by Julie Hyzy
But then I remembered the small mouth-like holes in Barton’s body, releasing his lifeblood, murmuring death.
“My God,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
My hands shook, my legs shook, and I could feel every one of my internal organs vibrate with a combined sense of fear and regret. “He was alive,” I said. “When I got there, he was alive.”
“Okay, Ms. St. James,” the officer said. “Settle down.”
For the first time, I noticed his name badge. “R. Mason.” The part of my brain that could still process random thoughts decided he looked like a Richard.
“I am settled,” I said with asperity, despite the fact that I was anything but.
“Good,” he said with heavy sarcasm, his expression baleful and annoyed. “Then answer my question. How did you know the victim? Were you lovers?”
“No,” I said, angry now. “Of course not.”
It wasn’t this officer’s fault. I knew that. I knew he had every right to ask me anything he wanted . . . I understood that my presence here at the scene of a killing spotlighted me as the prime suspect. But the horror of what I’d seen, coupled with all that had happened over the past ten days made my words come out sharp. My body throbbed with impatience. I needed to talk to Lulinski.
“Listen, missy,” the cop said. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in?”
Pressing my shaking fingertips to my eyebrows, I worked at them, striving to recapture some of that calm I prided myself on. “Yes,” I said. “I do. Let me start from the beginning, okay? I can explain.”
Turning toward him, I took a deep breath.
His sun-crinkled face expressed patent disdain, as his pen stood poised over his notebook. “I’m waiting.”
Seconds later, a gray-suited body appeared in the doorway behind Officer Mason, and I heard Lulinski’s voice. “I’ll take it from here.”
Relief rushed over me so quickly that I called him by his first name, “George!” I said, scooching sideways to get out. That must have startled Mason, because his chin came up in surprise, even as he’d started to slide out of my way.
“You’re acquainted with her?” he asked Lulinski.
Nodding to Mason, he repeated, “I’ll take it from here,” then extended his hand to help me out of the car. Grateful for the strength I felt there, I let go with reluctance when I finally made it to my feet. “Tell me what happened, Alex,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”
The brisk fresh air with its promise of warmth made me remember my early morning thoughts of spring, and I wondered what happened to the girl who believed in herself so completely just hours before.
Still, I nodded. “Yeah.”
He led me to his navy blue sedan, opened the door and helped me into the passenger seat. Inside the closed car, its ashtray full of cigarette butts, I could tell that he’d just finished one. For the first time in my life, leftover smoke smelled like heaven to me.
His gray eyes were intense. “What the hell were you doing here?”
“I wanted to get another look at the will. The one I told you we found in the safe deposit box,” I said.
His anger evident, I watched him work his jaw. “What was so goddamn important about the will that you had to come here alone? What if you would’ve walked in on the killer in the middle of this? Then what? Then I’d have not one, but two more goddamn homicides on my hands, and one of them would have been you.”
His fury broke through the barriers of my own, and even as I raised my voice, I was grateful. Anger was so much easier to handle than fear. “I called you,” I said. “This morning. Why didn’t you call me back?” I flung an accusatory hand in the direction of his coat pocket, where I knew he kept his phone. “You have it turned on. You must have gotten my message. If you would have called me back I wouldn’t have come here by myself.”
His body relaxed, almost imperceptibly and his eyes lost their unsympathetic gaze. “That was you?”
The gentle tone of his voice was contagious.
“Yeah.”
Hooking his left elbow over the top of his steering wheel, he nodded, staring out at the people still swarming outside. “I’d just gotten out of bed and turned on the phone when you called me just now. As soon as you told me where you were, I came out. Didn’t shower, didn’t shave.”
Finally taking a good look at him, I noticed the sleep-indentation running the length of his face from stubbled jawline, past his right eye, into his hairline.
“On the way over,” he continued, “I saw that I had a voicemail message. Didn’t want to take the time to check it until after I got a handle on what was happening here.”
“Sorry,” I said. I bit my lip. At the rate things were going, this man would never learn to trust me.
“Okay.” His mouth set in a line, he turned to face me again, pulling out his spiral-topped notebook. “Now, tell me everything.”
* * * * *
It wasn’t until we made it to the police station almost an hour later that I remembered Lucy. “Oh my God,” I said, with a clutch at Lulinski’s jacket. “My sister.”
“What?” His body language had shifted to one of swift urgency; he looked ready to bolt back to the car. “Is she home alone?”
“No,” I said, holding a hand up to calm us both. We’d made it through the front door and stood now at the circular brick reception desk. “I need to call. Real quick.”
Aunt Lena’s tone made it clear she was none-too-pleased with me. “Lucy’s been waiting all morning for you,” she said. “I called your house, and when you didn’t answer, I sent Moose over there.”
My aunt hadn’t yet jumped on the cell phone bandwagon, and she often forgot that I carried one. This didn’t seem a good time to remind her she should have tried that number. “I’m at the police station,” I said to hold off further rebuke. “Barton Vicks is dead.”
“Jesus,” she said in a whisper. “First his mother, now him. What happened? Was it a heart attack?”
