A Picture of Guilt (23 page)

“What’s the first thing you did when you got down to the harbor?”

“Well, we boarded the
Versulis
—that’s the tug that took us out to the crib from Navy Pier.”

“How many people were on the tug?”

“Come on. You can’t expect me to—”

“Try. Please.”

I searched my memory. It had been a cool day, I recalled, shrouded in fog, but the chop on the lake whipsawed the tug, making a steady shot impossible. I remember asking Mac if he thought it would be stable enough to shoot. The cameraman was there. And the soundman. And the PR guy from the water district. And the crew on the tug. “I think there were five of us. And three of them.” I ran it through my mind again. “Eight, all told.”

“Good. See, you can remember.”

“Maybe a little,” I said grudgingly.

“What happened when you docked on the crib?”

“We unloaded the gear—”

“Where?” He motioned to the paper.

I sketched a rough diagram of the crib’s surface, pointing out where we’d docked and unloaded the equipment. “We shot some exteriors near the entrance. Then we went inside to tape.”

“Draw me a sketch.”

I turned over the paper and sketched out the living quarters, the kitchen, the eating area, the large half-filled tank that sat to one side.

“Where was the tape from the reenactment at this point?”

“It was in my bag.”

“Your bag?”

I leaned over and felt for my bag before I realized I didn’t have it with me. “I usually carry a canvas bag on location. I keep a stopwatch in it, a penknife, gaffer’s tape, sometimes a mike.”

“You carry it over your shoulder?”

I nodded, wondering why that was important.

“Okay. Then what?”

“We set up in one of the bedrooms.” I pointed it out on the sketch. “The same room where we did the party scene. Then we took the reenactment tape and played it back through the camera so we could duplicate the same shot.”

“What was the shot?”

“Actually, there were two. We did a shot of the rolltop desk, moving in and out—I’m sorry, zooming close and then moving wider on it. Then we also did an establishing shot of the bedroom. They were both on the reenactment tape. We figured we’d decide later which worked better.”

“Now, tell me something. Where on that reenactment reel was the shot that you used for the match—whatever you call it?”

“Dissolve. But I don’t understand the question.”

He repeated it.

“You mean where on the cassette did it physically lie?” When he nodded, I answered. “Pretty much toward the tail. The end. We’d already recorded a good deal before we got to it.”

“And what did you do with the reenactment tape afterward?”

“After what?”

“After you used it for the dissolve.”

“I put it back in my bag.”

“Good.” He took another pull on his Molson’s. “Then what?”

“Then, nothing.” I was growing impatient. “Come on, Nick. What’s this all about?”

A determined look passed across his face. He shook his head.

“Yeah, well.” I pushed my wineglass away, feeling cranky. “Maybe if I knew why I’m supposed to remember, I could be more helpful.”

He studied me, as if weighing how much to say. “I’ll tell you as much as I can when we’re done. Okay?”

“This better be good.” I studied the wall behind him, where a still life of a bowl of fruit and bottle of wine hung. “
Chér
.”

He gave me a little smile. “Then what?”

“I think we went outside to grab some exteriors. Yes, that’s right.” It was coming back now. The fog had burned off, but it was still cool and cloudy. The lighting would be flat but even. “That must have been when we went up to the suspension bridge.”

“Show me.”

I penciled in the bridge that connects the two structures on the crib. “A guy was up there painting, or coating it with rust remover or something. We thought it would be a cool angle, so we went up.”

“Did you take your bag up with you?”

“I—I don’t remember.”

His jaw tightened. “Try.”

I struggled with the memory. The bridge was narrow and not very long. About thirty feet. Because of that, Mac didn’t come with us. It was just me and the cameraman. “I’m not sure—it was pretty cramped up there.”

He shifted. “Okay. Let me ask this. Where on the bridge did you position the camera?”

That I did remember. “The cameraman was about halfway across so he could pan across from the lake to the guy on the bridge.” I placed an
X
where he had set up.

“And where were you?”

I looked at the sketch, then at LeJeune. “I would have to have been behind him—out of camera range. Near the candystriper.”

