He spent as much time looking over the pictures as she had, than said, “OK.”
Not particularly helpful.
As she shuffled them back into the box, he fished her discards out of the trash and put them back in the projector tray. He looked them over as carefully as he had the others. He finally stopped at one of the miscellaneous scenery shots with the Crestwood Senior Housing building in the background.
“I’d blow this up more and have another look before I gave up on it,” he said. He fast-forwarded through the rest of the discards again and returned all but one to the trash. “Try cropping this.” He made a frame with the thumb and index fingers of his hand that cut an almost abstract composition of geese and grass and park fixtures from the jumble projected on the screen.
She gave him a rueful smile. “I know. Back to basics.”
Three
Through the kitchen window, Paul Minorini could see a black-and-white police car, parked outside at the curb, and beyond it, the dark back of the bored patrolman assigned to it. Minorini brought his attention back into the room, to the man who was briefing him. Northbrook detective Doug Gray looked like a plumber. He was Caucasian, five-eight, 280 pounds, with thinning, near-white hair, and gray-blue eyes. He seemed cooperative for a local.
Minorini wasn’t fooled. Gray might lack the experience of a big-city homicide detective, but he wouldn’t miss much, no matter how well he camouflaged predator instincts behind a bland demeanor. Minorini wouldn’t patronize him.
“A neighbor,” Gray was saying, “stopped by on his way to work this morning with some mail left at his house by mistake. When he didn’t get an answer at the door, he got suspicious because our victim was as predictable as a TV sitcom. Anyway, the neighbor looked through the window and saw feet and called nine-one-one.”
Minorini nodded. The feet were no longer on the kitchen floor, the body having been removed to the Cook County morgue for autopsy, but their position had been marked on the white linoleum with strips of black plastic electrical tape. As had the rest of the body except the head. The victim’s head had made its own mark—with the blood that seeped from two small caliber bullet holes.
“As near as we can tell,” Gray continued, “he opened the door and let the killer in—maybe at gunpoint. The goof shot him through the eye, then put the gun to his head and finished him. Twenty-two or twenty-five caliber, probably silenced.”
“The killer locked up on his way out?”
“Yeah. The patrol officer had to kick the door. There were no other signs of forced entry.” Gray waited as Minorini looked around.
Apart from its lack of feminine touches, the room was a standard suburban kitchen—white walls and linoleum floor, white-painted cabinets, white appliances, and mini-blinds that substituted for curtains. The accessories—dishrags and towels—were the washed out blue-and-lavender-with-geese that had been the rage years earlier. Black fingerprint powder was smudged on any surface that looked like it would hold a print. From the number and distribution of smudges, Minorini judged that the technician knew what he was doing. Why not? They might not have murders in the burbs, but they had plenty of burglaries. He glanced around again, then said, “Let’s see the rest of it.”
Gray nodded and stepped around the outline on the floor. Minorini followed.
The kitchen was at the front of the house, between the garage and a hall leading from the front door to the back. It wasn’t the usual arrangement, but convenient. Across the hall from the kitchen, a living room faced the street north of the house. There was a window on the east wall, and a door to an adjacent office on the south. The room was sparsely furnished with the kind of stuff that looks great in the showroom, but doesn’t wear well. An entertainment center beside the office door held a few best-sellers, no electronic equipment, CDs, tapes or videos. A sofa backed up to the street windows, paralleling a glass-topped coffee table and facing the empty shelves. End tables flanked the couch, and chairs faced the coffee table at either end. The room was neat, but the smooth surfaces showed a fine film of dust, disturbed only on the coffee table and the end table nearest the hall.
“You did your interviews in here,” Minorini said. He didn’t mean it as a question.
“Yeah, not that there were that many. The guy lived alone and didn’t have many visitors, didn’t socialize with the neighbors.”
“We’ll want his phone records.”
“We’re working on that.”
“And talk to his mail carrier. See if he got much mail. And from whom.”
