The Room Where It Happened

by Jason Letts

  “Alright,” she agreed, wondering how many times in the course of their work he’d have to emotionally pick her up and carry her. He was right again, and it was beginning to have an impact on her feelings about him. She wasn’t made of stone, and he was steering her out of some dark moments that didn’t seem to have an exit.

  They continued to listen to the recordings, and even though Tera braced herself for something worse, the final call with Wayne Chechy did contain a line that seemed to break the typical bank rep and customer exchange.

  “This is the last time,” Kim had said just a couple days before her death.

  “We’ll see about that,” Chechy had responded before hanging up.

  In one sense it was a relief for Tera that there wouldn’t be more. All told there was probably a dozen compromising calls, but at the end of it there was a sign that Kim knew she was wrong and regretted what she did. Chechy, for his part, didn’t seem to care, and he was nakedly suggesting he was going to pressure her to continue. Then she ended up dead.

  “That’s it,” Brady said. “There weren’t any more texts following this exchange either. This is a clear motive, but we need to get an idea of the scope of what they were doing and then tie him to the site of the murder.”

  They checked a few more things and listened to some more calls to be sure. It was impossible to completely rule out that Chechy had been the only one conducting this illicit campaign with Kim until all of her calls were checked, but so far he seemed to be the one in charge of the scam. When they called Mr. Dales back in and had him listen to these exchanges, his face managed to turn even paler than it already was.

  “I always thought she was our best rep,” he said, mouth agape. “What on Earth would possess her to do something like this?”

  “Have you noticed a spike in compromised accounts or fraudulent transactions?” Brady asked. Mr. Dales bowed his head, giving them a good view of his combover.

  “Not really. Nothing big that would trigger a review.”

  Tera tried to sort out what could’ve happened.

  “We may be talking about only a dozen or so accounts, and he could’ve made smaller deductions that could’ve been less noticeable. I hate to say it, but perhaps Kim had been able to identify account holders who would be less likely to notice unauthorized activity.”

  Brady tapped on the desk.

  “We’re going to need help from the bank reviewing her calls and running an audit for unauthorized transactions. It’ll take some time to crack the code, which doesn’t seem to be as simple as taking the first letter of some of these misused words. Until we can prove that money was actually stolen, we don’t have much other than some weird-sounding calls. And if we can get information about where the transactions were ordered, that’ll put us in striking distance of Chechy.”

  “You’ll have our complete cooperation,” Mr. Dales said.

  Once Brady had sent himself the relevant audio files, he and Tera left the bank and got back into the car. She felt conflicted and still a bit horrified. It didn’t seem to make it much better that they may have only stolen a moderate amount of money from a small number of people. If Kim had a thousand bucks hidden in a drawer, the transfers couldn’t have been that little.

  Brady’s hand on her arm again pulled her out of her thoughts. He seemed to know this was hard for her.

  “If you remember everybody has a bad side, it’ll never derail you when you find out what it is.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s your bad side?” Tera asked, catching sight of his brown eyes, which were sweet enough to melt into.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, putting the car in drive and pulling onto the street. She supposed Brady assumed he had seen her bad side, and rather than being repelled and disgusted he jumped right in with her, but he didn’t know the half of it.

  The next place they went to was Kim’s apartment. Except for the food in the fridge going bad, nothing much had changed around the place, though Brady had some unimpressed looks for the evidence of her fingerprint hunt. Rubber gloves on, they canvassed the place for prints again, and it was a masterclass compared to what she’d done on her own.

  “The best prints are found in the places people unconsciously touch. When someone pulls a seat into a desk like this, the digits grip the underside of the desk, not the top. Yes, doorknobs can be good, but when closing a door people rarely use the knobs. They’re more likely to brush the door at shoulder height. Two weeks can be a long time for the oils to sit and remain intact, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  They spent a lot of time in the kitchen and at the front door as well. Once they collected some good candidates, they’d be able to see if any of them matched the ones on file for Wayne Chechy.

  “As much as we’ve identified a plausible motive, we still have to tie him directly to the scene of the crime. A print match would help, but that’s not the only way. DNA evidence, possession of the murder weapon, and eyewitness accounts could also do the trick. When I go to take him in, I want it to be for murder, not breaking into people’s bank accounts.”

  “Do you think I’ll have scared him off by confronting him?” Tera asked.

  Brady took a deep breath.

  “I hope not. It depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “How confident he was that he was careful. How arrogant he is about it. How secure he feels about where he is and who’s around him. Whether or not he did it.”

  “You’re still not sure?” Tera asked, a little surprised since she was ready to throw the book at him.

  “Until the case gets closed I’m not sure about anything.”

  She supposed it was a good way to approach it, and keeping an open mind was smart, but all she needed was a whiff of that last meeting on a fateful Sunday when Chechy would see if Kim would really cut ties with the bank scheme to put him away.

  “How do you think the drugs fit in?” she asked him when he was kneeling down by the end of the bed near the window and far wall. Tera was by the doorway checking behind the dresser desk.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe the stolen cash was being used to fund some drug running. She may have just been holding for someone. It doesn’t look like a big part of her life.”

