by Julie Hyzy
He put his pen down and gestured for me to sit. “What’s up?”
I shook my head. “Remember me telling you about my sister, Lucy?”
His head canted, ever so slightly. Concerned. “Yeah.”
“Well,” I sat across from him, “it looks like plans for tomorrow have changed, after all.” Explaining my need to make the long trek downstate in the morning, I kept my tone cheerful. I didn’t want to make it seem like a chore—after all, Lucy meant the world to me—but I wanted him to know I was disappointed, too. “I’m sorry.”
“Sounds like a full day,” he said. His face had returned to that impassive look he was so good at. The look I had a hard time reading.
“Yeah,” I said. “Very full.”
We chatted a bit longer, and I lingered a few hopeful moments, but he didn’t say anything that could even vaguely be construed as “Hey, don’t worry, we’ll just make it another time.”
Pensive, I headed back to my office.
Jordan took one look at my face, and followed me in. “Looks like you’re having a hell of a day.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I hate to make it worse, but . . .” She grinned.
“What?” I asked, frustrated by the tired sound in my voice. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning, and I felt like I’d been through two weeks of boot camp.
“Bass wants you back in his office. He says something’s come up. And,” her brown eyes flicked up at me “that detective not only wants to fingerprint you, he wants to interview you again. He says to be there at three.”
“Be there at three,” I repeated. I made a mock-salute to no one in particular. “Yes, sir.” I stared out the window, trying really hard to soak in some of the good feelings the day was trying to deliver. No sense feeling sorry for myself.
“Do I need to call Detective Lulinski back?”
“Nope. He said he’ll see you there.”
“Of course,” I said, and stood. I headed in to see Bass.
* * * * *
A half-hour later I caught William in the hub of the office, talking with his assistant. “Got a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. He was back to his non-smiling persona.
He followed me into my office and I shut the door. “Guess what?” I asked, deadpan, my butt against the door, my hands behind by back.
“I give up.”
“Bass has a new assignment for us.”
William watched me as I wound around my desk and sat. His eyes narrowed. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this one?”
“I think you’re going to love this one,” I said, feeling yet another pang of disappointment. Bass had dropped opportunity in my lap not twenty minutes ago, but Lucy’s imminent arrival could prevent my taking advantage. “You know that big media conference next weekend?”
“In San Francisco?”
“That’s the one. Turns out there was some miscommunication. Bass thought Gabriela was going. One of the directors, too. Problem is, they had no idea, and now neither one can make it on such short notice.” I watched a puffed-white cloud move across the otherwise clear sky. “Bass doesn’t want to lose the hefty registration fee they paid.”
“So he wants us to go.”
“Yep. Both of us.”
“I’ll check, but I think I’m open,” he said. “What about you?”
I shrugged, “Not sure,” I said, thinking how if this had come at any other time . . .
“First you turn me down, then you send me away, huh?” He smiled, and I swore his eyes twinkled that time.
Returning the grin, I laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”
Just as I said that, Jordan knocked then popped her head in the door. “Here,” she said. Pushing the door open with her back end, she came in smiling—carrying a long white box tied with a wide black ribbon. “This just came for you.”
“For me?” I asked, standing. I flashed a hopeful glance William’s direction, but he looked as surprised as I was.
“Uh-huh,” Jordan said, sneaking a look at William too. She shrugged.
I’d seen enough old movies to know there were flowers inside the box; I’d just never received them presented this way, before. “You sure?”
She laid the package on my desk with a sense of reverence. “I just signed for them. Came from one of those florists on Michigan Avenue. Open it up, already. I can’t wait to see what’s inside.”
I didn’t have to be coached. William took a half step back, allowing me room to maneuver the cumbersome box. It had to be at least two feet long, and I guessed about nine inches wide. Deep, too.
I undid the careful bow, my excited fingers fumbling at the knot.
Finally, with the ribbon removed, I lifted the lid off the white box to see—tissue paper. As I moved that aside, the scent rushed up. Roses. A dozen scarlet red roses exquisitely arranged. “They’re beautiful,” I said.
“Well, who are they from?” Jordan asked.
A small linen note with my name written in black sat at the middle of the arrangement, over yet another ribbon, this one shimmery gold. “I have no idea,” I said.
Jordan grabbed the note, “Well, if you’re not going to read this, I am.”
I laughed, and let her. Mistake.
Her perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted and she shot me a knowing glance as she read the card aloud. “I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your friend and mine, Evelyn Vicks. Please accept these flowers as an expression of my condolence. And, if you are able to extricate yourself from your Saturday appointment with your colleague, please know that my offer for lunch and more remains open. Call me. With warmest regards, David Dewars.”
I glanced at William. He held my gaze for an awkward moment, mumbled something about Dewars having good taste, then moved toward the door.
“I didn’t . . .” I said, not knowing what to say, hoping to catch him, to explain. “I mean, I’m not . . .”
He didn’t stop, but rather kept moving till he was in the doorway. Turning around, his hand came up, as though to stop me from talking. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
I felt an immediate rush of embarrassment. How to explain that this was all a set of interlocked and unfortunate coincidences. “I am picking up Lucy tomorrow,” I finally managed.
