She said it good-naturedly, but Leal realized she’d felt slighted that he’d taken the squad. He suddenly remembered that she’d asked him if she could use it Friday when they were driving back. She must have been planning this all along, he thought.
“Yeah, well, sorry about that,” he said. What the hell, he thought, might as well level with her. “Actually, I had a date and my personal car is a wreck. I had to use the squad.”
“Oh,” Hart said, her eyebrows rising. “I see.”
“But I bought a new one, yesterday.”
“Great,” Hart said, prying open the glove compartment. “Anyway, I think I can find Ellias’ address on this.” As she pulled out the folded maps the opened box of prophylactics fell out onto her lap, spilling a few folded foil pack-ettes. Leal silently cursed himself for having forgotten about them being in there.
Hart carefully placed the box back in the glove com partment and said, “So I guess there’s no need to ask how your date went, huh?”
Leal was silent on the drive to Willow Springs. Hart’s verve and initiative had left him feeling guilty, but what the hell, he told himself, I deserve a day off once in a while, don’t I? It helped me come back renewed. But his argument flattened before the scrutiny of his own conscience. The fact of the matter was, his partner, the rookie, had acted while he just laid back. Or got laid, whichever way you looked at it. The wordplay brought a smile to his lips.
“What are you smiling at?” Hart asked.
“Oh, just thinking what a great detective you’re turning into.”
Hart smiled back, then pointed. “There’s our street.”
Randall S. Pecker, aka Simon Ellias, lived in the bottom half of a brown two-flat near the Des Plaines River. The house was wood frame over a solid-looking brick and mortar foundation. Hart pointed to the doorbell and Leal nodded. The faint noise of a stereo could be heard inside. She pressed hard on the bell, and suddenly they heard the heavy barking of what had to be a sizeable dog.
“Who is it?” a man’s voice said from the other side of the door.
“Police,” Leal said, holding up his badge case in front of the peephole. The interior door opened and a bearded man of medium height stood behind the screen door. His shaggy hair hung unkempt almost to his shoulders, and he was wearing a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Leal placed him at about forty. The dog, a rottweiler, continued barking until the man called its name.
“May I see your identifications again?”
Leal and Hart held up their badges and the man’s eyes narrowed slightly as he read them.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“We need to talk you about Miriam Walker,” Leal said. “Can we come in?”
Pecker looked stunned, then recovered, opening the door. The dog, ever vigilant, growled slightly. “Shadow,” he said. The growling stopped.
The inside of the house was filled with stacks of wood, half-finished paintings, crude statues, and rolls of paper. Off to the side a computer was on a desk playing a CD of classical music. Leal saw Hart staring at some of the paintings, abstractions of the human form, that were leaning against one of the chairs. A small television set sat on a coffee table in the center of the room.
“Pardon the mess,” Pecker said. “I’m right in the middle of a few projects.”
“Simon Ellias projects?” Leal asked.
Pecker smiled. “I see you’ve done your homework, Officer.”
“What do you have all this wood for?” Leal said.
“I’m a cabinetmaker. I work in my shop out back.”
Hart pulled the poetry book from her purse.
“Did you write this?”
Pecker wiped his hands on his shirt and accepted the book, immediately opening it to the title page and reading the inscription. His mouth hung slightly open as he looked up and asked, “Where did you get this?”
“From Miriam Walker’s private effects,” Leal said. “Why don’t you tell us about your relationship with her?”
Pecker licked his lips and went over to shut off the CD. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”
They sat at his table, a heavy wooden piece with ornately carved legs. Pecker offered them coffee, which they both declined.
“I was wondering why no one ever came to talk to me,” he said, finally. “I thought about going to the police my self, but then again, illicit lovers really don’t have a right to inquire, do they?”
“You were having an affair with her?” Leal asked.
Pecker nodded. “It was much more than that. The word ‘affair’ sounds so meretricious.”
Leal frowned. “So how did you meet? And how long had you been seeing her?”
