by John Misak
Mrs. Mullins’ house was just off Merrick Road, pretty much the main drag through the town. Her house was a big colonial, painted a baby blue, with a screened-in porch and a huge front yard. Rick stopped the car in front of the house, and we sat there for a moment.
“No lights on,” he said.
“She’s probably not home.”
“We’ll see.”
We walked up to the porch, took our badges out, and I was about to ring the bell, when someone called to us. It was the neighbor to the left. Well, the left if you were facing the house. He was taking out his garbage.
“You the police?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied, flashing him the badge, though from where he was, he might have not been able to see it.
“She’s not home. Doing a dig in the Andes, if I remember correctly. You’re here about her son, right? Shame.”
“We just need to speak with her,” Rick said.
“Real shame. Car accident, huh? Young man.” He shook his head. “You guys doing the investigation?”
“She leave any way to get into contact with her?”
“In the Andes? Not that I know of. You might want to ask her housekeeper. She comes here every morning around eleven. Keeps track of the place.”
“Got a name?”
“Roseanne, I think. Nice looking woman too. Like I said, she usually gets here around eleven.”
“You see her son around here recently?”
“Ron? No, he didn’t come around much. What, with his mother always running off to all parts of the world. She’s an archaeologist, you know. Jackie Minkoff. Ever hear of her?”
“No,” I replied.
“She’s real famous. Always on A&E.”
“What about her husband?”
“Died over ten years ago.” The neighbor started moving toward his house. “You sure you guys are cops?”
“As sure as we can be,” I said. I reached into my pocket and grabbed a cigarette.
“Oh, I just thought you would have known about that.”
“We don’t know much, yet.”
Rick whispered in my ear, “You want to officially question him?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then there’s no reason to. We have more important things to do.” I looked back at the neighbor. “Thank you sir.” We walked back toward the car.
“Well, it looks like we’ll have to get a warrant for the house, get a hold of that tape. This way, we can get all the information we need tomorrow when we speak to the housekeeper.”
“Right. So you can take me home and we’ll get started on this first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t you want to go see Coltrain?”
“Not especially. Anything he gets isn’t going to change by the morning. I’m a lot easier to deal with when I get a good night’s sleep.”
“If that’s possible.”
I went to open the passenger door to the car, and Rick gave me a look. “You’re gonna finish that before you get in, right?” he asked, referring to the smoldering Marlboro danging from my mouth.
“For you, anything.” I flicked the cigarette into the street and got into the car. The ride back to the city was quiet, which I enjoyed. I got the feeling that quiet was a luxury I wouldn’t be able to enjoy for a while
Three
Sleep didn’t come too easily that night. The bed felt warm, and a slick layer of sweat formed on my body. The temperature in the room wasn’t too bad, but my mind was racing, taking my heart along for the ride. I wanted to get to sleep so I could leap forward to the morning. By then, the media would be all over the situation, most likely camped out in front of the precinct. I didn’t like that, but it excited me. I was about to be thrust into a huge media blitz, make television appearances, and possibly even get a spot on Letterman. Well, at least something like that.
When I got up, which was about 7AM, my head felt like one huge cloud. I hadn’t rested. The sleep I’d gotten had done more damage than good. I went through the morning procedure of showering, shaving, and getting into the last clean suit I had. It was a brown one, from Macy’s, made of a fairly expensive wool. The shirt I had didn’t go with the suit. It was a white oxford from The Gap, and the tie, a floral pattern my mother gave me years before, only worsened the situation. Still, I looked better than most of the bozos at the station, which wasn’t saying much, but comforted me nonetheless.
Rick called after I got dressed, and was waiting downstairs in a Mercury unmarked car at the comer. He was nice enough to have a black coffee and buttered roll waiting for me when I got into the car. He seemed chipper, which was a common state for him, only more so that morning, like he’d slept like a baby the night before. I hated him for that.
“Ready to roll?” he asked.
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
“Nice suit.”
“Wiseass.”
“No, I mean it.
“Just shut up and drive.”
We drove toward the station, through the morning traffic and drizzle. It wasn’t cold, maybe around 50, but there was a dampness to the air that ran right through you. I’m not a weather person, meaning that whether it is raining, sunny, or snowing, I am unaffected by what Mother Nature is doing. That day, however, the dreary weather got to me. Probably because I was tired and cranky, and I had Mr. Sunshine sitting next to me. Fun.
“I spoke to Coltrain late last night,” he said to me.
“Yeah.”
“No sign of a heart attack. No present illnesses. The man was of sound health.”
“Not surprising. It could still have been an accident of some sort.”
“I don’t think you believe that.”
“I don’t believe anything right now.” I didn’t.
“I also spoke with Geiger. He’ll be speaking to the judge first thing, to get that search warrant.”
“That would help.”
“You cranky today?”
“Not especially.”
Rick rolled his eyes. “This should be fun.”
“Have you heard anything about the wife, kids?”
“They were in the Bahamas. I believe they’re flying back today.”
“We might want to have a chat with Mrs. Mullins.”
“I figured that.”
