Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  For one thing, you’d need a prescription. Could Arthur Morton have gotten one filled from the Saline County prison? At least in Cook County, the idea of a prisoner being given nicotine patches to quell his cigarette withdrawal would cause a laff riot among the guards.

  For another, it would be hard to get a prescription filled for thirty patches. If Morton could have gotten them, wouldn’t someone in a small jail notice he was covered in patches and beginning to suffocate?

  I sent an email to Chicago’s deputy chief medical examiner, a man named Nick Vishnikov who inhabits that gray area between friend and work acquaintance.

  Can someone really commit suicide with nicotine patches? How many would you need?

  Before putting the whole Lydia-Hector story to one side, I called the two men whose names Elisa Palurdo had given me, his boyhood friend and his college roommate. Neither had seen Lydia recently—like Elisa, they had felt unable to respond to her as she became more agitated.

  “What was her relationship with Hector like?” I asked.

  “Hector was on the road the last few years,” Stu Shiffman, the roommate said. “He liked to talk to me when he was in town—you know I teach Latin American studies at Northern Illinois?—he had become deeply interested in Chilean history and politics, and I was one person who knew enough to help him with resources, but we didn’t get together socially, so I didn’t see him with Lydia very often. Still, I thought Lydia was good for him, or maybe they were good for each other. His best-known book was a collection of short stories based on some of the oldest histories we have of the Americas. Lydia wrote her famous song, ‘Savage,’ culled from the stories Hector unearthed about the First Nations at the time of Columbus.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes. Just as we were saying goodbye, he said, “One thing—after his father died, Hector started traveling to Chile more often. He’d gone a couple of times, hoping to find relatives, I think, but after Jacobo’s death, he wanted more specific help in tracking down what happened to victims of the Pinochet regime. Between forty and fifty thousand people were tortured or disappeared and the postregime truth and reconciliation efforts were brief and didn’t account for most of them.”

  “Was Hector’s father a refugee from Pinochet?”

  “I don’t think so. I got the idea he was a blue-collar guy who emigrated because he couldn’t find work when the Chilean economy started to come apart.”

  “When was that?” I tried to remember what little I knew about Chile—the destabilization of the economy when the socialist Allende was president, the right-wing Pinochet coup.

  “No, after that,” Shiffman said. “It’s a complicated history and I won’t take your time with all the details—who did what to the economy and the infrastructure—but about a decade into the Pinochet regime, inflation and unemployment both began to climb. Pinochet had undercut a lot of the social network, so people who couldn’t feed their families or afford health care looked elsewhere.

  “Some looked to the north and from what Hector said, his father was one of those. I have a feeling, too, that Jacobo was pretty red—another good reason to leave Chile. Leftists were prime targets of the Pinochet death squads. I know Jacobo Palurdo didn’t want Hector at the University of Chicago—Hector told me his father thought it was an elitist institution that would make Hector ashamed of his roots.”

  It was something to think about, but not a help in finding Lydia. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I finally put her out of my mind to attend to jobs for other clients.

  I worked doggedly for three hours, ignoring a text from Murray, and met Peter Sansen for a late dinner. My phone buzzed as we were having drinks at the bar—Bernie. She rang again five minutes later, and again as the waiter led us to our table. This was followed by a text: You must phone at once. URGENT, URGENT, URGENT.

  For Bernie, urgent could mean anything, but her recent arrest made me uneasy. I excused myself and went outside to call.

  “Vic, I thought maybe you were in bed with Peter and not answering your phone until morning. I need you, à l’instant!”

  “What?”

  “Leo! He’s dead! They found him—found his body—he was in that wild park by the viaduct.”

  14

  Thorough Search

  Someone took the phone from Bernie before I could ask where she was, but from the background sounds before the phone went dead, I guessed she was with the police at the crime scene. Peter settled the drinks bill and drove me to Forty-seventh Street.

