He dropped his head into his fingertips and took in a shot of air, stopped the scattered thoughts. His anxiety levels were on the rise, he knew it. That’s when the racing thoughts were at their peak.
His previous case, the Thomas Hitchy fiasco, popped into his mind, and his face flushed red with shame, heated its surface. His cheeks always did that when he thought of it. His inability to build an investigation and the way it had gotten solved bothered him. He was embarrassed by it. The case had fallen into place by itself. He felt his work didn’t solve it. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. He didn’t know. But he reminded himself that he’d use it as a learning experience, grow from the lesson and apply new tactics to future cases.
He cell rang.
He pressed it against his ear. “Jim.”
“Hey, you here, Detective?”
“By the Old Navy,” Steel said.
“Stay right there, okay. I’m coming in the Tenth Street entrance. Be there in thirty seconds.”
“I’m starting my stopwatch,” Steel said and chuckled.
“Ha.”
Each hung up.
Within a minute, a man dressed in a black suit and what looked like a youths’ sports team jacket came walking toward Steel, and he stood and shoved his phone in his pocket.
“Detective Steel?”
“James Finndle?”
“Yep, call me Jimmy, like you have been.”
“How’d you know I was Detective Steel?”
Jimmy swirled his eyes around. “You’re the only person over thirty in this vicinity, and the only one wearing a suit and tie.”
Steel nodded. “Likewise. Have a seat.”
Jimmy sat on the bench.
Steel followed, tightened his facial muscles, put on his serious-cop-face—narrow eyes and a tight jaw.
“So, how’s your day going, Jimmy?”
Jimmy tipped his chin upward, lowered his eyelids. “Not bad, busy, can’t complain.”
“Right, right.” Steel squinted at the emblem on the upper left side of Jimmy’s silky gray jacket. “The?” he said, squinting some more for clarity.
“Cheetahs,” Jimmy said. He patted the stitched image of the orange animal with small black circles on its skin, its glowing eyes beady and green and intimidating. “My son’s Little League football team. I’m the coach.”
Steel shot another quick glance at the jacket and nodded. He didn’t speak for a minute and sized him up. Jimmy couldn’t have been older than thirty-five. His wavy brown hair was pushed back, not wet or slicked, but just natural looking. His light brown beard was trimmed neatly and started from under his barely visible cheekbones and stopped just under his jaw line. His face was round and full, and his blue eyes were bugged slightly. He was stocky, not fat, but like a guy who carried around an extra ten or fifteen pounds because he was too busy to exercise and ate one too many bowls of ice cream because he couldn’t care less about keeping a healthy diet. Jimmy gave off the air of an All-American average Joe who signed up for the NFL package with his cable provider just so he could track all of his players on his fantasy football team. Looked like one of the guys—a retired ex-partier who had once drank with his buddies in his college days and took off his shirt and swung it in the air after having one too many, but now was quiet and reserved, a family man, but could still flash back to a wild night of drinking once in a while, at a wedding or barbeque or something of that nature.
Jimmy lowered his head, his eyelids droopy and drained of energy. “Shame right, about Desiree and her mother. We were close,” he said and looked away, scrunched his face from pain that could only be felt internally.
“You and Desiree?”
He nodded, held in a tear.
“How long did you know her?”
“I’ve known her since I first started there, ah, about three years, I believe. Most of the attorneys at Fratt are older, so we were work friends. Had things in common, you know, same age.”
“How close? Were you two,” Steel pointed both index fingers toward one another and tapped the tips together, “ya’ know, a little more than friends?”
Jimmy cocked his brow, dug a finger into his beard, his eyelids twitching. “Detective, with all due respect,” he flung up his left hand and wiggled his ring finger that held a silver wedding band, “I’m a married man, got two kids. And please, have a little respect for Desiree. Come on.”
“You’re right,” Steel said. “Didn’t mean any offense by it to you or her, just have to clear all areas here.”
“Understood. I apologize, too.” Jimmy said. “It’s just horrible. She was such a nice person, always laughing and full of life.”
