The assistant state’s attorney’s name was Cipareli or Ciparini. Something Italian. Thinnes could never remember. Everyone called him Columbo because he wore a ratty-looking raincoat and was a lot smarter than he seemed.
Columbo said, “Detective Thinnes, are you looking for me?”
“We have a guy about to confess to murder,” Thinnes said. “We’d like you to take his statement in a few minutes.” He and Viernes moved aside to make room for Swann and Columbo in front of the viewing window.
“What’s he said so far?” the ASA asked.
“Nothing, but he will.”
“Watch and learn,” Ferris told him.
Thinnes tried to catch Ferris’s eye, to let him know he should shut up, but Ferris was too busy trying to impress Columbo with his wit to notice.
“Like the chief always says,” he gushed, “these guys ain’t rocket scientists.”
The usually easygoing Swann said, “Lucky for you, Ferris.” Ferris was even getting to him.
Inside the little room, Leon said, “What’s gonna happen to me?”
On the other side of the glass, Thinnes said, “That depends on you, you son of a bitch!”
Inside the interview room, Oster said, “That depends on you, son.” He might have been a priest counseling a penitent. “You left enough evidence around so we got you dead to rights. With this new DNA test, there’s no way you’re gonna get out of it, and Thinnes is probably getting a court order right now for a sample of your blood. The only way he wouldn’t go for murder one is if there was extenuating circumstances. But nobody knows the circumstances but you. And you’re not talking.”
“What’s extenuating circumstances?”
“It’s like an excuse—you know, a reason. Like it was an accident or something.”
“Like she laughed at me an’ I got mad and went nuts?”
“Like that. Is that what happened?” Oster seemed completely sympathetic. Only the sweat pouring off him gave any hint he wasn’t totally sincere. He wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief as he waited for Leon to answer.
“I can talk to a lawyer when I want?”
“Anytime you like. But you want to tell me about this. I can feel it. And I’ve heard that talking about these things can be a great release.”
On the other side of the window, Thinnes said, “Good thing he didn’t say for who.”
Inside the room, Oster told Leon, “…good for the soul, even.”
Thinnes said, “What if you haven’t got a soul?”
“Shut up, Thinnes,” Viernes said suddenly. “This is good.”
“Better than a soap,” Columbo agreed.
“Shut up, you guys!” This from Swann. “He’s giving it up.”
Oster glanced at the mirror, telling Thinnes to pay attention on the other side. Thinnes got his notebook and pen. And took notes while Leon talked.
“What’s going on here?” Rossi’s face was redder than usual. Embarrassed to be out of it in front of so many of his dicks, Thinnes thought. He let someone else answer.
“Oster just got a murder suspect to give it up,” Swann volunteered.
“Nice work. Which case?”
“The Jolene Wilson murder,” Thinnes said.
Rossi nearly did a double take, then said, “Why wasn’t I kept up to speed on this?”
“The paperwork’s on your desk,” Thinnes told him. “If you’ll excuse us, we’d like to get this guy’s statement before he has a chance to think about what he just told Oster.” Thinnes handed Columbo a page from his notebook.
“What’s this?” the ASA asked.
“Questions Oster needs to ask this guy while you’re getting his statement.”
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“And louse up a perfectly good confession? Oster’s doing fine. If I go in there, Leon’s gonna get belligerent and clam up. Trust me.”
Columbo shrugged. “I’d have thought you’d want to be in on the kill.”
Thinnes looked sideways at Rossi and said, “I set it up. That’s enough for me. Just make sure you don’t blow it.”
Three hours later, they had the whole story on paper and Mr. Mark Leon was on his way to 26th and Cal. Columbo came into the squad room, looking like a man who’s won the lottery, and headed for the coffeemaker.
Two minutes later, Oster followed along, dragging his ass. He put his paperwork on a table and sat next to it, resting his head on his hand. Columbo brought his coffee over, and Oster asked, “Are we done?”
Columbo tapped the papers. “This is pretty good.” He turned to Thinnes and said, “But he didn’t name the guy he got the gun from.”
