About twenty-six, Asian, and as cute as a box of kittens, Bea Vang had formerly been on the Chicago PD, four years, and was now a licensed private investigator herself.
Dan gave Bea a strained smile, then returned his gaze to me, frowning. “When you took over after Mike’s murder? No P.I. in this town ever got better media than you did. No P.I. anywhere ever did. And the agency got a boost.”
“Yeah,” I said dryly. “Great career move on my husband’s part.”
“All I’m saying is, we need to step up our staff. We haven’t even replaced Roger yet.”
“Haven’t needed to.”
“No, because we haven’t done what Mike intended, maximize what we’re up to. But all you wanna take on are lost causes and unsolved murder cases.”
I shrugged. “Media loves it.”
“Well, I don’t. Particularly since we aren’t taking advantage of any of this good publicity. We need paying cases, Ms. Tree, and more of ‘em. Domestics are the bread and butter of any—”
I shook my head. “No divorce work. It’s undignified.”
“So is standing in the government cheese line!... You know how we ought to fill Roger Freemont’s old office?”
“No. How.”
“With Roger Freemont. You need to call him.”
“That prick?” I started walking again. “Not in this lifetime.”
He tagged along. “He was Mike’s partner, too.”
“The bastard quit. When we needed him most.”
Dan’s hand found my arm—not roughly, but enough to stop me. I gave him a look, which should have withered him, but didn’t.
“Kiss and make up with him, boss.” He let go of my arm but his eyes held onto mine. “We can use Roger—he has smarts and contacts and can generate business.”
I drew in a breath. I let it out.
Dan sighed. “Just think about it, okay?...Anything else for me today?”
“No.”
“Okay then. See you tomorrow.”
He stopped by the door to get his dark-brown leather jacket from the closet, slipped it on and took one last look back my way and repeated, “Just think about it,” and went out.
I was next to Bea at her reception desk now. “What do you think? Is he right?”
Her big brown eyes gazed up at me. “Yeah, he is.”
“Really?”
“I am pretty much a glorified receptionist....Why do I have a license-to-carry again?”
I didn’t answer her, thoughts generated by Dan’s complaints leaving no room for hers.
So she gave it up, asking, “You want your messages? A couple of people have been trying pretty hard to get you.”
“They’ll keep till tomorrow. Night, Bea.”
“Good night, Ms. Tree.”
I took my dark blue trenchcoat from the closet and, juggling with my purse, slipped it on and slipped on out.
I’d barely exited when I all but bumped into Bernie Levine, our attorney, a dark-haired, sharp-eyed little man in a tailored black suit and a silver silk tie, a combo that hadn’t cost him any more than our monthly office rent.
“Ms. Tree! Thank God I caught you.”
Normally Bernie is so low-key and self-composed as to be invisible. But right now he was on edge—that was plain in his expression of wild-eyed relief.
“Well, I’m flattered, Bernie. But haven’t you heard of cell phones? Big breakthrough.”
“I’ve been trying yours. And I left half a dozen messages with your receptionist.”
“Damn. Sorry. Turned off my cell during a meeting, forgot to turn it back on, and I’m afraid I just blew my messages off—do we need to step back inside?”
“No, no time for that. You come with me and I’ll explain.”
I shrugged, gave myself over to Bernie’s urgency.
Bernard A. Levine was a man I rarely said no to—as the town’s preeminent criminal attorney, he provided the Tree Agency a good share of its clients and, on occasion, defended our actions, in his service and our own.
Soon I was in the rider’s seat of Bernie’s silver Mercedes, watching my lawyer friend sit forward as if he’d woken up to find himself in the midst of a NASCAR race, not in paralyzed rush hour traffic in the Loop. This time of year, darkness descended around four-thirty and it might well have been mid-night—which, as long and hard as my day had been, was exactly what it felt like.
“Ms. Tree,” Bernie said, gripping the wheel tight, “my client is an innocent woman.”
“Aren’t all your clients innocent? Until proven broke?”
