Killing Zone (18 page)

“Did anyone ever mention it to you?”

“You mean, how many other people knew about it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t know. I hope to God it wasn’t many. Not for my sake.”

“But nobody spoke to you about it?”

“No. They wouldn’t.”

“So you don’t know if anyone might have strongly resented your husband …”

The eyes turned back to his with a spurt of mocking, angry laughter. “I did, Officer. I resented it very strongly!”

“Yes, ma’am. But would anyone see it as a motive to kill him?”

“You think I wouldn’t?”

Wager and Stubbs held their tongues.

She stared at them with all the hatred she had stifled against her husband, because they insisted in poking into those places where hurt lay. And because they, too, were men.

Then her narrow shoulders quivered in a deep shudder. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. I thought about it—God forgive me, I thought about it in those long nights. But I loved him. And he was a good man despite that.” Her fingers folded inside each other and she studied them for several moments. “He didn’t love her. I think it was … the competition. He was one of the most competitive men I’ve ever known—he wouldn’t have been a good businessman or politician without that. But you have to understand something about black men, Officer, and white women; even when they won’t admit it—the men—it’s a way of getting even. It’s showing the white man who’s the more macho. It’s a mix of anger and fear that they have to face somehow. Even with black women … many black men feel angry toward black women because their families were dominated by women. It’s a way of asserting their manhood.”

Wager heard that tiny shift in her voice that told him she was no longer saying what she really felt but repeating something she had read or heard somewhere and elected to believe. Something she found comfort in thinking might be the explanation.

“You can’t remember anyone who might see the interracial thing as a motive for killing your husband?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Green”—Stubbs spoke for the first time—“have you had any more threatening calls?”

“No.”

And Wager had one last question. “When he didn’t come home on the night of the eleventh, you thought he was with Miss Andersen?”

She nodded, lips clamped against the woman’s name as she stared at her hands.

On their way past the end of the block, Wager lifted a hand in salute to the blue-and-white stationed discreetly on guard; a bored hand glimmered in return.

SATURDAY, 14 JUNE, 1142 Hours

The funeral, Mrs. Green had told them, was to be on Sunday at 2
P.M.
That way a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to take off work could come, and the expected long procession wouldn’t disrupt the weekday traffic. Services would be in the Baptist Evangelical Free Church where Green had been a deacon, followed by interment in the Fairmount Cemetery. Wager and Stubbs marked their calendars with the date and time, though Wager suspected they would be reminded of the occasion by the bustle among city officials who would attend and require extra police details. But right now the department’s problem was to get through the weekend with minimum damage to people or property from rioters. The best way to do that, Wolfard told Wager over the telephone, would be to catch the killer. But Wager’s report was the same as when he talked to Wolfard two hours ago: nothing new yet. “What’s your next step?”

“I want to check out the furniture store manager.” Even though they were using the telephone rather than radios whose transmissions were aired everywhere in the city, Wager was habitually cautious with names and specifics.

“Give me an afternoon report.”

“Will do.” He hung up and shook his head at Stubbs, who waited with a small batch of papers in hand. “I don’t know why Wolfard just doesn’t come on down to the office.”

“He’s afraid he’d have to give himself comp time,” said Stubbs. “Here’s what I’ve got.” He had spent the last twenty minutes on the telephone verifying points of Sonja Andersen’s story with local sources; Wager had spent the time trying first to reach, and then persuade the sheriff of Dawes County, Nebraska, that he wasn’t trying to railroad one of the daughters of a local taxpayer.

“She rents a condo off East Hampden. The owner said she’s been there a little more than a year and hasn’t caused any trouble at all. As far as she—the owner—knows, Andersen pays her rent promptly and is an upright citizen.”

“She got horizontal a few times,” said Wager.

“Yeah. Too damn bad it had to be Green.”

“What?”

“Black cock. Once they have black cock, they don’t want anything else.” Stubbs’s head wagged at the loss. “Anyway, the bank where she worked before going to Embassy Furniture tells the same story—a steady work record, no disciplinary or money problems while with them, a trustworthy employee, nobody special she dated that they knew of. They offered her a raise when she told them she was quitting, but she said she wanted to try another field and liked the chance to become a manager.”