  The Burnham Wildlife Corridor was narrow, but it stretched about two miles, from the parking lot at McCormick Place—Chicago’s big convention center—to the Forty-seventh Street viaduct. As we approached the northern edge, we could see bright circles of police flashlights bobbing among the shrubbery. Gapers slowed the exit to a maddening creep. When we finally left the Drive, Peter let me out near the parking lot.

  The sidewalk was even thicker with gawkers than the Drive had been, but I’d learned the art of breaking through a crowd on the streets of South Chicago. I quickly made it to the front, not bothering to apologize to anyone cursing me after colliding with my elbows.

  The entrance to the parking lot was barricaded. I told the officer on duty that I was Bernie Fouchard’s attorney and asked to be taken to her.

  The man looked at my credentials with painstaking—and pains-giving—care before grudgingly deciding I was actually an attorney and might be allowed in to see my client. He called someone for permission and pulled the sawhorses apart to let me pass.

  All the local TV stations had cameras set up, aimed at the entrance to the lot. The sight of a new body entering the enclosure caused major excitement: three people rushed up with their mikes, wanting my identity. Beth Blacksin, from Global’s cable news channel, recognized me and hollered for the name of my client. When I kept on walking, the other reporters converged on Beth, demanding my name.

  Once I was in the main part of the lot, the strobes and arc lights from the police blinded me. I squinted through the glare and finally saw a knot of uniforms at the north end, where they’d herded some twelve or fifteen people into a makeshift holding pen.

  Most of the detainees were older, worn-out people, mostly men, in threadbare shirts and baggy trousers, some in their winter parkas, since they had no safe place to store them in summertime. A handful of women was segregated from the men onto a couple of benches where they were watched by a trio of women cops. On one bench, wedged between a massive woman in a halter top and long skirt and a younger woman, pencil thin, whose twitches and rolling eyes betrayed an urgent need for medication, I saw Bernie. She was hunched over, her hands clutching the edge of the bench.

  I ran to her, calling her name, and she hurled herself into my arms, breaking down into sobs.

  One of the women officers put a hand on Bernie’s shoulder, as if to pull her back to the bench.

  I gave a shark smile. “I’m her attorney. We’re going to confer in private.”

  “I need a lawyer, too!” The large woman next to Bernie surged to her feet, hands on hips. “Why does the white girl get a lawyer and I don’t?”

  One of the male detainees staggered over. “You can be my lawyer anytime, sugar.”

  “It’s been a long time since I got an acquittal,” I said. “Best find someone with a better track record.”

  “Sweet thing like you can’t blind talk a jury?” the man scoffed.

  The woman was more belligerent. “Little white girl gets a lawyer and I don’t? What does that say about justice in America?”

  “Probably everything,” I agreed.

  I started to hand out cards when a female officer jogged over. “What’s going on—oh. You. And your troublemaking niece.”

  “Sergeant Pizzello. Yes, it’s me. What happened here and what does it have to do with Bernadine Fouchard? Who is my goddaughter, not my niece.”

  The sergeant frowned at us. “We’re still sorting that out. Ernestine,” she added, turni
ng to the angry woman. “I know this lawyer. You’d be better off with the public defender, but even if you weren’t, you’re not facing any charges. We’re only getting statements and then you’ll be free to go. Unless, of course, someone saw you bending over the victim and removing his wallet or his phone.”

  Ernestine and the drunk man retreated, both muttering phrases like “bitches with too much power.”

  “We’ll start with your client, sugar.” Pizzello flashed her own shark smile. The strobes turned her teeth a ghastly purple-gray. “Or is she your niece?”

  “Goddaughter. But she’s my client all the same. Are the dead man’s wallet and phone missing?”

  Pizzello nodded but looked at Bernie. “Bernadine Fouchard, this is the second time you’ve been involved in an incident in this park. It had better be the last, because even if your lawyer is the hottest investigator in town—meaning, even if she’s better than me, which I doubt—nothing is going to keep your little behind out of my holding cell. So you tell me, and your lawyer-like godmother, what the sweet fuck you were doing here tonight.”