“The pink and white structure?”

I nodded.

“Show me.”

I put another
X
at the end of the bridge.

He angled the drawing toward him. “How much tape did you shoot up there?”

“Not much. A total of maybe two or three minutes.”

“Okay. What did you do after the scenes on the bridge?”

What did we do?
I closed my eyes. I remember standing up, leaning over the railing of the bridge, looking down, waving to Mac.

My eyes flew open. I got it. “Before we came down, we shot down onto the surface of the crib. Four or five overhead shots.” I paused. “And then we went back down to the surface of the crib and shot more workmen.”

“That’s good.” His eyes glittered. “And then?”

“We came back down.” I remembered the whistle of the wind, the sound of the gulls, the dense, gray light.

The light.

“I forgot! We lugged a light kit up with us, in case we needed some fill on the bridge. In the end, though, we managed to squeak by with available light. When we were done, the cameraman picked up the camera, and I picked up the light kit and my bag, and we—” I stopped. “My bag!” I concentrated on the memory, testing its veracity. Yes. “My bag
was
there, between the light kit and the wall. Wedged against the candy striper.”

A grin broke across his face. “Show me.”

We leaned over the diagram, and I drew it. Then he folded the sheet of paper and put it in his pocket.

Our mussels arrived in a black bucket with a cloud of steam.

“Dig in,” he said.

I pried apart the shells, extricated the meat, and, after dipping them in butter sauce, let them slide down my throat. The waiter was right. They were fresh and large, and the smooth, hearty scent of garlic infused each bite.

We were quiet as we ate.

When there was nothing left but broth, LeJeune pushed the bucket to the side and tore open one of the wipes the waiter had brought to the table. “I like a lady who’s not afraid to eat.”

I wondered whether I could sop up the broth with a piece of bread. If I’d been with David, I wouldn’t have hesitated. As LeJeune handed me the other wipe, an image of a restaurant in Philadelphia sprang into mind. David, Rachel, and me last summer. Newspapers on the table, wooden mallets, a pitcher of soda, a mountain of hot, spicy hard-shells. All of us sucking juice out of the tiny orange legs, laughing when it dribbled down our chins. A sharp pang stabbed me.

LeJeune didn’t seem to notice. “Just one more thing.” He tossed the wipe into the bucket. “When you were done with the reenactment tape, did your cameraman rewind it before he took it out of the camera?”

“Come on. How would I remember that?”

He kept his mouth shut and his eyes on me.

“Lemme think,” I sighed. “If he’s in the middle of a setup or scene, he usually dumps the cassette and loads a new one right away so he can pick up the shot.”

“Is that what he did?”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching.” I searched his face. “Your turn now. Why is that important?”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, bayou boy. Why is the location of the cassette or whether it was rewound important?”

He spoke in that hushed voice again. “We went out to the intake crib a few days ago. We took a look around. Listened with some equipment. We were out there for hours, but we didn’t pick up any radio signals.”

“Radio signals?”

“Your tape, Ellie. The RF.”

An uneasy tingle ran through me.

“Our analysts say there’s a possibility that the degradation on your tape was the result of a powerful blast,” he said quietly. “Not a recurring signal. Just one. From a very close distance.”

I thought about the grilling he’d just put me through. “Are you saying,” I said slowly, “that the tape could have been damaged out on the crib?”

“It’s possible.”

“Where?”

He folded his hands on the table. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Why does it matter? What’s so important about this signal?”

He shrugged and looked away. If he knew the answer, he wasn’t about to tell me.

“Who are you, Nick LeJeune?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I told you.”

“Bullshit. You show up at my house with an agent who tracks mobsters. But you’re not on any mob squad. You tell me stories about RF signals from the intake crib. Why do you need to know about the tape? What made you seek me out? At least tell me that much.”

“You’re right.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. Coates comes into the men’s room down at the Bureau a while back. I’m there doing my business, and he’s shaking his head, telling me he’s gotta follow up on some ditsy broad who’s riding around with mafiosi on the North Shore. So we’re having a laugh about it, and then he says, ‘It’s the same broad who testified in that trial about the intake cribs.’” He steepled his hands. “I didn’t have much else going on, so I came with him.”

