“You asked her if that was what she meant?”
“I did. She said he had a history of substance abuse problems, rehab, and so on. She said he had been slowly killing himself for years. I guess he was divorced a few years ago, lost his wife and kids. One of those guys who figures out he’s gay when he’s older. Or maybe just admits to himself.”
“Do you think it was a suicide?”
“I did. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I didn’t to mean to suggest you shouldn’t be sure. I change my mind on cases too,” Hastings said. “I don’t know either. Odds are he probably did kill himself. Or maybe he was just thinking about it and fell in. But if it’s a suicide, why would he come all the way out here to do it?”
“It’s a peaceful place. Maybe that’s what he wanted.”
“You think that?”
“I’d like to think that because I’d like to wrap this up. That doesn’t mean I think it though.”
Hastings was beginning to see why they had made this man chief. In addition to being a natural leader, he was conscientious and intelligent. He had expected the man to be dismissive of the homosexual loser, but he was pretty thoughtful about it. He was also secure enough to admit he hadn’t considered everything.
Chief Dobbs said, “This may be a little beyond my capability.”
“I don’t think so,” Hastings said.
“I can call state police, see if they want to investigate it as a homicide. But it would be up to them, not up to me.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary yet,” Hastings said. “To be honest, I’d kind of like to clear it myself. Tell myself it’s just a suicide and forget about it. But I promised my friend that I’d…well, that I’d do more than that.”
“I understand. I should be able to get the names of the owners to you sometime today. If not today, then no later than tomorrow.”
On the interstate, he wondered if the trip had done him any good. He had left town because he wanted to quit thinking about the Bradbury lawsuit and he thought the long drive to the lake would help. It did and it didn’t. For a couple of hours he managed to quit thinking about bankruptcy and asshole lawyers and monsters walking free. But now he was starting to wonder why Johnny Rodgers would drive all the way to the Lake of the Ozarks to kill himself. It didn’t make sense. Why would he have a contusion? Hastings would have liked to have the body so he could have the St. Louis M.E. go over it. But the body was gone. Probably in a grave by now. He would have liked to have the St. Louis techs go over John Rodgers’s car, but that was gone too. Chief Dobbs seemed like a good cop and he wanted to help. But apart from that, Hastings had very little to work with. It wasn’t his jurisdiction.
He knew Terry well enough to know that if he went back and told her the local police chief was a good guy and, yes, indeed it just looked like a plain old suicide, Terry would believe him and be eternally grateful to him for taking the time to go down there. But that would be a deceit. And all the worse because she would believe him. Besides that, he was a homicide detective and he sensed that something was not right here. His questions had even made Chief Dobbs unsure. And even Chief Dobbs might think less of him if he suddenly dropped it. It seemed silly, worrying about what a small town cop would think of him. But he worried about it anyway, likely because he respected the cop.
He was quiet when Dobbs drove him back to his car. He had started worrying about the lawsuit again. He wanted to talk about it with someone but he was too embarrassed to discuss it with the cop. Dobbs might have thought he was being a baby. Big city detective skeered of a lawsuit.
He was on outskirts of St. Louis when his cell phone rang. It was Klosterman.
Klosterman said, “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Hastings said. “I’m taking a couple of days off. I’ve got some comp time coming and I figured I should use it before I lose it.”
“Okay. But why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I told Karen and I…sorry, I should have told you.”
“You’re all right, aren’t you?”
“I think so. The chief encouraged me to take a few days off. What with the lawsuit and all.”
“He thinks you’re cracking up?”
“He didn’t say that. I guess he thought I looked tired.”
“Oh. Well, no one here thinks you’re slipping.”
“Would you tell me if you thought I was?”
“I’m pretty sure I would,” Klosterman said. “How did the meeting with the city attorney go?”
Hastings told him.
Klosterman said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish I was.”
“Oh, those fucking assholes. They wouldn’t dare try to lay this off on you. It’s that fucking chicken shit mayor we have.”
“I don’t think it was his call. The mayor doesn’t know I exist. They said it has something to do with strategy.”
“They’re not trying to pressure you to resign, are they?”
Hastings hadn’t even considered that. Until now. He said, “Christ, I don’t think so. If they did, it would only hurt them. It’d be like admitting I’d fucked up.”
“The only one who fucked up was that dipshit jury and that judge with his head up his ass. I ought to call the O’Reilly Factor.”
“Don’t do that. Please don’t do that.”
“Well then at least local media.”
“Joe, seriously. Do not do that. I’m asking you as a friend.”
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t help anything. The system will work.”
“Like it did on Bradbury?”
Shit. The man kind of had a point there.
Klosterman said, “Murph had to deal with Devin Cloud once. When he was in patrol, he and Mike Davis arrested some shitbird for speeding and they took him back to the station and he blew up. Kicked Davis in the balls. So Murph and a few other guys joined in and subdued him and put him back in the holding cell. The shitbird later files a suit for excessive force.”
“Did Murph use excessive force?”
