Random Victim

by Michael A. Black

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your wife, sir.” Leal said. Hart stood by, watching Walker with intensity, her whole body stiff and tense.

  “For God’s sake,” Walker said, “I’ve already told you people everything so many times.” He drew in a sharp breath. “But I suppose if it helps…Come on.”

  They followed him down a hallway that opened into a large living room. Picture windows were set into each wall, one obviously meant to show a view of the front and the other the back, had the heavy drapes not been closed. A massive television in a wooden case with a VCR/DVD player underneath stood across from a curving white sofa. Several other matching chairs were strategically placed, along with a tall grandfather clock and other ornamental furnishings to give the place a decorative distinctness. At the room’s entrance was an ornately carved and highly polished circular table upon which stood a bronze statue of a satyr. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with brown leather-bound volumes lined other wall. Numerous video cassettes and DVDs were stacked haphazardly on a small metal table next to the television.

  Walker went to the coffee table in front of the couch, picked up a remote control, and shut off some cable movie. He turned and rubbed his index finger quickly under his nose.

  “I wish you would have called first, Officer…” He let his voice trail off, suggesting that he’d forgotten their names.

  “Leal, Sergeant Francisco Leal. And this is my partner, Detective Hart.”

  She nodded and smiled politely.

  Walker shifted his gaze to her momentarily, then glanced back at Leal, who strode past him and went to look at an oil painting of some running horses that was hanging over the couch. Leal stood there, waiting for Walker to follow him.

  “Now, just what is it you wanted?” Walker asked, walking toward Leal. His voice sounded tight.

  Leal didn’t answer, but instead crossed his arms and stared at the painting. Slowly he turned his head and said, “That’s a mighty nice painting.”

  “I’m glad you have an appreciation for art, Sergeant. But you surely didn’t come here for that, did you?”

  Leal shook his head slightly, grunted, and sat down on the sofa. He took out a small notebook and a pen from his sports jacket.

  “Mr. Walker, we’ve been recently assigned to a task force investigating your wife’s death,” he said. “We’re sort of reviewing things at this point.”

  Walker licked his lips. After a few moments he said, “That doesn’t speak very well of the communications system in your police department.” He picked up a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it. “Can we get on with this?”

  “Sure,” Leal said, speaking more slowly than usual. “What can you tell us about the day your wife disappeared?”

  “Not much,” Walker said. He perched on the arm of the sofa, his head swiveling occasionally toward Hart, who was standing silently on the left. “I worked till about four thirty, then I went to an alumni meeting of my old fraternity. We’re planning a fifteen year reunion.”

  “Where was this meeting?”

  Walker drew deeply on the cigarette before answering. He blew out some smoke. Leal watched Hart recoil visibly and smirked. She’d have to get used to dealing with smokers in this business.

  “It was at a gentlemen’s club on Wabash,” Walker said. “My secretary could probably get you the address, as well as names of people who can verify that I was there.” He took another quick puff on the cigarette. “You know, this would have been a lot simpler if you’d scheduled an appointment and come to my office.”

  “We were in the neighborhood,” Leal said, smiling. “So what time did this meeting break up?”

  “Actually, we had dinner there also.” He brought the cigarette to his lips and sucked on it almost greedily this time. “I don’t know. Maybe seven thirty or eight. I caught one of the late trains home and had to wait. I do remember that.”

  “And you arrived home at?”

  “Around nine thirty or so.”

  “Was Mrs. Walker home at this time?”

  “No, she also had a meeting that night,” he said. He took a final drag and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. “Her domestic violence committee. I didn’t think anything of her not being home,” he reached for the pack of cigarettes again, “but when it got close to midnight I began to make some calls. Orville Baker, another lawyer we know, said she hadn’t even come to the meeting.”

  “Is that when you first called the police?” Hart asked.

  The suddenness of her voice seemed to startle Walker.

  He paused with the cigarette unlit in his mouth.

  “The first time, yes,” Walker said, bringing up the lighter, which he flicked several times to no avail. Walker tossed the lighter down on the coffee table and leaned forward to pull open a drawer. He rummaged through it as he spoke, finally pulling out a white book of matches with glossy red letters. “They declined to do anything, saying she wasn’t actually missing, and could just be”—he struck one of the matches on the safety slate and lit the cigarette—“making a late night of it with some friends, or something equally ridiculous.” Walker shook out the match, dropped it into the ashtray, and placed the matchbook beside it. “I can’t help feeling that if they’d done something right then and there, this whole thing might have turned out differently.”

  “You wife ever stay out late before?” Leal asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  Leal rolled his pen between his fingers. “Would you have an address book of your wife’s friends we could look at?”

  Walker blinked several times before answering.

  “Not really,” he said, tapping the cigarette over the ashtray. “I do have a book of my associates, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do you any good. Miriam never used it. She had her own book, but I’m afraid I don’t know where she might have kept it.”

  “Perhaps we could go through some of her things?” Hart asked.