Gray nodded. He seemed neither eager to please nor offended that the Feds were horning in. A professional. Minorini was relieved. He said, “Did he have a maid service or cleaning lady?”
“We’ll know after the canvass.” Gray seemed to be waiting for a dismissal. Then he looked behind Minorini, toward the door. Minorini turned to see his partner, Special Agent Wayne Haskel, enter the room. Haskel fit the FBI profile—clean cut, clean-shaven and stone-faced. He was six feet tall and physically fit, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Minorini waited for his report.
Haskel looked pointedly at Gray, obviously waiting for him to leave before speaking. It was the sort of arrogance that had earned the Bureau its bad rep among the locals. Minorini felt a surge of annoyance. There wasn’t any reason Gray couldn’t hear what Haskel had; Gray was the primary on the case. Minorini kept his irritation hidden. “What did you find out, Wayne?”
Haskel looked at Gray again before saying, “As the locals surmised, Mandrel was a protected witness. Real name, Albert Siano. ’Bout eight years ago, he testified against some real heavy hitters on the east coast and…” He shrugged. “The mob never forgets.”
“We may have a break on this one,” Gray said.
Haskel looked surprised—as if he’d thought Gray couldn’t talk. Minorini let Haskel ask, “What’s that?”
“A woman who lives near here was out taking pictures in the park about the time our victim was shot. She may have seen the killer.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Haskel said. “Let’s get with her.”
“We can’t right now. She’s at work, and we don’t know where she works.” Before Haskel could say anything sarcastic, Gray added, “She reported a hit-and-run, property damage only. The officer who took her statement didn’t have any reason to connect it to this so she didn’t press for a full autobiography.”
Gray’s radio hissed and he said, “Excuse me,” and walked to the other side of the room to answer it. When he came back, he told them, “We just got another report on what we think was the getaway car—a woman who lives in the Crestwood Senior Housing seems to have seen the same hit-and-run as our photographer.”
“And she’s just now gotten round to reporting it?” Haskel demanded.
Gray shrugged. “I’ll ask her. You coming?”
Mrs. Harriette Cronin seemed to Minorini like a larger, wrinkled version of the girl she must have been before puberty—straight-figured as a two-by-four. And she had an oddly childlike voice, though, mercifully, no tendency to talk childishly.
She hadn’t been going to call at all—she told them—there was a witness who’d surely seen enough for the police to catch the driver. But then Doris—Doris Davis, Mrs. Cronin’s next-door neighbor—had made such a fuss that Mrs. Cronin had had second thoughts.
They followed her up to her room, a brightly lit space on the third floor facing the park. The walls were covered alternately by bookshelves and Audubon posters. Though most of the furniture was new, the armchair by the window was well worn.
After he’d inspected her view, Detective Gray asked, “How is it you happened to be looking out when this accident occurred?”
“No happened about it,” Mrs. Cronin said. “I was watching the geese. There was a flock grazing in the park and the young woman was taking pictures of them.”
“Then what happened?” Haskel demanded.
Mrs. Cronin looked at him sharply, and seemed about to say someth
ing she must have had second thoughts about. Then she said, “Some idiot came screeching down the street in a gray car and scared them off.”
“Did you get a look at the idiot?” Gray asked.
“No. He was too far away. And I didn’t have my field glasses. I don’t need them for watching geese.”
“What did the photographer do?” Minorini asked.
Mrs. Cronin turned to face him. “Well, when the car came down the street, she turned and pointed her camera at it—that’s when it hit the other car. Then she put down that camera and picked up another camera. I’m sure she got pictures. And she must’ve seen the license plate. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t report it—until I mentioned it to Doris. She said I should’ve called the police.”
“And we appreciate that you did, ma’am,” Gray said. “And just to be on the safe side, you probably shouldn’t mention it to anyone else until we catch the guy.”