  Bernie looked at me. “They searched me in a nasty way. Even my breasts.”

  “You what?” I shouted at Pizzello.

  She bit her lip but said stolidly, “The victim’s phone and wallet were gone. We searched everyone. Plus, girlfriend is covered in blood.”

  That much was true: Bernie had blood on her T-shirt, and she’d wiped her hands on her jeans. I ignored that to protest Pizzello’s strip search. “Out here in the parking lot? Where God and every leering passerby could see you? Even the South Side’s sorriest addict has a right to privacy. I’m going to mention this. Not to the Police Review Board, but to the TV reporters who are hovering around the entrance like crows searching for carrion.”

  She didn’t respond, but at least she didn’t try to bluster.

  I pulled Bernie away. “Talk directly into my ear. She’s probably recording you. What were you doing here?”

  Her voice trembled, but she had good nerves. Standing on tiptoe, she whispered that Leo wanted her to go with him to the park at night. They were supposed to have dinner at the African Fusion café on Forty-seventh and then walk over together. When an hour passed without him showing or answering her texts, Bernie decided to look for him in the park. When she got there, though, the parking lot was full of the drunks; people were even shooting up.

  “It was dégoû—disgusting. I went back to the sidewalk. Runners and people with dogs, they were all going back and forth, it felt safer. Then one of the drunks came out of the bushes over there—” She pointed up the track, toward the railway embankment. “He was yelling and I didn’t pay attention at first but then all these other people started coming out of the park and the drunks in the lot started yelling, too, about a dead man.”

  Her fingers dug into my forearm as she tried to steady herself.

  “What did you do?”

  “I was scared it was Leo,” she murmured. “I—I went to look.”

  I told her she could repeat the story to Pizzello.

  “You went and looked at him?” The sergeant was incredulous. “What made you do that? Did you want to make sure he was really dead?”

  “I didn’t know why Leo stood me up,” Bernie said in a small voice. “And then I thought, if he was dead that would explain it.”

  Pizzello rolled her eyes. “It would, indeed. Really, what made you go look at the body?”

  “She told you,” I snapped. “Maybe you’d have run as fast as you could to the nearest intersection and hailed an Uber to drive you home, but the Fouchards are made of strong mettle. Steel on ice. They don’t shy away from their fears. You know how to reach me, which means if you want to talk to her again you call me.”

  I put an arm around Bernie’s shoulders and steered her past the officers and civilians. Pizzello said to our backs, “The phone, Ms. Steel-on-ice? Do you have his phone?”

  “You know I don’t. You know it wasn’t inside my bra and panties.” Bernie’s voice trembled, but she held her ground. “You have my phone, though, and I want it back.”

  “Let’s have it,” I said to Pizzello. “I’m getting her out of here and getting her home.”

  “We need her clothes, fingerprints, DNA,” Pizzello said. “She admits to handling the vic—let’s see whose blood—”

  “How long has your team been here? And this is just occurring to you? I’m taking her to a doctor. If you want to send a tech along to collect her clothes, go for it.”

  Pizzello scowled. Neither of us was on very solid legal ground here, but she had the added disadvantage of being in a public setting. She finally summoned a crime scene tech from the area where Leo had been found. Bernie and I went into the CST van.

  Bernie gave the guy her blood-stained clothes; I put the knit top I’d been wearing over her. Since I’m four inches taller, it covered her down to her hips. I helped myself to a paper gown from a shelf in the van and wrapped a second one around Bernie. She was shivering, and paper wouldn’t keep her warm, but it was the best I could do.

  The tech took scrapings from Bernie’s fingernails, did a DNA swab, and inspected her head and arms for bruising. I stood over him like the avenging angel, making sure every item was sealed in an evidence bag and properly labeled.

  I videoed him as he filled the bags and labeled them, put all the clips into Dropbox, and mailed them to my own attorney.

  “I’ve been doing this job for five years. I don’t need you leaning over me while I work,” the man snapped.

