Had anyone told the cops about Brad and his grievance? Had Randall or some other cop talked to him? Had they given him a serious look? Or had Beth’s confession thrown them off? Had it shut down the investigation before they considered all the possibilities? Or had the cops had tunnel vision from the get-go? It happened. It was one of the main reasons, right up there with incompetent defense attorneys and faulty eyewitness identification, that innocent people ended up doing time. And yes, Virginia, despite what a lot of cops will tell you, there actually are innocent people in prison.
So what about Brad? Where had he been later that night when Parker was killed?
And where had Kuldip been?
He bet the cops hadn’t looked into that because (A) Kuldip hadn’t been at the party, and (B) the cops probably didn’t know that Pam had been there. But from what Dooley could see, Kuldip had as good a motive as Beth, maybe an even better one, given how his family was determined to keep a short leash on Pam. The family wanted Pam to be a good girl. They wanted her to marry someone not just approved by, but chosen by, her parents. They didn’t want her hanging out with some white boy; it didn’t seem to matter how wealthy his family was. Kuldip knew about Parker. He knew where Parker lived; Parker had seen him sitting out front once. Kuldip was in the neighborhood the night Parker died. Dooley was willing to bet he knew Pam had been out of the house; he probably knew exactly where she had been. He had dark hair, too, just like Dooley. Looking up from a dark ravine, Beth could have made a mistake, especially if he was turned partly away from her. But what had Kuldip been wearing that night?
And how could Dooley find out? He knew where to find him. But what were the chances he would tell Dooley anything? Maybe he should just go to Randall and spell out his theory.
But before he did that, he wanted to make sure that he was in the clear himself, in case Randall decided to follow up on his own theory and try to get Beth to come clean about her accomplice. Boy, Dooley could picture him at work: Ryan must have gone crazy when he found out what happened. He’s a hard case, that one, but you know what, Beth? I believe he loves you. I believe he’d do anything for you. Is that what happened, Beth? Did he help you? All the time probably sitting there with Dooley’s file in front of him, reading and re-reading about baseball bats and the woman in the wheelchair, thinking not only wasn’t it a stretch but it was a pattern; anyone could have seen this coming a million miles away. So, job one (and he couldn’t believe he had put himself in the situation where he actually had to do this): find Ralston.
He got off the bus at Victoria Park and walked south one block until he was standing in front of the new white apartment building there. Sure enough, just as the kid at the park had told him, there was a sand-colored brick triplex next to it, the place further subdivided into six apartments. Dooley read the names beside the buzzers to the left of the main door. There it was: Ralston, 1A. He pressed the corresponding buzzer.
No answer.
He pressed again.
Still nothing.
He read the other names and pressed the buzzer for the basement apartment.
“Yes?” came a tinny voice.
“Are you the super?”
“Yes.”
“I’m looking for one of your tenants—Ralston, 1a.”
“Just a minute.”
A man in work pants and a plaid shirt appeared. He looked gruffly at Dooley as he pushed open the door.
“You a friend of his?”
“I’m looking for him,” Dooley said.
“He didn’t send you here?”
Send me here? Why would Dooley be asking for Ralston if Ralston had sent him here? More to the point, why would Ralston send him here?
“He skipped out of here a week ago,” the man said. “The rent was covered—he paid first and last when he moved in. But he left all his stuff here. I need the place cleared if I’m going to rent it.”
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address?”
“Would I be talking to you if he did?”
“And you haven’t heard from him?”
The man stared at him, probably wondering how a guy who obviously spoke English didn’t understand when it was spoken to him.
“Did you notice a kid hanging around with him, maybe thirteen or fourteen, say, this tall?” Dooley held his hand at shoulder height.
“I’m not that kind of super,” he said. “People don’t pay their rent, I talk to them. Someone complains about noise or whatever, I talk to them. Otherwise, they got their privacy. It’s what they pay for. It’s what we all pay for.” He turned to go back inside.
“Hey!” Dooley said.
The man turned, but the look on his face made it clear that he had better things to do.
“Did you notice anything about him before he left?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything different.?”
“All I know is, I heard him come in a week ago Saturday night, and a couple of days later when I saw the mail piling up in his mailbox and went to knock on his door to see if everything was okay, there was no answer. I never saw him again.”
Terrific.
SEVENTEEN
Dooley’s uncle flew out the front door and down the steps before Dooley had even set foot on the front walk.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he roared, which told Dooley exactly how angry he was. Normally Dooley’s uncle kept his business indoors, away from the neighbors. “You told me you’d be home for supper. That was two hours ago.”
“I told you I had a few stops to make.”
“Do you have any idea how serious this is?”
Jesus, that again.
Dooley glanced around. There were a couple of junior high kids a few houses down, skateboarding in the street. They stared in awe at Dooley’s uncle. Old Mrs. Tanley across the street was looking at him, too.
“Let’s go inside,” Dooley said. “We can talk.”
His uncle glanced around. He waved brusquely at Mrs. Tanley and then stomped up onto the porch and held the door for Dooley.
