“Heather Martin. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? She’s proof.” He shuts off the TV and leans forward, elbows on his knees. The light of the fire in the fireplace illuminates his face, and I can see that he was handsome once, before booze and depression and nicotine stripped his looks away. “He never was any good. She’s proof,” he repeats. He squeezes his forehead with the hand that holds the cigarette, and ash falls on the floor.
“Proof of what?” I ask.
He chuckles. “Look, I might be a drunk has-been, but I still know to ask you for your ID, even if you been all over TV lately. If it checks out? I might tell you what I know about good old Joe. It’ll all make sense to you. You can finally put that asshole away, assuming you’re smart enough.”
I never assume I’m smart enough, but the comment vindicates my instinct that Mattioli is bad news. I slide my wallet out of my pocket and reach across the coffee table to hand it to him.
He closes one eye to read it then hands it back. “How long you been in Homicide?”
“A little under five years,” I reply.
“You were on that big-deal kid case last year,” he says as I slide the wallet back to where it belongs. “Plain Dealer did that big profile. Tryin’ to make cops look like human beings. That stuff with your brother.”
I nod, surprised that he remembers anything about that case.
“And now you’re on this one. What, you got an in with the media or something? Or are you somebody’s pet? Sleepin’ with somebody you shouldn’t be, maybe.”
I bark out a laugh before I can get offended. “Not by half,” I reply.
He narrows his eyes. “So you’re a good cop, then, huh? Follow the rules?”
I chuckle, remembering the way Mattioli described his partner’s detailed, neatly written notes in the murder books, the commendation in his jacket, the early retirement brought on by too much whisky and too many accusations. He might have been a good cop, too, once. “I guess you could say that,” I reply, not mentioning the fact that I’m violating policy six different ways in being here right now. “Look, Ray, I—”
“Nah, there’s more to it. You work for Fishner,” he says.
It’s not like Fishner hasn’t done a couple of press conferences, but it still surprises me. I hide it well.
“Yeah? You work for good ol’ Jane Fishner, don’tcha?” He doesn’t break eye contact as he sips from his coffee mug.
“Yes, Lieutenant Fishner is my supervisor,” I reply in an even tone.
He laughs, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s funny. “I remember her. From way back when she was a rookie. Good lookin’ back then. She still good lookin’?”
I’m just not sure what to say to that.
“Anyway, what do you want to know?” he asks. He’s struggling not to slur his words. “You think good old Joe killed Heather Martin?” He hits his cigarette one last time before lighting another one with it. “He always had a hard-on for her. Thought she was responsible for Anna dyin’ like she did. Maybe he put Eli up to it.”
“Ray, with all due respect, in what way would Heather Martin be responsible for Anna Mattioli’s death?”
“Well, what would you be here for unless it was about Heather Martin and Joe Mattioli? You’re the detective. You tell me.” He blinks hard when smoke goes in his eye.
“This is totally routine,” I reply. “I just have some questions about you and your partner’s relationship, allegations of sexual misconduct against him, that sort of thing. You know I can’t tell you if he’s a suspect or not.”
He laughs, a big belly-chuckle that reverberates through the room. “Yeah, right. Totally routine that a Special Homicide dick is clear the fuck out here, by herself, talking to me at nine at night. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Good Cop. I may be old and drunk and retired, but I know how this works.”
I nod. I’m starting to like this guy, in spite of his crass undertone and the thick cloud of sadness that encircles him.
“So, here’s my guess. You think Superstar Joe put the kid up to doing Heather Martin. Or better yet, you can’t eliminate him, but you can’t prove anything either. You’ve run down a few leads that went nowhere, so you brought Eli in, and he confessed. You’ve got your own suspicions but no evidence, just your gut. So you’re out here talking to me, without your partner and probably without Jane Fishner knowing about it, because there’s nothing left to do but throw the murder book onto the shelf and call it a day. And something in you says you can’t do that, cause you got something to prove, ’specially given all that shit you just said at Grimes’s trial. Am I right, or am I right?”
