by Leslie Glass
But there was no time to talk about it. At three-thirty Daveys charged into the supervisor’s office, where the four detectives were reviewing their day.
“Where is he?” he demanded.
“Ah, Daveys,” Mike piped up from behind the supervisor’s desk; “we were just talking about you. Where’ve you been all day?”
“Where’s the suspect? This is the second fucking time you’ve done this to me.”
“What? Done what?” Mike protested. Aspirante and Healy shifted around in their chairs. April sat on the windowsill, probably for the very last time. The ivy was dead.
“You’re supposed to cooperate. You kids aren’t cooperating.”
“We worked according to plan today. You knew exactly what we were going to do. We did it. If you got a better offer today, that’s not my problem.”
“All right, all right. Let me see the video.”
Healy scraped his chair on the floor. Aspirante coughed. Daveys glared at them. “What’s your problem?”
“This isn’t L.A., Daveys. We don’t have a video.”
“No video?” Daveys was impatient and aggrieved. “Well, you got a confession, right?”
Mike’s face was impassive. He glanced at April. It was maybe the third time he’d looked at her all day. He didn’t get a reading, so he turned back to Daveys. “We can link him with the Treadwell incidents. There were newspaper articles about Treadwell and her condom campaign taped to the wall in the basement room at the hospital, where he hung out. Also packages of condoms, scissors, paste, several fake IDs, different uniforms. Metal toolbox. Guy didn’t have any trouble getting around.”
“What about Dickey?”
Mike shook his head.
Daveys made a face. “What’s the matter with you kids? Don’t you know how to do an interview?”
“He said he didn’t do Dickey.”
“Oh, yeah, then what was he doing there when Dickey was brought in to ER? What about the fucking scotch bottle?”
“It’s at the lab, being tested.” Healy had found the Johnnie Walker bottle in Boudreau’s apartment, right in plain sight, just where Daveys had said it would be.
“It’s a smoking gun,” Daveys said with satisfaction.
Mike glanced at April.
“What?” Daveys demanded.
“Nothing.”
“What, for Christ’s sake? Don’t hold back on me.”
“Boudreau says he took the bottle out of Dickey’s office because Treadwell was setting him up with it.”
“Treadwell was setting Boudreau up,” Daveys said with heavy sarcasm. “They were that close?”
“Boudreau says Treadwell knew he was harassing her, so she decided to get rid of him.”
“By murdering one of her oldest friends?”
“Well, it’s complicated, Daveys. Dickey was Treadwell’s lover years ago. They were being named in a lawsuit over a patient who’d suicided.” Mike chewed his mustache thoughtfully.
Daveys closed his eyes, then opened them. “You’re fucking up here. The guy had the evidence in his home. If it turns out the Elavil was in the scotch bottle, you have a smoking gun. What else do you fucking need here?”
“Treadwell was with Dickey when he died.” April spoke up for the first time.
Daveys rolled his eyes at her. “Ah, another country heard from. So, little girl, Treadwell was in the office. Boudreau was down on the street. So what?”
“So there are two threads leading to the truth here,” Mike said. His eyes blazed at the FBI agent’s insult to April. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be interested in the truth? I thought I heard somewhere that the FBI was dedicated to uncovering the truth.”
Healy guffawed.
“What a bunch of fuckups. Where is he? You still got him here, don’t you?” Daveys demanded. His stony face was getting red.
“Yeah, we got him,” Mike said.
“Okay, give me a few minutes with him.” Daveys shook his head. “Do I have to do everything for you kids? Bring him out, I’ll show you how to get a confession.”
“Fine.” Mike glanced at April again. This time her eyes flickered. She pushed off the sill and went to the bathroom.
Sixty-six
Bobbie was slumped in his chair in the interview room when Daveys walked in with his FBI credentials held in front of him as if he were warding off Satan with a cross.
“Hi, Bob, ma man. I’m Special Agent Daveys, FBI,” he said.
