Next to him, sprawled on the seat, Rob stretched and yawned and said, “Do we hafta go in?” Into the three-story gray stucco, with its imposing porch and tall windows. It was a rhetorical question.
“Look at it like this,” Thinnes said. “You get through today, and you won’t have to come back until Easter.”
“Promise?” He had Rhonda’s coloring and Thinnes’s build, but his large hands and feet suggested that he’d be taller than both of them.
“Unless you want to fly down to Florida with them, over Christmas break.”
Rob didn’t bother to answer. He did laugh, and they both stared out the front window, not hurrying to get out of the car.
Thinnes had once heard Rhonda describe her parents’ house as late nouveau riche. He didn’t think it was that bad. They’d had the good sense to buy well-made furniture and had kept the brass and glass and the gaudy prints in trendy colors to a minimum. The overall effect was “We have money.” The Coateses themselves were sort of like their house: basically decent, a tad too eager to impress. Bill got on well enough with Thinnes when they were alone together, but when Louise was around, he acted embarrassed that he was enjoying Thinnes’s company. Louise didn’t approve of Rhonda’s choice of husbands. Her own was the ultimate yes-man, though he usually said yes in a way that made whatever he was agreeing to seem like his own idea.
The brass knocker on the Coateses’ front door was hidden under a bunch of Indian corn, and a fat gray squirrel with a blond tail was clinging to the ears, munching the kernels. When Rob and Thinnes got near the door, it took off, flicking its tail.
“Look, Dad, a rat with a tailcoat.” Under one arm, Rob was carrying a case of Miller Genuine Draft for Thinnes. Rhonda had brought the food earlier.
Thinnes laughed. “You want to start trouble, just tell your grandmother that.” He reached behind the corn bouquet to rap on the door with the knocker.
“I got a better one than that for Grandma.”
“What’s that?”
The door opened as Rob said, “At the first Thanksgiving, they probably served squirrels.”
Bill Coates—six one, two hundred pounds, blue eyed, and gray haired—filled the doorway. He was wearing a red-plaid flannel shirt—L.L. Bean—and pressed designer blue jeans. He said, “Don’t tell your grandmother that! Hello, son.” He meant Rob. He’d never called Thinnes “son.”
Rob shifted the beer to his other arm, and Coates shook his freed hand energetically, then hugged him. He said, “Hello, John,” and offered Thinnes his hand.
Shaking it, Thinnes said, “Bill.”
“Well, come in.” Coates backed away from the door. “You’re just in time. The game’s starting.”
Thinnes took the beer from Rob and said, “I’ll just put this in the kitchen and say hello.”
He followed the wonderful aromas to the kitchen, where Rhonda and Louise were elbow deep in potato peels. Louise’s favorite thing to make for dinner was usually reservations, but on Thanksgiving, she made everything from scratch. She also made a production of serving it—candles and table linens and flowers, three kinds of forks at each place and two different glasses. Between setting up and cleaning up, it was a whole day’s work for twenty minutes of eating.
“You’ve gotten much too thin, John,” Louise said, after she said hello. She was five five, ash-blond, and gray eyed. And her statement was unintentionally ironic—she was thin as an anorexic.
Thinnes didn’t bother to remind her he’d been sick. A bullet in the gut wasn’t a reducing method he’d recommend, but he could testify to its effectiveness. He took a beer out of the case he’d brought and squeezed the rest into the refrigerator and the cooler near the door. He extracted a Coke from the cooler for Rob.
Louise wasn’t finished. “Rhonda, you really should make him eat more.”
“Mother, he’s been feeding himself since he was six months old.”
The rest of the Coates clan was gathered around the forty-six-inch TV, watching the Bears maul the Lions. Thinnes said hello to everyone, handed the Coke to Rob—sitting on the floor near his grandfather—and squeezed between Coates and his youngest daughter on the couch.
After a few minutes of the game, he found his attention wandering. Compared to the life-and-death problems he worked on daily, grown men fighting over a pigskin ball seemed silly. And adults getting worked up watching them seemed absolutely nuts.
