by Rex Burns
“That, too, was for campaign contributions.”
“Then, like that first five thousand, the fifty thousand will be logged in and accounted for in the campaign records. And we’ll find out tomorrow from the postmaster just how much mail went to that box.”
“None of this means anything—you can’t prove anything. It’s circumstantial, that’s all.”
Wager went on as if she had not spoken. “Last Wednesday night you were seen at a restaurant with Green. He skipped the Prudential buffet for a more important meeting—to talk with you about the Tremont zoning study.” Wager was going completely on guesses, now, but it still made sense and the stiffening of Julia Wilfong’s expression told him he was right. “He wanted to know why you hadn’t told him about the residents who would be evicted—the ones the Northeast Denver Action Committee raised such a stink over that afternoon. And he began to suspect a payoff: He remembered a few puzzling things Aaron Kaunitz hinted at now and then.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what he thought—you don’t know what he said. You’re just guessing!”
“We have other evidence, Miss Wilfong. From the crime scene.”
“What kind?”
Wager smiled again. “Serious evidence. The kind that links you to the murder.”
“No, you don’t. If you had something like that, you’d be handing me a warrant instead of all this bull. You’re guessing—you don’t have evidence; you don’t have a thing but guesses!”
“Why don’t you make a statement, Miss Wilfong. You know what’s going to happen tonight—you know a lot of people might get hurt, a lot of property destroyed. Why not make a statement and keep all that from happening?”
“You want me to sacrifice myself for them? They don’t care—they never did! Not a one of them knows how much work, how much sweat and tears, people like me give just so they can complain all the more. Most of them don’t even vote because they just don’t care! Sacrifice? For them?” She stood, a wide figure almost as tall as Wager and the Afro no longer dwarfed the breadth of her face but seemed to increase it like a warrior’s headdress. “No—I’m admitting nothing, Detective Wager. If you have evidence, arrest me. If not, leave my home.”
Wager, too, stood and gazed deep into the hot anger of eyes that dared him to prove what he suspected. “I’ll be back, Miss Wilfong.”
1712 Hours
He made the call from his car parked where he could see both the apartment’s front walk and the row of closed garages behind. Stubbs soon pulled up to his rear bumper in a second unmarked automobile and wearily slid into the seat beside him.
“I should be used to this by now.”
Wager ignored the hint about overtime. “Sit on Wilfong. Everything she does, everywhere she goes.”
“You think she’s the one?”
Wager sketched it for him.
“Jesus—all this time I was thinking a man wearing cowboy boots.” Stubbs peered toward the curved thrust of the apartment’s brick walls glowing in the afternoon sun. “All right, no problem. You want a phone tap, too?”
Wager shook his head. “Who’s she going to call? She’s in it alone.”
“You think those heel prints are enough to tie her to the killing?”
“They’ll help, anyway.” He started the car and Stubbs got out. “I’ll stop by Admin and arrange for your replacement.”
The man’s rounded face pushed toward the car window with a touch of aggressive determination and a taut smile. “Hey, no rush, Gabe—I want to be in this all the way.”
“All right,” said Wager. “That’s fine.”
1735 Hours
He was explaining his request for twenty-four-hour surveillance on Wilfong to the new shift-sergeant when Fat Willy’s call came through.
“All right, Wager. I got him. Where you want to meet?”
“That little park behind St. Luke’s Hospital.” It was nearby and usually crowded with kids and strollers, so that a couple more cars wouldn’t be noticed. And the area was open enough so no one could overhear.
“Ten minutes.”
1753 Hours
Wager was there when Fat Willy’s long, gleaming automobile pulled up the narrow lane to the turnaround and parked behind his car. Wager slid into the back seat behind Willy so he could see the face of the youth who looked back without smiling.
“Cop, this here’s Rabbit. Rabbit, this here’s a cop. Now, tell him what you seen.”
