by John Lutz
“What about the night Millie was murdered?” Pearl asked.
“I was in the hospital, watching hour after hour of South Park reruns.”
“My God, Adam.”
“I didn’t kill Kenny, either. Not even once.”
“Get serious, Adam.”
“Okay. That was the night I had my rare bit of luck. I’d bent over earlier that day to pick up a… to pick up something, and I couldn’t straighten up. This happened up at Fifty-fourth Street and Lexington, and a lot of people gathered around me. Some guy with a cell phone called for help and I got taken to a hospital emergency room. They helped me some but not much, and I spent the entire night there, watching TV and driving the nurses crazy, trying to get them to give me more pain pills. Angels of mercy-bullshit!”
“They might turn out to be angels after all,” Pearl said, “if they give you an airtight alibi.”
“That’s what the other cop said.”
Pearl paused in her note taking.
“What other cop would that be?”
“The one who was here a few days after Millie Graff’s murder.”
“What was his name?”
“Her name? Hell, I don’t know. She wasn’t as pretty as you. She had an NYPD badge, though. She was all business.”
“Don’t think I’m not,” Pearl said.
“No, ma’am.”
“I can see how you got into trouble.”
For the first time, Wright smiled. Briefly he looked ten years younger and Pearl saw again what he might have been, and it made her sick.
She put away her pencil and notepad in her purse and stood up, careful not to lean her weight on the chair’s spindly arms.
“That’s it?” Wright asked.
“It.”
He looked disappointed. Probably he never got visitors unless someone in the neighborhood was raped or murdered.
“I was told my alibi checked out,” he said, as if struggling to maintain conversation, to keep her there. His starvation for human contact had overwhelmed his fear. Again Pearl felt a thrust of pity for him. To be such an outcast, to be shunned, could in itself be a disease.
But what could she do? She couldn’t give him back his reputation. His five years.
“How’s your back now?” she asked.
“Not good. I need an operation to repair some ruptured disks. Tell me the city’s gonna pay for that.”
“I would if I thought it’d help.”
“But it won’t.”
“It won’t,” Pearl said, and left him alone in the ruins.
“Wright is just a poor schmuck,” Pearl said, sitting at her desk in the Q amp;A offices. “My gut tells me he couldn’t kill anyone.”
“Anyone under the right circumstances can kill anyone else,” Quinn said. He was standing, with his sleeves rolled up, drinking a diet Coke.
“You really believe that?” Pearl asked.
Quinn wiped foam from his chin and stared at her, wondering how she could think otherwise, considering the experience she’d had as a cop. “Yeah. I don’t like it, but I believe it.”
Pearl knew he was right, but she didn’t feel like giving Quinn the satisfaction of agreeing with him. Besides, she was still feeling sorry for Adam Wright.
“Wright was in the hospital the night Millie Graff was killed,” she said. “He’d been collecting aluminum cans and hurt his back.”
“That’s his alibi? He hurt his back picking up an aluminum can?”
“Well, he didn’t admit he was a can collector, but I’m sure he is. The important thing is, he hurt his back and was hospitalized at the time of Millie’s murder.”
“You feel for this guy, Pearl?”
“His life is a load of shit. But aside from that, he really does have an alibi.”
“Did you check out his story?”
“No. I will.” Pearl had no doubt that hospital records, along with eyewitness accounts, would substantiate Adam Wright’s alibi. Still, she should be reserving judgment until she verified his alibi. Was she getting soft?
“You getting soft, Pearl?”
Damn it! Thinking parallel thoughts again. It angered her. It was almost as if her privacy was being invaded.
“You should move in with me permanently,” Quinn said. “We could be like an old married couple that finishes each other’s-”
“Sentences,” Pearl interrupted. She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Quinn.”
“We’re sleeping together some of the time, anyway, even if we are practicing celibacy.” Yancy Taggart, even dead, is still in the way.
“Almost celibacy,” Pearl said. Things had changed lately, and were still changing, but slowly.
“I said practicing,” Quinn said. “And I’m redecorating the brownstone for you.”
“That place is an investment,” Pearl said. “And eventually it’ll be a good one. That’s why you’re rehabbing it.”
Quinn smiled. “Pick a room and choose a color.”
“Your room, black.” She laughed. “Never mind. Anyway, if I moved in with you, my mother wouldn’t approve. She still calls it shacking up, like I’m young Barbara Stanwyck in one of those movies where she winds up in an electric chair.”
“Could happen,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, to anyone. You told me so just a few minutes ago.”
“Barbara Stanwyck. Didn’t she usually get last-minute reprieves in those movies?”
“Not all of them.”
“Think about it, Pearl. Please.”
“I have. And my gut feeling is that Adam Wright didn’t kill anyone.”
Quinn sighed, making sure it was loud enough for Pearl to hear. “Okay. Just check his story before we strike him from the list.”
“Of course,” Pearl said. “Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“The brownstone tonight wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“Your air conditioner broken?” Quinn asked.
“I’ll break it if you want.”