Well, look who joined the party. Bobbie felt like laughing. The other asshole. The Fed. This morning he’d been humiliated at work by spic-and-slope cops. The spic had tried to kill him, and it got him nowhere. Now they had to get this FBI crud he’d seen hanging around the bitch Treadwell to take a crack at him.
“FBI, you hear that, Bob?”
“So what am I supposed to do: shit in my pants?”
“Most people do.”
Bobbie snorted.
“I see you’re a man with a sense of humor. How’re you doing with the police—they treating you all right? You want some coffee, a cigarette?” Bobbie didn’t reply, so Daveys shrugged and lowered himself into a chair.
Bobbie watched the asshole with cold, pale eyes. He’d seen guys like this before. In the service they were the ones who used clubs to do their questioning and made up the answers after their victims were dead. He flinched when Daveys suddenly reached down to his ankle where a gun was strapped. He glanced over at Bobbie with raised eyebrows as he scratched an imaginary itch on his calf.
“I want to make this easy for you, Bob. We know all about you. Everybody here knows everything there is to know about you.”
Bobbie glanced uneasily at the tape recorder. The asshole hadn’t turned it on. Bobbie had a feeling it hadn’t been an oversight. He made some faces at the mirrored wall opposite him, wondered if anyone was watching on the other side of it.
Daveys rubbed the side of his calf just above the butt of the gun. “Make it easy on yourself, Bob, tell me about Dr. Dickey and his drinking problem, how you put the Elavil in the old man’s scotch.” Daveys’s hand moved to the butt of his gun. “Let’s get this over with, save ourselves a lot of time and aggravation.”
Bobbie licked his lips and glanced at the mirror again. Anybody out there, or was this asshole going to finish what the other asshole had started?
“I didn’t off the bastard,” he said finally.
“You didn’t—then who did?”
Bobbie pulled on his ponytail. “You know who did.”
“Oh, Bobbie boy, this is no way to treat the FBI. We’re not stupid, you know. We’ve got the goods here. We’re going to put you away for a long time for what you did to Dr. Dickey.”
“Don’t give me this FBI shit. It means nothing to me.” Bobbie shook his head. They had nothing to charge him with. They had nothing on him that could put him behind bars for a single day, and this asshole knew it. He hadn’t killed Dickey. He wasn’t going down for it.
“Sure it means something to you, Bob. The FBI is everybody’s nightmare. We don’t let go.”
“I’m not going down for it. The bitch was in the room with him. Ever think about that, FBI?” Bobbie waved at the mirror. “Anybody out there? The—fucking—bitch—killed—her—old—man. You gonna let her get away with it?”
“You know, Bob, you’re not being cooperative. Is that smart?” Daveys looked pained. “You want to be smart, Bob, don’t you? You don’t want me to think you’re stupid, do you?”
“You’re trying to fuck me. Why should I give a shit what you think?”
“Because I’m important to you. I can save your life—”
“Can you?” Bobbie sneered.
“—or I can end your life. What do you want it to be?”
Bobbie was silent. He did not see a choice here.
“You know, you’re never going to get another job, Bob. You’re done, finished. Your wiping Dickey is not just a suspicion of ours. We know you did it. Your girlfriend told us you killed
him. She told us all about it.”
Bobbie shook his head. Gunn wouldn’t have done that.
“Yes, man, she did. She told us what a bad boy you are.”
Bobbie squirmed in his chair, uneasy. “That’s a load. She doesn’t know shit about it.”
Daveys laughed. “Believe me. I don’t lie.”
Bobbie snorted. “Well, neither do I. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t off the guy. Why should I? His girlfriend did it.”
“Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.” Daveys got up and slouched over to the chair where Bobbie was sitting. “I don’t want to hear this cowardly shit about Dr. Treadwell. This is a life-or-death matter, understand? Life or death, Bobbie. So make it easy for all of us.” Daveys leaned into Bobbie’s space, crowding him. “I said, speak up.”
