by Beverly Long
The waitress brought back two cups of steaming coffee. She put them down on the edge and slid them over. With her index finger, she pointed at the bowl of creamers.
He waited until Liz had added both cream and sugar to her coffee. “Lizzie, I’m concerned.”
“I know you are,” she said. “But I’ve got a handle on the drinking. I do. I know that I’m an alcoholic and I know that I can’t drink.”
He’d heard all this before.
“Last night when I got home,” she continued, “we celebrated with a cup of herbal tea.”
She’d been sober for nine weeks the last time. And then she’d taken such a drop off the cliff that she was lucky to have survived it. “That sounds good,” he said. “But don’t you think it makes some sense to finish out the program? It got approved by insurance, so there’s no downside to going back.”
“I hated it there,” she said. “I’m not like those other people. They’re really bad alcoholics.”
Was there a good alcoholic? “I can drive you back this morning. I want to do that. Please let me do that.”
She shook her head. “And you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got Tom.”
That was supposed to make him feel better? “Do you think he understands the extent of what you’re dealing with, Lizzie? Does he get it?”
“He does. And he still loves me. Which is pretty great, A.L.”
She was easy to love. “Are you going back to work?”
“Next week,” she said. “That will be good.”
Maybe. She worked in the office of a not-for-profit that provided services to the elderly. Stress went with the job because there was never enough money for the things they needed and never enough people to do the work. They used to laugh that it was a lot like police work. But she needed the job for the insurance benefits. She’d almost lost it this last time because she was missing so much time, but he’d gone with her to request a leave of absence so that she could get treatment.
The waitress delivered their food and then swung by a second time to fill up their coffee cups. She slid their ticket onto the table. It was that kind of place. People came, ate and paid at the register when it was time to get the hell out.
Sometimes he daydreamed of opening up something like this in Baywood. He could make pancakes and eggs and he’d hire a couple smart-ass servers to keep the crowd entertained and under control. After Traci had gotten her job at Pancake Magic, the dream had expanded. The two of them could be in business together. A father-daughter team.
They’d have been at each other’s throats in a month.
He needed to stick to being a cop. And Traci needed to go to college, get a good job and move any place her heart desired. He finished the last two bites of his biscuits and gravy and pushed his plate aside. Liz had eaten one piece of toast and most of one egg. Better than nothing.
“You still have people you can call, right?” he asked.
“I have my sponsor,” she said. “And I will call her if I need her. I’m going to go to meetings, too.”
“And you’ll call me if you need anything. I mean anything.”
“I would, A.L. But I’m going to be fine. Trust me.”
He trusted that she always had good intent. But it was a goddamn dreadful disease, and once it got you by the ankles, it was hard to kick free. “I do, Lizzie.”
He paid the bill, then drove her back to her place. When she got out of the car, he gave her an extralong hug. “I love you,” he said.
Jacqui had told him once that he didn’t say that often enough. He supposed that was true.
* * *
He sat in his SUV and reviewed the information that Claudia Lawson had sent on the Poisen Group. Not only had she provided a main contact number for the corporate office as well as a street address, which he might have found online, she’d also listed the two owners, their cell phone numbers and personal emails.
He wasn’t going to piss around with the switchboard. He dialed the first man’s cell. Dwayne Thistle. It rang twice before it was answered.
“Hello,” a man said.
“This is Detective McKittridge of the Baywood Police Department calling for Dwayne Thistle.” He figured he better get that out fast, or the guy would probably think he was a telemarketer and hang up.
There was the briefest of hesitations. Then, “This is Dwayne Thistle.”
“Mr. Thistle, I am on my way to Chicago this morning. I should arrive in approximately two hours. I would like to spend a few minutes with you.”
“I... I’m not sure what my schedule is.”
“I understand that you’re a busy man, sir, and I promise that I won’t take up any more of your time than absolutely necessary. It is important, however, that I speak with you as soon as possible.”
“What are you investigating, Detective McKittridge?”
“I’d like to discuss that in person, sir.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Not that I’m aware of, sir.”
“I suppose I can fit you in.”
“Great. Thank you,” A.L. said. “And you’ll be at the corporate headquarters on LaSalle Street?”
“That’s right.”
“If you could assist me in ensuring that your partner, Sean Mallor, is also available, that would be helpful.”
“I can’t promise,” he said.
“I understand. But know that it would be very much appreciated.” People generally wanted to cooperate with the police. The not-guilty because they saw it as an opportunity to help. The guilty because they saw it as an opportunity to spin their story and maybe get some intelligence on what the cops did and didn’t know.
Time would tell which camp Dwayne Thistle or his partner fell into.
* * *
Rena was out of her house by seven thirty and at city hall by the time it opened at eight. Applications for public housing were accepted on the second floor. She showed her badge to the woman at the front desk and asked to see a supervisor or manager.
