by Tom Fowler
I left the ME’s office, collected Alice Fisher, and walked back into the police station. Rich handed Alice off to an officer who would arrange a ride home for her. I went to Rich’s desk with him. Once we sat down, he looked at me. “He had your business card in his pocket,” Rich said.
“So you said.”
“I’m going to need to ask you about it, about him, about his wife, all of it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t kill him, and I wasn’t sleeping with his wife. Happy?”
“I’m afraid we’ll need more,” Rich said.
“Fine. We doing it here?”
“A room down the hall.”
“Lead the way,” I said.
Despite some adventures in college, I had never been in an American police interrogation room before. It looked like I expected it to from the myriad TV shows and movies I had seen. A table sat in the middle of the room with a set of handcuffs attached. The chairs both looked uncomfortable, but the one nearer the handcuffs more so. A long mirror ran down the right-hand side of the room. A window covered in bars split the back wall. I walked in and sat in the slightly better chair.
“Other side,” Rich said.
I traded chairs. Apart from being a little smaller, it didn’t feel any different. Rich sat on the business side of the table. I saw a camera mounted in the corner to the left of the door. The red light below the lens was lit.
“Turn the camera off,” I said.
“What?”
“Turn the camera off.”
“Why would I?” Rich said.
“Because I’m not a criminal.”
“Not in this country, at least.”
I smirked. “When cheap shots are all you can afford, I guess you need to take them,” I said.
“Not even two minutes,” Rich said, “and you’re already pointing out how wealthy you are. Or were before your China trip.”
“We all have our crosses to bear.”
“You’re here to answer questions, C.T.”
“Then maybe you should start asking me some,” I said. “After you turn the camera off, of course.”
Rich slapped the table with the palms of both hands. I had seen it coming so it didn’t surprise me. He looked at me as he did it, and I met his stare the entire time. “I spent nineteen days in a Chinese prison, Rich,” I said. “There is nothing you can do in here to scare me.”
My comment made Rich frown. “What happened to you over there?” he said, his voice low.
I thought about it, and my chest grew tight. My vision narrowed. If I were to tell someone, Rich would be a fine candidate. As a veteran of the Army and the BPD, he had seen a lot and survived more. Rich kept staring at me. Now wasn’t the time to answer his question. “I’m here because I’m cooperating,” I said after a moment, “not because I have to be.”
“Did they torture you?” I didn’t answer. I wanted to but I said nothing. “I know someone you could talk to if they did. He’s worked with a lot of soldiers who have . . . been through a lot.”
The shrink my parents foisted upon me had been useless. Would Rich’s guy be any better? I might ask him for the referral sometime, but not now. While I appreciated Rich’s concern, I had a murder to solve. He didn’t need to see me sweat. “I thought I was here to talk to you,” I said, “and I thought you were turning the camera off.”
“Fine, fine.” Rich got up and crossed the small room to the camera. I let out a slow breath while his back was turned. My vision returned to normal as my breathing eased. Rich reached up and unscrewed a coaxial cable from the back. The red light winked out. “Are you happy, sire?”
“It’ll do.”
Rich sat down and sighed. He looked at me. I looked back at him. He had eschewed his usual clean-shaven appearance and sported a Van Dyke I pegged as a few days old. A couple gray hairs encroached on the dark brown. “First time trying to grill someone?” I said.
“What if it is?”
“Hey, I went to my first crime scene tonight. Or whatever you’re calling it until you realize I’m right.”
“Accident scene,” said Rich.
“Anyway, it seems fitting that you’re getting your first interrogation.” I offered a small smile.
Rich gave a slight grin. “A night of firsts,” he said.
“I guess it means you should make your first question a good one.”
“I’ll do my best.” Rich paused, cleared his throat, adjusted his tie, and cracked his knuckles.
“Want a breath mint, too?” I said.
“No, I’m good.” He paused. “Do I need one?”
“Just trying to be polite.”
Rich breathed into his hands. “I think I’m good,” he said. “Don’t you?” He leaned toward me as if to breathe in my face. I put up my hand and pulled away. Rich leaned back.
“No complaints.”
“OK, here we go.” Rich took a deep breath. “How did the dead guy end up with your business card?” he said.
“Really?” I said. “Your first question in your first interrogation has to be lame?”
“What?”
“Seriously?”
Rich frowned. “It’s a valid question,” he said.
“It’s boring and predictable, too,” I said. “You never get a second chance to ask a first question.”
“Can you just answer it already?”
“How do you think he got it?” I said.
“I suppose you gave it to him,” said Rich.
“See? You could have led with something else.”
“Why did you give him a card? Didn’t his wife hire you?”
“She did.”
“Because she thought he was cheating on her,” Rich said.
“Yes,” I said.
“And yet he has your business card.”
“Because I don’t think he was unfaithful.” I went over the events leading me to my conclusion.
“It doesn’t sound like he was a cheater,” said Rich.
“I told you he was devoted to his wife,” I said.
“Still doesn’t explain why he had your business card.”
