Death Angel (20 page)

“Nothing. Marian even asked the the
reporters. All I know is that a man’s body was found in the forest preserve.”
She sat down next to Richard, noticing the dark circles beneath his eyes.
Picking up his hand, she rubbed it between hers. “Are we going to need alibis?”

His body jerked at her question. He
tried to pull his hand away but she held tight, staring back calmly as he
glared at her.

“You mean, do
I
have an
alibi?”
 

“Don’t go defensive on me, Richard.
Leidecker’s going to ask.”

The tension in his hand relaxed. “Sorry.
You’re right. The only trouble is we don’t know when the man was killed. We’ll
have to wait and see.” At the expression on her face, he tightened his hand on
hers. “What is it, Kate?”

“We’re sitting at the kitchen table
calmly trying to figure out the time a man was killed. There’s no reality to
our lives anymore. The unthinkable has become commonplace.” She pulled her
hands away from Richard and pressed them against her cheeks, shaking her head
in bewilderment. “It’s like we’re sliding down a hill on a toboggan. The speed
is increasing and no matter what we do we can’t affect the outcome.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it? Up until today I
had the same feeling,” Richard admitted. “Now I’m just praying this new murder
will shed some light on Jenny’s death.”

Kate wished she could be as hopeful as
Richard on that point. Currently she saw the world in shades of gray.
 

When Leidecker arrived, Richard let him in
and brought him out to the kitchen. Kate offered a cup of coffee and he
accepted, pulled out a chair, and sat down at the table. His uniformed figure
looked out of place in the casually decorated room.

“I should have known the media would be
here,” he said. He pushed his notebook and hat to the far side of the table. “I
promised them a statement when I leave, but I don’t think even that will get
them off your front lawn.”

Kate sensed a difference in Leidecker,
but at first she couldn’t pinpoint the change. She was pouring his coffee when
it struck her.
 

The police chief’s air of hostility
toward Richard was gone. He was not treating him like a suspect.

Blindly, she set the coffee pot down on
the counter. Neither of the men noticed her agitation. When she returned to the
table, Carl began to speak.

“Now before you hear all sorts of wild
rumors,” he said, “I’ll tell you as much as I can without compromising the
case. This morning a man walking his dog found the body of a jogger in the
forest preserve not very far from the spot where Jenny was killed. The man died
from injuries suffered through repeated blows to the head.”

“Just like Jenny,” Richard said

“Was it someone from Pickard?” Kate
asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Leidecker said.
“When I left the scene he had not been identified. For the moment we’re
assuming he’s a local.”

“Aside from the location of the body is
there anything to tie his death to Jenny’s?”
 

Kate could hear the strain in Richard’s
voice as he asked the question. For a moment Leidecker said nothing. His eyes
stared across the table giving each of them a searching glance.
 

“Although I’m not at liberty to give you
any details, evidence was found at the scene that definitely links this death
with your daughter’s.”

Kate placed her hand on Richard’s arm.
He turned toward her, and she could see the glitter of excitement in his eyes.
She supposed, after all the pressure he’d been under, it was reasonable to feel
triumph at any sign of vindication. All too aware of Leidecker, Kate squeezed
his arm in warning.

“Can you tell us when it happened?” she
asked.

“Yesterday. In some places the ground
underneath the body was almost dry. The medical examiner says he died no later
than five o’clock because by then we had reports of rain in the area.”

Kate nodded. It had started to rain when
she got to the restaurant.

“The man was listening to an iPod while
he ran. It was still hooked to his belt, but the earphones were missing. It’s
possible that the killer took them.”

“Took them?” Kate asked.

“Sometimes a murderer takes something as
a sort of souvenir. Kind of like the Indians taking scalps. The trophy is a
symbol of the event. Focusing on the item can give him a high as powerful as
any drug.”

Kate was sorry she’d asked. “That’s
sick.”
 

“Yes. The murderer is sick.” Carl nodded
in agreement. “And very dangerous.”

Eventually Leidecker asked Richard how
he’d spent the afternoon and early evening. It was not the antagonistic
questioning that the police chief had subjected him to in the last week and a
half. He wrote the responses down in his notebook, looking neither surprised
nor critical that Richard had gotten drunk. He commented in an offhand fashion
that next time it would be better to take a cab from the train station rather
than drive in such a condition.

Richard nodded. “At any rate, I got home
around five. Kate was out, so I made a drink. Or maybe it was two.” He rubbed
his forehead as if to jog his memory. “I think I went upstairs to change
clothes around five-thirty. The next thing I knew it was morning and I had a
god-awful headache.”

“And you, Kate?”

Kate was still listening to Richard’s
voice in her head so she didn’t realize Leidecker was speaking to her until he
repeated her name again. She was flustered by the shift of attention.

“What?” she asked.

Leidecker smiled indulgently. “I just
wondered what you did yesterday afternoon. Just a formality,” he added.

“Oh.” She licked her lips and tried to
organize her thoughts. “I went grocery shopping after lunch. I got home at two.
Christian Mayerling called, and we arranged to meet for a drink at five.”

“You were with Chris?” Richard
asked.
 

Kate could feel the heat rising in her
cheeks at his question and turned to speak directly to him. “He called because
he was concerned about you. And he wanted to see how I was doing, and if there
was any way he could help.”

“You could have told me.”