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “I just want to make sure that if the day comes when we’re all standing in front of a judge, we agree on the number of bags you tagged and what was in them. And I want Ms. Fouchard’s phone. I assume by now you’ve inspected the SIM card.”

  “I don’t have the phone,” the tech said.

  I texted Sergeant Pizzello, who called me to say that the phones had been taken to the Edgewater district for analysis.

  “How funny,” I said, “and not in the side-slapping way. My client doesn’t have a receipt. So why don’t you make a call over to the station for us and we’ll pick up her phone on our way to Evanston.”

  A few minutes later, a uniformed man appeared in the van with a bag of cell phones. Bernie picked hers out.

  The sergeant caught up with us as we walked to the exit.

  “I mean it about finding you down here again, Fouchard.” It was a face-saver, so I didn’t try to fight it, not even when she added a warning to me to make sure that Bernie didn’t leave town.

  My own phone had been beeping me. I kept one arm around Bernie, but took my phone out to read texts from Peter. He hadn’t tried to get past the crowds; he was parked up the street, near the old bank where the SLICK meetings had been held.

  It was an ordeal, getting out to the street. When the camera crews saw me at the sawhorses with Bernie, they rushed us. “Come on, Warshawski, who’s your client?” Blacksin shouted.

  I didn’t answer, but the TV crews made us more interesting to the onlookers, who crowded around the sawhorses. The officer on duty studiously looked at the parking lot, ignoring our plight. Bernie was having trouble staying on her feet. Her body was wet with sweat, and she was starting to shake.

  “Beth, this young woman is about to faint,” I cried. “Get your camera guy to make a hole for us.”

  “An exclusive in exchange?”

  “Do it because you’re human!” I screamed. “Just do it.”

  The cameraman didn’t wait for her word; he began stepping backward, paying no attention to what was behind him, camera at his head. I pushed through after him and got Bernie to the curb, texted Peter, put her over my shoulder, and staggered to the intersection where he was waiting for us.

  15

  Shortest Way from A to B

  Peter and I drove Bernie to my place. I wrapped her in blankets. Peter prepared hot tea laced with honey while I sponged Leo’s blood from her hands and face. I put her into m
y T-shirts—several layers, despite the warm evening. By and by the symptoms of shock eased. Peter helped me open the sofa bed and we left her to sleep.

  It was getting on for midnight; we were both ravenous—we’d raced out of the restaurant having eaten nothing but a few olives. Before making a snack, though, I called Pierre and Arlette Fouchard to let them know what was going on. It wasn’t an easy conversation: they wanted Bernie on the next plane home and couldn’t believe, or at least Arlette wouldn’t believe, that the police had a right to demand she stay within their jurisdiction until they’d questioned her formally.

  We finally agreed that the Fouchards would get in touch with my own lawyer, Freeman Carter, whose rate for six minutes stacks up nicely against any other firm in Chicago.

  “She did not kill anyone,” Arlette said fiercely.

  “No, of course not, but she wasn’t in any shape to give me details on what happened tonight. She’ll call you in the morning,” I promised.

  Peter opened a bottle of Brunello I’d been saving, while I cooked up trecce pasta with mushrooms and Parmesan. We could talk about the night’s drama only in short, disjointed bursts.

  “Will the police leave Bernie alone now?” Peter asked.

  “Hard to say. She was covered in Leo’s blood.”

  “They think a lover’s quarrel?”

  “They think the shortest way from A to B. On the other hand, she’s a young woman whose father is a Chicago sports hero, and it would be quicker and quieter to pin the killing on a homeless person.”

  Peter put down his glass. “You don’t think she killed him, do you?”

  I was too tired to say what I thought or didn’t think. That I didn’t know what their relationship had consisted of, or how deep feelings had gone on either side in the short time they’d known each other. Or that Bernie could swing a stick with a well-trained aim and great power, that she had a fierce temper. She was also tenderhearted, though, and I couldn’t imagine her killing someone. Unless greatly provoked in the moment.