Abby glanced up at Dart condescendingly and then said to the girl, “You saw a white man get out of his car-a blue car-and climb those back stairs?”
“Big man. Yes, ma’am. Gray maybe-the car.”
“And what did you do then, Lewellan?” Dart asked, hoping to discover some inconsistency that might invalidate her as a witness and at the same time explain why Kowalski had left out her statement. Hope built inside him that Abby’s instincts were right: perhaps the connection was Kowalski, not Zeller. What a pleasure it would be to bring down Roman Kowalski.
“I watched,” the girl answered. “The Man come sneaking around our alley late at night, and I figure somebody gonna get arrested, maybe kilt.” She nodded at Dart, and he felt a chill down to his feet. Bellevue Square entertainment-arrests and shootings. Said with excitement, as if this window were just another television screen.
Dart considered the possibilities. Gerald Lawrence could have been a dealer, his white visitor a customer. Kowalski could know something about that, having been Narco once. The buyer could have been a cop, Dart realized, looking for Kowalski’s motivation. A cop buying drugs near Bellevue Square, or performing a shakedown was just the kind of information that Kowalski would attempt to keep quiet. If he handled it on his own, if he hushed it up, he could protect a fellow officer and pick up some chits to barter later in his career.
“The white man was upstairs about five minutes,” Abby repeated.
“Yeah, and no shooting.” She told Dart, “My mama tell me when there a shooting to get under a table. Head down and under a table.”
Five minutes was enough time to make a buy and get back down to the car, Dart thought. It didn’t seem to him near enough time to fake a suicide. He experienced another wave of relief-he had jumped to conclusions by considering Zeller. Guilt, he thought, is a form of illness.
He looked at Abby and saw sadness. Someone so young, her eyes said to him. Someone innocent. And innocence, he thought, is like a balloon-once punctured, it’s gone. There is no making it whole again. No making it well. His mother had stolen a different innocence from him; he felt empathy for this young girl.
“What time of night was this, Lewellan?” Abby asked.
“Between eleven and eleven-thirty.”
“You were up that late?” Dart asked. He wondered if this was a possible crack in her story.
“I don’t sleep so good. My mama reads to me after the news is over, then maybe I sleep for a little while.”
“Why don’t you sleep well?” Abby asked.
“Bad dreams.”
By the name of Gerald Lawrence, Dart thought.
He glanced at Abby. How could a person volunteer to work Sex Crimes? How could she live with this day after day?
Abby asked the inevitable question, and as it registered, Dart looked away. “Did Gerry Law ever ask you over to his place?”
“I don’t know.”
“We won’t tell your mother,” Abby promised.
She knows exactly what to say, Dart thought.
He looked back as Lewellan Page shrugged and focused her attention on the cracked linoleum again. She nodded sheepishly. “He had bunnies,” she said. “White bunnies.”
Dart felt a stinging in his eyes, and caught himself with fists clenched. Why bother asking this? he wondered. He didn’t want to hear any of this. But then he realized how important a question it was-perhaps enough animosity and hatred toward Lawrence had built so that a neighbor had killed the man and made it look like a hanging. Maybe there was no white man involved at all. Maybe Kowalski had discovered the hint of a murder and decided a scum like Lawrence wasn’t worth the taxpayer’s money.
Abby’s face held an expression of infinite patience and compassion. Dart admired her; his own face probably held a look of horror. He could see in the young girl’s fear and hesitation that she had indeed been in Lawrence’s lair, had petted those bunnies. A victim.
Attempting to fend off her confirmation-not wanting to hear it-he said impatiently, “Well, you’ve certainly been a big help.” God help him, he would not bring this girl downtown. He no longer cared about Kowalski’s missing pages. Let it go.
But for Abby this was simply another investigation, another case; she had seen dozens of girls like Lewellan Page. She would not allow Dart to close the questioning. “Are they nice bunnies? Cute bunnies?” she asked.
The girl nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Lewellan, did you visit Gerry Law that night?”
