Eyeshot

by Lynn Hightower

  “But he watched me. I was going to go and try to make him let her up, but she wasn’t moving and I was pretty sure she was dead. And he was such a big guy. So I ran for help. I wanted somebody to try and save the baby, if nothing else.

  “Just before I could move, or run, or whatever, he said. He said, ‘Hang on just a minute, will you?’

  “I … it was such a shock, because he sounded so normal. Hang on, be right with you, I can explain. It was funny, because he had a really nice voice, kind of gentle and calm. And I just stood for a second and we stared at each other. And then I started crying, I think, and I ran away.

  “I ran down the hall and there was a room with the door open and full of people. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t come when I screamed, but when I went inside it wasn’t people, it was mannequins. That was … horrible. And I ran out back in the hallway, wondering if the person with the pink sweater had come back, but then I thought whoever it was wears teeny pink sweaters won’t be much help either way. If it had been a big old gray sweatshirt I might have risked it.

  “I remember seeing an exit sign and thinking—”

  The sound of a telephone ringing came through loud and startling.

  “Oh, shit.”

  There was a sound like bedsprings before the click of the machine shutting off.

  Sonora looked at Sam. They listened, for a while, to the hiss of empty cassette tape. Julia Winchell didn’t come back.

  28

  Sam wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and came back into the living room with the Oreo cookies, drawing Clampett and Sonora’s immediate attention.

  “I am eating these only because I need a sugar hit to get the energy to drive home. Why are you frowning at me? I’ll share.”

  “Julia Winchell said the woman drowning in the toilet was Oriental.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Caplan’s got pictures in his office. His little girl is blue-eyed, Amerasian. Which means her mother—”

  “Could have been the woman in the bathroom. Hmm.” He crunched a cookie, dribbling black crumbs down his shirt front. “Say it’s Caplan. What’s he doing on campus?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You are tired and cranky. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.” He reached down, rubbed the back of her neck.

  She closed her eyes. “You’re tired too. Spend the night, why don’t you?”

  “Remember what happened the last time I did that?”

  They both smiled.

  Sonora shrugged. “Kids are here, this time.”

  “They’re sound asleep,” Sam said.

  “The bedroom or the couch?”

  “I couldn’t resist you. And it would be a shitty thing to do to Shel.”

  She was not going to listen to the wife lecture. Plus she liked Shelly, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she might feel guilty. Sonora rolled sideways on the couch, pulled the quilt off of Clampett and over her head.

  “You going to roll up like a worm in a cocoon or walk me to the door?” Sam asked.

  “I’m not moving.”

  “If you walk me to the door I can accidentally kiss you good night.”

  “Lock up on your way out.”

  29

  The air-conditioning in the bullpen was emitting a sour smell that reminded Sonora of Liza Hardin’s little Toyota. She had come in early, around six, in spite of the late night, but Sergeant Crick was still in ahead of her.

  He sat at Gruber’s desk, rolling his chair from side to side. He looked like he had slept.

  “Hold up your foot, Sonora.”

  “What?” Her eyelids ached, and her head was hurting. She also thought she might want to throw up, some time or other. No sleep gave her a queasy feeling in the morning.

  “Your foot. Hold it up.”

  Sonora lifted her left foot, aware that her white high-top Reeboks were getting dingy and worn. Maybe new shoelaces would perk them up. She was not supposed to wear them to work, and she hoped Crick was annoyed. If she had to put up with queasy, he could put up with annoyed.

  “Damn, girl, look at those.”

  Sam, over her shoulder. Sonora looked from Sam to Crick.

  “I like these socks,” she said.

  “Hot pink,” Crick said. “Reeboks and pink socks? You looked at the dress code lately, or you pushing for a transfer to vice?”

  “It’s just so we know she’s a girl cop,” Sam said.

  Sonora nodded at them. “Soon as Gall’s starts selling pink handcuffs, I’m first in line.”

  “At least we know what to get her for Christmas.”

  Sonora put her arms on the rests on her chair. “While you’re admiring my socks, sir, I was wondering what you could tell me about Gage Caplan.”

