She picked up an envelope. It was empty and she started to toss it when she noticed it was addressed to a Miriam Blalock, no return address. It was an ordinary business sized white envelope with the name and address typed. Rita noticed two envelopes in the pile before her. Both belonged to this Miriam Blalock.
It could be another tenant. It could have been a girl friend of Bobby’s. Maybe he had stolen the mail from somebody else’s trash for one of his stories. Rita kept the envelopes.
♏
Rita glanced at the Timex on her wrist. She liked expensive handsome watches, always had, but anymore the numbers were too little for her to see without glasses. At forty-six, she wasn’t going to wear those damned bifocals yet. She dialed Mary Margaret’s office.
“Captain Smooth.”
“So, how’s your day going?” Rita stood outside a McDonalds’s in Laurel. No way could she make it six hours without eating.
“Found Jimmy Hoffa and made a positive ID on Jack the Ripper.”
“Well, aren’t you special.”
“Yes, I am. So, how’s ‘bout you?” Smooth asked. “Find anything at Bobby’s apartment?”
Rita let the straw slip from her lips. The throat lump came back, but she wouldn’t let it become tears. Old habits grow to be strong habits.
“He had his whole life packed in boxes, Smooth. He had his whole life in boxes waiting to be taken out and lived again. The apartment was a holding cell, not a thing personal in it, except when I got into his closet and there it was. His family pictures and favorite books, his clippings, his awards. Everything that was him was crammed into those little cardboard holders.”
The words spilled out fast and then she halted. Rita turned from the phone to watch cars and eighteen-wheelers flash by on I-95.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said,” she said after a moment.
Smooth repeated. “I said I was sorry, that it must have been very hard to go into that apartment.”
“Well, it’s my job, you know. I signed on for this.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m fine. Anyway, I found some interesting things that need explaining.” Rita tested the Coke straw and when nothing came through, shot the empty cup into a nearby trash barrel.
“Like what?”
“I found his keys. I still think it’s weird that he didn’t have his house keys on him when he died. They were under the dresser in his bedroom. And he didn’t have any individual PC files—none. You know, with stories or information, just program files. And I found a bunch of envelopes addressed to some woman.”
“There’s obviously more to this story,” said Mary Margaret.
“I’m going to talk to Edmund to see if he knows the woman and check some other places where Bobby might have stashed disks and the stuff on his PC at work.” Rita glanced at the watch again. She needed to run tonight. It settled her head.
“If you need to talk,” said Mary Margaret.
“Love you, Smooth.”
“Love you, Slick.”
Chapter 17
Rita had visions of shuffling bodies in shabby robes and loose scuffs. She knew it wasn’t like that, but the term “rehab” flipped that image across her mind’s big screen. Once she got to Maplewood Manor, that picture dissolved to an extreme opposite.
Maplewood was a name known in wealthy Baltimore-Washington society circles. In the dark ages before addiction treatment was enlightened and recovery was a celebrity badge of passage, “The Manor” was little more than a plush holding tank for drying out. Today a better-educated staff combined the stuff of psychology and spiritual rejuvenation with an aim toward no recycling of clients.
Rita slid her Jeep into the visitor’s parking lot. The big brick colonial reminded her of a country club with its white Georgian columns and railed porch. She half-expected to see a foursome of golfers swing out of the handsome oak and glass paneled front door. Instead she watched a noisy game of volleyball in the side yard.
“Tim Parks?” Rita tapped on the open door to a small office whose window displayed the volleyball game.
“You must be Rita Mars.” The man who stood bore the rounded hard physique of someone who worked out regularly with weights. But there was a slight aberration; one side of his mouth was rigid and un-alive. He held out his hand to shake and Rita noticed the serpent and globe of the Marine Corps tattoo. Tim Parks’ eyes followed hers.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” she said.
“I was very upset about Bobby’s death. We got to be good friends.” Parks gestured to a chair.
“I was a close friend of his and also very upset.”
“He was a guy I thought could make it.”
Rita frowned. “You sound like you believe the newspaper.”
“I don’t understand.” Parks interlocked his strong fingers and rested them on his desk.
“Suicide,” she responded with the frown deepening.
“The paper said he hanged himself.”
“The paper says it was going to rain today,” Rita said.
Parks glanced out the window at the sunny lawn where the volleyballers were taking a break. “Enlighten me.”
“I didn’t come here to enlighten you. In fact, I came for just the opposite.”
“I take it you oppose the suicide theory?” Parks reached for a pack of Marlboros then dropped it.
“Go ahead,” Rita said. “Secondary smoke is the least of my problems today.”
“Thanks.” Parks poked the cigarette into the working side of his lips and lit it with a battered silver Zippo.
“Vietnam?”
“How nice of you to notice.” Parks blew out a long stream of smoke.
Rita blushed. She knew he thought she referred to his facial paralysis. “It was the lighter and tattoo. My father brought home a Zippo. He was infantry in ‘63 to ‘64.”
“I was armored,” he said. “‘65 through ‘67”
“Lots of time there, “Rita said.