“Yeah, and now she’s gone. I can’t tell you how many times I see these situations in any given month.”
Jimmy tugged at his ear, listened. “You have any leads, anything?”
“We have a few things lined up.”
Steel always told others that he had leads. He didn’t want word to get out that he had nothing and liked to spread around that he had leads because he wanted the parties responsible to know he was on their asses.
“But that’s what I’m here to talk to you about. I need to know if you saw anything I might need to know. Desiree’s mother had mentioned you before she died, said you were close with her daughter.”
“Ah…Nah, no.” Jimmy turned his head, tugged his ear again. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“It’s just you and me here, Jimmy…talk to me.”
Jimmy bit his lip, twirled his thumb in his palm. “I have a family. I can’t get involved in this. I want to help Desiree and you, but…I have enough on my plate with work and my wife and the kids and the mortgage,” he said, his voice raising a pitch, almost shrieking as high as a whine.
Steel studied Jimmy and noticed his wide eyes and shaky hands. Probably a nervous guy, got a lot on his mind, he thought. Steel was a nervous guy himself and didn’t even have a wife, kids or mortgage, and couldn’t imagine his nerves if he’d ever get to that level.
“Get involved?” Steel said. “Just tell me what you know. Simple as that. I’ll leave you alone after that.”
Jimmy still stared off to the side, as if thinking over Steel’s statement. He sighed. His double chin bounced twice under his brown beard. “All right, look. I think her boyfriend did it. I honestly think her boyfriend did it.”
“Kevin Johnson?”
“Yeah.”
Steel thought quickly but slowed his words as he spoke, didn’t want to seem over anxious, “Was Desiree seeing anyone besides Kevin?”
“Nope. Just Kevin. I didn’t like that guy. He was cocky. I think he beat her a few times because she’d come into the office with a swollen lip here and there,” Jimmy rubbed his cheek, “cuts on her face. He’d come to the Christmas parties and not talk to anyone, no one. He’d just sit at the bar with an arrogant look on his face, wearing jeans and a T-shirt to a three-hundred-dollar-a-head-dinner. Everybody else was in a tux or suit. Just didn’t like him. Didn’t like his face. Didn’t trust him.”
Steel leaned back against the bench and the cold metal chilled his skin.
“Desiree had a lot going for her. I never understood why she was with him. She was brilliant.”
“So I hear.”
Jimmy’s eyes lit up. “No, she was. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” He angled his body, one buttock on the bench, one off, and spread his arms out in front of himself. “Could talk on any topic. She left the office that day, we said goodbye casually, and then she’s gone. Life’s crazy.” Jimmy shook his head hard, repeatedly.
“Anything else I should know, Jimmy?”
He blew his cheeks to the size of baseballs, popped his eyes open, shook his head again. “That’s it.”
Steel spread his hand out for a shake. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll let you get some lunch and get back to work.”
Jimmy’s thick hand squeezed Steel’s. “Detective, thank you. I’m done here though, right?”
“Yeah, I’m a man of my word…won’t bother you unless I absolutely need to.”
“And this conversation stays here, right?”
“Yep.”
Jimmy stood and hurried away, his stomach probably rumbling from hunger, trying to eat before his lunch hour expired.
Steel inhaled and exhaled. He watched the orange cheetah on back of Jimmy’s Little League gray jacket shrink the farther he walked toward the exits, then leaned back and stared up at the white ceiling.
I’d like to strangle this Kevin Johnson with my bare hands, he thought. Bite his fucking neck off like a cheetah.
24
T
he Starbucks was half-full. While seated, customers scrolled through laptops, drumming their fingers on keyboards, and conversed, and a guy in a suit and girl in tight bicycle clothing stood in line to order coffee. Steel pulled a tiny, round wooden tabletop with black-painted metal legs closer to him. He dragged the table across the floor, and it whined and scratched the ground, the scrapes sharp against the cold tile. He’d left Jimmy at The Gallery about half-an-hour prior and couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin Johnson. Has to be that bastard, he thought over and over. Who else would want to hurt Desiree and her mother?
