by Joel Goldman
Rossi’s investigative report didn’t mention finding the dress or any other clothing belonging to Joanie.
“Did the detective ask you about what Joanie might have been wearing?”
“No. Only thing he asked me was if it was Joanie lying in the morgue. When I told him it was her, he said not to worry ’cause they got the guy that did it.”
Bethany took a final pull on her cigarette, the smoke curling around her until a wisp of air coming through the trees blew it away. She turned in her chair, facing Alex, her brow furrowed.
“You think maybe she really did have a date that night and was wearing that dress when she was killed?”
“Maybe.”
“That fella they arrested, what’d he do with the dress?”
“I don’t think he did anything with it. He was living in a tent down in Liberty Park. That’s where they had sex, but he says he didn’t rape her. She told him that she had to go home to get cleaned up for some big date. That was the last time he saw her.”
Bethany gave her a long look. “So you really think he’s not the one who killed her?”
“I haven’t seen all the evidence the police have against him, but at least that part of his story matches up to what Joanie told you.”
Bethany dropped the cigarette on the ground and clasped her hands in her lap.
“Joanie always did look good in that dress.”
She lowered her chin, quiet at first. Her chest began to swell, her shoulders heaving. She snaked her arms around her middle, trying to hold back her grief, then giving in and sobbing.
“I shoulda been there. I shoulda been there.”
Alex put her hand on Bethany’s shoulder. “Been where?”
Bethany lifted her head, tears streaming down her face. “In the garage the first time our daddy raped her. On the street the first time she traded her pussy for dope. I shoulda been there, but I wasn’t. She was my baby sister and I shoulda been there. I shoulda saved her.”
She began to cough, a convulsive smoker’s hacking that forced her to stop crying. When the cough subsided, she stood, red-eyed and out of breath, ashamed that she’d broken down in front of Alex. She lit another cigarette, putting her armor back on.
“You can go. We’re done here.”
“Almost. Who stays with Charlotte when you’re at work?”
Bethany folded her arms against her breasts. “That child is ten years old. She don’t need nobody to stay with her.”
“Of course not.”
Alex walked away, stopping and turning around when she reached the end of the concrete slab. Bethany was standing at the trailer door, one foot on the step, watching her.
“You’ve got five thousand dollars sitting on your kitchen counter. That would buy a lot of therapy for Charlotte.”
Bethany glared at her, drawing deeply on her cigarette and exhaling the smoke through her nose.
“You come snooping around here again, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“Is that money yours or Joanie’s?”
Bethany flicked the butt on the ground and opened the door to the trailer.
“Doesn’t matter anymore, now, does it?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
PIECES WERE LINING UP, even if they weren’t quite falling into place for Alex as she drove away. Joanie Sutherland had a benefactor concerned enough about her to pay for a rehab stint at an exclusive treatment center. She was excited enough about meeting someone special the night she was killed to put on her one good dress. And Bethany had five thousand dollars in crisp hundreds sitting on her kitchen counter. Chances were those dots connected in a straight line to Joanie’s killer.
Her benefactor may have started out smitten, pretending he was Richard Gere in Pretty Woman or, if he was old and proper enough, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Joanie latched onto him, street-smart enough to know a good thing when she saw one, leveraging sex for rehab, then tacking on a premium to keep their relationship a secret, adding blackmail to prostitution. Her benefactor ran a cost-benefit analysis and decided he could no longer afford her. End of a sad but familiar story. The good news was that, if Alex was right, Jared Bell was innocent.
Had Rossi not made up his mind that Jared was the killer, he might have actually done an investigation that would have painted the same picture. But he didn’t, which brought Alex back to the night in Judge West’s barn when he told her that Jared was her new client. She suspected then that the judge was fronting for someone who wanted this case closed in a hurry, and now she wondered whether Rossi’s decision not to look past Jared for a suspect was part of that effort. She couldn’t picture Rossi conniving with the judge, but a year ago she would have said the same thing about herself.
Proving all of that wouldn’t be easy. Judge West wasn’t going to find religion and confess his sins, and he wasn’t going to give up whomever he was protecting. The same was true for Rossi if his hands were dirty. Bethany knew more than she was willing to say, maybe even knowing who killed her sister. But five thousand dollars was a lot of money, and if there was more where that came from, it might be enough to soothe her grief and guilt over her sister’s death.
Alex called Grace Canfield, leaving a message with a to-do list when Grace didn’t pick up. Subpoena Joanie’s records from Fresh Start and find out who paid for her treatment. Check Joanie’s rap sheet to find out who posted her bail. Track down her street sisters and ask them if they knew Joanie’s sugar daddy’s name.
If none of that panned out, there was still Charlotte. Like a lot of autistic kids, the girl was a wanderer. A couple of years before, Alex had defended a father who was charged with felony child endangerment for not preventing his autistic son from sneaking out of the house at night. The boy was found at the bottom of a neighbor’s swimming pool. The boy’s doctor testified that nearly half of parents with an autistic child aged four or older said their child had tried to leave a safe place at least once and one in four said their child had disappeared long enough to cause concern.