“He was killed,” I began, then caught Lulinski’s wide-eyed warning. “I can’t talk about it right now. But, please, tell Lucy I’ll make it up to her. I promise.”
“You can promise all you like, honey,” she said, “but it won’t do much good anymore. Lucy’s been staring out the window since you were due to pick her up. She refuses to move.”
“I couldn’t come,” I said.
“Well, I understand when plans get cancelled, but your sister’s different. You know that.” She sighed. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this right now, but Lucy told me the other day that she thinks she’s not important to you. She said she thought you wished she was back at school and out of your life. Now, after this, she’s sure of it.”
For the second time today, I leaned my butt against a nearby wall and stared at the floor, as my heart gave out. I swallowed the hurt this time, feeling empty. I didn’t have the words to fix this. I didn’t know how. When I finally spoke, my voice cracked. “Just tell her how sorry I am.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Just as I finished giving my statement, my stomach let loose with a ferocious growl. Lulinski’s gray brows shot up, gray gaze following. “Hungry?”
“After all I saw this morning, I can’t believe I am.”
“Come on,” he said, “I have to drive you back to your car anyway. I’ll buy you lunch. Let me just make a couple of calls.”
I offered to walk out to the coffee room to give him privacy, but he waved me back into my chair. Since I had de facto permission, I eavesdropped on his two phone conversations, one regarding an update on Laurence Grady, which appeared to give him little information, but the man on the other end of the line had such a booming voice that Lulinski held the phone far away from his ear, and I could even hear his promise of more information soon. The second call was a more personal one; Lulinski spoke briefly to someone named Jenny, and promised to get back to her soon.
We stopped at a storefront Chinese restaurant,
set up cafeteria-style where aproned Oriental men smiled as they lumped rice and stir-fry onto Styrofoam plates. Lulinski paid for our two trays and we chose a table near the back, away from the rest of the hungry patrons.
“Now that we’ve got the official report taken care of,” he said, “tell me the rest of it.” Shoveling beef and broccoli into his mouth, he watched me with wary eyes.
“There isn’t anything else.” I pushed at my shrimp fried rice with the plastic fork. “I still can’t believe Barton’s dead. I can’t believe I found him. My God,” I said, yet again, “if I’d only seen the blood right away, he might have survived.”
Lulinski shook his head. “No,” he said with authority. “You were there what, about five minutes? Even ten, fifteen minutes and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Those were fatal shots he took.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded, head down, apparently concentrating on his food. I was glad not to see his eyes. If he was lying to me, I didn’t want to know.
We both ate in silence for a few moments until I asked, “Who do you think did it?”
“Good question,” he said. “I’m having them run prints again. Fortunately we have yours on file for elimination,” he said, heavy with sarcasm. “Look Alex, how about you try not to be involved in any more murders, okay?” When I shot him a conciliatory smile, he sighed. “But, that forty-two hundred dollars you told me about wasn’t found in the room.”
“Somebody stole it?”
“Either that, or he gambled it away last night.” Lulinski responded to my skeptical look. “Yeah, I don’t think he did, either. I think whoever killed him got away with his stash, too.”
“You have any ideas?”
His food almost gone, speed-eater Lulinski seemed to weigh his decision to tell me. “Couple of thoughts. First and foremost, Barton Vicks was a gambling man, and we both know he was into his bookie pretty deep.”
“You think this was a hit?” I said, just a bit too loudly.
Lulinski’s eyes swept over the room before returning to me. “Could be.”
“Wow,” I said. “But if he’s dead, then they never get a chance to recover that twenty-five thousand he owed, right? Killing him doesn’t make sense.”
He moved his head in a so-so motion. “Depends. If they’ve been waiting a long time, with nothing coming from Barton, then he’s toast.”
“Wouldn’t the forty-two hundred be good-faith money?”
Lulinski barked out a laugh, but I didn’t have a clue as to what was funny.
His eyes took on a hard glint. “Not everyone is ‘nice,’ Alex. There are bad people in this world. People who will gun down a woman and her three toddlers for ten bucks because drugs make them do it. They’re not fair, they don’t give a shit about promises, or good-faith gestures. They’re cold. They want their cash. That’s it. And if somebody is dead weight, and they figure they won’t get any more out of him, maybe then he’s worth more to them as a deadly example to their other lowlife clients.”
I didn’t have any response.
Lulinski sighed. “There’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“If Laurence Grady killed Evelyn Vicks, then chances are good he took Barton out too.”
“Why would he have killed Mrs. Vicks? What’s in it for him?”
“Barton was about to inherit half of the estate. With him out of the way, Grady’s girl Diana will get everything.”
“One problem with that,” I said. “I don’t think Diana knew she was related—or even knew anything about the will. So it stands to reason that Grady didn’t either.”
He pursed his lips, thinking. “You told me he was accompanying Diana to Dr. Hooker’s, right?”
I nodded.
“So, Diana may or may not know that her landlady is her grandmother.”
I interjected. “I’m betting she didn’t know.”
“Okay. But, Evelyn Vicks knew that Diana was her granddaughter, right? Over time, I’m sure they’d developed a close relationship. How could they not?”
