by Elaine Viets
He unlocked his door and I followed him into his office, which was dusty and cluttered. The only decorations, on a pair of battered file cabinets, were framed photos of Joe’s wife and daughters. I took a chair. He offered coffee. We spent a little time making small talk and quietly checking each other out to see if we’d aged much since our last meeting. I was relieved to see that Joe looked fine. He still had his blond curly hair. He’d gained about thirty pounds since high school, but it looked good on him. Joe was too skinny when I dated him. Joe had evidently decided I didn’t look too bad either, and we both relaxed. We could keep on kidding ourselves that we weren’t getting any older.
“So, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he said.
“I want to ask you about someone who works with you. Harry Handlein.”
“Why?” Joe said, warily. “Is there a problem with Harry?” Interesting. He said it as if he was expecting bad news.
“Not that I know of,” I answered truthfully. “I wanted to talk to him about his son. The one who just died of cancer.”
“Now there’s a sad case,” Joe said, shaking his head. This seemed to be a subject he felt safe talking about. “That poor bastard. What he’s been through for the last five years. First, they couldn’t figure out what his boy had. Then they found out, put him through an operation and all that awful treatment, and he died anyway. I tell you, it just wasn’t right what that man went through.”
“How’d he take his son’s death?”
“About like you’d expect. Not good. It’s a terrible thing to lose your child,” he said, and looked at the framed pictures of his little girls, as if to reassure himself they were safe.
“I told him to take some time off, and he’s taking two months’ leave. But I’m worried about him. I guess that’s why I reacted so strangely when you asked about Harry. I was expecting bad news. He told me he was going to spend some time in the woods. I didn’t think he should be holed up alone in the middle of nowhere. That cabin doesn’t even have a phone. I can’t call and check how he’s doing.
“Harry was bitter when his son died. Very bitter. Blamed everybody. Blamed the doctor for not diagnosing the cancer sooner. Blamed the surgeon for not getting all of it. Blamed the chemo and radiation doctors for not curing the kid. But most of all, Harry blamed himself. Kept saying he should have insisted that his son see a specialist sooner. As I understand it, the kid had to have a referral from his family doctor to see a specialist, and the doctor wouldn’t give one. Instead, he made him try this remedy and that. I think the doctor was one of those quacks who didn’t like to risk cutting into his HMO bonus by referring patients.
“Anyway, when Harry found out his kid had cancer, he never forgave himself. Harry said he should have just given the kid two hundred bucks to go see a specialist. He could have afforded it. But he didn’t. Now Harry can’t forgive himself. That’s what scares me. I’m afraid he’s going to kill himself. That’s happened to too many retired cops. They ate their gun.”
“Cop?” The news hit me hard, like a punch in the gut. “Harry was a police officer?”
“Sure. Detective. Third district. I thought you knew that. Put in his twenty and took a job with us. Most of our staff are ex-cops. They’re good. They recognize the kind of problem people we attract here at the hotel—drug dealers, con men, hookers working the businessmen out of the bar. We don’t mind a few working girls, if they’re discreet. But you get too many of the wrong kind, and it lowers the tone. Also, you can’t have the girls taking guests’ wallets and such. Your ex-cop knows how to handle these things. Harry was very good at his job.”
Joe laughed, a little embarrassed. “I guess you never expected a graduate of Chaminade High to talk that way, did you?” he said.
“Might have gone out with more if they did,” I said. “What does Harry look like?”
“Like an old-style ex-cop. Buys his suits on sale at Penney’s. Keeps his shoes shined. Wears his hair short. It used to be brown, but it’s mostly gray now. He’s average height, average-looking, fairly thin except for a bit of a belly. Brown eyes. Harry looks like one more South Sider until you get a good look at those eyes. They’re shrewd and very scary.”
He glanced at his watch. I stood up to go. “Thanks for your help, Joe. I mean it.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Any time.” I’d feel silly shaking hands with someone with whom I’d steamed up the windows of his father’s car, and I guess he felt the same, because he did something that was between a shrug and a bow, and I returned it.
