdre’s ghost were breathing there. I scratched my ears and tiptoed to the far side of my desk.

  Reaching across the filthy surface I rummaged in the drawer where I store my floppies. Finchley was right: they had vanished. I opened the other drawers in a futile hope that I might have misplaced them, but found nothing. Even my box of unformatted disks had disappeared.

  Without my computer, what did I really need to set up shop at home? Certainly not the printer. And how could I sift my current accounting files from the wreckage on the floor? Only my Rolodex might prove helpful. I scooped that up, along with the phone, and took a last look. On my way out I lifted the Nell Blaine and Gabriella’s engraving of the Uffizi from the walls.

  Dumping everything into one of my packing boxes, I moved as fast as I could down the stairs to the lobby. I was prepared to plow through a police cordon and sprint for freedom, but the lobby was still empty. Even so, the Furies seemed to be on my heels. I ran all the way to the garage, the box bouncing against my abdomen, and flung myself into the Trans Am. I needed to bathe, to wash the dirt of the elevator shaft, the residue of Deirdre’s brains, the soul-piercing filth of murder and pillage from my bones.

  Mr. Contreras met me in the hallway as I entered the apartment. His faded brown eyes were bright with alarm.

  “You okay, doll? I heard the news on the radio when I was eating lunch. What happened? Who was that lady? Why was she in your office?”

  The dogs joined us. Mitch, a hundred pounds and still growing, jumped up and knocked me off balance. The box fell. Phone, Rolodex, and pictures crashed around me. The glass covering the Uffizi splintered. The wood frame split and fell away from the engraving. My father had made that frame for my mother one Christmas, out of walnut, sanding and staining the wood to a high gloss. Gabriella hung it over the piano, where she could watch it while listening to neighborhood children pick out “The Happy Farmer” or “The Flight of the Bumble Bee.”

  I pushed the dog down with a leaden hand. My stomach twisted in pain. I wanted nothing more than to go to bed and take refuge in the world of sleep, to find a place where I might lie a hundred years undisturbed.

  Mr. Contreras seized my arm and impelled me into his apartment. “You sit down, doll. You’re worn out and these animals ain’t helping none. You just rest here in the armchair. I’m going to clean up your treasures, don’t you worry, I won’t hurt nothing. I’ll get all that stuff
tidied up and fix you some hot tea. You had any lunch? You want some fried eggs?”

  “I want that picture frame.” I sat on the lumpy cushion, shifting away from a broken spring. “Be careful how you pick it up. I want to see if I can fix it.”

  “Don’t worry, doll; I see it’s valuable to you. You just shut your eyes and leave it to me.”

  Nothing made the old man happier than to feel I needed him as caretaker. I leaned back in the chair. It smelled of must, as any chair that hasn’t been cleaned in two decades will, but after the traumas of the morning I was too tired to mind. The smell even seemed soothing, like the embrace of the old man himself.

  Mitch still hadn’t fully expressed his delight at my arrival. He shoved his huge black head into my legs. When that didn’t get a response he ran to the couch, picked up a knotted rope, and started tossing it and growling at it, hoping to entice me into playing tug-of-war. Peppy, his mother, barked at him once, trying to get him to mind. Sensing my mood she sat down next to the chair and began grooming my right hand, which dangled over the chair arm.

  “It’s okay, girl,” I told her. “Just too much going on today. But I’m telling you, if your idiot son busted that picture frame beyond repair it’s coming straight out of his hide. Why’d you produce such a hulking monster, huh? Why not someone sleek and well behaved, along your own lines?”

  Peppy attacked my hand more vigorously, which I took for agreement.

  “I just can’t make sense of Deirdre’s death. Not that murder ever makes sense, mind you, girl. But why kill her and erase my machine? If someone wanted to kill me because of my case files, they’d have known that wasn’t me in the office. But if someone murdered her on purpose, I mean, because of who she was, there wasn’t any reason to wipe out my files.”

  Peppy stopped licking me. She sat back on her haunches, eyes alert. I fondled one of her ears. Maybe it was someone who feared the progress I was making on an investigation and came to delete my files. They surprised Deirdre in the office and killed her to cover their tracks.

  “Ludicrous,” I told Peppy. “Even if that weren’t straight out of Cagney & Lacey, I haven’t been working on anything that’s upsetting people. Except for asking questions about Century Bank, but I only started doing that yesterday. It’s true Eleanor Guziak was upset by my questions, but I don’t think she’d have hired a hit that fast.” And of course it was ludicrous to think a bank officer would want to hire a hit.

  “What’s that, doll?” Mr. Contreras bustled into the room. “Oh, you’re talking to the dog. Now, don’t you worry about your picture frame. It’s broke at the joints, so you can just glue it together, all but a couple of chips that came out. I know a guy’ll fix it for you, a first-class carpenter. You say the word and I’ll get right onto him.”

  I inspected the nicks in the dark wood. Yes, I’d let Mr. Contreras’s friend repair it, but I knew I’d never look at it again without a sense of loss.

  The old man bustled off to the kitchen to make tea. He returned with a sweet black cupful. While I drank it he fried up eggs and bacon. The rich greasy smell reminded me that it had been seven hours since my breakfast, a meal that hadn’t stayed with me.

  Mr. Contreras pulled a TV table up next to the armchair and fed me like an anxious stork with one chick. While I drank a second cup of tea I filled in the gaps left by the radio report, including Terry Finchley’s threat to get a warrant for my apartment.

  My neighbor was appropriately indignant. “He’s got no call to be rude, doll, not any reason whatsoever. ... You told Conrad yet?”

