Scent of Evil (29 page)

I pulled open one of the top half-drawers and discovered a neat row of rolled men’s socks. This is where a search started yielding a mixed emotional bag, for while bedrooms were traditionally rich in compromising landmarks, you had to paw through condom packs, underwear, weird literature, and God knows what else, some of which one inhabitant of the room had been keeping secret from the other for years.

I sifted through the gathered socks and then reached in behind them, my fingers touching something smooth and metallic. Just then, the screen door in the front room opened and banged shut.

As I pulled out a large, very expensive-looking gold watch from the back of the drawer, Rose entered the room, a quizzical expression forming on her face at the sight of me. The shiny band of the watch caught the lamplight, scattering it in tiny flecks across the ceiling.

“This yours?” I asked John.

He shook his head, looking puzzled.

Rose, at his shoulder, went white, her mouth falling open in shock. She moistened her lips and blinked. “It’s Charlie’s.”

KLESCZEWSKI APPEARED AT THE SCREEN DOOR
, followed by Tyler and several other police officers, who filed past us into the apartment. Rose and John Woll sat side by side on the couch, looking as if they were being held at gunpoint. In fact, no one was paying any attention to them.

Tyler handed me the search warrant as he went by. His voice was flat to the point of rudeness. “Harrowsmith was not thrilled at the procedure.”

“You mean that the warrant was triggered by a Consent to Search?”

He nodded curtly. “He had questions I couldn’t answer.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he disappeared down the hall into the bedroom, his enormous evidence box tilting him to one side.

I looked to Klesczewski for an explanation. Tyler usually came to these scenes like a beagle to the hunt. This testy display was so rare as to be unique.

Klesczewski waited until the last of Tyler’s team had gone by. “Everyone’s heard that you and Brandt sat on the evidence against John. They’re a little pissed off you didn’t trust them, and more than a little pissed that the shit’s going to hit the fan in the papers.”

I noticed he’d severed himself from Brandt’s and my conspiracy, siding with the disgruntled lower deck as mutiny loomed on the horizon. I obviously had some major bridge-repairing to do.

That, however, would have to wait. I crossed over to the Wolls, Klesczewski in tow, and pulled an armchair around so that it was directly facing them. Ron parked himself on the corner of a sturdy coffee table, notebook in hand, slightly to one side.

I looked at Rose and tilted my head in Ron’s direction. “You two know each other, don’t you?”

She nodded silently.

“I want him to hear this conversation, since things have become more formalized with the search warrant. I also want him to read you your rights. You’re not under arrest, of course, but I have to let you know you’re under no obligation to talk to us.”

They both barely nodded. I glanced at Ron, who recited their litany of rights by heart.

I resumed speaking when he’d finished. “The State’s Attorney will probably be taking over the investigation from us, at least as far as you and John are concerned. Otherwise people could complain of a conflict of interest. You understand that?”

Rose didn’t look as though she understood anything. “You mean because of the watch?”

“Yeah. That, and other things. John was seen in an area where Charlie’s body was later discovered, John’s cigarette was found in Charlie’s grave, and his footprints were in the soil around the grave site. In addition, you’d been having an affair with Charlie, about which John was aware, and there’s a history of conflict between the three of you going back to high school, including your pregnancy. And now Charlie’s watch, presumably the one that was missing from his wrist, is found in your apartment. It’s all what they call circumstantial evidence, but it is beginning to stack up.”

This time, they both nodded without a word. I hadn’t mentioned Rose’s call to Jardine, or John’s admission that he’d known about the affair virtually from the start. Things were looking bad enough for him without rubbing them in.

“Did you know whose watch that was?” I asked John.

“No.”

“How did it get into your sock drawer?”

“I don’t know,” he answered in a dull monotone.

“You’d never seen it before?”

“No.”

“Rose, how did you know whose watch it was?”

She glanced furtively in John’s direction, two incongruously bright patches of pink rising on her cheeks. “I recognized it.”

“Very quickly. How come?”

She hesitated, touching her forehead gingerly with a fingertip, as if checking for a loose strand of hair. “I gave it to him.”