“We’ll wait till ballistics gets finished with it,” Thinnes told him. “See if it was used in any other felonies. If it was, we’ll have a little more leverage.”
“This guy’s no rocket scientist,” Oster added. “He’s got no priors, so chances are this is his first real fuckup. Probably got the gun from a friend or bought it from a neighborhood gang-banger.”
“And we don’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to get in on this fish hunt,” Thinnes told Columbo.
“Fish hunt?”
“Shooting ’em in a barrel,” Oster said. “After you’ve laid out just what the consequences are of all Mr. Leon’s told us, I’m sure he’ll be happy to give us his friendly local gun dealer. Also his neighborhood pushers and his grandmother if she cheats at bingo.”
Forty-Three
Rossi had taken to calling the victims of Thinnes’s two unsolved homicides the Downtown Indian and the Uptown Indian, as if they were some kind of joke. But even he couldn’t fault the investigation of either murder. Convincing evidence just wasn’t available. Thinnes was prepared to wait for it—no statute of limitations.
In addition to the Wilson case, Thinnes and Oster did clear three other homicides during the weeks following Thanksgiving. Two were routine cases where the shooter was known and clearing them was a matter of canvassing the neighborhood, taking witnesses’s statements, and writing up reports. The multiple offenders in one of the shootings gave such wildly conflicting stories that interrogating them was a piece of cake. Getting confessions was easy. There were no witnesses to the third killing, and the suspect wouldn’t talk at all. But there was plenty of incriminating physical evidence—semen, saliva, fingerprints, bite marks. And the victim’s blood was all over the suspect’s shoes. The only hard thing about it was the reams of paper the detectives had to fill out—days’ worth. Few of the sob-sister reports about the national murder epidemic ever mentioned how expensive it was in terms of police overtime.
On Friday, Thinnes came in during the day to tie up some of the loose ends on the Wilson murder. Ferris was the only Violent Crimes detective in the squad room. “Hey, Thinnes,” he said, “we got the tox report back on your John Doe—or maybe I should say John Buck.”
That brought to mind something that had been niggling at the back of Thinnes’s mind ever since he first spotted the unidentified corpse. John Buck. Evanger’s unsolved case. Same MO.
“Thanks, Ferris.” He walked away, leaving the other detective to wonder about his lack of response to the slur. He took the tox report to a table with a phone and put in a call to records, looking the report over while he waited for someone to answer.
No trace of drugs or alcohol in the victim’s system.
When a voice from the phone said, “Records,” Thinnes said, “Thinnes, Area Three. I need a case report on a John Doe homicide.” He paged through his notebook for the RD number, gave it to the clerk, and waited while he went to find the report.
When the clerk came back on the line, he said, “Sorry, not here.”
“Who’s got it?”
“Search me. Not here. Not signed out.”
“Well, look around. I dropped it off three weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” He went away again, then came back on the line. “Bingo.”
“Hold on to it,” Thinnes told him
. “Someone’ll be by later to pick it up.”
His next call was to Ballistics. As soon as he said, “Thinnes, Area Three,” the tech told him, “We’re working on it, Detective. Check back this afternoon.”
“You’re not working on anything of mine,” Thinnes said. He’d gotten the ballistics report for the Wilson case the day after the autopsy. “I wanted to ask you to check an old open case as soon as you get time.”
“What?” He sounded tired.
Thinnes gave him the number of Ferris’s John Buck case and said, “The MO matches that John Doe we had recently. Maybe you could compare the slugs and see if we’ve got the same shooter.” He gave him the John Doe case number.
The tech sighed. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll get on it.”
“Thanks.” Thinnes put the tox report into the Uptown Indian’s case folder and went out to talk to the state’s attorney.
Ferris was gone by the time Oster showed up. “What’re we doin’ today?” he asked. Neither of them commented on the fact that they weren’t scheduled to be in for hours and, consequently, weren’t on the payroll.
