J Bertrand - Back on Murder

“I’m not avoiding you,” Cavallo says. “Believe it or not, there’s all this work they want me to do. It didn’t stop just because you left.”

“Wanda said you took a personal day.”

“I was sick. I think this case is giving me an ulcer.”

There’s more to it than that, I have no doubt, but I don’t want to press her. Her voice sounds scratchy, like she’s been yelling at someone. I don’t want to make her yell. I want her happy. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s an integral part of my master plan.

“Listen,” I say, “Theresa…” If she objects to my use of her first name, she doesn’t verbalize it. “There’s a favor I need to ask you.”

“Fire away. But just so you know, the answer’s gonna be negative.”

“In that case, I’m not going to say it over the phone. Mind if I drop in on you?”

A long pause. “Is it really that important?”

“Life or death.”

“Right. Well, I’m up at Northwest. Lunch is on you. And the answer’s still going to be no.”

“See you in twenty.”

As soon as I hang up, I grab my jacket and take the elevator down, moving on autopilot through the car pool. After lunch I’m going to drop in on Vance Balinski in person and find out why he hasn’t gotten back in touch. First, though, I need to convince Cavallo to do a little moonlighting.

The car clunk-clunks along the Pierce Elevated, static coming in loud and clear over the radio. My phone starts to ring.

“March.”

“What do you want?”

I notice a silver Impala on my tail, edging closer, the driver’s bald dome visible, a phone pressed to his ear.

Keller.

“You wanna pull over a minute?” he says. “I’d like to talk face-to-face.”

I give my car a little gas. “No, thanks. I’ll be in touch to arrange an interview in due course.”

“An interview?”

“You worked closely with my victim. Standard procedure.”

He sighs. In the rearview I can see him kneading his brow. “They’ve still got you working the suicides. If I’d have remembered that…”

“What?” I ask. You wouldn’t have shot Thomson? You would’ve made it look gang-related, like my attempted murder, instead of staging a suicide?

“Nothing. Pull over. I want to talk.”

We race past the I-10 exit, switching lanes to avoid a stack-up on the far left. Everything slows down, lights are flashing, shattered glass kicks out across the interstate. A pickup with a dislocated fender hugs the concrete median, and up ahead a little Honda looks like somebody set off a grenade in the trunk.

“Nasty,” Keller says.

I hang up the phone. A second later he calls back.

“What’s the problem, March? You were only too happy to barge in on me the other day. Now you’re running scared. You got a problem with me or something?” Baiting me. He’s too far back for me to make out his expression, but I can imagine the sneer on his lips. “The thing is, I’ve been hearing these rumors about you. They’re saying it won’t be long before you’re out on your ear. Bouncing from one detail to another, that’s what they call terminal velocity. Means you’re about to hit the ground. Hard. I’d hate to see that happen to a guy of your caliber, March.”

“Really.”

“I was thinking…” He chuckles. “I’ve got an opening on my team…”

I push the end button. We’re coming up on Cavalcade. Near the exit he moves to the right and puts his blinker on. I watch his car until it disappears down the ramp. Just as I begin to breathe easy, the phone rings again.

“One more thing,” he says. “If you don’t want the job, there’s no hard feelings.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

“Fine. Tell that pretty wife of yours I said hello.”

This time it’s Keller who hangs up, leaving me to contemplate the fact that Cavalcade will take him to Studewood, five minutes away from my house. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there. But then, I wouldn’t have thought he was stupid enough to kill a cop, either.

Thanks to Keller’s veiled threat, I turn up late to my lunch with Cavallo. While evicting the tenant might not rank high on my list of marital duties, protecting my wife does, even though I’m pretty certain the man’s just yanking my chain. I find Charlotte upstairs in her office, drinking cold coffee and staring at a column of text on her computer screen. Moving closer, I can read the lines, a stack of whereas, whereas, whereas down the left-hand margin, waiting for her to come up with the wording of each petition.

“You wanna trade jobs?” she asks.

“No thanks. I prefer getting shot.”

She blinks affectionately. “What are you doing home?”

I make up some excuse about forgetting something, then head out the door, casting a glance up and down the street. No sign of Keller, of course, and no sign of Tommy’s car, either, which is a shame. As much trouble as he is, I wouldn’t mind him being nearby right about now. Still, there’s no danger. Keller’s just pushing my buttons.

Cavallo chooses the 59 Diner across from Willowbrook Mall, triggering my speech about eating at chain restaurants when there are perfectly good hole-in-the-wall establishments nearby.

“Not out here,” she says. “And anyway, at least it’s a local chain.”

In my book, the 59 Diner actually located on Highway 59 makes perfect sense, and has the added benefit of being a little broken down and slightly greasy. The slicked-up suburban version leaves me cold. There aren’t even any rips in the vinyl upholstery of our booth. The menu isn’t tacky to the touch. When our waitress arrives with spot-free water glasses, I frown, which only invites Cavallo to observe there are 59 Diners all over the place. On Interstate 10, for example.

“Across from ikea,” she adds.

“Yeah, thanks. Listen. I’m sorry for leaving you to go it alone on the task force.”

“What are you talking about? We have enough dead weight as it is.”

“So you didn’t take a sick day when you heard the news?”

“Sick with relief, you mean?” She gazes into the distance. “It’s just this case catching up with me. You heard the Fontaine kid’s parents got a lawyer? They’re talking about suing the city now, which means the da wants to put a charge on the boy after all. If they would just let it drop, they’d be home free. But you can’t expect people to skip a potential payday anymore, even if their kid’s slinging.”

I could point out my misgivings about the way Fontaine was treated, but that would only get her wound up. And besides, I see her point.

“How’s Donna Mayhew holding up?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Doing a lot of media now. You saw her on cable last night?”

“I didn’t even know she was on.”

“Now she’s expressing concerns about the way the case has been handled. I think she’s mad they’re dragging Hannah’s name through the mud. That stuff about the drugs, the restraining order.” She slaps her laminated menu shut. “I’d be mad, too – but it’s not our fault.”

She goes on like this for a while, venting about task force woes. With the media pressure intensifying, more effort at the top seems to be going into damage control than finding Hannah Mayhew. The rumors are getting out of control, too.

“The team’s so porous,” she says. “Whatever you put into it leaks out by the end of the day.”

In the latest gaffe, some bored detectives who’d seen a documentary about forced prostitution started jawing on the topic of white slavery. By that afternoon the news wires were running a story, anonymously sourced, suggesting the task force was looking at this as a probable theory. Blindsided by the question during his cable call-in debut, the chief had responded that “every avenue was being investigated,” which had the unintended consequence of validating the rumor.