  Crick’s look was wary. “The DA Caplan?” He folded his arms. “Who wants to know?”

  “I want to know. His name’s come up in the Julia Winchell investigation.”

  Sam settled at the edge of her desk, winked. “Sleep well?”

  “Better than you.”

  “Come up how?” Crick said.

  Sonora glanced over her shoulder. Saw Molliter, working at his desk, finishing up the night shift. Pretending not to notice their conversation. Caplan was a popular district attorney. He liked cops. He respected them. He put perps in jail. He had a lot of friends in the police department. One of them was Molliter.

  Sonora looked at Crick. “Let’s go in your office.”

  “This chair does not fit my butt.” Crick got up.

  The coffeemaker was on in Crick’s office, baking old coffee into toffeelike sludge at the bottom of the glass pot. Crick flipped the switch, waited for Sonora and Sam to settle. He sat behind his desk and smiled. Sonora did not like that smile.

  She was a little bit afraid of Crick—most of them were a lot afraid. He had smarts, he had integrity, and he backed his people up. She’d misstepped badly in the Selma Yorke case last year, and here she was, still working.

  But being a cop was like being in the army. Crick was a superior officer, not in the rank and file, and, in Sonora’s experience, as soon as a fellow officer left the rank and file they had motivations and agendas that were not obvious and to be avoided.

  “Don’t trust me?” Crick asked, showing his teeth.

  Sam was looking at her like she’d lost her mind.

  “I’m organizing my thoughts.”

  Crick smiled again, a real one this time. In appreciation of a good side step, Sonora suspected.

  “Julia Winchell witnessed a murder eight years ago.” Sonora expected questions, but Crick did not interrupt—just stayed quiet and coiled like a cat well versed in the art of looking sleepy and bored before the pounce. “She got a clear and long look at the killer. When she went for help and came back, the killer was gone.”

  “Big surprise,” Sam muttered.

  “The body was gone too. In short, nobody believed her and she had to let it go.”

  Crick leaned sideways. Still no comment.

  “So anyway, Julia Winchell comes to town for a conference. Opens the newspaper. Sees a spread on Caplan, over that ex-football player and the hit and run.” She looked at Crick. “She recognized him, sir.”

  He looked at her and sighed. “Say the name, Sonora. I want to be real clear on this.”

  “She identified District Attorney Gage Caplan as the man she saw murder a woman in the bathroom on the UC campus.” Sam was leaning back in his chair with his feet stuck out, but his chin was up.

  Crick looked at Sam, soft but watchful. “This bring back memories, Delarosa?”

  Sonora looked from Sam to Crick. Decided, for once, to keep her mouth shut. Sam had run into trouble, of the higher-up political kind, just before they’d become partners. Which was why he’d gotten the rookie female partner award. Which was why promotion was not in his line of vision.

  “You want off?” Crick asked.

  Sam shook his head, slow and deliberate. “I
wouldn’t mind seeing Sonora off it, sir. She’s got kids.”

  “We’ve all got kids,” Sonora said.

  “Not Sanders. Not Gruber.”

  “Gruber? He’s probably got some somewhere,” Crick said. “He and Sanders are busy on the Bobo thing. You sure you want to tangle with the DA’s office, Sonora?” Crick was clear-eyed, almost sincere.

  She actually hesitated. She’d had enough of being the cop you stare at when she’d tracked Selma Yorke last year. Lost her brother and a large chunk of her reputation in the fallout. Neither she nor the kids needed any more fallout.

  “We caught it, sir.”

  Crick nodded. “Let’s look at what we’ve got here. A prominent district attorney has been accused of murder by a nutcase who has subsequently disappeared, then been found in pieces on the side of the road.”

  Sonora gritted her teeth. Julia Winchell was her baby. She’d decide if the lady was a nutcase. “You saying she’s a nutcase because she had the bad taste to get herself dismembered?”

  Crick sighed. Looked at Sonora. “You look like the dachshund in the yard next door when my collie goes over the fence. I’m calling her a nutcase because she sees murders where the bodies disappear and the perps are sort of local celebrities.”

