Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“So?” Jean-Paul asked when we were outside, headed home.

“Now we know where Duc got that gun,” I said. “We keep tripping over Chuck Riley, don’t we?”

“He seems a bit of a bungler, but I think he is an adept manipulator of people,” Jean-Paul said. “Perhaps dangerously so, yes?”

“Yes.” I held my phone on my open palm; the connection to Chief Wasick’s phone was still open, still on speaker, as it had been during the entire conversation with George. “Chief, you there?”

“I am.”

“Did you get it?”

“The whole confab,” he said. “Interesting.”

“Where is Chuck Riley?” I asked.

“I heard enough to send a squad to pick him up.”

Happy to hear that Chuck wouldn’t be out loose for a while, I closed the connection and slipped the phone into my pocket. Our front door opened just as we reached the porch and crime scene technicians, apparently finished, filed out past us carrying their gear and bagged evidence. With no fanfare, Duc’s body, zipped into a green plastic body bag, was wheeled out among them and deposited into the coroner’s unmarked white van. Almost as reflex, Jean-Paul and I both turned to see if anyone was watching from the Loper house, but saw no one.

The last man out handed me a certificate releasing the scene and a card with the numbers of local crime scene cleaners. I dialed the first number on the card and arranged with the dispatcher for a crew to come as soon as possible. For a small additional payment, I was told, a crew could be at the house in an hour. I said, fine, whatever, peachy, just come. Now would be good.

Chief Wasick, standing in the open front door, eavesdropped on the transaction.

“Any word on Kevin?” I asked as we walked up the steps.

“Doc says he should be okay.” Wasick crossed his arms over his chest and sagged against the doorjamb, weary, ashen-faced, as he watched the coroner’s van pull away from the curb. “Until we bring in Riley, I’ve posted men at the ICU.”

“ Until you bring Chuck in?” I said, thinking that Chuck should be in custody by now. “He lives just down the street.”

“Yeah, but he seems to have stepped out. The wife said she doesn’t know where he went. The logical place for him to go is the hospital to check on Kevin, but he hasn’t turned up there, yet.”

“When you find him,” I said, “might be wise not to tell him right away that Duc is dead. Let him worry that Duc is talking.”

He smiled grimly, “Hey, who’s the cop here, you or me?”

“You sound like Kevin,” I said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment; Kevin is our best investigator.” His voice cracked when he said Kevin’s name. “I should have paid more attention when he told me he was reopening the Bartolini murder. A favor for a friend, he said. There was so little to go on-a thirty-year-old case-that I never thought he’d get anywhere with it. Poke around, make his friend happy. But now, Jesus.” He canted his head toward the bloody mess visible through the open door; I dreaded going back inside. “What did he set in motion?”

I said, “Ask the original investigator.”

“Yeah, Riley.” Wasick went over and sat on the porch rail, gazed out across the long shadows of early morning stretching across the lawn. “For all of his problems, Riley had a good record as an investigator. But he sure did a piss-poor job on that one. I thought maybe he was off his game because he was too close to the case, lived across the street from the victim. But now…”

He shifted his focus to me. “Was Riley covering his own butt? Did he shoot that woman?”

“I don’t know if he pulled the trigger,” I said. “But I’m very sure he had a hand in it. Trinh Bartolini was being extorted for sex and Larry Nordquist, the neighborhood Peeping Tom, knew who the guy was. Riley didn’t want Larry to talk to me. And now Larry’s dead.”

“What was Riley’s hold on her?”

“Fear for her sister’s safety,” I said. “Wouldn’t you expect that if a woman were murdered not long after she and her husband went to the police to report that they were being extorted by the local agent for the people holding their relative for ransom in Vietnam, the homicide detective assigned to her case would pursue that lead?”

“Sure.”

“There’s not one word in Trinh Bartolini’s murder book about the ransom demands or a police inquiry about it.”

He scowled. “Kevin told you that?”

“I saw it for myself,” I said.

“I’ll have a word later with Kevin about showing you the murder book, but it is interesting. You think Riley was in league with the extortionist’s local agent?”

“Maybe not in the beginning, but from the time the police were brought in, yes. Old Chuck Riley, always on the lookout for a little spare cash, extorted the extortionist who, unless I am mistaken, is now zipped inside a green body bag on his way to the morgue.”

“So far, that’s a lot of speculation,” Wasick said. “Have any solid evidence?”

“That’s your department,” I said. “It’s your case. I have faith you’ll turn up something. Duc came out of Vietnam with nothing, but managed to turn that nothing into a very substantial business. It’s worth looking into.”

Jean-Paul, who had been quietly listening in, said, “If you don’t mind, Chief, I will make a call or two. Records of Duc’s land purchases will not be difficult for you to find, but international bank transactions, especially very old ones, will require help of a certain sort. Maggie, shall I inquire whether the FBI has records of your parents’ report and any follow-up investigation?”

“Can you do that?” I asked. A little Gallic shrug was the response. Jean-Paul was already punching numbers into his phone when he turned to go into the house; the man was full of surprises.

Wasick seemed puzzled. “He said what?”

“Jean-Paul has resources,” I said.

“Who are you people?”

I tried to imitate Jean-Paul’s shrug. “When Kevin gets the DNA report from Mrs. B’s shirt, with luck you’ll have your solid evidence.”

“The DNA report came in from the lab yesterday,” Wasick said. “Whatever Kevin saw in it upset him enough that he ran out to talk to his priest.”

“He ran out to get drunk with my uncle,” I said, turning to go inside. “Please excuse me.”

The blood on the entry hall floor was congealing and beginning to smell. Taking shallow breaths, giving the mess a wide berth and keeping my eyes averted, I went looking for my uncle. I found him in the living room, asleep on a sofa.

“Uncle Max.” When I shook his foot he opened one eye. “Kevin got the DNA profile from Trinh Bartolini’s shirt?”

“He wanted to talk to you about it. That’s why he came home with me last night. That, and he didn’t have enough for cab fare; we put away a tidy bit of scotch after dinner.”

“How did you get home?” I asked. I hadn’t seen the rented Caddy out front.

“In a cab.” He yawned. “I offered to lend Kevin some money, but he said something about wanting a farewell tour on a leather sofa. He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense by then.”

“What did he say about the DNA?”

Max propped himself up on his elbows and yawned again. “He said he was an idiot and that you were right.”

“About?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe in vino veritas , but in scotch there’s just a lot of slurred words after a while.”

Chief Wasick had followed me in.

“Chief,” I said, “we need to see the DNA report. Where is it?”

He addressed Max. “She’s kind of bossy, isn’t she?”

“She can be,” Max said, smiling at me fondly. “And she can be a force of nature when she is on to something. I believe it would be wise if you produced that report.”