“He was fun is what he was.” She said, “No. He never hurt me or scared me. That’s not the kind of man he was. He was actually very nice.” The woman was looking at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“His.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, “he was a good officer. And he was not the sort to rough women up. I promise you that.” Her voice broke toward the end.
Shit, Hastings thought. He felt ashamed. He put that aside too and said, “How did it end with you two?”
“It just fizzled out. I know Chris. I was well aware that I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last.”
“So he moved on.”
“Yes,” she said. “To some other lonely, fat girl. But I’m not sorry for what we did. You can write that down if you want.”
“That’s all right,” Hastings said. “You say he moved on; you mean to another woman or back to his wife?”
“Probably another woman.”
“Okay. How did you feel when you found out he had been killed?”
“What do you think?”
Hastings remembered sitting at a trial and watching a shrewd defense lawyer cross-examining a sad old lady in a quiet, patient tone, asking the woman if she took medication for mental illness and she answered that yes, she did and the lawyer took his sweet time and made her list every sort of pill she had ingested. After each one, the lawyer would say, “And what else?” until tears started rolling down the old lady’s face. The prosecutor objected to the cruel line of questioning, and the defense lawyer told the judge he was by no means enjoying this, but that it was necessary on the issue of credibility. The lawyer was slick enough that Hastings almost believed it. In any event, the man had to do his job.
Hastings said, “Do you want to answer my question?”
“I felt like shit.” Brahma Jones said, “Happy now?”
“No,” Hastings said. “One more thing. Was he clean?”
Brahma Jones strengthened her lower chin. She said, “He was the cleanest cop I’ve ever met.” And everything about her expression at that moment said, Cleaner and better and nicer than you, Detective. A better man than you.
Later, she walked out of the break room. Murph, who had been waiting in the hall on Hastings’s instructions, stepped back against a vending machine, gave a mock leer to her hind end after she walked past him. It made Hastings feel worse.
Hastings walked up next to Murph.
Murph said, “Well?”
“She’s okay,” Hastings said.
“So you’re eliminating her as a suspect?”
“Probably.”
Murph said, “Did they—?”
“Yeah. She was in love with him.”
“Hmmm,” Murph said. “Ready for the next one?”
“Can’t wait,” Hastings said.
Deputy Connie Birdsong was in full uniform when they interviewed her—tan slacks, dark brown tunic. They sat at a small table in an interview room at the county headquarters. She was a tall woman with broad shoulders and a short, unfashionable haircut, and she sat in her chair the way a man would. They had barely started their questions when she burst into tears.
Hastings wasn’t ready for this at all. Murph had his mouth slightly open, mildly shocked. She was an officer in uniform wearing OC spray, ammunition clips, and a fully loaded weapon on her side. But here she was weeping like Tonya Harding over a broken shoestring.
Hastings said, “There’s nothing to be upset about.”
She said, “Am I going to lose my job?”
“No, we’re just—”
“I can’t lose my job—”
“That’s not going to—”
“—I didn’t do anything—”
“Connie,” Hastings said, “Connie. Will you please calm down?”
Deputy Connie Birdsong drew a few breaths. She steadied herself, bit by bit, resting her hands on her knees.
Hastings said, “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
Hastings said, “Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But we have information you were having an affair with Chris Hummel. Is that true?”
Connie Birdsong nodded. Her mouth closed, as she struggled to hold back the tears.
Hastings said, “It is true?”
“Yes.”
“When was it?”
“About two years ago.”
“You were married too, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did your husband ever find out?”
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
“How did he find out?”
“I told him.”
Murph said, “You told him?”
“Yes, sir.”
Murph said, “Why?”
“I told my minister. At church. He said that’s what I should do.” Deputy Birdsong said, “I told my husband and then I told the congregation at the church. It’s what Ben said I should do.”
Hastings said, “I thought your husband’s name was Martin?”
“It is,” she said. “Ben is our minister.”
Murph said, “Your minister made you tell everyone at church?”
“Yes, sir.”
Murph said, “What church is this?”
The question seemed to wound the woman. It was her religion they were messing with now.
She said to Murph, “What church do you go to?”
“Never mind that,” Hastings said. “About how many people are in this congregation?”
“Around fifty,” she said. “It’s a small church.” She added, “But we like it.”
Hastings said, “When did you make this confession?”
“It was about a year and a half ago.”
Hastings looked at Murph and Murph looked back at him. Hastings said, “Did you feel better after you made the confession?”
“Definitely.”
Murph said, “How about your husband? Did he feel better?”
“Yes. We worked through it.”
Hastings said, “Your husband works at Boeing, correct?”
“Yes, sir. He’s an aerospace engineer.”
Hastings said, “Where was he the night Chris Hummel was killed?”
Deputy Birdsong counted back the days. She reached it, then said, “He was with me. We were at church, getting ready for a bake sale.”
