The Judgment (12 page)

I began opening drawers—and finding most of them empty. This was more or less as Conroy had described it. There were a few items of his clothing in one of the dressers—socks and underwear, a couple of shirts, and a pair of jeans, all laundered and ready to wear.

The most interesting thing about the other dresser was the picture I found in the top drawer. It was a photograph, standard print size, of Mark Conroy and a young woman who looked to be in her twenties. They were both smiling—no trace of a sneer from him this time. She had a lot
of red hair and looked sweet, if not exactly innocent. She seemed capable and intelligent, but not innocent. The picture wasn’t exactly hidden, more like buried beneath a pile of feminine odds and ends—torn pantyhose, an old lipstick, a bent barrette, and a half-empty card of hairpins—exactly the kinds of things that would be left behind when packing in a hurry. The other drawers were all empty.

I tucked the picture into my pocket and went in to check the bathroom. Nothing surprising in the medicine cabinet—quite empty, really, except for aspirin, a packet of cold tablets, and a man’s shaving paraphernalia. There was a pricey silk robe hanging on the back of the door: Conroy’s, I was sure. A lot of empty hangers. None of Conroy’s two-thousand-dollar suits were to be seen, just an old leather jacket that he might have worn on stakeout a dozen years ago.

But Mary Margaret Tucker was a student. Where did she do her studying? I hadn’t seen anything like a desk or a work area in any of the rooms I’d been in so far. So I kept going farther back into the apartment and found what I was searching for in the kitchen.

It was the big, old-fashioned sort with a good-sized table right in the center. She had taken over half of the kitchen table. There was a coffee can full of pencils and ballpoint pens, a couple of new, legal-sized yellow tablets, and a beat-up copy of
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
All quite neat and orderly, just waiting for her to sit down and get to work. But over to one side, behind the table, was something that caught my attention.

It was a big brown grocery bag overflowing with discarded wads of yellow paper from the tablets on the table. I plunged into it, not paying much attention to what was written in a small, neat hand on the crumpled sheets of paper. No, what I was looking for was something different, though I didn’t know quite what it was. There were Xeroxed assignment sheets. These I looked at more carefully, noting the class and teacher, putting them aside. Finally,
toward the bottom of the bag, I found exactly what I wanted.

It was her schedule of classes for the semester. She must have thrown it away when it became routine. I had to think for a moment about the day of the week. Then I checked my watch. Yes, Political Theory, Professor Novak. The class had just begun. I had a little less than an hour to get down there.

I
f Detroit had a subway, then Wayne State would be its subway college. Located only blocks away from downtown along the notorious Cass Corridor, it’s one of those big-city universities with big-city policies and big-city problems. But you can get a good education there if you choose the right courses and get the right teachers. And if that sounds sort of lukewarm, maybe it’s because I went to the University of Detroit. Jesuit. Back in the Dark Ages when I was a Catholic.

I hoped to find Mary Margaret Tucker there at Wayne State’s Social Sciences Building, Room 117. That was where I was waiting, anyway, just outside the door of the classroom.

It seemed to me that Miss Tucker would be a lot less likely to give up her education than the apartment she had shared intermittently with Mark Conroy. She’d dropped out to work full-time at the police department. That was where the two of them had met. If she’d gone back, it was because she was determined to finish. And if she had her eye on law school, then she was
very
determined.

Conroy’s pride would have kept him from searching her out here. But if she was on the prosecutor’s list of witnesses for the preliminary examination, why hadn’t he sent someone out to subpoena her in class? It seemed odd, inconsistent.

So here I was, picture in hand, trying to fix that face of hers in my mind so that when she emerged from the classroom, I’d recognize her immediately. I looked from the photograph to my wristwatch, which told me she’d have to be coming out soon.

Just then, down the hall, the door to another classroom opened, and students began pouring out, then another, and another one after that. I pocketed the picture and waited. Professor Novak must have had a few words to get in before the end of his class. But then, at last the door opened, and mostly young, serious-looking males, white and black, began to emerge from Political Theory.