I found my way out. But I wasn’t thinking about Joe and how cute he looked on prom night. I was thinking about Harry. The ex-cop. Who surely had a thirty-eight and knew how to use it. Who also had a grudge against doctors. And hadn’t been seen for almost two months. Long before the Doc in the Box killings started.
Katie’s next candidate was Bill Ruddlestein, a mechanic for the Bi-State buses. Bill was thirty, divorced, and had one boy aged ten. Bill had maybe six months to live, according to Katie. I tracked down his supervisor at Bi-State. He said Bill had been out on sick leave for the last three weeks, and he didn’t expect him back anytime soon. He was really sick, poor guy.
I saved my worst question for last. The supervisor gave me a strange look when I asked him, but he did answer it.
“Guns? Bill likes to deer hunt, so I suppose he has a hunting rifle, and probably something for home protection, too. Bill isn’t one of those gun-control nuts.”
Bill’s house was in Affton, a southern suburb with my favorite business: Seven Holy Founders Credit Union. Now there was a name that inspired confidence. Bill lived in a neat brick bungalow off Gravois that was showing signs of recent neglect. The paint on the trim was still good, but the yard was weedy and spotted with windblown trash. The mail box was crammed with letters and the porch piled with yellowing newspapers. I figured no one was home, but I rang the doorbell anyway, then peeked in the garage window. That brought out his next-door neighbor, a woman with a frizzy gray home perm and a long nose that I bet she poked in her neighbor’s business. Her name was Agnes, she said, and she hadn’t seen Bill in a while, but the last time she did, “He looked just terrible. He’s such a nice young man, with a good sense of humor. Loves his cartoons, he does. Especially Warner Bros. ‘Agnes,’ he’d say, ‘get with it. Disney is for wimps. The real connoisseurs like Warner Bros. They’ve got a crazy streak you won’t find in the Mouse. You need to get crazy, Agnes.’
“Bill’s a great kidder, or he was before he got so sick. He has long black eyelashes a girl would kill for, and lots of curly dark hair. He still has the hair, but now his clothes hang on him. They’re flapping in the breeze. The poor man must have lost thirty or forty pounds. He’s too skinny now. It makes him seem taller.”
Agnes was plump and short. Tall for you, or tall for me? I thought and asked her, “How big is Bill?”
“Not as big as you,” she said. “I mean, not as tall. And a little heavyset. At least he used to be. Poor man. I don’t think he weighs much more than I do anymore.” I didn’t have the nerve to ask what Agnes weighed. That would be a shocking question on the South Side for a woman her age.
Bill was divorced, Agnes said. His ex-wife and son lived in Florida. “They used to have joint custody, but when Bill got too sick she took the boy and moved home to her parents in Tampa. Said she could raise Billy Junior better with their help. Bill didn’t fight it. I don’t think he’s in Florida now, though. They don’t get along too good. I think Bill might have gone home to his mother in Michigan, but he didn’t leave me a phone number and ask me to take in the mail and papers like he usually does before he goes away, so I don’t know for sure.”
I didn’t, either. Did Bill go home to mother? Or stick around to murder? He had good reasons to do both. He could be hiding out in a cheap motel somewhere. He could be the Doc in the Box killer.
Katie’s third candidate was Faye Smithman, the mother who would never see her two children grow up
. I stopped to use the pay phone at Phil’s BBQ on Gravois. I called Faye’s office, but no one answered. It was after five, and everyone must be gone for the day. No one answered at her home, either. I’d try again in the morning. While I was there, I picked up Phil’s pork steak plate with baked beans and potato salad for dinner. And people wondered why I didn’t have a cell phone. If I made those calls from my car, I would have been so busy talking I’d have driven right by Phil’s. That would have been a great loss. Gotta take time to smell the barbecue smoke.