Steel popped the lid off his white coffee cup and stared at the green Starbucks symbol across its center. He lifted his head and listened in on a man in his mid-twenties talking on the phone next to him. The guy wore a wool hat over long hair and thick black-rimmed sunglasses. Steel stopped eavesdropping after the fifth or sixth “Like, yeah, seriously dude…the graphics are totally awesome. It’s way better than the last one. You could create yourself as a character and beat people up, get prostitutes. You’re the criminal.” Steel noticed that the guy’s vocabulary consisted of “yeah, cool, awesome and asshole” every other word, and he wished he could trade places with this nitwit for a day. Stop being a cop for just one day. Live life without investigating murders or hearing about rapes or kidnappings daily, without evil on his mind 24/7. This guy was probably talking about a new video game that had just come out. Steel lived in that world, his existence riddled with evil, catching those bad guys that that guy was creating and living through in a digital form. What a backwards society, he thought.
Steel shook his head as if it would divert his attention away from the loud phone conversation next to him. He whiffed the air and took in the scent of burned bagels, warm butter, and water simmering through dark beans, dripping into a pot to create a fine cup of coffee. The coffee aroma reminded him of waking up early on Saturday mornings as a kid to find his parents drinking a cup before he and his siblings woke up. He eyed the line that began to form and then noticed a Christmas-themed display of red-and-white snowflakes on the coffee mugs and coffee bean bags that sat for sale next to the register, a large plastic snowman hanging from its center, the case’s exterior lined with shiny silver gift-wrap paper.
The door opened and activated a ding. A thin, gorgeous woman in her twenties walked in, her straight black hair dangling just past her shoulders, her sculpted cheekbones protruding from soft flesh. A touch of red lipstick covered her thin lips and the upper one formed the letter V. She wore Ray-Ban sunglasses, black yoga pants, black boots that stopped at each calf, a short light blue jean jacket over a tight gray T-shirt that hugged her waist. The pants were so skin-tight that the smooth black fabric shaped perfect curves and amplified her buttocks, each cheek like a jumbo water balloon bouncing with every step. Every guy in the place straightened his shoulders and gazed in her direction. Steel did the same. Soon he felt a little bad because he was in relationship. Marisa might have had his heart, but this woman and her water balloons had his eyes at the moment, the type of woman who no man would say wasn’t good-looking, had universal appeal.
She flipped up her sunglasses over her hair and stared straight ahead, her oval cinnamon eyes glowing, fully aware of the twenty or so hawklike male eyes drooling into their coffee cups over her, but she seemed to be used to the attention and didn’t break eye contact with the menu atop the register. A wave of her sweet, tangy perfume reached Steel’s table. His stomach flipped. Damn, she’s beautiful.
Probably gets this attention everywhere she goes, Steel thought. Probably annoying and not flattering after a while.
He stopped checking her out after coming to his senses but still peeked a few times for confirmation that she was as good looking as she had been when she first walked in. She was, even better, the tight, perfect skin of a woman in her twenties. He smirked and thought of Marisa again. He told himself that the woman in front of him didn’t even come close to her, as if Marisa had a sixth sense and could feel his wandering eyes. And he reminded himself that all women have breasts and all the rest of the female parts and could potentially lure in a man. And when a man was alone with a woman he was even somewhat physically attracted to, and she came on to him, odds were, the mood would strike for intercourse. A man would act with most women in that scenario and in the heat of intimacy. But personality and chemistry with a woman were the things that made her unique, made the sex meaningful, made the relationship sustain and work, made two people truly click. That was how he knew he was maturing. And Marisa happened to have the whole package. Loyalty and being faithful meant a lot to Steel, was a sacred bond. Why even be in a relationship if that wasn’t the case? he reasoned. He laughed to himself for a good minute at the half guilty, half cover-up thoughts circulating through his mind, but soon got serious.
He snatched his phone from his pocket and searched through his e-mails for the telephone numbers tied to the case that he had forwarded to himself. After finding Kevin Johnson’s, he pressed the numbers and raised the cold phone to his ear. It rang twice before a woman answered.