He nodded. “I never doubted that you were.”
I watched the empty doorway for at least a half-minute after he left. Jordan stayed silent, watching me, then asked, “What was that all about?”
I dropped into my chair and rubbed my eyes. “Missed opportunity.”
Chapter Seven
Bass called a meeting for three-thirty, so I asked Jordan to reschedule my fingerprint appointment for one. I called my Aunt Lena to discuss Lucy’s situation and was still on the phone when Jordan dropped a note on my desk. She shot me a look and rolled her eyes.
The pink paper gave me the police station’s address with the message: “Two o’clock.” She’d added the word, “Sharp,” underlined four times.
“Hang on,” I said into the handset. Scowling at the note, I put my hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Jordan. “Problem?”
She shrugged. “He wasn’t too happy about changing the time, let me tell you. Two o’clock was the best I could do. I was trying to be real nice and I started to explain that you’d been called to a meeting but he didn’t want to hear about that.” She gave a little head wiggle. “He made some sort of comment too, I couldn’t hear it all, but I thought he said something about you being ‘high and mighty.’ So I say ‘What was that?’ like I was being polite. He says, ‘Nothing. But just tell her she better be on time,’ and then he hangs up.”
I glanced at my watch and nodded. “Sorry about that.”
“I feel sorry for you,” she said. “You’re the one that’s got to go over there.”
Aunt Lena was talking again. “I need to let you go, honey. My bunco club is meeting in about a half hour and I still need to get my shoes on. But don’t you
worry. We’ll be happy to have Lucy stay with us while you’re at work. Okay? That’s all settled.”
I mouthed, “Thanks,” to Jordan as she left, and turned my attention back to the phone conversation. In the midst of chaos it’s always nice to know there are people you can depend on. Aunt Lena and Uncle Moose were just those people. “Thanks,” I said again. “Lucy is going to love that, and it’s going to make life a whole lot easier for me.”
“Good. And you two should plan to come over for dinner tomorrow night. It’ll be just the thing after that long drive.”
“That,” I said with enthusiasm, “sounds fabulous.”
I ran behind schedule for the rest of the day but managed to leave the office for my appointment with Detective Lulinski right on time. An accident on the southbound Dan Ryan expressway slowed me down, and I watched the digital clock in my car turn to two just as traffic opened up at 35th Street.
Racing the rest of the way to the station at 51st and Wentworth, I got there about ten minutes late. Not too bad.
I gave my name to the uniformed black woman at the reception desk. Sitting within a circular wall of chest-high brick, she took my name, phoned the detective, and then motioned me to a set of benches along the wall of windows to wait. Because the day was unseasonably warm, I’d left my coat in the car. Little did I know the station would be ten degrees cooler than the ambient air. Worse, the fabric of my skirt was so flimsy that the cold from the metal under my butt seeped into my body and made me shiver.
I crossed my legs to maintain body warmth and my airborne foot wiggled a nervous beat. I glanced at my watch: two-twenty. I didn’t know how long the fingerprinting process took, but I reasoned that as long as Detective Lulinski didn’t make me wait too much longer, I ought to be able to make the three-thirty meeting with a couple of minutes to spare.
The female officer shared the circular area with an older man, currently in conversation with two other officers. They flanked a handcuffed fellow dressed in baggy pink pants, a ripped orange down jacket, and a white knit hat pulled so low on his downcast head that I couldn’t tell what he looked like.
I could tell that the officer standing behind the counter was a sergeant; he had three chevrons on his sleeve, a full head of white hair, bushy white eyebrows, and a jowl that hung, wobbling, over his snug collar. He kept both hands palms downward on the counter, and leaned forward, giving instructions. An elderly black woman came through the glass doors, sending a rush of cold air my direction. Moving as fast as she could, using her three-footed cane to help her progress, she immediately started shouting at the female officer. “My boy is gone. My boy is gone. You got to help me find him.”
Although the officer tried to keep her tone low, the elderly woman, her gray hair tight in pincurls, gesticulated with her free left hand and shouted over and over about her son having gone missing.
A flurry of activity expanded through the rest of the station, behind this small group. It reminded me of our hub, the only difference being that our people weren’t in uniform.
Since the woman’s son was an adult—thirty-eight years old—the officer behind the counter tried vainly to explain that he couldn’t be considered missing unless there was evidence of foul play.
“But he’s not smart,” the woman insisted.
“He’s handicapped?”
“No.” She slammed her cane on the floor. “He’s just not smart. He don’t go out by himself. Never.”
My heart went out to her and it dawned on me that I’d be in just that situation if Lucy ever decided to take off without telling me. I reminded myself to discuss safety issues with her when I picked her up tomorrow.
I eventually tuned out the shouting, choosing instead to stare over the parking lot beyond the tall windows. Trying not to think of the minutes ticking by.
“Ms. St. James?”
I jumped.
Detective Lulinski, looking even thinner and more haggard than he had the night of Mrs. Vicks’ murder, stood before me, a bland expression on his face. Again he wore gray—a suit jacket and pants in a crisscross pattern, and a white shirt with a dark gray tie loosened and askew.