Pecker sighed. “Do I really have to go into that now?”
“Now or later,” Leal said. “Your choice.”
“Simon,” Hart said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I know you must have cared for her very much. We need your help if we’re going to find the people who killed her.”
When he looked up his eyes were glistening. He quickly recounted the beginning of their relationship, as he put it, from their initial meeting when he did some cabinetwork at an abused women’s shelter that Miriam had sponsored. How Miriam’s interest in the arts lead to a drink, and the drink to a subsequent dinner.
“She was very unhappy at home,” he said. “And we shared so much in common.”
“She ever talk about her husband?” Leal asked.
“Only occasionally. About what an insensitive bastard he was. Her marriage was practically arranged by her father, you know.”
Yeah, I’ll bet, Leal thought. But he said, “So was she going to divorce her husband?”
“That was problematic,” Pecker said. “You see, Miriam came from a very wealthy family, and had just received control of her inheritance from a trust. She was worried that under the community property laws, she’d lose half of what she felt was essentially her money.”
Leal nodded. “So what was the plan? Keep meeting in secret?”
“Actually, things seemed to change the last few weeks before she disappeared,” Pecker said. “She told me that our problems would soon be solved, that we could be together. She was ebullient, but she was also enigmatic.”
“Try that again in plain English,” Leal said.
Hart smirked at him.
“Well, she seemed happy, confident that the divorce wouldn’t be as much of an obstacle as she’d thought,” Pecker said. “But at the same time she seemed very nervous. She wanted both of us to get HIV tests.”
“She say why?”
Pecker shook his head. “Only that if we were going to stay in a monogamous relationship, we should both be tested. We both came back negative, of course. She then told me that we shouldn’t see each other until after the formal separation papers were filed.”
Leal asked, “Was it because of something her husband did?”
Pecker shrugged. “I surmised as much, but I didn’t ask.” He brought his hand up to wipe at his eyes. “When I didn’t hear from her, I assumed that everything was all right. Then I saw that she was missing on the news. I knew something had gone wrong, but kept hoping that she was merely hiding somewhere for her own purposes. When they found her, I didn’t know what to do. The police kept saying that it was apparently a random street crime.”
“So you just sat on your hands?” Leal said.
“What else could I do?” Pecker raised his head and Leal saw there were tears streaming down his face. Hart reached out and patted the man on the shoulder. “What else could I do?” he asked again.
They spoke to Pecker for about twenty minutes more, assembling the dates and locations of their trysts, trying to get a picture of Miriam Walker’s habits and routines during her last few months.
“Okay,” said Leal, once they were back in the car. “She was planning on dumping her old man, and was initially concerned about losing her money…” He waited for Hart to pick up his trend of thought.
&nb
sp; “But then she suddenly gets something on her husband that makes the divorce less of a problem,” Hart said.
Leal nodded. “So we gotta assume that she picked up on Martin Walker’s secret life. Only what could it be? Drugs? Hookers? Why the concern about HIV?”
“Maybe he’s AC/DC?” Hart said.
Leal grunted, remembering Ryan’s comments questioning Hart’s sexuality. “That’s what we gotta find out,” he said, twisting the keys in the ignition. “Let’s go talk to the housekeeper. Maybe she can give us more on the enigmatic Mr. Walker.”
Hart looked at him and smiled. “Nice word. For a cop.”
It was near noon by the time they pulled in front of the dull gray apartment building near the Cal-Sag Channel. Two children, a boy in a blue shirt and pants, and a little girl in a dirty white dress were playing in the yard. They both stopped as Leal and Hart approached.
“Does Mrs. Martinez live here?” Hart asked.
The girl nodded, showing them a gap-toothed smile, and pointed to the second floor. After walking up the sagging wooden steps, Hart rang the buzzer and presently a heavyset woman in her forties opened the interior door. Her dark eyes flashed suspiciously at the badges.