“Where were you?” he demanded as soon as they were both inside. “I called you. I couldn’t get through.”
“Did Randall call again? Is that what this is all about? Did he find something?”
“Find something?” his uncle thundered. Okay, bad question. “I thought you said he wouldn’t find anything.” He’d been pissed off when Dooley had said that, too. Dooley had the impression he would blow his top no matter what, so he kept his mouth shut and counted silently to ten. His uncle’s breathing gradually slowed. “He wouldn’t be calling you in again unless he had something he wanted to ask you about—or unless he found something. What’s going on, Ryan?”
It was a question Dooley could answer honestly: “I don’t know.” He truly didn’t, although he had a few theories. “You said you left a message with Annette. Did she call you back?”
“Half an hour ago. She’s going to see what she can find out, but—” His shoulders heaved helplessly. “Is there anything I should know about this Albright kid that you haven’t told me?”
“Only that what he did to Beth he did to at least one other girl that I know of,” Dooley said. “And that I didn’t find that out until after he was dead. And the so-called witness, the one who said she saw Beth and Parker holding hands the night he raped her, she was lying, not that that’s going to help Beth. It’s not about that anymore.”
His uncle considered this.
“Anything else I should know?”
Dooley thought the question over. Should know? Not really. Not now. Would be nice to know? Well, maybe. But not until he had a little more information.
“No,” he said.
“You hungry?” his uncle said.
“Yeah.”
“Come on.”
His uncle had made spaghetti with meat sauce with a side of garlic bread. It was sitting on the stove. Two clean plates were on the kitchen table. His uncle pulled a green salad
out of the fridge and dressed it while he reheated the rest of the food. Then they sat down to eat. The meal passed in silence, but not an angry silence. Dooley felt the tension of anticipation, but it didn’t feel like it was directed at him. He didn’t get it. If he were his uncle, looking after some screwup of a kid, he’d be blowing a gasket every other week. And, sure, his uncle did that sometimes. But mostly he seemed worried about what was going to happen. Mostly he seemed to care.
Dooley was on seconds when the phone rang. His uncle answered it before Dooley could even think about getting up. After hello, he said yes and okay. That was it, until he said goodbye. He sank back down on his chair.
“That was Annette. She’s on her way over. She wants to talk to you.”
Somehow Dooley didn’t take that as a good sign.
Annette Girondin came up the walk thirty minutes later, looking lawyerly and efficient in a navy business suit with a silk blouse underneath and a large but feminine briefcase in her hand. Dooley’s uncle invited her in.
“Thanks,” she said. “But I can’t stay. I just wanted to impress on Ryan”—she turned and looked directly at him—“that I have it on good authority that Randall has you in his sights for the Albright murder.”
“Did you talk to him?” Dooley’s uncle said.
“We had words.”
“And?”
“And the only thing he told me was that if Ryan doesn’t show up tomorrow, he’ll get a warrant.”
Dooley’s uncle didn’t say a word.
Neither did Dooley.
“So you’re going to be here when I come by tomorrow at nine-thirty sharp, right, Ryan?” Annette stared at him as if trying to divine the answer for herself.
“He’ll be here,” Dooley’s uncle said.
It wasn’t good enough for Annette.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
Annette looked at him for another few seconds.
“Okay, then.” She nodded at his uncle and let herself out.
Dooley and his uncle stood in the front hall. Dooley wondered if Randall had said what he had because of something he’d found on the clothes he’d seized. Or was it something else? He thought back to that night. Maybe there had been someone else down in that ravine, someone he hadn’t seen but who had seen him. Someone besides Beth. He knew how the cops worked, especially when they thought they were on to something. He knew Randall, too. He had Dooley as being part of it, and Dooley bet he wouldn’t give up until he could make his case. He probably had other cops out there, talking to everyone who’d ever gone into the ravine—dog walkers, runners, ramblers, kids. Maybe he was out there himself, asking everyone he could find if they had been in the ravine that Saturday night and, if so, had they seen anyone. Maybe he even had a photo array with him: Any of these people look familiar? Once Randall had Dooley in the ravine, he had opportunity. He already had motive: revenge for what Parker had done to Beth. He had method, too. He probably even had it as Dooley’s M.O.—Nothing like a solid blow to the head to get the job done, right, Ryan?
His uncle spoke first: “You have some kind of alibi for that night, don’t you, Ryan?”
There was only one way Dooley could answer.
“No,” he said.
One thing that always shook Dooley was seeing his uncle look worried. The man was a rock, after all. He was tough and solid and dished out more than he took in. So when he started to look like he was expecting the roof to cave in, Dooley thought, Aw shit.
“I’m going up to my room,” Dooley said.
His uncle didn’t try to stop him; well, except for the question he asked when Dooley was halfway up the stairs: “You are going to be here tomorrow morning, Ryan, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
He felt his uncle watching him climb the rest of the way. Watching and probably wondering what the chances were that he’d be knocking on the door to an empty room in twelve hours’ time.