“Oh, the man got some love, yeah. But nothing he didn’t ask for. He had a tiny cut on his forehead. They called in EMTs and when they got there the shitbird refused treatment. But when he filed the suit, he claimed he had permanent disfigurement. Anyway, Cloud represented Murph and Davis and Murph said he treated them like they were criminals. Like he was a public defender there to save their bad asses. And they hadn’t done anything wrong. Gave them no respect at all.”
“That’s the vibe I got.”
“Well if that’s the case, you’re probably better off being represented by someone else.”
“I hope so,” Hastings said. “Hey, what happened on Murph’s case?”
“He never told you about it? The City offered the shitbird five hundred bucks to settle and he grabbed it. Though Murph thinks he was in jail for something else at the time.”
Hastings cooked a pot of chili when he got home. He had two bowls with some onions and cheese on top and chased it down with a glass of iced water. A couple of years ago he would have chased it down with a bottle of beer, but his stomach had gotten less tolerant of alcohol in his middle years. His eyesight had deteriorated too. He had to wear a stronger prescription contact lens and he didn’t see things as well at night. Middle age was creeping up on him.
He poured the leftover chili into a container and put it in the refrigerator. It would taste better when it sat for a couple of days. He looked forward to serving it to Amy when she got back from her vacation.
He brewed some coffee and sat down to drink it while he watched ESPN.
The commentators were discussing what baseball teams looked good in spring training. Oddly enough, he had little interest in baseball. Talk of the Cardinals bored him. Though a baseball scholarship had gotten him out of Nebraska and to a college in St. Louis, he found the game uninteresting. He preferred football, particularly college football. He was a fan of the Universit
y of Nebraska football program and he missed the days when Nebraska was a contender.
Then he remembered the connection. Johnnie Rodgers. The famous running back for Nebraska who scored the winning touchdown against Oklahoma in the 1971 game. The so-called Game of the Century that Okies still insisted they should have won because an Oklahoma defender had been illegally blocked, thereby allowing Rodgers to score the touchdown.
Johnnie Rodgers the running back had had some run-ins with the law. What about Johnny Rodgers the hairdresser? He could do an NCIS search and see.
He checked his e-mail. There was a message from his daughter. She said they were having a great time. Today they had gone scuba diving and they had had crabcakes for lunch. She clipped a photo to the message. Eileen and Ted and Amy sitting on a chartered boat in their bathing suits, smiling and happy.
The sight of Amy enjoying herself with her mother and stepfather wounded him. He knew it was wrong to feel that way — like, would he have preferred that Amy not enjoy herself? But it hurt and depressed him all the same. Deep down, he knew Ted was not a bad guy and that he did love Amy. But it didn’t seem fair. Ted never had to do the day to day parent tasks that Hastings did. Never had to tell Amy to do her homework or clean up her room or remind her to thank Mrs. McGregor for her generosity or warn her about hanging around the wrong sort of kids. Ted never had to do the heavy lifting. But Ted could afford to pay for private school and trips to Jamaica. Ted could afford to charter boats.
Klosterman’s wife, a kind and perceptive woman, had once said to Hastings, “There’s no guarantee with children. You can do everything for them and there’s no guarantee they’ll ever be grateful to you or appreciate it. But you can’t let that be your approach to kids. You can’t look at it that way. You just have to do the best you can and hope they turn out right.”
He had not told Anne Klosterman about his fight with Eileen about whether or not he should let Ted pay for her private school. He had not told anyone. The hard truth was, he was ashamed. He feared that if he went along with what Eileen was proposing, that if he let Amy go to private school, his closest friends would suspect that he was not paying for it and that they would think less of him for permitting it. He also knew that their opinion of him was something that mattered to him. Eileen was right when she said he was concerned about his own pride.
He called Klosterman.
“Joe?…I wanted to see if you could run an NCIS for me.…John Rodgers…”
Aaron Peterson worked at the University City library. When Hastings first saw him, he was validating a patron’s parking stub. Hastings waited for the patron to leave before he introduced himself.
Hastings said, “I spoke to you on the phone this morning. Do you have time to talk about this?”
Aaron said, “I have a fifteen minute break starting at ten. Do you mind waiting?”
Hastings said he didn’t and walked over to the area where the newspapers were. He read the Post-Dispatch and the sports page of the Chicago Tribune. At times he stole a few glances at Aaron Peterson. Aaron was a soft looking man in his thirties. He had thin blond hair and he was firm with patrons who tried to exceed the check out limit on DVDs. Hastings had no reason to think Aaron would have murdered Johnny Rodgers.
When the break came, they walked out of the library and up Delmar Avenue to old U-City city hall where the large stone lions looked down on them.
Aaron said, “I met Johnny before he got divorced. When he was separated from his wife. It was a tough time for him. He was gay and he didn’t want to be. He said he’d known what he was since he was a kid, but he came from a strong Baptist family and he believed he could pray out the gay. You know? But it doesn’t work that way. His parents never really did come to terms with it. Some of these guys, when they come out of the closet later in life, they sort of overdo it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re a little queenie. Well…maybe not a little. He was going through this wild time after this divorce. Lot of men, lot of encounters. It was like he was trying too hard, trying to prove something.”
