Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

“So you said already. I’ll take it up with your sergeant,” Ariel said, dismissing them. “Ma’am, would you like to talk to me about this?”

  The woman’s nod was slight.

  Feeling angry eyes on her back Ariel led her to an empty interview room. “May I get you something to drink? Coffee? A Coke?”

  “Wa—water will be just fine,” the woman rasped.

  Ariel went for the water. When she returned, the woman had her arms folded on the table and her head down.

  “Here you are,” Ariel said, sorry she had to interrupt the woman’s brief moment of rest.

  The woman lifted her head and blinked teary eyes. “Oh, thank you.” She took the glass, put it to her lips, and sipped. “Thank you,” she said again.

  Ariel sat across the table from her. She could tell she’d been a pretty woman in her younger days. Years of too much hard work and struggle had turned her beauty into functional. Salt-and-pepper hair—mostly salt—styled in a plain pageboy. No makeup.

  “I’m Detective Ariel Lawrence. Are you up to telling me what happened to Chloe?”

  She didn’t answer at first. Then her lips began to quiver and tears filled her eyes again. “My baby was going to be somebody too,” she said, then began sobbing in loud shaking gasps.

  Ariel waited until they subsided. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Sondra Love,” she sniffed. “Chloe was my oldest daughter. She was a good girl. A really good girl.”

  Ariel hated to ask the next question. “How was she killed?”

  That got more sobs.

  Again Ariel waited.

  “On Forty-seventh Street about three weeks ago,” Mrs. Love finally said. “In some vacant building. I told them my Chloe would never go to that neighborhood.”

  Her head went up proudly. “My baby was a senior at City University. She was going to be a lawyer and then a judge. She was a good girl. They said she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Got shot because she was doing something she had no business doing. Not my baby. She went to school and she studied. I’m a widow but I work two jobs so Chloe wouldn’t have to sell hamburgers to help pay for school. So she could concentrate on getting good grades. Only job I let her work is … was … as a teacher’s assistant because she was a senior and she said she needed the experience. It was more like studying. Being black and a woman we have to know twenty times more to get ahead.”

  Ariel smiled slightly, thinking about her own battles with Sergeant Mancuzek about her detective work.

  Mrs. Love folded her arms across her stomach and rocked back and forth in the chair. “Every night she was working on something. Schoolwork or some story for the paper. You would have thought she was that Carole Simpson news-woman the way she worked for that paper. And they not even looking for the lowlife who killed my baby.”

  “Have you spoken with Detective Donnelly at all?”

  Mrs. Love threw her head back. “Humph. I spoke to him all right. I’m ashamed to repeat what he said. He laughed and said what a pretty thing. Said he’d wished he’d gotten a piece of that before she died. Said it right in front of me when I went to see my Chloe’s body!

  “She was nobody to them,” Mrs. Love went on, looking toward the wall. “Just a little ol’ black girl whose life wasn’t worth their time.”

  She turned back to face Ariel. “Can you help me? Find out who killed my baby?”

  Ariel winced inwardly. She felt Mrs. Love’s pain; Ariel was only fifteen when she’d lost her father to violence. But Mancuzek had dumped a case load on her that would sink a ship. And she had just come back from suspension a week ago, the third one he’d given her for working cases she hadn’t been assigned. It didn’t matter that she’d gotten arrests on all of them. Mancuzek was more interested in his people following regulations than solving murders.

  “Mrs. Love,” Ariel said, “there are detectives already assigned to this case. I can’t just decide that I’m going to work it.”

  “They don’t care about what happened to my baby. I’ve been calling and calling and you saw for yourself how they treated me for coming down here. They won’t do anything.” Mrs. Love’s voice was pleading.

  “I’m sorry,” Ariel said. She was pleading too—for understanding. “But there are procedures we have to follow.”

  Mrs. Love looked at Ariel with somber eyes. She stood up on her sturdy boots and buttoned up against the cold. “Well. Thank you very much, Ms. Lawrence,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment. Then, head up, she walked slowly to the door.