“Yeah? What do you do at the Bureau—monitor the Coast Guard?”

“Me?” He hesitated a fraction too long. “I do odd jobs.”

“Odd jobs.”

“That’s right. Hey.” He unfolded his hands and waved one in the air. “You want some pasta? The stuffed shells here put Maggiano’s to shame.”

***

Bands of rain streaked across the windshield on the ride home. The Spyder’s headlights barely pierced the gloom. LeJeune switched on the defroster while I wiped the inside of the windshield. We were behind an SUV, a Ford Explorer. As LeJeune swerved around it, it occurred to me I hadn’t seen any dark SUVs recently. Since the day I’d been driving around with Morelli, in fact.

I looked over. “You remember that Keystone cop routine you and Morelli and that SUV went through the other day?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you ever find out who was in it?”

He was quiet for a minute. “Someone muddied the plates up. We couldn’t get a read.”

“So you don’t know who they were?”

He shook his head.

“Or if they were following Morelli?”

He shrugged.

“Rhonda Disapio thought she was being followed by an SUV. And she died.”

“But you’re alive. And how many SUVs have been following you recently?”

“None,” I admitted. “But—”

“So maybe it was a coincidence.”

“And maybe it wasn’t.”

“You said you were through with conspiracies.”

“Then why are you pumping me about the cribs?”

He didn’t answer, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. As we pulled up to my house, he kept the engine running. I took that as a sign to get out.

“Thanks for dinner.” I opened the door.

He leaned across and tipped up my chin with his finger. “You know, in this light,
chér
, you’re a dead ringer for Vivian Leigh.” He paused, as if waiting for my reaction.

“Does this usually work for you? I mean that Cajun shit just keeps oozing right out.”

He grinned, not at all disconcerted. “Just like mud on the bayou.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE

I got into my PJs, trying to make sense of the evening.

The tape with the shots of Johnnie Santoro might have been damaged on the cribs.

By a nonrecurring radio signal. Okay. Fine. But why was the FBI so interested?

There had to be a logical reason. I checked the clock. Almost eleven. Rachel would be home soon. She knew something about radio. I could ask her.

I turned on
Saturday Night Live
. A skit about homeopathic medicine was followed by a heavy metal band screaming their way through a song about war. I suffered through it with gritted teeth, then checked the clock again. Eleven twenty.

Rachel was late.

I went to the window. Rain sluiced down over the glass, and the disk of the streetlight at our end of the block was rimmed in fog. Beyond it stretched a dark expanse of space. I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of wine. When I came back out, it was eleven twenty-two.

No Rachel.

I picked up the phone and dialed.

Katie’s mother answered.

“Patsy, Hi. It’s Ellie Foreman.”

“Oh, hi, Ellie. How are you?”

“Should I come get Rachel now? She didn’t call for a ride, but it’s past her curfew.”

I heard a slight hesitation. “Umm, Rachel’s not here.”

“Oh, did Frank give her a ride home?” Frank was Patsy’s husband.

“Ellie, Rachel left a long time ago.”

“What?”

“Her cousin picked her up around nine.”

I gripped the phone. “Her cousin?”

“She said you knew all about it.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“My God, Ellie—you didn’t? Oh no. What can I do?”

“Did you see this ‘cousin’?”

“No. I think they honked—the rain and all—and she went running out.” She sounded more upset than me. “Tell you what. Let me wake up Katie and ask her. She’ll probably know.”

“I think that would be a good idea, if you don’t—” A pair of headlights threw beams of opaque light through the window. A dark SUV was pulling into the driveway. I tensed. The side door opened, and Rachel emerged, jacket over her head. The SUV backed down the driveway.

“You know what?” I said into the phone. “She just pulled up. Thanks, Patsy.”

I was at the door when Rachel jabbed it with her key. I planted my hands on my hips and waited. It seemed to take her a while to open it. I thought I heard her humming.