“I’m sorry, but she’s not in yet,” the woman said.
Rena didn’t want to have to come back. “Anybody else available who might be able to answer a few questions?”
“Boyd Wonder.”
At first, Rena thought she’d said Boy Wonder. She worked to keep a straight face. “Perhaps I could talk with him.”
“Of course.”
Rena took a seat in the lobby. Within minutes, a man, probably in his early thirties but already balding, approached. “I’m Boyd Wonder,” he said.
She showed her badge again. “Detective Rena Morgan. I appreciate your time.”
“Of course,” he said, motioning her to follow him.
His office was small, windowless and smelled as if he’d eaten breakfast in it. She glanced into the garbage can, and sure enough, there was a fast-food wrapper in the garbage. Her stomach growled in response. Her breakfast had been a large cup of coffee.
“Mr. Wonder, I’m interested in getting some information about public housing residents who lived in the Gizer Hotel during the 1970s and 1980s.”
He raised one side of his upper lip and sucked in some air. “That’s a while ago.”
She nodded.
Now he rubbed his chin. “It’ll be a mix of records,” he said. “Applications were still completed on paper then, but once received, they would have been entered into a database, and if the applicant was accepted into public housing, most of those records would be computerized.”
It probably made the most sense to start with whatever was computerized. “Could you email me a file of the computerized records?”
“What information do you want?” he asked.
“What kind of information would you have?”
“Names. Probably a Social Security number. Date of application. Dependent names
. Annual income for current year and previous year. Current employment information. Maybe some references. When I’ve gone through old files, I’ve seen a couple versions of the application. Probably depended on who was in charge at the time.”
“Okay. Ideally, if you could separate those who applied and were rejected from those who applied and were accepted, that would be a good first cut. And then, for each group, all of that information as well as anything else you might have.”
“I’ll have to get permission from my manager to release any of this.”
“Absolutely. I’d be happy to talk to her.”
“I’ll call you if there’s any trouble with the request.”
“Can you tell me about how many records I might be looking at?”
He blew out a loud breath. He was a very animated talker. “I don’t know how many units were in the Gizer Hotel, but based on the size of that building, I’d estimate there were probably forty or so. Generally, once a building is full, ten percent of the apartments turn over every year. So that means four openings a year.”
Claudia had said that the Gizer Hotel was open for fifteen years. She did the math in her head. There would be the original forty apartments and then another sixty with turnover. Assuming two adults in each spot, that was two hundred people. “How many might have applied for those four slots and got rejected?”
He scrunched his face like a rotting apple. “We usually can accept about thirty percent of the applicants,” he said.
So for four openings, they would have gotten about thirteen applications. That meant that nine or so hadn’t been accepted. Nine times fifteen was a hundred and thirty-five. “Would some of those applications each year have been repeats?”
“Probably. I don’t have a percentage on that.”
If she assumed that a hundred were unique applications, that was two hundred adults. Roughly the same amount of people had been rejected as had actually lived there. “Ideally, I want the same information on both groups—the ones who lived there and the ones who simply applied and got rejected. But if it’s difficult to get the information, focus on getting me everything you have for the ones who actually lived there. And when you send the list, just please remember to separate the two groups.” She pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to him. “Here’s my email address. When do you think it might be ready?”
“A day or so,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, standing. “I appreciate your help.”
As she left the building, she checked the time. Once in the car, rather than turning left to return to her office, she turned right, toward the bakery. Not because of Gabe, she told herself. He’d left this morning for Denver for a sales conference.
She had a few minutes, and she should have a croissant, damn it, if she wanted one.
She was in line, eyeing the muffins, when the blonde came in. She wasn’t wearing her green linen dress today. No, it was a black suit with wide legs. Very trendy. Her white blouse was silky, and she wore very high black heels. She was carrying the same Michael Kors purse that she’d had the other day.
Her hair was twisted and pinned up in the back. Oh, God. She had pearl earrings. And they looked absolutely perfect. A pearl kind of girl. Exactly what Rena wasn’t.
Rena placed her order and stood off to the side to wait for it to be bagged. She tried not to think too much about the fact that she was wearing last year’s brown pantsuit, flat, comfortable shoes, and had forgotten to put on any jewelry.
They handed her the order, but instead of leaving, she took a seat at one of the tables and watched as the woman moved up in line. She got some kind of coffee drink and a scone. It was easy to tell that the woman was a regular. She was chatting easily with the clerk behind the counter. When she turned, she and Rena locked eyes for just a quick second.
No hint of recognition on the blonde’s part.
No hesitation in her step.
Still, when the blonde left, Rena was twenty steps behind her. It was a two-block walk before the woman entered a building. Rena was familiar with it. It was mostly professional offices. Architects, lawyers, tax preparers. That sort of thing. She opened the door just in time to see the woman stop before a door and reach into her purse for a set of keys.