37
Hogart, 1992
The day had started off unseasonably warm. Now brief snow flurries formed droplets on the windshield, so that occasionally the wipers were needed. Sheriff Wayne Westerley steered his Ford Crown Vic cruiser up the bumpy driveway from the county road to Beth Brannigan’s ramshackle frame house. The driveway, more of a road, really, was once graveled, but over the years mud and ruts had claimed most of the rock.
If Roy Brannigan hadn’t lit out on Beth when he learned she was pregnant, Westerley would have been on him to regravel the drive, just to save the suspension on the cruiser. But Westerley wasn’t about to utter a word that might cause more hardship for Beth.
He parked in front of the plank porch and sat for a moment behind the wheel while a stiff breeze blew flecks of snow almost horizontally across the windshield. When the bare tree limbs stopped swaying, he opened the door and climbed out.
Beth had heard his arrival and came out onto the porch. She was wearing a sacklike blue dress that hung from shoulders hunched against the cold. He saw that her feet were clad in fuzzy blue house slippers. Her hair was streaked red where the cold sunlight struck it. She wore no makeup that he could discern, and her eyes were the blue of her skirt. Normally a graceful woman, she stood somewhat awkwardly with her feet planted wide. It was late now in her pregnancy.
As Westerley approached from around the other side of the car, he absently started to put on his eight-point cap.
Beth smiled. “You don’t put on a hat when you’re about to enter a house, Sheriff.”
Westerley smiled back. This woman, with all she’d been through, and how she’d looked on the night of the rape and later in court, caused his throat to tighten up so words didn’t come easily. “Since you called and left a message with the dispatcher,” he said, “I figured it was an official visit.”
“Well, I guess it is. But it can be a hatless one.”
She held the front door open for him and he edged inside past her, smelling
the fresh scent of perfumed soap or shampoo. It struck him that despite what had happened to her, a woman like Beth would get lonely with her husband gone. Then he cautioned himself not to think that way, even though Roy was a grade-A prick to have deserted his wife after what happened, just when she needed him most. Westerley reminded himself that this was an official visit, cap or no cap.
“You want some hot tea with lemon in it?” she asked. “I already got the water on.”
“Love some.”
Westerley lowered himself into a creaking green vinyl sofa and watched her walk into the kitchen, heard her clatter around in there. In a few minutes she returned carrying a tray with two steaming cups on it. There was a napkin on the tray with a stack of five Oreo cookies.
He thanked her for the cup as she handed it to him. She placed the tray on a table within his reach and then picked up the other cup. Westerley sipped and made a big deal out of sighing and licking his lips in appreciation.
She grinned. He saw that she wasn’t drinking her tea, but had put the cup back on the tray. Maybe something about being pregnant. Maybe in her state it tasted bad. She unconsciously touched her extended stomach, as if picking up his thought waves.
“You mentioned trouble on the phone,” Westerley said. “What kind you got?”
“Letters.”
She reached into a pocket in the voluminous dress and withdrew a stack of white envelopes with a rubber band around it.
“They’re from the penitentiary,” she said, handing the letters to him.
He leaned forward and placed his cup on the tray. “From Vincent Salas?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
There was a total of nine letters. He peeled off the rubber band and saw that the top five envelopes had been neatly slit open. The others were still intact.
“He’s been writing regular. The first letters were kind of pleading with me to change my story, claiming he was innocent. I swear, he does seem to believe it.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Westerley said.
He removed the folded letter from the top envelope and read. It was written in a neat hand with a blue felt-tip pen. The first part was a litany of how hard life was for Salas in prison. The rest of the letter was a desperate plea for Beth to change her story so he might be able to win an appeal. Salas’s signature appeared tight and neat at the bottom.
“In a letter I got last week,” Beth said, “he seemed like he’d given up all hope of getting out, and he blamed me for what he called his predicament. Then he got nasty, Sheriff. Threatening. I didn’t open any letters after that. After a while, when he kept writing, I called your office.”
“You did right,” Westerley said. “He’s got no business harassing you like this. I’m gonna take care of it. As for any more letters that might already be in the mail, you just ignore them. Don’t open the envelopes. I’ll talk to the warden in Jeff City and see that Salas stops writing you.”
He didn’t tell her he intended to talk to Salas personally. Scare the holy bejesus out of him. As if Salas could make good on any threat.
“I wasn’t gonna call you,” Beth said. Again she touched her stomach lightly, as if it might be about to burst. “But I figured I didn’t need any more stress in the form of letters. Not at a time like this.”
“No reason for you to feel stressed. Salas can’t harm you in any way from where he is.” Westerley rebanded the letters and tapped them hard with his forefinger. “This kinda thing isn’t unusual. Losers like Salas find themselves where they need to be and don’t like it. They got nothing to do and nothing to lose, so they write letters. Might be he’s trying to gain your cooperation, through lies or fear, and get you to write back and say something his lawyer might be able to use to impress an appeals court or parole board. It’s an act played by many a guilty prisoner. You were right to call me.” He picked up the banded envelopes and waved them. “You forget about these. They’ll stop coming. They’re not your problem anymore. Far as you’re concerned, Vincent Salas is as gone as yesterday.”