The young man shrugged and scratched at the spotty curls of a light mustache that struggled beneath a narrow, hooked nose. “I seen Councilman Green and Julia Wilfong. They come out of the Gold Dawn restaurant last Wednesday—that Korean place out there on East Colfax.”
“You’re certain it was them?”
“Sure. I was surprised to see them, so I looked real close to make sure. It was them.”
“About seven?”
“More like seven-thirty. I was waiting for my woman to come out of this beauty shop they got there.” He added, “There’s maybe twenty places closer, but she got to go to that one. Say nobody else knows her hair like they do. I told her I be glad to introduce her hair to somebody closer, but she don’t want that.”
“How were they behaving?”
“How you mean?”
“Were they talking to each other? Did they seem mad at each other? What?”
He raised his face to the car’s upholstered ceiling and thought back. “Now you mention it, they was mad. Not talking-hard mad, but quiet mad. You know, walking kind of stiff and pretending that each of them wasn’t there and then acting real polite when they got to the car.”
“His car? The black Continental?”
“Yeah. HRG-1. I saw the plates—cool, you know? Here I am, Horace R. Green, number one!”
“How were they dressed?”
Another upward stare. “Regular, like.”
“How, regular?”
“Regular—you know. He had on this suit and tie. Looking good, you know. She had on one of these dark dresses with a frilly white thing coming down between her tits. Looked like … I don’t know, a bunch of wadded-up handkerchiefs.”
“Did you notice her shoes? Did she have high heels on?”
“Naw. These stubby heels like big women wear. They was going pow-pow when she come marching out of that restaurant. That’s one reason I figure she was mad: pow-pow-pow.”
They would check out the restaurant and somebody would remember the couple. Perhaps even note that they had an argument, but over what no one would know; Green and Wilfong would have kept their voices low and private. That was the reason she—or he—chose a restaurant away from his usual haunts: for the privacy. It wouldn’t be much—one more item of circumstantial evidence. Enough to convince Wager. Maybe enough for a warrant. But not enough for a jury.
Fat Willy heaved around with a grunt to glance sideways at Wager. “Well?”
Wager shook his head. “It’s not enough.”
“Wager, damn you—”
“I need a witness from the murder site.”
“God damn you, Wager, it’s too bad what you need—what about what I need!”
“That big empty lot over there on Twenty-fifth Avenue. You know the place?”
“Yeah, I know it. But I ain’t got—”
“That’s where he was dumped. She drove his car there, hauled him out, and walked in with him propped over her shoulder like he was drunk. Then she came out alone and drove off.”
“Wilfong? Julia Wilfong done that?”
“It probably happened around ten-thirty or eleven.” It might have been earlier—forensics said it could be as early as nine. But the car had been seen around eleven, and Wilfong wouldn’t have an alibi for that hour—eleven to midnight; she’d be too busy getting rid of that car somewhere, after dumping Green, and then trying to get home.
“Why would she leave him there?”
“In case someone remembered seeing them together at the restaurant. She could say G
reen took her home before he went to the Vitaco reception and that was the last she saw of him.” She wouldn’t say that she agreed to meet him somewhere after the reception to tell him what she decided about quitting or confessing to the police, or whatever scheme Green may have had in mind for setting things right and clearing his name at the same time. He might have come by her apartment later to find out her decision. She couldn’t think—she wanted to go for a ride, anywhere, just around, because it was easier to tell him about it when he wasn’t standing there looking at her. Easier to explain just how it all started and how sorry she was and how they would straighten things out. Easier to apologize for getting so mad at the restaurant earlier this evening. Easier to ask him to park for a minute so she could tell Green he was right and she’d do anything to make sure his name was clear. Easier to shoot him when his head was turned from her. Then dump him quickly and drive his car to hide it somewhere before returning to her apartment or to her own already-placed car. And the next day start her own disinformation campaign: a hint to Councilperson Voss, whispers about that crank call to Mrs. Green—the White Brotherhood.
