J Bertrand - Back on Murder

If you knew you were going to die, what would you do? Fight to hang on a few more months, or throw yourself into a task that really means something?

I dial Charlotte’s number, expecting to find her at the computer in her home office, doing whatever it is corporate attorneys do. Instead, I hear footsteps on pavement and road noise in the background.

“Where are you?”

“Rice Village,” she says. “I decided to do a little shopping.”

“Good therapy, huh?” I glance at my watch. “Can we do lunch?”

“Is something wrong, Roland?” she asks with a note of concern.

“Kind of. I’ll tell you when we meet.”

She goes through her mental list of restaurants, cross-referencing whatever’s nearest, finally suggesting Prego. The drive takes me fifteen minutes, then I burn another five navigating the warren of streets around Rice Village, trying to remember the exact location. By the time I park and walk inside, Charlotte’s already secured a table and started scrutinizing the menu. She’s always taken her food quite seriously. A couple of shopping bags are stacked at her feet.

“So why the midday rendezvous?” she asks. “It’s been a long time since we’ve done something like this.”

“You know about the missing girl, the one on television? Hannah Mayhew?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, they’ve put me on the task force.”

She swishes the ice in her water glass. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s definitely not good.”

The waiter comes and we order. I don’t feel much like eating, but I get the lentil soup. Charlotte changes her mind a couple of times, finally landing on the grilled red snapper, joking that if I’m taking her to lunch for a change, she’s going to get something expensive.

If we’d had this conversation the other night, instead of arguing over our tenant, the tone would have been quite different. That seems like a decade ago, but it was just Friday night. I blew my big break almost as soon as I got it, and over the stupidest thing. All I had to do was go to Geiger’s office immediately, but instead I’d tagged along with Cavallo for no better reason than that she was easy on the eyes.

Not that I can tell Charlotte that. My account of the events is selective, but by the time I’m done she gets the point.

“So you’ve screwed up your last chance?”

“Pretty much.”

She takes a bite of snapper, and I honestly can’t tell if the contemplative look on her face has to do with my predicament or the taste of the food. I stare into my soup, moving the spoon in tiny circles.

“Roland,” she says, “have you thought about chucking it in?”

“Retirement? I don’t have the time in.”

“No, not retirement. Just quitting. If they’re not going to let you work Homicide, why don’t you find something else? I mean, it’s not like we’re living off your salary or anything. Maybe it’s time to make a course correction.”

“Can we not talk about me quitting?”

“But if you’re miserable with the job, I don’t see why – ”

“There’s still a possibility,” I say. “If I can connect the murders with this girl…”

“Roland, you know what I’d like? Just listen for a second. You’ve been thrashing around for a long time, like you’ve got some kind of clichéd inner demon. And we both know why. What I’d like is for you to let go. Leave the department. In fact, we could both get a fresh start. We could move somewhere else. We could sell the house and do some traveling – we always said we would someday. Why not do it now? What’s the point of being unhappy? We have the money, Roland, so let’s – ”

It’s a good thing I’m not hooked up to an EKG, or the whole restaurant would be deafened by the shrill, beeping pulse. As it is, my fist puts a decent bend in the handle of my spoon.

“We’re not going to sell that house,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice calm. “Never. And I’m not leaving the job. That’s not why I wanted to talk.”

“Then why did you?”

I drop the spoon in the bowl and sit back. Honestly, I don’t have an answer. There was a reason, some deep and primal instinct that pushed me at a moment of crisis to reach out. But Charlotte and I, we don’t function that way, not anymore. Especially not now.

“I just thought… I wanted to let you know what’s going on.”

“Great,” she says. “Now I know.”

She keeps eating, using her fork like a trident on the helpless fish, all joy in the process now gone. When the waiter swings by with offers of espresso and dessert, I shake my head and ask for the bill. Charlotte and I part ways on the sidewalk after a desultory kiss.

An hour later, on the far side of town, the wind blows Cavallo’s twisted locks across her eyes. While she grapples with her hair, I flip through photos of Hannah Mayhew’s abandoned car, a white Ford Focus hatchback. I match the painted lines in the photographs with the parking space divisions at my feet, working out the car’s exact placement. A makeshift shrine by the nearest lamppost, wilting flowers, candles, and sun-baked greeting cards, helps to mark the spot.

As far as crime statistics are concerned, Willowbrook Mall ranks second in the city behind the notorious Greenspoint, mainly people breaking into parked cars or simply stealing them. Fortunately Hannah’s Focus wasn’t one of them, or we’d have even less to work with than we do. Along with the shots of the car, I have grainy stills from the video surveillance footage.

“Those haven’t been released to the media,” Cavallo says.

According to the time stamps, the Focus arrived at 12:58 p.m. Twelve minutes later, a gray shadow emerged from the driver’s side – presumably Hannah, but the action transpired too far from the camera for decent coverage.

“While she was sitting there, she made a call from her mobile to the prepaid number. The connection lasted about thirty seconds. She was probably calling to say she’d arrived.”

“And then the van pulls up?”

I flip to the next still, in which a white panel van blocks the view.

“One theory is, she got in the van. It was moving slow, and kind of stops right there, but you can’t tell from the footage if she got in. A group of people passes by right then. She might have blended in with them and gone inside the mall.” Cavallo fingers through my stack, sliding out another photo. “As they get closer, you can see one of the girls kind of looks like her. So that’s another theory.”

“Any footage from inside the mall?”

“Nothing we can confirm as her, no. You’d be surprised how many five-foot-four teenage blondes there are in the mall at any given time, and how hard it is to tell them apart on surveillance tape. She had a shiny pink purse, pretty distinctive, and we haven’t spotted anything like that.”

“No witnesses have come forward?”

She laughs. “Over fifty have. She was spotted in the parking lot, inside Macy’s, Sephora, and Williams-Sonoma. She was all over the food court. Sometimes with other girls, sometimes alone. She was arguing with a boy – sometimes a white boy, sometimes Latino – and she was holding hands with at least two different guys.”

“She got around.”

“Yeah, you could say that. There was even a witness in the Abercrombie changing room who heard a girl crying in the next stall. She couldn’t see this girl, but she’s pretty sure it had to be Hannah Mayhew. They’re all sure.”

“And they just want to help. I know how it works.”

Go to a neighborhood like the Third Ward, and no matter what happens – somebody can walk up to a dude in broad daylight and put a gun to his head – nobody sees anything. But out in the suburbs, everyone sees something. As they say, the crazies come out of the woodwork – only the crazies are normal enough. They’re just starved for attention, captivated by their proximity to the girl on tv.