  Tera was tempted to check the bottom drawer on the other end of the dresser where she’d found the dime bags, but as she moved over Brady abruptly got up and turned around. They bumped into each other, caught in the tight space.

  “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time, and Tera suddenly felt flushed. Neither of them were moving, and being pressed up against a strong man like this put thoughts in her head that shouldn’t have been there. There were a lot of things she’d do that were outside of the lines, but taking another woman’s man wasn’t one of them. She snapped their gaze and tried to forget about the feeling of having him brush against her front.

  “Excuse me,” she said, turning around.

  “I think we’ve got as much as we’re going to get here. Let’s get going,” he said, leaving her to wonder if the awkward encounter was pushing him into wanting to get out.

  It wasn’t as noticeable that they didn’t say much to each other on the ride back to the precinct, since they’d done so much and had so much to think about on the case. But Tera still walked away from her shift feeling both unsettled about this new working arrangement and that something between them was wrong.

  When Tera went to visit her Mama after work, the disappointed looks she’d gotten before were now replaced with surprise that she came by later than usual.

  “Don’t tell me. You lost your job,” Eliza said, already sulking.

  “No, my shift got changed and I thought I’d join you for dinner. I’m no longer doing nights for a while. Instead I’ve been working with that detective I told you about on a murder case,” Tera said, stepping inside and appreciating the air-conditioned room. It was getting too hot out there.

  Her mother’s raised eyebrow made it clear that Tera couldn’t sl
ip in even the most obscure reference to a man without having it come to dominate the conversation.

  “Are sparks flying?”

  Tera had no choice but to come clean…‌mostly.

  “I’d actually briefly gotten involved with someone else, but it didn’t last long and by the time it was over the detective ended up finding himself a girlfriend,” she said, glad for the opportunity to vent. Her mother’s ear was something Tera realized she didn’t make use of enough.

  “Perhaps it won’t last. Miserable luck and a sad story. I’ve got just the thing for both. How about I make Bandeja Paisa? I’ve already got some Aborrajados ready.”

  She knew just how to put a smile on Tera’s face.

  “Mmm, that’d be amazing,” she said, sprawling out on the couch and holding a small decorative pillow tight to her chest. “But I’ll tell you that some things he’s said have left me scratching my head. He grew up in Garfield Park and said his dad, who came and went a lot like Papa did, had lost a thumb when a gang held him to some train tracks. Doesn’t that sound like quite a coincidence? Did Papa ever go by another name, like Evan Iger?”

  Eliza was scooping out some rice and mixing in beans when she released a painful sounding sigh. Tera knew she didn’t like to talk about him much, but she had to know if her speculation had anything to it.

  “He was always Nate to me,” she said, shaking her head. “Idle hands do the devil’s work, and I’ve seen enough men around here pay the price in all sorts of ways for putting their hands in places they don’t belong. I don’t know what your Papa was doing while he was gone, and I’m under no illusions that he may have found a woman some of the time, but at least he had the good graces never to expose me to any of it.”

  Her mother pulled out some plantains and chorizo. Tera figured that was the end of it, but suddenly she went on.

  “We could’ve had a good family, the family you deserve, mi amor. All he had to do was stay here and keep his temper down, but he couldn’t do it. Sometimes nothing could hold him down, like he was made for the road. I worry too much of him found his way into you sometimes.”

  Tera gasped, suddenly defensive.

  “I’ve been very good about my temper lately. You’d be impressed,” she said, a pleading note to her voice. Going into detail about letting Lawrence go wouldn’t do, even if it could’ve been the only way to convince her she’d kept control better than some previous times.

  The best way to change the subject was to get up and help with the cooking, and she manned the stove to prepare the chorizo and the carne el polvo. Life just seemed so much better when she had a can of Adobo seasoning in her hands and could take a big whiff.

  “The whole thing with this investigation though is that it’s really got me thinking that if I knew a little more I could do this kind of thing. I might even be good at it. Maybe I have been selling myself short being a run of the mill police officer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m still young and could aim a little higher.”

  “I’ve always told you to believe in yourself,” Eliza said, and Tera shot a narrow look out of the corner of her eye. Never once could she remember her mother using those words to her. Most often the closest thing was something like: Don’t give up. It’ll be over soon. Perseverance had been her mother’s problem, and as best Tera could tell self-doubt had never come into play because she never tried to spread her wings much.

  “It would mean finding a way to take my credits and go back to school for a bachelor’s degree. I’m not sure where I’d find the money for that, or the time.”

  Her mother laughed.

  “That’s what the bachelor is for! Just get a good one of those and the other problems get taken care of. But seriously though, you should. See what happens and maybe it’ll work out,” she said. Tera felt her mother’s arm wrap around her shoulder and pull her in tight. It was the exact kind of encouragement she needed.