  “She was pretty clear about what she saw,” Sam said.

  Crick was still looking at Sonora. “Exactly what did she see?”

  “A man drowning a woman in the ladies’ rest room in the Braunstein Building on the UC campus. The victim was Oriental, and very pregnant.”

  “Very convincing,” Crick said. “I just don’t remember a body turning up on the UC campus. I think I would remember a pregnant Oriental female drowned in a toilet.”

  “Winchell went for help and when she came back the body was gone.”

  Crick ran a hand over his face, rubbed vigorously. The growth of beard sounded scratchy against the rough-callused palm. “Yeah, you mentioned that before. I was just thinking—didn’t I just see this plot on a movie of the week a couple months ago? Brian Dennehy? Suzanne Somers? I bet she had repressed memory, or something.”

  “Not repressed memory, sir. The body was gone.”

  “Swam away, no doubt.”

  Sam got up, left the room. Sonora heard file cabinets open and close. She placed her fingertips together, tapped the back of her nails together.

  Crick grimaced. “Don’t do that.”

  “What, sir?”

  “That thing, there, with your hands.”

  Sonora held her hands up like they used to in old M&M commercials. “Julia Winchell was strangled and cut up in pieces and strewn like so much garbage from here to Clinton, Tennessee.”

  “Yeah, I get you, dragging a woman to Tennessee is heinous. She had a lover, right?”

  Sonora hesitated.

  Crick put a hand out, cupping his ear. “What’s this I hear?”

  A file drawer slammed shut. Another one opened.

  “Yes sir, she had a lover.”

  “That Jeff Barber guy. The photographer, if I remember correctly. Do I remember correctly?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Fooling around on her husband. And you bypass the jealous husband and/or lover and go for this convoluted nonobvious bullshit?”

  “Okay, sir. We agree it’s usually the husband. But—”

  Sam came back in, pushing the hair that slid into his eyes back with an impatient gesture that was as familiar to Sonora as the wistful feeling that came with it. He stood next to her chair. Solidarity. And he had a triumphant air that seemed to put Crick on his guard.

  “We’ve all heard yada yada yada that Caplan became a DA after his wife was murdered and the killer never found,” Sam said.

  Crick leaned back until his chair creaked. He folded his arms.

  “This is the file, and a picture of the first Mrs. Gage Caplan.” Sam put an open folder and a spread of pictures on Crick’s desk. Sonora saw them upside down.

  Black hair. She would have been pretty once—but not in the shot that captured her curled in a fetal position around the mound of belly, hair stuck to her delicate neck.

  Sonora picked up one of the pictures. The woman’s eyes were wide. She was Asian. Small and petite.

  “Where’s the autopsy report?” Crick was rummaging. Sam passed it across the desk. Sat back down in his chair.

  “Sir?” Sonora said.

  Crick held up a hand. Achieved silence. Sonora wondered why Crick holding up a hand brought immediate obedience. When she held up a hand people tended to comment on her nail polish.

  She considered the way he held the hand. Nothing special. Maybe it was the size of the hand.

  “Delivered of a perfect baby girl, death by asphyxiation, minutes after the mother.”

  Sam winced.

  “Micah Caplan. Cause of death, drowning. Found her body by Sonier Creek. Signs of struggle …” Crick frowned, kept reading. Looked up at Sam and Sonora. “Either of you looked at this?”

  Sonora shook her head.

  “No,” Sam said.

  Crick got up and shut the door. His walk was slow and deliberate. Sonora knew from the tense and in-check way he moved that somebody was in trouble.

  He sat back in his chair, voice oddly subdued. “Two things.” He held up thick fingers. “Fragments under her fingernails match skin samples taken from her husband. His answer: she had a habit of scratching his back during lovemaking, and they’d had relations that afternoon.”

  Sonora looked at Sam.

