“I can’t do that,” Fitzgerald said, sticking the cigar in his mouth, plastic wrapper and all. “You know I can’t release evidence in a homicide.”
“You have to,” Stella pleaded. “I don’t know who’s involved in this, who we can trust. Those pieces of metal are the most valuable evidence we have right now. You turn them over to Carl Winters or someone else at the P.D. and they may disappear. How do we know how many people are mixed up in this? For all I know, Holly Oppenheimer is involved as well.”
“That’s preposterous,” the older D.A. said. “This pension scam, if there is such a thing, only involves police officers. Why would you think my people would be involved?”
“Winters isn’t one of your people, remember?” Stella said. “He’s a cop, Jack, and he’s been out to railroad me for years. If Winters is involved, then Oppenheimer can’t be trusted either. She and Winters are tight. Holly is a jealous, vindictive woman. She’ll do anything to convict me.”
“Hmmmm,” he said, pondering her request. “You’re asking me to do something that could compromise our case. Not only that, it’s highly irregular.”
Stella leaped to her feet. “What case?” she shouted. “The case against me? There is no case. Don’t you realize that now? If I’m the bad guy, why is someone trying to kill me?” She thrust her chin out in defiance. “A good woman was shot tonight, Fitzgerald. Add up the deaths. My parents, Randall, and now, Brenda Anderson almost lost her life. How long is it going to be before you wise up?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You’re still facing murder charges, young lady, no matter what happened tonight. This here shooting may have no connection to the crimes you’ve been charged with. Just because a man is running a pension scam doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. For all I know, you’re simply trying to pull a fast one on us, take advantage of this situation.”
Blood rushed to Stella’s face. “I resent that,” she snapped. “I’m trying to put together your damn case, Fitzgerald. Not only did you put me on trial for something I didn’t do, your idiot prosecutors created a fucking nightmare. If you hadn’t gone after me, Randall would be alive and Anderson wouldn’t have been shot tonight. When I turn up with a bullet in my head—”
Fitzgerald held up a hand. “Calm down, okay,” he said. “Let’s say I do agree to give you this evidence and see what you can make of it, where exactly would you want me to send it?”
Stella knew the name of the lab, but it had momentarily disappeared from her memory, so she made up a name of a lab and jotted down Mario’s address beneath it. “Anderson was certain those metal chips came from a Zippo lighter. If we can make out the inscription, you might have enough evidence to bring charges against my uncle.”
Fitzgerald still looked unconvinced. “And the information on the pension scam,” he said, scratching the side of his face. “Where is it?”
“Anderson probably stored it in her computer,” Stella told him. “Why don’t we make a deal? I‘11 give you what we have on Clem Cataloni. In exchange, you send me the metal chips. As soon as I get the results, I‘11 send a copy of the report directly to your office, along with the evidence.”
“I didn’t say I’d do it,” he drawled. “I have to look into this and give it some serious thought. You know, I have people of my own I can trust.”
“You owe me, Fitzgerald,” she said, fixing him with an icy gaze. “Do you know what I’ve been through? I could have been killed out there tonight. At least give me a chance to protect myself and prove who’s behind all this.” Stella could see her plea for compassion was falling on deaf ears, so she switched tactics. “I could sue for unlawful detainment, false arrest, loss of wages, and libel. My career is seriously tarnished, and I was flying high before this went down. This was the most trumped-up case I’ve ever seen, Jack.” She pointed a finger at him. “I’m a D.A, for Christ’s sake. Let me try to put this together before you and your people end up looking like a bunch of idiots.”
Fitzgerald drew himself to full height. ‘Til let you know,” he said, shuffling toward the door.
“Whatever you do,” Stella cautioned, “you better do it fast. If you don’t, more lives will be lost.”
Stella stopped to check on Anderson’s parents, and then took a taxi to the hotel, her eyes smarting in the early morning sun. She was relieved to find the car was still in the hotel parking lot and that the police had not towed it off as evidence. Because the shooting had occurred outside, she assumed they didn’t think anything could be accomplished by examining it. She needed to find Anderson’s computer, but after checking inside the car, she remembered that the investigator had been carrying it at the time of the shooting. The police had more than likely taken the computer in with the rest of the evidence. Now Stella would have to go through miles of red tape to get it back.