I give him my blank face.
“Either that, or the brass is up your ass to pin this on Mattioli, what with all the ‘brutality’ going on lately.” He makes air quotes around “brutality.” He hits his cigarette then puts it out. “But nah, they wouldn’t want you looking into Superstar Joe. Not now. So you’re here on your own.”
“What can you tell me about Joe Mattioli?” I ask. “Did you ever see him behave violently toward women?”
“All the time, of course,” Gibson replies.
“Was any of this documented?”
“Hell no,” he replies.
“What was his relationship with Heather Martin like?” I ask.
“Heather and his wife were best friends,” he says. “Hey, toss me that carton of smokes over there, would you?”
On the floor in front of me is a half-empty carton of Merits that I hand him.
“Thanks.” He peels the cellophane off a new pack, pulls out yet another cigarette, and lights it. “Anyway, Heather and Anna were best friends. Best fucking friends. Until one day they weren’t.”
This is new information. “Did they have a falling out?”
“Somethin’ like that. You ask me, Joe threatened her. Heather, I mean. Word on the street was she caught him cheating on Anna, Heather told Anna, Anna went fucking ballistic, threatened to cut his balls off, all that kind of thing. I stayed the hell out of it.”
“When was this?” I ask.
“Oh, hell. Lemme think. She died twenty-five years ago, so what would it be? Five years before that, maybe?”
“So you were all pretty young.”
“Anna and Heather and Jane were young. You’ve seen my file. I’m sure you know I’m not that young.”
Anna and Heather and Jane. Fishner? I nod.
“Listen, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. I know about what you did to that other cop. I’ve always said there’s nothing worse than a snitch,” he says. “That asshole made me out to be one in his book. Desecrated my good name.”
“I’m not here to talk about that, Ray,” I reply. And you were a snitch, too, Ray.
“Nah, I figured it out. You’re here because you think Mattioli did it, and you hope that pinning this shitty case on him will, how do I put this? That you can atone for something. ’Cept that ain’t how it works. Cause you’d just be tarnishing another guy. You know what I mean?”
“This is a homicide investigation.” My neck gets prickly. “This isn’t personal at all.”
He laughs and sputters into a coughing fit violent enough that he drops his lit cigarette on the floor. “I’m just fucking with you. Calm down,” he says. He picks up the cigarette and hits it. “Listen, you want the truth, Heather knew shit about Joe—shit about both of us—that he wouldn’t want anybody to know. And that means I’m not gonna tell you. But I also doubt that Superstar would do something this dumb. If anything, he hired somebody to do it. Not Eli. Joe wouldn’t do anything to that kid.”
He’s moving up to about an eight on the drink scale and making less sense by the second. It’s time for me to go. “You’re telling me that he had motive.”
“A lot of people had motive against that bitch,” he replies.
“Why do you call him Superstar Joe?” I ask on my way to the door.
“Cause he’s fucking Teflon,” Gibson replies, heaving himsel
f out of the chair to follow me to the door. “I got bumped back to Property Crimes after some bullshit accusations, and Joe got promoted. That’s how it always went.” He opens the door for me. “Look, I’m sorry for giving you shit. But you gotta know that testifying against that other cop, that was fucked up.”
“Thanks for your time, Ray.” I hand him a business card. “If you think of anything, let me know.”
“Yeah, I will. In the meantime, maybe you should ask your boss what she knows about all that shit that happened way back when. She might be more willing than I am to reopen old wounds.”
So “Jane” really is Jane Fishner. Well, shit.
Back in the car, I don’t say anything at first. Neither does Cora. It almost feels as if we’re having some sort of silence contest. As I pull back onto the main road, I thank her again for coming with me.
“Just don’t get yourself killed, Liz. That’s all I ask.”
I nod. “I won’t.”
I drop her off next to her car, and we say good night.