I looked at John, no longer sure he was breathing. His eyes were fixed before him, locked onto my right kneecap, his face deathly pale.

Tyler gestured to me from the hallway. I grimaced, more than a little irritated at this obvious breach of interview protocol. “Hang on a sec, will you?”

I crossed over to Tyler, unable to read his expression. Without a word, he led me down the hallway to the bathroom. There, taped to the underside of the toilet-tank lid, was a small envelope of white powder.

“Shit,” I muttered.

His voice held no satisfaction. “I thought you’d want to know.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks J.P. I appreciate it.”

I re-entered the hallway, almost colliding with James Dunn. He did not look pleased.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice was a barely subdued hiss. I glanced over his shoulder at the Wolls. John was watching us.

“Let’s take this outside,” I muttered and steered toward the front door.

We rattled down the rickety stairs and stopped around the corner, amid quite a cluster now of official-looking cars.

The State’s Attorney could barely contain his rage. “I told you, not two hours ago, that if anything additional was dug up against the Wolls, my office would take over the investigation. Am I dreaming, or does that ring a bell with you?”

“Look, I came by here to see how John was doing. I knew Katz must have contacted him; I also knew John had his problems with booze in the past. I wanted to see how he was holding up.”

Dunn was not sympathetic. “Right, and the next thing we know, he’s signing search consents and you’re ordering up warrants to tear his house apart. You think I’m an idiot, Joe? You think I don’t know you pulled a fast one on me? This is bullshit.”

I felt my face flush. “Hold it just a goddamn minute. Your
request
to be informed is not an order; and I followed the paperwork here.” I pulled out the consent form. “He signed this thing, and I made damned sure he knew what it meant. As soon as the watch surfaced, that was it; there was barely a word exchanged between us until the search warrant arrived to cover our butts.”

Dunn raised his hands in frustration. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. The consent form makes the fucking warrant useless. If the court throws out the first, which they almost always do, then they have to throw out the second.” He took a deep breath. “What else have your people found?”

“Looks like some coke, taped to the inside of the toilet tank.”

Dunn rolled his eyes. “Great. Perfect.”

Again, I was washed with anger. “Look, James, if the consent form is such a live grenade, then why do we have it? It was one of your people who told us, and I quote, ‘it is one of the weapons in our arsenal.’ I admit they said it wasn’t a first-choice thing, but that we could use it. What the hell’s going on? Seems to me you’d be better off telling your own people to do their jobs before you start on mine.”

We stared at each other like two bloody-nosed kids, breathing hard. Finally, Dunn lowered his head and took a deep breath. “All right. Consents aren’t totally worthless, but they cause intense judicial scrutiny. It usually hinges on what they call ‘the truly voluntary nature’ of the consent. If the defense can raise a single hint of coercion during the process, then it’s dead. It boils down to your word against theirs, and they have an attorney telling them just what to say. Maybe we’ll get lucky; maybe Woll’s lawyer’ll be brain dead.”

He turned on his heel and stalked off toward the apartment. It hadn’t been an apology, but I sensed the edge was off his anger. Furthermore, I couldn’t blame him. In my own anger, I had forced him to justify the validity of consent forms, but I’d known what a feeble tool they were. Part of my irritation stemmed from my own sloppiness. It was a thought that gave me pause—it wasn’t the first time I felt the pressures in this case were having an undermining effect on my judgment.

As I followed Dunn up the stairs, he turned to me and said, “You realize the Wolls are mine, right now, this second, right? And everything having to do with them.” He jerked his thumb toward the apartment.

“Right,” I said tersely, and followed him inside to inform the troops.

· · ·

“We have a problem,” Brandt said later, as I entered his office.

“I know. Dunn’s already told me: hands off the Wolls.”

Brandt shook his head. “I was expecting that; I’ve already talked to his office. This concerns Mark Cappelli.”

“Oh, Christ. He didn’t die on us, did he?”

“Figuratively. He woke up a couple of hours ago, but he won’t say word one to us. He’s instructed his lawyer to sue the department for reckless endangerment, among other things.”