On the way home I bought two red geraniums at the supermarket and plunked them in pots on my porch to make Mrs. Indelicato happy. I picked the rattiest ones at the store, so I wouldn’t feel so bad when they died. They were doomed anyway.
Back at home, I found a phone message from Irene. The Whispering Arch pictures were almost ready. Her daughter would drop them by my office first thing tomorrow morning. Yes! Finally, something was going right. I was a day ahead on my columns. I could use the extra time for the Doc in the Box stories. Tomorrow was going to be a good day. I could feel it.
But tonight was bad. I dreamed of Lyle. We were holding hands and walking in Tower Grove Park, my favorite place, and I was so happy. It was a sunny day and we were talking and laughing and he kissed me in front of the fake Roman ruins by the pond where generations of St. Louis brides had had their wedding pictures taken. Then he was doing more than kissing me, and in the odd logic of dreams all the people went away and it was just the two of us and I was on the grass moaning with pleasure. But the phone was ringing, and I had to answer it or something bad would happen. Lyle said he’d wait. I couldn’t find the phone, but it stopped ringing. When I came back to the ruins, he was gone. The sunshine was gone, too. Now the park was vast and cold and lonely and dark. I looked everywhere for him but I couldn’t find him. I wandered through the dark, and stumbled over tree branches, and shivered in the cold. I knew he was gone, but I was so lost I couldn’t find my way out. I was so alone, I could hardly go on.
I was awakened by the sound of a shower running. Then I heard thunder. My head cleared and I realized it was a rainstorm, a dark steady downpour that threatened to last the whole day. Fat drops hit the windowpanes, small waterfalls gushed from downspouts, cars left fishtails of water as they plowed through the semiflooded streets. My feet were soaked by the time I walked to the car. I quit trying to juggle a briefcase, an umbrella, and the pepper spray and tossed the spray into my briefcase. If the killer wanted to shoot me today, he’d put me out of my misery.
Before I left my place, I’d called Faye Smithman’s office at NationsBank. A man said she was on leave. Good for Faye. If my days were numbered, I couldn’t see spending them at the Gazette. Next I called her home and asked if Faye was there.
“Why do you want to know?” a woman asked cautiously.
“I just wanted to know how she’s doing.”
“Terrible,” the woman said, bursting into tears. She was Connie, Faye’s sister-in-law, and she was watching the kids. Connie lowered her voice, presumably so the kids wouldn’t hear, and said Faye was in a coma at Suburban General Hospital and not expected to recover and wasn’t it just awful? I agreed. She said that poor Faye had been in a coma for the last week.
In a coma. At another hospital. Katie wouldn’t have seen that information on her record at Moorton. Faye couldn’t have committed the last two Doc in the Box murders. I was about to cross her off the list when I thought of something and called Katie.
“Our third candidate, the woman, has been in a coma for a week,” I said.
“Can’t beat that for an alibi,” Katie said.
“True. But what about her family? Does she have any relative who would murder for revenge?”
“Let me check the face sheet printouts again,” Katie said. “They should have next of kin.”
There was the sound of paper rustling, and then she said, “Both parents deceased … no sibs … two kids, but they’re in middle school. Besides, they were in school when the murders were committed … holy shit!”
“What? What did you find?”
“It’s right here on this form. Husband. Occupation. Owns Cal’s Cash for Loans Gun and Pawnshop on Delmar. The guy sells guns.”
So that’s where I was headed on a rainy morning—to a pawnshop in one of the less desirable sections of Delmar. I should be glad for the rain. It increased the chances that my car would still be there when I left the pawnshop.
The trip took twice as long as usual. There seemed to be dozens of little fender benders slowing down traffic. Finally I found the pawnshop, parked, popped the face off my radio-tape player and stuck it in my briefcase, so it was worthless for thieves. I didn’t want it turning up at the pawnshop.
