Back on Murder (21 page)
“How does stuff like this get missed?” I slap the pages down.
She shrugs. “Information overload. Nobody knows it’s important at the time. And anyway, is it important? If it’s true Hannah keyed his car, then I guess that gives him some kind of motive – but I thought you’d already ruled Fontaine out.”
“Maybe. But we should at least follow up on Evey Dyer, get her side of things. If she was such a good friend of Hannah’s, no matter how they left things, she might be able to tell us something useful.”
“Anything’s worth a try.” She throws her hands up in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She brushes her hair back. “Everything.”
I remember Bascombe’s words about the Morales case. A cool breeze blowing. The same thing’s happening here, and Cavallo’s not taking it well. The reason professionals don’t invest too much of themselves in a case like this is that it’s almost certain to end badly. But of course professionals do it all the time, because they’re human like anyone else. Cavallo lets out a sigh, then rubs her eyes until she can’t rub anymore. She starts back on the interview forms, making me wonder if she’s more human than most.
“So you want me to follow up on the Dyer girl?” I ask.
“Knock yourself out.”
After an hour of hunting and pecking on the computer keyboard, I decide to take a shortcut around my technological limitations, placing a long distance call to Detective Eugene Fontenot, a New Orleans homicide detective who helped me out years ago on my most celebrated case, the Fauk stabbing, which was the basis for Brad Templeton’s book
The Kingwood Killing
. We had a good laugh about that, Gene and I, when he stayed at my place after Hurricane Katrina blew his house down. Like Evangeline Dyer’s mother, he’d toyed with the idea of a new life in Texas before nopd reeled him back.
“Don’t you people have such a thing as databases out there in Texas?” he asks. “I’m lucky you didn’t talk me into staying.”
“There’s nothing like the human touch, Gene. Besides, I heard you’d gotten fat and could use some exercise.”
Over the line I hear him patting his belly. “My ex-wife been talkin’ again?”
He asks about Charlotte, then gives me an update on his leisure time, which seems mainly to be taken up by fishing. Finally, I get his attention by explaining the link between the favor I’m asking for and the case that’s on every television screen.
“This is connected to that girl?” he says, wonder in his voice.
“The one you’d be locating is supposed to be her best friend.”
Fontenot hums a tune, thinking things over. “For you, I wouldn’t lift a finger. You’ve never brought me anything but trouble. Still, I’ve got kids of my own, and if one of them went missing, I’d want anybody who could lift a finger to do it.”
“That’s noble of you, Gene.”
“I’m a noble sort of man.”
“Not according to your ex-wife, you’re not.”
He laughs with me a little, then at me, and then hangs up the phone. Cavallo, who’s been making an effort not to pay attention – or at least, not to seem to be – can’t help looking up with an inquisitive lift of the eyebrows.
“Gene Fontenot,” I explain.
“That name sounds familiar,” she says. Reaching under the table, she digs through her shoulder bag for a couple of seconds, then produces a dog-eared copy of
The Kingwood Killing
. “I’ve been reading up on you, March.”
I snatch the book away, flipping absently through the pages. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Not everybody around here has a book written about them.”
“It’s not about me.” I hand it back to her. “Trust me, when you’re at your prime, the last thing you want is for someone to capture it like that. You’ll always be reminded of what you used to be.”
She fingers the book contemplatively, then stashes it away. She has questions to ask, I can tell, but I’m not in the mood to answer them. With Evey Dyer taken care of for the moment, I still have Thomson to worry about. I excuse myself from the table and go in search of a telephone directory.
I wait until the shift ends, then call from behind the wheel of my car. A woman’s voice answers.
“Is Joe there?”
“No, I’m sorry. Can I take a message?”
“Is this his wife?”
A pause. “Yes, it is.”
So what Wilcox said is true. He really has put his marriage back together. The same woman who divorced him is now waiting at home by the phone. I can’t quite fathom how a life so shattered can be put back together like that, but remembering Charlotte’s words this morning, the idea gives me hope.
“Do you know where I can reach him?” I ask.
“Ah . . . can I ask who’s calling?”
“Just a friend.”
