Blood Shot

by Sara Paretsky

  At the far end I walked into a room that had the unmistakable air of a poor not-for-profit agency. The scarred metal furniture and newspaper articles taped to the walls wavered under a badly winking fluorescent bulb. Papers and phone books were stacked on the floor and the electric typewriters were models IBM had abandoned when I was still in college.

  A young black woman was typing while talking on the phone. She smiled at me, but held up a finger to ask me to wait. I could hear voices from an open conference room; ignoring the receptionist’s urgent hissing, I went to the door to look in.

  A group of five, four women and a man, sat at a rickety deal table. Caroline was in the middle, talking heatedly. When she saw me at the door she broke off and flushed to the roots of her coppery hair.

  “Vic! I’m in a meeting. Can’t you wait?”

  “All day, if it’s for you, my sweet. We need a tête-à-tête about John McGonnigal-he visited me first thing this morning.”

  “John McGonnigal?” Her little nose wrinkled questioningly.

  “Sergeant McGonnigal. Chicago Police,” I said helpfully.

  She turned even redder. “Oh. Him. Maybe we’d better talk now. Will you all excuse me?”

  She got up and took me to a cubbyhole next to the conference room. The chaos there, compounded of books, papers, graphs, old newspapers, and candy wrappers, made my office look like a convent cell. Caroline dumped a phone directory from a folding chair for me and seated herself in the rickety swivel chair behind her desk. She gripped her hands together in front of her, but stared at me defiantly.

  “Caroline, I’ve known you twenty-six years, and you’ve pulled tricks that would shame Oliver North, but this one has got to head the list. After whining and snuffling you got me to agree to look for your old man. Then you called me off without any reason. Now, to top it all off, you lied to the police about my involvement with Nancy. You want to explain why? Without resorting to Hans Christian Andersen?” I was having trouble keeping my voice below a shout.

  “What are you on your high horse about?” she said belligerently. “You did give Nancy advice about-”

  “Shut up!” I snapped. “You’re not talking to the cops, sweetie pie. I can just picture you blushing and winking away your tears with Sergeant McGonnigal. But I know what I told Nancy that night as well as you do. So cut the crap and tell me why you lied about me to the police.”

  “I didn’t! You try and prove it! Nancy did come by that night. You did tell her to talk to someone in Jurshak’s office. And she’s dead now.”

  I shook my head like a wet dog, trying to clear my brain. “Could we start this at the beginning? Why did you tell me to stop hunting for your old man?”

  She looked at the desktop. “I decided it wasn’t fair to Ma. Going behind her back when it upset her so much.”

  “Whew boy,” I said. “Hold it there. Let me get onto Cardinal Bernardin and the Pope to start beatification proceedings. When did you ever put Louisa, or anyone else, ahead of what you wanted?”

  “Stop it!” she shouted, bursting into tears. “Believe me or not, I don’t care. I love my mother and I don’t want anyone hurting her no matter what you may think.”

  I looked at her warily. Caroline might bat a few tears around as part of her tragic orphan routine, but she wasn’t prone to sobbing fits.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “I take it back. That was cruel. Is that why you sicced the cops on me? To punish me for saying I was continuing the investigation?”

  She blew her nose noisily. “It wasn’t like that!”

  “What was it like then?”

  She caught her lower lip in her teeth. “Nancy called me Tuesday morning. She said she’d gotten threatening phone calls and she thought someone was following her.”

  “What were they threatening her about?”

  “The plant, of course.”

  “Caroline, I want you to be absolutely clear on this. Did she specifically say the calls were about the plant?”

  She opened her mouth, then took a breath. “No,” she finally muttered. “I just assumed they were. Because it was the last thing she and I had been talking about.”

  “But you went ahead and told the police that she was killed because of the recycling plant. And that I told her who to talk to. Do you understand how outrageous that is?”

