J Bertrand - Back on Murder

Cavallo’s eyes harden. “Where are you going?”

I don’t have time for the statement, I don’t have time to explain, and the way they’re both looking at me, one despairing and the other expectant, both thinking they have a claim on my attention -

“Has something happened with the case?” Robb asks.

“Not this one.”

Cavallo stands. I take a step back, only to bump into Aguilar, who extends two coffee cups out at arm’s length, trying to avoid spilling on his shoes.

“Hold your horses,” Aguilar says.

My desk phone starts to bleep. I squeeze forward, nudging Robb’s chair aside. Since I can’t push these people out of the way, I push the contents of the cramped cubicle instead, accidentally toppling the topmost box from the nearest stack. Cavallo dives for it, pushing a pile of paper off the edge of the desk, half of it landing in Robb’s lap while the other half hits the floor. Aguilar jumps back for no reason, splashing more coffee on himself.

I lift the receiver.

“Be up here in ten,” Wilcox says. “And grab a vest on the way.”

“Will do.”

I put the phone down, surveying the scene. While Cavallo reaches across Robb to wrestle the box back in place, he’s on his knees retrieving overturned files from the floor. Aguilar curses his spattered shoes, saying something under his breath about ruined calfskin. It’s ridiculous enough to laugh at, if only I hadn’t set the comedy in motion.

“Sorry,” I say.

My fellow detectives glare, while Robb reappears from under the desk with an armload of now intermingled paperwork, which is going to require some organizing. Later. I take it from him, drop it on the desk, and turn to go.

“Where are you going?” Cavallo asks.

“I’ve got to grab a vest.”

“A vest? For what?”

I glance around, making sure no one’s near enough to overhear apart from Aguilar.

“Keller,” I whisper. “We’re about to kick his door.”

“That’s not our case.”

“It’s not yours.”

Robb steps closer, holding Thomson’s sketchbook open in his hands. “What is this?”

“Nothing to do with you,” I say, snapping it away.

He ignores my reaction, his brows knitted. “No, really. What are those pictures?”

I sigh, glancing again at my watch, then flip to the back of the sketchbook, producing the cell-phone photo enlargement. “They’re an artist’s representation of that.”

The photo is weightless, but he reacts like I’ve handed him an anvil, slumping back against the desktop, letting the image drag his arms down.

Cavallo bends down. “What’s wrong, Carter?”

“Where did this come from?” he whispers.

Suddenly, the clock doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I take the photo from him. “We believe this woman was killed during a shooting in southwest Houston. Her body was dumped in the Gulf.”

“What?” he croaks.

“Do you recognize her?”

He reaches for the picture again. “I think… I’m not sure. It looks like it could be Evey.”

Aguilar puts the coffee mugs down. “Who’s Evey?”

“Evangeline Dyer,” I say.

I slip the photo he gave me out of my notebook and make a comparison. Maybe he’s right. It’s hard to tell, given the quality of the cell-phone snap, and the way Evey Dyer’s hair hides her face in the candid picture.

I’ve broken men down in the interview room before, had them crying like babies for their mamas, and at moments like that there’s a satisfaction you get, a sense of psychological power. But Carter Robb isn’t broken by any power of mine, and when he hunches over the chair, one knee on the seat, his body across the back cushion like a seasick man leaning over water, I can’t help but pity him. Aguilar backs off, baffled by what’s happening, and Cavallo puts her hand on Robb’s back, stroking methodically.

“I’ve got to make a call,” I say.

It takes the rest of my ten minutes to get Gene Fontenot on the line, and as I enlist yet another colleague to obtain yet another dna swab from yet another mother, Cavallo shakes her head, either at the irony or just the weight of the moment. There’s no way Robb could have made a positive identification from that photo, not objectively, but I know in my bones he’s right.

Fontenot bucks a little. “You want me to get a swab from this lady? And what am I supposed to tell her, that you’ve got a body in the Houston morgue you want to check it against?”

“I don’t have a body, Gene. Just some blood on a sheet.”

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

I put the phone down, head spinning, the raid all but forgotten.

Cavallo gazes at me, eyes shining. “You were right.”

“About?”

“The two cases,” she says. “They really are connected.”

It’s true. If the woman on the bed – just a girl, really – was Evange-line Dyer, then that means the Morales shooting and Hannah Mayhew’s disappearance are truly tethered, just as I’d suspected at the beginning. Only I still can’t fathom how.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Robb says.

He struggles to his feet, shrugging off Cavallo’s touch, and starts loping toward the exit, his shoulders hunched, like Atlas in a T-shirt and jeans. She tries to follow, but I motion her back.

“Let him go. He needs to lick his wounds.”

As Robb passes through the door, Wilcox squeezes in, wearing a Kevlar vest over his shirt and tie and a blue hpd jacket over the vest. He bounds over, drawing a lot of attention from the detectives in the squad room, most of them former colleagues, though his move to IAD dampens any impulse they might otherwise have to welcome him.

“Are you coming or what?” he asks.

“I’m coming.”

Cavallo grabs her jacket. “Me, too.”

Wilcox turns on her, none too pleased. “Do we know each other? Because I don’t remember issuing an open invitation.”

“The cases are connected,” she tells me, ignoring Wilcox entirely. “This is my case, too. Don’t even think about leaving me behind.”

“What does she mean, the cases are connected?” Wilcox asks. “What cases?”

“Come on.” I take each one by the arm and start for the door. “I’ll explain everything in the car. Let’s not keep our man waiting.”

The tenants in Keller’s apartment building, a vintage tower on Memorial Drive that was updated a few years back, converted into swanky mid-century pads, react to our shotguns and drawn side arms with a surprising sangfroid, as if they’re accustomed to armed police raids. More likely, the scenario is too foreign for immediate processing, the stuff of television rather than real life, more a product of stunned excitement than alarm.

We stack up in the hallway outside his door, first Wilcox, then me, with Cavallo on my elbow clutching a shiny-looking Beretta, barrel down. Her vest doubles her width, like she’s wearing a life jacket. Behind her, a couple of iad detectives, one with a pump shotgun and the other with a portable battering ram, and the surveillance boys we picked up out on the curb, who reported that Keller went in and still hasn’t come out and his car’s parked in his reserved space.

Still no sign, they said, of Salazar.

Advancing to the edge of the door, Wilcox rings the bell. He waits a moment, then knocks.

“Houston Police Department,” he growls.

Nothing. He waves the ram forward and a thrill goes through me. No matter what anyone says, taking a door down is exhilarating work, a pure adrenaline rush, the law enforcement equivalent of an extreme sport. Anything could be on the opposite side of that door. Keller could be sitting in his underwear in front of the tv, or deafened by the roar of the shower. Or he could be hunkered down behind a makeshift barricade with an illegally converted automatic rifle leveled at the entrance.