She’s about to hang up, and for some reason I don’t want her to. I have this crazy notion all the sudden that she can tell me something.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I say.
“Stephanie.”
“Hi, Stephanie. Listen. I heard Joe’s taken up sculpting?”
She clears her throat. “Yeah . . .”
I can tell from her tone that she’s a little perplexed by my call. Nix’s words about sneaking up come to mind. Time to end this.
“Never mind,” I say. “I was just thinking . . . Anyway, it’s great that you two are back together. It’s great about the . . . art.”
“Thanks.”
After I hang up, a strange laugh echoes in the car. It’s me, only I can’t think what’s so funny all the sudden. Maybe it’s the desperation of my phone call, trying the guy at home instead of waiting for him to touch base. Now that I’ve put in an appearance at the office and chatted with his wife, Thomson’s bound to come out of the woodwork. When he does, I’ll tell him what Wilcox said. Putting the Morales case down is all well and good, but there are bigger fish to fry. If he wants the written assurances I collected from Internal Affairs, he’s got to give me nothing less than Reg Keller.
Perhaps the reason I’m laughing is because, for the first time, I’m starting to believe Thomson will actually be able to deliver.
Working cases from behind a desk, while some might consider it an art form, requiring as it does the carefully orchestrated ferrying of witnesses back and forth, the adept use of fax and phone – not to mention a comfortable chair with adjustable lumbar support – has never been my style. Task force headquarters is starting to resemble a teenager’s bedroom, paperwork and debris stacking up on every available surface, including a tower of mostly empty pizza boxes from I don’t know when. Cavallo and I have staked out a corner, but even here the chairs aren’t comfortable and the white noise of nonstop conversation grows increasingly difficult to tune out.
I’m ready to get out on the street, to go anywhere for almost any reason, but my partner seems glued to the interviews. She hunches over her dwindling stack, head propped on hand, her face veiled behind a curtain of hair. She stares at the page, but I’m pretty sure her eyes don’t move.
“Cavallo,” I say. “Are you even reading those things?”
She flips the page, ignoring me.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“And go where?”
“How about the school?” I throw it out there, a random suggestion, the first thing that comes to mind. “We could re-interview some of these people. Instead of just rereading the original notes.”
“Something’s here,” she says. “We just need to keep looking.”
“No, what we need is to shake things up.”
She leans back in her chair, throwing her arms into a leonine stretch. “What we need,” she says, “is more coffee. It’s your turn.”
At the far end of what we’re jokingly calling the catering table, two chrome vats of lukewarm coffee beckon, the constantly diminishing regular and the untouched decaf. While decanting the leaded version into Cavallo’s styrofoam cup, I glance through the open door of Wanda Mosser’s temporary office, a converted conference room. She and Villanueva watch Nancy Grace on a portable television, volume muted, while a series of angry voices on the other side of the speakerphone carry on an indecipherable argument.
Noticing me, Wanda slips out for a refill, not mentioning her departure to the superiors downtown. Behind her, Villanueva mimes a cup with one hand, pointing with the other for emphasis. I give him a nod and pull a fresh foam vessel from the nearby stack.
“How’s it going, cowboy?” Wanda asks.
“I’m gonna hang myself if I don’t get out of here soon. My new partner thinks they’re handing out toy surprises for whoever gets through the most paperwork.”
She laughs. “I told you she was uptight. And those interviews aren’t the only thing she’s been reading.”
“You mean
The Kingwood Killing
? I already know.”
“She was asking me all kinds of questions this morning.”
“Spare me,” I say. “Though come to think of it, I’d rather she ask you than me.”
I refill her cup, then hand it over along with the one for Villanueva, who still listens silently to the squawking phone. Before I can make good my escape, though, she steps closer.
“You know something, Roland? It’s nice to see you putting your heart into the work again.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Looks that way to me.”