“Why you telling me this, Wager?”
“I said I need a witness.”
“I told you I ain’t got one. This here’s all I come up with.”
“With the right kind of witness, I can help you out, Willy. Without him …” Wager shook his head.
“God damn—” Willy paused in midcurse, his eyes blinking twice as they looked at Rabbit. “A witness, huh?”
“Somebody who might have been visiting in the apartments across from the lot; somebody who was just walking down the street. A witness who saw a woman dressed like she was when she came out of that Korean restaurant.”
“Hey, now—” Rabbit’s face turned quickly from Wager to Fat Willy and back. “Hey, now.”
“I think I got your witness, Wager. You go see what you can arrange.”
“Hey, now!”
1834 Hours
The chief wore wrinkled civilian clothes and he didn’t appreciate Wager asking for time when he was busy charting troop deployment for the coming riot. The napkins and crumbs from a boxed dinner had been shoved to one side of his desk, and the bags under the man’s eyes told Wager he was another one who had not slept much this weekend.
“Do you have something?”
“Almost.” He told him about Julia Wilfong.
“By God—it makes sense!” He drank something from a Styrofoam cup. “You talked to her, right? What do you think?”
“She’s guilty.”
The chief wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and wadded it into the trash basket. “We can match the heel prints, maybe. And if we ever find that car, we might find something there—prints, hair, something.”
“Try the airport parking lots.”
“What?”
“It’s fifteen minutes from the murder site, and a car could sit there six months before it’s noticed.” And a person going in had to stop at a gate house to pick up the parking tag—a well-lit gate house that shone into each halted car. “From there, the shuttle to the airport and a cab back home.” Nothing unusual about a person taking a cab from the busy airport at any time of night.
“We might get lucky with a cabbie remembering her. But she was in Green’s car earlier—her prints there could be explained away.”
“We have a witness who saw her at the murder site.”
“You what?”
Wager said it again.
“Bring him in! We can get this on a television news flash and defuse the neighborhood!”
“Remember Franklin and Roberts? Those two dirt-balls Papadopoulos picked up?”
The chief leaned back. “You’re telling me your witness wants a trade?”
“That’s it.”
“I don’t like letting people off, Wager. Not even for this. There are other ways of making that witness come forward.”
Wager had thought about that, too. “That’ll take time. And might not work. What about suspending the charges for a year on Franklin and Roberts?”
“Suspending them?”
“That way, if they’re convicted, they don’t get sentenced as habitual criminals. A year puts them beyond the ten-year limit on their first conviction.”
“And they’d still stand trial.”
Wager agreed. “If they’re convicted, it’s their third felony. One more and it’s life. Automatically.”
“Would your informant go along with that?”
“I can make him see it.”
“Very well. I’ll talk to Papadopoulos. How soon can we move on Wilfong?”
2253 Hours
The riot standby had been cancelled by the time Wager reached his apartment. He had finished the last paperwork and had had a matron escort Julia Wilfong to the holding cells in the sheriff’s building. The woman had been shaken when she learned of the witness who saw her at the scene, but she still admitted nothing, “I have a right to a lawyer.”
She was probably talking to him now in one of the quiet cubicles whose only adornment was the fixed worktable and benches and the white paint on the walls, and whose only sound—other than the muted voices—was the steady buzz of fluorescent lights. A grinning Adamo had brought in a pair of shoes from the woman’s closet and held them aloft like a prize-winning fish: “A match, Gabe—perfect match with the casts. And we found traces of soil from the crime scene in the cracks between the heel and the shoe. These are the heels that went in heavy and came out light.” And with that evidence and the arrest, the chief had turned loose a detachment to look in every parking lot surrounding Stapleton Airport. The word had come in maybe ten minutes before Wager left: Green’s Lincoln had been located.
