The Judgment (28 page)

“You were right,” he said. “She wasn’t that hard to find. I didn’t go out looking myself. I thought for a couple of reasons it’d be better if I kept my distance. A friend of mine from my old TAC Squad days looked her up for me.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll ask her. But tell me something. Why did you two break up?”

He signed audibly. “Oh, the usual reason in situations
like that. She wanted me to leave my wife, wanted us to get married, and I didn’t know if I wanted to do that, so I stalled. I guess I stalled too long because we had a big blowup. Not the first, but it turned out to be the last. I sure as hell hated to lose her, though.”

“And when did the final break come?”

“In the fall—not too long after her classes at Wayne State began.”

“And the money was in the safe?”

“Look, if you’re thinking she might have taken it, it was a good week after she left before the money turned up missing.”

It took only a moment to consider that. “But you said yourself that the Mouse was in charge of the safe,” I said. “He was the one who found the safe empty, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.”

There was a silence that went on for too long.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.”

Either one of them could have taken the money. They could have been in collusion, or could have worked independently. At this point it didn’t matter. What did matter was that I had extended the possibilities by one. That might prove to be the most important thing to come out of this morning’s meeting.

I looked at my watch. “Let’s go back,” I said.

On the return trip we didn’t have much to say for a while. The light wind we’d had at our backs seemed much sharper as we walked into it, sharp enough to discourage conversation. And besides, I had temporarily exhausted my store of questions pertaining to the disappearance of the W-91 Fund. And Conroy had evidently run out of arguments intended to bring me out with him and Tolliver that night. You didn’t engage in small talk with a guy like Conroy. But when, about halfway back to my office, he started to talk, he wasn’t talking small.

“You’ve got some nasty homicides out here,” he said.

“We sure do. Children. Bodies wrapped in soft plastic.

Left in the snow. Three so far. No solid leads, as far as I can tell.”

“Yeah, I read about it in the papers.” He held back, as if he were deciding whether or not to go on. But then, after five or six paces, he began talking: “You know, when I was homicide detective—this was about ten or twelve years ago—we had a case sort of similar to this one up here. You were in Detroit then. Maybe you remember it.”

There was something back there in my memory, but it was vague. “Maybe,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

“There were two homicides—both victims were kids, eight and nine, both black, both in the same part of town—east side, off Jefferson. The bodies were found about three weeks apart. Similar circumstances, sexual element in both instances. It looked like we had a serial killer on our hands. I’ll spare you the details of the investigation. But you know who it turned out to be?”

I matched Conroy stride-for-stride, waiting for him to continue. He looked straight ahead, his face in that same tight mask.

“It was a cop,” he said, “a uniform cop. I knew the guy myself. I’d done a little time in a patrol car with him not long after I was out of the academy. He was black, too. See, the operative principle in our investigation was that it had to be somebody children would trust. He asked the kids if they wanted to take a ride in a police car. That’s all it took. It turned out he’d operated without a partner on both occasions. The department was shorthanded then, and on the day-watch, if a partner slicked out, they’d do one man in a car. So that was it. The days his partner was out were the days the murders happened—on his beat.”

“I remember the case. The guy was convicted.”

“He got two consecutive life terms. Didn’t last a year in Jackson.”

“Quite a story.”

“You know any of the detectives up here who’re working the case?”

“I know a couple of them, one very well.” I hesitated
to mention Sue Gillis, but knowing Conroy, he probably already knew about her.

“Tell them to check out their own. Maybe also the town cops up in that little town—what’s the name of the place?”

“Hub City?”

“That’s it,” said Conroy. “Yeah, tell them to check out the cops.”

That took us to the office parking lot. I went with him to his Cadillac. There we stood regarding each other silently for a moment.

Then, with a stretch of his mouth that was more grimace than smile, he said, “Well, what about it, Sloan? You with us tonight?”

“I’m going to surprise you.”

“Okay, surprise me.”

“I’ll come along, but I’ll be with you mainly as an observer. You need protection, Conroy. Protection from your enemies, your friends, and protection from yourself.”