That description pretty much fit what Wager had learned from the sheriff’s office, and he traded that information with Stubbs: the second daughter of a farmer with a big spread of land north of Chadron. Married at the end of her senior year in high school and divorced two years later. Wanted, apparently, to get away from farm life more than from her husband. Moved to Denver to get a job and pretty much lost touch with most of the people in Chadron. The sheriff would be mighty surprised to find that she was part of anything shady or suspicious—her family was a good Lutheran family and hardworking. If she was into anything, it was because she moved down to Denver and not because of anything she learned at home.

“He said that? The sheriff?”

“Yes.”

“You tell him about Councilman Green?”

“No.”

“Probably a good thing. Her family find out about him, they’d want to lynch somebody. Two somebodies.”

“That’s all we need,” said Wager. “Another motive.”

They filed the corroboration statements with those pieces of paper that pertained to Andersen. Probably nothing would come of it, but that was the way of much police work: take a statement, check it out, and see if anything rang untrue; file away the answers against that time when they might be needed.

In the background, the telephone rang and Stubbs answered. Wager, his mind juggling bits and pieces of information into various patterns of meaning, paid no attention to the distant buzz until he heard his name. “It’s for you, Gabe—a Councilman Albro.”

“I’ve got a note here saying you wanted to talk with me.”

“Yessir. It’s in relation to Councilman Green’s murder. When’s a good time for you?”

A silence. “I don’t know what I can do for you. We did council work together and that’s about it. We weren’t close personal friends or anything like that.”

“It’s part of the procedure, sir. We’re trying to fill in as much as we can about the victim.”

“You have any idea yet who did it?”

“Nothing definite.”

“The papers this morning make things sound pretty bad over in Five Points.”

“Yessir. That’s another reason we’re checking in every direction we can think of.”

“I see. All right, I’ve got a half hour starting at twelve-thirty. Can you make it then, Detective—ah—Wager? Every day’s a busy day for me, and Saturday’s busiest of all.”

“I’ll be there.”

Stubbs raised an eyebrow and started to ask something when a bleary-eyed Golding came through the door, awkwardly sipping a cup of coffee. “God, this stuff s awful. How can you people drink it?”

“What are you doing down here?”

“Double shift; I’m on eleven to seven, too, we’re so goddamn shorthanded.” He sipped and shuddered. “Anything new on Green?”

“Nothing.”

“What a hassle. Next goddamn time a councilman wants to get killed, I hope I’m on leave.”

“I thought you only drank barley juice or something like that.”

“I never tried that. But I need caffeine. God only knows what this stuff’s doing to my aura.”

Wager squinted at him. “I think it’s turning yellow.”

“What?”

Stubbs peered, too. “I see what you mean, Gabe. He looks a little … pale. Pale yellow—kind of like a sick haze around him.”

“Batshit—you guys wouldn’t know an aura if it strangled you.”

“Some people can see them, Maury. And I think Stubbs is right. It’s not a haze, exactly, it looks more like steam. Yellow steam.”

“You guys laugh—go ahead. Just keep laughing. But there’s a lot of truth in it. What goes in your body, that’s what makes up your body. You put crap like this in your body, pretty soon you got a crappy body.” He gave the cup a sour look. “It’ll probably take me a month to get it out of my system.”

The telephone rang again, Stubbs answering “Homicide” as Wager drained his coffee cup and forced a loud belch. “But one thing about this stuff, Maury—it tastes good going down and coming back up, too.”

“Jesus, you’re gross, Wager.”

Stubbs waved a hand at Wager to pick up the extension and mouthed silently, “Lieutenant Elkins.” Wager picked up his telephone to hear the department’s neighborhood liaison officer say “and let me know what’s going on.”

“Yessir,” said Stubbs. “But we don’t have anything to tell you yet. I wish we did.”

“We’ve got to have something for the people, Lester. I met with the Five Points Leadership Committee this morning. They’re uptight about what might happen tonight and tomorrow night. I haven’t seen people stirred up like this since the seventies. All sorts of rumors are going around.”

“Like what?” asked Wager.