“Lots of crazy after that.” Parks waved his cigarette hand to indicate the office where they sat. “That’s why I’m here now. So, you’re here for what—the family—to disprove suicide so they can collect insurance?” he asked.
“No, I’m here to get an honest objective appraisal. You think you can handle that or is the chip on your shoulder going to get in the way?”
They glared at one another.
“I loved Bobby Ellis,” Rita said. “I came here for some truth and for that reason, I purposefully didn’t tell you my side. I didn’t want a nice story or an edited edition of where his head was when he left here.”
“Then you came to the right place.” Parks squashed the barely smoked Marlboro in a clean ashtray. “Tell me how you want it.”
“I want it from the beginning, from the time he came in here until the last time you saw him. I want plain facts and I want your professional assessment.” Rita leaned forward to take in the story.
“Bobby Ellis came in here about eighteen months ago. He was a loser.”
Rita winced at that word.
“His brother dragged him in here, half dead, hadn’t eaten in days, hadn’t taken a bath. He looked like a POW. But like all good addicts, he had enough mouth and ego left to act like he was doing us a favor by dropping in. He didn’t need us. He was just humoring his brother.”
“I thought Bobby put himself in here,” Rita said.
“It may well have been his own idea, but at the end, you’ve still got to keep up that pretense that you’re doing just fine. You know what I mean?”
Rita nodded.
“So anyway, Bobby’s in bad physical shape. He’s lost his family, his job. It’s the job going away that actually drives us in. No cash, no stash.”
“Then it wasn’t the loss of his family that drove him to help?” Rita eyed the photos behind Parks’ desk. Buddy shots from the field of war. No wife and kids pictures in the lot.
“It’s like this. You lose the job, y
ou lose the wherewithal to medicate yourself. A little clean time makes you realize the really important stuff that cut you.”
“You sound like the voice of experience,” Rita said.
“Hey, I did those three tours of Nam with an endless supply of cheap heroin. I get back here and act like the possessed until jail time catches my attention with a round of cold turkey. I got lucky and my head found a lucid moment where I recognized I didn’t want to be like that anymore.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Rita said.
“It’s ok, besides you can’t con a con and that’s what addiction is pretty much about.” Parks reached for the Marlboros again.
“So, Bobby’s brother dragged him in.”
“Yeah. Bobby starts to perk up, put on weight. He’s still got to be a smart ass to save face, but I could see we were making progress. The second week he was here, I even caught him in the chapel—down on his knees no less. I backed out of the room real quiet so he wouldn’t know I saw him. That first encounter with God is as scary as a blind date for some people. They don’t want you to know they need one, but they’re desperate enough to try. Bobby was one of those.”
Rita thought of her own encounter. At fourteen she’d done her own passionate turn with the church. But her father didn’t stop drinking or terrorizing her family. Finally she’d told God to buzz off and not to call again. She’d tempered over time, but theirs was an uneasy relationship.
“He did his twenty-eight days. He got better?” Rita offered.
“He worked his time,” Parks corrected. “He participated in group. He and I talked a lot. I liked the man. I saw him as honest and sincere. I thought he would make it.”
“You thought he would make it?”
“Yes, I did.” Parks blew smoke through his nostrils. Rita noticed the right side flare; the left never moved.
“But when I first came in here you seemed to be saying you agreed with the suicide theory.”
“Stuff happens,” Parks said.
“Forget that,” Rita demanded. “Tell me what you thought about Bobby Ellis when he left here.”
“Are you taking back your search for truth and looking to prove some personal equation?”
“No, I want you to tell me if you, first of all, thought Bobby Ellis would keep himself clean, and secondly, would you have picked him as a candidate for suicide?” Rita slapped the arm of the chair.
“Yes, I thought he would stay straight,” Parks said. “No, I never saw him as a guy to do himself in.” He paused. “You know there’s two types who come in here. One’s the fighter who’s going to fight everything—even the things that work for him. The other kind is a type of fighter too, but there’s that will to live, a survival instinct that’ll keep him from fighting himself when it’s life or death. Bobby was the last kind. He had that instinct.”
Rita closed her eyes and sighed. “Thank you.”
“But stuff happens,” Parks reminded her.
“Yes, sometimes it does—like you know the wrong thing about some very right people.” Rita stood. “Mr. Parks. Thanks for your time. You’ve been a big help.”
“We’re here if you need us.” Parks slipped her a business card.
“I knew somebody who could’ve used this place,” Rita said as he stood beside her at the office door.
“It’s not too late,” Parks said.
“Maybe for this lifetime it is.”
Parks studied her eyes for a moment then nodded silently.
On the way out, Rita passed the double doors to the chapel. She looked up and down the hall then ducked in. It was dim and faintly blue from a stained-glass skylight. In the front pew was a young woman, a teenager with a fresh face and long blonde hair. She looked up as Rita entered and rose to leave as Rita stayed.
Rita looked at the small altar and the votives burning there. For an instant she thought of something to say, but quickly banished it from her mind. With a casual salute at the candles, she turned and left.
“Next time maybe,” she whispered.
