by Lisa Black
Riley had the driver’s door open, slipped inside. Jack turned, waved at the two cops now moving toward them, dropped into the passenger seat, and shut the door with a shuddering thump. “Go.”
They pulled away, leaving the cops staring after them. Riley drove slowly, casually.
Behind him, Marlon Toner let out a sigh of deep relief he probably didn’t understand, and neither did Jack. Wasn’t driving into the Justice Center, if one feared violence against the suspected cop-killer, like jumping from the frying pan into the fire?
And did he truly think his fellow officers would have lynched the man right there, or arrange to have him mysteriously hang himself in his prison cell? No, Jack didn’t really believe that would happen. But . . . neither did he want to take the chance.
He also wanted to talk to Marlon Toner before the circus of outraged cops and posturing higher-ups could get their parade organized.
“What is going on?” Toner demanded.
“That,” Riley said, “is what we hope you can tell us.”
Monday, 12:55 p. m.
They put him in an interrogation room and with a guy Riley trusted on the surveillance camera who could make sure it would not be turned off under any circumstances. Again, Jack didn’t really think his fellow officers would burst in and beat Toner to death right then and there, but violent scenes from too many movies and black and white newsreels haunted the edges of his mind.
He had his doubts about Toner’s guilt, but if the man had killed his own sister and their own cop, then the case would have to be airtight. There could be no areas of the investigation for a decent attorney to negate. Marlon Toner must be treated with kid gloves, afforded every right and privilege, and each minute in their presence recorded, documented and utterly transparent. The other officers knew that, but it only took one or two cowboys to undermine a by-the-book investigation.
Except for legal representation—at least for now, Jack and Riley concluded. If they questioned him while he was under the influence, his statements could be thrown out. If they got him a lawyer, the first thing any attorney who had been awake through at least a few of his classes would be to postpone all questioning until the client’s sobriety could be established, and they didn’t want to wait. They wanted to get at least a few questions answered before the cops from the scene returned and asked who the hell it was they had in the interrogation room.
Toner didn’t have any obvious outward signs; he wasn’t slurring, staggering, or speaking nonsensically. His eyes were bloodshot but not jumping . . . at least not too badly. The two detectives figured it was worth trying. If he turned out to be higher than they thought, then they’d have to stop the interview and get him some representation.
The next hurdle: getting him to agree to talk without a lawyer. Surely a truly sober Marlon Toner would not, but according to his sister he had been a productive, law-abiding citizen until only recently. He didn’t think of himself as a criminal or he would never have approached them in that parking lot, whether under the influence or not.
They avoided most obvious problems by not arresting him. They had enough probable cause to arrest him for the murder of his sister, if not Rick; but they didn’t have a warrant, so they could honestly tell Marlon Toner, on video, that he was not under arrest and could leave at any time.
But the creepy scene at his sister’s apartment had spooked the man and besides, the police department had a good heating system. Jack got him a glass of water and a cup of coffee and a heaping plate of cookies from the break room. Police departments were full of food during the Christmas season, gifts from well-meaning citizens and civic groups and grade schools.
So it was on.
The temperature in the interrogation room felt a little too warm after the frigid outdoors and all three men quickly shed their coats. Jennifer Toner had said her brother smelled as if he hadn’t showered in a few days; Jack guessed that had spread to a week. He tried to breathe through his mouth without making it too obvious.
Cooperative didn’t mean clueless. Toner refused to tell them where he had been and what he had been doing unless they told him why they asked—and why the Cleveland police department thought he had killed one of their cops.
“It’s turning out to be a long story,” Riley said, briskly but not aggressively. “It goes back to last week. A man died of an overdose at the West Side Market and had your ID on him.”
“What, like my driver’s license? I got that, I just showed it to you.”
“Right. His driver’s license had his picture, but your name and your sister’s address. The man’s name was Raymond Winchester. Was he a friend of yours?”
“Never heard of him.”
They showed him a photo. Still nothing.
From this somewhat benign starting point, he took them through his activities since that time. Unfortunately, those were all amorphous and indistinct, with lots of “walking around” and “hanging out,” eating fast food and sleeping at St. Malachi’s or inexpensive motels.
“So you didn’t visit your sister on Friday afternoon, or evening?”
“No, man. I ain’t been there in a couple of weeks.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why don’t you ask her? She’ll tell you.”
They circled back a few more times, but the answer didn’t change: he had not been to his sister’s apartment building in two or three weeks. He spoke to her on the phone, but hadn’t gone there.
“Do you have your phone with you now?” Jack asked.
“Yeah.”
“Could I see it?”
All the cookies in the world couldn’t sweeten that deal. “No.”
“I just want—”
“No.”
Riley said, “We only ask because your sister told us you’ve been having some issues with medication.”
The man rolled his eyes. “She exaggerates. She’s like our mom, a bit of a nag. Thinks it’s her job to tell me what to do.”
“Sisters can be like that,” Riley agreed. “She seemed especially concerned about a Dr. Castleman.”
A wary look came over the man. He said nothing.
