She checked her watch. Barely seven. She didn’t have to be here, but she felt more in control of a case when she could ID the people involved. Not that she ascribed motives to people based on their looks—people were consummate actors—but she liked to watch how they carried themselves, whether they looked you in the eye, how they interacted with others. And since she had no reason to contact the Ramseys directly and probably wouldn’t get through if she tried, this was the best she could do.
She riffled through the pages she’d printed out last night. Thanks to Google and Kroll, a security company with a huge electronic database that she could access for a fee, she now had solid background on Jeff Ramsey. Raised in the New Jersey suburbs; graduated fourth in his high school class. Had a scholarship to Penn—the Wharton School—but majored in political science. Ended up at Columbia Law, where he met his wife, Janet. Worked his way through law school—at least partially—playing the piano at private parties and corporate events. Clerked for a federal judge in New York, then got hired by the DA’s office where he emerged as a star trial lawyer with an impressive won-lost record. Came to Chicago four years ago in one of Daley’s sweeps to find fresh talent.
His wife Janet was a lawyer, too, although she didn’t practice. She was the Executive Director of the North Shore seniors organization. She was also active in local politics, and there were rumors she planned to run for the Village Caucus. Monica was their only child.
Two ambitious overachievers in one house. That could put stress on a marriage. Not to mention a teenage daughter.
The front door to the house swung open, and a man with wavy brown hair falling over his forehead came out. Georgia glanced down at the photo she’d printed out. Ramsey. He was followed by a young girl in jeans and a pink sweat shirt.
Monica was about five-four. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She hoisted a backpack on her shoulder and started down a bricked path to the street. She stopped when Ramsey called out to her. Georgia rolled down her window hoping to catch his words. She was still too far away, but Monica nodded, threw him a kiss, and proceeded to a red Honda Civic in front of the house. Wide-eyed, with a pug nose and bow-shaped lips, she was pretty in a fresh, wholesome way. She looked sweet, too. Not like someone who might club another girl over the head with a baseball bat. Then again, Ted Bundy had been a handsome charmer who walked with a cane.
Monica slid into the Honda, and Ramsey cut across the grass to the garage. He was average height and wore a blue pinstripe suit and a red tie, and he walked with an easy, charged grace. Georgia’s throat suddenly went dry. He walked the way Matt did. It had made her smile, Matt’s walk—until the day she watched him walk away from her.
Ramsey watched his daughter drive off, then raised the garage door and climbed into a silver Beamer. He backed out of the driveway and disappeared around the corner. Georgia considered hanging around to check out Janet Ramsey but decided it could wait. She finished her coffee, pitched the cup on the floor, and started her car. As she doubled back to Hibbard, she punched in Kelly’s number on her cell. It was still early, and she reached his voice mail. Rather than leave a message, she hung up and headed for the gym.
She reached him after her workout.
“Kelly.” His morning voice was thin and gravelly.
“Hi, Paul. This is Georgia Davis.”
“I didn’t know if I’d hear from you again.”
“Hey. Does that mean you missed me?”
He groaned.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ I’ve been checking things out.”
He paused. “And?”
She told him about her interviews with Claire Tennenbaum and Melinda Long.
“How’d you get the Long woman to talk to you?” He sounded impressed.
She told him how she’d dropped into New Ideas and ended up at the woman’s house.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She told him about Melinda‘s feelings about the speed of Cam’s indictment and the hazing.
Kelly muttered something under his breath.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He cleared his throat again.
Georgia let it go. “Her husband wasn’t as… open-minded.” She described how he’d come home from work and promptly asked her to leave.
“That’s more like it,” Kelly said. “Still, we might have some leverage. You think the mother’d testify for us?”
“I’d say it’s a long shot. She’s getting pressure from her husband to steer clear of us. I guess it depends on what else we find.” She told him about the expensive clothes in Sara’s closet. “I’m gonna talk to her boss at the bookstore just to confirm things. But that’s not the best part.”
“You got more?”
“Do I.” She told him about her visit to the Walcher home. “They weren’t cooperative.”
“Walcher? Who the hell are they?”
She explained the relationship between Lauren and Sara. “Of course, it might have been my fault.”
“Why?”
There was no sense keeping it from him—he’d find out eventually. She told him how she’d impersonated a social worker and had been caught.
“Why in hell did you do that?”
“It was kind of—well, it just happened. I didn’t plan it.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“It’s true.” She wondered why she was defending herself. She didn’t have anything to prove to Paul Kelly. “I wanted to try to get something before they shut down.”
“Yeah, but showing up at their house under false pretenses? He could make trouble.”
“It wasn’t… that deliberate an action. It was more like taking advantage of an opportunity, but you’re right. It won’t happen again.”
Silence.
“I think we can work around it,” she added.
“We?”
Georgia kept her mouth shut.
“What do you want from me?” He sounded pained.
“Tom Walcher—the girl’s father—is a lawyer. He claims he’s not involved in the case. But I’d feel better knowing for sure. Could you check him out?”