“That you, Gabe? I’ve heard stories Mrs. Green’s been threatened again, that the White Brotherhood’s going to make a raid, and that the police are trying to protect a racist killer.”

“Lieutenant, you know that’s a pile of horseshit.”

“I know it. You know it. But they don’t, and that’s where the trouble begins. And I’ll tell you something else: Rumor has it the Doo-Rag Devils and the Uhuru Warriors are getting involved. Is there anything at all you can give me to pass on?”

“All I can tell you is we’re working as hard as we can on it. But we still have no suspects.” Wager asked sweetly, “Have you talked to Lieutenant Wolfard yet?”

“I tried to reach him. He’s not on duty.”

Wager gave the man Wolfard’s home number. “He’s monitoring the case very closely, Lieutenant. We report to him every three or four hours. I’m sure he’ll have a statement for you.”

“All right—but for God’s sakes call me as soon as you come up with anything concrete, will you?”

“Yessir.”

Wager hung up his extension and checked his watch. “I’ve had my lunch.”

Stubbs emptied his cup with a weary puff of breath. “I’ll see you back here.”

1228 Hours

Stubbs was to survey the people who lived and worked in Sonja Andersen’s neighborhood, show them a picture of Councilman Green, ask if they had ever seen the man, and if so, when, with whom, under what circumstances. He would gather up a record of the little things that people wanted to do without being noticed; but because someone was usually nosy enough to look and remember, people weren’t as inconspicuous as they thought they were. And in that predominantly white neighborhood, Councilman Green would be a very visible man, indeed—especially with a blond woman.

Wager stood rapping on the office door of Councilman Albro—“Smiling Ray” his official letterhead named him—in the now-familiar curve of hallway that banked around the City Council rooms. He knocked once and waited, peering through the frosted glass for a shadowy movement.

“You want to see the councilman?”

Wager looked over his shoulder; the stumpy figure of Jeremy Fitch, with its comb of floppy white hair, leaned around the hallway’s bend. “Is he in?”

“Ah—the policeman!” Fitch came forward, the crepe soles of his shoes making whispery squeaks on the fresh wax. “What have you found out?”

“Nothing yet, Mr. Fitch. We’re still beating the bushes.”

The man’s eyes glanced at Albro’s closed door. “You’re talking to him about it?”

“Routine stuff: when he last saw the councilman, any worries the man might have had. The same things I asked you.” Fitch was slightly shorter than Wager so that the wag of his hair bobbed up and down in front of Wager’s eyes. “Have you remembered anything that might be important?”

“What’s to remember? The man was alive, now he’s dead. It’s making one hell of a stir in the city, I’ll tell you that. The mayor even held a Saturday session this morning with his cabinet. There’s a lot of worry about Five Points.”

That wasn’t something Wager needed to hear again. “I understand the council president, Mrs. Voss, appointed Green to the Zoning and Land-Use Committee.”

“That’s what the president does—that’s how she gets her power. That, and run the meetings.”

“Was there any objection to Green chairing that committee?”

“Objections?” Fitch tugged an earlobe that had a web of gray hairs curling from it. “Some other people wanted it—it’s a good committee to chair. But I don’t remember anybody making any kind of stink about it.”

“No one thought it was unusual?”

“Why should they? Somebody had to chair it. Green was a good choice. As good as any, anyway.”

“Has there ever been any kind of trouble on that committee?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Kickbacks. Payoffs. Anything out of the ordinary.”

Fitch took a step or two back, distancing himself from Wager and anything he was suggesting. “It’s happened—it certainly has. But not with this council. I haven’t heard anything like that lately, and if that’s where your investigation is taking you, I think you’d better run, not walk, to the nearest district attorney, young man. You’re getting in water that’s not only deep but a hell of a lot hotter than you’ll like it.”

“I’m only looking at all possibilities, Mr. Fitch.”

“That’s the kind of possibility you want to look at with your mouth shut, then. Unless you’ve got evidence of something—and strong evidence at that—you don’t even want to whisper that kind of thing.” An age-spotted hand slapped the polished stone of the wall. “Ears. It looks like rock, but it’s ears. You understand me?”