“Mrs. Martinez,” Hart said. “We’re the police. We’d like to speak to you.”
The woman tried a weak smile. “My English no too good.”
“Señora, no importa,” Leal said. “Hablo español.”
The woman seemed more at ease as Leal continued to chat with her so rapidly that Hart was left stranded trying to follow the conversation through overheard cognates. She understood Señora Walker and el señor, but everything else was lost.
Mrs. Martinez bent her left elbow and patted the point of it with her right hand, saying something else. Hart looked to Leal, who grinned.
“She says Miriam was always very nice, but Mr. Walker was a stingy bastard.”
“Muy tacano,” Mrs. Martinez said, again patting her elbow.
“Did I hear you ask her something about a divorce?” Hart said.
“Right. They were sleeping in separate bedrooms,” Leal said. He said something else in Spanish. Hart heard the word drogas. She knew what that meant.
“Creo que si,” Mrs. Martinez said. “Pero no lo vi.”
She says she never saw him using drugs, but suspected it,” Leal said.
“Después de la señora despareció, el me dio calabazas.”
“Cuando?” asked Leal. “Immediamente?”
“Sí.”
“She says that he fired her right after Miriam disappeared,” Leal said.
“Almost like he knew his wife wasn’t just missing,” Hart said. “More like she was gone for good.”
“Sure enough.”
“You know, Sarge, this is sounding more and more like we figured, and not like,” Hart dropped her voice in an attempt to mimic Brice’s raspy voice, “a random victim killing.”
Leal grinned. Back in the car she asked him what their next move should be.
“We’ve got to pressure Walker,” he said. “We can’t pull him in just yet, but maybe we should follow him. See what his quirks really are. Then if we find something, we can use that as a lever in an interrogation.”
“Interrogation?” Hart said. “This guy’s a lawyer as well as a CEO, isn’t he? What makes you think he’ll talk?”
“Yeah, well his experience is as a pissant corporate lawyer, not a criminal one,” Leal said. “Maybe he does have some street smarts. It’d be nice to catch him buying some dope or something.”
“It sure would.”
“But one thing’s certain. To clear this one we’re probably going to need a confession, or something pretty damn close to it.” He sighed and pulled away from the curb. “You check our messages today?”
“No,” Hart said, sorting through her purse for her cellular phone. She punched in the numbers and the codes to release the voice mail. After listening she pressed another key and turned to him. “Guess what?”
He glanced at her.
“Miriam Walker’s father called,” she said. “He wants to talk to us.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Everybody Hates Mondays
Leal kept remembering the image of the old man as he and Hart drove in to work the following Monday. With the wisps of white hair, the oxygen tubes hooked under his nose, Miriam’s father had looked virtually played out. He was at the end of it, Leal figured, and was searching for some hope that his daughter’s killer would be found. He blamed himself for his daughter’s death.
“I was the one who encouraged her to marry Martin,” the old man had said. “It seemed a good move for her, career-wise and financially, but,” he paused to gather a few breaths, “I never thought about her long-term adjustment or happiness.”
Their interview with him had yielded little. Only that Miriam hadn’t been close with her father in the past several years. The old man’s pleading look had prompted Leal to make a premature promise as they left. “We’ll get the people responsible for your daughter’s death, sir. You have my word on it.”
Now he found himself wishing he hadn’t said that. Just what I need, he thought. More pressure to solve a cold case. He turned to Hart as they walked up the steps toward the office.
“You type up all our summaries of the interviews?” he asked.
She nodded. “Sure did, Sarge.”
Leal grabbed the door and pulled it open, debating whether or not he should tell her to call him Frank. But that will come, he thought, if this partnership works out. Inside they were met by a group of trainees getting a tour of the facility on their first day at the academy. Looking at all the eager young faces brought back more memories for Leal.
“God, I hate Mondays,” he said. “You can’t even move around this damn place.”
