Hard Line

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “Me?” Fleetwood asked.

  “I’m not giving orders to myself.”

  “It’s going to take me a while.”

  “I’ve got a while. Good practice, rolling yourself around. How did you get along this morning?”

  “I managed.”

  “There you are,” he said. “All that department money spent on fancy wheelchairs and car modifications must be worth it.”

  “Every single cent came from contributions while I was in hospital,” Fleetwood said angrily.

  “And here you are on your first big Missing Persons case. Got to make the kids’ hearts warm that broke open their piggy banks for you.”

  “I didn’t ask for it. Powder. But I’ll take help wherever I can get it.”

  He dabbed at an eye with a finger. “I’d lend you a hanky, only mine isn’t back from the laundry yet.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lieutenant Gaulden, the officer in charge of police personnel assignments, appeared in Missing Persons shortly after three.

  “Hello, Powder. On your own?”

  “Yes,” Powder said. He finished a report form slowly. Then he rose from his desk to face Gaulden across the counter. “Busy as hell,” he said. “Absolutely swamped.”

  “You have a secretary in here, don’t you?”

  “Only part-time. I beg her to stay on into the afternoon, I offer to pay her out of my own pocket, but the poor kid is so shattered from all that she has to do in the mornings that she can’t face any more.”

  “That’s the one who takes computer classes in the afternoons, isn’t it?”

  “When she’s up to it,” Powder said. “But can I ask you what you want? I don’t mean to be impolite, but I am really up to my ears.”

  “I stopped in to see how Fleetwood is getting along.”

  “Fine, just fine,” Powder said.

  “Where is she? At physiotherapy?”

  “She doesn’t have time for that in working hours. Too busy. She’s on a case.”

  “Outside?” Gaulden asked sharply.

  “We don’t miss many people inside the department.”

  “We agreed that she wouldn’t go out,” Gaulden said.

  “I don’t think we did,” Powder said slowly. “You said, ‘Of course she won’t be able to do much outside the office.’ That isn’t agreement.”

  “I explained why we assigned her to you when the appointment was confirmed,” Gaulden said. He waved a finger in the direction of Powder’s nose.

  “You said she was immobile and ought to be somewhere like Public Liaison. But I find that she gets around pretty well. And,” Powder continued, warming to his theme, “considering that you gave me the choice of a full-time secretary and no other help or continuing with Agnes and getting Sergeant Fleetwood, I think I’m coming out of your shortsighted, Missing-Persons-is-shit deal pretty well. I need an all-day secretary and three full-time cops to make this service one to be proud of.”

  “Stow it. Powder. I don’t decide manning levels.”

  Abruptly Powder stopped. “I would love to continue this discussion with you, but I’ve got too damn much work to do. Good-bye, Gaulden.”

  “You haven’t heard the last of this. Powder. Fleetwood could do this force a power of good, if she would think of the team instead of selfish preferences.”

  “You mean by trading on pity for the rest of her working life? I wasn’t all that certain before, but it doesn’t sound like much of a contribution the way you sell it.”

  Fleetwood looked pale and tired when she returned to the office. Powder watched as she worked herself into position behind the counter. “You look terrible,” he said. “Take a load off your feet.”

  The telephone rang, so Powder didn’t hear Fleetwood’s response, if any.

  The call, from County Hospital, was to inform him that the woman who had fainted in Missing Persons in the morning had just decided that their unidentified corpse was not that of her missing husband.

  “You can’t win them all, Cedric,” Powder told the administrator.

  Then an angry bald man in a red shirt walked in.

  “Missing Persons?”

  “So it says on the door,” Powder said.

  “Well, I’m missing somebody and when I find him, I’m going to kill him.”

  “You want Homicide. Kill him first, then go upstairs to the fourth floor.”

  The red-shirted man took a cigarette out and tapped it on the counter. “Smartass, huh?”

  “I said to kill him, not me. You want to smoke, go out in the street.”

  Powder and the man stared at each other in what was suddenly a test of wills.

  No contest. The man put his cigarette away. “Goddamn public servant, huh?”

  “What can we do for you, sir?”

  “I got a tenant. He’s crapped out on me and he took a TV set and my video with him. I want him found.”

  “Burglary is upstairs too.”

  “I know,” the man said.

  Powder frowned.

  “I went to Detectives. They said that the kind of information I have on the guy wasn’t going to find him.”

  “Yes?”

  “So this cop said,‘They don’t have a lot to do in Missing Persons. Try down there.’”

  “Did you get his name?”

  “The cop? Naw. Little guy, head like a tennis ball. Kind of a little fur all over. And no taste in clothes, this guy. Brown shoes with gray slacks.”

  Powder took details.

  The tenant had been in the room for only a month and the red-shirted man held an extra month’s rent in advance.

  “I’m not completely out of pocket, but it’s the principle of the thing. Guys shouldn’t be able just to disappear with TV sets and videos, you know?”