  I squeezed the older man’s hand. His normal jealousy of anyone I dated was augmented by his revulsion at the idea of me in the arms of a black man, but he was working hard to take our life in stride.

  “I haven’t had a minute to myself since finding Deirdre’s body. It’s time I went upstairs and phoned him.” I waved aside my neighbor’s offer of his own phone; I wanted to bathe. More than anything else, though, I craved some time alone. I kissed Mr. Contreras on the cheek and left him feeding the remains of my eggs to the dogs.

  After my bath I wrapped myself in blankets and sat cross-legged in my armchair, staring at nothing. More and more the murders in Chicago—in America—make no sense at all. People are shot for not driving fast enough, for smiling when they should frown, for wearing green when they should wear yellow. Someone came into my office and bashed Deirdre’s head in. And I wanted it to make sense.

  As the day dwindled into evening my living room windows turned black and reflected me back to myself. A bedraggled caterpillar in an untidy cocoon. I switched on the table lamp and called Conrad.

  He’d already heard about the murder from three different sources, but was waiting for me to feel like calling him myself. “And I already heard from the Finch that you two didn’t part friends, so don’t think you have to hide that from me, Ms. W. How you doing?”

  “I’ve been better. Any news from Forensics? And did Terry say what happened when he spoke to Fabian Messenger?”

  “He didn’t tell me he suspected the husband. I thought he was trying to find that homeless woman you let hole up in the place.”

  “As a witness or a chief suspect?” I demanded.

  “Whoa, there, Vic. Don’t jump down my throat. It’s not my case and I don’t have any opinions about it. ... I don’t suppose I could persuade you to follow the same path.”

  I thought it over. “If Finchley talks to Fabian, really talks to him, and finds out whether he was down at the Pulteney last night, you might. Although I won’t promise.”

  Conrad coughed, a sign of nervousness with him.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “If I tell you, you’re just going to start raving, and I can’t handle that right before I go on shift.”

  I made a face and watched the window reflect it back as a distorted, streaky grimace. “I promise that any raving I do will be confined to my private thoughts.”

  “Alec Gantner’s already been on the phone to the Finch.”

  “Papa or son?”

  “The senator himself. How distressed he was at the death in the family of such a distinguished citizen and how he hopes the police will leave no stone unturned. The kind of thing that gets lots of resources assigned to your case but makes it a major nightmare. Terry’s got to find that woman, Vic. He’s not going to railroad her, but she’s the only one who might have seen anything last night. If you know where she is, don’t sit on her in the belief you’re protecting her from police brutality.”

  I rubbed my forehead but didn’t speak until Conrad’s cough in my ear made me realize he thought I was fuming in my armchair. “I’m not raving, Conrad. Just staggered. Why would a U.S. senator ... oh, I suppose because Fabian was angling for a federal judgeship. But I will swear to you, on my honor, I don’t know where Tamar Hawkings is.”

  “I wish I could see you in person,” he grumbled. “You know a dozen ways to slice the truth, but when I look at your face I can tell what you’re doing to it.”

  That made me laugh, a feat I wouldn’t have thought possible thirty minutes earlier. “This is the whole truth and nothing but—not that I don’t know where she is at this precise moment, but I haven’t a clue whether she’s in the Loop or Uptown, or even back on the Southwest Side. ... Oh, yes—I guess you guys don’t know—tell Finchley her old man filed a missing persons on her some months ago. She says he was starting to molest the oldest kid.”

  And then Terry would have a fit, thinking I’d held out on him on purpose. The cops never believe you may genuinely not remember something they think is vital.

  When Conrad and I hung up, more or less in tune, I scrambled into my jeans and a knit cotton shirt. Alec Gantner might be able to force the city to tiptoe around Fabian Messenger, but he didn’t have any clout to hit me with. I wasn’t angling for a federal appointment.

  16

  A Doting Father

  Fabian opened the door to the mansion himself. “Oh, it’s you,
Warshawski. If you’ve come to see Deirdre, she’s dead.”

  His greeting jolted me. “I know. I found her body when I went to my office this morning. It was quite horrible; I’m sure you must be shocked as well.”

  “If you knew she was dead, why did you come down here?” he demanded.

  “To see you, Fabian. Shall we go inside?”

  I’d been betting he’d slam the door on me. To my surprise he backed into the hallway, allowing me to follow him. Once inside he looked around uncertainly, as though the house were strange to him. I began to think his off-balance remarks might token genuine shock at Deirdre’s death.

  “Where are the children?” I asked.

  “The children? Oh. They’re upstairs with Emily. Did you want to see them?”

  “Not especially. Although maybe I should talk to Emily. Her mother’s death must be hitting her pretty hard.”

  “Do you think so?” Fabian looked at me in surprise. “She and Deirdre didn’t seem to get on very well.”

  My own mother’s death, when I was a year older than Emily, had been the cataclysmic event of my life. In some ways I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from it. But what if Gabriella had been like Deirdre—drunk, angry with the world, hostile to me personally? I tried to picture it. Death wouldn’t have released me from her fury. On the contrary—it would have made the cataclysm more violent. My own wishes to be rid of her would torment me beyond the fact of her death itself.

  “Doesn’t she have a grandmother or an aunt she could stay with?” I asked Fabian. “This is no time for her to be alone here looking after your sons.”

  “Emily is good in a crisis. I won’t have Deirdre’s mother hovering uselessly around the place, and my own mother died years ago. I can’t afford to do without Emily right now. Maybe after the funeral we can see.”

  I blinked a few times, hoping to keep reality in focus. “Bring in a nanny to look after the kids and give your daughter a break.”