She was looking at him as if he’d just preached a sermon and pronounced her saved.
He smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a speech.”
“It was a speech I needed to hear,” Beth said.
Westerley finished his tea, then picked up his cap and stood up out of the creaking sofa.
“I do thank you, Sheriff.”
He held his cap in both hands, grinned, and motioned with his head toward her bulging belly. “I don’t doubt we’ll see each other soon. And if I’m not on duty, my deputy Billy Noth will drive out and transport you to the clinic.”
“That’s awful kind of you. You and Billy both.”
“You’re a taxpayer,” Westerley said. Instantly he realized it had been a stupid thing to say. Beth had no doubt been on welfare since Roy cut out after learning of her pregnancy. Westerley doubted if Roy had picked up any of the medical bills. It was more like him to preach about charity than to practice it.
Westerley moved toward the door, putting on his cap and tugging it low so the visor almost concealed his eyes. Beth hadn’t moved. With his hand on the doorknob, Westerley looked back at her. He nodded again toward her advanced pregnancy. “Everything… in there all right?”
She smiled the way she used to. Before what had happened to her. The tiny dark fleck in her left eye caught the light. “Couldn’t be better,” she said. “And I thank you for asking.”
“Speaking of asking, do you know…”
“The baby will be a boy,” she said.
Westerley didn’t know quite what to say to that. He gave her a lingering last look before leaving, as if fixing her in his mind so she’d stay as long as possible in his imagination, like an image burned into a TV screen. Then he went out the door.
It was snowing again. Much harder. The kind of snow that coated everything and made it pure and cold, but not forever.
38
New York, the present
Harley Renz had nicked himself with his razor this morning. Quinn was glad.
Plastered to Renz’s bulging pink jowls were two small tan adhesive squares that were supposed to be invisible and might have worked if Renz had been Hispanic. The nicks could have been what put him in a bad mood.
The office had a window that looked out on a potted tree. Its leaves were as still as an oil painting. Morning sun blasted golden glory through the tilted blinds and warmed Quinn’s bare forearm resting on the chair facing Renz’s desk.
Renz inhaled deeply before speaking, puffing out his jowls and looking for a moment like a bullfrog about to croak. “I’ve got enough to be pissed off about without you coming in here all worked up because Millie Graff’s rapist was questioned without you knowing about it.”
If Quinn was pissed off, he didn’t appear so. He seemed to choose those rare times when he displayed anger, so that in retrospect it was difficult to know if it had been real. That was one of the things about Quinn that infuriated Renz. This morning Quinn’s voice was flat and carefully modulated. The way it sounded, come to think of it, when he was pissed off.
“Exonerated alleged rapist,” Quinn corrected.
“Yeah, yeah. Who else might he have raped?”
Quinn shrugged. He didn’t want to get into that conversation with Renz. Harley wasn’t the only cop with the “everybody’s guilty of something” philosophy. Often it was used as a rationalization to bust someone’s skull.
“I feel as bad about Millie Graff’s shitty luck as you do,” Renz said.
Quinn knew that wasn’t true. “What about the other Skinner victims’ released alleged rapists?”
“I don’t feel bad about them.”
“You know what I mean.”
Renz drummed the fingertips of both hands briefly on his desk. He wanted this office visit to be over. “Weaver just finished interviewing them, too.”
Quinn sat forward. “ Nancy Weaver?”
“The same.” Renz blinked and s
wallowed. He obviously regretted mentioning Weaver’s name.
“Jesus, Harley! You think Weaver’s gonna keep these interviews away from the media? The way she sleeps around, she’s probably trading pillow talk with half the journalists in town.”
“Best you remember she’s Lieutenant Weaver now, an aide to the commissioner.”
“Harley-”
“She’s earned the position, Quinn. And not in the way you might think in your dirty mind.”
“ My dirty mind? You’re the one who’s gotten down and shamelessly rolled in shit in order to get ahead.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
“I grant you Weaver’s good at her job, and I don’t care about her sexual adventures. What I do care about is you sending her around to interfere in the investigation you gave me to run.”
Renz thought it might be a good time to pretend to be angry. “Listen, Quinn, I’m the goddamned police commissioner. If I want to monitor an investigation, I will.”
“As long as I know about it, Harley. If I’m gonna run an investigation, I want one hand to know what the other’s doing, and whether there’s a third hand.”
“That sounds reasonable, Quinn, but you gotta understand there are political ramifications here. I got everybody on my ass about this case. You might insist on doing everything your way, but this is happening on my watch, and if things go crappy and slippery, I take the fall.”
“I wouldn’t think political ramifications would matter, considering the nature of this killer.”
“Political ramifications always matter.”
“Would Millie and the others understand that?”
“You bet they would. To make a go of it in this city, you have to step on some toes, and you have to avoid the toes of the people you got no choice but to dance with.”
“No denying that,” Quinn said.
“I can tell you that Millie and those other women wouldn’t want me slapped down by some dimwitted, deal-making sleazeball with mayoral ambitions, just because of what happened to them.”