  Mrs. Love’s teary face replaced Ariel’s sleep that night. She knew there’d be no rest for her until she at least read the case file. So the next morning after roll call she pulled it.

  Now she knew what a knockout Mrs. Love had been. The file portrait could have been her at twenty. A beautiful young woman with clear skin the color of nutmeg, sparkling almond-shaped eyes, and a saucy smile.

  In sad contrast, the crime scene photo showed a body riddled by ten bullets from a semiautomatic. Ariel’s chest tightened and she fought back the tears that wanted to fill in her eyes. Seven years of police work, and she’d never understand how anyone could kill another person.

  Two brothers, ages eight and nine, on their way to school that morning had taken a detour to play in the building and had found Chloe’s body. Their mother, Debra Green, called 911. There was no lab report on the crime scene. No autopsy or ballistics report. No interviews with Chloe’s family or classmates.

  What irony, Ariel thought. Mrs. Green had done her duty only to have Donnelly slough off his.

  Ariel took the crime scene photo and went down to the evidence room in the lower level. “How’s it going, Kornfein?” she asked the uniform at the counter.

  “If it was any better, I couldn’t stand it,” he said dryly.

  Ariel chuckled. “Those new babies keeping you up nights?”

  Kornfein’s round face beamed. He and his wife were getting used to month-old twin boys. Kornfein whipped out his wallet and opened it to a photo. “Aren’t they the cutest fellas you ever saw?”

  Two fat faces and two pairs of sky-blue eyes stared at her. “Just like their daddy,” Ariel teased.

  Kornfein beamed some more and put his wallet back. “What brings you to my castle this morning?”

  “I need to see the evidence on the Chloe Love case, number 231264.”

  “Forty-seventh Street?”

  “You got it,” Ariel said.

  “Be right back.”

  Kornfein disappeared among the shelves and Donnelly chose that moment to show up.

  “Don’t tell me you workin’ today, Lawrence, that’s a new one,” he quipped, waddling his three hundred slovenly pounds up to the counter.

  “It’s a new one for you too, Donnelly, and you haven’t been on suspension.”

  “Hah. Same ol’ smart mouth. Gonna git you more than suspended one of these days.”

  Kornfein came back with the package. “Here you go, Lawrence.”

  Ariel tried to take it before Donnelly figured out what it was, but he caught the tag. Grabbed at it.

  “Hey, wait a minute. This looks familiar.” He read the tag. “This from my case! Whatchoo doin’ nosin’ in my case?”

  Damn, Ariel thought. Fine time for him to become eagle-eyed. She looked at Kornfein, who was rubbing his temple nervously. Probably thinking about those twins he had to feed. She decided to try to reason with Donnelly cop to cop.

  “Look, Donnelly—”

  “Naw, you look, girlie. You putchoo nose in my case and I’m goin’ straight to the sergeant.”

  Ariel wanted to tell him that somebody needed to put their nose in it because he sure wasn’t. How could one human being be so despicable?

  She scooted the evidence back to Kornfein.

  Since Donnelly had spoiled her look at the evidence, Ariel went to see the medical examiner. “Best I can tell, time of death was somewhere between six-thirty p.m. and ten-thirty p.m.,” Robert Holifield
said. Ariel was in his office at the morgue.

  “That’s an awfully big spread,” she said. “You can’t be more specific?”

  “I didn’t gel to examine the body until the next morning,” Holifield said, in a tone that made his feelings clear about it. A short man with thick white hair and heavy bifocals on a large nose, Holifield had been the city’s chief medical examiner for twenty years. And ever since Ariel had been in the detective division she’d heard the same complaint from him.

  “They don’t call me when they should and then they expect me to perform miracles,” Holifield said. “I had to base the time of death on the amount of rigor mortis that had set in. So that spread, as you call it, is as accurate as I can get.”

  He looked at the photo. “Beautiful girl. Such a shame.”

  “Anything else you can tell me that might be of help? This case is getting icicles on it and I don’t have a single lead.”