Judith Coates Ashley, Rhonda’s younger sister, was a rabid Bears fan and a bitch. Even Rhonda said so. She was carrying on about the game like a Pop Warner football mom. Her husband, Charles—only slightly less enthusiastic—was stretched out in Coates’s recliner. Chuck—as everyone called him when they wanted to annoy him—was an attorney who’d always seemed to Thinnes like a pale imitation of Coates. He’d lost interest in Thinnes when he realized he wasn’t going to give away any juicy details about open cases. Chuck and Judy’s two spoiled brats were squabbling over a pocket video game close enough to the television to periodically interrupt the action with their own skirmishes. Thinnes figured it was going to be a long afternoon.
When Rob and most of the Coates clan headed outside, midafternoon, for a little touch football, Thinnes and Rhonda stayed in the TV room. They left the television on out of habit, but Thinnes couldn’t have said who was playing. He sat in the recliner next to the couch and watched her. One of the teams called time-out, and she looked around. She seemed startled to find him watching, but—he could see her thinking about it—she didn’t seem displeased. She gave him a little smile. “Penny for your thoughts.”
The desire and love he suddenly felt made him feel as if his chest would explode from the internal pressure. He grabbed the chair arm. If he were to hold her—as every cell in his body cried out to do—he would surely crush her. He said, “Censored.”
She smiled. “Let’s throw a party. Just invite people we like.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “No one here—your father. And my boss—people we’d like to get to know better.”
“No cops.”
“What about Carl?”
“Okay. Maybe him.”
“Think about who else you’d like ask.” She went back to watching the game.
Thinnes did think about it. Apart from Rhonda and his dad, he didn’t have any close friends. Frank Flynn had been one. Frank had bought a .38 slug and six feet of Rosehill. Oster was the closest he could come, at work, to naming someone who’d miss him if he fell off the planet. And Jack Caleb.
But he’s a faggot. And guys who make friends with faggots are faggots.
As quickly as he had the thought, he had another. It was queer—he immediately appreciated the irony of the term—how you could overlook someone’s being gay if he was a relative, or if he’d saved your life. Maybe that was why the bashers were so busy—keep ’em away, keep ’em hostile, keep ’em from getting close enough for you to see the scared face on the head you were about to split. If you admitted they were human—like you—you might have to wonder if you were like them in other ways. Something Jack had pointed out to him once. He’d been right. And there were worse people you could be like.
Thinnes moved to the couch and put an arm around Rhonda. “Yeah, let’s have a party. And maybe I’ll invite Jack.”
After dinner, Chuck borrowed Coates’s Cadillac to go rent a movie. When he came back, and Coates asked him for the keys, he got a funny look on his face. Thinnes watched him pat down his pockets, becoming mildly alarmed at not finding the keys there, then look around the room. “They’ve got to be here somewhere,” he said. “I couldn’t have gotten back without them.”
“Did you leave them in the car?” his wife whined.
He gave her a withering look, but handed her the videocassette and went out to look. “They’re locked in,” he announced when he came back. “Let me have your spare set, Bill,” he said to Coates.
Coates looked annoyed. “It’s at my office.” His office was in the Loop.
“Shit!�
� Chuck said.
Judy rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, God!” then went to join Rhonda and her mother in the kitchen. Thinnes put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.
“I’ll call the cops,” Coates said. “Have ’em send someone over to get it open.”
“They’ll do that?”
“That’s what I pay taxes for.”
Cops breaking into cars. To order! Thinnes had heard rumors it happened, but he’d never quite believed it. At least Coates used the nonemergency number to call.
He felt sorry for the officer they sent. He had the pressed and polished look of a new academy graduate. Thinnes guessed suburban cops never had it worn or beat out of them, because this guy was at least thirty. He got out of his polished, no-visible-damage squad with a slim jim and an air of confidence. When they pointed out the car, he went back to his squad and adjusted his spotlight to shine on the Caddy’s driver’s-side door. As he slid the slim jim between the window and its rubber seal, the cop’s face and breath—condensing in the frigid air—were lit by the reflection off the pale gray car. Coates and Chuck stood over him, their breaths also steaming.