“Everybody hates Mondays,” Hart said, dodging the group by going along the wall. She tugged at his sleeve. “But it’s sort of like Wednesday for us, remember?”
Inside the office Ryan was standing at his desk with one foot on the seat of his chair. His right elbow rested on his thigh as he read a copy of the Sun-Times. He smiled at them, pointing to Hart’s in-box where an eleven-by-fourteen manila envelope denoting interdepartmental mail lay. “You got some goodies, babe.”
She opened it and flashed several large photos of Martin and Miriam Walker at Leal.
“I ordered some duplicates made of our file photo of Miriam last week,” she said. “Thought it might be useful to get Martin’s driver’s license digital, too.”
Leal nodded approvingly.
“You look ready to go,” Leal said, turning to Ryan.
“Not hardly. That fucking Smith’s late again.” Ryan rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “But get a load of this.” He tapped the newspaper. “This dog-ass in New York went into the ER with a real problem. Seems he shot up his dick with cocaine to improve his performance with the ladies.” Ryan flashed a rakish grin under his bushy mustache. “And it worked. Sort of. He had a hard-on for three fucking days, but found that he couldn’t take a piss. It’s called…” he looked down at the paper, “Priapism. Can you imagine that? A hard-on for three days?”
“Not like little Ryan, who rises and falls on demand, huh?” Leal said. He wondered how Hart was reacting to this.
Ryan smirked. “Well, they catheterized him and it deflated. The only problem was his johnson turned gangrene and fell off.”
“I love a story with a happy ending,” Hart said.
“It says here,” Ryan continued, patting the paper again, “that injecting cocaine into the penis to enhance sexual performance is a commonly held, but false, belief. In the ghetto, no doubt.”
Christ, thought Leal, the asshole’s more interested in that fucking story than he is in solving the damn case.
Suddenly the door opened and Smith came in smiling.
“Sorry about being late, Sarge,” he said. “Another false alarm with the baby.”
Ryan rolled his eyes again. “We
ll, now that we’re all present and accounted for, let’s compare notes. The boss wants a progress report in half an hour. Hart, can you make us a pot, please.”
Leal bristled at the impropriety of the request, but remembered that he couldn’t fight her battles for her. And at least he did say please, he thought.
Over coffee they discussed their separate efforts on the investigation. Ryan and Smith had touched bases with the Illinois State Police Criminal Investigations Division and SSATIN, the auto-theft section.
“You should’ve seen the layout they had there,” Ryan said. “They set up their own sting operation for buying stolen cars. Videotaped every transaction.”
“So you get anything on that angle?” Leal asked.
Ryan shook his head. “One thing that is funny. They said that parts for Caddies ain’t been much in demand this year.”
“Which makes the chances that someone murdered her for a chop shop ring kind of small,” Smith said. He’d sat passively while Ryan had been relating their activities.
“We looked over all the files of carjackers and auto thieves who’ve been active in the South Suburbs in the last year or so,” Ryan said, taking out his cigarettes and shaking one out of the pack. “Nothing really matches up. I guess we can spend today digging through some more files.”
“That’s a dead end, Tom,” Leal said, realizing that the anger in his voice was more than he intended. He took a deep breath and explained about the interviews he and Hart had done. “We got to start focusing on the husband.”
“So, you saying we should tag him?” Ryan asked, leaning forward, the smoke from his cigarette trailing up toward the ceiling. Hart moved back away from it.
“It’d be a start,” said Leal. “We got to get some leverage on the guy.”
“All right, then,” Ryan said. “Let’s go run it by the boss. Give me your summary reports.”
Leal and Ryan spent ten minutes waiting outside Brice’s office while he finished a telephone call. Then he opened the door and admitted them. Leal noticed that Brice looked pale and haggard, and wondered if he was getting some pressure from upstairs. Good, Leal thought. Maybe it’ll shake his ass up so we can move on this thing. But Brice seemed unfazed by their reports. He meticulously bit off the end of a cigar as he listened to the synopsis.
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