She picked up her key at the desk and headed upstairs to her room, thinking that tomorrow she would have to switch hotels. It was doubtful that the shooter would come back tonight, though, she decided, unlocking the door to her room. She didn’t believe he would be stupid enough to try to ambush her again in the same hotel.
She had ripped off her clothes and entered the shower when she heard the phone ringing in the other room. Grabbing a towel, she rushed to answer it.
“Is this Stella Cataloni?” a man’s voice said.
“Yes,” she said. “Who is this?”
“Victor Pilgrim,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
Stella had not slept all night. By the time she arrived at Jack Fitzgerald’s office at nine o’clock, her eyes were bloodshot and her skin had an unhealthy pallor. Growman was waiting in the outer office, having just arrived from Dallas. “I called your hotel from the airport,” he said, eyeing the man standing next to her. “They said you left instructions that I should come straight here. What’s going on, Stella?”
“This,” Stella said, tilting her head to the side, “is Victor Pilgrim, the state’s primary witness.”
“I see,” Growman said. “Want to fill me in?”
“There’s no use telling the story twice,” she said. “Is Fitzgerald here yet? I called him at home and told him we were coming.”
Growman walked over to the secretary’s desk, waiting as she buzzed the district attorney over the intercom. Once Fitzgerald’s secretary had announced them, they entered his musky office and took seats in the heavy oak chairs around his desk. “Mr. Pilgrim has something to say,” Stella said. “Go on, Vic. Tell them what you told me.”
Victor Pilgrim was a plain-looking man, with light brown hair and a thin mustache. He was dressed in a pink polo shirt and cotton slacks. At one time he was probably robust and fit, but at present he was stooped-shouldered and whatever muscles he had once possessed had turned to flab. “Where do I start?” he said, a pathetic look on his face.
“Start from the beginning,” Stella said. “Tell them exactly what you told me.”
He hesitated a moment, then sighed. “I was injured on duty,” he said slowly, “when I was a deputy with the San Antonio Sheriffs Department a number of years back. In the beginning I didn’t have any beefs. My medical care was adequate and everyone at the department was supportive. But once my sick leave was used up, the brass demanded that I come back to work. They said I could have a desk job until I could go back to patrol.” He cleared his throat. “I knew I could never go back to patrol. It isn’t just my leg, see, it’s my wife.”
“She’s legally blind,” Stella said. “Victor said she was raped. During the attack the rapist hit her over the head with a baseball bat. The blows to the head caused both her retinas to detach.”
“Everything just happened at once,” Pilgrim continued. “First, my accident and then my wife was attacked. I didn’t want to put her in a nursing home. I love my wife. How could I leave her alone all day by herself?”
“Please go on,” Fitzgerald said, firing up a cigar and puffing clouds of smoke out into the room. “If you
were legitimately disabled, why didn’t the San Antonio department give you a pension?”
“Don’t think I didn’t fight for it,” Pilgrim said. “I got an attorney and everything, but we still lost. These people, I don’t know,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Seems as if they do everything in their power to make it tough on guys like me. They said I was malingering, you know, making it up. The county physician swore there was no physical reason for me to limp. Maybe he was right and I just didn’t want to leave my wife. A person’s mind is a strange thing.”
“How did you meet Cataloni?” Growman asked.
“Well, while I was out on leave after the accident,” Pilgrim told him, “I got involved in the Knights of Columbus. It was just something to do, a way to keep myself occupied. We had a big affair in Houston and that’s where I met Clem.” He stopped, as if searching for words. “I don’t know exactly how it went down. I mentioned something about my problems, and Clem said he could help. All I had to do was transfer to Houston, he told me. He promised he’d get me hired without a physical. I just had to hide the limp.” Pilgrim shrugged. “He even suggested that I learn to walk in a certain way so it seemed as if the limp was nothing more than a distinctive walk. Kind of like a swagger, he said. That’s the exact words he used too.” He paused and looked Fitzgerald in the eye. “Just swagger, he told me, and they’ll never know the difference.”