Four
Three men were sitting in a car in front of her house when Joanne got home. As she walked up the drive, they got out and strolled over to meet her. She felt a sudden apprehension. Two of them were tall, tanned and fit, with conservative suits and haircuts, and impeccably pressed shirts. One of these was dark complected and handsome—Hispanic or Italian—the second lighter and coarsely featured. The third man was older and heavy. He wore a sport jacket over a shirt that looked like he’d served hard time in it. He’d unbuttoned the top button, and loosened his tie. As the group met her at the top of the drive, he said, “Mrs. Lessing?”
They were between her and the door. Joanne felt her apprehension swell to near panic. Irrational.
Then the older man pulled aside the front of his jacket to show a badge on his belt. “Detective Gray,” he said, “Northbrook police.”
Joanne’s relief was profound but short-lived. The vague threat the three strangers had posed suddenly became specific. “What happened? Is Sean all right?”
Gray looked puzzled, briefly, then seemed to realize what she was asking. “Your son? He’s in the house. He told us you’d be home soon, so we waited.”
The other men didn’t speak, and Gray didn’t introduce them. They must be police, too, but they didn’t seem as friendly.
Joanne said, “What’s this about?”
“The hit-and-run you witnessed this morning,” Gray said. “Can we come in for a minute?”
Before they started, the dark-haired man introduced himself as Special Agent Minorini and his partner as Special Agent Haskel. Something her ex-husband, Howie, once said flashed into her head—government suits. He’d been referring to FBI agents. These two fit the part. FBI! Minorini asked Joanne if she minded them taping the interview.
She remembered Howie telling her once that cops interview subjects and interrogate suspects. She wondered why the FBI was involved. “Was the car stolen?” It was.
The cops had printed all her negatives and blown up details of a few—the rear window and rearview mirrors of the car—presumably to get a likeness of the driver. But no such luck. The single disconnected eye and eyebrow visible in the center mirror were too grainy to be of any use. She’d have discarded the whole roll. The shots were focused and balanced, but boring as calculus.
They’d also brought a large map of the park and nearby streets. They asked her to mark where she’d stood when she spotted the car, where it had been when the geese took flight, and where she’d been when she snapped the first picture.
She wondered how they knew about the geese.
Their questions were just like the cop’s who’d taken her report earlier: “You were taking pictures. Were you trying to shoot the hit-and-run driver? Might he have thought you were taking his picture? Did you point the camera at him? You weren’t trying to photograph him, but he may have thought you were? Was he going fast initially? Did he slow down after he hit the car? Could you see him clearly? Could he see you clearly? Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
They were obviously trying to determine why the driver swerved. She didn’t know. They seemed to be making a Federal case out of a simple hit-and-run, even if it was a stolen car.
Agent Haskel asked, “Why didn’t you shoot him when he hit the car? You were pointing the camera at him at that point?”
“I couldn’t.” She shook her head. “I’d used up all the film, and since I didn’t have time to reload, I had to change cameras. By the time I got the other camera out, he was where I caught him in the picture.”
“You always carry two cameras?”
“Nearly always. I’m a professional photographer.”
“You didn’t tell the officer that.”
“She didn’t ask.”
“Where’d you get it processed?”
Joanne hooked a thumb towards her darkroom. “I developed it myself. In my darkroom.”
The others looked sharply at Gray. The officer hadn’t told them that, either, she guessed.
“What was on the rest of the roll?” Minorini asked. His voice was neutral—not accusing, just curious.
Joanne shrugged. “Pictures of my son.” She let her tone imply “nothing of interest to the police.”
Haskel said, “Mind if we have a look?” His tone said he didn’t quite believe her, and that it wouldn’t matter much if she did mind. Joanne looked at him more closely, as she would at a portrait that didn’t quite flatter its sitter. She decided that he appeared ugly because of his expression rather than because the collection of features making up his face was unattractive.
He asked, “So why did this guy swerve? A squirrel run in front of him or something?”