  Crick held up another finger. “Second. Cause of death was by drowning. M.E. made a note here, flagged it. Lungs contained traces of surfactants, phosphorus, hypochlorite bleach—samples were consistent with any number of household cleaners. He wasn’t happy. The creek had its share of pollution, and while said elements can certainly be found in trace quantities … basically, what he’s saying here is that wasn’t creek water in her lungs.”

  “If she drowned in the toilet, that’s where she’d get all that crap in her lungs,” Sonora said. “The surfactants, the bleach. That’s all cleaning fluid.”

  “I want his car,” Sam said. “He scattered her down the side of the road—his car’s got to be a gold mine.”

  Crick’s tone of voice was dampening. “If he used his car. This is not some juvenile we’re dealing with. He’s a DA, he works the system. We move too soon, and take the car, even if he doesn’t get us blocked, we could blow the whole case. What’s the story on the vic’s car? It was a rental, wasn’t it?”

  “Haven’t found it yet,” Sam said.

  “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  Sonora pulled her hair back and tucked it under the collar of her shirt. “He did it, didn’t he?”

  30

  Sonora had a great deal of curiosity about Gage Caplan’s wife, so when the white Nissan Pathfinder pulled up in front of the Caplan household, and she saw a woman behind the wheel with a dark-haired child in the passenger’s seat, she forgot her irritation with Caplan for keeping her waiting in front of his house.

  His power play was childish and interesting. A gauntlet thrown down—why? Because he was guilty? Too important to be bothered?

  She watched his family, wondering why they did not go into the garage. The Pathfinder was stark white and pretty, new-looking. It had the air of a car kept snugly under wraps.

  The little girl hopped out quickly, jumping off the side of the Nissan and closing the door. It did not catch. She looked to be ten or eleven—hard to tell because she was petite and likely small for her age. Her hair, blue-black and shiny, hung chin-length. She wore tiny jean shorts fringed à la Dogpatch with white lace on the pockets and hem. Sonora caught a flash of a loose red T-shirt and beige lace-up hiking boots—all the rage—before the little girl disappeared around the front of the Pathfinder.

  Colleen Caplan was quite pregnant. The little girl gave her a hand out and Colleen said something that made them both laugh.

  She was graceless in her pregnancy
, backside broad and spreading. She wore shorts that hung long and loose just above her knees. Her legs were pale—no sun. She wore thick cotton socks, and high-top white Reeboks just like the ones Sonora had on herself. A red maternity T-shirt hung like a lampshade over the shorts.

  Sonora got out of the car, shut the door softly, and headed up the driveway toward Gage Caplan’s wife.

  It was a face only a mother could love, yet oddly endearing, like a boxer puppy, ugly and cute. She had a thick round nose, a round face, marzipan blonde hair that was chin-length and straight, parted to one side, and a thin feathered fringe of bangs.

  Her complexion was rough, face flushed, and she seemed to move in a fog of preoccupation. She looked worried. Her brow was wrinkled in the kind of deep grooves few people earned till their sixties or seventies.

  Colleen had not noticed Sonora, but the little girl had. The woman hopped sideways in an awkward movement that was as playful as it was gauche. The little girl said something and tilted her head and Colleen Caplan turned and saw Sonora.

  Her mouth made an O, and her shoulders sagged, and the worried look settled back on her face. Sonora felt like the black cloud that came with every silver lining.

  “Hello,” Colleen Caplan said with a dutiful but wary politeness. “Can I help you please?”

  Sonora smiled, reached for her ID. “Specialist Blair, Cincinnati PD. Are you Mrs. Caplan?”

  But she had lost the woman’s attention.

  “That’s so amazing!”

  Sonora frowned at her. Surely not the woman cop thing. Please not the do-you-pack-heat-like-the-big-boys question.

  “Your purse! You just found your ID like that right in the top of your purse! How do you do that?”

  “I dug it out before I got out of the car,” Sonora said.

  “No, don’t tell me that, you’ll ruin it!” Colleen Caplan gave her a real smile, big and broad and spreading across her face, making her cheeks puff up and her eyes go small. “Pockets!” She patted voluminous side bulges in her shorts. “I don’t carry a purse, I can’t find anything in it, so everything is in pockets.”