“Trying to prove he was gay?”
“Well, he didn’t have to prove that. But…you know, like trying to make up for lost time or something.”
“You think he was reckless?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Was he self-destructive?”
“Yeah.”
“Suicidal?”
“I don’t think so,” Aaron said.
“Do you believe he killed himself?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t seem like something he would do. But it’s hard to know someone else completely. Isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Hastings said. “Do you know if anyone wanted to harm him? If he had enemies?”
“Enemies? Oh, I doubt that. Johnny got along with everyone. Particularly women.”
“Women?”
“Oh, the girls loved him.”
“But he was gay.”
Aaron Peterson gave Hastings a look that could have been hostile or sympathetic. He said, “So what?”
Okay, hostile.
“Hey,” Hastings said, “I don’t judge. I just want to find out if someone killed him.”
“Okay,” Aaron said. “Then why the surprise that women liked him?”
“It just surprises me.” Hastings sighed. “Listen, there are no issues here.”
“Well, sometimes cops can be unkind to us. I got a ticket once for having my dog off the leash at the park. You know, serious crime. And this cop was pretty shitty to me. Calling me sweetheart and stuff.”
“Well, that was unprofessional. And in most departments, if you reported that, they’d probably discipline the officer for it.”
“I doubt that.”
Hastings sighed out a smile. He didn’t want to get into a sensitivity awareness dispute with this man. Hastings said, “Work with me, okay? The man was your friend.”
“Okay. You asked about his friendships with women.”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I said, they really liked him. It was a thing with him.”
“You mean he was bisexual?”
“Oh, no. But he was very vain. He liked being around women, liked the attention they gave him. He was funny that way. On the one hand, he loved having them around. But when they were gone, he could be the biggest misogynist on earth. He would say how much they smelled, how fat they were, etc.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Not so much. Do you know much about his background?”
“No. Tell me.”
“He was a sales rep for a big pharmaceutical company. He made a lot of money. Had a nice house in Creve Coeur. Wife, two kids. And then, a couple of years ago, he quit the corporate job, left his wife and became a hairdresser and photographer. Came out of the closet and became what we would call one of the family.”
“He did photography too?”
“Yes. He was a better photographer than he was a hairdresser. In fact, he used each to feed the other. He would do their hair and persuade them to let him take their picture. Or he would take their picture and persuade them to let him do their hair. See, that was his secret. He knew how to make women feel and look beautiful. I’ve never known a man so adept at looking a woman in the eye and telling her she was beautiful and meaning it. I’ve seen him do it. And the thing is, when he says it, he believes it. It doesn’t matter what the woman looks like.”
“What did he get out of this?”
“Well, like I told you, he was vain. It gave him satisfaction to, well, ‘get’ these women to pose for him. To sit for him. Like he was collecting them. And there was the money.”
“Money?”
“Oh, yeah. He typically charged them at least five hundred for a photo shoot. And they were glad to pay it. See, he was making them beautiful.”
“Were they beautiful to begin with?”
“Most of them not. But some of them were. Some of them were real showstoppers. B
ut he was good at selecting his victims. Neurotic, middle aged, probably not getting much attention from their boyfriends or husbands, if anyone. He knew what he was doing.”
“A little predatory?”
“A little, yes.”
“Yet you liked him.”
“Everybody liked him.”
Hastings thought of Terry McGregor. The tears in her eyes when she spoke of the deceased hairdresser. Was he jealous? Hastings said, “Did he have any disputes with any of these women?”
“I wouldn’t say disputes. He’d cycle through them. He usually had a posse of at least five or six. That’s what he liked. Some of them claimed he had taken money for pictures he never took. And, knowing him, he probably borrowed money from some of them with no intention of paying it back. But…we’re not talking huge sums of money. Maybe a few hundred here and there.”
“What about husbands?”
“You mean, jealous husbands?”
“Yeah.”
“I never heard of any. Look, if you knew him, you’d know he was not the sort to get men mad at him. He was not a threat to them.”
“What about his ex-wife? How did they get along?”
“They got along great.”
“Was he mixed up in anything criminal? Drugs, things like that?”
Aaron Peterson hesitated, looking at the cop.
Hastings said, “I don’t care if he was. Frankly, I don’t care if you are. I’m only interested in a possible homicide. All right?”
“All right. Yeah, he did a few things. He liked his marijuana. And he snorted a line or two of coke if it was at a party. But he never carried his own.”
“Never dealt drugs?”
“Never. At least, not that I knew of.”
“Where were you the night he went to the lake?”
It caught Aaron off guard, Hastings slipping it in like that. “I was at home with my partner.”
“You have a partner? What’s his name and number?”
“You’re going to check with him?”
“I’ll have to.”
“I didn’t do anything to him.”
“No one’s saying you did. Look, I’m going to find out whether or not you tell me. It’ll be easier for you if you tell me.”
Bullet Beth (George Hastings police procedural) Page 4