Red Man Down (26 page)

‘So I wasn’t monitoring but I was working on the same floor and couldn’t help overhearing. Joey had trouble getting his call through, it sounded like the person he was calling didn’t want to accept charges, and he got enraged. He was screaming into the phone, “You better take my call, bitch!” I was just going to call the floor guard to have him taken back to his cell when it went through.

‘There were a few minutes’ fairly quiet conversation, and then he blew up again, yelling that he wasn’t going to sit in this place – this hellhole, he called it, can you imagine? About Pima County! I was just thinking,
wait till you start doing real time in Florence
, when he went berserk, screaming that this person better get him out of here, because “I got plenty I can say about you and if I start to talk you’re gonna be in here with me!” Somebody said something back, also loud, and Joey yelled, “Damn right it is, you think you’re the only one knows how to threaten?” And then the guard came and took him away.’ Her nose twitched. ‘Took two guards, actually. He was out of his mind, raving and kicking.’

‘Greta, could you tell if he was talking to a man or a woman?’

‘Well … he called the person on the other end, “Bitch.” Of course, some people say that to men now, but … I didn’t think Joey was gay, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So it was probably a woman.’ She stood up. ‘That’s all I’ve got, and I’d better get back. Hope it helps.’

‘Wait,’ Sarah said. ‘There’s a record kept of the numbers called, isn’t there? Must be.’

‘Yes. And there’s a sign on the phone that warns that numbers are recorded, so … You can get a print-out of the numbers in that time-span, is that what you want?’

‘Sure is. Do I need a subpoena?’

‘No. If the call was privileged, like to a doctor or lawyer, maybe, but this wasn’t that kind of a call.’

‘So … I just call the phone system?’

‘Got your notebook? I’ll give you the number to call.’ She wrote, frowning in concentration, and handed the notebook back.

‘Hey, I owe you one,’ Sarah said. ‘Thanks, Greta.’

‘Glad to help.’ She walked back inside at her street-cop pace, fast but not hurried, the consummate steady hand.

Sarah went back to South Stone, looking forward to telling Delaney what she’d found. He was in his office, on the phone. He was on the phone every time she checked for the next hour, and then jumped into the elevator and disappeared for the rest of the afternoon.

By then she didn’t want to talk to him because she was involved in describing what she needed to a bemused quite new employee of a telephone system she didn’t understand. The girl was polite and wanted to help, but was completely out of her depth; she kept saying, ‘Why don’t I check on that and get back to you?’ Feeling like a not-very-great Wallenda on a slender wire over a canyon, Sarah finally talked the nervous girl in the anonymous distance into passing this call on to her superior. She’d evidently been cautioned in some business school that she should deal with the public as best she could and not be passing rude strangers along to her boss all the time. When Sarah suggested she could put her own chief of police on the line if need be, she decided to opt for the smaller risk.

Once the transfer was complete, though, and Sarah had an experienced, competent woman on the line who understood what was necessary, the whole thing went on greased wheels. When she learned Sarah felt some uncertainty about the date, she said, ‘I can go for a day before and a day after the day you think it was, and it still won’t be a very long list. Collect calls – they’re kind of a pain, you know. They don’t make so many.’

Sarah told her where to send the fax, and she said she’d call when it was on the way.

Ollie had stuck his head in her workstation once in the afternoon. He’d looked pleased with himself and he’d had his mouth open, ready to tell her why, but she’d waved him off. She’d been deep in the conversation that had persuaded the young girl to transfer the call to her superior at the time, and could not risk pausing for even one second.

When she finally had her list of numbers on the way she went by Ollie’s desk to tell him what she’d done. He waved
her
off then, muttering, ‘Found something hot.’

Nobody else had come back by the time she checked out and went home, rubbing her ear thoughtfully, hoping what she’d done would be enough.

‘You look tired,’ Aggie said, at dinner.

‘We live in a world of interlocking systems, you know that?’ Sarah said. ‘And no matter how many systems I learn, there’s always going to be a new one popping up that will make everything I know stop working.’

‘Is that what makes you tired?’ Denny said. ‘When I’m tired, like tonight, it’s because I swam so hard in gym and I have too much stupid homework.’