“Because his wife is hiding something. She told me they were underwater on their house, and they’re not. I—“
“Wait, how do you know they’re not?”
“I checked,” I said.
“Checked how?” Rich glared at me. “Did you hack into their financial information?”
I put my hand to my chest and feigned indignation. “Moi?”
Rich shook his head and sighed. “OK, so she lied about their degree of financial peril. Big deal.”
“It bothered me. It would bother you, too. I figured she was hiding something having to do with money, like maybe a drug problem. Not what I was hired to investigate, but I found it while I poked around. I chose to pursue it. I wanted to keep it from Paul, but I thought maybe he had some insight into what was going on.”
“I take it he didn’t?” Rich said.
“If he did, he didn’t tell me.” I said.
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t seem like a druggie, so it’s probably not drugs.”
“You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?” Rich said.
“Would I do something so unprofessional during your first interrogation?” I said.
“Yes,” he said and stared at me.
I spread my hands and grinned. “OK, you have me there.”
“So you’re holding out on me?”
“You know what I know.”
“But I don’t know everything you know.”
I chuckled. “True about a great many things,” I said.
Rich smirked and shook his head. “Touché,” he said.
“Now I want to know something,” I said.
“You think you get to ask questions?”
“You’re in plain clothes tonight, and I doubt you normally get so involved with investigations like these. What’s going on?”
“I was going to tell you soon.” Rich paused and smiled. “I’m up for detective. I already took the exam, and now I’m doing a few ride-alongs.”
“Great.” I smiled, too. “You’ll be a natural. Did you pass the exam?”
“They haven’t told me yet.”
“Well, if I can puzzle this thing out, you’ll get to make a key arrest. Might earn you your shield right there.”
“What’s there to puzzle out?” Rich said. “You think this is a murder?”
I said, “I told you something about it bothers me. I don’t know if it’s a murder yet, but I’m going to keep looking around.”
“You talked to the ME?”
“I did. He said injuries are consistent with a car accident and his final report will be out in a day or two.”
“I don’t think it’s a murder, C.T. You might be wasting your time.”
“Maybe, but I think I owe it to Alice to find out. She thought he was cheating on her, and he ended up dead. He got involved in something a lot worse than adultery and I want to know what it is.”
“Good luck,” Rich said.
“I might need it,” I said.
It barely turned one o’clock when I turned off the engine. This had been a long day, and not one I would soon forget. More questions had been raised, and I would tackle those in the morning. For now, I wanted to go to sleep. I walked from the recesses of the parking lot to my apartment building and went inside. I collected a few envelopes from the mailbox and unlocked my door, then locked it behind me. No sooner had I left the foyer, tossed my mail on the table, and started down the hall than someone knocked on the door.
I frowned and looked at it. Who the hell would be knocking at this hour? When I looked through the peephole, I saw Jessica Webber standing in the hall. She was about to knock again when I unlocked the door and opened it. “Jessica, it’s late,” I said.
“You look tired,” she said. She had a business suit on, with a matching skirt and blazer, professional heels, and a white shirt unbuttoned just far enough to be interesting. I liked this one spectacular habit about the way she dressed.
“Because I am. What brings you by?”
“I was working on a story not far from here and decided I’d see if you were awake. When I turned the corner, you were walking inside. How goes the case?”
I shook my head. “Not well,” I said. “The woman’s husband is dead.”
“Dead?” Jessica said. “Oh, my gosh. Did that just happen?”
“Tonight, yes. She’s a wreck, and the whole thing has become a mess. It’s gone from possible adultery to . . . I don’t know what.”
“Well, since I’m sort of chronicling this case for you, maybe I should talk to her, get her reaction.”
I frowned. “No, you shouldn’t,” I said.
“It sounds like you think he didn’t die of natural causes,” Jessica said. She had me there. Jessica picked up on things people said—and didn’t say, no doubt—very well. “That makes the story so much more interesting. She should—“
“Jessica, her husband is dead. She’s in shock, and she’s grieving. I don’t know if you’ve ever lost anyone you loved, but the last thing you want is people in your face. Especially a camera and a reporter asking you how you feel. It’s a time for mourning and privacy. Who cares about your story?” Jessica frowned and recoiled like I struck her, but I kept going. “Her husband is dead. Have some goddamn respect.”
She was about to say something, but I slammed the door in her face.
Chapter 10
The next morning after a run and a shower, I made breakfast in the kitchen. Blueberry pancakes seemed too elaborate for only me, so I went with sausage and toast. It won no awards for originality, but it tasted good. I washed it all down with a mug of red bush tea sweetened with a teaspoon of honey. I lingered at the table, sipping my tea until it had grown tepid.
The car accident still bothered me. It was entirely possible Paul Fisher decided to take a drive down Chesterfield Avenue late on a Friday night for reasons currently unknown. Was he having an affair and I simply whiffed on it? I would have to check his coworkers and see if any of them lived on Chesterfield. I really didn’t think he cheated on Alice, but I also didn’t expect him to end up dead. Maybe I had been wrong all along.