CHAPTER 27
Monday morning, I’m setting down my second cup of coffee and listening to Fishner tell me to look into a case from last year that I would just as soon forget—unfortunately, no one cares about dead sex workers, so running down witnesses will be impossible—when the landline on my desk trills away. It came through the operator downstairs, so I give the full greeting: “Cleveland Special Homicide, this is Detective Boyle.”
“Hi, this is Gillian Swift from Case Western, returning your call?” Her voice is a soft, pleasant alto that’s deeper than I expected. Her outgoing voicemail message is one of those robot voices. Honestly, I didn’t expect her to call back in the first place.
“Hi. Thanks for calling. Can you hold on for a minute?”
“Sure.”
I give Fishner the thumbs-up on the case I would rather not revisit, and she goes to her office.
I look around to make sure no one is listening. I’m not supposed to be spending any time on the clock investigating any other cops. Fishner was clear that this has to be stealth. Sims is doing some glassy-eyed thing on his computer, and Roberts is down the hall at the vending machine. I hit the hold button. “I don’t have a lot of time right now,” I lie—all I have today is time—“but I wonder if you’d be willing to meet with me about the book I mentioned in the message.”
“Really?” she asks. “I sort of thought your call was a prank. But sure. I’ve never been interrogated by the police. It could be interesting, maybe even fun. I’ll earn street cred with my students too.”
She sounds like she’s smiling, but I can’t tell if she’s kidding. “Well, it wouldn’t really be an interrogation. I just have a couple of questions. Won’t take long, I don’t think.” I glance down at Mattioli’s book, which is exposed in my messenger bag, so I flip the bag’s flap over to conceal it.
She chuckles. “I was joking. I’m happy to help. I have some free time this afternoon at about three o’clock. Does that work?”
That gives me four hours to finish the paperwork, dig up the murder book on Fishner’s latest order, try to track down the books I can find on Mattioli and Gibson’s old cases, come up with something to tell everyone in the squad, including my boss, and drive over to the fancy private university. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”
“I’m in the Guilford House. It’s just off Bellflower. Good luck finding a parking spot unless you have a placard.”
I assume she means a handicapped sticker. “I have a police placard,” I say.
She chuckles again and says she’ll see me later.
THAT AFTERNOON, I HEAD over to Case to keep my off-the-books appointment with Dr. Gillian Swift, Important Literary and Media Scholar. Her name reminds me of someone you’d see on an infomercial, some overly lipsticked gal trying to sell me something I don’t need or want and encouraging me to call today so I can get two of the thing I don’t need or want for the price of one. I didn’t tell anyone but Becker I was leaving. Best to let them wonder.
Her office is in one of the old yellow-brick buildings. I think I heard that the university had cut its English department in half a few years back, so I’m surprised they hired this new hotshot. I’m sort of surprised that I know she’s a hotshot too. Maybe it was that Plain Dealer thing, the way the article made a big deal out of a literary critic who also writes books a bunch of other eggheads care about and interesting articles about internet culture and, on occasion, bestselling fiction.
I park the Charger in a tow zone. The walk to the Guilford building is nice enough; the blue sky and yellow trees and big puffy clouds almost mask the fact that it’s getting chilly enough for me to wear a sweater under my leather jacket.
Her office is on the third floor. The elevator looks sketchy enough that I take the stairs. I walk past a bathroom that’s labeled “Faculty Women” and, before pushing through the heavy door, wonder if I’m allowed to use it. I make sure I look presentable before tossing my paper towel in the trash and exiting.
I find her office in the hallway then knock three times on her door, which is ajar. She has a variety of things taped to it, including a flyer for some lecture series on campus, a cartoon about proofreading, a color copy of her latest book cover, a rainbow-flag sticker, and a picture of Oprah Winfrey giving people car keys. I hear her voice—she must be on the phone—and it’s even richer in person than it was when I talked to her earlier. She gives a warm laugh to whomever she’s talking to, says that she’ll call back, then tells me to come in.
