34
S
teel sped on the Walt Whitman heading for Atlantic City. It stretched over the Delaware River and connected Philadelphia to New Jersey, blue steel stretching up and connecting at the top of the suspension bridge, and was a smooth ride, except for the damn five-dollar toll coming back from New Jersey and into Philly. And Steel thought how the city was still always crying broke. He turned his head right as they passed Citizens Bank Park and stared for a second at its dark red exterior and briefly thought of Brad Lidge striking out the final batter in 2008 for the World Series title.
The vents pushed cold air from outside the vehicle the more and more he accelerated and stomped on the gas pedal. He glanced over at Marisa hugging herself for warmth, so he flicked the heater up a notch and listened as the heating system hummed, gradually getting louder and stronger.
“You believe this guy, Atlantic City?” Steel said.
“I don’t know if this is the right move,” she said, still hugging herself, her tiny hands running up her forearms.
He looked at her, turned his head back at the road, eyed the red brake lights in front of him. “It’s our only move right now.”
Marisa spun the heater dial down a notch. “All right, it’s too hot now. Who was the other man in her life?”
“If I were a betting man, I’d go with Fratt. He’s the closest one to the case. He knew everyone involved. I don’t think it’s a cop, reporter, or anyone trying to mess with us. I mean, I trust the shrink’s advice, but my gut’s telling me Fratt. And on top of Desiree getting killed, we have Desiree’s mother’s murder, Kevin Johnson’s, and Jonathan Herns’. But it all starts with Desiree. They’re all linked to her. It’s something against her.”
“What’s Fratt’s motive though?”
“That’s what I’m gonna find out. Maybe he was the other man. Maybe he loved her.”
They sat silent for a moment, the tires bouncing at 45 mph, and Steel stared out his rearview mirror at Citizens Bank Park fading and shrinking in the distance, until it reduced in size as if he could grab the entire stadium with his hand. Its seats were empty and looked cold, if that was even possible. For some reason, the scoreboard was lit up with a picture of Chase Utley and his statistics just to the right of the photo. Maybe a winter test run, Steel thought. He turned his head back toward the road and thought to himself, listening to his tires rumbling over a bumpy patch of road.
“You still have that file on your phone I sent you?” Steel said.
“On Fratt?”
“Yeah…the background check and all.”
She blew a shot of air through her lips, raised her eyes in thought. “Ah, yeah, I should. Let me check.”
She grabbed her phone and went to work, typing with two hands and her head and eyes zoned-in on the screen.
“Son of a bitch,” Steel said. He huffed and puffed, cursed some more under his breath, and watched a car cross lanes in front of him without a turn signal, slammed his brake. “Why the fuck couldn’t Jimmy just tell me who the other man was so I could get an investigation going?” He eyed the car that had cut him off and screamed, “And use your turn signal, asshole.”
Marisa smirked, still looking down at her phone. “Some things never change.”
“Fuckin’ guy’s an asshole.”
Steel cut over and pulled next to the car to yell again, give the finger, something. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but had to untie the knot of rage that had just tangled in his gut. He started to yell, but came to his senses, and saw a tiny old woman who could barely see over the steering wheel gripping tightly with both hands, big glasses on the tip of her nose and a puff of white hair curled down to the tip of her neck. She’d fit right in with the cast of The Golden Girls.
He exhaled through his nostrils and clenched his jaw. “You know what, never mind…fuckin’ bullshit, fuck, fuuuuck—kk.” He huffed and puffed again.
Marisa laughed for a good minute. “That’s what you get for assuming it was a guy driving.”
“It’s an expression, ya’ know, ‘What’s this guy doing?’”
She rubbed his arm, her smooth fingers gliding just over the bicep, smiling. “Hope you learned your lesson. That old lady might kick your ass.”
He didn’t laugh, wasn’t in the mood.
“Forget it…let’s focus.”
Marisa looked back down at her phone, realized it was coworker-time, not couple-time.