Bethany must have been searching for Charlotte the day Alex found her playing in Rock Creek. That she was playing in the exact spot where Joanie’s body had been found could have been a coincidence, but Alex didn’t have faith in random chance on that order of magnitude. Since Bethany left Charlotte alone when she went to work, Charlotte might have gone out the night Joanie was killed and might have been playing in Liberty Park, maybe even in the creek, when the killer dumped Joanie’s body. If so, Charlotte might be able to identify the killer, assuming Alex could get her to talk.
It was midafternoon and Alex was famished. She headed to Hamburger Mary’s near the southwest edge of the downtown. The chain was known for its gay founders, openness to diversity, and knockout burgers, though Alex favored the GLBT, which added guacamole to the traditional BLT in a tasty salute to her world.
Her cell phone rang as she pulled into the parking lot on Southwest Boulevard, but it wasn’t the phone resting in the cup holder next to the steering wheel. It was the burner phone she’d set in the console between the driver and passenger seats, the caller ID displaying Unknown instead of a name.
She picked up the phone, unable to tell whether her hand was shaking because the phone was vibrating or because her insides were quaking. Judge West and his wife, Millie, were the only people who had the number for the burner phone. Millie had no reason to call. When the judge called her from his office, the familiar phone number showed up on caller ID, and when he called her from his home, his name was displayed.
Either the caller had misdialed or someone else had her number, and she didn’t want to answer without knowing who that might be. She hadn’t set up voice messaging for the phone, and since the caller was unknown, the phone wouldn’t capture the caller’s number. She stared at the phone, transfixed, waiting for it to stop ringing. Most people’s phones had voice mail. If it was a wrong number and there wasn’t an option to leave a message, odds were the caller would realize her error and not try again. If it wa
sn’t a wrong number, the caller would keep trying.
The phone quieted. Alex silently counted to ten, easing the phone back onto the console like it was fragile, jolting so hard when it rang again that she banged her head against her seat’s headrest and dropped the phone on the floor of the car. Unlatching her seat belt, she leaned forward, groping with one hand around her feet, accidentally kicking the phone beneath the seat. Cursing, she opened the car door, slid onto the asphalt parking lot on her knees, and stuck her head inside the car, peering under the seat. She grabbed the phone and answered.
“Who is this?”
“Why is Rossi asking me about our relationship?” Judge West asked.
Alex began to shake, her voice uneven. “I have no idea.”
“Don’t forget that if I go down, you go down with me.”
Alex heard footsteps approaching from behind her. “Like that’s news. I gotta go. Someone’s coming.”
The footsteps stopped. She could feel someone standing over her.
“Are you praying, throwing up, or just hiding from me?” Bonnie asked.
Alex shoved the phone under the seat and grabbed the inside of the car door, pulling herself up, her gut in full-tilt trampoline mode, a hot flash racing through her.
“I dropped my phone.”
Bonnie pointed to the phone in the cup holder. “There’s your phone. Is that the best you can do?”
Alex’s face was so warm she thought her eyeballs would catch on fire.
“And yes,” Bonnie added. “You’re blushing like your mother just caught you playing with yourself.”
“I can explain.”
“Me first. Sit down. In the car, not on the pavement.”
Bonnie walked around to the passenger side and got in. Alex stared at her. She wasn’t wearing makeup. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her hair was pulled back, held in place by a black headband. She was wearing faded jeans and a heavily pilled crewneck sweater. The only other time Alex had seen her leave the house looking like that was when they had to evacuate in the middle of the night because of a gas leak.
“You wouldn’t answer my calls, so I had to track you down. I looked at your credit card charges online to find out you were staying at the Residence Inn at Twenty-Ninth and Main.”
“You did what?”
“Don’t be so surprised. Did you think I was just going to sit back and do nothing? And in case you forgot, I know where you keep your list of passwords. I wanted to know where you were staying so I wouldn’t worry as much. I hear that Residence Inn is nice. It’s across the street from Penn Valley Park. I know you love to run there, but please don’t go at night. It’s not safe.”
Alex blinked, her mouth half-open, dumbfounded. “It’s okay.”
“I drove by a couple of times but I was afraid to knock. I didn’t want you to think I was stalking you.”
“You mean you didn’t want me to know that you were stalking me.”
Bonnie took a breath, smiling. “Yeah. That. And I thought you needed time and space, but that was Saturday and this is Monday and I talked to Grace and she said she didn’t know where you were, but I know how much you like to eat here so I took a chance and I’ve been sitting at a table in the front window since eleven this morning and—”
Alex stopped her. “I’m not coming back.”
Bonnie sniffed. “I know. Not now anyway. Maybe never. But you can’t just walk out like that without . . . without me telling you something.”
“I know you love me. I love you too, but that’s not what this is about.”
“I do know that, but you’ve got some crazy idea what loving someone means, so just be quiet and listen for a minute.”