  Tera didn’t press her about her activity level, but they did manage to go for a long walk after dinner, which while not actually that much was more than Eliza had thought she could do. She appeared to not need her cane as much for a mental crutch. All she really had to do was get out of her apartment and get moving more to be healthier, and nothing was holding her back but her willpower to stick with it and maybe some ibuprofen for her feet.

  It felt strange having the evening free, and it was tempting to carry on throughout the night as she normally would, but without a chance to catch up on sleep she’d be in pathetic shape to help Brady the next day.

  At work bright and early for a change, Brady was nowhere to be found and she had a chance to follow up on her speculation about his father. She’d searched for news reports about her father’s death before, which didn’t have any pictures, but now she was intent on seeing if she could dig something up about Evan Iger that she could match against her memories of her father or her mother’s photos if it came down to it.

  The most obvious notable moment that may have resulted in some coverage was the train dismemberment, but no amount of searching for combinations of things like Evan Iger Train Accident or Thumb or Hand Injury did the trick. The CPD database didn’t have anything either, which seemed like a miracle for someone who’d had run-ins with gangs. The closest thing she found was just his name on a list of participants for a youth work program that ran in 2002.

  It was a bit surreal that she may have been a baby when her father may have been participating in a youth program under an alias.

  “Hey, you mind if I talk to you about something?”

  The unexpected voice tore her away from her researching, and she turned to look up at Olivia, who all at once had a subtle grin on and was managing to ominously block out some of the lights from the ceiling. Considering who Tera was working closely with and how she may have come up in their conversations last night, she had a good guess about where this was going to go.

  Olivia pulled a chair back from the opposite desk, swinging a leg over and mounting it with her thighs spread around the base of the backrest, as if she’d had a lot of practice performing the maneuver. Some of her blonde curls stretched down her shoulder on one side like little yellow vines.

  “So the fourth of July is coming up and I’m in charge of managing the CPD section of the parade. I was wondering if you’d like to join us,” she said.

  Whatever Tera thought was coming, it wasn’t that.

  “Oh, what exactly would that involve?”

  “The parade route is in Elmwood Park and begins at 9 AM, so we need to get there a little early. One person will hold a flag, a couple of people will hold a police banner, a bunch of us will walk in formation. A couple of people will be driving squad cars. That’s pretty much it, and when it’s all over we can assist with the other officers who are keeping an eye on things until everybody disperses. What do you think?”

  In any normal circumstance the thought of being in a position where a lot of people might be looking at her or that she would have to engage in what might best be described as a public act of frivolity would be the last thing she’d ever do, but she was completely thrown off by Olivia’s invitation and evident anticipation about the event even though Tera had figured she’d be more of the jealous and protective type.

  “OK, sure, I guess,” Tera said.

  “Great. We’ll see you there. Don’t forget which day,” Olivia said, smiling and getting up.

  “The fourth of July. Next week,” she said.

  “You got it.”

  Olivia strolled away out of sight, and Tera watched her go the entire time. Either that was the subtlest stay-away-from-my-man conversation she’d ever been on the receiving end of, or Olivia was a lot more confident in herself than Tera had ever given her credit for. Tera began to wonder if a lot of what she thought of Olivia was based on assumptions that had no bearing on reality, and that the pretty traffic cop had a lot more going for her than it seemed.

  So much for the hope that her relationship with Brad
y would fizzle out soon.

  The jarring sensation she felt made it difficult to get back to what she was doing, and sorting out the identity of Brady’s dad seemed less pressing the more Olivia seemed like someone who could manage her relationships, but now that Tera had started down this path she was going to reach the end, even if just to satisfy her own curiosity.

  Asking Brady if he had a picture of his dad would’ve been the easiest route, but on the off chance things didn’t work out between him and Olivia Tera couldn’t imagine him ever considering her an option if she raised the crazy possibility that they might be half-siblings.

  She’d have to find out on her own and put the issue to rest before he ever caught wind of it. Picking up the phone, she put in a call to the public works department, formally known as Streets & Sanitation.

  “Hi, this is Officer Tera Caldera, and I’m trying to dig up some information on an individual named Evan Iger. I found something saying that he was a youth work program participant circa 2002,” she said as she saw Brady enter the office and start toward her. Her eyes flared a bit and she needed to get off the line.

  It didn’t help that the person on the other end spoke kind of slowly.

  “I wasn’t here back then, but there’s no end to the records we have on hand. I can look around if you want me to put you on hold.”

  “No, that’s OK,” Tera said quickly, imagining that with a youth program there would have to be pictures of the participants. “I’ll stop by when I have a chance and we can go through it together. Thanks. Bye!”

  “What was that about?” Brady asked, and Tera’s mind drew a blank when it came to coming up with an excuse for what she might’ve been calling about when they were supposed to be working on their case.

  “That was the landlord, Ted Flint. Perhaps Chechy paid some of her rent checks as part of their arrangement,” she said. Brady tilted his head a little.

  “I guess that would be helpful to know,” he said, sounding like he couldn’t care less. “But I’ve got some other news and we can get back to it. Come on over here.”