Steel thought of calling the computer specialist from the department. He was familiar with Desiree’s case because Steel had written him an email and briefed him on it. The man was a former detective who had been wounded on the job years prior. But the guy was a computer whiz and the department kept him on as a computer consultant. His title was Investigator/Technology specialist given that he could offer his technological skills and also former experience as a police detective. This position was rare and he was the sole employee for Steel’s unit. That meant he reviewed computers that were submitted as evidence, investigated social media, e-mails, etc. If a case was technology-related and a fellow detective needed an expert or didn’t have enough time, it got pushed off to him.
Steel pulled out his phone, dialed a number while glancing up and down at the screen and road, and held it to his ear. He looked at the taillights and headlights lighting up in front and back of him, as wind zipped by whipping around, until he heard Henry Howler’s voice.
“Hello,” Henry said.
“Henry, Steel.”
“What’s up?”
“How far you get on that computer I gave you? For Desiree Jones?”
“Ah…Jones, Jones,” he said. Steel heard him whistle while shuffling some papers. “Actually looked at the work e-mails, nothing suspicious that I saw. Didn’t get to her personal laptop yet. I’m backed up.”
“Can you do me a solid and work it for me? I have a huge lead here.”
“Ah, all right, no problem. I call ya back.”
“Thanks pal.”
“You got it.”
Steel hung up.
Marisa gazed in his direction, her brown eyes reflecting the sunlight breaking through the clouds and his windshield. “I got John Fratt’s info here. And wait, what computer?”
Steel talked but keep his head forward. “They took a laptop from Desiree’s apartment in as evidence the night her mother was killed. The back of his neck began to ache and tingle from stress. God, don’t let the anxiety start up.
“I didn’t know that.” She shrugged.
“Yeah.”
Marisa scrolled through the file with her thumb. She talked and mumbled, breezing and skimming through the text. “Hmm, hmm, let’s see, let’s see. Mostly what we knew. Married. Ah, two kids. Graduated from Temple top of his class—was in a fraternity. Honor student. Kinesiology undergrad and then graduated law school about fifteen years ago…has been practicing law ever since. Lives in the city.”
Steel jerked his head toward her for a second, swirled his eyes back at the road. “We knew all this.”
“Yep,” she said.
“Fuck.”
“Stop cursing.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I love you,” she said.
He grinned and reached out and ran his hand through her hair. “Sorry, just irritated. I love you, too.”
“Yeah, we definitely both have our own ways of being irritated,” she said and laughed. “I’m putting the radio on, even though you hate it.”
He spotted a deer sprinting in the wooded area off the side of the road. “Go ahead. What fucking difference does it make? Put the radio on. I don’t give a shit.”
She smirked. “Keep cursing so much and see what happens. The couch is somewhere in your future.”
But before she could even reach out for the stereo dial, and before he could even playfully reply to her remark, his phone rang. The caller ID read HENRY HOWLER.
“Henry.”
“Steel. Where you at?”
/> “Driving.”
“Come to the station,” Henry said.
“Why? What’s up?
“Found saved love letters on Desiree’s desktop.”
Steel stretched his ears back as far as they could go until the lobes heated, widened his eyes. “E-mails?”
“Ah, no. Word documents saved to the hard drive. There are at least fifteen of them.”
“Be right there,” Steel said and hung up.
In one wheel-jerk, Steel switched over three lanes and hooked a right off the highway into Deptford, New Jersey, to turn back around and hop on the bridge the opposite way toward Philly, his tires skidding and cars honking behind him.
Marisa slapped her palms onto the dashboard and held on, balancing herself as the car circled and swerved.
Steel stuck his head over the wheel, flipped his eyes upward, and scanned for green and white road signs back to Philadelphia. “Change of plans, we have to go back to the station.”
“What about AC? What about Jimmy and his family?”
“We have a stronger lead to follow. They’ll be okay for another hour or two. We’ll catch up with him after that.”