Wager stretched back in his chair to reach the beer on the table behind him. He figured the weapon never would be found; Wilfong was too smart to keep it. But they would search all along the route from the murder site to the car for any place a person might lose a pistol. With luck, they’d find it; without luck, they still had a strong, logical case against her. Thanks to Rabbit, the witness, and to Willy, who only nodded and smiled when Wager asked if the youth would keep to his story on cross-examination.
It wasn’t all that legal, but it was justice nevertheless. And it was the best Wager could do for Green. He felt satisfaction with it. Green had been a man with faults—a lot of faults, like a lot of people. But he still had virtues enough to be loved by his women and admired by most who knew him. Sufficient virtues, anyway, to soften those faults and to make his death a loss to others. So it felt especially good to find his murderer before even more harm was done under the excuse of avenging his death. It kept Green’s name decent.
Yawning again, he looked without seeing the tail end of the late news on television where the featured story was an interview with the chief and Lieutenant Wolfard of Crimes Against Persons about an arrest in the Councilman Green homicide. A vague thought crossed Wager’s mind as it slowly relaxed like the tight muscles of his back and neck: Jo. He hadn’t thought of her once in the last twenty-four hours. He had been too busy to surrender to the screaming nightmares, the swirl of guilt, the angry self-blame. It was as if the intense focus of the case had burned that away to leave him missing her, yes, but no longer cursing himself for her death. For some reason he felt that’s what she would want, and as he accepted that idea, the more convinced he was of it. It’s what she would want. Eyes heavy, the natter of television voices sliding away into the rush of sleep, Wager felt something inside gradually unfold like a fist easing into a hand, and his self-anger and guilt for her death began to sift away between the opening fingers like sand.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Gabe Wager Novels
CHAPTER I
9/21
0444
“THE FIRE FIGHTERS found it. After cool-down they could go through the rooms.” Rodriguez, a barrel-shaped man, wore a slicker striped with silver reflective tape that made him look even broader through the
chest. He wore a large helmet and flash mask too, and all the equipment added authority to a posture that said the firemen had done their job right, and it wasn’t their fault somebody died. Homicide Detective Gabriel Wager nodded and added to his notes. The pumper crew had received the call at 0312. By the time they arrived, less than eight minutes later, the small frame house on Wyandot Street was a flare of orange and red, and every window belched fire. None of the wide-eyed and disheveled neighbors, awed by the roar and heat, could tell the fire fighters if anyone was in the building. “It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway,” said Rodriguez. “The place was gone.” They set up containment and began pouring water over the roof and walls. There was no possible way to get through the searing flame that spiraled out of every doorway, and little hope for finding anything alive if they could.
“Look like a homicide?” Wager followed the glare of Rodriguez’s flashlight and stepped where the fire fighter’s boots smeared ash and mud into the soggy carpet. The floor, like the rest of the structure, was wood, and in places it had burned through. Under his feet, the weakened joists were quivering beneath the weight of bulky firemen, their equipment, and the first wave of official investigators.
“Can’t tell. But it was found curled up in a closet.”
Which was probably the sign of a futile attempt to escape the flames. But whether accident, suicide, or murder, it was an unnatural death, and unnatural death meant a police report. Wager was the homicide detective on call when the body was found. “Male or female?”
“Can’t tell.”
The smell of wet, charred wood and burned cloth mingled with the heat of still-smoking embers and fire-blued metal. And another smell too: that of newly burned flesh, a greasy, sweet-fried odor that made Wager breathe shallowly through pinched nostrils. They crowded into a bedroom where the remnant of a door hung open to the black and glistening insides of a gutted closet. Huddled against the indignity of the flashlight’s beam, and at the foot of one of the wet and steaming walls, was a cramped shape. In the pitiless circle of pale glare, it was mostly black, like the charred studs surrounding. But here and there splits of pink and white erupted through the baked crust. Wager could see, a darker circle against the flaking ash of the cheek, the socket of one eye. “The medical examiner been called?”