I might have missed her entirely. There were, along with the men, three young women who came through the door. Miss Tucker was the second. But her red hair was so well hidden beneath a shapeless hat, and her eyes concealed behind big sunglasses, that I let her walk right on by me. She didn’t even glance my way. I had to take a look at the third to be absolutely sure she’d already passed.

Perhaps that was just as well. I still had her in sight. I took off after her, telling myself that it would be better to talk to her outside. If there was to be confrontation—and maybe there would be—it would be better to have it without an audience.

We crossed Cass more or less together. I may have been about a step behind. Anyway, when we came to the slush and pool of water at the far curb, I muttered a courtly “Allow me,” and gave her a lift at the elbow. She leaped the mess gracefully. I didn’t do quite so well.

She stopped and turned to me with a curious smile on her face. “Thanks,” she said. “You’ve been following me, haven’t you?”

So much for Charley Sloan, private eye.

“Which one are you?” she asked. “Are you Timmerman?”

What did that mean? Who was Timmerman? I was tempted to play along and find out, and in my former, more adventurous legal life, I might have done just that.

But these days, I played it strictly by the book.

“My name is Charles Sloan,” I said. “I’m the attorney representing Mark Conroy. I was hoping we could talk.”

The smile faded fast. “I don’t think so,” she said. “They said I shouldn’t talk to you unless I had to.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“If you don’t know, then I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Look,” I said, “how about a cup of coffee? Just one. That’s how long we’ll talk. Frankly, my client hasn’t been very forthcoming. It’s pretty hard to help him, knowing as little as I do.”

A frown wrinkled her forehead just above her sunglasses. “No. I have to go to a class.”

“No, you don’t. You’re through for the day.”

“You seem to know a lot about me. How’d you know where to find me? And hey, how did you know what I looked like?”

“Well, in answer to your second question, I had this.” I took the photograph out of my pocket and showed it to her. “And maybe it answers the first question, too.”

“That’s mine. Where did you get it? Did Mark have it?”

“No,” I said, “he didn’t have it. I found it under a pile of odds and ends in one of the dressers in that place on Parker.”

“You were nosing around my apartment!”

“May I remind you, Miss Tucker, you moved out. It’s no longer your apartment. It belongs to Conroy, along with the rest of the building. He gave me the key.”

She reached for the photo. I moved it away, just out of her grasp. “It’s still my picture.”

“Like to trade it for a cup of coffee? A little information?”

“Keep it. I don’t care.” She broke away from me and started walking purposefully up the side street that led to Woodward.

I stuck the picture back in my pocket and caught up
with her. “All right,” I said, “look, you’re going to your car, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll just accompany you there. We can talk along the way.”

“Go ahead.” She shrugged. “Talk.”

“You were on the list of witnesses at Conroy’s preliminary examination, but you weren’t called. In fact, you were the only one who wasn’t. Were you subpoenaed?”

“I wasn’t served.”

“Do you know why?”

“I’ve got a fairly good idea, but I’m not about to tell you.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t
‘they’
like it?”

“No,
they
wouldn’t, and I’m playing it just the way they say.” With that, she stopped, turned, and faced me. “This is as far as we go,” she said, and pointed at an old gray, rusted VW Beetle that had been squeezed between a full-sized Ford and a Jeep.

“Is this your car?” I was disappointed. I thought I’d have at least five minutes with her.

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’re only half a block from school.” The way I said it, it must have sounded like an accusation.

“Guess I just got lucky.”

“But I’ve got some more questions.” I didn’t really. I was just trying to get her to loosen up and give me something, anything.

“Too bad. Maybe next time.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“You found me once. I guess you can just look me up on the class schedule.” She pulled off her sunglasses and gave me a fierce look with her blue eyes. “Aren’t you ashamed?” she said. “Going through people’s garbage?”

And you know, when she put it like that, I really felt just a little ashamed. She started past me to the car. Then I had a thought. I put out my hand and detained her.

