Look the Other Way

by Leigh Jones

  “We have no evidence of anything like that, just the widow’s hints he was doing something to make extra money,” the chief had told him earlier that morning. “You’d better be damn sure you know what you’re talking about before you go accusing anyone at the port of doing something illegal. Everyone in this town will fight you on that one. What a nightmare.”

  The chief wiped a bright red handkerchief across his dewey brow and swore. Johnson took that as his opportunity to excuse himself. Although he hated to admit it, he knew the chief was right. He had nothing other than a hunch and a grieving widow’s suspicions to suggest Costa’s death had anything to do with his job.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Although he hadn’t been satisfied with Muriel’s initial interview, Johnson hadn’t pressed her for more information. But now, three days after the funeral, he knew it was time to talk to her again.

  When he pulled up outside the dingy house, two boys were rolling around in the dirt, pulling shirts and pushing faces. Just as Johnson opened his door and stepped out into the street, the bigger boy, whom Johnson recognized as Muriel Costa’s oldest son, managed to get the upper hand on his opponent. Straddling his waist and pinning him to the ground, the older boy pulled his arm back in a windup and prepared to smash his fist into the younger one’s face.

  “Hey!” Johnson shouted.

  The aggressor wheeled around as Johnson strode quickly toward him. He jumped up and ran toward the front door, leaving the younger boy sniveling in the dirt. He scrambled up by the time Johnson reached him, wiping his face with the back of his hand and trying to brush off his dirt-caked shirt.

  “You okay?” Johnson asked.

  The boy, whom Johnson recognized from the funeral as the Costas’ second son, nodded miserably.

  “He said papa algo que se hace mal,” the child said, spitting dirt-stained saliva onto the ground at his feet. “I tol’ him to take it back.”

  Johnson’s heart began to beat faster. Julian Costa’s oldest son thought his father had done something bad. Had he overheard his mother talking to someone about what happened? Why else would a child declare his father a bad guy? Before he could ask the child what he meant, Muriel appeared at the door.

  “Juanito! Que paso?” she exclaimed, gaping at her dirty child and the detective.

  The question provoked fresh tears and a stream of rapid-fire Spanish Johnson couldn’t follow. The angry mother barely let him finish before she ordered him inside and slammed the door, leaving Johnson standing alone in the front yard. He hadn’t meant to gather information from a child, but he now had more evidence the dead dock worker might have been doing something he shouldn’t have. Should he confront Muriel with her son’s declaration? Before he had a chance to evaluate the consequences, she opened the door again. This time, she had a baby perched on her hip. As Johnson walked toward the house, she glanced quickly up and down the street.

  “Detective, now is really not a good time,” she said, looking at him with wide, apprehensive eyes. “The boys have been fighting, and the baby won’t stop crying. I can’t talk to you right now.”

  The baby’s eyes were red and her nose dripped, but she wasn’t crying.

  “Mrs. Costa, I understand this might not be the best time, but I need to ask you a few more questions,” Johnson said. Although he respected her genuine grief, he refused to let her use it as an excuse to avoid helping him catch her husband’s killer.

  Glancing one more time up and down the street, the widow turned without speaking and walked back to the house. Who was she looking for? When she didn’t shut the door in his face, he followed her inside. Toys littered the living room floor, and only a few covered dishes remained on the table. The mourners had melted away, and Muriel was finally getting a taste of life on her own. She looked frazzled, weary, and afraid.

  “I need to ask you more about those extra shifts your husband was picking up at the port,” Johnson said, taking a small notebook out of his front shirt pocket. “Can you tell me more about what he might have been doing? Did he tell you anything about the work? What time of day did he normally take the shifts?”

  Muriel stared at him with wide eyes, the tendons on her slender arm sticking out as she gripped the baby tightly to her chest.

  “What extra shifts? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said, haltingly but firmly.

  “You don’t? You told me you thought he was picking up extra shifts to make a little extra money, to pay for diapers. Remember?”

  Muriel shook her head. “No. I never said that.”

  “You did!” Johnson exclaimed. Shock at her lie squeezing his voice up almost an octave. “When I asked you what he might have been doing, you said you didn’t know.”

  “I don’t remember that at all,” she said, absently smoothing the baby’s scraggly hair.

  “Mrs. Costa!...”

  Johnson’s cheeks flushed. His heart pounded in his ears. He had listened to plenty of witnesses change their stories, but Muriel Costa’s about-face came as a complete surprise. For a minute, he couldn’t figure out what to say next.

  “Mrs. Costa, whether you remember it or not, that’s what you told me. And it’s the only lead I have to go on. The people at the port tell me your husband wasn’t picking up extra shifts, which means whatever your husband was doing was probably off the books. If you can help me figure out what that was, we might be one step closer to catching his killer.”

  “Please, detective. You don’t know what you’re talking about. If the union bosses say he wasn’t picking up extra shifts, then I’m sure he wasn’t. If that’s what I said, I must have been confused. I hardly remember anything about those first few days.”

  Almost convulsively, the woman began to bounce the baby on her knee, the frenetic movement more a sign of agitation than an attempt to soothe the child. After a few moments of silence, she looked up at Johnson with wide, tear-filled eyes.