  He shook his head. “’Fraid that’s about it.”

  “No other signs of abuse?”

  Holifield shook his white head again. “No. Not raped or beaten.” He handed her a manila folder. “Stick this in the case file. It’s the autopsy report; Donnelly never picked it up.”

  Forty-seventh Street was like a hundred other streets in Chicago. Back in the sixties it had pulsated with black-owned businesses and theaters. Ariel’s aunt Lela often told how she and Ariel’s mother would go to the Regal Theater on 47th and South Park Way, which was now King Drive, and watch the best of Motown—the Miracles, the Temptations—over and over. Could stay at the Regal all day for the price of one ticket. Now 47th Street was just another example of the urban blight that uncaring politicians had allowed to take away the life of the city. From State Street to Cottage Grove, every other building on 47th Street was a hole in the landscape the politicians had created.

  The abandoned building where Chloe’s body had been found had been a department store. It claimed the whole corner. Ariel stepped through what was once a display window on the 47th Street side. She flicked on her flashlight so she could see in the shadows that winter cast during the day.

  A gust of wind whipped through. Ariel steadied her booted feet and turned her face away from its sting. She let the wind die down, then took out her photo of the crime scene to try and pinpoint where the police markers—if there’d been any—might have been. Gingerly she stepped over the bricks, wood, and bottles to as near the spot where Chloe had been found as she could.

  “This is ridiculous,” she was muttering to herself twenty minutes later as she searched around the area. “Why didn’t evidence take photos of the blood droplets? This is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  She left, clueless and disgusted.

  Ariel walked both sides of the street, three blocks from the building that had been Chloe Love’s deathbed. She interviewed every store owner. There was a shack of a fast-food place called Sam’s, and a tiny overpriced grocery store. There was a liquor store where the line to buy lottery tickets snaked to the back. She interviewed the folks who hung on the corners. If Ariel was to believe any of the people she talked to, the night somebody pumped ten bullets into Chloe Love, 47th Street had been as quiet as a Sunday in church.

  The trees on City University’s grounds were breathtaking in their winter clothes of snow and ice. From its cocoon of wealth, surrounded by some of the city’s most poverty-stricken neighborhoods, the school had produced Nobel scientists and celebrated authors. And had her young life not been stolen, most likely would have produced a bright lawyer named Chloe Love.

  Ariel got a list of Chloe’s professors and activities from the dean’s office. Chloe had carried a 3.8 grade point average out of 4.0. Had written for the campus newspaper, tutored a student, and still found time to work as a professor’s assistant.

  The professor was Michael Trenton, and he taught criminal justice. Ariel found him in a small cluttered office, his desktop littered with papers. He was younger than Ariel had expected, early forties, and stockily built with blond hair that fell into his eyes. Dressed in khaki pants, blue jean shirt with a print cotton tie, he looked more like a news reporter, yet he exuded a scholarly calmness.

  “This is one reason I miss her,” he said, holding up a stack of papers. “Chloe kept my paperwork up-to-date.”

  He began cramming the papers into a tan leather briefcase. “You mind walking with me to the parking lot while we talk? I have an appointment to get to.”

  “Sure,” Ariel said.

  Trenton opened the door for her, followed her out, and turned to lock it. Started down a narrow corridor.

  “Chloe was one of the brightest, most hardworking students I’ve taught in a long time,” he said. “She was like a sponge; trying to soak up as much knowledge as she could. Believed that the law would always win. That’s rare to find in anyone these days. A lot of us don’t hold on to that childlike optimism.”

  In the parking lot Trenton stopped in front of a red sports car.

  “How long had she worked for you?”

  “She took the assistant job in September. Usually came in for about three hours on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. She reviewed exams, kept my records. Just kept everything in good order. We’re all just devastated by what happened.” He opened the car door and climbed in. “She had such a good life ahead of her. If anybody didn’t deserve to die, it was Chloe.”