“Just along for the ride, then?”

“Coming along to keep you out of trouble.”

Although he’d gone to Wayne State Law, Stash Olesky had done his four undergraduate years at Michigan State. I’m not sure I knew that until the afternoon I spent at his house watching the Spartans do battle with the Wolverines. It only took a minute or two in front of the TV set with him to make it clear whom he was rooting for. He was partisan. He was passionate. He was loud. When Michigan State took the opening kickoff, he jumped up from his chair and began shouting encouragement to the receiver, who, with Stash’s vocal help, managed to run the ball back to the 25. That, of course, was just the beginning. He was up and cheering on every offensive play, no matter how small the gain. Dropped passes drew agonized groans from him. Then, after a couple of measured first downs, the Spartans were forced to punt from the 50, and
Stash proved nearly as noisy when his team went on defense. Funny, I thought, he’d always seemed like a pretty normal guy up until now.

Anybody who had spent as much time on barstools as I had has watched a lot of football. But in my condition I had never been quite attentive enough to pick up the fine points of the game. Most of the time I was lucky if I knew which side had scored the touchdown or even who had won the game. Up here in Pickeral Point, I just never seemed to turn on the television set on Saturday or Sunday afternoons or even Monday nights. It occurred to me that this Michigan-Michigan State game was probably the first football since I was a teenager that I’d watched absolutely stone-cold sober.

Somebody had shoved a beer at me the moment I walked in the door. I declined and asked for a Diet Coke. It was just something to hold in my hand: I sipped at it as I listened to Stash going crazy beside me and took stock of the others assembled in the big living room. There were about a dozen of us, counting the two Olesky kids, Tommy and Stan, who were about eleven or twelve. Stash, it turned out, had played football in high school and had red-shirted at State for two years—“the toughest and greatest time of my life,” he later claimed. John Dibble, who had a storefront practice across from the courthouse, was seated on the other side of Stash, quietly but emphatically rooting for Michigan. Mrs. D was there, too, looking a little embarrassed by the frequent outbursts of our host. The others were neighbors and friends, I guess. I’d been introduced to them hastily, male and female, when I made my appearance just before kickoff. I’m not much good at names, especially in situations like this, but they seemed a lively, affable bunch—or maybe they’d been jacked up to a pitch by the host’s high spirits.

At any rate, nearly everybody seemed to be having more fun than I was, and I felt a little guilty about that. The beer flowed freely, though most of the women sipped white wine, and there I was, pulling away at my can of
soda, trying to keep my mind on the game. It wasn’t so easy, considering the talk I’d had with Mark Conroy. He’d given me a lot of information I’d have to process later. And I felt obliged to pass on to Sue that bit of advice he’d offered: “Tell the cops to check out their own.” How she would take that I had no idea.

That was how the first quarter went. At the end of it, I took advantage of the commercial break and headed back to the kitchen for another Diet Coke.

Mrs. Olesky—Lorraine—was there, bustling around, pulling things from the oven, putting together the halftime feast that Stash had promised.

“How’s the game going?” she asked.

“Nothing to nothing, about as even as it can be.”

“That’s good.” Then, probably thinking that sounded disloyal, she said, “Or is it? I mean, Michigan’s favored, right? Don’t tell Stash I said that.”

“My lips are sealed, Lorraine.”

Laughing, I knelt down and began feeling around in the ice-filled tub for a can of Diet Coke or its near-equivalent.

“There’s a little of everything in there, Charley.”

I found what I was looking for, and Lorraine tossed me a dish towel for drying my wet hands.

“Where’s Sue Gillis?” she asked. “Couldn’t make it?”

“Sue is probably out in the county someplace chasing down a lead on these hideous child murders. If there are any leads.”

“Working Saturdays on it?”

“She’ll work every day of the week if that’s what it takes.”

“According to Stash, she might be a bit too involved.”

“They grounded her for a couple of days because of it,” I said. “And now she’s back on the case, more determined than ever, or maybe more obsessed. We’re having dinner tonight. I’ll try to lighten her load a little.”