“At night? No way. Only when Mama’s at work. Mama don’t like Gerry none. Mama don’t want me seeing the bunnies.” She asked Dart, “You know what happened to them bunnies now that Gerry is dead?”
Dart spun around and left the room, his throat constricted, his vision blurred.
Kill all the Gerry Laws you can find, and there would still be more, he thought. He wanted to change this girl’s life, to turn back the clock.
“Abby,” he called out, hoping to end this.
But he heard her voice from the other room as she asked softly, “Do you think you might recognize this white man if you saw him again?”
Dart didn’t hear an answer. He could picture those thin shoulders lifting into that shrug, the eyes expressive with fear. There was a picture of Jesus Christ on the wall and another of the pope by the door to the bathroom. There was a picture in Dart’s head of Gerald Lawrence hanging at the end of a lamp cord. Cut him down with a pair of wire cutters. Zip him up inside the ME’s black plastic body bag and forget about it. Who cares about him? Why bother to investigate? Kowalski was right: good riddance.
“Abby,” he called again.
“Come in here a minute,” she answered.
Reluctantly, Dart reentered the kitchen.
“Tell him what you just told me,” Abby said, glancing at Dart, and punishing him for his desertion.
“I saw the white man pull the chair out from under him.”
Dart stood there, slack-jawed. For a moment it felt as if his heart had stopped. The rationale that he had formulated in his head-the drug deal, Kowalski chalking up a favor-evaporated.
Several thoughts coursed through him, from how lousy a witness she was: a twelve-year-old victim of sexual abuse; to Kowalski’s missing pages.
The chair. He recalled the photograph: the chair lying on its side, spilled over as if kicked away.
Standing up and glancing out the kitchen window, Abby asked, “Were the shades up or down?”
Dart recognized that tone of voice: Abby didn’t believe the girl. Thank God! he thought.
“The shade was down. Gerry always had the shades down. Said the bunnies didn’t like the sun.” She turned to face Dart and explained, “But it was hot that night, and there was a wind, you know, and the shade blowing back and forth, and it moved once, and I saw that white man pull the chair, and I saw Gerry’s feet … you know?” She glanced over at Abby, and paddled her hands out in front of herself. “Like he was running, you know? Running real fast.”
Dart felt paralyzed. Lewellan Page had witnessed a murder.
To Abby the girl said, “Fritz ran away. That’s my dog. Mama’ll let me have bunnies now that Fritz is gone. Said no bunnies as long as we have Fritz, but Fritz is gone now, gone for good.” She nodded enthusiastically.
Fifteen minutes later Dart and Abby Lang were back in the department-issue Taurus soaking in the air-conditioning. Abby stated strongly, “She killed the dog, or let him go, or gave him away.”
“You think?”
“She wants those rabbits.”
He had a witness now that in many ways he did not want, and yet felt grateful to have. Someone had murdered Lawrence-the same person who killed the Ice Man? he wondered-and no matter who this person turned out to be-even if Walter Zeller-he had to be stopped, and right away. He couldn’t help but think that he might have stopped this killing if back then had he spoken up. He felt cold all of a sudden.
“Why would Kowalski leave her out of his report?” sh
e fired at him.
Kowalski was a big white man; Dart understood what Abby was saying. He objected, “She could be lying about the guy’s color. About any of it.”
Abby kept her attention on the road and slowed for a red light. “I don’t think she’s lying,” she said.
“No,” he said, though he wanted to bury the whole thing. He thought he understood Kowalski now more than ever.
Mistakes compound other mistakes, Dart reminded himself. You overlook something three years ago, and it comes back to haunt you. I did my job, he reminded himself, wondering if a board of inquiry would see it that way, wondering if his career was on the line. He felt like a fuck-up. A fool. He considered a transfer-someplace in the South, away from the winters. People might attribute it to his breakup with Ginny. It was a good time to try.
But the better part of him knew that he could not outrun the truth. Better to stay and fight.
Abby asked, “What exactly is going on with us, Joe?”