“Tell me something,” I said. “If I gave you this picture
of you and Conroy, what would you do with it?”

She looked me straight in the eye. “What would I do with it? I’d destroy it.”

I pulled out my cigar lighter and handed it to her. Then, gripping it tightly with my thumb and forefinger, I brought out the photo and held it between us.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Burn it.”

The look she gave me was more than skeptical. She seemed to be asking herself if I was sane. At last she asked, “Are you serious?”

“Go ahead.”

With another dubious look, she struck the lighter, got a flame, and put it to the picture. The photo-print paper took a moment to catch. Once it had, it burned steadily. I looked around, suddenly aware that we’d attracted a little crowd of three—two boys and a girl. They watched, fascinated, not so much curious as enjoying the spectacle.

I felt the heat on my fingers, watched the flame consume Mary Margaret and then begin eating away at Mark Conroy. It was getting harder to hold on. I shifted my grip, took it as long as I could, and with less than an inch patch left to burn, I let the photo drop to the sidewalk. My thumb and forefinger hurt like hell.

The little crowd applauded. “Way to go, man!” one of them shouted. Then, the show over, they drifted away.

“You’re crazy,” said Mary Margaret Tucker.

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, have it your way. I’m getting out of here.” She put the lighter back in my sore hand and pushed past me to the Volkswagen.

I followed her into the street, watched her fumble with her keys to unlock the car.

“What about the negative?”

“What about it?”
She almost screamed it at me.

“Have you got it?”

“No!”
She’d gotten the car door unlocked at last. She threw it open. I jumped out of the way. “He took that roll of film and burned it, said he didn’t want pictures of us
together. That was our first fight. But I had two prints of that picture—one for me he never knew about. That was the one we just burned.”

She jumped into the car and slammed the door shut. I stepped back and watched her bang into the Ford behind her and narrowly miss the Jeep ahead as she pulled out into the street and drove away. Before she left, though, I had my notebook out, and I wrote down her license plate number and the name Timmerman.

“Well,” said Mrs. Fenton, “where’ve
you
been?”

I thumped in, worn out from the drive to Pickeral Point. The roads were now deep in water and slush. My car had been splattered and smeared by every eighteen-wheeler in southeastern Michigan. I was in no mood for Mrs. Fen-ton’s unvoiced complaints.

“Working on a case,” I said as I walked past her and headed for my office. “I take it there have been phone calls.”

“Not many,” she called after me. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. There are a couple of please-call-backs on your desk.”

I stopped, turned, and frowned at her. “Then why the third degree?”

“I only asked you where you’d been.”

“Why should it matter?”

“Well, you were gone a long time, most of the afternoon. What if I’d had to reach you? What if there’d been an emergency?”

Through force of will, I fixed a benign and gentle smile on my face. “Mrs. Fenton,” I said, “the places I was, you couldn’t have reached me by telephone, or even by carrier pigeon. And besides, I have the utmost confidence in your ability to handle any and all problems that might arise.”

That stopped her. She sat there, blinked once or twice, then at last said, “Well, thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome.”

I went into my office and shut the door gently behind me. Maybe I’d discovered how to deal with her at last. A little flattery can go a long way.

One of the please-call-backs was from Jack Rivers. What would it be this time, the carrot or the stick? I wadded the note and threw it in the wastebasket.

The other one was from Ernie Barker. He hadn’t received the bill yet. I wouldn’t expect any difficulty from him on that count, anyway. He was probably still celebrating beating that gun charge. Who knows? Maybe he just wanted to thank me some more.

I picked up the phone and punched out the number on the note.

“Yah, hello, this is Ernie.”

“Charley Sloan here. You called.”

“Oh, hey, Mr. Sloan, thanks for calling me back. I, uh … well, there was something I been thinking about, I just wanted to ask your advice.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“You know, I hate to say it,” he began, “but all the time I was carrying that .38 around in my glove compartment, I felt really safe. You know? I could go anyplace—down onto John R, or there around Gratiot—it didn’t matter, just as long as I had that gun along.”