  “But, Vic. It’s not just a wild guess. I mean-”

  “You mean shit!” My anger returned, making my voice husky. “Can’t you tell the difference between your head games and reality? Nancy was killed. Murdered. Instead of helping the police find the murderer, you slandered me and got them on my butt.”

  “They don’t care about Nancy, anyway. They don’t care about any of us down here.” She got to her feet, her eyes flashing. “They respond to political pressure, and as far as Jurshak is concerned, South Chicago might as well be the South Pole. You know that as well as I do. You know the last time he got a street repaired down here-it sure as hell was before you left the neighborhood.”

  “Bobby Mallory is a good, honest, thorough cop,” I said doggedly. “Just because Jurshak is twenty kinds of asshole doesn’t change that.”

  “Yeah, you don’t care, either. You proved that pretty good when you moved away from here and never came back until I pushed you into it.”

  The pulse beside my right temple started throbbing. I pounded the desk hard enough to knock some of the papers to the floor. “I busted my ass for a week trying to find your old man for you. Your grandparents insulted me, Louisa blew up at me, and you! You couldn’t be content with manipulating me into going to look for the guy and then spinning me around a few times. You had to lie to the police about me.”

  “And I thought you’d give a fuck,” she yelled. “I thought if you didn’t care about me, you’d at least do something for Nancy because you played on the same team together. I guess that proves how wrong I was.”

  She started for the door. I caught her arm and forced her to face me.

  “Caroline, I’m mad enough to beat the shit out of you. But I’m not so mad I can’t think. You fingered me to the cops because there’s something you know that you’re scared to talk about. I want to know what that is.”

  She looked at me fiercely. “I don’t know anything. Just that someone had started following Nancy around over the weekend.”

  “And she called the police and reported it. Or you did.”

  “No. She talked to the state’s attorney and they said they’d open a file. I guess they have something to put in it now.”

  She gave the smile of a triumphant martyr. I forced myself to speak calmly to her. After a few minutes she reluctantly agreed to sit back down and tell me what she knew. If she was telling the truth-a big if-it wasn’t much. She didn’t know whom Nancy had seen at the state’s attorney’s office, but she thought it could have been Hugh McInerney; he was the person they dealt with on other issues. Under further probing she admitted that McInerney had taken statements from them eighteen months ago about their problems with Steve Dresberg, a local Mob figure involved in garbage disposal.

  I vaguely remembered the trial over Dresberg’s PCB incinerator and his alleged sweetheart deal with the Sanitary District but didn’t realize she and Nancy had been involved. When I demanded to know what role the two had played, she scowled but said she and Nancy had testified to receiving death threats for their opposition to the incinerator.

  “Obviously Dresberg knew who to pay off at the Sanitary District. It didn’t matter what we said. I guess he figured SCRAP was too puny to listen to so he didn’t have to make good his threats.”

  “And you didn’t tell the cops that.” I rubbed my hands tiredly across my face. “Caroline, you need to call McGonnigal and make an amended statement. You need to get them looking at people you know threatened Nancy in the past. I’m going to phone the sergeant myself as soon as I get home to tell him about this conversation. And if you’re thinking of lying to him a second time, think again-he’s known me profess
ionally for years. He may not like me, but he knows he can believe what I tell him.”

  She looked at me furiously. “I’m not five years old anymore. I don’t have to do what you say.”

  I went to the door. “Just do me a favor, Caroline-the next time you’re in trouble, dial 911 like the rest of the citizenry. Or talk to a shrink. Don’t come hounding me.”

  12

  Common Sense

  I dragged my feet back to the Chevy, feeling as though I were a hundred years old. I was disgusted with Caroline, with myself for being stupid enough to get caught in her net once again, with Gabriella for ever befriending Louisa Djiak. If my mother had known what Louisa’s damned baby would get me into… I could hear Gabriella’s golden voice in response to the same plaint twenty-two years ago. “Of her I expect nothing but trouble, cara. But of you I expect rationality. Not because you are older, but because it is your nature.”