Watching from the comfort of the Coates’s living room, Thinnes didn’t see how the cop could succeed. He was aiming for the wrong spot. But he kept trying. He gave it fifteen minutes—fourteen more than Thinnes would’ve—before he shrugged and got in his car and drove away. Comforting, somehow, to know the cops were inept car thieves.
Coates came in tight-lipped and tersely told Chuck to “forget it.” Chuck headed for the kitchen; Coates headed for the phone. Thinnes heard him pick it up, then watched him listen to the message from the other end of the line. Then he slammed the receiver down and stalked out yelling, “Louise, where’s the phone book?”
Good luck, Thinnes thought, getting a locksmith on Thanksgiving.
He got his coat and went out to his car. Under the passenger’s seat, tucked into the springs, he had a flat strip of aluminum that had come from someone’s lawn furniture by way of an apprentice car thief he’d busted. The strip had been modified to perform as a slim jim. It took forty-five seconds to get it out, slide it down next to the Cadillac’s window, and unlock the door. Thinnes put the Cadillac’s keys in his pocket and returned his slim jim to the Chevy. He brought the keys into the house and handed them to Rhonda as he kissed her good-bye. Before anyone could make an issue of it, or make the usual snide remark about him not having to work holidays if he had a respectable job, he got in the Chevy and left for work.
Thirty-Seven
Friday. The day after Thanksgiving. The holiday had put together a lethal combination of booze and family members with long-standing grudges. Add a few knives and guns and baseball bats, and you had overtime for the police. All of the Violent Crimes detectives, except Ferris, were out when Thinnes got to the squad room. Even Property Crimes dicks had been pressed into service to catalog the mayhem. Thinnes was fifteen minutes early. He’d just gotten himself coffee when Rossi charged out of his office.
“Thinnes,” he barked. “You’re doing Indians this month. Here’s another one for you.” He handed Thinnes a paper with an Uptown address.
“Piece of cake, Thinnes,” Ferris volunteered. “Just look for a male Cauc with long blond hair and a Seventh Cavalry uniform.”
Thinnes watched Oster out of one eye and kept the other on the traffic ahead.
“Something’s bugging you, Carl. What is it?”
The older detective often made pointed remarks about politics or current events, but he never talked about his personal life. Thinnes knew he had a wife, and three kids he was putting through college, but he rarely talked about them. He never said anything bad. Thinnes respected that. Guys who bad-mouthed their own wives had no idea how stupid they made themselves out to be.
“Nothin’,” Oster grunted.
Thinnes waited.
“Aw, what the hell. I found out yesterday my daughter’s gettin’ a divorce. Be final in three days. Guess the father’s always the last to know.”
Thinnes felt like saying, “Not always, sometimes it’s the husband,” but he didn’t think that would go over well.
“That’s not the worst,” Oster continued. “She’s pregnant!”
Thinnes vaguely remembered Oster mentioning—months ago—that he was going to be a grandfather. He’d been disappointed. Oster was a great believer in education and wanted his children to finish college before they complicated their lives with kids.
“I take out a second mortgage and work OT for a year so she can marry the bum in style, and it doesn’t even last a year. Go figure.”
Thinnes shook his head by way of answering. He signaled left and didn’t answer until he’d made the turn. Two blocks up, he could see the flashing blue lights of the patrol car at the scene, but he kept to the speed limit. The Indian wasn’t going anywhere, and the uniforms were on the clock. He stole a glance at Oster and said, “If the guy’s such a bum, maybe she’s better off raising her kid alone.”
“Oh, she won’t be raising him alone. She wants to move back in with Norma’n me. Just when we got the last one outta the house…”
“Just say no.”
“Where else she gonna go? Cabrini?”
Moot question.