“When, Richard?” She could feel anger
rising and fought to keep it out of her voice. “You were gone before I got up
this morning, and then when you came home today, there wasn’t a chance. Besides
it was no big deal.”

“Your note said you were running
errands.”

Disregarding Richard’s aside, she turned
back to Leidecker. His face was expressionless, but she knew he hadn’t missed
any of the byplay.

“I left the house at a little before
five. We met at Dave’s Place, that restaurant over on Buckeye. I had two
glasses of wine and I came home. I got here about seven. Richard was upstairs,
already in bed.”

“Do you recall what time Mr. Mayerling
called, Kate?”

“Yes. It was three-ten.”

Leidecker looked up from his notes. “Exactly?”
 

His question flustered her. “Y-yes. I
was watching the clock when the phone rang.”

Leidecker didn’t say anything, just
stared at her. She noticed that when he was most observant, his face was
expressionless. She held his gaze without blinking.

“Was Mr. Mayerling calling from Dave’s
Place?”

“No. From his car. He was on the
expressway.”

“And he arrived at five.”

“No. He was a little late,” she said. “I
think it was about five-fifteen.”

Once he had their statements, Leidecker
finished his coffee and got up to leave. Richard went with him to talk to the
reporters. Kate remained in the kitchen.
 

It seemed to her that all the sounds in
the house were exaggerated. The footsteps were crisp and steady on the way to
the front door. She heard the door open, the sounds of murmured voices outside,
the sharp click of the latch. And then silence.

She remained standing, arms wrapped
around her waist, thoughts inward. In her mind she played back Richard’s
answers to Leidecker’s questions.

“When
you left work a little after three, where did you go?”

“I
stopped in the bar at the train station. I planned to just have one drink, but
I got to talking and ended up having quite a few.”

“What
time did you leave the bar?”

“I
don’t know. All I can remember was having some drinks there, getting on the
train, driving to the house, and then when I found Kate gone, having a few more
drinks.”

Kate closed her eyes, feeling cold and
very frightened. She had been prepared to accept his story of getting drunk
until she heard the lie in his voice. Now she didn’t know what to believe. She
remembered how she’d found him last night. Passed out on the bed, soaking
wet.
 

The rain hadn’t started until just
before five. If Richard got home at five, how had he gotten so wet?

A voice in her head responded. He was
standing in the rain waiting for the jogger?

Fifteen

Was
it raining in the woods when the jogger was killed? Is that how Richard got
wet?

Hearing the questions inside her head,
Kate panicked. She glanced at the door to the kitchen afraid that Richard would
return at any minute. She knew she couldn’t face him. Not yet. She went out on
the deck, then wanting to get as far away from the house as possible, she went
down the stairs into the backyard. She stood in the shade of the crabapple tree
and stared up into the leafy branches.

I’m going crazy, she thought. I’m
standing outside in the backyard, and going right out of my mind.

She felt as if her questioning of
Richard was a betrayal. She knew he hadn’t killed Jenny. That bit of soul
searching had cost her dearly. Even though she had decided that he hadn’t been
involved in Jenny’s murder, she had felt dirtied by the mental
calculations.
 

And now she was faced with a similar
situation.
 

She considered what she knew. Richard’s
suit jacket had been soaked. She remembered when she hung it up that the water
had penetrated all the way through to the inner lining.
 

Richard had left the office after three.
She had talked to Chris about the same time and he said it was not raining in
Chicago. So if Richard went directly to the train station, he wouldn’t have
gotten wet. He said he drank at the bar and then caught a train to Pickard. So
the only time he would have been outside was walking to his car on Main Street.

At a quarter to five there was only a
light mist in the air. It didn’t really start to rain until five.
 

The only way he could have gotten
soaking wet was if he was outside for an extended period of time.
 

Where had Richard been?

Kate shook her head, biting her lip as
she searched for answers. She thought back over the sequence of events. She’d
forgotten all about the strange series of phone calls yesterday. She should
have told Richard about them. Especially the last one when she spoke to the
Witness. She’d tried. When she called to tell him, he’d just left the office.

What if the Witness had called Richard?

Even though the thought frightened her,
it made sense. If the caller were out for blackmail, Richard would never want
Leidecker to know about it.
 

It would also explain where he had been,
and how he had gotten wet. They might have agreed to meet someplace outside.
And then the storm caught them unawares.

Relief washed over Kate. The oppression
that had weighted her down lifted as she realized what probably had happened.
It didn’t explain everything, but for the moment she’d just have to trust
Richard. He was already upset with her over the meeting with Chris. This wasn’t
the time to ask him where he’d been. He was never very good at keeping a
secret. Eventually he’d tell her.

Taking a deep breath of the summer air,
she walked back to the house. Richard was just coming down the hall to the
kitchen, wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

“What an ordeal. You wouldn’t believe
the questions the reporters asked. Leidecker’s really good with the press.
Maybe it’s because they’re not hounding him personally.” He blotted his upper
lip. “God, I feel awful. I’m going upstairs to lie down.”

As he started out of the room, Kate
spoke. “Richard, you’re not still upset about my meeting Chris, are you?”

He stopped in the doorway, but didn’t
turn around. “Perhaps a little. Maybe offended is a better word.” He faced her
then and she could see the hurt just beneath the surface.
 

“Chris was only trying to help,” she
said. “He’s in an awkward position, and he wanted me to understand his
motives.”