  I made a bitter face at the memory and started the car. Sometimes the burden of being rational and responsible while everyone around me was howling was more than I liked. Even so, instead of washing my hands of Caroline’s problems and heading north toward home, I found myself driving west. Toward Nancy’s childhood house on Muskegon.

  But it wasn’t to help out Caroline that I was making the trek. I didn’t care that I’d told Nancy to talk to someone at Jurshak’s office, or even that we’d shared the old school towel. I was hoping to assuage my own feeling of guilt for not having been there when Nancy called me.

  Of course she might have been phoning to condole about the Lady Tigers-our successors had been eliminated in the state quarterfinals. But I didn’t think so. Despite my bravura performance with Caroline, I sort of thought she was right: Nancy had learned something about the recycling plant that she needed my help to deal with.

  I didn’t have any trouble finding Nancy’s mother’s place, which didn’t exactly cheer me up. I thought I’d left the South Side behind, but it seemed my unconscious had perfect recall of every house I used to spend time in down here.

  Three cars were crowded into the short driveway. The curb in front was filled, too, and I had to go some way down the street before I found a parking space. I fiddled with my car keys for a moment before starting up the walk-perhaps I should postpone my visit until her mourning callers had gone. But even if it was my nature to be rational, patience isn’t my leading virtue. I stuck the keys into my skirt pocket and headed up the walk.

  The door was opened by a strange young woman of thirty or so, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked at me questioningly without saying anything. When a minute had stretched by without her speaking, I finally gave her my name.

  “I’m an old friend of Nancy’s. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Cleghorn for a few minutes if she’s up to seeing me.”

  “I’ll go ask,” she muttered.

  She came back again, hunched a shoulder, told me I could go on in, and returned to whatever she’d been doing when I rang the bell. I was startled by the clamor when I got into the little foyer-it was more like the noisy house of Nancy’s and my childhood than a place of mourning.

  As I followed the sound toward the living room, two small boys erupted from it, chasing each other with sweet rolls they were using as guns. The lead one caromed into me and bounced off without apology. I sidestepped the other and looked cautiously around the doorway before entering.

  The long, homey room was packed with people. I didn’t recognize any of them, but assumed the men were Nancy’s four brothers grown to adulthood. The three young women were presumably their wives. What looked like a nursery school in full session was crammed around the edges, with children jabbing each other, scuffling, giggling, ignoring adult admonitions for silence.

  No one paid any attention to me, but I finally spied Ellen Cleghorn at the far end of the room, holding a howling baby without much enthusiasm. When she saw me she struggled to her feet and gave the baby to one of the young women. She picked her way through her swarming grandchildren to me.

  “I’m so sorry about Nancy,” I said, squeezing her hand. “And I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this.”

  “I’m glad you came, dear,” she said, giving a warm smile and kissing my cheek. “The boys mean well-they all took the day off and thought it would cheer up Grandma to see the kiddies-but the chaos is too much for me. Let’s go into the dining room. There’s cake in there and one of the girls is making coffee.”

  Ellen Cleghorn had aged well. She was a plumper edition of Nancy, with the same frizzy blond hair. It had darkened with time rather than graying and her skin was still soft and clear. She had been divorced for many years, ever since her husband ran off with another woman. She’d never gotten child support or alimony and had raised her large family on her meager earnings as a librarian, always making room for me at the dinner table after basketball practice.

  Ellen had been unique on the South Side in her indifference to housekeeping. The disarray in the dining room was much as I remembered it, with dust balls in the comers and books and papers shoved to one side to make room for the food. Even so, the house had always seemed romantic to me when I was young. It was one of a handful of big homes in the neighborhood-Mr. Cleghorn had been a grade school principal before he decamped-and all five children had their own bedrooms. Unheard-of luxury on the South Side. Nancy’s even had a little turreted window where we acted out Bluebeard.

  Mrs. Cleghorn sat down behind a stack of newspapers at the head of the table and gestured me to the chair catty-corner to her.

  I fiddled with the pages of the book in front of me, then said abruptly, “Nancy was trying to get in touch with me yesterday. I guess I told you that when you gave me her number. Do you know what she wanted?”