“Tell them what happened after you got to Houston,” Stella interjected.
“Well, nothing much happened,” he said. “I went to work in patrol. It was hard, but I took a lot of pills and tried my best not to limp or get in a foot pursuit. My wife stayed in San Antonio with her sister. After about six months Cataloni gave me these papers, certifying me as permanently disabled. They were signed by the city doctor, but I never even met the guy.”
“How were you supposedly injured?” Growman asked.
“One night he staged an accident, see, making it appear as if I had hurt my leg on duty. He set it up to look like a hit and run, but I never went to the hospital. He supplied me with papers that said I went to the hospital. I even had bills from the hospital, but I guess they were all just phonies he had made up at some printing company. Regardless, the city accepted them and I finally got my pension.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Stella said, leaning forward. When Pilgrim gave her a blank look, she said, “What about the money, Vic?”
“Oh,” he said, “Cataloni made me pay him twenty grand for the documentation papers. I didn’t have that much saved, so he agreed to let me pay him in installments. I think I still owe him about five grand.” His face flushed. “That’s why I agreed to do it, see. He said he’d wipe my debt clean if I did it, and with my wife’s problems, money is hard to come by right now.”
“Do what?” Growman said. “Spell it out, Pilgrim.”
“Say I saw a woman in a white rental car leaving the scene of the Randall homicide.”
Although Stella had already heard his story, she found it hard to suppress her outrage. Fidgeting in her seat, she said, “It was more than that, wasn’t it, Vic? You positively identified me from a photo lineup.”
“Clem coerced me into doing it,” he said defensively. “He said they needed a positive ID, and just saying I saw a woman in a white car wasn’t good enough.”
“Your statements were all lies?” Fitzgerald said, biting down hard on his cigar. “I want to make sure I’m hearing this right. Everything you told the police was fabricated, fed to you by Clem Cataloni? You never saw this woman at the scene of the crime?”
“Yeah,” Pilgrim said, scratching at an angry rash on his forearm. “But I didn’t know Clem was the one who shot and killed the guy. I would never get involved in something like that—a murder, for God’s sake. This is what he told me, see. He told me his niece had murdered his brother and sister-in-law and got away with it. He said she killed this Randall guy as well, but they’d never be able to prove it if I didn’t help them. I thought I was doing a public service, you know, getting some dangerous criminal off the street.”
“Did you really believe that?” Growman asked.
“Yeah,” Pilgrim said, completely earnest. “I swear I did. If I had thought the woman was innocent, I’d never have agreed to do it. I was a cop, see, a damn good cop. I may not be a cop anymore, but I still have values.” He started scratching at his arm again. “I’m not a bad person, really,” he said, glancing down at the rash and seeing that he had drawn blood. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.” He grimaced. “Now I’m fucked, aren’t I?”
“What made you come forward today?” Fitzgerald asked.
“Because he shot that lady,” he shouted, the first time he had raised his voice. “She was one of us, in law enforcement, you know. How could I remain silent and let him get away with that? This Anderson woman didn’t kill anyone. She was just trying to do her job.”
“When you say he,” Growman said, thinking they should be recording Pilgrim’s statements, “are you referring to Cataloni? These are serious allegations. You have to be specific.”
“Of course it was Cataloni,” Pilgrim said, glowering. “Who else have I been talking about?”
“How can you be sure he was the one who shot her?”
“Easy,” Pilgrim said. “He tried to get me to do it for him and I refused.”
The room fell silent. Fitzgerald looked over at Stella and then at Growman, shocked at what he had heard. Pilgrim started clawing at his arm again. Stella pulled a tissue out of her purse and handed it to Pilgrim to blot the blood. “When Brenda Anderson and I came to your house,” she said, “why didn’t you come clean then? If you had, this poor woman wouldn’t be in a hospital right now fighting for her life.”