Murph said, “I believe it.”
Hastings gave him a look and said, “Can you give us names and numbers of people who saw you there?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
The detectives looked at each other again, seeing if the other had something else to say.
Deputy Birdsong said, “I’m not going to lose my job, am I?”
Hastings said, “For what?”
“For—you know.”
Hastings said, “I strongly doubt it.”
And Murph said, “Lady, they start firing police officers for that, they’re not going to have the manpower left to patrol Tower Grove Park.”
Hastings waited for a county patrol car to pull into the parking lot before he drove the Jaguar out into the street.
Murph said, “Are you Catholic?”
“No,” Hastings said. “You?”
“Yeah.” Murph said, “We have confession too. It’s not like that, though. It’s to a priest. When I was a kid, the priest’d be behind a screen so you couldn’t see him. I went last year, before Easter Sunday, though, and then you just sat in front of him in front of the whole church.”
“So now it’s like what she did?”
“No. No one hears what you’re saying. Except the priest. It’s just that people who are waiting in line can see you. The priest, he hears you.” Murph said, “Still, I liked it better the old way.”
“Protestants think that’s wrong too, don’t they?”
“What, confessing your sins to a priest?”
Hastings was thinking of his father. The man could quote New Testament passages chapter and verse. A Protestant of the John Knox school, Carl Hastings hated Cat
holics. When Hastings was a teenager, he finally figured out that dad was a man full of resentment and anger and meanness of spirit. A small man who probably despised his son and wife for seeing through him. In one of their last conversations before Hastings had left for St. Louis, he had heard his father say something vicious to his mother, something ugly enough to send her from the kitchen in tears. Hastings said to the old man, “You’re not even interested in religion. You just want to carve people up and claim that it’s for the greater glory of God.” He waited for the old man to make his move, so he could have an excuse to belt him. But Carl was a man of violent words, not action, and a coward, so he kept still. In the solitary years that followed, Hastings more or less came to terms with the fact that he had been a miserable creep. He believed that if there was a hell and he went there, he would probably meet up with Carl on a talk show set, with Jerry Springer or some other demon trying to coax a bogus reconciliation between them before the inevitable exchange of swinging chairs.
“Yeah,” Hastings said. He wished he hadn’t said anything about priests now.
But Murph only shrugged. “Beats saying it to a church full of people,” he said. Murph looked out the window. Hastings hoped Murph would not start waxing philosophical about the nature of sin and redemption and congregants wondering if Connie Birdsong was game for another round.
Murph was shaking his head now. He said, “Can you believe her crying like that?”
Hastings smiled. He shrugged. He sensed the onset of a conversation he did not want to have.
Murph said, “I mean, come on. She’s a police officer, for God’s sake.”
Hastings said, “She’s not typical.”
“Yeah, I know, but goddamn. That interview was nothing. How does she handle things when they really get hot?”
“Murph, I really don’t—”
“You know what the problem is?”
“No.”
“Lieutenant, you know I don’t have issues with women cops. I mean, I hope you know that. But if a man in uniform behaved that way, we both know they’d get rid of him.”
Hastings thought of Marvin Tate. The relief he felt when Marvin resigned.
“Maybe,” Hastings said.
“But she gets to stay. And I bet I know why. I’ll bet she’s got a supervisor who’s afraid of disciplining her because he’s afraid he’ll get sued. Or, she’ll file a complaint on him and fuck up his career. Or, he’s one of those supervisors who looks out for her, treats her like the little girl he never had. Or he’s hoping one day she’ll give him a piece himself.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“But other officers got to work with her. They’ll need her to back them up. And then what happens?”
“Murph.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a failure of leadership. You know what I mean?”
“Murph.”
“Yeah?”
“Another time, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Let’s talk about the investigation. Did you call Rhodes about the dispatch logs?”
“Yeah. Rhodes asked if we should get Hummel’s cell phone records too. I agreed it was a good idea.”
“Good. Yeah, that is a good idea.”
“We were going to go over them this evening.”
“Okay. I’m going to run you back to the station. Then I’ll drive out to interview the nurse.”
In the early days of their courtship, Hastings and Eileen had had the conversation that women and men the world over have had. The man charges that a woman can have sex anytime she wants while a man cannot. Eileen responded that men could have sex anytime they wanted as well. Eileen said George could go to a bar on any given night and bring a woman home to his bed and that he may not like how the woman looked or talked or how much she drank, but he could find one if he wanted. Eileen could not be persuaded otherwise.
It was one of those silly arguments they had with drinks and cigarettes that neither one cared to win so long as it gave them something to laugh about and engage with each other over, back when they cared about each other enough to do it.
But Hastings thought about it when he met with Trudy West, R.N., at Southcrest Hospital.