  When the office was empty again. Powder turned his attention back to Fleetwood.

  “So, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “You look like you been out all day but you’re not strong enough to cut it, that’s what you look like.”

  “I said nothing. All right?”

  “Gaulden was in here a little while ago. He wants you in Public Liaison. What do you think of that?”

  “It’s supposed to be a newsflash or something?”

  “I told him forget it. She’s too bad-tempered to do PR. That’s what I told him. So, see? I’m on your side.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me about the check stubs.”

  Fleetwood leaned her head on one hand for several seconds. Then she bestirred herself and found her notebook. “Three stubs,” she said. “One for cash at the bank—”

  “Anybody remember her there?”

  “I had them trace the teller. But she doesn’t remember the transaction.”

  “All right.”

  “One stub was at Ayres. Downtown. She bought a large nylon travel bag and she told the sales assistant that it was for her husband.”

  “The hell she did!”

  “She said he was going on a business trip, that day, and wanted her to get a new bag for him.”

  “That day being Friday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the third check?”

  “Train ticket.”

  “From Union Station?”

  “No. A travel bureau in the neighborhood of the store. Ticket to Washington.”

  “D.C.?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the same story about buying the ticket for her husband?”

  Fleetwood nodded. “It wasn’t the first time. She’d bought tickets for her husband’s trips half a dozen times this year.”

  “Well, well,” Powder said. “And did you ask Weaver about all this?”

  “No,” Fleetwood said, looking at him sharply.

  Powder picked up the phone and called William G. Weaver, Jr.

  “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions,” Powder told him.

  “Do you want me to come in
again?”

  “No, no. Now on the phone is fine.” Powder could picture the man’s expressionless face waiting rigidly with the receiver pressed against his ear.

  “You haven’t heard anything from Annie, by the way?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Powder said. “Now, she took money out of the joint account on Friday.”

  “Yes.”

  “My colleague . . . you remember her?”

  “The young lady. Yes.”

  “My colleague has also learned that your wife bought a train ticket to Washington, D.C., and a traveling bag, both on Friday.”

  “Did she now?” Weaver said calmly.

  “Yes. The thing that I wanted to check was this. When Annie bought the ticket and the bag, she told the sales people that she was buying them for you.”

  There was silence at the end of the line.

  “Mr. Weaver? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Did you ask your wife to buy a ticket and a bag for you?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “But you had asked her to make traveling arrangements for you in the past?”

  “She bought tickets for me. Never a bag. I didn’t need another bag.”

  “And where do you go on these trips?”

  “Various cities.”

  “As far away as Washington?”

  “Once to New York, but usually closer. Chicago, Cleveland—”

  “And what is the purpose of the trips?”

  “I go to conferences and exhibitions. The field of security systems is developing very quickly and I have to work hard to keep up with what is happening.”

  “I expect you’ve been sitting rather nervously by the telephone since Annie left, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Uh, I’ve—”

  “In case she contacted you. Surely that’s more likely to happen even than our finding her.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t expect her to call, then?”

  “I have decided that if she did all this, she is not about to change her mind in a matter of a couple of days.”

  “I understand that you are getting away from it all this weekend.”

  “Yes. I told your young lady.”

  “Camping. Right. I hope you have an enjoyable time, Mr.Weaver.”

  “Thank you.” Weaver paused. “Is that all, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes. Good-bye, Mr. Weaver.”

  Powder put the phone down and rubbed his face with both hands.

  Then he turned suddenly to Sergeant Fleetwood. “It’s nearly four-thirty,” he said. “Why don’t you call it a day, kid?”

  Before she could say anything, the telephone rang. Powder answered it.

  The manager from the bus station said, “I tried you earlier but it was busy. I couldn’t keep calling.”

  “Quite all right. What have you found out?”

  Rather proudly: “I can say, for sure, there was no unclaimed luggage on the bus that arrived here or on any possible connecting buses from St. Paul. The head counts on those buses worked out, clear back to St. Paul.”

  Powder thanked the man extravagantly.

  After Powder hung up, Fleetwood asked,“What was that about?”

  “When a member of the public helps you out, it’s good PR to make a bit of a fuss over him.”

  “I meant. . .” she began. “Oh, forget it.”

  “Why are you still here? I thought I told you to go home.”

  “I am being met after work,” she said. “But thanks.”

  “Don’t ‘thanks’ me, kid. The way you look, you remind me that I’m going to die one day.”

  Fleetwood said nothing.

  “What’s that call about?” Powder asked rhetorically. “It’s about that somewhere, in this fair city, there is a niece who didn’t make it to her auntie’s.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do something useful. Call the cab companies and get a list of who picked up female fares at the bus station last night between seven and nine. Women alone or women with men. And where they went. Once you’ve got that, start tracking back through the drivers and find one who saw a woman of this description.” Powder took the description of Marianna Gilkis from the missing niece’s file and slapped it down in front of Sergeant Fleetwood.