“Who is Dr. Castleman?”
“He’s my doctor. That’s what I keep telling her. I take those pills because they’re prescribed to me.” He enunciated each word with careful clarity.
“Where can we find him?”
“You can’t talk to him about me. That’s violating patient confidentiality.”
“We understand that. We only want to talk to him.”
Toner crossed his arms. “Not my problem.”
“We’d like to know where he is.”
“Try the phone book.”
“He isn’t in it. That seems very strange for a doctor, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Not my problem.”
“Did Jennifer speak with Dr. Castleman?”
“No.” But he seemed uncertain.
“Did you tell her where to find him?”
“No!”
“Are you sure? I was on your same medication once, Percodan,” Riley said, and Jack assumed he lied—about taking it, not about the drug. Jennifer Toner had told them what the label on her brother’s bottle had read. The drug combined aspirin and OxyContin. “After I fell out of a window chasing a suspect, landed right on my knee. I know it made me feel light-headed, a little confused. Even a big guy can get loopy on that stuff.”
Toner said nothing, arms still crossed.
“Perhaps part of last week gets a little mixed up in your mind. Because of the medication.”
“No.”
“Maybe you went to Jennifer’s and then forgot about it.”
“ No. ”
Riley backed off. “Okay. So what did you do on Friday?”
“I told you.” Another litany of walking around and hanging out.
Riley leaned back in. “Jennifer told us how concerned she felt about Dr. Castleman and his treatment of you. She tried very hard to locate him so
she could talk to him personally. Did she tell you about that?”
The sugar boost of the cookies provided an energy boost, and Toner fidgeted in his chair. “No. Why don’t you just ask her?”
“You’re positive she never confronted the doctor?”
“No, man! He would have told me, or she would, or something.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes! Why’re you asking all about Jenny and my doctor? They don’t even know each other. What’s any of that got to do with anything?”
“Quite a bit, Mr. Toner,” Riley said. “Because your doctor is the only other person who might possibly have a motive to kill Jennifer. Besides you.”
No reaction. Fingers gripped the coffee cup and his other hand stilled over the cookie plate. Jack pulled the cup from his hand before he could break the Styrofoam shape into pieces. The expression on Marlon Toner’s face turned from intense bafflement to a ghastly knowing.
“She’s dead?”
Monday, 1:45 p. m.
The interview went downhill after that, Jack reported to Maggie. The man had burst into wails of grief so profound that they lost twenty minutes trying to calm him down enough to speak with any sort of coherence at all.
She and Jack sat in the lab, surrounded by the comfortingly familiar sounds of lab work being done—Denny in the wet lab spraying Ninhydrin on what looked like fake currency, Maggie’s computer humming as the program did a search through its fingerprint database, Carol bustling about in the DNA lab, and the boxy mass spec moving sample vials around on a carousel. At least Jack hoped Maggie found it comforting. It did nothing for him.
Josh and Amy were at the police impound garage processing Rick’s assigned city vehicle, which had been located in Euclid at nearly the same moment that Maggie first saw his body—a complete coincidence. The vehicle had been sitting in a Park and Ride lot for who knew how long until a bored transit cop out having a smoke happened to run the plate. The killer might have dumped the car and gotten on a bus, or might have been picked up by a cohort, or might have walked home for all they knew. Video cameras only covered the bus loading area; they could start canvassing commuters, but with no idea when the car had been dropped that seemed like a desperately hopeless task.
“You don’t think he did it,” Maggie instantly guessed.
“Not quite yet, I don’t. We could not shake his timeline—he hadn’t been to his sister’s apartment in two or three weeks. I said, maybe he dropped in to borrow a few bucks, but he insists he has plenty of money, as Jennifer had said. But if he has plenty of money, then why isn’t he spending it on a place with good running water? But maybe he is but isn’t bothering with the water because he’s too busy shooting up. He’s not starving, either. A little hungry this morning, but not starving. Of course he could have had money all weekend because he got it from Jennifer before he killed her. Who knows? Riley and I went round and round.”
“So he didn’t kill Rick, either,” Maggie said. “If he’s telling the truth.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he crushed up a boatload of Oxy, went there and killed them both, and now honestly has no recollection of even being in the area. He seemed really devastated about his sister, but it’s hard to tell. We’ll wait until the stuff clears his system, and then see what kind of answers we get.”
“Where is he now?”
“We transferred him to the special detox cells, private room, suicide watch, lots of eyes on him. He went voluntarily—safer for him and strict adherence to protocol for us.”
“What about Rick’s autopsy?”
“They were going to do it immediately. Unless they had to wait for, um—”
“For the body to thaw,” Maggie said. She spoke matter-of-factly, Jack saw, because her ex-husband’s half-frozen corpse was, at heart, a practical problem with a practical solution. Sometimes Jack thought she was more like him than she would ever admit. That could be why their weird partnership hadn’t imploded . . . yet.
“Yes.”
“Who’s going?”
“Johnson and Padlecki. The chief wouldn’t let Will go.”