“That’s unkind.”
Notice he didn’t say “unfair.”
“So this is an indigent innocent woman, then? Pro bono work, Bern?”
He winced. “No...not exactly.”
“A wealthy innocent woman, then?”
“Why, is that a crime?”
“No. But what crime are we talking about?”
He sighed heavily. “It’s just that this...this is the weirdest goddamn case. She killed her husband, all right. This afternoon. No question.”
I frowned at him. Traffic might have been slow, but we’d just gone from innocent to guilty in ten seconds. “She admits it?”
“Admits it. Caught at the scene with the murder gun. And yet...”
“There’s an ‘and yet’?”
He nodded, honked at a taxi, and we moved a few inches. “You may have heard of her husband—Richard Addwatter? Addwatter Accounting?”
When Bernie dropped a name, he dropped a name. “I know the firm, obviously,” I said. “Who doesn’t in this town? But I don’t know the man.”
“And you never will. The man is dead. Mrs. Addwatter made him that way. And you’re going to find me extenuating circumstances.”
My eyebrows took a hike. “What happened to the ‘innocent woman’ angle?”
“Oh, she is innocent, legally speaking. Even without your help, I can get her found not guilty. No problem. Slam dunk.”
I didn’t have to say, What the hell? My face did it for me.
“Better give me the basics, Bern. She killed him where and when?”
“This afternoon, about three PM—at a no-tell motel out by the airport.”
Traffic picked up a little, and Bernie told me the story, based upon his client’s confidences and the police reports.
Richard Addwatter, a graying, handsome man in his early forties, had been in bed, apparently asleep and naked as God had first made him though considerably hairier, next to an attractive if slutty-looking blonde woman in her thirties, who was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette, looking bored, sheets not covering large breasts with half-circle surgery scars on the underside of large brown nipples.
The woman in bed might have been waiting for a taxi.
This was the tableau awaiting Marcy Addwatter, a beautiful desperate housewife, also in her thirties, impeccably dressed in white stretch twill pantsuit and a pale blue blouse and black Jimmy Choos. Her wildly permed dark blonde hair may well have given her a Medusa aspect, when she threw open the door and sent her own shadow into the room in a slant of sunshine.
The blonde in the bed looked up at the figure filling the doorway, just a little surprised, then immediately got bored again, smoking insolently. “You must be the little woman.”
“You must be the dead whore.”
Then Mrs. Addwatter’s arm swung up and the gun in it aimed itself at the two figures in the bed, the slumbering man and the woman who was scrambling, fighting the sheets as she tried to get out of harm’s way.
Mrs. Addwatter had been smiling, just a little, when the big nine millimeter automatic in her small hand bucked as she blasted away at the bed, emptying all eight rounds, eight small explosions that rattled everything in the room, until Mrs. Addwatter was clicking on an empty chamber.
The newly minted widow did not even bother to step into the room, where her husband had slept through his own murder, his shopworn afternoon delight wrapped up in a bloody sheet l
ike some awful Christmas present, hanging half out of the bed and staring sightlessly with surprised, indignant eyes.
*
“Mrs. Addwatter used a nine millimeter?” the doctor asked.
“Yes.”
“That was the weapon in your dream, Ms. Tree.”
“And the weapon in my purse, doc.” I gave him a sideways glance. “Sometimes a nine mil is just a nine mil.”
He raised an eyebrow. “She shot her husband, and his, uh, ‘date’ until all the bullets were gone. Until she was ‘clicking on an empty chamber,’ as you put it.”
“Right. Like in my dream. You think that’s significant?”
“Perhaps. Please continue.”
Bernie Levine and I were walking down an endless corridor at the city jail. Our pace was steady but not frantic—Bernie had left his anxiety behind once we’d conquered traffic, and anyway he needed me to be filled completely in.
“My client is a disturbed woman, Ms. Tree—clinically a schizophrenic. And her husband was, for years, a confirmed womanizer, whose behavior aggravated his wife’s mental illness.”