♏
Rita got the same image every time she walked into a police station. Late at night and the house reeks of beer. At sixteen, she, her mother, and her younger brother clutched one another in fear on the sofa. Their father stood over them unsteady; his eyes glazed. His service revolver wavered toward them. This would be the last moments of their lives.
“I’m gonna’ get this over,” her father said as he drew back to fix his aim.
The door burst open with a bang. A man as large as her father materialized into the room with a presence that seized her father.
“Put it down.” Her father’s captain spoke in a low, slow voice. “Put it down, Troy.”
Her father stared at the blue metal gun as if he had never seen it before. In a moment, his shooting arm fell so that the revolver swung from his finger and dropped to the carpet.
Her mother wailed and Rita held her tight. Both her mother and her brother cried with shuddering sobs. Rita’s eyes were dry and hard.
The police captain guided her father into the kitchen and started to shout. “You stupid son of a bitch. What do you think you were doing?”
Her father’s answer was unintelligible.
It was up to Rita to gather her mother and brother into her bedroom. They fell together, weeping on the floor beside her bed. Rita left and went to the kitchen.
“You going to turn him in?” Rita asked.
“No, honey, I’m not.” The captain towered over her father who sat bowed in a chair at the kitchen table, head in hands, tears streaming his reddened face. “He didn’t mean it. He wouldn’t have done it either. He’s your father. He loves you a lot. He just gets out of hand from the liquor.”
The captain took her father with him that night and kept him for three days. He never spoke to her or her mother, just swept the threat out of their lives for the time being. His words stayed with Rita, but somehow she could never reconcile that night of destruction and terror with her definition of love.
Now, Rita sat in a well-worn interview chair outside the shift commander’s office in the Baltimore Street station. She leaned her head back against the smoked stained walls and closed her eyes.
“What is it I have to do to jeopardize my job this time?” Mary Margaret kicked Rita’s foot and offered her a coffee as she jumped from the seat.
“You’re mean, you know that?” Rita took the coffee container.
“I’m a cop, remember? We’re all mean.” Smooth pointed her coffee cup in the direction of her office. The two women sat down behind the glass-paneled walls where they could speak in private.
“I am more convinced than ever that Bobby was murdered,” Rita said.
“How so?”
Rita explained the Harper’s Ferry scenario, complete with Lamar, Eustace McClung, and Young Joe Friendly.
“Sloppy work or deliberately covered up? That’s my first question.”
“I have no idea.” Rita sighed.
“So, what do you have?” Smooth’s tone was suddenly official and questioning.
“I’ve got a mortician who’ll swear I lied about his comments on the cause of death. I’ve got a mystery woman at a post office box, and I’ve got a drug dealer with a penchant for altruism.” Rita frowned as she enumerated her slim list of possible leads.
“Sounds like a ‘who-done-it’ to me.”
“Maybe, but I’ve got to try. Listen, I found a couple of envelopes addressed to some woman at Bobby Ellis’ apartment. All it had was a P.O. box. Can I get you to run her name through some networks and see if anything pops up?”
“Will do.”
Rita gave Mary Margaret a 3x5 card with Miriam Blalock’s name written on it.
“And one other thing. It seems that Bobby Ellis was repaying a loan to a coke dealer by the name of Skippy Lockerman. Works out of Harper’s Ferry. Can you run a rap sheet for me?”
“For you, my dear, anything,” said Mary Margaret.
“I’ll c
all back in a couple of days to see what you find.” Rita stood up.
“You’ll call if you get in a jam?”
“That’s me.”
“Yeah, right.” Mary Margaret walked with her to the office door. She put her hand on the knob before Rita could turn it. “You don’t have to be your father, you know.”
“He had street smarts. He was a good cop.”
“That he was,” Smooth admitted.
“I miss him sometimes.”
“I know you do.” Mary Margaret took her hand away so that Rita could open the door. “In the immortal words of TV—be careful out there.”
“Thanks for helping me, kiddo.”
As Rita made her way through the squad room, more uninvited thoughts about her father rushed in. Absently her hand went to the battered chrome lighter in her jeans pocked. He had taught her so many things about human nature and observation. With all that knowledge about good and bad, she asked herself for the millionth time: why was he never able to put the equations together about himself?
Chapter 18
Rita’s office reeked of garlic. A half-eaten Greek salad wilted in a plastic take out container, a plastic fork plunged into its heart. Weighing down the lid was the one last slice of greasy cold garlic bread. Two empty Coke cans guarded the remains.
Strewn across the desk were the pieces of the Bobby Ellis puzzle Rita worked on identifying. Right now, her attention focused on the Washington telephone number, which Bobby had called the night of his death. There was a woman she knew who worked in Security for the phone company, but she was out for the week on medical leave.
“Great.” Rita slammed down the phone. “I’m here trying to solve a murder and she’s having her navel rotored.”
How to get this phone number. She could phone Smooth and ask for an additional favor. She shook her head and picked up the phone.
“Hi, this is Rita Mars.” She gave her cell number. “I have a call on my bill and I don’t recall who I made it to.”
“I don’t see this number on your current call detail. Was this on last month’s billing?”
DRIVEN: A Rita Mars Thriller Page 14