J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Okay,” he says.

I open the back door for him. He starts to get in, then pauses, conscious of the churchgoers watching on the periphery. His pale cheeks redden and he hurries into the car, pulling the door shut himself. Aguilar and I exchange a look over the roof. We’re taking a chance not putting him under arrest or even patting him down. But it’s a calculated risk. He knows what he did, but he doesn’t know whether we know. He doesn’t know how much we know. As long as he believes there’s a shot at getting out of this, he’s still liable to talk. Technically he’s just a witness, a person of interest helping with our investigation. If we read him his rights and treat him like a suspect, he’s not going to give us a thing.

We get inside and close the doors.

“You all right back there?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” he says, nodding for emphasis.

I trade another look with Aguilar. Young hasn’t asked why we want to talk to him. Either he’s very trusting or he already knows.

The man who drowned his own father in the bathtub last night is sitting in Interview Room 1 with Jerry Lorenz, one of the greenhorns on our shift. So I install Young in Interview 2 with promises of coffee and breakfast muffins on my return. Down the hallway I find Lt. Bascombe in front of the monitors. He sends Aguilar off to his cubicle for a much-needed nap and beckons me into the room.

“And shut the door behind you.”

He’s set on interfering, I can tell.

On one screen, Young has his elbows on the table, hands folded, gazing blandly at the four corners of the room. On the other, Lorenz paces back and forth while his suspect, a fragile-looking man in a stained guayabera, cradles his face in his hands.

“That looks like it’s going well,” I say.

“This is what I like, March. Fresh homicides on a Sunday morning. Overtime for everybody, suspects for everybody, closures for everybody. We even have a name for the shooter on Antoine. When we pick him up, we’ll be three for three-assuming the glove fits for Mr. Jason Young.”

“It fits,” I say. “We tailed him before picking him up, and he just about led us back to the scene. Then he veers off and starts heading north, where he pulls into a parking lot and dumps his breakfast onto the pavement.”

“And you got him going into a church? That sounds like a guilty conscience to me.”

I nod. “It’ll sound that way to the jury, too. He didn’t even ask why we brought him in. He just came.”

“ ’Cause the boy knows he done wrong,” Bascombe says, breaking into a smile. “Now, are you ready to have a go at him?”

“I think so. We got a look in his truck and didn’t see anything, but I’d like to get a warrant to search his apartment.”

“I thought he didn’t get home until this morning, and Aguilar saw him go inside. There’s nothing in there.”

“He could have come and gone anytime yesterday. I still don’t have a firm time of death.”

“Go look on your desk,” he says. “The autopsy’s this afternoon, but Dr. Green gave me some preliminary info over the phone.”

“She did?”

“When you need something special from the ME, you just call your brother-in-law. When I need something special, I use my charm.”

“Charm. I’ll have to try that.”

“There’s something else on your desk, too,” Bascombe says. “You left a message with your victim’s mother? Well, she called back. I spared you the hassle of doing the notification, but she’s coming down here to give a statement. She brought your suspect’s name up and said she’s positive he’s the one.”

“Really? So maybe I need to hold off on talking to him and see what she can give me first. The more information I have, the better.”

“It’s your call.” He glances back at the monitor and his smile fades. “Listen, March. That penguin suit last night, what was that all about?”

“Charlotte’s firm hosted a Christmas thing and she promised conjugal relations in exchange for my attendance. So thanks for ruining that.”

“Don’t blame me,” he says, pointing at the monitor. “Take it out on him. But the question I wanted to ask is, did you see the captain at this party?”

“Hedges? No, why?”

He shakes his head. “No reason.”

“Come on, Lieutenant. You asked for a reason.”

“Let it drop.”

“He never showed last night at the scene,” I say. “That was a little odd.”

“We had our hands full last night. Don’t make a big thing out of it. I was just wondering if you two ran in the same circles is all.”

But that’s not all. I can tell. He dismisses me and I go straight to the captain’s office, which is dark and locked tight. Of course it is. If he’s not going to show on a Saturday night, don’t expect him bright and bushy come Sunday morning. I go to my desk and read over the notes from the medical examiner’s office, but the whole time the lieutenant’s question eats away at me. Why would he think Hedges was at the party? Why would he shut down so quick when I asked him about it? One minute I think we have a good relationship finally, and the next he’s bawling me out in front of outsiders.

I’m still thinking it over when my phone lights up.

“Detective March? There’s a visitor in reception for you-Candace Walker?”

The victim’s mother. “I’ll be right down.”

“I want to see her, please,” she says.

“Your daughter’s not here, Mrs. Walker. We can arrange for you to see her, though. That won’t be a problem. You can see her when she’s ready.”

When she’s ready. The woman swallows the euphemism down and I can see her mind chewing on it, working out what it must mean for Simone not to be ready now. She sucks in her hollow cheeks, her eyes fluttering.

If Joy Hill had a sister, a shrunken, shriveled sibling who’d gotten none of the breaks, who lived badly and suffered and made all the wrong choices, she would be a dead ringer for Simone’s mother. The resemblance between the two women is striking enough to make me wonder about Simone, what her motives were for living under Dr. Hill’s roof. Where Hill comes off as rather attractively dissipated, aged by the good life, lanky and at ease in her skin, Candace Walker is hard and grating, her mouth twisted into an involuntary frown.

Of course, she just learned in the past ninety minutes or so that her only daughter was brutally murdered, probably after having been sexually assaulted. Under the circumstances, maybe she looks just right.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” I say, my hand on her elbow to guide her. “We’ll take this elevator right here.”

She’s quiet on the way up to the sixth floor. I let her through the Homicide Division door, leading her away from the interview rooms toward the lieutenant’s office, since he’s volunteered to sit in. She trails behind me, not paying much attention to her surroundings, still preoccupied with her grief. If she knew about Young’s presence, her demeanor might change.

Bascombe stands at the door, leaning forward to take her hand. She withers before him and draws her hand back, not paying attention to what he’s saying. I see the hardness in her mouth and know why. It’s because he’s black. He sees it, too, but doesn’t take any notice, ushering her inside and onto the soft couch near the door.

“I’ll leave you with Detective March,” he says.

After he’s gone, she lets out a breath. I try to think of a question to ask, but for the moment I’m stumped.

“He’s the person I talked to over the phone?”

I nod.

“He seems real nice.”

“He is,” I say. “Let me begin by expressing my condolences, ma’am. I know how shocking this is, and you have my deepest sympathy.”