“I should think not.” She seemed aghast at the idea, more solicitous of her ex-husband’s workplace partner than—“We need to know, ASAP, whether he was shot or stabbed. And if stabbed—”
“Was it the same weapon that killed Jennifer, which would make sense, as well as the same weapon that killed Evan Harding?”
“Which wouldn’t.”
“No,” Jack said. “Not at all.”
His phone rang.
Riley said, “You’re not going to believe this.”
“Don’t tell me we have another body.”
“No, not that. It’s Harding’s little girlfriend. She got mugged on her way to work.”
Chapter 24
Monday, 2:05 p. m.
The attack had been witnessed by two of Shanaya’s coworkers, who had also been arriving for an afternoon shift at the building on East Ninth. The patrol officer who had taken all the reports provided Jack and Riley with this concise summary: Shanaya had been walking up Bolivar, a busy street in broad daylight, with the two witnesses approaching from the opposite direction on the other side of Ninth, coming from the Rapid Transit stop at Tower City. Though they were approximately 350 feet away, across a busy road, they clearly saw the man stop the young woman. It seemed that a short conversation ensued and then the man pulled her into an alley, where she clearly did not want to go. The two young women instantly dashed against traffic, across East Ninth and sped to the alley, where they found the man punching Shanaya in the midriff. One of the witnesses called 911 while the other leapt onto the man’s back, doing her best to choke him. The first gave police their location, then hit the man across the knees with a piece of rebar she found on the ground. After that he put up his hands and told her to stop and that he would cooperate fully provided she didn’t hit him again. The second witness slid off his back. He made no attempt to leave the scene and even thanked the first witness for calling the cops.
Shanaya, however, ran farther up the alley until one of the witnesses called her name. The patrol officer guessed she’d been about to run out on the whole drama until she realized that they knew her.
“Unless it was just nerves,” the officer told them, confiding his take on her behavior. “Totally panicked and all. And this alley’s a dead end, so she had nowhere to go. I ran all their names and she came up in relation to a homicide of yours. I told Dispatch to inform you and here you are.” He seemed pleased to think he could get back into his car and roll on to the next incident. Not all patrol officers want to make detective or sergeant. Many are perfectly happy where they are, addicted to the constantly changing landscape of law and order in a large city.
“What’s the guy’s story?” Riley asked.
“Once he heard me say there were detectives coming, he declined to give one. His name is Eric Hayes, and he lives on Franklin. He’s a construction worker, commercial jobs. I asked him why he assaulted the young lady, and he said, and I quote, ‘That punch I threw is nothing compared to what she deserves.’ I asked for clarification, and he said he’d wait for you. The two witnesses gave me their info so I let them go.”
A note of caution had entered his voice, and he paused.
“What?” Jack asked.
His word flow, strong until that point, seemed to ebb and falter. “The two witnesses were, well, totally typical. Adrenaline high, both talking at once, jumping all over the place in their story, yak, yak, yak. Since they said they knew the victim because they worked with her, which is where all three were heading, I asked where they work. Dead stop. They said, practically in unison, we work in customer service. Dead stop again. I got them to give me the name and address. . . it’s in that building on the corner, right on—”
Riley said, “Yeah, we’ve been there.”
“Really? Huh.” The officer waited a split second to see if more explanation would be forthcoming, saw that it wouldn’t, and went on.
“I got curious, pressed a bit, but they kept saying either technical support or customer service like they were friggin’ yoga mantras or something, and after that they weren’t so excited and talkative, like the adrenaline had drained right out of them both at the same time. It was kinda weird. Then that one”—he jerked a chin toward Shanaya, huddled in an alcove within the alley—“has been trying every which way to wriggle out of here. When I put the guy in my car, she tried to take off but turned around when I started to chase her. I’m not only standing in this alley because it blocks the wind. I figured if I didn’t keep her cornered, she’d try again.”
Riley jotted a few notes before giving up. Trying to write on a tiny pad with thick gloves didn’t work well.
“What do you guys want to do with these two?” the patrol officer asked. “Want them in your car?” When they hesitated, he added: “I only ask because it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass out here, wind block or no wind block.”
“You book him in,” Riley said. “We’ll take her.”
“Keep a firm grip,” the officer warned, and left the alley.
* * *
Shanaya Thomas flat-out begged not to be taken to the station. She couldn’t miss work. She was already late and that was bad enough, but to miss part of the day would probably get her fired—which added insult to injury since she was the victim here. So why did she have to suffer? She had already told them everything: the guy came up, said some nasty things to her, then dragged her into the alley and hit her. Then the other girls showed up.
“What nasty things?” Riley asked, raising his voice slightly. The city-issued Ford had seen better days and the heater made a droning whine, especially when turned up full blast, and Riley had it turned up full blast. He and Jack faced the young woman in the back seat. She wore knit pants tucked into boots, oversized nylon gloves, and a parka, that didn’t seem to have quite enough padding for the weather. Her black hair hung in silky tufts around her face. No puffs of warm air had reached her yet and she had her knees drawn up to her chin, held in place by both arms. And still she shivered.