The question seemed rhetorical, so I let him continue.
“Grady now has a window into Mrs. Vicks life, through Diana. Whether she meant to or not, Diana probably fed the loser enough information to let him know about the woman’s finances, and her habits. Evelyn Vicks became an easy mark.”
“But . . . to kill her?”
“My guess is he didn’t plan on that. Criminals get nervous, too. Often with tragic results.”
I shook my head. “Very iffy. Then why kill Barton?”
“Even if Grady doesn’t know the true relationship there, Barton is in the way. And maybe he didn’t set out to kill him, either. Maybe, like Evelyn Vicks, it was a robbery gone wrong.”
“You really think that?”
Lulinski guzzled down the remaining coffee in his Styrofoam cup. “I’ve got three possibilities and I can’t afford to dismiss any one of them until I have solid proof. Most likely scenario has Grady killing Evelyn Vicks. He’s got the means, he had the opportunity, and all we need now is a motive. Second choice is a random act of violence. Thieves break into the victim’s home and wind up killing her. And if that’s the case, then Barton’s murder coming on the heels of his mother’s is just tragic coincidence.”
He smiled, adding, “Of course, I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“So, what’s number three? Owen Riordan?”
“You got it.”
I’d about finished up my platter of Chinese food, amazed that I’d been able to eat so much in so little time. At the rate I was going, I might be able to race Lulinski next time we lunched together. With any luck, I thought, we wouldn’t ever have to. Two murders in two weeks were too many. I’d be content never to have to deal with the good detective again—at least not in an official capacity.
“So you believe Maya and I might be onto something?” I asked.
“Could be,” he said. “But I don’t like the idea of the two of you skulking around in the bank by yourself at night.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said, with a gusto I didn’t feel. The specter of Bart’s body moving from life to death before my eyes, still chilled me, down deep.
“You trust this Maya?” he asked, not for the first time.
“I do,” I said with impatience.
“There’s no way she can be setting you up?”
“Listen,” I said, “I went to her with the information, not the other way around. And the reason I did was because I know she’s okay.” It sounded lame, but I knew I was right. “Okay?”
Lulinski made a face. “This kind of white collar crime is hard to carry out without help. I’m thinking there’s a good chance he’s working with at least one other person. Someone who can cover his ass.”
My mind made the immediate connection. “Nina Takami,” I said.
“Come again?”
“A woman who works for him,” I said. “She was ready to haul off and deck me when I needed Mrs. Vicks’ files.”
“Give me her name again.”
I did, spelling it from memory of the placard on her desk, then added, “If Owen’s working with anyone, I guarantee it’s her.”
He nodded. “If you come up with the kind of information you’re talking about, we’ll have enough to investigate Riordan, and this woman, too. Mostly, I want to see if his blood samples and fingerprints match up to any of the ones we’ve found at any of the crime scenes.” Holding up a finger, he looked like he wanted to say something else, but changed his mind. “I can’t go in with you,” he said. “Not without a warrant. But if you two find information that you believe points to someone’s guilt, you have every right to bring it to my attention.” He focused on a far corner of the restaurant for a moment. “It’ll be best if you don’t tell Maya that you plan to hand the information over to me. If she goes in there, with that knowledge . . .” he waggled his head in a so-so motion, “it could be construed that she acted as my agent. That’d s
crew everything up.” Lasering his focus back to me, he added, “But as soon as you’re out of there, I want to know. Make sure you’re okay.”
“What about Jenny?” I asked, remembering his phone call earlier. “Didn’t I hear you promise to be home soon, or something like that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “My daughter. She worried about me running out the house so fast this morning.”
“Your daughter?” That took me by surprise. “How old is she?”
I expected him to say eleven or twelve.
“Twenty-one. Graduating college in May, summa cum laude.” The pride in his voice was nothing compared to the sparkle in his eyes. “She’s home for spring break from Notre Dame.”
“Wow,” I said. “You don’t look old enough to have a college grad daughter.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, but he grinned.
I was enjoying this glimpse into Lulinski’s personal life. “Any other kids?”
“Nah.” He shook his head, looked away. “Jenny’s mom died real young,” he said quietly. “She’s had it rough all these years with just me for a parent.”
Impulsively, I touched his hand. “Sounds like you did pretty well.”
“Thanks. She’s a good kid.”
Leaning away again, I frowned at him. “You ought to lay off the smokes. For her sake.”
He stood. “You women all like to nag, don’t you?” Grinning, he cleaned up his dish and reached for mine, tossing them both in the nearby wastebasket. “But, we’re not talking about smoking now, we’re talking about you and this Maya pulling your little detective stunt. I don’t like the idea of you taking chances. Too much can go wrong.”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” I said, this time feeling a bit more confident. “Maya has the keys, the codes, and the authority to be there any time she wants. She told me she’s gone in on weekends before, so this isn’t going to raise any eyebrows.”
“What time you meeting her?”
I glanced at my watch. Three o’clock already. “I’m supposed to be at her house about an hour from now. We better go.”