  “Please, detective! I don’t want to cause any trouble with the union. I need Julian’s pension.”

  Worry creased Johnson’s brow. The widow looked absolutely terrified. He suddenly thought of Tim Hammond’s earnest whispering at the funeral.

  “Mrs. Costa, has someone said something to you? To scare you? You don’t have to be afraid. If you think you’re in danger, we can protect you. I can assign an officer to stay with you day and night until we catch your husband’s killer.”

  “No, no, no! You have it all wrong,” the widow said, standing abruptly and pacing across the room to the window. “I am not afraid. I do not need protection. And I don’t know anything about my husband’s work. He was a good man who didn’t deserve to die. That’s all I know.”

  When she got as far away from Johnson as the room would allow, she whirled to face him.

  “You should be out there trying to catch his killer, instead of coming around here accusing me,” she said, spitting the words through her teeth.

  Johnson flinched. Her accusation stung as much as it surprised him.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just asking you questions, and so far, you’ve been completely unhelpful. Don’t you want us to catch whoever did this?”

  Muriel bit her lip as she looked out the window.

  “It was probably just some homeless person who was either drunk or high or something. They’re always hanging around. Maybe one of them asked Julian for money, and when he wouldn’t give them anything, they killed him.”

  “Why didn’t they take his wallet then? And what was he doing walking through that alley in the first place?”

  “I don’t know, detective. I don’t know. But I can’t listen to this any longer, all these questions and theories. You need to leave now. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  Johnson was sure that was a lie. But he hesitated only briefly before he rose reluctantly and followed her toward the front door. As he stepped over the threshold, he turned back to look at her.

  “I’m just trying to figure out wh
at happened to your husband. Don’t you think your sons deserve to know why he died? They seem to think he did something bad. Is that how you want them to remember him?”

  She looked down at her feet as he made his final attempt to get her to cooperate, and he thought for a moment he might have broken through. But as she looked back up, she slowly swung the door closed between them.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Kate took a swig from a half empty bottle of beer as she sat in her open window and listened to the deep boom of the cruise ship’s horn. It was preparing to pull out of port. From her fourth story loft five blocks from the waterfront, she had a perfect view of the massive boats as they floated by. She liked to watch them leave, their decks and balconies choked with eager vacationers waving goodbye to no one in particular.

  It was Saturday, and she’d spent most of the day cleaning and doing laundry. Brian’s shift started at noon, so he’d stayed just long enough to cook an omelet and some chicken sausage before heading to the hospital. Kate had never heard of chicken sausage before she met Brian. Her dad ate steaks and hamburgers. Bacon was the only option for a breakfast meat at home. She sometimes wondered what her dad would think of Brian, if they ever met. Brian often talked about his parents and had even suggested Kate meet them when they came to visit later in the summer. He never pushed her to talk about her family, so she never did.

  A faint breeze wafted past the window, like the last gasp of a dying hair dryer. Kate’s shorts had stuck to the tops of her legs and a trickle of sweat pooled in a crease in her stomach. The cruise ship had floated off the dock now and was moving slowly toward the ship channel. It made almost imperceptible progress at first, but it soon disappeared behind the bank building in front of her apartment, giving one final blast on its horn as it headed for the Bahamas. Reluctantly, Kate slid the window shut and headed for the shower.

  While she cooked dinner, she tried not to think about the latest murder and the stalled investigation. Muriel Costa’s raw anguish over her husband’s death seared her soul. She’d once felt pain that deep, but the sheer shock of it had cauterized her grief and left her numb. She had never given vent to her sorrow. Now it festered under a ragged scar that had never fully healed. Muriel Costa’s wailing had threatened to reopen the wound.

  But Kate refused to revisit the past. The only thing that mattered was today. And the day after that. And the day after that. If she could spend every day ahead of her exposing injustice and fighting for people who couldn’t fight for themselves, maybe the keening in her own heart would finally fall silent.

  She popped the top off another beer and wandered over to her bookshelf looking for a distraction. She picked out an old Michael Connelly mystery and settled down in her most comfortable chair. In the background, the police scanner hummed with the chatter from routine traffic stops and public disturbance calls—typical for a Saturday night. A few chapters later, the book slowly closed in her lap and her head rested back against the chair as she dozed off.

  When she woke, it was completely dark outside. She could hear shouting and laughing from a group of bar-hopping carousers walking by under her window. She checked her phone—1:20 a.m. As she walked to the kitchen to put her empty beer bottle in the trash, the scanner crackled to life with another call for a loud party. But the address was in the East End, not your usual party-until-dawn neighborhood. Kate frowned as her fuzzy brain tried to process the address. When the responding officer requested a few extra cars, in the event of the likely need for courtesy rides, she knew exactly whose house it was.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kate stood behind a large oak tree across the street and a few houses down from Joe Henry Miles’ white-columned Victorian. Yellow light blazed from every window, and three cop cars lined the street outside. Miles leaned on the frame of the open front door laughing uncontrollably as two officers led Mayor Matthew Hanes down the front steps.