Dart felt his face and spine go hot. How could she disconnect from Lewellan Page so quickly? Was that what Sex Crimes did to you, numb you, the way Homicide turned you into a comedian?
She wanted an answer; she didn’t want to repeat herself.
“Let’s forget the ice cream,” he said.
“I’m not talking about ice cream.” Abby found a stray button on her blouse and closed it. She steered clear of a slow-moving truck, turned at the jai alai fronton and crossed over the tracks. She parked in the back of the Jennings Road building, and just before they climbed out of the car, announced, “I know what I know. I know what I’m feeling from you. For you. It’s scaring me a little.”
“You’re good company, Abby.”
“Okay,” she said, accepting this.
But Dart didn’t accept his own explanation. He wanted to say something. She was more than good company; he was interested-the couple of years that separated them didn’t bother him a bit. She was a fighter; a comer. She spoke her mind, and when she met eyes with him he felt it inside.
Whereas she seemed to have faced all of this, to have reconciled herself to the obvious, he could not. Not verbally. And so he said nothing: Another deliberate omission on his part. Would he pay for this one as well?
CHAPTER 9
After weeks of routine work in which it was easy to lose himself, Dart still retained a folder on his desk containing five mug shots that little Lewellan Page had identified as likenesses of Lawrence’s killer. To her credit, the faces appeared similar-renewing Dart’s faith in her as a witness. He stumbled onto the folder on a Wednesday afternoon in early October and decided to do something about the worry that he had been living with since the interview. The only step that he could clearly see was to steal a look at some files that he did not have authority to access. The risk had kept him away from them, but on this particular Wednesday he snapped. He had to do something before another “suicide” turned up.
Dart walked down the hall to Abby’s office, shut her door quietly, and asked her out for an ice cream.
“An ice cream?” she asked, viewing him curiously-as much for the way in which he had shut the door, as his question. “It’s October.”
“Someplace away from Jennings Road is all,” he informed her.
They met eyes and he sensed that perhaps she understood. They agreed to meet in the parking lot a few minutes later.
The Oasis Diner was across town on Farmington Avenue, on the way to the Mark Twain house and West Hartford. The first triple-wide diner in the country, the Oasis retained its art deco interior, which included a total surround of stamped stainless steel and movie stills of Brando, Monroe, and James Dean. Dart had vanilla, Abby raspberry with chocolate sauce.
“So?” she asked. The drive over had been in complete silence.
Dart said, “Kowalski was Narco before Homicide. Doc Ray’s preliminary of Stapleton turned up some injection marks. They may be nothing, but it’s possible that Stapleton-maybe Stapleton and Lawrence-were dealers. The point is, we’ll never know because Narco records are shut away, and after what they’ve been through, if we go asking questions, we’re likely to open up a hornets’ nest and have Haite asking a lot of questions that neither of us wants to answer until we have some answers. Are you with me?”
“All the way,” she said, rolling her tongue over the chocolate sauce. She made no attempt to disguise her enjoyment and then licked her lips. “Lawrence was a cover-up?”
“It depends if we believe Lewellan Page or not,” he said.
“She wouldn’t survive on the witness stand, if that’s what you’re asking. No. She’d be torn apart by the psychologists, who would discover her abuse and create all sorts of reasons she would want to invent someone killing Gerry Law. That’s my professional opinion. Personally, I believe her, and I think that you do too, or we wouldn’t be sitting here, and you wouldn’t look so tired and bothered.”
“If we apply through Internal Affairs for Lawrence’s Narco file, it will take a ream of paperwork and six weeks. Plus countless interviews and reports, and at some point we’ll have to put everything out on the table.”
“In the meantime, we aren’t sleeping well,” she said, sampling the ice cream again. She drew it into her mouth on the end of a white plastic spoon and skimmed the surface softly with her lips stealing a little bit of the prize at a time, until what was on the spoon disappeared and she went after more. He sensed no intention on her part in making this overly sensual-it seemed more her way of eating her ice cream, but Dart had a difficult time with it. What would it feel like to be kissed by her?