Thinnes pulled the car over to the curb behind the beat car. He put it in park and shut off the engine. “Keep telling yourself it could be worse, Carl.” He pointed beyond the parkway, to the vacant lot surrounded by yellow POLICE LINE tape, lit by portable lights, and guarded by the uniforms. “It could be a lot worse.”
The Indian was the American variety, male, five eight, Thinnes guessed, though it was hard to be sure given his position. He was dressed in the traditional city-Indian garb—Levi’s, jeans jacket, and cowboy boots. No attempt had been made by his assailant to take the silver and turquoise-trimmed belt or watch. So, he’d had some money, but he didn’t look like a drug user or seller.
It was a fresh kill. Steam rose from the blood trickling from a star-shaped entrance wound in the man’s temple and from his groin region, where urine seeped onto the freezing ground. Among the deep shadows thrown by the portable lights, it seemed like a soul escaping from the body.
Thinnes took an extra glove from his pocket and pulled it on over the one he already had on his right hand. Poor SOB probably didn’t have AIDS, but no sense taking any chances. He probed the center of the head wound with his little finger. Small-caliber weapon, probably a .22. Mob hit?
As he stepped back and pulled the outer glove off, inside out, Oster walked up.
“We got a witness says she saw your shooter.” He pointed toward the shadows beyond the sidewalk, where one of the uniforms was talking to a bag woman. “Poke Salad Annie there says Elvis did it.”
“Get her statement.”
“I was just kidding. She’s so high you could get tipsy breathing in the same room with her.”
“Get her statement,” Thinnes said.
While the technicians hustled around the crime scene, chased by their own long shadows, Thinnes stood outside the police-line tape and tried to reconstruct the murder in his head. The victim hadn’t struggled. The expression on his face suggested surprise—though you couldn’t count on that. He hadn’t been a bum or wino—a blue-collar worker, by his clothes. The boots were new or—probably—his dress boots.
As soon as the photographer was finished, Bendix ambled over and began to go through the deceased’s pockets. Thinnes and Oster ducked under the yellow tape and moved closer to watch. He removed a piece of paper and put it in a plastic bag, which he held up so Thinnes could read and copy what was written on it. A telephone number. Unfamiliar area code.
“No wallet,” Bendix announced. “And no keys. But you may be in luck.”
“How’s that?” Thinnes asked.
Bendix held up a plastic evidence bag containing a .22-caliber shell casing. Then he pointed to a slight dip in the terrain that had collected residue from a snow shower earlier. “And
someone left a footwear impression. What d’ya wanna bet it’s the shooter’s?”
“No takers,” Oster said.
Bendix’s crew had finally finished casting the “footwear impressions” and were packing up when Thinnes yelled out, “Hey, Bendix, get the dog shit, too.” He pointed the flashlight he’d borrowed at a pile of shit just inside the crime-scene perimeter.
Bendix hurried over and gawked. “What kind of crap is this? I’m filing a complaint.”
“It’s physical evidence, Bendix. Officer…” Thinnes checked his notebook for the patrol officer’s name. “Officer Enright observed that pile of shit steaming when she arrived. Since it was only six minutes between the 911 call and Enright’s arrival on the scene, we can assume that whatever dumped that pile was here during the killing or pretty soon after.”
“What the hell d’you expect me to do with it?”
“What ever you do with any unstable evidence. I want to know whether it’s from the two- or four-legged variety of dog.” Thinnes turned to Oster. “Have everyone doing the canvassing ask who around here has a big dog. And maybe you could check with animal control and see if there’ve been any complaints.”
While he was talking, they watched Bendix amble over to one of his junior partners.
“You really hope to learn anything with this dog shit?” Oster asked.
“At the very least, it’ll piss Bendix off.” Thinnes shrugged. “And who knows, maybe the dog’s owner knows something.”
“Maybe the dog is the two-legged variety and he did something.”
Thirty-Eight
“Dr. Caleb,” Mrs. Sleighton said, when Caleb came back from lunch, “a Mr. Wang called. He’d like you to get in touch with him as soon as possible.”
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat Page 13