“For how many years?”
The attorney frowned. “I knew Rich Addwatter. He wasn’t a close friend, just a...country club golfing buddy. But I do know he changed his ways a good five years ago.”
“He really changed ’em this afternoon.”
Bernie stopped.
So did I.
“Ms. Tree, Rich Addwatter loved his wife. Loved her very much. I truly believe he turned over a major new leaf, five years ago, to save her...and himself.”
I couldn’t suppress the smirk. “Nobility like that rarely winds up in sleazy motel rooms.”
Bernie ignored my expression and my words. “Otherwise, with her sickness? He’d have skated. Dumped her like a falling stock—a lot of guys would, you know.”
I couldn’t argue with him.
We began to walk again, and I said, “Okay...so she snags the insanity verdict and is institutionalized. You know when she’ll get out, don’t you? The day after Hinckley.”
He nodded, said, “Which would be a major miscarriage of justice. Marcy Addwatter has been stabilized for years.”
“Her husband falling off the faithfulness wagon unstabilized her in a hurry.”
Bernie stopped again, took the sleeve of my trenchcoat. “All right, Ms. Tree, fine...but how? How did that happen?”
I thought for a moment, then started walking again and Bernie fell in step with me.
I said, “Okay. Richard...let’s call him Dick...made an afternoon pick-up in a bar, most likely.”
“After all these years, why?”
“Bernie, you don’t know for sure that hubby hadn’t been feeding his letch habit by picking up the occasional working girl. And the dead woman was a pro?”
“The police haven’t confirmed that, but that’s the assumption.”
“Okay, then. Maybe Dick’s idea of being faithful was not to have a serious affair. Strictly cash and carry on.”
“Even so,” Bernie said, “how did my client happen to know about this pick-up? And find her way to that no-tell motel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then find out, Ms. Tree. Talk to her.”
I was shaking my head, not in refusal but to clear the cobwebs. “Top of the list of a couple hundred things I don’t understand is why I’m even able to talk to her—the murders happened just hours ago. Nobody should be getting in but you and maybe family....”
“Haven’t you guessed?” Bernie smiled for the first time since he’d spirited me off. “Your friend Lt. Valer of Homicide greased the wheels.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“You’ll have to ask him. I don’t look gift cops in the mouth.”
Within minutes Bernie Levine and I were seated on our side of the booth and its Plexiglas divider in the city jail visitor’s area, a study in gray institutional brick and no windows. We watched as a uniformed policewoman escorted in a shell-shocked Marcy Addwatter—her permed hair a fright wig, her face pale and sans make-up—and guided the small woman in jailhouse orange over to the seat opposite us.
The attorney reached for the phone, nodding to his glassy-eyed client for her to do the same. She did, sluggishly.
“Marcy,” Bernie said, and he bobbed his head toward me, “this is Ms. Tree. She’s working for us as an investigator.”
“Rich is dead,” Marcy said into her phone.
I could barely hear it through Bernie’s phone, which he cocked to share with me; but got it well enough for her zombie monotone to register.
“I know Rich is dead, Marcy,” Bernie was saying, “but you’re alive, and you’re going to be well again. Have you seen a doctor yet?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll work on that. Right away. But first I’m going to turn the phone over to Ms. Tree. Answer her questions, Marcy. She’s our friend. She’s your friend.”
“Okay.”
The attorney let out a breath, sat back, and passed the phone over to me.
I scooched forward.
“Hello, Marcy—my name is Michael.”
The tiniest confusion came into the woman’s eyes. “Boy’s name. That’s a boy’s name.”
“Sometimes it’s a girl’s name. May I call you ‘Marcy’?”
“That’s a girl’s name. Marcy’s a girl’s name.”
Her gaze was unblinking and steered vaguely my way, but she didn’t really seem to be seeing me. Or anything.
“Marcy, how did you know where Rich was this afternoon?”
“Phone call.”
“Who called you?”
“A friend.”