  She shook her head. “I hadn’t talked to her for several weeks.”

  “I know it’s rotten of me to bug you about it today. But-I keep thinking it had something to do with-with what happened to her. I mean, we hadn’t seen each other for so long. And when we did talk it was about my being a detective and what I would do in her situation. So she would have thought of me in that context, you know-something came up that she thought my special experience might help her with.”

  “I just don’t know, dear.” Her voice trembled and she struggled to control it. “Don’t let it worry you. You couldn’t have done anything to help her, I’m sure.”

  “I wish I could agree with you. Look, I’m not trying to be a ghoul, or pressure you when you’re so upset. But I feel responsible. I’m an experienced investigator. I might have been able to help her if I’d been home when she called. The only thing I can do to assuage my conscience is try to find who killed her.”

  “Vic, I know you and Nancy were friends, and I’m sure you think you’re helping by getting involved. But can’t you just leave it to the police? I don’t want to have to talk about it or think about it anymore. It’s bad enough having to get ready for her funeral with all these children screaming through the house. If I have to worry about-about why someone wanted to kill her-I keep thinking of her in that marsh. We used to go bird-watching there when she was in Girl Scouts and she was always so scared of the water. I keep thinking of her in there being alone and afraid-” She broke off and struggled against her tears.

  I knew Nancy was afraid of water. She had never joined our surreptitious swims in the Calumet and she had to get a written statement from a doctor to excuse her from the swimming requirement in college. I didn’t want to think of her last minutes in the marsh. Maybe she’d never regained consciousness. It was the best I could hope for.

  “That’s why it matters to me to find out who put her through such torment. It makes me feel that she was a little less helpless if I can go to bat for her now. Can you understand that and tell me who Nancy might’ve talked to? If not to you, I mean?”

  She and Nancy had always had a kind of careless camaraderie, which I’d envied. Even though I loved my mother, she was too intense for an easy relationship. If Nancy hadn�
�t told Ellen Cleghorn what was going on with the recycling center, she’d certainly have talked to her about friends and lovers. And after a few more minutes of coaxing, Mrs. Cleghorn started speaking about them.

  Nancy had been in love, been pregnant, had an abortion. Since she and Charles broke up five years ago there hadn’t been any special men in her life. And no close women friends down here, either.

  “It wasn’t really a good place for her to meet people. I hoped maybe after she bought that house-South Shore is a little livelier neighborhood and lots of university people live down there now. But there wasn’t anyone in this area she would’ve been close enough to talk to. Except maybe Caroline Djiak, and Nancy thought she was such a hothead, she wouldn’t have told her anything she wasn’t dead certain about.” The unconscious phrase made her wince.

  I rubbed my eyes. “She talked to one of the state’s attorneys. If it had something to do with SCRAP, she might’ve talked to their lawyer too. What’s his name? She mentioned it that night she came by Caroline’s and I can’t remember it”

  “I guess that would be Ron Kappelman, Vic. She went out with him a few times but they didn’t really click together.”

  “When was that?” I asked, suddenly alert. Maybe it was a crime of passion after all.

  “It must have been two years ago, I guess. When he first started working with SCRAP.”

  Maybe not. Who waits two years to revenge himself on love gone sour? Outside Agatha Christie, that is.

  Mrs. Cleghorn couldn’t tell me anything else. Other than the date of the funeral, set for Monday at Mount of Olives Methodist Church. I told her I’d be there and left her to the ministrations of her grandchildren.

  Back at the car, I slumped dejectedly against the steering wheel. Except for the financial searches I’d done on Tuesday, I hadn’t had a paying customer for three weeks. And now, if I was really going to look into Nancy’s death, I’d have to talk to the state’s attorney. See if Nancy had revealed anything when she told him she was being followed. Talk to Ron Kappelman. See whether he might’ve felt like a man scorned or, failing that, if he knew what she’d been up to the last few days.