The space is nothing like I’d imagined. Back when I was in college, all the profs had walls of dusty bookshelves, bad fluorescent lighting, weird knickknacks, piles of papers on their desks, and typical store-bought artwork when they had artwork at all. Gillian Swift has the requisite bookshelves, but on one of them is a small stereo that plays a song I’ve heard before, and the large window behind her is propped open with a broken umbrella. Complementing the sunlight, which streams in and hits her red hair in a pleasing way, is soft illumination from a pair of floor lamps in two corners. I glance around and notice some plants, a couple of Stieglitz prints that remind me of the ones I have in my bedroom, and an appealing red-and-tan area rug under the two visitors’ chairs.
“Come in,” she repeats. She gestures for me to enter and closes her laptop, the only thing on her large wooden desk other than a small plant and a framed picture of two black-and-white cats. She stands and extends her hand. I take it and thank her for her time after introducing myself. I’m surprised four times over by her physical presence: her grip is strong, and she’s younger than I expected—can’t be more than thirty, thirty-one. She’s almost as tall as I am, and I never had a prof who wore jeans, even nice ones like those. I’m a little surprised by how stunning she is; she’s got the bone structure and facial symmetry that make a lot of people jealous, and she carries that little bit of extra weight well.
She holds my gaze for a second longer than most people would as the old radiator clangs and hisses in the corner. “That’s why I have the window open,” she says, flicking her eyes at the radiator. “They turn the heat on at the beginning of October—it’d be three thousand degrees in here without that umbrella. Do you want to talk here?” Her green cable-knit cardigan brings out both her hazel eyes and her fair coloring.
“Sure, yeah, here’s fine with me,” I reply. “Nice office.” I wonder if I come off as raggedy and unpolished as I think I do.
“Then let’s head down the hall for a cup of coffee first.” She grabs a wooden cane from against the bookshelf then steps out from behind her desk. “You should see the other guy,” she jokes, waving the cane back and forth a few inches off the ground.
I smile and raise an eyebrow.
“I’m the resident gimp.” She laughs at the floor. “That’s probably why they hired me. Call it ‘diversity.’ I’m surprised there aren’t two of you—don’t cops usually work in pairs?”
“Yeah but not today,” I reply.
; I let her lead me down the hall, past other offices and into a kitchen of sorts that doubles as a mail and copy room. Her limp is pronounced in the left leg, but it’s clear that she knows how to use the cane. A balding middle-aged guy curses at the copier, and she walks over and tells the machine to behave before opening it up, deftly removing a crumpled piece of paper, resetting it, and making some joke about being the copier tech. She closes the lid, and it works again, and he thanks her. He doesn’t seem to notice me.
I stand in the doorway, wondering who in the hell this woman is.
“Cream, sugar?” she asks as she pours coffee into two mugs.
“Cream, thanks,” I reply, and she dumps a good amount into both mugs and stirs it in before holding the red mug out to me.
I take it and mumble my thanks.
“So what can I do for you?” she asks as she adjusts her weight against the cane, her coffee mug still on the counter.
“Can I get that?” I ask before I think.
She levels an even stare at me as the color rises in her cheeks. I watch her consider my question. She’s probably used to people offering to help, and I wonder if it pisses her off the way it would me. She blinks and smiles. “Thanks,” she says, nodding.
I grab her mug in the other hand and follow her to her office.
Instead of taking the seat behind the desk, she slides down into the chair next to mine and hangs the cane handle on the edge of the windowsill. “What can I do for you, Detective?” she repeats. Something twinkles in her eyes. Or maybe I’m imagining things.
“Like I said in the emails, I’m interested in your take on Mattioli’s book and on anything you got from interviewing him that maybe I should know.” I hand her coffee to her and set my own on the floor next to my chair.
She uses her free hand to pull her bad leg over the good one.
“The Plain Dealer ran the story. I read it, and I thought you could help,” I add.
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