“What friend?”
The barest shrug. “Just a friend. Said he was a friend. Doing what friends do.”
“What do friends do, Marcy?”
“Help. Help friends.”
“When was this phone call?”
“After lunch.”
I tried to put it as delicately as possible: “And this was the first you suspected your husband was—”
But I wasn’t delicate enough, because she came alive, her eyes wide and wild—those eyes had probably looked like that when she shot her husband and his pick-up.
“No! No. I’ve known for weeks. Over a month....We argued. He denied it. Such a good actor. Made me remember the other times.”
“Other times?”
“In our marriage. Years back. When he cheated. Cheated all the time.”
“How have you known for weeks? Other phone calls?”
“Just the one phone call.”
“Then how—”
“Voices. The voices.”
“What voices, Marcy?”
“The voices at night. In the dark. In my head....Could I talk to Mr. Levine, Michael?”
Feeling like I was getting nowhere, I passed the phone back over to the attorney, who brought his chair forward.
I could hear Marcy’s monotone coming scratchily from the phone: “I need something. My head hurts. And I’m awful blue. I’d kill myself, but...”
“Marcy, don’t talk that way.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t do it. What if I went to heaven or hell or someplace? And Richard was there? I’d have to talk to him about this. And I really don’t want to.”
The woman hung up.
Stood up.
The policewoman came over and escorted her out.
Bernie and I lingered momentarily, feeling pretty shell-shocked ourselves.
“Voices,” I said. “That’s par for schizophrenia, right?”
“Right. But a patient on medication, stabilized for years? Why would the voices in her head start striking up conversations now?”
“Was she still on her meds?”
“Yes! That’s my understanding, at least. Ms. Tree, you’ve got to help me.”
“No, Bernie.”
He looked crestfallen. “No?”
I stood. “I’ve got to help her.”
THR
EE
In the lower level, which is to say basement, of police headquarters on South State Street, I found Lt. Rafe Valer in one of the eight cubicles on the firing range.
Black, in his early thirties, Rafe—in a yellow shirt and a copper-color tie slung out of the way—was so angularly handsome he didn’t look ridiculous in those black-padded earmuffs and the wraparound sunglass-style eye protection. How I looked in the same gear—required of all who set foot on the range—I couldn’t tell you.
I was standing behind Rafe, with a great view as he fired off six rounds from his .38 Police Special, and earmuffs or not, those ringing reports got my attention. The cartoon perp twenty-five yards away had a cluster of shots on his heart.
Rafe half-turned, reloading, and noticed me. He nodded and almost smiled.
“I’ve seen better,” I said.
“That’s why I come in evenings,” he said, in his mellow radio announcer’s baritone, “when this place is a ghost town.”
“Does it help?”
“Does what help?”
I nodded toward the target. “That it’s a white guy.”
He chuckled, snapped the cylinder shut on the reloaded weapon and said, casually, “You’re evil.”
“If so,” I said, sidling up to him, “why do I rate the special privileges?”
“Like what? Civilian access to the firing range?”
I folded my arms and gazed up at him with one eyebrow arched. “Like paving the way for me seeing Marcy Addwatter when the smoke from her handgun’s barely cleared.”
“Actually,” he said lightly, “those were smokeless rounds.”
“Rafe....”
He gave me a serious look. The half-lidded eyes behind the protective glasses were as dark as burnished mahogany. “I don’t like to be manipulated.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning this Addwatter case is too damn pat.” He shook his head, lifted his shoulders. “This is a woman with mental problems, kept under control, by medication, for years...who suddenly flies off the handle? Why?”
I shrugged. “Hubby’s chubbies?”
The dark-brown eyes narrowed. “Did Bernie Levine tell you about the prior incidents?”
“What prior incidents?”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ ” Rafe let some air out. His free hand rested on his hip. “Back when Rich Addwatter was catting around, his wife took a potshot at him on one occasion, and on another, her aim improving, put him in the hospital with a bullet in the upper arm.”
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