Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“What you want us to do,” Jose said, “is pin a bunch a cold cases on Skeeter so we can make our numbers.”

Emerson’s lips thinned. “I want you two to do some retrospective investigation,” he said tightly. “Bring justice. Is that too much to ask?”

“What you’re asking us to do,” Frank countered, “isn’t investigating, it’s picking through a garbage dump.”

Emerson’s face flushed. He jabbed an index finger at the two detectives.

“You two prima donnas,” he shouted in a strangled voice, “are not… by God… going to fucking define… what your job is in this goddamn department!”

His eyes bulged and his finger trembled as he went on. “There are procedures… recognized procedures… legal procedures… for closing cold cases. And you will damn well get busy, or you will turn in your badges.”

Winded, Emerson paused. “Is that clear?” he asked in a flat, metallic voice.

“Clear…” Jose hesitated, then tacked on a silent “But…?”

“Yes?” Emerson asked.

“You mind if we track down Skeeter’s killer while we’re at it?”

Jose shook his head. “You had to know that was coming,” he said as they walked down the hall from Emerson’s office.

Frank felt the knot of anger tight in his stomach. “Emerson the weatherman.”

“Hunh. Weathervane.”

They stopped at a door with a sign that said “Records-Modus Operandi.” Frank tapped his five-digit access code into a keypad set into the wall beside the door.

Nothing.

Frowning, he entered the numbers again. Again, nothing.

“Damn thing’s fighting you,” Jose said unhelpfully.

Frank mentally went over the access code again. Bank PIN, Social Security number, health insurance group number, frequent flyer account number. “I thought it was only the army that made people into numbers.”

He tried a third time. The door unlocked with a metallic click, and Frank pushed through. Battered ranks of old-fashioned file cabinets filled the left side of the cavernous room. On the right, records analysts sat at four rows of desks. The analysts, mostly women, faced their computer screens with a vacant stare-the empty look of combat veterans who’d seen too much and who knew they were going to see more.

No one looked up as Frank and Jose made their way to a desk in the last row. There, a small-boned woman with short-cut iron-gray hair leaned forward, her fingers racing across her computer keyboard like those of a concert pianist at a Steinway. They stood watching until she looked up.

Eleanor Trowbridge intrigued Frank. R amp;MO’s senior analyst was a constant in a constantly changing world. She’d had the wrinkles and the gray hair when he and Jose had first met her twenty-six years before. She knew damn near all there was to know about crime in the District. She’d turned in her battered Olivetti typewriter for a Gateway computer, but she was still the person you went to if you wanted to make sense of things that didn’t make sense to anybody else.

Jose started to say something.

Before he could, Eleanor swiveled her chair around to a file cabinet and pulled a thick file jacket from a drawer. “James Culver Hodges. Aka ‘Skeeter.’ ” She handed it to Jose.

Jose flashed a look of surprise, then smiled. “While you’re at it, got any picks for NBA playoffs?”

“Maybe the Powerball numbers?” Frank asked.

“Elementary, gentlemen,” Eleanor said, sighing. “Point one, Mr. Hodges is newly dead.”

Jose’s smile turned wry. “Bingo.”

“And you two want me to find you some cold cases you can bury with Skeeter?”

“Double bingo,” Frank said.

Eleanor looked at the two detectives over the top of her glasses. “This afternoon? After five?”

Back in the office, the answering machine flashed insistently. Frank jabbed the answer button.

“Frank?” The words came out burgundy. “Call when you can.”

Jose watched the smile gathering at the corners of Frank’s mouth. “Woman’s got a voice.”

Frank nodded and slouched comfortably into his chair. “She does indeed.”

He never thought about Kate without a flush of warmth somewhere between heart and stomach. He didn’t remember a world before her and couldn’t imagine a world after. He caught occasional reflections of himself in her, and it always surprised him, the goodness he saw there. Part of him marveled that the two of them had found each other, while another part worried how he’d be if she weren’t there.

Jose watched Frank’s smile grow. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Meantime, you want to do… what?”

Frank thought about Kate some more, then sat up, took a deep breath, and surveyed his desktop. The overflowing in-box drew his eyes.

“We could”-he waved at the mound of paper-“get some of that done.”

Jose looked at his own in-box in distaste. “Let’s not. Let’s go check the street.”

Frank reached for his phone. “Let me call Kate first.”

“I’ll get the car.”

Frank picked up the phone and hit a speed dial. He looked out toward the Mall. The wind had picked up; the flags atop the Smithsonian castle stood straight out. How long, he wondered, had it been since he’d taken the time to-

“Hello.”

The Smithsonian and its flags vanished, and he felt warm in his chest.

“Jose says you’ve got a voice.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

He waited several heartbeats. “You’re back tonight?”

Kate gave him a flight number.

“Missed you,” he said.

“It was only a week.”

Several more heartbeats. “Oh?”

Kate laughed. “You’ve got a voice.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

Another laugh. “No.”

The maroon Crown Vic idled at the curb, Jose at the wheel.

Still thinking about Kate and dinner, Frank got in.

Jose dropped the car into gear and pulled away. “Thought we might check the Rolex market.”

Ten minutes later, Frank and Jose sat in the car, watching as Waverly Ngame assembled his stand across the street.

First out of the white Dodge van, a longish rectangular folding table, the kind you see in church basements and at catered receptions. Ngame locked open the legs. With a toe, he nudged wood shims under them, working around the table until it was steady on the uneven brick sidewalk.

Ngame disappeared into the van. He came back out with racks of white plastic-coated wire-grid shelving under both arms, and a grease-stained canvas bag in his left hand. In swift, practiced motions, he picked the largest of the shelves and braced it upright on the side of the table facing the street.

Holding the shelf with one hand, he reached into the canvas bag with the other and brought out a large C clamp. He twirled the clamp with sharp snaps of his wrist, then opened the jaws just enough to slip over the shelf and the table edge. He tightened the clamp, and moved to repeat the process on the other side of the table.

Almost magically, more shelving and more C clamps produced a display stand.

Back into the van.

This time, Ngame reappeared with large nylon bags of merchandise. Several more trips, and Gucci handbags hung alluringly from the vertical shelving while Rolex watches and Serengeti sunglasses marched in neat ranks across the top of the folding table.

In the street, by Ngame’s van, a crow worried at the flattened remains of a road-killed rat.

With a little finger, Ngame made a microscopic adjustment, poking a pair of sunglasses to line up just so with its neighbors. He didn’t look up from putting the fine touches to his display.

“Detectives Phelps and Kearney. Good morning, sirs.”

As a boy in Lagos, Ngame had learned his English listening to the BBC. He sounded like a Brit announcer, except that he had a Nigerian’s way of softly rounding his vowels and stressing the final syllables of his sentences.