More silence. Then, “Maybe.”
“Thanks.”
“Anything else?” He groused.
“As a matter of fact, there is.” She told him what she’d learned about Monica Ramsey. That Sara had apparently stolen someone’s boyfriend, possibly Monica Ramsey’s. That the Ramsey girl might have been in the Forest Preserve at the hazing. That she’d staked out the house.
“Hold on,” Kelly cut her off. “Are you saying the Ramsey girl might be involved in the Long girl’s murder?”
“I’m saying we ought to find out more about their relationship.”
“Whoa. Stop. Right now. What proof do you have that she was even in the Forest Preserve?”
“Two of the girls said so.”
“There was no mention of Monica Ramsey in the discovery documents.”
“That’s true, but—”
“So you’re going to take the word of a couple of teenagers?”
“I can get corroboration.”
“Jesus Christ. You can’t do this. I knew this was a bad idea. I should never have let Father Carroll talk me into—”
“You were ready to plead him out.” She reminded him. “Without any investigation.”
“I’m a lawyer. That’s what I do.”
“Send innocent people to prison?”
“Cut the drama, okay? We both knew this was a long shot from the get-go. Davis, you can’t go after Ramsey’s daughter. What are you gonna tell me next? That he covered up news of the hazing? That he’s railroading Jordan to protect his daughter?”
Georgia forced herself to stay calm. “I’m not going after anyone. I’m just following the evidence.”
“What evidence? Where?” Kelly’s voice was as sharp as a razor blade. “From where I sit, you’ve got nothing but gossip. Can’t even call it hearsay. It’s—you’re…” He sputtered.
“Do you know what the State’s Attorney could—could do to me? And you?”
“I understand. But—”
“No. I don’t think you do. I could lose my license. You could never work again.”
“If that happens you’ll have the insurance business to fall back on.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Well, you don’t seem to be working the legal angles too hard.”
A cold silence followed. Then, “Back off the Ramsey girl, Davis. Even if she was in the Forest Preserve, there had to be twenty other girls there, too.”
“Paul, if there’s a chance any one of those twenty is implicated in the death of Sara Long, I need to follow it.”
She heard an exasperated sigh.
***
It was still early, and the aroma of roasting coffee coated the air inside the bookstore. Georgia sniffed her way to the café and bought a latte, hoping the milk would neutralize the acid eating away her stomach. She sipped her drink and looked around, trying not to feel intimidated. She’d never spent much time in bookstores. Her high school English teacher, a shriveled old nun who used to quote Shakespeare at the beginning of every class, tried her best to introduce Georgia to the world of literature. Sister Marion had waxed eloquent about the worlds that would open up to her through reading—except it never happened. Georgia had struggled just to make sense of the words. She found out later she’d been dyslexic: her brain didn’t want to read letters in the right order.
Now, she wandered over to the counter where a twenty-something guy with lots of earrings punched through his eyebrows was working the register. There was only one customer in line, a woman pushing a stroller. Georgia waited until the woman left. “Hi.”
The guy looked up from the register.
“Is the manager here?”
He pointed to the back of the store. “Back there.”
Georgia turned around. The store was as big as a football field. “Where?”
“That door marked ‘employees.’”
She nodded her thanks and made her way to the back, winding through stacks of books, mostly paperbacks. The dry, flat scent of paper replaced the smell of coffee. Had she missed something by not reading? Kids staffed stores like this. Did they know something she didn’t? Had they entered the secret world of literature? Or were they just here because it was cushier than McDonald’s?
She reached the employees’ door and knocked. Nothing. She knocked again. This time she heard a rustle, and the door opened. Another youngish man in a denim shirt and jeans stuck out his head.
“Are you the manager?”
“That’s right.” He looked harried.
“My name’s Georgia Davis. I’d like to ask you about one of your employees. Well, former employee.”
He frowned. “Yeah?”
“Sara Long. She worked at the café.”
He frowned for a moment. Then recognition lit his face. “The girl who got killed in the Forest Preserve.”
“That’s right.” Why did it take him so long to remember? Didn’t everyone at the store know about Sara’s murder?
He scrutinized Georgia more carefully. “Who are you?”
“Georgia Davis. I’m an investigator working the case. What’s your name?”
“Brian Pucinski.”
She noted it down. “Brian, her mother says she worked here pretty much every day after school and on weekends.”
A frown creased his brow. “She did?”
“Yes.” Georgia looked up.
“That’s weird.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think—well, let me check her file.”
“Good idea.”
He held the door open, and Georgia stepped into a cramped room filled with metal shelves from floor to ceiling. Each shelf was crammed with books or cardboard boxes full with books. Some lay flat, some were stacked vertically. More books were piled on the floor, and even more spilled onto counters and cabinets. If they were arranged in some order, Georgia didn’t catch it—except one that would give a non-book person claustrophobia. She took a breath.
Pucinski bent over a metal file cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. He paged through it slowly, then stopped. After scanning a sheet of paper, he lifted it out of the folder and nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
“Sara hasn’t worked here in a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“She quit a long time ago.” He held up a sheet of paper. “It’s here on her sheet.”