Rena stayed back, pretending to look at the directory on the wall by the entrance. Once the blonde had entered the office and closed the door behind her, Rena waited another minute before moving. Then she casually walked by the door, looked at the lettering.
Jamie Forsythe. Life Coach.
What the fuck?
Thirteen
The building on LaSalle Street had to be thirty floors. There were multiple bays of elevators, and to get to any one of them, he had to pass by an armed security officer. He identified himself as law enforcement, showed his badge and his gun. They had him sign in. Then it was up to the fourteenth floor. There was a young female receptionist. He identified himself, and she picked up her cell phone. A few keystrokes later, he was confident that she sent a text that he was in the reception area.
Thistle made him wait ten minutes. A reasonable time, given that A.L. had sprung the appointment on him, and enough time, Thistle probably thought, to show A.L. that he wasn’t going to be a pushover.
When he finally came down the hall, he was walking fast. Another tip to convey that he was busy, very busy. He was probably close to A.L.’s age. He wore dress pants and a wrinkled white dress shirt. His pants were black, and his beat-up shoes were brown, a fashion faux pas, according to his ex. Rumpled. That was the word that came to mind.
“Detective McKittridge, I’m Dwayne Thistle. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you,” A.L. said. He’d had plenty, and he didn’t want to look too social.
“If you’ll follow me, then,” Thistle said.
He led A.L. down the carpeted hallway to the first door, a long conference room. A table that sat eight took up the center space. There was a large screen on one wall and a ceiling-mounted projector. He suspected that at one point in time they’d used it to look at photos of the Gizer Hotel. Past the table, at the end of the room, two heavily padded leather chairs and a matching couch provided a more relaxed space for a smaller group.
He didn’t like conference rooms. They were too sterile. He preferred to talk to people either in their homes or their offices, where he could see their surroundings, judge their interests, make note of unusual things. But he wasn’t going to force the issue. While the chair and couch would have worked, A.L. took a seat at the table, on the side where he could see the door. He didn’t want to send any messages that this was a casual meeting.
Thistle sat across from him. “I’ll admit, Detective McKittridge, that I’m curious.”
“I understand that the Poisen Group had some interest in the Gizer Hotel in Baywood.”
Thistle nodded. “Great piece of property. A little smaller than what we would have wanted, but the riverfront location made up for that.”
He didn’t sound pissed. “When your deal fell through with the city, I understand that you were out some up-front money.”
“Of course,” Thistle said. “That’s the nature of our business. We prefer to avoid those situations, but sometimes we get bit in the ass.”
“So no hard feelings?” A.L. asked.
“Toward the city?” Thistle clarified.
“Toward anybody in Baywood?”
Now Thistle was frowning at him. “I think I’ve been a good sport here, Detective McKittridge. I was accommodating with my schedule and was willing to talk to you without the cadre of lawyers we keep gainfully employed at my side. But now I’m starting to regret that, because your questions appear to have a purpose that I don’t understand.”
“Fair enough,” A.L. said. “When’s the last time you were in Baywood?”
“Valentine’s Day. I was th
ere to wrap up some final business on the Gizer Hotel and had reservations to take my fiancée out for dinner and a show back here in Chicago. But it was snowing and the interstate from there to Chicago was a bitch. I was two hours late. I remember promising that it would never happen again because I wasn’t ever going back.”
That would have been well before the first murder occurred. “You keep in touch with what’s going on in the community?”
That made Thistle smile. “No.”
“So you weren’t aware that four women have been murdered in the last forty days?”
Thistle’s smile faded. He shook his head. “I was not.” He picked up his coffee cup. Took a drink. “I would have thought...”
His voice trailed off. And there was a tenseness to his body that hadn’t been there a minute earlier. Maybe it was from hearing the word murder. But maybe it was from something else. “You would have thought what, Mr. Thistle?”
Still, he hesitated, his lips pressed firmly together. “I would have thought,” he said finally, “that Sean might have mentioned something.”
“Sean Mallor?” A.L. clarified.
“Yes. He was born and raised about twenty miles from there. In a little town call Smithville.”
A.L. knew Smithville. It was almost straight north. Probably had less than a thousand people. A wide spot in the road, really.
“Baywood came onto our radar because of Sean’s connection to the area,” Thistle went on. “It would have been our first Wisconsin development, but once we saw it, we agreed that it had good potential.”
“Does Mr. Mallor still have family or other connections in the area?”
Thistle stared at him. “I think you should ask Sean those questions.”
“I’m asking you,” A.L. said in his best don’t fuck with me tone.
“He’s got an ex-wife and a four-year-old daughter,” Thistle said.
Claudia Lawson had said nothing about any of the Poisen partners having a personal connection to Baywood. A.L. was confident that if she’d known, she’d have said something. “Now it’s probably time I speak with Mr. Mallor,” A.L. said.