Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“I oughta file a complaint against the son of a bitch.”

Wheeler nodded. “That’s your right. I can give you the number for the Office of Community Complaints or the website where you can download the complaint form and e-mail it in. There’ll be an investigation and you’ll have to provide a formal statement. After that, there’ll be a mediation and conciliation process.”

Norris rubbed his chin. “You let me outta here and I’ll forget the whole thing.”

“You’re going to have to help me before I can do that.”

“What do you want from me? I didn’t do it and I don’t know who did.”

“Can you think of anyone who might want to harm Robin?”

He rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? The woman was a saint. Her only sin was marrying me.”

“You only get to be a saint after you’re dead. What about someone she’d defended who wasn’t happy with the job she did?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been divorced a long time and we didn’t talk much. When we did, it wasn’t about her job. It was mostly about me fucking something up.”

“What about Robin’s social life? Was she seeing anyone?”

“Maybe. My youngest, Kimmy-she’s the only one that talks to me-a few months back she told me her mom had a new boyfriend but she was keeping it a secret.”

“How did Kim find out about it?”

“I don’t know, but Kimmy’s smart-scary smart. Not much gets past that girl. If she says Robin was seeing someone, you can bet on it.”

“Did she say who it was?”

“When I asked her, she said she didn’t know, but I got the feeling she did but didn’t want to tell me, so I didn’t push. I wasn’t looking to stir anything up, and if Robin had something going on, then good for her.”

Wheeler had asked Robin’s children whether she was seeing anyone and they’d said that their mother dated occasionally but hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time. Except for Kim. She hadn’t commented. Wheeler didn’t think much of it at the time since Kim had said very little in response to any of his questions. He attributed her sullen demeanor and dismissive body language to a combination of angry grief and teenage angst.

Wheeler tried a different tack. “Did you have a spare key to your car?”

Norris brightened. “Yeah. I kept it in one of those magnetic hide-a-key things inside the wheel well, driver’s side, rear.”

“Who knew that?”

Norris threw his hands up. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s not like I advertised it. Wait a second. I told Richie so he wouldn’t break a window if he repossessed the car.”

“Anybody else?”

Norris thought for a moment. “Just Robin. She was always forgetting where she left her keys, so she hid a key like that. She got me to do it in case she needed the key to my car. After we split up, I kept doing it. Habit, you know.”

Wheeler got up. “Okay. Sit tight. I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of here.”

Rossi was waiting for him outside the interrogation room. They retreated to a safe distance to make certain Norris couldn’t overhear them.

“Did you catch all of that?” Wheeler asked.

“Yeah. I thought you were going to help him fill out the complaint.”

“Don’t worry. My good cop isn’t that good. But your bad cop was so good I thought Norris was going to piss himself. You want to let him take a look at the airport video?”

“Not until I get the video from the shuttle stops outside the terminal and the airport police tell me if they found any discarded clothes or the duffel bag.”

“What do you want to do with him in the meantime?”

“We can hold him for twenty-four hours without charging him, so let’s make good use of the time. Robin Norris had a reason to be up north. If she wasn’t meeting her ex-husband, she was meeting someone else. Since she wasn’t familiar with the area, she probably took I-29 north from downtown to the Barry Road exit. There are plenty of restaurants that would have still been open that time of night. Send some uniforms up there with pictures of Robin and have them canvass the area, see if anyone remembers seeing her.”

“So you think Norris may be telling the truth, that somebody really did steal his car and is setting him up for Robin’s murder?”

“Since we know the killer used his car, it’s the only other possible explanation.” Rossi looked away for a moment, brow furrowed. “In the video from the Economy parking lot, the driver of the Camry stayed in the car until the shuttle bus got close. When he got out of the car, he bent down like he’d dropped something, which took him outside the camera’s view. If he used the spare key to steal the car, he could have been putting it back.”

Wheeler grinned. “So it would look like the driver had used Norris’s key, not the spare. I’ll check the Camry to see if the spare is still there and if there are any prints we can use.”

“And check Robin’s car to see if she kept a spare in the wheel well too.”

“That would confirm one part of Norris’s story.”

“It might be more important than that. If Norris is innocent, the killer had to know about his spare key. Who would have known that?”

“Norris said he told Richie the Vig.”

“Yeah, but Richie had no reason to kill Robin.”

Wheeler thought for a moment. “Norris said he and Robin had always hidden a key in the wheel wells of their cars, so it makes sense that their kids would have known, but I didn’t pick up anything that would make me suspicious of them.”

“Except for the daughter, Kim. The other night when we were at their house, she was the only one who didn’t cry when I told them their mother had been murdered.”

“Now that you mention it, she was more angry than anything else. In fact, she hit me as more angry that she was stuck there with us than that her mom was dead.”

“Norris said she’s the only one of the kids that still talked to him. He called her ‘my little Kimmy.’ He didn’t talk about the other kids like that.”

“You had to stop him from smacking Donny.”

“And Kim was the only one who looked like her father. The other four were all Robin.”

“Kim sided with her dad after the divorce but she’s forced to live with her mom and four siblings that take her side,” Wheeler said.

“She doesn’t just side with him; she looks like him, and her brothers and sisters look like their mom. Which leaves her alone, outnumbered, and on the losing side. That’ll buy you a whole lot of anger.”

Wheeler nodded. “Kim knew her mom was seeing someone on the sly. Maybe Kim found out who it was and that was all she could take.”

“Kids have killed their parents for less. Talk to Sonia Steele. Robin may have confided in her about the affair and any problems she was having with Kim.”

“I don’t know. A sixteen-year-old kid, a girl. You think she could do something like that? Lure her mother someplace and kill her? Then cool as cool can be, drop the car at the airport and make it back home?”

“You’re right. That’s a lot for any sixteen-year-old girl, unless she had help. Get a warrant for her e-mail and texts. We need to find out who her friends are.”

“You want to talk to Kim?”

Rossi shook his head. “Not until we know more about her relationship with Robin. Did you recover any hair or fibers from the Camry?”

“CSI is handling that. Maybe we’ll find something that ties to Kim and one of her buddies. What’s next for you?”

Rossi checked his watch. “I’m meeting someone at five.”

“That’s in twenty minutes. Is it on this case?”

“No. Something else.”

Wheeler raised his eyebrows. “That thing with Alex Stone?”