“I was about to bring the commander up to speed on the Wilson and Bisti cases.” He meant the commander of Area Three detectives.
“You want me to come?”
“Not unless you want to.”
“Not particularly. You got something else for me to do?”
“Feel like going Downtown?”
Oster shrugged.
“I need an old case file from Records.” He gave Oster the case number.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll do that. You want I should ask about the tox report on Wilson?”
“They’ll fax it to us when it’s ready. It isn’t as if we don’t have enough to hold him on without it.”
“Then why am I going all the way Downtown for one lousy, old case report?”
“I’d like you to personally take it up to Fingerprints and have them run the victim through NCIC.”
“Why?” He meant, Why, when that’s been done already, or should have been?
“It was Ferris’s case.”
“Say no more.”
“Same MO as our Uptown Indian.”
Thinnes spent exactly twenty minutes with the CO, then had the next two hours free. He and Swann went to lunch at a sit-down restaurant where they could get a steak sandwich and a beer. They were in good spirits when they got back. Oster, on the other hand, came back from 11th and State looking so dragged out that Thinnes was sorry he’d sent him. He had a McDonald’s bag with him that he put on a table and tore open. He got himself coffee before he started in on his Big Mac.
Swann hung up the phone and finished jotting something on a piece of paper. “Hey, you guys know there was such a thing as a Navajo Tribal Police?”
Thinnes was getting coffee. “No,” he said, “but it makes sense.” He brought his cup over to where Swann was sitting.
“He sounded like he knew what he was doing. Use-ly, when you’re dealin’ with some podunk sheriff’s department, you got a better chance of gettin’ somethin’ from Deputy Dawg than from Deputy Redneck.”
“An Indian tribal police force probably doesn’t have any rednecks.”
“That’d explain it.”
“How ’bout you guys just cut the crap,” Oster said. He glared at Swann. “Just tell us what you found out.”
Swann gave him a what’s-with-you look, which he ignored, then shrugged. “The shipping company you asked them to check out—near Farmington—from the phone number you found on your victim, the Uptown Indian? Officer Tso told me, as far as he’s been able to find out, it’s legit. According to the owner, they haven’t shipped anything to Chicago in the last two months. They do send art supplies to Wisconsin. Regularly.”
“What kind of art supplies?” Thinnes asked.
“According to the shipping manifests, clay, clay slip, glazes, and botanical dyes. That kind of stuff.”
“He give you the address?”
“Yeah.” Swann handed Thinnes the paper.
“I don’t suppose they’re missing any citizens?”
Swann shook his head. “None matching your Uptown Injun.”
Forty-Four
Saturday morning Rhonda had to work, so Thinnes’s hopes of a day alone with her were dashed. He followed her around the house until she was ready to leave, then asked Rob if he’d like to go to Wisconsin. Rob wasn’t interested; Thinnes left alone.
Before hitting the highway, he stopped in at headquarters and went over the Uptown Indian file. In case he’d missed anything. And out of habit.
When he went back out to start his Chevy, it gave a discouraging groan, followed by the stomach-churning click of a dead battery. Damn! He spent the better part of an hour trying to get the car started, borrowing jumper cables and bumming jumps. It was freezing; the car kept dying. Finally, he gave up and went inside.
“What d’ya ’spect?” Mike asked, when Thinnes called. “Gotta get serviced now ’n’ then.”
Thinnes arranged to have the car towed to Mike’s shop, on Fullerton, and left the key at the District Nineteen desk. He’d just walked back into the detectives’ squad room when the sergeant said, “Phone for you, Thinnes.”
He picked it up and said, “Area Three detectives. Thinnes.”
“John,” a familiar voice said.
Thinnes racked his brain for a name to put with the voice. Jack Caleb!
“Rob told me you’d gone to Wisconsin for the day. I was going to leave a message.”
“My car broke down,” Thinnes told him. “Looks like I’ll have to go another time. What can I do for you?”
“Would you like me to drive you?”
Thinnes said, “Why?” without thinking. “That’s not why you called. You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Sun Prairie. Rob told me.”