35
F
ried onions and oily meat stunk up the office, and Steel thought if he’d leave the room the stench would attach itself to him wherever he went. Detective Johnny McKnight strolled past Steel’s cubicle and hoisted a cheesesteak tightly wrapped in white sandwich paper, wet orange patches of grease staining some of the covering from cheese whiz seeping through the bread. “Stopped by Geno’s for lunch. Can’t beat it. The fucking best.”
Steel tipped his head, fake-typed on his keypad even though he didn’t have anything to write, cast his eyes on paperwork on his desk, and all to look busy so that McKnight would leave him alone.
Johnny got the hint, ducked into his cubicle, and shook the floor after plopping into his chair. But Steel had to agree with Johnny, even if silently, Geno’s Steaks was the best in the city.
Marisa plodded up to his desk, drying her hands with a white paper towel, the white dampening as it touched her skin. “Where’s Henry?”
“He’ll be over in a minute.”
Steel inhaled and knew Detective Williams was behind him, the musk of his cologne gave away his presence.
“What do we have?” Williams said.
Steel spun around to face him. “Waiting on Henry. He’s got love letters on Desiree Jones’s personal laptop.”
Williams blinked. “You serious?”
“That’s what I heard.”
Williams cupped a hand on each hip and tugged up on his belt. He pulled at his tie and grimaced, and his stomach jiggled . Steel inwardly chuckled and wondered why he could be so immature sometimes, laughing at his boss’s stomach jiggle, even though he knew Williams was once a weightlifter but had let the muscle turn to flab. Maybe it was that Williams had authority over him, and maybe being able to find a flaw made Steel feel in control. He didn’t know but didn’t have too much time to think about it.
Williams ripped off his black-framed Versace eyeglasses, twisted his mouth left and yawned, and rubbed each eye one by one with his thumb. He placed the glasses back on his face with one hand and checked his watch. “He’s coming now?”
As the word “now” left his mouth, Henry Howler stumbled into the cubicle holding a silver laptop. He glanced at Steel’s desktop and chair, but discreetly, passive aggressively, almost as if attempting to tell Steel to move without using words and just his eyes.
Steel shot up from his seat and waved Henry down into the chair. Howler was a nervous guy, his mouth always twitching, and he was that way the six or seven years Steel knew him. Probably more anxious since he’d been shot on the job three years prior. During that time, he had been working Homicide and went out to question a suspect in his home but was shot before he could even knock. The man just came out guns-blazing. Howler was lucky because the guy didn’t have that good of an aim. The maniac had fired four shots but only hit Henry once in the chest. The incident left the man doing thirty to life and Howler with a damaged heart and a new career. Henry would tell everyone that it was a blessing in disguise because he was working his true passion now, computers. And Steel knew that was correct because he felt Henry wasn’t cut out for detective work.
Howler flipped up the laptop and turned it on in seconds. Steel watched the back of his head, staring at the black curly hair bouncing as he moved as fast as he could. Henry did everything quickly. That was probably the reason he was about a hundred and fifty pounds soak and wet. He was roughly forty, clean-shaven, and wore thin glasses that were barely visible on his face and over his pointy cheekbones. His eyes were bulgy and always alert. Steel figured that was a mixture of paranoia from being shot and curiosity from being so fucking smart. The man could reprogram a computer overnight. Give him a pocket protector and thick glasses and he’d be the quintessential nerd from any 80’s movie.
Henry poked at the keyboard like a stenographer when the homepage loaded. Within seconds he pulled up the folder titled MY HEART. Inside he scrolled through fifteen pages. One poem was on each page. Steel, Marisa and Williams all laid a hand on the computer chair and leaned over Henry, glancing at the screen open each document before shrinking and minimizing to a small blinking box on the bottom of the monitor.
Each person read every poem, which took about five minutes. The office was pretty quiet during this, only a couple of phones ringing and Johnny McKnight chewing with his mouth open and smacking his teeth together in the cubicle next to them.
The only alarming poem was the last that alluded to its author missing Desiree for breaking it off. Steel noted that as a motive.