All the shops on the block had either bars or metal roll-down shutters. Cal’s Cash for Loans was in a row with a tae kwon do studio, a chicken wing and chop suey joint, and a check cashing shop—all the businesses that thrive on poverty. The pawnshop looked like a cross between a jewelry shop, a hardware store, and a stereo center. There were glass cases of 10-karat gold jewelry—rings, chains, and big hoop earrings. There were shelves of VCRs, stereos, speakers, cordless drills, and socket wrenches.
Ron the manager said Cal the owner was not there.
“When will he be back?” I asked.
“You ain’t gonna cause him any trouble?” he said. “The man’s got enough problems. Are you sure this isn’t something I can’t handle for him?”
“No, no, I just want to ask him about his wife, and she’s not even in the business,” I said. Ron relaxed.
“Faye’s a nice lady,” he said. “Cal hasn’t been around much for the last few weeks. His wife’s sick in the hospital. In fact, she’s not expected to live. I’m trying to keep the place together. Cal’s falling apart. He practically lives at the hospital these days.”
Oh, boy. I needed a description of this distraught husband fast.
“Maybe I could track him down at the hospital,” I said. “Cal’s a little fat bald guy, right? About sixty?”
“You got the right pawnshop, lady?” Ron the manager asked. “Cal’s in his late forties, medium height, on the thin side, with a full head of blond hair, although it’s been getting grayer since Faye got sick.”
Cal definitely sounded like a killer candidate.
“You’re right, I must be thinking of some other guy,” I said. “Don’t bother Cal. He’s got enough to worry about.”
I got out of there before Ron had time to think about these goofy questions. I now had three men who sounded like good Doc in the Box material: all desperate, distraught, or bitter. All had guns, plenty of motive and nobody really knew where they were. Maybe if I talked with Katie again we could narrow them down to one or two likely suspects.
I found a pay phone at a gas station in a safer neighborhood and stood in the rain, dropping change in the phone and swearing I was going to get a cell phone. I did that a lot on rainy days. But I hated the idea that the Gazette could reach me in my car.
I called the office first to see if Bill and Irene’s pictures had arrived. Scarlette the department secretary actually answered the phone for a change. “You better get in here, Francesca,” she said, delighted to be the bearer of bad news. “Wendy’s looking for you. You’re in big trouble. That kid you wrote about today is a gang member!”
“What! You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not. I got the call first. Some lady saw the picture and said he was in a gang.”
“How does she know?”
“I’m not sure. But she was positive. She demanded to talk to the editor, so I transferred her to Wendy. Now the whole place is in an uproar. You better get right in here.”
Gang member? Jamal? I couldn’t believe it. I called Marlene at Uncle Bob’s.
“That can’t be,” she said. “They have the wrong person. Jamal’s been working here since his sophomore year. He’s a good kid.”
“This woman called the paper and insisted
.”
“She’s wrong. When is Jamal going to have time for a gang, between school, his job, and baseball? Gang members don’t work in a hot kitchen for minimum wage. The kid’s an A student. I’m positive he never had anything to do with gangs.”
I hung up the phone and headed for my car. This was trouble. Wendy was terrified of any controversy, and would sell me out in a minute. Worse, she’d destroy Jamal while she was at it. A little bit of the wrong kind of publicity, and a promising kid could wind up washing dishes for the rest of his life. I stepped on the gas, dodged two more accidents, took side streets and back alleys, and got to the Gazette in record time.
All the spots were taken at the closest Gazette lot, so I parked the car in the far lot and trudged two blocks to the office. I stood on the street corner in the pouring rain, waiting for the light to change, worried sick and soaked to the skin. A truck went around the corner, rolled through a dirty puddle the size of a small pond, and splashed me with oily water. My misery was complete.
At least until I got inside. I stopped in the john and tried to scrub some of the oil and mud off my legs. My hair was frizzed, my suit was soaked. So much for dress for success. My shoes squished water when I walked. I squished to the Family department. Wendy was waiting for me. She looked worse than I did, but drier. Her suit today appeared to be cut from old T-shirt material, bunched and wadded at her thick waist. She had a run in her pantyhose and a chip on her shoulder.