  Walker seemed startled again as he turned toward her. This guy’s uneasy around women, Leal thought.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not possible, either,” Walker said. He took a quick puff, exhaled, and squinted through the smoke. “I had our former housekeeper dispose of them. You see, I was so devastated by the entire incident, I just didn’t want anything around to remind me.”

  Leal nodded, then asked, “So do you have any theories about what happened, Mr. Walker?”

  Walker exhaled twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be your job, Sergeant?”

  “We’ll need some names of some mutual friends of you and your wife.”

  Walker brought his hand up and pushed up his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose.

  “Miriam and I had few friends in common,” he said slowly. “That we saw socially, anyway.”

  “Maybe some of her friends, then?”

  “I might be able to come up with some,” he said. He blew up a thoughtful-looking cloud of smoke into the now hazy room. “But not off the top of my head.”

  “Okay,” Leal said, standing. “Would you have a picture of her we could borrow? I’d like to get it reproduced. We’ll make sure it gets returned.”

  Walker stood and compressed his lips. “I’ll have to try and locate one.”

  “Anything will do,” Leal said. “Maybe a wedding picture even.”

  Walker stared at him. “As I said, I’ll have to look. Now is there anything else?”

  Leal bit at his lip and squinted. “How about the housekeeper’s name and number?”

  “I can give you the agency’s number. I had to let her go.” Walker set the cigarette down in the ashtray and went over to a table with a telephone and picked up a black leather folder. Leal stepped over to the couch, stooped briefly to reset Walker’s smoldering cigarette, then straightened up. Walker read off the number and Leal scribbled it down.

  “Now,” Walker said, flipping the book closed rather abruptly, “I really do have an early da
y tomorrow.”

  “Okay, sir,” Leal said. “We’ll be in touch later for that list of your wife’s friends then.” He started toward the door, then stopped. “Do you know the routes she usually took when she was going to those meetings?”

  Walker frowned and shook his head.

  “Those meetings were regular?” Leal asked.

  “The third Tuesday of the month,” Walker said. He wiped at his mouth.

  “Did your wife wear any regular jewelry?” Leal asked. “You know there was none recovered with the body.”

  “I assume the people who killed her took it,” Walker said in clipped tones.

  “Okay. If you think of anything else in the meantime, sir,” Leal said, handing him a card. Walker put the card into the pocket of his robe as Leal extended his hand. “Thanks for your time.”

  Walker and Leal shook hands, and Leal stared at Hart, cocking his head slightly. She returned his glance, then also held out her hand toward Walker. He shook hers with less enthusiasm. At the door Leal paused again, placing his hand on Walker’s shoulder.

  “Mr. Walker, I just want you to know that me and my partner are gonna stop at nothing to find the son of a bitch who did this to your wife, sir,” Leal said. “You got our words on it.”

  Walker seemed to stiffen at the unexpected touch. He nodded, nervously this time, and smiled.

  As they got to the car, Leal opened the door and watched Hart slide into the passenger seat and take a deep breath.

  “Ugh, all that smoke,” she said.

  “Well, Ollie, what do you think?”

  She compressed her lips, then licked them with the tip of her tongue.

  “I don’t know, Sarge. His reactions didn’t seem right. Something was off. He sure didn’t act like a husband should.” She shook her hand exaggeratedly. “Sweaty palms, too.”

  “Yeah, the sure sign of a nervous liar,” Leal said, twisting the keys in the ignition.

  They sat down the road, blacked out, watching the Walker house just to see if maybe he’d leave or if someone else would drop by. He’d been nervous, all right. They’d both sensed that. And the perpetual sniffle suggested to Leal that Walker was putting something up his nose on a regular basis. Excited, they both talked about the inconsistencies of Walker’s statements, his quick disposal of all his dead wife’s clothes and belongings, and his professed ignorance of her friends.

  “Not even a picture of her anywhere,” Hart said.

  She was really warming to the task, Leal noticed, and it made him feel good.

  “And when you brought up that part about the jewelry,” Hart said eagerly. “He said, ‘the people who killed her.’ Like he knew it was more than one person.”

  “Good point,” said Leal. “You sure you haven’t done this before?”

  He grinned and could see that she held back from giving him a playful slap. Leal struck a match and let it flicker momentarily in the darkness before blowing it out and watching the smoke curl upward from it. “Need a light?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He handed her the white book of matches with the red lettering. The design spelled out The Kit Kat Club. An address and phone number were printed in smaller letters. Hart looked at them, then looked up smiling.

  “Why, Sarge, I was wondering why you adjusted his cigarette when you were getting up.”

  “Ever hear of that place?”

  Hart strained to read the address, then shook her head.

  “It’s up around River North,” Leal said. “Maybe we can go up there and show some pictures around.”

  Hart rotated her head slowly with her eyes closed, seeming to stifle a yawn.

  “Tired?” Leal asked.

  “A little, I guess.”

  Leal shifted into gear.