‘Your Aunt Sarah lives in a much more rarified world,’ Aggie said. ‘We probably can’t hope to understand a thinker at her high level.’

‘Or a mother who ridicules her own child when she’s down, that’s pretty hard to understand too. You want to watch a rerun of
Battlestar Galactica
after the dishes?’ she asked Denny.

‘You bet. Can Grandma watch too or are you two having a fight?’

‘It’s not a fight,’ Aggie said. ‘More like a joust, to help Aunt Sarah keep her sense of humor limbered up.’ She looked very tired herself, Sarah realized with a pang. When her mother began to stack her dishes, a thing she never used to do at the table while she was still sitting at it, Sarah touched her arm and said, ‘Sit still, you cooked. I’ll get this.’ When the dishes were done, they all watched one short episode of an old saga and went early to bed.

Sarah felt much brighter in the morning, and observed that the rest of the crew sitting around Delaney’s desk also looked as if they found their jobs rewarding and life worthwhile.
All of us in a good mood at once? Is the moon blue?

Delaney said, with a glint, ‘Oscar, you have some pictures to show us?’

‘Yes.’ He had an old corkboard set up next to Delaney’s desk with a sheet over it. He got up now, proud of himself, lifted the sheet and twirled it away like a bullfighter. On the corkboard he’d pinned copies of the digital shots he’d taken yesterday, which showed, in succession, the steps by which a Toyota Camry could be reduced to a pile of spare parts. The last shot was of the bare chassis, off its wheels, surrounded by its mounds of rubble.

‘Amazing old car,’ he said. ‘Motor could go another hundred thousand easy.’

‘Now tell us what you found?’

Standing together by the cork board, Oscar and Jason said, in unison, ‘Absolutely nothing!’

‘The money’s not there,’ Delaney said. ‘Now, Leo, you?’

‘It’s not in Mesa anymore either,’ Leo said. ‘As we know, Joey drew out the last of it – a little over nine thousand dollars – on the morning of the day he died. I’ve spoken to the bank tellers and it looks like he’s been drawing it out a little at a time for years. It was up to almost ten times this much at the tipping point, three years ago. Then for some reason he quit depositing and started taking money out, one or two thousand at a time.’

‘So nothing new there either. Now Ray, did you get anything from your stroll around the neighborhood?’

‘Met a drinking buddy in one of the bars,’ Ray said, ‘who had heard Joey talk about money a lot. He discounted most of it as tequila talk, but he said it always seemed to center on the idea that Joey was coming into a nice piece of cash, he was going to be a lot better fixed pretty soon.’

‘But nothing definite?’

‘No. I went in two places that sell used merchandize – you know, it’s a fine line between junk and antiques in this town. They both said they buy things that look ready for resale, and base that judgment on what they’re already selling. It doesn’t seem to get any more scientific than that. They might have bought a few items from Joey over the years – nothing steady.’

‘See, just what I said, occasional money,’ Leo said.

‘OK. Who’s next?’

Sarah told them the story of Joey’s enraged phone call and her efforts to get the number. ‘I haven’t got the list yet, but it should be along any minute.’

‘And you like this phone call a lot,’ Delaney said. ‘Why?’

‘Because of the part about the threat,’ Sarah said. ‘I think it explains the one thing we’ve wondered about all along.’

All the heads in the room swiveled in her direction, eyes of all colors staring at her as Delaney said, ‘Oh, really? Only one? Which of the many things I have wondered about does it explain, Sarah?’

‘Well, you know – haven’t we said, all along, why would Frank do this? He was a good employee all those years and got along all right on what he earned. Why would he suddenly start to steal? Especially if he wasn’t going to spend it on himself? Doesn’t that suggest blackmail?’

‘Yes,’ Delaney said. ‘But how do you blackmail a man who only does favors for people? Ollie, you’re bouncing around in your seat, all of a sudden. You got an idea, or just an itch?’

‘I found Angela’s deadly file,’ Ollie said.

‘What?’

‘I asked him to look for a file we’ve called “Angela’s Deadly Research,”’ Sarah said. ‘It was just a— Marjorie told me she was looking up things, and she was afraid she might have found the item that got her killed. What did she actually call it? The file?’