“When?”
“Middle of April.” He passed her the sheet. “Last spring.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOMETHING WAS up. Something he wasn’t privy to. It could have happened before he signed on. Or maybe it just happened, and they were keeping him in the dark. He’d witnessed a flurry of private conversations between Lenny, the security chief and the guy who’d hired him, and his employer. He’d overheard a fragment of one— his boss demanding to know when they would move. Whatever was going had to be serious; his superior was more short-tempered and impatient than usual.
He figured they weren’t going to let him in on it, so he was surprised when Lenny came up to him while he was hosing down the Jag.
“Got a job for you.”
“Sure.”
“Surveillance.”
He looked up, twisted off the flow of water.
“With your experience, it should be a slam dunk. Assuming all those references you gave us weren’t bullshit.”
“You checked ’em.”
“Umm.” Lenny hesitated, hands in his pockets, as if he was still deciding whether to give him the job. “I don’t have to tell you how important this is. You come through, you’re on your way up. You don’t, well…” The unsaid threat hung in the air.
He cleared his throat. “I won’t let you down.”
Lenny shot him a glance. “The target is a woman. A P.I. Used to be a cop. She’s been nosing around things we’re not… comfortable with. We want you to find out who she’s been talking to. Where she’s been going. We need to know how much she knows.”
“About what?”
Again Lenny hesitated. Then, “You been watching the news?”
“There’s a lot of stories on the news.”
“The girl who was killed in the Forest Preserve.”
“I heard about it.”
“The target is the PI working the case.”
He started winding the hose, making big loops with his hands. “Why her?”
Lenny shook his head. “Sorry. Need to know basis only.”
He shrugged. “She got a name?”
Lenny gave him an edgy look, almost as if he didn’t want to say the name out loud. “Here.” Lenny scrawled something on a scrap of paper and handed it over.
Matt set the hose on the ground and peered at the name. Then he stuffed the paper in his pocket. He picked up the hose and met Lenny’s cool gaze with one of his own. “When do I start?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OUTSIDE, INDIAN summer was at its peak, the bright October sun igniting flames of reds, yellows, and oranges. Droves of people would abandon Chicago for Michigan and Wisconsin this weekend, all of them converging on the Chicago Tribune’s “Best of Autumn” leaf-viewing sites. They’d trample through decomposing forests, click their digital cameras, and scold their kids who’d be whining about missing TV or the mall. Then they’d drive back on Sunday afternoon in bumper-to-bumper traffic, satisfied that they’d “done fall.”
Relieved she didn’t have to do things like that, or even pretend to like them, Georgia went back to her car. Sara was supposed to be working at the café in the bookstore. Except she wasn’t. Why had she lied? Did she have another job? If not, how was she getting the money to pay for her cell phone, iPod, and those clothes in her closet?
Something had shifted. Georgia didn’t know what, but the ground under her feet felt less firm. And the most disturbing part was that she might be the
only one who knew it. Before leaving the bookstore, she’d casually remarked to the manager, “I guess the police are all over this, huh?”
Pucinski’s brow furrowed. “They haven’t been around.”
Now she tried to recall if she’d read anything about Sara’s job in the police reports. She didn’t think so. She could see Robby Parker letting it slide. Especially when he could reap the fame that came with sewing the case up fast. But this was a homicide. Why didn’t someone follow up? She would have. O’Malley would have, too. Unless his hands were tied.
Driving home, she decided it was time to question Jill Beaumont, Sara’s advisor at Newfield. Advisors knew the child from a more or less long-term perspective. Some became a surrogate parent, some were pals, and some—the good ones—made themselves the adult ally kids needed as they ventured into the world. But she couldn’t meet Beaumont at Newfield. The Walchers had reported her subterfuge to the school; no one would be rolling out the welcome wagon for her. They might even forbid her from going inside.
Back in her apartment, she checked the time. Noon. There was nothing more she could do now. She sighed, booted up her computer, and started the skip trace she’d promised another client.
Jeraldo Gutierrez, a mechanic from the West Side, had made off with twenty thousand of his employer’s hard-earned dollars. His employer, Hector Montoya, was most interested in getting the money back but knew the police wouldn’t be much help. He’d called his lawyer, a kid Georgia had grown up with from the old neighborhood. The lawyer referred the matter to her.
Luck was with her. After searching the Cook County Assessor’s records online, she discovered a bungalow owned by Gutierrez’s wife. Two hours after that, after culling through two more subscription websites, she called a number in Tucson, Arizona belonging to Maria Rodriguez, Gutierrez’s wife’s cousin. Georgia told the woman who answered the phone that she was calling from Mr. Gutierrez’s bank in Chicago, and that a substantial sum of money had just been wired into his account. Was he by any chance there? The woman on the phone said he wasn’t but was expected later that afternoon. Georgia said she’d call back, then called her client with the information.
Easy Innocence Page 10