“I’d like to get inside the Narco file room,” he confessed.
The spoon stopped inside her mouth. She returned it to the paper cup and put a napkin to her lips. “You what?”
“We need to know, one way or the other, if either Stapleton or Lawrence was ever investigated by Narcotics. It’s our only hope of connecting Kowalski to Lawrence.”
She set the spoon down, noticeably more pale. She looked around, as if he might have been overheard. “You must really trust me,” she said, staring at him. “Does the word suspension mean anything to you? Or how about the words, suspension without pay? How about an IA investigation with you as its target?” She pushed the ice cream away. “If you’re using me as a sounding board, Joe, then take this advice: Forget it. They’ll suspend you, maybe toss you. They’ll make an example of you-that’s how it works.” She cocked her head at him. “What is that look?”
“Narco is empty by one in the morning. They’re all out working the streets or eating doughnuts or killing time at strip joints. By three, they go home. CAPers is up and running, but it’s down the hall. Thursday through Sunday the cleaners start at midnight. The rest of the week, they go eight to eleven.”
“What they say about you and your research is true, isn’t it?”
“I can’t watch the hallway and go for the files at the same time.”
“No way.” She didn’t hesitate a nanosecond.
“It can’t be done?”
“No, it can’t,” she confirmed.
“Not without help,” he pressed.
“Message received. Now hear this: No way!”
“Your office has a clean view of the hallway. With the door left open, you could see down that hall, could warn me. Sometimes there’s a late bust. Predicting traffic flow in and out of that division is never a sure bet.”
“It would make me an accomplice.”
“We carry pagers. They can be set to vibrate instead of beep, did you know that? If you were to program your phone to dial my pager number, then it would take only seconds to warn me. It takes exactly nine seconds to walk down the hallway and reach Narcotics once you’ve rounded that corner.”
She shook her head, looking amazed that he had already timed it. “And whoever it was would recognize you.”
“I’m dressed as a housecleaner. I wear a ball cap, glasses, and a press-on ’stache. I keep my head down. No one ever loo
ks at the wombats. Not at one in the morning. I push my cart out the door, and I’m gone. Besides,” he offered, “that’s my risk, not yours. If I’m caught, I acted alone. You’ve done nothing more than pull an all-nighter. How unusual is that?” He spoke sotto voce. His heart was beating fast, and he was sweating. The vanilla was melting in front of him, untouched.
She reached out, snagged the spoon, and guided it back between her lips. “I suppose you already know the order that housecleaning cleans in. Which offices are done first?”
“I can do this alone,” he reminded, “but I thought I’d ask you first. I’m pressuring you, Abby, and I’m sorry. Let’s drop it.”
She removed the spoon and pursed her lips. She looked at him quizzically, skeptically, squinting in a way that felt as if she were measuring him. Testing him. “You’re right about IA. Putting the request through them would probably take several weeks. But break into Narco’s files based on the testimony of a victimized twelve-year-old girl? Does that strike you as odd?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” He toyed with the ice cream, but wasn’t hungry.
“You’re really pissing me off here, damn it.”
“Good.”
A tension had settled between them, uncomfortable and gnawing. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” she declared.
At 12:30 A.M., Dart, wearing a fake mustache, blue jeans, and a dark blue ball cap, entered the department’s basement housecleaning closet, where he located both a cart and a navy blue smock that the service people wore. There were four workers assigned to clean the two-story building. Dart, heading upstairs, estimated that he had a little over an hour for a job he thought would only take a few minutes.
He had rarely found use for the speed key given him by Walter Zeller some four years earlier. Zeller had claimed that no investigating officer could get by without one, despite their illegality. The speed key was shaped something like a small flat pistol. It magically picked most locks with the squeeze of a trigger and was the preferred tool of car thieves because of its simplicity-insert the tongue into the lock, squeeze and hold the trigger, rotate, and the lock was open. Dart hid it under a stack of green cotton rags on the cleaner’s cart.
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