Witch House (21 page)

“Yes.”

“It turns out that it was no small remodel.
The work on the vault, the upgraded security and the additional
wing they built onto the west end of the complex cost the
casino—you ready for this?”

“Tell us already.”

“Six million dollars.”

“That’s the same amount….”

“Exactly. Coincidence?”

“Maybe. What are you suggesting?”

Dominic pulled a chair up to the desk, spun
it around and sat in it backwards, his arms and elbows propped up
on the backrest. “Okay, hear me out. What if the chief wanted to
rob his own casino? Wouldn’t it be easy enough if he arranged to
move a large sum of money out of the vault and send it by armored
car across town to a bank somewhere? Then what if he recruited
someone like Powell to run interference, delay the police just as
the armored car came under attack?”

“I’m listening.”

“The chief works on Powell for months, lets
him run up large gambling debts and then forgives them, encouraging
him to gamble even more. Eventually, Powell accumulates an
insurmountable debt, one the casino will not forgive. The chief
then comes along and offers him not only a way out, but a way to
get rich, too. All Powell has to do is place himself closest to the
site of the holdup so that his is the first unit called to respond.
Then when the call comes in, he suddenly develops car trouble.”

“If you’re saying that Chief Running Bear
robbed his own casino for the insurance money, then René Landau had
to be in on the scam as well?”

“Sure, maybe Powell recruited him.”

“And what then, Landau double-crossed Powell
and everyone else by stashing the money and pretending it burned in
the fire?”

“The fire he set, exactly.”

“So you think he killed Johnny Buck?”

“You said it yourself, no honor among
thieves.”

“It does sound possible.”

Carlos said, “Okay, that does it. I’m
changing my bet. I think Chief Running Bear and his thugs snuffed
Landau. DeAngelo had nothing to do with it.”

“Really, Carlos? You don’t want to consider
that maybe Powell did it? He could have been working for Chief
Running Bear, cleaning up a mess eighteen years in the making.”

“Oh, yeah.” Carlos sat with his left butt
cheek propped up on my desktop, his arms folded at his chest. “Now
I’m confused. It looks like everyone had a motive and a means. What
other surprises could you possibly throw at us?”

Spinelli smiled. “You really want to
know?”

“Ho boy,” I said, “What is it?”

He removed one last document from the manila
envelope and handed it to me. It was a photocopy of a driver’s
license, a young woman’s, not half-bad looking either. “Does she
look familiar?” he asked.

I read the name on it. “Maryann Gilmore?”

“Yes.”

“She does look familiar, but I can’t place
her.”

“She was the prosecutor’s mystery witness at
Landau’s trial, the one who positively identified Landau as the
get-a-way driver in the robbery.”

“So, why is this so important now?”

He pointed at the document, and his smile
told me that it was something big. “Look again.”

I did, and then it hit me. “Hell!” I said.
“That’s her!”

Carlos grabbed the paper from my hands.
“Who?”

“Dominic said, “Stephanie Stiles.”

“No way.” He held the picture to within
inches of his nose. Even though Dominic had blown it up three times
its normal size, its graininess left him unsure. “You know, I’d do
her,” he said.

“Carlos!” I snatched it from him. “Stiles is
a subject in an ongoing investigation.”

“What? No, I didn’t mean I would do her. I
mean I would do
her
.” He pointed at the picture.

“It’s the same person.”

He plowed his hands into his pockets and drew
his jacket tight around his belly. “Well, forget it then. I
wouldn’t do her.”

I handed the picture back to Dominic. “You
know, Stiles told us that Paul Kemper introduced her to Landau in
prison. Why would he do that? As Landau’s lawyer, he knew it was
her testimony that put his client behind bars.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. She was a mystery
witness for the prosecution, wasn’t she?”

“Mystery yes, but not anonymous. Even with
her identity kept secret from the public, jurisprudence provides
the defense with the Confrontation Clause, allowing the accused the
right to face the witness against him. Even if Landau did not meet
Stiles face-to-face, Kemper would have met her during her
depositions.”