He motioned for me to follow him, and I did, walking past the round reception wall toward a pair of elevators. The building had only a basement and two floors. I eyed the wide-open adjacent staircase, but the detective pressed the “up” button before I could suggest we take the stairs.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asked as the elevator opened. I caught a whiff of just-finished cigarette as I walked past him into the boxy room.
I touched my nose in a dainty motion, as if that would help keep the smell at bay. “Not this station. I’ve been in a couple of others. I have a friend who’s on the force on the north side.”
He didn’t ask me her name, where she’d been assigned, or anything. This guy wasn’t going to win any Mr. Congeniality awards. When the doors slid open at the second floor he allowed me out first and gestured toward a long hall. Not knowing where I was headed, I stepped to the side. “Why don’t you go first?”
“No, go ahead. Up there, on the right,” he said.
I found it disconcerting to have him follow.
We wound up in a sizeable office, with more than a dozen desks. A busy place, more than half of them were occupied by detectives, with civilian guests seated next to each desk, apparently giving statements.
Detective Lulinski led me through the room and opened a far door. “We can do the fingerprinting in here,” he said, by way of explanation.
When he set my first finger up for scanning on a glass plate, I turned to him, “I heard all kinds of horror stories about black ink that’s so hard to wash off.”
“Nope. We’ve moved to the twenty-first century here. We scan your prints nowadays.”
He accomplished the fingerprinting task in a matter of moments, navigating my digits around with a smoothness that had to be borne of practice.
When complete, and once they’d been uploaded, he guided me back into the big room of busy desks and indicated where I should sit. We were nearly dead-center in the room, and I was amazed at the buzz of sound, with each detective busy on the phone or with the individuals seated at their desks. There were a handful of fellows Lulinski’s age, but most of the detectives were hard-body young men, dressed in varying shades of black and dark blue.
One woman worked a desk in the far corner. I wondered about that.
Detective Lulinski’s desk was a model of Spartan efficiency. Except for his computer monitor and a Rolodex, his workspace was empty. No pictures, no cutesy mugs, nothing that gave me any indication of his personality. All business, this fellow. But, to his defense, I imagined that he often interviewed less than ideal citizens at this desk, and the last thing he’d want to do is provide information they could possibly use against him.
The one out-of-place thing on his desk was his blotter. Evidently, Detective Lulinski was a scribbler and the entire white face of the calendar that covered the center of the blotter was awash in drawings and notes. He seemed particularly interested in drawing eyes—there must have been fifteen of them staring back at him, female eyes, male eyes, most of which had been rendered in black ink, a few in blue. I had to admit, he was pretty good.
No emotion in any of the eyes, however, and I wondered what that said about the man.
As soon as he sat, he pulled up a file from his computer, and concentrated on it, leaving me to my lonesome.
“Why . . .” I cleared my throat. “Why did a funeral home van come to take Mrs. Vicks away? I thought that this would be something for the coroner to do.”
His eyebrows, dark with bits of gray hairs that went their springy different ways, raised up—not pleased. But he didn’t make eye contact. He simply kept clicking at the form on the screen, even as he answered me.
“First of all, here in Cook County, we say ‘medical examiner’—not ‘coroner.’ The difference is mainly semantics, but due to the overwhelming number of incid
ents every year, we’re sending funeral homes to shuttle the bodies to the morgue.”
That surprised me. I’d been about to follow up with another question regarding Mrs. Vicks’ autopsy, when he interrupted my thoughts.
“You believe you last saw the victim at about six-twenty-five, correct?”
“Yes,” I answered. The time reference reminded me about the meeting I still had to get to this afternoon. I sneaked a surreptitious glance at my watch.
Detective Lulinski caught me checking. One wiry eyebrow raised and his lips pursed.
“Okay, tell me again about the night of the murder. I’m going to transcribe it into this report and then you’ll read it, sign it and you can be on your way.”
Well wasn’t he warm and fuzzy?
“I don’t mind being here,” I said. “I mean, I want to do whatever I can to help find out who did this.”
He glanced at my wristwatch. “Uh-huh,” he said in a flat voice. “Now, let’s start at the beginning.”
Within a few minutes he’d taken down every detail of my interaction with Mrs. Vicks, moment by moment. He had me repeat some of it several times and despite the fact that I knew I wasn’t a suspect, I felt odd about it. As though I was holding back information. I knew better, of course, but I still felt guilty—like not having all the answers to who killed her was my fault. Like somehow I held the key to it all.
Lulinski clicked the controls and sent the file to a nearby laser printer. He got up, snatched it from the printer and perused it as he walked back to the desk.
“Okay,” he said keeping his attention on the report before him. Without making eye contact, he handed me the document. “Here, read it over, sign it if you agree with everything. I’ll be right back.”
Before he’d made it out the door, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and a lighter from his pants. I watched him leave, then began verifying everything he recorded.
The guy was meticulous, I had to give him that. Both with recording details and with drawing eyes, and I wondered if that’s why he came across as taciturn as he did. Hard to connect those attributes with friendliness, I supposed.