Bobbie didn’t speak, didn’t move. He stared at Daveys.
“Are you telling me you’re not a man, Bob? You know what I think you are? I think you’re an un-American sack of shit.” Daveys leaned closer. He whispered, “You smell like a sack of shit, too.”
Bobbie looked down at the gun on Daveys’s ankle. He kept his silence.
“You’re a chicken-shit coward. You kill like a girl, Bob. You’re a disgrace to your country. You fragged an officer in ’Nam. That’s as low as they go. How many innocent people have you killed since, you mulatto sack of shit?”
The blood rushed to Bobbie’s head so fast he was almost blinded by his rage. Then Daveys backed away. For a second Bobbie thought he was going to take out his gun and shoot him right there in the interview room.
“I want a lawyer,” Bobbie managed to croak out. Now he was scared, really scared. “I know my rights,” he cried. “You either let me out of here or you arrest me.”
It was over, and Daveys knew it. He banged his hand on the table. “I want you to know something, asshole. It’s my job to rid society of vermin like you, and I do my job whether I like it or not.” He spun around and smacked the table again.
“You’re a blight on this country, on the whole world, you hear me, you little shit? And I’m going to bring you down not because it’s my job—my job just makes it legal—I’m going to get you because I want to. And I may break you, and you may be dead first.” When Daveys finished talking and hitting the table, he walked out of the room and slammed the door.
An hour later Bobbie was back on the street.
sixty-seven
Gunn kept trying the phone in the basement apartment all Tuesday. It rang and rang and nobody answered. Where was Bobbie? She knew he hadn’t shown up at work because she called and asked for him. The person who answered the phone in the maintenance office said he didn’t know where Bobbie was.
Gunn was worried. When Bobbie got upset, he went out drinking. When he drank, he got in fights. She was glad she’d told the Chinese cop she had no picture of him, and there hadn’t been one out on display to prove her a liar. She was glad he’d never put a card with his name on the intercom board. Bobbie didn’t want to be found. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to find him. She felt so guilty for what she’d done.
As the evening hours crawled by, Gunn became more and more concerned. She’d never liked the game of hide-and-seek when she was a kid. Concealment scared her. It always upset her to be in a game where she couldn’t see what was going on. Days had gone by, over a week had passed since Dr. Dickey drank from his scotch bottle and died. And every second she was more afraid. Last time Bobbie got in trouble, she was right there in the middle of it all, knew every detail of the incident, but was never in any danger herself. Now she was the one in trouble and didn’t know which way to turn. She had nobody but Bobbie, and he was out there somewhere, wasn’t coming home to her now that she’d been to the police station, had her fingerprints taken and talked to the cops. Bobbie would forgive her for everything else, but he wouldn’t forgive her for talking about him.
The Chinese detective had given Gunn her business card last Friday, just in case she thought of something else. Gunn had put the card in her purse to be polite. This morning she took it out. She still felt guilty about letting the detective into her apartment and then not telling her the truth about what she’d done. Maybe Bobbie had seen the cop come in last night and was too unnerved by it to come home. Gunn was pretty sure Bobbie hadn’t slept in the building. Maybe the cop had gone to find Bobbie at work this morning and that was the reason he hadn’t shown up. Gunn hadn’t shown up at work, either. She hadn’t slept and was terrified because she was out of her depth and didn’t know what to do. She wished Bobbie would come back so she could explain everything to him.
From time to time she played with the Chinese cop’s business card. It wasn’t a real business card. It was a police department card that said on it 20 Detective Squad and below that Det. ——— . April Woo had written her name in the blank by hand. The blank below that was for a case number, but no number was written there. Maybe Bobbie’s case didn’t have a number yet. Gunn thought about calling the cop and asking what was going on about Case number-nothing-yet. She thought about calling all day, about giving herself up. Then it got too late.