“Why? And why’d you call?”
“Why not?”
Refusing to be sucked into the I-asked-you-first trap, Thinnes waited.
Finally Caleb added, “My car could stand the break from city driving, and I haven’t anything better to do this afternoon.”
Thinnes suddenly felt very strange. He hadn’t really worked out how he felt about the idea of being alone with Caleb for any length of time. Intellectually, he was aware that he and the doctor weren’t so different, but his gut feeling was—
He still wasn’t sure what he felt about him.
Caleb had brought the cat to the house and stopped by several times to see how it was doing, but most of their conversations were strictly business, especially now that the doctor was a department consultant.
“Why did you call?” Thinnes repeated.
“I was wondering what progress you’d made on David Bisti’s murder.”
“I wish I could say we were getting close, but we’ve run out of leads.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m serious about the lift. And I’d be happy to let you drive.”
Caleb drove a Jaguar. XJS 4.0 liter coupe. Silver-blue. This year’s model. Thinnes usually had contempt for yuppie cars and their drivers, but he knew Caleb was very good. He was relieved, though, when the doctor got out of the car and walked around to get in on the passenger’s side.
The car had a manual transmission. As a kid, working for his dad, Thinnes had driven a pickup truck—and damn near every other vehicle used in construction—so the Jaguar’s gearshift didn’t throw him. But it still took a few blocks to get used to it.
The doctor leaned back in the corner between the door and the seat and watched him without commenting, even when Thinnes ground the gears going into third. By the time they hit the Kennedy, Thinnes was shifting up and down automatically and could concentrate on traffic. The car was a pleasure to drive, responsive and comfortable. He could see why someone with the cash would own one. He had to fight himself to keep from doing Daytona as they spun north off the Kennedy, onto the Edens.
Traffic increased and Thinnes was forced to slow down. As
they passed the Touhy exit, he pointed to the CD player. “You got any disks for that?”
“Yes,” Caleb said. “But how do you feel about opera?”
“Forget it.”
“What have you found out, so far, about David’s killer?”
There wasn’t much to tell—nothing new. Beyond saying that the lead they were following wasn’t part of it, Thinnes didn’t go into detail about his reason for going to Wisconsin. He did confirm that his supervisor had refused to authorize the use of a department car for the trip. Caleb was as good a listener as any of the best dicks Thinnes knew. They quickly exhausted weather—standard for the Midwest; sports—they were in agreement about the Bulls, the Bears, and the Cubs, and neither gave a damn about hockey; and current events—the Cardinal didn’t do it, but the Rock Star probably did.
For a while, after that, they rode in silence—Caleb staring out at the winter-yellow scenery; Thinnes appreciating the merits of the Jaguar as he maneuvered it around lesser vehicles. He could easily see the horsepower going to his head, like a drug. He backed off the accelerator and said, “Have you always had money?”
“I suppose by most people’s standards. Yes. My father’s a surgeon. And, as a workaholic…” He paused, then laughed. “The first accident I ever had, I wrapped his Cadillac around a tree.”
“My old man drives a ’75 Ford F150. Changes the oil every two thousand miles. He’s had bodywork done on it—twice—but he won’t even consider getting a new one.”
North of Waukegan the land flanking the highway began to look and smell more like farm country—miles of yellow grass; paler, stubble-striped cornfields; and hedgerows of naked trees poking through threadbare snowdrifts. “What made you decide to become a shrink?” Thinnes asked.
“’Nam.”
“How’s that?”
“My father always wanted me to be a surgeon. We didn’t get along, so, naturally, I planned to do anything else.”
Caleb paused. Thinnes let the silence be.
“I was majoring in history when I was drafted, registered as a CO. One of the geniuses who assigns PhDs to the motor pool must’ve found out my father was a doctor and decided that would make me a natural medic. It made sense, in a Catch-22 sort of way. I forced myself to learn to do it well, and I kept my sanity by studying my buddies’ descents into madness.
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat Page 16