Poor Alice Fisher didn’t need to know any of this. Regardless of her husband’s possible infidelity, he died, and she was devastated. Even if I discovered diddled half the office, I couldn’t tell Alice. Let her bury her husband with the good memories she had of him. Since Paul died, I wondered if talking to anyone at Digital Sales would now prove more fruitful. Some people didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but more people didn’t want to speak ill of living coworkers because of office gossip and politics.
I changed into more professional attire and headed to Digital Sales.
Based on the dearth of cars in the parking lot, Saturdays brought only a small crew to Digital Sales. Sally Willis was still there, though, and she smiled at me as I walked in the front door. “You must be working overtime,” she said.
“I could say the same about you,” I said at the reception desk. “You don’t have any better way to spend your Saturday?”
Color rose in her cheeks. “I work a half-day in the morning every other Saturday.”
I leaned on the low wall at the front of her desk. Now I could tell she dressed more casually than during the week. Her professional skirts had given way to a well-worn pair of jeans, and her plunging necklines had taken an unfortunate day off in lieu of a red University of Maryland sweatshirt. “What can I do for you?” said Sally.
“So quick to get back to business today, Sally?” I said. “Color me disappointed.”
“I only have a few hours.” She smiled. “That doesn’t leave a lot of time for flirting.”
“If you insist. Have you heard about Paul Fisher?”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead,” I said.
Sally frowned, and her mouth fell open. She sat mouth agape for a few seconds. Finally, after some head-shaking, she found her voice. “Dead? He’s really dead?”
“I saw the body myself.”
“Wow,” she said. “I hate to say it, but I didn’t much care for him. Never wanted to see anything bad happen to him, of course. How’s his wife holding up?”
“She’s destroyed.”
“I can imagine.” Sally shook her head some more. “Do you want to talk to someone here about Paul?”
“I do, yes. It looks like you’re running a skeleton crew today, but if anyone here worked with Paul, for him, supervised him, whatever, I’d like to talk to them.”
Sally nodded. “Yeah.” The frown remained on her face, “How did he die?”
“Car accident,” I said.
“In his own car?” Sally said.
“Yes.”
“Wow. That’s . . . that’s just really hard to believe.” Sally sighed and indulged in yet another round of shaking her head. “I’ll see who I can find. You can take a seat over there.” She pointed to a short row of leather chairs about halfway between the entrance and her desk. I walked to the chairs and sat in the one nearest Sally’s desk while she worked the phones.
A few minutes later, she waved me back. “Jake Driscoll is going to talk to you,” she said. “He worked for Paul up until recently when he became an account manager, too.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Where’s his office?”
“Third floor, room three-oh-five.”
I got in the elevator and punched the “three” button.
Jake Driscoll’s office was to the left of the elevator, second on the right. The nameplate on his door shone like it had been minted that very morning. I could smell traces of fresh paint from his office. Jake had a surfboard hanging on the wall along with a couple of posters for classic surfer movies (if there could, in fact, be such a thing). Jake himself let his long blond hair hang down to his shoulders. He wore a teal collared shirt unbuttoned about a
third of the way down, light khaki pants, and sandals he should have packed away two months ago. I wondered if he presented this kind of image to his clients during the week. Maybe Jake managed the accounts for skateboard and beachwear manufacturers. He would fit right in at Tony Hawk’s boardroom.
“Hey, man, how are you?” Jake said, extending his hand from across the desk.
I shook it and sat in the guest chair. It felt significantly less comfortable than my own. “I’m OK, considering I’m making the rounds here on a Saturday morning. How are you?”
“Good, I’m good. So what’s up? Sally said you needed to ask me some stuff about Paul.”
“Paul’s dead.”
The news wiped the surfer look from Jake’s face. A deep frown creased his brows. “Dead? What the hell? I just saw him yesterday. What happened?”
“Car accident.”
“Wow.” Jake shook his head. There was a lot of it going around today. “Hey, however I can help.”
“You worked for Paul until recently, right?”
“Yeah. He’s a good dude. Real easy to work for, you know? I mean, he expected me and everyone else to do the work, but he didn’t hound us about it. We got our stuff done and everyone was happy.”
“Did he ever seem unusually stressed out?”
“No, he was an even keel sort of dude.”
Jake’s surfer lingo had already grown annoying. I got the feeling he wouldn’t be able to tell me much I could use, but I needed to hold out in case he possessed some nugget of wisdom to pass along. My patience grew thin, however. “Did you ever hear him complain about money?”
“No way, not Paul. If he had money problems, none of us heard anything about it.”
“Did he talk about his wife at all?”
“Alice? Sure, he talked about her plenty. Most married guys talk about their wives, you know?”
I noticed the absence of a ring on Jake’s left hand. “Did Paul ever say anything bad about Alice?” I said.
“Not to me,” said Jake. “I never heard him say anything but good things about her. You ever meet Alice?”
“I have.”
“She’s a good lady, man. A good lady. How’s she taking the news?”