Alex nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m glad you told me everything. I know you think you did some terrible things and I’m not saying you’re wrong about that, even if I’d like to think I’d have shot Dwayne Reed if it had been me instead of you. And the whole thing with the judge and your clients, well, I won’t lie. That’s . . .” She shook her head. “That’s a real mess. And shutting me out, that’s a huge problem in the trust department even if I get why you did it.” She made a quarter turn, facing Alex. “You carried all this crap by yourself for the last year and you can see how well that worked out, but you can’t fix it now by running away from me, from us. I don’t know anything about the law or what you have to do to set things right or even if you can. I don’t know if you’ll lose your job, your law license, or go to jail, and I don’t care. All I know is that I love you and I’ll be by your side every step of the way if you’ll let me. And if you don’t come home, I’ll find you no matter where you go.”
She leaned over, kissed Alex on the cheek, got out of the car, and walked away, not looking back.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
INTERROGATING A SUSPECT WAS LIKE putting on a play where everyone but the suspect knew their lines. The other actors had to be rehearsed and ready and the stage had to be set to keep the suspect unbalanced, desperate to catch the right cue.
Rossi liked flashing his badge in front of the suspect’s family, coworkers, or nosy neighbors and asking if there was someplace private they could talk. Catching suspects cold, he’d watch them stammer and stutter, littering their stories with tissue-thin lies that would trap them later.
Knocking on a suspect’s door and telling him they were going downtown for questioning could be just as effective. Whether the suspect spent the ride asking his own questions or stewing in silence, the uncertainty softened him up. And if it didn’t, the perp walk from the car to the interrogation room with cops holding each arm and dozens of heads tracking every step made all but the most hardened thug afraid they would mess themselves. And having met him at Robin’s house, Rossi knew there was nothing hardened about Ted Norris.
Rossi wanted to know as much as he could about Norris before he asked the first question. He wanted to know his work history, his criminal history, and his financial status. He wanted to have copies of the restraining order from the divorce and the one Sonia Steele had obtained, for the moment when Norris denied ever threatening her. He wanted surveillance video from the parking lot where Norris rear-ended Robin’s car, for when he claimed that never happened.
More than anything else, he wanted Norris’s car. He pulled Norris’s license and vehicle registration records. The car was a black six-year-old Camry, not the white Ford Escort Norris had been driving when Rossi escorted him out of Robin’s house a few days ago.
Putting all of that together took time, so Mitch Fowler grudgingly assigned a couple of detectives to sit on Norris and make sure he didn’t run, warning Rossi that Norris better be their guy or the overtime was coming out of Rossi’s paycheck, an empty threat Rossi ignored. By Tuesday morning, less than twenty-four hours after he met with Sonia Steele, Rossi had everything he wanted except for Norris’s car.
The surveillance video from the parking lot confirmed that Norris had been driving the Camry when that accident happened. The detectives babysitting Norris reported seeing only the Escort, so Rossi had dispatch issue a be-on-the-lookout for the Camry. When the BOLO didn’t turn up anything overnight, Fowler ordered Rossi to bring Norris in for questioning.
The detectives watching Norris banged on his door Tuesday morning at seven o’clock. They hammered loud and long enough to rouse the neighbors on either side before Norris opened up. They let him throw on some clothes and brought him in, bleary-eyed and hungover, depositing him in an interrogation room. Rossi watched him through the two-way mirror. Unshaven and disheveled, Norris gazed around the room, drummed his fingers on the table, and then laid his head down using his folded arms as a pillow. Rossi poured a cup of coffee and joined him.
“Good morning, Mr. Norris.”
Norris raised his head, squinting at Rossi. “You’re the cop from the other night?”
“Detective Rossi. Thought you could use this. It’s not exactly hair of the dog, but it’s the next best thing.”
Rossi put
the cup of coffee on the table in front of Norris, who raised it to his mouth, inhaling the aroma before taking a sip.
“What am I doing here? The other guys, all they’d tell me is that it was something to do with Robin.”
“That’s right. We’re making progress in our investigation, but we need your help to clear up a few things.”
Charlie Wheeler knocked on the door and stepped inside, right on schedule.
“Mr. Norris, I’m Detective Wheeler. I did the reconstruction on your ex-wife’s accident. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Detective Rossi for a minute. Won’t take long. Do you mind waiting?”
Norris took another sip of coffee. “No. Take your time. You got a newspaper or something?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Wheeler said.
Mitch Fowler met Rossi and Wheeler out in the hall.
“How long are you going to let him sit like that?” Fowler asked.
“Couple of hours at least,” Rossi said. “I’d like to find his car before I go at him.”
“Still nothing on the BOLO,” Wheeler said. “Airport police are still checking all the lots in case he stashed it out there, but there are thousands of cars for them to look at.”
“Why would he leave the car at the airport?” Fowler asked. “Why not take it to a body shop and get rid of the evidence?”
“Because he knows we’ll check the body shops and they all take before-and-after photographs for insurance purposes,” Wheeler said. “He could take it to a chop shop that handles stolen cars if he knew where to find one or he could sell it to a salvage yard for scrap, but they’d probably just take his money and sell it to someone else since it’s worth more as a used car than a hunk of steel. So hiding it in an airport parking lot until he can figure out how to get rid of it isn’t a half-bad idea.”
“Checking all those parking lots could take a couple of days,” Fowler said. “And if he didn’t leave it there, he could have parked in any number of garages or lots on either side of the state line. Are you going to search all of them?”