  By the time Ariel had talked to the rest of Chloe’s professors it was after three. Deadline time at the City Weekly, where the budding journalist had worked. The staff was scurrying around the newsroom like rats trying to get out of a maze. She went up to a young woman with russet hair past her waist who was intently banging on her computer keyboard. “I’m with the Chicago Police Department. Is your editor around?”

  The young woman paused and absorbed Ariel for a minute.

  “Is he?” Ariel asked again.

  “Her office is in that corner.” The young woman jerked her head toward the back and returned to her banging.

  The editor, a tall black woman with close-cropped natural hair, was huddled with a short guy with blotchy skin.

  “This photo looks like something my little sister would take, Arthur. Too grainy. Take Pete and see if you can get Professor Wickham to give us ten minutes for another shot.”

  Arthur screwed up his face. “Walking on hot coals would be a lot easier than getting that prima donna to give me more time.”

  “Yeah, well, Cartwright will have our butts if we print this.”

  Arthur sighed dramatically, took the photos, and stormed past Ariel.

  The editor rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Photographers,” she said. “You here about the reporter’s job?”

  Ariel smiled. She hadn’t had a compliment like that in a while. “Actually I came about a reporter.”

  The woman looked puzzled. Ariel showed her identification.

  “I’m looking into the death of Chloe Love.…”

  “Kind of late aren’t you—sister?” the woman snapped.

  The change in attitude took Ariel aback. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s been three weeks since Chloe was killed. That’s three years in your line of work.”

  “You know a lot about my work?”

  The tall woman shrugged. “Criminal justice courses. Chloe and I took a couple together.”

  “Nobody came to talk with you about Chloe?” Of course, she knew the answer, she just wanted to hear it firsthand.

  “Not a soul. Chloe was good people. She was going to make one hell of a reporter or judge, whatever she ended up doing. But who cares. She was just another—”

  “Don’t say it. That’s why I’m here. Her mother asked me to find Chloe’s killer, and that’s what I intend to do. Maybe you can help.”

  They looked at each other squarely. Ariel extended her hand. “Detective Ariel Lawrence.”

  The woman let her hang out there alone for a few awkward seconds before she accepted it.
“Eva Phillips.”

  “Can you tell me who Chloe hung out with? Could she have been involved in some bad business?”

  Eva shook her head vigorously. “Not Chloe. She was straight as an arrow. A crusader.”

  “What about her personal life. Boyfriend or anything?”

  Eva hunched her shoulders. “I really don’t think she was seeing anybody. She came in here three times a week to work on her stories. We didn’t party together or anything like that; we were both too busy trying to make the grades and graduate, so we didn’t see each other much outside of this place.”

  Ariel thought a moment.

  “How about her stories? Anything there that could have caused any problems?”

  Eva laughed. Her laughter was loud and deep. “You kidding? This is not the Washington Post. We don’t run anything that, in my adviser’s words, is not a positive representation of this prestigious institution.”

  Sean O’Hallihan was a freckled-face sophomore with thick carrot hair. In three quarters, Chloe had helped him pump up his English grade from a D to a B.

  “She was cool,” he said. “Real cool.”

  “You two ever talk about anything other than English? Did you ever see or meet any of her friends?”

  Sean looked down at his gray Nikes. “Not really. I know she was dating some guy. I saw her with him once.” His tone was wistful. He bent his head and studied the red swooshes on his shoes. Had Sean O’Hallihan had a crush on Chloe?

  “He was real tall and sort of skinny.”

  “A student here?”

  Sean finally looked up. “I’d seen him around.” He wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something bad. “Wouldn’t know his name, though.”

  “The last time you saw Chloe was she her normal self?”

  Sean shrugged. “Guess so. We didn’t get to talk much really.”

  “Too busy going for that A, huh?”

  “She said she had to get out early.” He looked at his Nikes again. “I figured she had a date or something.”

  Mrs. Love, her tired eyes drawn into slits, led Ariel to what had been her daughter’s bedroom. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to put her things away.” She said it almost as if that made her a bad mom.