Dooley sat on his bed and thought about Beth. Had Randall been at her again? Boy, he wished he knew. If he went in tomorrow and if it turned out that Randall had spoken to her and he had something on Dooley, something that Beth had maybe let slip, Randall wouldn’t likely be in a mood to hear Dooley try to finger someone else. But worse than that—far worse—Dooley wouldn’t be able to see Beth again. He wouldn’t be able to talk to her. Even if they didn’t end up hanging the murder on him—and he wasn’t altogether sure that they wouldn’t; after all, shit happened—there was an excellent chance they’d get him on a lesser charge. And that would be enough to land him in a whole new round of trouble.
But he had to talk to Beth.
He had to talk to her right away, before anything else happened.
He dialed the number for the facility where she was being held and was told that a call could not be put through to her. He was told, because he asked, even though he knew better, that, no, she couldn’t call him back, either. It didn’t do any good to say it was an emergency.
“Are you on her approved list?” the woman on the other end of the phone said.
“No.” Of course not.
“Well, then, I’m sorry.”
Sure she was.
He thought of calling Beth’s mother, but what were the chances that she would even talk to him again, much less arrange for him to speak to Beth?
There was only one person he could think of who could help him.
He listened at his bedroom door for a moment. His uncle was still downstairs. Dooley crept into his uncle’s upstairs office, grabbed the telephone directory he kept on the bottom of one of his bookshelves, and went back to his room. He looked up the number he needed and made the call, only to be told by the man who answered, “I’m sorry, he isn’t here.”
“I’m a friend of his,” Dooley said. “Maybe ... do you think you could give me his cell phone number?”
“You can’t be much of a friend if you don’t have his cell number.” There was a superior finality to the man’s voice.
“Could you give him my number, then?” Dooley said. He said it slowly and hoped the man was writing it down.
“And to whom should I tell him this number belongs?” the man said.
“Ryan. Tell him it’s Ryan.”
He waited an hour, but his phone didn’t ring.
It didn’t ring all night.
He woke up at six the next morning and checked his cell. No messages. Goddammit.
He sat up, rolled onto his side, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He padded over to his desk and dug through the books and papers that littered it until he found the torn sheet where he had scribbled down the numbers that Cassie had given him. He dialed one of them, praying the right person would answer and would be both able and willing to help him.
She did.
And she was. Well, sort of. She was also pissed that he’d woken her up so early.
“Anything else I can do, don’t hesitate to call,” she said, the dry sarcasm in her voice making her the verbal twin of Linelle.
The hardest part was sneaking out of the house. He left a note that said he’d be back as soon as he could. He said he had his cell phone with him. But he had the feeling that all of this would be small comfort to his uncle.
Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of the gym Cassie had told him about. Good news: he caught Kuldip on his way in. Not-so-good news: he had three of his buddies with him, all muscle guys, all of them breaking into scowls and tightening their formation when Dooley stepped in front of them and said, “Hey, you got a minute?”
Kuldip was shorter than Dooley but hard, with an erect posture. He met Dooley’s eyes with the intense confidence of a guy who knew how to handle himself. He ran his eyes over Dooley in his jeans and beat-up sneakers.
“Get a job,” he said, moving forward right at Dooley, the kind of guy who expected obstacles to get out of his way. Dooley stood his ground and wasn’t surprised to see Kuldip keep on coming until their two ch
ests were almost touching. His buddies flanked him and Dooley saw in their eyes an itchiness to get into it.
“It’s about your sister Pam,” Dooley said.
That took Kuldip by surprise.
“You know my sister?”
“I saw you on the street in front of Parker Albright’s house,” Dooley said. “You remember Parker, right?”
Kuldip said nothing. His buddies tightened their formation.
“Somebody killed Parker,” Dooley said. “The cops talked to you about that?”
“Why would they?” Dooley had to hand it to him, his puzzlement was convincing. Maybe he was a good actor.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Dooley put an arm around Kuldip’s shoulders. “How about we have a private conversation.”
Kuldip didn’t resist when Dooley eased him away from his friends and walked him a few paces away from the front door of the gym.
“You were at Parker’s house the night he died. You want to tell me about that?”
Kuldip’s face hardened again.
“I can tell the cops you were there,” Dooley said. “I can steer them to your sister.”
No, Dooley decided, old Kuldip wasn’t much of an actor after all. If he’d been a cartoon character, smoke would have been streaming out of his ears, he was that burned up.
“I know you know Parker. I know you know your sister was seeing him. You know what I’m saying, Kuldip? I know you went into her room late at night. She said you were grinning at her, like you had some kind of secret. You knew he was dead, didn’t you, Kuldip? That’s why you didn’t rat her out to your parents. You knew Parker was dead and that she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore.”
Kuldip didn’t say a word.
“Fine. Whatever,” Dooley said. “Like I said, I’m sure the cops will be interested.”
Kuldip stared at Dooley. Jesus, what a hard case. Dooley turned to leave.
“There was this girl,” Kuldip said, his voice calm, like he didn’t care whether Dooley waited to listen to what he had to say or not. “She came out of the party after you. A long time after you. Blonde girl.” Dooley thought maybe it might be Ashley. “I asked her if she knew my sister.”
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