Elmore Leonard - City Primeval

Raymond got up from his desk. He walked over to the young black guy in the plaid golf hat and touched him on the shoulder.

“Let me ask you something, okay?”

The young black guy didn’t answer, but looked up at the lieutenant.

“The woman’s lying there dead-is that right?”

“What I been trying to tell him.”

“What did you burn her with?”

The young black guy didn’t answer.

“Shit,” Hunter said, “let’s put him upstairs.”

“I just touch her a little,” the young black guy said then, “see if she’s alive.”

Hunter said, “What’d you touch her with, your dick?”

“No, man, nothing like that.”

“They’re doing an autopsy on her,” Hunter said. “Now they find any semen in her and it matches your blood type-then we got to ask you, Darrold, you rape her before or after you shot her?”

“I didn’t shoot her. You find a gun on me? Shit no.”

“Where’d you touch her?” Raymond asked.

After a moment the young black guy said, “Like around her legs.”

“Just touched her a little?”

“Yeah, just, you know, a little bit.”

“You touch her with a cigarette?” Raymond asked.

“Yeah, I believe was a cigarette.”

“Lit cigarette?”

“Yeah, was smoked down though, you know, like a butt.”

“Why’d you touch her with a cigarette?”

“I told you,” the young black guy said, “see if she’s alive, tha’s all.”

Raymond went over to the coffeemaker, picked up the glass pitcher and walked out.

Maureen Downey, coming along the hall, raised a file folder she was carrying. She looked eager, pleased.

Raymond waited for her.

“Pathologist reports,” Maureen said.

“How about the lab?”

“They’re still comparing, but as far as they’re concerned the slugs’re identical.”

“What kind of gun?”

“They got frags from the woman and two good ones from Guy, the casing intact…”

“Norb told me.”

“Nine-millimeter or a .38. You know what they’re leaning toward and looking into now?” Maureen was beaming.

“Walther P .38,” Raymond said.

Maureen’s grin dissolved. “How’d you know?”

“November, seventy-eight,” Raymond said, “the shooting in the drug house on St. Mary’s-”

Maureen’s eyes came alive again.

“Remember? Two slugs were taken out of the woodwork, from a P .38.”

“My God,” Maureen said. “You don’t suppose-”

“I sure do,” Raymond said. “Go on back to the lab, get ’em to do a comparison, the slugs out of the wall with the slugs from Judge Guy and Adele Simpson.”

“It sounds too good to be true,” Maureen said.

“If they compare,” Raymond said and continued down the hall and around the corner to the sink in the janitor’s closet where he rinsed out the glass percolator and filled it with fresh water-aware of the good feeling, the rush of excitement he would have to contain, the feeling telling him-without any doubt or pauses or maybes-that all the slugs would compare. He saw Clement Mansell in a green-red-and-yellow Hawaiian sportshirt standing before the judge’s bench. He saw Clement Mansell turn and walk out of the courtroom, grinning at everybody.

THEY WERE QUIET MENwho discussed murder in normal tones.

Robert Herzog, Inspector of the Homicide Section, seated at a glass-topped desk in his glass-walled office: twenty-nine years a policeman, a large man with a sad face, a full head of gray hair. And Raymond Cruz, whose gaze came away from the window when Herzog asked him if the glare bothered him.

“No, it’s fine.”

“You look like you were squinting.”

The window, directly behind Herzog, facing south toward the river, framed late afternoon sunlight and the top half of a highrise in the near distance.

“So what do we know about Adele Simpson?”

“Worked for a real estate company, divorced, no children. Lived alone, apartment over near Westland, dated a couple of guys from the office. One of them married.”

“Can you tie in either of the guys to Judge Guy?”

“I don’t know yet, but I doubt it.”

“You’re gonna need help on this one. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I don’t know…” Raymond said, easing into it, wanting to hear his own theory out loud and not rush it or leave anything out. Herzog was looking at him expectantly now; but he knew Herzog would ask the right questions and let him take his time.

“Maybe it was luck you gave us both cases,” Raymond said. “I mean the two investigations might’ve never been related, but the first thing we did was look for a nexus and there it was. Same gun was used on Guy and Adele Simpson.”

“So,” Herzog said, “you assume the same guy did ’em both, but you don’t know if it was revenge or jealousy or what.”

“Actually,” Raymond said, “I’m not too anxious about motive right now. Take the most obvious approach, you’d say it’s a hit and the girl, it’s too bad, happened to be with the judge.”

“How do you know the girl was there?”

“Witness heard five shots, exactly five. Then a woman scream, though he’s not positive about it. Three slugs in Guy plus two exit wounds, two slugs found in the car upholstery, in the backrest of the seat. Two matching slugs were taken from Adele Simpson’s body. They caught her in the back, shattered her spine and were deflected into her lung. A third gunshot was through and through.”

“But the scream,” Herzog said, “didn’t necessarily come from Adele Simpson.”

“No, I wouldn’t want to offer it in court,” Raymond said, “but we’ve got a valet parking attendant at Hazel Park by the name of Everett Livingston who tells us Guy left there in his silver Mark VI with a blond lady wearing like a pink dress, gold chains and dark lipstick. Which matches Adele Simpson.”

Herzog said, “What’s Everett doing parking cars?”

“Everett remembers the judge because he knows him by sight. And, because the judge was involved in a little bumper tag with a black car that was either a Buick or an Olds.”

“He describe the driver?”

“He described the driver’s left arm-sort of sun-burned with reddish hair, sleeve turned up. Which brings us to Gary Sovey-white, twenty-eight years old, he saw a black Buick Riviera pushing or racing the judge’s car down John R.”

Herzog said, “Where do you find witnesses like that?”

“It gets better,” Raymond said. “A guy was standing on the corner of Nine Mile and John R, one-thirty this morning, when a black late-model GM car, possibly a Buick, nearly jumped the curb and almost ran over his dog taking a leak. License number, the guy says, PVX-five something. Lansing doesn’t have a Buick with a PVX five-something number, but they sure have a PYX-546… Buick Riviera registered to a Del Weems who lives right over there in that building.”

“What building?”

Raymond nodded toward the window. “Thirteen hundred Lafayette East.”

Herzog swiveled to look over his shoulder at the highrise and came back to the desk again. “Del Weems have red hair on his arms?”

“I don’t know what color hair he’s got. He was out of town last night.”

“Then why’re you telling me about Del Weems?”

“He’s got a dinged front left fender,” Raymond said.

“That’s interesting,” Herzog said.

“And he’s got a young lady living in his apartment who was out at Hazel Park last night.”

“The lady have red hair?”

“Sort of, but more blond than red. No, the young lady wasn’t in the Buick, she was in a Cadillac with-you ready?-Skender Lulgjaraj.”

Herzog said, “That’s kind of a familiar name.”