We got to the station, and my premonition about a media frenzy was dead on. Rick averted them, pulled into the lot, and we entered through the back entrance, where said reporters didn’t think to park themselves. Before we got halfway down the hall, Geiger intercepted us.
“You two are in for a hell of a day. I’ve already heard from the mayor and several of Mullins’ people, wanting to make sure the case is handled by able men. Oh, and a few senators called, to express their interest.”
“How nice of them. Doubt it was anyone I voted for.”
“I thought you didn’t vote,” Rick said.
“Exactly.”
“I’m working on that warrant, and I want you guys reporting to me every hour on the hour. I want to be able to keep people abreast of what’s going on. Damn shame,” Geiger said.
“Yeah, really,” I replied.
We just stood there, almost as if we were offering a moment of silence for the deceased. It was uncomfortable. I fumbled with the change in my pocket.
“Well, I guess we should get to work, eh?” I said.
“Probably a good idea.” Geiger glared at me, as if to say my attitude better stay in check on this one. I never really had any problems with him, but he didn’t always appreciate my laconic wit. I never can find the right audience.
Rick and I made our way to our desks, and I checked my phone for messages. I had none. Rick seemed to be doing the same thing. He made a call. By the manner in which he spoke, I could tell it was his wife. She had him by the balls. He kept nodding and saying “okay” a lot. I wondered if she let him take his genitals out of the box she had them stored in when he had to go to work. I could hear it.
“Please honey, all the other guys at work get to take theirs. I’ll look like an idiot not having mine.”
“You know how you get when you wear your balls, dear.”
“I’ll be good, I swear. Please?”
“Maybe next time.”
I couldn’t imagine an existence like that. Yeah, Rick certainly had sissy tendencies, but he was a decent looking guy who had a lot going for him. A little annoying, I suppose, but still an okay guy. Instead of finding someone to mutually get along with, he got stuck with a woman who controlled his life from top to bottom.
Rick hung up the phone, and caught me watching him. I could see the embarrassment on his face. Defeated. By a woman. He must have known my opinion on that. He fumbled with some papers, took a swig from a bottle of water he always kept at his desk, and then got up to come over to me.
“Okay,” he said, dropping a file on my desk, “That’s Coltrain’s report.”
“You told me what was in it. I don’t need to read it.”
“I thought you might want to take a look at it.”
“Waste of time.”
“Okay.” He took the file back. “You want to go speak to him?”
“So he can tell me what it says in the report?”
Rick shrugged, and I wondered exactly how he got the gold badge in the first place. After thinking about it, I attributed his temporary stupidity to his enthusiasm. He wanted to get rolling, and I couldn’t blame him. He was just a little too much for me. I think he was a little too much for anyone. Especially his wife.
“Any word on Mrs. Mullins?” I asked.
“9:15 flight out of the Bahamas. Commercial.”
“No corporate jet?”
“The partner has it, in Amsterdam.”
“Anyone contact him?” One would think the second in command, at least on the corporate side of Mullins’ life, would have been notified of his death. Then again, you never know with people. They can be shockingly inept.
“Yes. He’s at a convention. Will be back Friday.” If you can’t already tell, Rick’s short answers indicated his excitement. He didn’t mean to be rude, but his ballsack, devoid of testicles, rose higher and higher in his crotch as he thought about this case. Nice visual, I know.
“We should talk to him as well. If anyone will know something about Mullins’ state of mind, it’ll most likely be him.” Rick jotted something down.
“What time is Mrs. Mullins getting in?”
“Flight touches down about 12:45,” Rick said.
“Someone greeting her there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Maybe we should.”
“At the airport?” Rick asked.
“Why not? This way she doesn’t get a chance to formulate any kind of story. I don’t want her concocting something. She’s already had some time on the plane to think of a plan. You never know.”
Rick’s face took on a strange look. “We’re not considering her a suspect, are we?”
I took a breath. Mrs. Mullins as a suspect. She was in the Bahamas as far as I knew, with a rock solid alibi. Still, I learned a long time before that nothing should be taken for granted. If you wait, you get burned. I wanted to talk to Mrs. Mullins as soon as possible. If I waited, lawyers might get involved. That sucked. They only complicated things. Even more so, the media. I need to get to her ASAP.
“I’m not ruling out anyone. Maybe we should have a couple of uniforms go pick her up, and bring her down here. Tell her she has to see the body, then we question her.”
“Maybe we should give her time to grieve. Get herself together.” Rick had learned to temper that excitement of his, I noticed. Strange for him.
“Not too much time, trust me on that.”
“Okay. We’ll try and get to her sometime today or tomorrow.”
I fumbled with a few things on my desk, a sign for Rick to go back to his cave. He didn’t get the hint. He stood over my desk, like a teacher in class, looking at a kid’s work. I looked up at him, and glared at him, sort of, but he still didn’t get the message.
“Why don’t you go see when Geiger will have the warrant?” I asked. Translation, shoo.
He looked around the station. “Okay.”