At eight o’clock she went downstairs and peeked out the glass front door to see if someone was watching the building. She didn’t think Bobbie would come home if there were cops around. She prowled around the back windows of her bedroom, but it was dark out there in the garden and she couldn’t see anything but the shapes of old heaps of garbage. She went down the stairs a second time at nine, then a third time at ten-thirty. There was no light under Bobbie’s door. Each time she returned to her own apartment she had a few drinks. At eleven, she went down the stairs one last time. This time something didn’t feel right. The last of the three dim light-bulbs in the hall ceiling fixture had gone out. It was dark in the hall, and dark under Bobbie’s door. It didn’t feel right. Gunn leaned close to the door. She heard the toilet flush.
“Bobbie?” Gunn whispered. “Bobbie? Are you there?”
Nobody answered.
sixty-eight
Tuesday was a quiet night in the squad room of the Two-O. Except for the Boudreau case, nothing much was going on. One detective was at his desk on the phone; everybody else was out. Mike and April sat at the table in the locker room, the tension between them unrelieved. It had been a long day. Their shift had been over many hours before, but neither wanted to go home. April knew that she would be out of there tomorrow, headed toward another life, but she wasn’t ready to detach from this one yet. Mike had sent Detective Andy Mason to watch Boudreau, whose only response to his interview with Daveys had been to ask for a lawyer. The D.A.’s office felt there was only circumstantial evidence, no direct evidence, that the suspect had tampered with Dickey’s scotch bottle. In addition, Boudreau’s prior history, though persuasive to Agent Daveys, was also based on circumstantial evidence. In any case, nothing he’d done in the past would be admissible in court in the present instance. They needed a stronger case before they could make an arrest Behind the mirror, April and Mike had watched Daveys put on a show for nothing. They didn’t feel good about him.
Boudreau had been released for the moment, and a completely unapologetic Daveys took off after him. A bad day was turning out to be an even worse night. After Daveys had gone without leaving a forwarding address or beeper number, they’d received some disturbing information from the lab. Lab techs confirmed the presence of Elavil in the Johnnie Walker bottle found in Boudreau’s apartment. Boudreau’s fingerprints had been found on the bottle along with those of the deceased.
But the print experts also found smudges and partials of a third person on the bottle. Those partials turned out to match the only other set of prints found on the folder containing Boudreau’s file: Gunn Tram’s. Dickey’s fingerprints on almost all of the pages of Boudreau’s file suggested that the file had been in his office and he had read it. Gunn’s prints were mingled with the dead man’s in such a way as to suggest that she had handled it after he had, and she had probably been the one to return it to her o
ffice. If Boudreau had taken the file from Dickey’s office, April and Mike reasoned, he would never have returned it to the personnel office. He would have destroyed it.
Gunn’s prints showing up in two places where they weren’t supposed to be bothered the two detectives enough to keep them sitting at the table with their notes, and Boudreau’s file, for many hours. April dialed Gunn’s number a few times to make sure the little lady hadn’t gone anywhere. Her line was always busy.
At ten P.M., they’d been on the job for fourteen hours, and they were still debating what they should do next. A lot of people would have gone home hours ago, waited for another day, another supervisor to deal with it. Tomorrow was their day off; whatever came down would be off their watch. But Mike and April didn’t see it that way. They had one suspect they considered dangerous out on the street who was being tailed by one or more FBI agents, as well as by one of their detectives. And now they had a brand-new suspect, the first suspect’s girlfriend, who happened to be a little old lady. Suddenly the case was beginning to sound like a boyfriend/girlfriend thing after all. April sighed gustily. They had to bring Gunn in and talk to her. Should it be now or tomorrow?
At ten-thirty Andy phoned in to say Boudreau had gone into his building and looked as if he might have settled in for the night. April suppressed a yawn. If all was quiet, maybe she could go home now. She picked up the phone and dialed Gunn’s number again just to make sure the old woman was all right. She let the phone ring ten times, then hung up, shaking her head.
“It’s been busy for hours and now suddenly she’s not there.”