  She was still on the telephone at five when a nervous, muscular man of about thirty hesitated outside the door and then came in.

  “We’re closed,” Powder said. “Come back tomorrow.”

  The man stood without speaking, and Fleetwood finished her call.

  “This is the man who is meeting me, Lieutenant,” she said. “Mark Capes, this is Lieutenant Powder.”

  “Capes,” Powder said. “Capes. Wasn’t that the name of the guy you jumped in front of to take the bullet that landed you in that chair?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Because he intended to go out again. Powder parked in front of his house. He walked along the side and went to the garage.

  At the garage’s side door he stopped. An Indiana Bell lineman’s truck was parked in the alley.

  “Hey! Dad!”

  Ricky was up a pole that stood at the edge of the shed next to Powder’s garage.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Ricky called, as if assuaging a nervous father’s fears. “I just have to make the final hooks.”

  Powder entered the garage and took down two rolls of garden wire from a considerable stock on a dusty shelf. He also picked up the drawer he had repaired.

  He walked back to his car. He put the wire in the trunk, then took the drawer to his neighbor. He went to his kitchen, where he made some coffee.

  Shortly after the coffee was ready, Ricky Powder walked in, carrying gloves under his arm and looking mightily pleased with himself.

  “Coffee? Great!”

  Powder poured two cups.

  “You have any sugar?”

  Powder brought a bowl of brown sugar from a shelf.

  “Hey, I don’t mean to be a bother. Dad, but do you have any of the old-fashioned white stuff? This has a funny taste.”

  “Brown is all I have,” Powder said.

  Ricky sniffed. He spooned some in.

  “What were you doing out there?” Powder asked.

  “I put a phone in my room, so I can make calls without it costing you.”

  “Oh,” Powder said.

  “Ma Bell has a little spare capacity she won’t miss.”

  “I see.”

  “Hey, it doesn’t mean I’m going to stay forever. I just like to put a phone in wherever I’m in residence more than a day or two. I don’t have many talents, so I like to use what I’ve got.”

  “You have talents,” Powder said suddenly.

  “All right. Skills. I don’t have many skills.”

  Powder said nothing.

  “Just because I’m living here doesn’t mean you’re going to lecture me again about dropping out of college, does it?” Ricky asked aggressively.

  “Who’s lecturing who?”

  Powder rose and moved his coffee cup to the sink draining board. “I’m off for a while,” he said. “Don’t get the police out if I’m late.”

  Powder drove to a plot of land he owned on the north-east side of the city, just off Alisonville Road, a low-lying section of a former field where he grew things.

  Over a period of, years he had created a complex I patchwork garden with a well-established orchard, unusual flowers, vegetables, and soft fruits. There were also three tiny buildings, housing chemicals, tools, and clothes.

  Powder changed clothes and worked for two hours, splitting his time between making a wire framework ready for asparagus ferns later in the year and hoeing some ground where there were no weeds. He was not a man to let a little work stand between him and what he wanted to see accomplished. If you hoe where there are no weeds there will be no weeds.

  At eight he packed up. In one of his sheds he toweled down and changed back to nongardening clothes.

&n
bsp; At a quarter to nine Powder arrived outside the house that corresponded to the home address on Fleetwood’s file. It was a tiny single-story prefab, off College just south of the river.

  He rang the bell and stood patiently outside the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Leroy Powder, Sergeant.”

  “Who?” But the question was more of surprise than failure to understand.

  When Fleetwood opened the door she asked, “Whatever do you want?”

  “That’s not very sociable. Sergeant. Invite me in.”

  Powder sat in a lightly upholstered chair that was one of a pair in the joint living-dining room.

  “I would have guessed you’d be living with parents or relatives,” Powder said.

  “And now you see that I’m not,” Fleetwood said. “What is this, an inspection? Making sure that I’m not faking, that I don’t live in an apartment at the top of six flights of stairs?”

  “You have no reason to be impolite,” Powder said. “I was passing by and I dropped in. That’s all.”

  Fleetwood’s face expressed her disbelief.

  “All right, I’m a liar,” Powder said easily. “I was thinking about one of our cases and wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “I’m having a little trouble absorbing this,” Fleetwood said.

  “Too fast for you? Sorry. Have you got a beer?”

  “There’s one in the icebox.”

  Powder stayed in his seat. “Guests have to serve themselves? A house rule?”

  Fleetwood brought him a can of beer.

  “I was thinking about this woman who is trying to keep the world from identifying her until she gets a chance to kill herself. Did I show you that file?”

  “No,” Fleetwood said.

  He told her about Jane Doe Aurora Sheila Smith in between sips of beer.

  “I find it hard to find an alternative hypothesis to that which says she cut her face because I threatened to spread her picture around.”

  They sat quietly for a moment.

  Powder said, “So there is someone who might not be hurt as much by her disappearing as by knowing that she killed herself.”

  “Sounds like parents or close family.”

  “Mmmm,” Powder said.