After he walked away, I leaned back in my seat. Our area of the station looked old, with dark paneling on the walls and a white tile floor that was so worn, the seams didn’t show anymore. I never really looked around the place much. Not much to look at. The detectives had six small desks gathered in the right comer of the room. I had the one on the far left. Rick had the one on the far right. By the entrance, sat four offices - well, more like cubicles. Geiger occupied one of them, the smallest, actually. He picked it because it was in the center of the room. He had four windows that almost reached the ceiling. From there, he could keep an eye on all of us. He did that a lot. He wasn’t a ball buster or anything. You could describe him as meticulous. I liked that in a superior. I did my job, submitted my paperwork on time, and didn’t spend idle hours on the department computer chatting with women on the Internet. I’m not pointing any fingers, saying that any of my co-workers did such a thing. Of course, they did, and I never saw the use. You can’t talk to someone you can’t see, or hear. These guys were trying to meet women, whether they wanted to admit that or not. Desperate, I say. There was no way to be sure that the people they were talking to were females in the first place. Other guys played a golf game, pretending that they were doing work. They turned the sound down, which basically took the fun out of the game. Guys actually gambled on the game. Sergeant Peters lost two hundred bucks last week. Two hundred bucks on a video game.
No one was doing much at almost eight in the morning. Peters was in his office, probably staring at the computer across the room, thinking about his stupidity. He had a lot to think about. Peters was in his forties, had been on the force for about twenty years, and was damn close to burnout. From what I knew of him, which wasn’t a hell of a lot, he was a gambler, both with money and with his work. Geiger was always on his case, mainly because Peters always tried to find his way around the hard stuff, and never got his paperwork done on time. I worked two cases with him. One of them, a murder of a convenience store clerk, went so bad I feared we were headed for a demotion. He was rough with interrogation, pressing witnesses that were supposed to be on our side, and he never went by the book. I didn’t mind that so much, mainly because I rarely followed “the book.” Actually, I doubted the existence of such a manual. Everyone did things their own way. Peters just had a more creative way about doing it. A dangerously creative way. I always wondered how he’d made Sergeant. Rumor said it was because of his father, who was a Sergeant himself, and had died on the job back in the seventies. I didn’t put much value on that rumor, but, after getting to know a little about Peters, it made more and more sense.
Geiger was in his office, on the phone as usual. I figured he was talking to someone about getting the warrant. He made eye contact with me, and nodded his head - my indication that things were going well. Geiger always came through when needed. That’s how he got the respect of his men. That, and the fact that he never asked anyone to do something he wouldn’t do himself. I didn’t know too many people like that.
Besides Rick, those two were the only other ones in the department. It was quiet. We all knew the media was outside, waiting for any of us to walk out. It wouldn’t be long before the captain paid us a visit, and gave us his usual speech about dotting out “I’s” and crossing our “T’s.” Nobody listened, but he felt the need to go through the whole thing any time we had a high profile case. He was more concerned about what the Mayor thought than anything else.
As if on cue, Captain Agnelli walked through the double doors into the department. He didn’t acknowledge anyone in the department, and went straight to Geiger’s office. Agnelli was a tall, thin man, who looked more British than he did Italian. He had jet-black hair, which was dyed for sure, and stood at about 6”4”. He was a smart guy, graduate degree
and all that. The story went that he worked hard at making it to where he was, starting off in the Bronx, and moving to undercover Vice before getting the gold badge. From there, he set records for indictments, and had a good relationship with the DA. Agnelli was about 52, but looked younger because of the dyed hair and his baby face. The face had a roundness to it that made him look almost like a cartoon. He didn’t talk much and had a deeper voice than one would expect from the face. He always looked impeccably clean. Guess what? I didn’t like him.
I watched as Agnelli and Geiger talked for a few moments. I pretended to be on the phone when they looked my way. They never looked at Rick, who was busy doing something. God knows what. They kept looking at me, and Agnelli looked stressed at the fact that I was on the case. It might have been too obvious to everyone in the department that I didn’t really care where my career was headed. Content people bother eager people. They can’t understand why someone doesn’t want to move up and become the boss. I had no such desire. Give me my cases, let me do my work, and hand me my paycheck every two weeks. You’d think that people would be happy with that.
Rick noticed the stares I was getting and smirked at me when he looked up from a stack of paperwork. Wiseass. I had to laugh though. I just hoped Agnelli didn’t see it. When I looked back at them, Geiger gestured for me to come to the office. I hung up the dead phone, went to the cart to get a cup of coffee, and walked into Geiger’s office.
“Keegan,” Geiger said, slightly distressed. It was no secret that he didn’t enjoy it when Agnelli came into his department. The two had a personality conflict. Agnelli worried and tried to give his advice and two cents. Geiger went about his business without saying much, and didn’t like being told how to do something. They had a big argument about two years ago and, if I was keeping score, Geiger won, but the record books didn’t show that. You can’t win a battle with a superior.
“Good morning,” I said, taking a sip of coffee. “Captain,” I said, nodding toward Agnelli.
“Detective,” Agnelli replied, without the nod.
“I need you to be careful on this one, John. A lot of people will be watching all of us and, most likely, you will be investigating this case on TV, if you know what I mean.”