“I was afraid,” Pilgrim said, his eyes widening. “Captain Cataloni isn’t the only one involved in this pension deal. No one wanted this thing to come to light.”
“Aren’t you afraid now?” Stella asked. “If you give us the names of these individuals you just mentioned, we can have warrants issued for their arrest.”
“Not on your life,” he answered, letting Stella know that she was reaching the end of the line. He had stepped forward and admitted his involvement, but he would not roll over on his fellow officers. At least not until he had been offered the right incentive. “Are you guys going to offer me immunity?”
“Now wait just a minute,” Fitzgerald said. He had been nodding off, the lack of sleep from the night before taking its toll. When he heard the word immunity, he sprang back to life. “I’m a little confused here. Who did Cataloni want you to shoot? Brenda Anderson?”
“No,” Pilgrim said, pointing at Stella. “She’s the one he wanted dead. Didn’t you hear what I said a few minutes ago? He thought she killed his brother.”
“What about Randall? Did Cataloni kill Randall?”
“I don’t know,” Pilgrim said. “He could have, I guess, but he tried to make me think his niece had done it.” He paused, looking around the room, as if he wasn’t certain where to direct his next question. “What are you guys going to offer me? I can’t go to jail because of my wife. Are you going to grant me immunity in exchange for my testimony?”
Growman started to speak, then deferred to Fitzgerald. He would have no say as to what happened to Victor Pilgrim as the crimes had occurred outside of his jurisdiction.
Fitzgerald’s beady eyes flashed, and a glimpse of the feisty young prosecutor he had once been reappeared. “In this city, Mr. Pilgrim,” he said forcefully, “you do the crime, you do the time.
“If you’re looking for a free ride, you’ve come to the wrong town.”
By two o’clock that afternoon, Fitzgerald had secured an arrest warrant for Stella’s uncle for multiple counts of fraud, along with one count of attempted murder in the shooting of Brenda Anderson.
“I can’t believe it,” Stella told Growman. “Are they moving too fast? Do they have enough to make the charges stick? I pushed them, but I don’t want t
hem to do anything to compromise the case.”
“They have Pilgrim,” he said. “Right now that’s all they need. Once they arrest your uncle, they’ll search his house. Then they’ll run ballistics tests on the guns in his gun cabinet. If they find the weapons used to shoot Brenda and Randall, your uncle’s down for the count.”
As soon as Stella finished speaking to Growman, she left the D.A.‘s office and rushed to the hospital to see Brenda Anderson. The investigator had still not regained consciousness.
“What does the doctor say?” she asked, finding Anderson’s parents in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit.
“She’s in a coma,” Milton Anderson said. “The longer she stays out, the greater the chance the coma could be permanent.”
Stella put her hand over her mouth, trying to keep from crying. She glanced through the glass windows to Brenda’s room and saw all the tubes and equipment. Once she regained her composure, she asked the nurse if she could go in to see her.
“Are you family?” she asked.
“Yes,” Stella said, overlooking the fact that her skin was a different color.
“I guess it’s all right then,” the nurse said, bending her head back down to her chart.
Stella walked into the room. She was shocked when she saw Brenda’s face. She looked so different, so helpless and frail. Leaning close to the bed, she spoke into her ear. “You have to wake up, Brenda. Everyone’s here for you. Your mother and father are here. I’m here. We all love you and want you to get well.”
For a long time Stella just stood there, not knowing what to say or do. It was such a tragic situation. Stella felt her heart wrenching as she pressed Brenda’s limp hand. “We’re going to get him, Brenda. I only wish you could be there,” she said. “We’re going to arrest my uncle this evening at five o’clock. Pilgrim confessed to everything. Because of you, I’m going to be cleared.”
Stella felt a tiny flicker in the palm of her hand. Brenda’s eyes were still shut, but Stella was certain she could hear her. “You’re a hero,” she continued. “Don’t you want to bask in the glory? I bet you’ll get a commendation and everything. In fact, I’ll make certain of it.”
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