“No, there was nothing I could see.” They waited again. “My guess is he wasn’t expecting anyone to see him—or, at least not anyone with a camera.”
Her questioner exchanged glances with his partner.
Suddenly, the whole situation seemed absurd. Joanne was tired and hungry and she resented these people inviting themselves into her house to ask for information without reciprocating. She said, “What’s this about?”
Detective Gray said, “You didn’t listen to the news.” It wasn’t a question.
The younger men gave him a sharp look.
Gray seemed annoyed, but Joanne couldn’t tell if it was with her or the others. She shook her head and waited. He continued, “A man who lived a couple blocks from here was murdered…”
“And I may have seen the killer!” Joanne finished.
She turned to the pressed-and-prim tag team. Mutt and Jeff—the good cop, bad cop routine—was something else she’d learned about from Howie. “Why is the FBI involved?”
Haskel started to say, “We’ll ask—” but Minorini cut him off. “We have reason to believe organized crime may enter into it.”
Joanne shivered in spite of herself. It seemed so melodramatic—thriller movie stuff—but here they were.
“Would you mind coming with us,” Minorini continued, “to look at some mug shots?” His tone implied it wasn’t a request. “If this individual has a record, we’ll have his picture on file.”
Mentally, Joanne ran through the list of things she’d planned for the evening. She shrugged. “I guess not.”
“We’ll drive you down and bring you back afterwards.” He made it sound, at least, as if he gave her credit for appreciating the urgency.
“I’d like to change and make arrangements for my son, if you don’t mind.”
Gray said, “Sure. And we’ll have your statement typed up so you can come in tomorrow to sign it.”
She nodded, her mind already revising her schedule. Sean could go to Jane’s for the evening…
Five
They took her to 219 South Dearborn, downtown Chicago, because the Feds had a more extensive gallery of mob portraits than the local law. Detective Gray followed in his own car. Inside the ninth-floor FBI headquarters, they were issued visitors’ IDs and followed agents Haskel and Minorini through the building. Detective Gray seemed as out of place as she.
When they reached the picture room, Haskel disappeared, leaving Minorini to explain that Joanne should study the faces carefully and let him know if she spotted the hit and run driver.
The mug shots were on computer, many black and white, most color. None of the faces looked familiar. Joanne found herself mentally criticizing the photographers’ technique. Most of the pictures looked as if they’d been taken by the same person, with harsh light that flattened the faces and created unflattering shadows. Some of the subjects looked dead, but of course if they were, she wouldn’t be looking at their pictures.
She lost track of time. After a while, the faces looked the same. She began to feel dazed. She became aware of being hungry. When the computer operator finally said, “That’s the lot,” Joanne felt as if she’d been given a reprieve. But it was only temporary. Minorini asked if she would like to take a break before they started on the Identisketch computer.
“What’s that?”
“The electronic equivalent of a sketch artist.”
“Maybe I’d better check the plumbing.”
He escorted her to the door of the ladies’ room and asked if she’d like coffee. She would.
“With?”
“Just cream, thanks.”
He was standing outside the door with three coffees when she came out. He handed her one and offered one to Gray, who was waiting in the room with the computer. The woman in charge of it sat her in front of the screen and began to question her about the shape of the suspect’s face, his eyes, his ears, the contour of his nose. To Joanne’s disgust, she discovered she couldn’t quite picture the driver’s face. Nevertheless, the operator gradually constructed a portrait on the screen. It seemed to Joanne that the composite looked more like a generic bad guy than the real thing, but apart from knowing that it wasn’t a good likeness, she couldn’t say what was wrong.
“I’ve gotten lazy,” she said, finally. “I have this photographic memory…” She patted her camera case. “…if I get enough shots. So I often don’t bother remembering—or even noticing—details.” Life moved too fast, sometimes. Sometimes you had to catch it on film, stopping the action, to get a look at what was happening.
The Fall Page 2