She goes back to her crisis management meeting, leaving me to ponder her words. If this is my heart in the work, I have to admit it doesn’t feel much different. Rather than an increase of passion, or a single-minded focus, what I’m left with is more frustration spread thin along a wider front. The Morales killing, Hannah Mayhew, Thomson’s pending defection, all of it promising enough, but so far nothing has actually delivered. Charlotte’s unexpected announcement yesterday morning, her declared aims for our future relationship, pending apparently on a solution to the tenant crisis – a problem which, after Tommy’s assist at the Paragon the other night, I’m reluctant to even address. No, if this is my heart in the work, I’d just as soon keep it out.
Cavallo accepts her coffee in both hands, as if they need warming in spite of the temperature outside, which is threatening to creep into the lower nineties, with a heaping side order of humidity. She sips while giving me an interested look, like her off-duty reading is coming back to her.
“March,” she says, “can I ask you something?”
I fumble for a response, but then the ringing in my pocket saves me. With an apologetic shrug, I flip the phone open and press it to my ear.
“Detective March,” I say.
“You the one assigned to Octavio Morales?” The words are precise, though heavily accented, a male speaker probably in his twenties, I’m guessing.
“That’s right.”
“I got some information for you, okay?”
“May I ask who’s speaking?”
My tone arouses Cavallo’s interest. She puts her cup down and leans forward, eyebrows raised. I motion for a pen.
“You want the information or not?” he asks.
“Go ahead. I’m just getting something to write with.”
He gives me an address on Fondren not far from the Sharpstown Plaza shopping center. “I’ll be on the side of the road with a red bandanna. You pick me up. And come alone or I’ll just walk, okay?”
“When?” I ask.
“Now, dude.” Then he abruptly hangs up.
Cavallo asks for the incoming number, then walks it over to one of the support staffers to run a computer search, which comes back with the news that my caller used a public phone at Sharpstown Mall.
“The phones still work there?”
She smirks. “Anyway, this sounds kind of cloak-and-dagger.”
“I called in a favor yesterday hoping for some street-level intel, and I guess it paid off.”
Frankly, I wasn’t expecting Salazar to follow through on his promise, not after the awkward confrontation with his boss. Wilcox hadn’t seemed very impressed with him, but it looks like Salazar is a stand-up guy after all.
“Are you really going to meet this informant alone?” Cavallo asks. “Don’t you have protocols for this kind of thing in Homicide?”
“I’m not in Homicide,” I say.
“Maybe I should tag along.”
Eager as she sounds, the last thing I want is Cavallo’s company on this errand. The drive to Sharpstown would give her plenty of time to ask whatever questions her reading
The Kingwood Killing
has raised. I hate that book. I’d only agreed to be interviewed as a favor to Brad Templeton, a former
Houston Post
reporter turned true-crime writer, never realizing he’d turn the case into a lurid movie-of-the-week thriller, complete with me in the role of hero, something I’ve been trying to live down ever since.
“You know, I think those interviews need another going over.”
“What, I’m not good enough backup for you?” She frowns. “Should I mention this to Wanda, considering it has absolutely nothing to do with the case?”
“I think it does,” I say. “And when those test results come back, you’ll think so, too. In the meantime, I have a friend down there who can lend me a hand. Ever heard of Sergeant Ed Nixon?”
As I gather my things and prepare to go, Cavallo stands there, arms crossed, like a disappointed mother watching as her teen gets ready to run away. But to her credit, she doesn’t tattle to Wanda or even wag a finger at me as I leave. Pulling out of the parking lot, I check the rearview to be sure she’s not following. She isn’t. Cavallo knows better. She’s probably back at her interviews, hoping that on the next read-through the words on the page will change.
Sharpstown Plaza, just across Bellaire from Sharpstown Mall, boasts a strip of mostly vacated retail spaces and an empty swath of yellow-lined parking reminiscent of the oil bust back in the eighties, which left so much real estate unoccupied. They used to say back then that the difference between a Texas oilman and a pigeon was that one of them could still put a deposit on a Mercedes.
Although the signs are now gone, I can still tell from the color-coded facades which chains used to operate here – pretty much the same ones that operate everywhere else. I pass by on the Southwest Freeway feeder, taking a right on Fondren as directed.
I caught Nix at the end of his shift, after he’d changed into street clothes and squirted on cologne. He was happy enough to check out an unmarked car and tag along, and now he’s keeping way back, just in case.