‘Ed’s Life,’ Ollie said. ‘It’s got that geneology she told you about – Ed’s father and grandfather, their sorry lives and history of alcoholism. She put all his triumphs as a man in there, too – his awards and merit raises on the police force. This was just for her own satisfaction – she didn’t open this file until after he died.’

‘OK. Anything else in it?’

‘There’s a small story copied from the middle pages of
The Star
– old, over forty years ago – about a Boy Scout leader being dismissed from the leadership of his pack because a parent accused him of molesting her son. No charges were filed because the accused simply resigned and did not protest the charge.’

‘My God,’ Oscar said. ‘Don’t tell me it was Frank?’

‘Bingo,’ Ollie said.

‘So that’s the secret he’d pay to keep covered up,’ Delaney said. ‘Do you think it was Angela putting the arm on him?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Ollie said. ‘This file was opened just a few weeks ago.’

‘That’s what she said at lunch, Oscar, remember? Said it was something to do after dinner when the game show was over and she still wasn’t ready to go to bed. It was just a flippant remark but it sounded bitter and true, a new widow discovering that evenings alone were long. She was so edgy with us that day – no wonder, now we know what she was hiding.’

‘Yes. I think she had just found out about Frank – why would she start a file about something she’d known about for years?’

‘Why would she start one and then delete it?’ Ray said.

‘Oh, well, this Angela was actually almost as computer savvy as Genius Geek, I think,’ Ollie said. ‘She retrieved this file several times. There’s another little folder in this section that contains her diary. She didn’t make daily entries, it’s more like a personal blog post – she wrote when she had something to say. And one of the things she had to say was that she kept getting a strong feeling she was being stalked. Whenever she found something in the apartment she thought was out of place, she’d delete the Ed file for a while.’

Sarah’s phone chirped and she stepped outside and answered it, to hear a secretary say that the list was on its way. While she waited for it, she called Greta Wahl and thanked her for playing an important part in the chase that was now underway.

The bell rang on the fax machine in the hall. When she saw it was for her, Sarah had a momentary feeling of ease, of sunny open spaces reaching toward an end point. She harvested the list of numbers and walked it into Delaney’s office, saying, ‘Here we go, guys, I got it.’

All the detectives leaned around her, running their eyes down the listed numbers. They didn’t know the exact time of the call they had to find.

‘There it is,’ Sarah said, pointing. ‘Just as I thought. Cecelia.’

S
arah drove the car when they went to pick her up. Oscar asked to ride in the second seat, saying he thought he could coax her into co-operating.

‘OK, if you think so,’ Delaney said, getting that look again,
Oh, yeah, Oscar
and the ladies
. ‘Be a whole lot better for her if she does.’

‘And for us, too’ Sarah said, when they were under way. ‘Who wants to stage a fight in a beauty shop?’

‘She would never do that,’ Oscar said. ‘She’s too proud.’

They had talked to the owner of Desert Cuts, confirming the payments Cecelia had been making – a thousand a month for the last four years. ‘Another two months and she’ll own it,’ the woman said.

‘Really? The whole place for fifty thousand?’

‘The chairs, the dryers – and the business I have built up, that’s all it is. I don’t own the building – she will still have rent to pay, same as me.’ The shop owner’s name was Lois, she was from Iowa, and she had bought in to Cecelia’s story about saving her tips.

‘A hundred percent!’ she insisted. ‘Of course I believed her – why wouldn’t I?’ She had brought her asthmatic son to the desert because she had heard the dry air would be good for him – ‘The other big lie I believed! Oh!’ She mopped her face, which perspired freely when she was agitated. ‘We got here just in time for dust storms and global warming. Hell’s bells, a couple more years and this town is just gonna dry up and blow away completely!’

On the phone, Sarah had persuaded her to come to South Stone early in the morning before the shop opened. ‘And don’t tell anybody where you’re going. Not even a whisper, you understand?’ Sarah said. ‘Extremely important!’ She was less concerned for the investigation now than for the welfare of the shop owner.

Lois was devastated when she learned that the sale would not go through.

‘I’ve made all my plans,’ she wailed. ‘I was going to move back home!’ She grew fixated on the notion that someone might expect her to repay some of the money. ‘It’s all I have to retire on,’ she said, and then realized, with a fresh gush of tears, that she would not be retiring any time soon.