“You’re kidding. He shot at us, for Christ’s sake.”

“In self-defense. He claims you never identified yourselves and that he thought you were hoods about to jump him. He saw Klesczewski’s gun and, as his lawyer put it, moved to protect his own life.”

I sat on the edge of the low filing cabinet near the door and thought back. “I don’t think we did ID ourselves; he opened fire on us before we got close enough. But those were obviously police cars chasing him down I-91, and he sure as hell didn’t have permission to steal that truck. Nor was he protecting himself when he shot that other guy, getting out of the building.”

Brandt shrugged. “Doesn’t matter; that’s all food for the legal beagles. Chances are, before it’s all done, he’ll end up in the can. What counts for us right now is that he’s dead as a witness. We won’t find out why he was on Milly Crawford’s list until after we’ve done a long, protracted dance with his nit-picker attorney. That could take weeks. We also lost out on a warrant to search his apartment. Harrowsmith said we were fishing.”

I ran my fingers through my sweat-dampened hair. “So we are. By the way, Tyler found what looks like cocaine at Woll’s apartment.”

Brandt made a face.

“Think Dunn’ll issue an arrest?”

Brandt shook his head. “Too early. He’d sooner put up with the political heat than lock John up and then try to cobble together a case before the judicial clock runs out. I’m afraid John’s going to be hung out to dry for a while.”

I didn’t point out the irony of the phrase. “You going to hold the news conference to steal Katz’s thunder?”

“Yeah, Dunn called from the Wolls’ to arrange a time. We’ve missed the TV news hour, but we’ll hit the radio guys and the papers.”

I pushed myself to my feet, feeling drained. “Well, I think I’ll check in with the troops.”

Brandt stopped me at the door. “You look a little flattened.”

I shrugged. “Just the heat.”

The double dose of losing both Woll and Cappelli, combined with the storm I knew would break when Woll’s involvement became common knowledge, was hardly grounds for enthusiasm. Furthermore, it heightened my sense that I was losing control of this investigation. It had been three days since we had found Charlie Jardine in the dirt, and I was plagued by the thought that while some play was indeed being acted out, we were all crowded into the wrong theater.

It was therefore with mixed emotions that I saw Gail sitting in my office as I entered the detective bureau. Usually, the sight of her lifted my spirits, brightening me like the proverbial breath of fresh air. This time, however, I would have had to be sleepwalking not to know the reason for her visit. Indeed, in my present state of mind, her being here was as inevitable as the pain following a twenty-foot fall from a ladder.

“Hi.” I bent to kiss her and was met with a cold look. I settled for positioning myself warily behind my desk. “What’s up?”

She stared at me darkly. “I’m not sure what to call it. Breach of trust comes close.”

“On whose part?” I was groping, badly, for appropriate lines.

“Why didn’t you tell me the police department was shielding one of its own during a murder investigation?”

“We weren’t.” It never ceased to amaze me how fast and inaccurately information was passed around in this town.

“You’re denying there was evidence against John Woll from the moment you found Jardine’s body?”

“I’m not denying there was some—a lot of it pretty skimpy until about an hour ago.”

“I’ve been told Jardine was having an affair with Woll’s wife, that the two men had fought over her since high school, that Woll was seen at the grave site just before Jardine was found, and that he was possibly burying the man at the time.”

“He claims he was investigating a road flare someone had thrown over the embankment.”

“A road flare no one has found.”

I placed both my hands behind my neck and looked at her for a moment in silence. “You’re well informed.”

“Not by you.”

Despite my earlier misgivings, her almost officious rage made me toe the party line. “Gail, you sound like I’m to blame for not keeping you up to date on the latest police business.”

“I don’t expect you to tell me everything you’re up to. But I thought you were sensitive enough to warn me of the time bomb you were sitting on before Jackson, Nadeau, McDonald, Katz, and everybody else in the world opened fire. You asked me yesterday if things ever got tough because of our relationship. Well, today I felt like an idiot, because you let me be blind-sided.”

The inevitability of this conversation pained me worse than I’d imagined. I got up and circled my desk, reaching for her shoulder.