  “That’s right, Mr. Mayor, go home and sleep it off,” Miles shouted, bursting into another round of guffaws when one of the officers urged him to keep his voice down.

  “Aw, officer. You sure do know how to ruin a good time,” Miles said, slurring his words and swaying slightly as he tried to stand upright. “We were having a good, ‘ole time.”

  “I’m sure you were, Mr. Miles, but it’s time to wind it down for the night,” the officer said. Kate couldn’t see who it was, but she could hear the exasperation in his voice.

  “Oh, ahl-right,” Miles said in mock resignation. “I guess all good things must come to an end, huh boys?”

  Behind Miles, a group of four other men stood in the foyer.

  “Are the rest of you going to be OK to get home?” the officer asked. He sounded skeptical, and Kate couldn’t blame him.

  “Yes, sir, we’ll be just fine,” said a quiet voice behind the port boss.

  “Hammer here will make sure the boys all get home safe, wontcha now?” Miles said, still swaying slightly.

  Kate had witnessed similar scenes before. Miles was known for his loud parties. But she’d never seen a more eclectic group staggering out the front door. She recognized Tim Hammond and several other longshoremen, not Miles’ usual party crowd. It must have been a men-only party, also unusual for Miles, Kate thought.

  “Good night, boys!” Miles yelled as the group of men headed down the street. “This will go down in history as an epic adventure.” As he shut the door, Kate could hear uncontrollable laughter echoing through the foyer.

  The first time she’d witnessed the police closing down one of Miles’ parties, with the mayor bundled into the back of a patrol car for a ride home, she thought she had a great story on her hands. The next morning, she’d rushed into Mattingly’s office to tell him to hold a page-one spot. The managing editor had simply laughed.

  “No one wants to read about the mayor’s private partying,” he told her. “Besides, everyone knows he does it. Unless someone gets hurt or presses charges, we’re not interested.”

  Mattingly’s nonchalance ruined Kate’s whole day. She sometimes still came out to watch the parties break up, if she heard a call come across the scanner. But she usually just listened to the chatter from the responding officers on the radio. She wasn’t sure what made her drive out to the East End this time. It seemed like just another party, but the invitees didn’t fit the usual mold. What would make the mayor spend an evening with men he normally wouldn’t hang out with? It made her suspicious, although she had no definite reason to be.

  As she walked back to her car, Kate considered the growing list of unexplained incidents filling up her notebook. Nothing connected them…but their apparent lack of connection to anything.

  Chapter 9

  Another week went by without any break in the Costa murder case. Kate spent most of her time writing about the city budget battle. Mattingly wanted a three-part series—one story on the mayor’s perspective, one on the police and city workers’ perspective, and one crunching the numbers to find out whether the cuts would really make any difference to the city’s overall financial position. For the last two days, Kate had scoured previous city budgets for the details of past pay increases. Spreadsheet printouts, waded up burrito wrappers and empty soda cans covered her desk. When Mattingly came out of his office and declared the last draft ready for the page, Kate put her head down on a stack of documents and sighed with relief. She couldn’t bear to look at one more number.

  The next morning, the phone on her desk started ringing less than five minutes after she walked into the newsroom. She considered letting it roll to voicemail. It was Friday, and she was looking forward to an easy day after her long week. When she picked up on the last ring, she was surprised to hear Johnson’s voice.

  “Running late this morning?” he asked, not bothering to identify himself.

  “No, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to take a call so early in the morning,” she said. The detective sounded almost chipper, and her heart immediately started to beat faster at the thought he might have somethin
g to report on one of the two murder investigations. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, just a little prostitution sting. We netted three johns, five girls and one very belligerent mamasan,” he said. “It’s not as good as a suspect in a murder investigation, but it’s something.”

  “Wow, okay. It’s been a couple of months since you guys did your last sting. I guess it’s worth a story.”

  “Ha! Well, if you want the details, come down to the station. I’ve got mugshots and bad coffee to make it worth your while.”

  “Alright, you’ve got me hooked,” Kate said, amused by his attempt at hospitality. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  After digging an empty notebook out from under one of the stacks of spreadsheets, Kate stuck her head in Hunter Lewis’ office to let him know what she was working on. He nodded appreciatively. Readers always liked seeing their neighbors caught with their pants down, so to speak.

  Kate smiled to herself as she walked out of the building. A caressing wind, just enough to make the morning feel deceptively cool, lifted her long hair off the back of her neck. It was already starting to look like a very good day. A straightforward crime-fighting story wasn’t a bad way to end the week. She might even have time to sit down for lunch somewhere. She wasn’t sure her stomach could take another greasy burrito.

  When she got to the station, she found Johnson seated behind his desk, reading over reports. He held a steaming styrofoam cup in his hand. An identical cup sat across the desk, in front of the empty chair facing him.

  “Wow, you’re really rolling out the red carpet. What’s the catch?”

  Johnson put one hand over his heart, shook his head and let out a short huff of mock indignation as Kate sat down.

  “That hurts,” he said. “I’m just trying to let you know how much Galveston’s finest appreciates their friends at the local paper.”

  “Right, which means you really want us to play up this story,” Kate grinned. “You’re just lucky I have nothing better to do today.”