Like Connie Birdsong and Brahma Jones, Trudy West was unattractive. There was no getting away from it. Hastings told himself that it had nothing to do with the case. He told himself that it was not his place to judge the slain police officer. Not over something like this. He wondered if the women looked like they could have appeared in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues, would he feel the same way? Would he feel not sadness, but perhaps envy and admiration? All right, Hummel. Go team. Shit. It was adultery either way. When Eileen had been unfaithful, he did not stop to wonder if the other fellow was handsome or ugly.
Why should it make any difference? If Hummel sought out lonely, unattractive women to seduce, what should it matter? There seemed to be no evidence that he mistreated or abused them. It should only matter if it related to his murder.
Hastings remembered seeing the video footage on national news of the spurned wife in Texas running over her husband with her Lexus. Stopping the car after the first strike and backing over him as he lay struggling to survive. Killing him with most definite premeditation. He remembered seeing a counselor, a woman, interviewed on television saying the lady should not go to prison for the murder … the interviewer saying, well, what punishment then? And the woman counselor responding with complete seriousness, “Well, definitely counseling.”
Trudy West, wearing light green scrubs, spoke with him in the hallway of the hospital.
She said, “He used to work security here. Nights. That’s how we met.”
Hastings said, “How long did it go on?”
“A few months. He would call me on his cell phone, sometimes come here on his breaks.”
“How come?”
“Well … I had breaks too.”
Hastings could ask her if he dropped by to chat or if they would sneak off to a broom closet, but he didn’t see the point.
He said, “When did it end?”
“Over three years ago.”
“How did it end?”
“You mean, was it amicable?”
“Yes.”
“Sure it was. He was a nice man. It wasn’t just—sex. He would visit my house too. He helped me with my kids. My husband left me several years ago. Chris would come by sometimes and cut my lawn. Come in, have a soda, and leave. He’d do that without asking for anything in return.”
“Were you angry with him?”
“Why would I be angry with him?”
“I don’t know.”
Nurse West shook her head. “He was a kind man. He had flaws, like the rest of us. Yes, he liked to fool around with women. But if you weren’t interested in doing that, he was okay with it. He never pushed. And he liked helping people. It’s why he became a police officer.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No,” she said. “Look, I’ve been around, okay? I know that when someone makes a big point of telling you the importance of being nice, they’re usually not very nice. It’s the same with him. He never said he became a police officer because he wanted to help people, but you could see it in how he acted.”
“So you liked him?”
“Yeah, I liked him. But … that’s not the point. Listen, there was a girl that used to work here. She had a neighbor who was a real jerk. He would get drunk and make a lot of noise and say ugly things to her in front of her children. A bully. It made her cry and the police in her neighborhood said they couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t committing any crimes. Well, he was sure scaring the devil out of her. So I told Chris about it.”
“This woman ask you to do that?”
“No. She was just telling me. I made the decision to tell Chris.”
“And what did he do?”
“I guess he went over to the neighbor’s house and just scared the you-know-what out of him. Told him if he didn�
�t start showing respect for Sharon and her family and the rest of the neighborhood, he was going to come back and, well, I guess beat him up. And you know, I think he would have done it too.”
“Did it work?”
“Oh, heck yes. The guy got so scared he eventually moved someplace else.” Trudy West reflected for a moment. She said, “I wonder if Chris knew something else about him. Like if he was selling dope or something.”
If he didn’t, Hastings thought, Hummel could have planted it on him.
Hastings said, “When was this?”
“Oh, this was years ago. When he and I were seeing each other.”
She seemed to be studying Hastings now. In a respectful tone, she said, “He was a good man. Not many people would have done what he did.”
“I hear you,” Hastings said. “Do you remember this neighbor’s name?”
“No. No one ever told me that.”
“But your friend, this Sharon, she would know, right?”
“I guess she would. But she doesn’t work here anymore.”
THIRTY-THREE
No one called Jimmy to tell him his brother had been killed. He found out about it by reading it in the Chicago Sun-Times. Sean dead, Bacon dead. Max had been killed too; shot to death in his own home. There was no one left to call Jimmy and say, sorry for muffing the job. Sean had been the only family he had left. Jimmy realized that there could well be no one back home who thought he was even alive, so that made him dead too in a way. Two years now of running and living in places he didn’t want to live. Running from police and prison and now from Jack Regan.
Jack Regan had killed his brother.
How?
How had Jack pulled that off? Sean was smart, but Jack was smarter. Jimmy should have known. He should have called Sean and told him to bring more guys, to wait for Jack to walk into a parking lot, to stick a bomb under his car, to avoid going into the man’s place because the man would know his place better than intruders. He should have gone up to Chicago and done it himself. Maybe taken Mike with him. Though it would have taken a lot of effort to talk Mike into it. Mike Dillon wasn’t afraid of anyone, not even Jack Regan, but Mike Dillon wouldn’t be dumb enough to return to Chicago. Mike hadn’t stayed out of prison by being dumb.
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