Lorraine Olesky listened, nodding sympathetically. Then a great roar went up from the living room. That had to be a Michigan State touchdown.

I heard Stash yelling, “Charley! Charley! You gotta see this on replay.”

“I’ve been summoned,” I said to her. “See you at lunch-time.”

I arrived in time to see a Spartan running back thread his way through half the Michigan team and do a silly little dance of triumph in the end zone. Football players just don’t have much dignity anymore. But Stash seemed to enjoy the performance just as much the second time around.

The rest of the second quarter belonged to Michigan State. They went charging up the field but seemed to lose the ball—a fumble, an intercepted pass—just when it looked like they might push it over. They did, however, come away with a field goal, so that when the half ended the score stood at 10 to 0, Michigan State.

“Well,” said Stash, rising, “I can live with that. Should be a good second half.” He went over to the TV set and turned down the sound, then gave his belly a healthy slap. “How about something to eat, you guys?”

Lorraine had laid on quite a spread. There was chicken, baked beans, and salad, and for the more ethnic among us, kielbasa and kraut. Not to mention a mighty array of condiments, a chocolate cake, and a plateful of cookies. It was a little after two, and I was hungry. I grabbed up a plate and some silverware and joined the line that had formed around the table.

John Dibble was just ahead of me. He turned in my direction and looked at me suspiciously.

“Did you send Delbert Evans over to me?” he asked.

“No, but I tried: That was when his son got taken in for questioning on the Catherine Quigley homicide. I got trapped into taking care of it myself. He’s not a very likable man, is he?”

“No, he’s not. He came over to my office trying to promote a false arrest suit. When I turned him down, said I didn’t think he had a case, he accused me of cozying with the cops.”

“I suppose he figured it’d worked with me, why shouldn’t it work with you?”

Mrs. Dibble stuck her head out from behind her husband. “He’s a terrible man, Mr. Sloan.”

“Charley.”

“All right, Charley then. But he
is
terrible. Before you came up here, he was involved in a child-neglect case that was—oh, I don’t even like to talk about it, it was so awful. They ought to just lock him up and throw away the key.”

“Come now, Sarah, everybody deserves due process. Where would Charley and I be without it, right, Charley?”

“Our bread and butter. Speaking of which …”

I nodded at the table, and the Dibbles realized their turn had come. They excused themselves and began piling their plates high, perhaps with the intention of adding an inch or two to their already considerable waists.

As for myself, I went ethnic. The kielbasa and kraut looked too good to pass up.

I had dinner with Sue that night. I wasn’t quite sure what her mood would be. All too soon these murders would tie her up in knots again. Why not? They had us all tied up. The whole county seemed to be talking about nothing else. I had heard at Benny’s Diner that Hub City had virtually shut down. A pall of fear had settled over the place. Parents refused to let their kids out to play after school. Mothers were probably going nuts keeping their kids in. This was a tough one for a town that had already had its share of hard knocks. I wondered what Sue would have to say over dinner.

I picked her up at her place about seven-thirty. I suspected she hadn’t been home long, not long enough to change clothes, anyway. She managed a wan smile and a greeting, grabbed her purse, and we were off. I’d made a reservation at a steakhouse in St. Clair, so it took a bit of a drive to get us there. She was quiet on the way, though not sullen.

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked.

“Are you still working for the Evans family?”

“Forget I asked.”

So maybe she was a little bit sullen.

But she apologized later and unburdened herself during dinner. Bud Billings still liked Delbert Evans for the homicide, and she respected his intuitions. After all, there was that matter of the time of year the murders had begun and the way the daughter had been buried. It seemed to me we were having the same conversation we’d had at lunch one day before. But since, as they had heard, old man Evans was going around the county trying to peddle a false arrest suit for his son, the two of them had been told to steer clear of Delbert until they might actually get something on him.

“But how are we going to do that,” she asked, “unless we bring him in for questioning and then check out his story?”