“Hi, may I speak with Kevin Johnson, please?” Steel said.
“Yeah, but Kevin’s not here.”
“May I ask who I’m speaking with?”
“This is Kevin’s mother.”
“Do you know where he is or when he’s expected home?”
The woman said nothing.
“I’m Detective Steel, working on Desiree Jones’s case. Need to ask your son a few more questions.”
“Um, all right. Okay. I see,” the woman said, “but he hasn’t been home since he found out about Desiree.”
Steel dug his elbows into the wooden table, hunched over.
“At all?”
“No, nope. Afraid not, Detective, no,” she said, her voice low and deep, grandmotherly and raspy. “Kevin told me about Desiree the day he found out and then I haven’t seen him. Not a concern, though…he stays away from time to time with those people he hangs out with. He’ll be back soon. He’s sensitive, just needs time to clear his mind.”
I’m sure he does, Steel thought.
“Well, if he contacts you, can you have him contact me ASAP,” Steel said and gave her his direct phone line afterwards.
“Yes, will do. Um. Is there something I can help you with, Detective?”
“Yeah, mattera fact, did your son kill Desiree Jones?”
“Excuse me?”
“Answer the question?”
“You want to question me, sir, then come to my home. And to answer your question, no, he didn’t. He loved her. Goodbye. Unbelievable.”
She hung up.
Steel listened to the phone cut off, an emotionless gaze on his face, no blinking, just thinking. His frustration had gotten the best of him and he knew it, knew he’d lost his composure. He pounded the table with a balled up fist and quickly glanced back at his phone to deflect attention away from his outburst. He sucked at the coffee-scented air and took a deep breath until his lungs were full. He cursed in his mind at his hot-headedness.
His stomach dropped and flipped as if he were riding the biggest roller coaster at Six Flags. He didn’t like this case. Not one bit.
He rolled a thumb across his home screen and flipped the phone back up to his ear in one motion.
“Hi babe,” Marisa
said.
“Not now.”
Her voice changed from soft and flirtatious to sharp and serious. “Why, what’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“At the office,” she said.
“Can you start the paperwork to issue an arrest warrant for Kevin Johnson?”
“Ah, yeah, why, you have cause?”
“Hunch…talked to Desiree’s coworker who thinks Kevin did it and he hasn’t been home since Desiree was killed…just talked to his mother.”
“I’m on it,” Marisa said.
Meanwhile, Kevin Johnson hugged his mother and shook his head into her warm, soft shoulder. She reached behind him and hooked an old cordless phone back onto the wall on its charger. They stayed that way for a moment, arms wrapped around one another, Kevin clinging to his mother the way a toddler would in a strange and uncomfortable environment.
Kevin stepped back. “Ma, don’t tell them I’m home if they call here again or come by. I can’t deal with them now…I’m too out of it. This’s all too much for me.” His eyes filled with cloudy moisture as if his tear ducts were drained of normal tears.
His mother, about 5’1 and at least a foot shorter than her son, sniffed back her own tears behind twitching eyelids. Her lips quivered, the quiver of a mother feeling her child’s pain. “I won’t, baby. But you have to deal with them sooner than later. You wanna know who did this to Desiree, don’t you?”
Kevin blinked, and his white eyeballs refilled with tears. “Of course I do.”
25
T
wo days passed, and Steel hadn’t been able to locate Kevin Johnson, even with a warrant out for his arrest and help from the department. He’d spoken to a few of Desiree’s friends but they were stunned over the situation, didn’t have any information. He had received the results from Jeanette Jones’s autopsy. Her murderer had been sloppy, left traces of DNA on her person. But unfortunately for Steel, the DNA found on her wasn’t a match for anything registered in the system. Although he was relieved to have the evidence, it did him no good without a match on file in the database system. He’d have to link a suspect with the samples. He desperately wanted to bring Kevin Johnson into the station for blood, saliva, hair samples and prints, so that he could match the evidence found on Jeanette, but he couldn’t find the bastard.
Divine (A Benny Steel Novel) Page 15