“That’s it,” Henry said, “that’s all I’ve got.”
“But it doesn’t say who it was from,” Steel said. He tapped Henry on the shoulder and pointed at the screen. “Did you look for e-mails that the poems may have come from?”
Henry frowned. “Nothing. She must’ve copy and pasted them into this folder and deleted the e-mails, or typed them from handwritten letters herself.”
Steel sighed, slid his fingers through his hair and gripped his waist with the other hand, spun in a circle.
Marisa read aloud a few lines from one of the letters:
What we’re doing feels so right
Could lay there forever listening to your heartbeat
Mine beating with yours
Our souls in rhythm
It was meant to be
I cherish you, us, we
Because you are the sweetest, so sweet
Marisa snorted a laugh through her nose. “Give me a break. We have a wannabe Shakespeare here.”
Williams chuckled. “Um-hmm.”
Henry didn’t react and stared at the white screen with black letters across it, lost in his thoughts.
Steel internally debated whether or not to tell Williams about Jimmy but chose to keep quiet. He’d get in touch with Jimmy after this and tell him about the letters. He was sure he would know who had written them.
Marisa playfully slapped Henry on the shoulder. “Because you’re the sweetest, Henry, so sweet.”
Henry blushed a bit, probably not used to real touch in the human world, outside of artificial contact in the digital arena.
Steel’s skin heated. The hair on his neck rose and a chill iced his back. He pointed hard at the computer. “Marisa, read that again.”
“What? The poem?”
He stuck a hand at the monitor again, almost pressing his fingertips through the screen. “Yeah, yeah, one more time, come on, read what you just read. That last line.” He shut his eyelids, listened.
She leaned in and read it, “Because you’re the sweetest, so sweet.”
Son of a bitch, Steel thought. Those were the same words John Fratt used to describe Desiree Jones when I first interviewed him.
Johnny popped up from his chair in the cubicle next to Steel’s and dangled a white envelope, chomping on his meat sandwic
h, the bread and steak a ball of mush and swirling around just behind his lips. He spoke with his mouth full, his words jumbled. “Oh, almost forgot, Steel, this came hand-delivered for you when you were out of the office earlier.”
Steel reached over and grabbed it. “Thanks, Johnny.”
“Yep.” Johnny licked his hand and Steel wanted to throw up.
Steel slid a finger under the flap and tore off the glue in one motion. He dug his fingers in and pulled out a photo, froze in place, his body stiff, motionless, a wave of terror running through him, and knew instantly that the little girl in a blue dress and smiling from ear to ear next to her father on a sofa was Desiree.
“Holy shit,” Steel said.
36
J
ust after they had read the love letters, Detective Williams asked Steel to step into his office.
Williams pushed the door closed behind him, wobbled behind his desk and plopped down. Steel sat in the chair in front, but he couldn’t stop thinking about John Fratt’s words during his initial interview with him—The sweetest, so sweet, sweetest in the world. Some variation of that, he couldn’t remember how he had worded it. Was he imagining that conversation out of desperation? Couldn’t be. He knew what he heard in that office.
Williams leaned over in his seat, dropped his elbows on the desktop. He yawned. “I’m tired, been tired lately. Maybe a little winter blues, but the Lord Jesus always reminds me to shine. I been doing two services on Sundays now. One at nine in the morning and one at twelve in the afternoon, but I’ll do anything for my Lord.”
Steel listened, didn’t particularly like when people told him about their personal God, seemed like Williams was saying it for a reason, as if he was trying to get Steel to convert. But he respected Williams’ beliefs, anyway. He knew Christianity was the only consistent thing in his boss’s life, that he had been raised dirt poor in West Philly, had seen three of his brothers murdered in the streets, and had watched his mother suffer and live through it all while still keeping her faith. Jesus was Williams’ saving grace, gave him an outlet to give back and help others try to live a moral life.
Divine (A Benny Steel Novel) Page 20