  “We might as well call it a night, then. This isn’t going to tell us anything else.” He looked at her in the darkness. “You did all right in there tonight.” In the moonlight he could see her smile ever so slightly.

  He rolled well past Walker’s house before turning on the lights. As they wound their way back toward the main highway a vehicle with its brights on came from the other direction. Leal flashed his brights, but the other car’s didn’t dim at all. A white Jaguar whizzed past them.

  Nothing but rich assholes around here, Leal thought.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Messages

  “You what?” Ryan asked, leaning back in his chair and letting his cigarette dangle loosely from his lips.

  “We went out and interviewed Walker last night.”

  “At his fucking house?”

  Leal nodded.

  Ryan moved forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “Great move, Franko. Just fucking great.”

  Hart was standing off to the side, watching the contest between the two men.

  “Christ, Ryan,” Leal said. “If we don’t start taking some proper investigative steps on this—”

  Ryan cut him off: “We’ll get Brice’s boot shoved up our asses.”

  “Hey, fuck that,” Leal said, massaging the back of his neck. He had almost said, “Fuck Brice.”

  Ryan smiled crookedly, as if he knew what Leal was thinking, and said, mimicking a black accent, “Brice be da boss.” Smith hadn’t shown up yet.

  “Then maybe we got to start thinking about going over his head,” said Leal. “There’s less than two months till the election. If O’Hara’s so set on us clearing this damn thing, he’s got to give us the leeway to check everything.”

  “Nobody from upstairs has been in lately,” Ryan said.

  “All out campaigning at those county luncheons, putting the arm on everybody’s wallets.” He stubbed his cigarette out after taking a last drag. “Anyway, we got to go through the motions on Brice’s suppositions. Me and Smith are going to check with DCI today. They were supposed to be running a big chop-shop sting. If the brother ever gets here, that is.”

  Leal said nothing.

  “Look, Frank,” Ryan said, leaning forward again. “Like I said, we gotta at least go through the motions, right? And in covering that stuff we’re at least able to rule it out.”

  Leal was still silent.

  “Let’s try this,” Ryan offered. “I’ll run this chop-shop angle to pacify the boss. You and Hart take the rest of today and tomorrow off. Then Sunday you guys can run down some of the personal angles on the housekeeper and maybe that author dude if you want. And I’ll bring up our suspicions about checking out the husband to Brice when the time’s right.”

  Leal looked at Hart, then back to Ryan.

  “That would give us weekend coverage, I guess,” he said. And keep us out of Brice’s hair for today, too, he thought. “Sounds okay to me. Ollie?”

  “Sure, Sarge,” she said. “I have to get in a heavy workout tonight anyway.”

  Ryan clapped his hands together. “Good, now that we’ve got that settled,” he moved over to a stack of papers on his desk and rummaged through it. He selected a pink message slip and shoved it toward Leal. “Here, this is for you.”

  It was a telephone number under which was written S.A. Devain. Please call.

  “I assume that’s Sharon Divine?” Ryan asked salaciously.

  Leal noticed that it was her home, not her work number.

  “Who’s that?” Hart asked.

  “A state’s attorney I know,” Leal said quickly. He stood and started to head for the door. “I’d better make this call.”

  “Hey, wait, Franko,” Ryan said. “Just use one of these phones, why don’t ya?”

  “I want to get some coffee,” Leal said. He pushed out the door as Ryan smirked triumphantly.

  Leal took out his cell phone as he walked, but noticed the low battery signal as soon as he turned it on. He snapped it shut and debated going back to the office to get a new one. To hell with that, he thought. I’ll just use the pay phone in the cafeteria. Proceeding down the hall, Leal took a dollar bill out of his pocket and put it in the
coin changer. A set of pay phones was on the opposite wall. She answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, Sharon. It’s Frank Leal. Returning your call.”

  “How are you?” she asked. Her voice had a coolness that seemed more distinct over the phone. “I got your message on my machine, but I didn’t get in until late last night.”

  “I see,” Leal said, wondering what that meant. “How’s Felony Review?”

  “It’s not too bad. Keeps me hopping. We work twelve-hour shifts, on call seven to seven. Four days, four nights, then four days off.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “It’s not, really, once you get used to it. I had my off days, so I went up to Michigan with my sister. They’ve got a summer place up there.”

  That sounded innocuous enough, Leal thought. At least it doesn’t sound like she went someplace with a boyfriend.

  “Well, ah,” he began, finding himself fumbling over the words, like a teenager. “I was wondering if you’d be interested in going out to dinner?”

  “Hmm,” she said slowly. “When?”

  Oh, great, he thought. Another brush-off.

  “Whenever’s best for you,” he said. “Depending on your schedule and plans, of course.” He was beginning to feel stupid.

  “Well, I’m scheduled to go back on call tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, feeling crushed.

  “But I haven’t got anything planned for tonight.”

  There was an abrupt dropping sound and at first Leal thought he’d been disconnected. Then a computerized voice said, “Ten cents more, please.” He fished in his pocket for more coins and quickly fed a dime into the slot.