“She looked different then,” Carlos remarked.
“Look at her picture.”

“Not that different. Kemper knew that Maryann
Gilmore and Stephanie Stiles were the same person when he
introduced her to Landau. I am sure of it.”

Dominic asked, “What do you suppose motivated
her to want to meet Landau?”

“Money,” said Carlos, “what else?”

“If that’s her game,” I said, “then it’s
Kemper’s game, too, and probably the motivating factor for everyone
involved.” I turned to Dominic. “Got any more surprises?”

He shook his head. “No. That’s it for
now.”

I got up and started around the desk. “Okay
then. We need to get out and pay another visit to Ms. Stiles. You
coming, Carlos?”

“Of course.”

“You gonna keep it in your pants?”

“What?”

Spinelli laughed. I called back to him as we
headed down the hall. “Don’t forget my subpoenas for those
guns.”

He waved me on. I knew he would not forget.
The kid is a machine. I suspect that one day I will be working for
him. I only hope when that happens, he does not take me for granted
as badly as I sometimes take him.

Stephanie Stiles’ condo is an easy one to
watch. It is on the third floor and the only way up is the
stairwell out front, directly in the middle of the building. The
apartment door faces the street and metal handrail over tubular
pickets stripe the cantilevered walkway on each floor like prison
bars, offering no anonymity for visitors coming and going. It is a
cop’s dream stakeout location. There is no slipping in and out
undetected, and the reason why Dominic was able to provide me with
such great surveillance photos of everyone Stephanie had seen over
the last two days. As Carlos and I sat out front in an unmarked
cruiser, we discussed the possibility that maybe she had killed
René Landau. It was Carlos’ idea, really, and I tried like hell to
put forth sufficient cause to lay waste to that theory; not that I
did not believe she could do it, I simply had my hands full with
enough viable suspects and I did not need to scrutinize
another.

“She had motive,” Carlos remarked, “even if
she was not in it for the money. Think about it, a woman scorned
that had waited seventeen years for her boyfriend to get out of
prison to marry her, only to have him call off the wedding the day
he got out. That would piss anyone off.”

“It would,” I said, “however, a crime of
passion would likely have unfolded spontaneously, while he was
still there in her apartment.”

“Not if she sat fuming over it after he left.
Maybe she had to work up the courage to kill him. We can check her
phone records, see if she called him while he sat drinking at
Pete’s Place. After locating him, she could have gone down there
and waited for him to stagger out and—BOOM! He’s dead.”

“Yes, but she claims to have an alibi for his
time of death.”

“Who, Powell? Like that’s a good alibi.”

“It’s something. Come on. Let’s see if we can
rattle her cage.”

We went upstairs and knocked on her door. She
did not answer at first, though I knew she was home. I could smell
cigarette smoke leaching from under the door, and a clamor of
activity told me that an orchestrated movement in preparation of
our unscheduled arrival was under way. After an abrupt lull in
noise, Carlos tried knocking, his rap harder and louder than mine.
“Ms. Stiles!” he called. “It’s Detectives Marcella and Rodriquez.
Please open up.”

Moments later, we heard the click of a
deadbolt and the sound of a security chain unlatching. The door
opened. Stiles stood in casual posture, her weight shifted onto one
hip, her arms semi-folded, one under her breasts, the other
crossing at the wrist. In her hand, of course, a burning cigarette,
its smoke escaping in whispers through the screen door on a thin
breeze stirring from the open balcony doors out back. To our
relief, we found her dressed suitably in blue jeans, a long-sleeved
white cotton blouse buttoned to the collar and closed-toed shoes; a
sight bountifully more presentable than the day before. She pointed
at Carlos with her cigarette in a stabbing gesture like a cobra.
“What do you want? I told you everything I know yesterday.”

“No,” I said, “you answered our questions
yesterday. You did not tell us everything you know. May we come
in?”

She took a drag, turned her head and pursed
her lips, blowing a stream of smoke over her left shoulder, still
maintaining eye contact with me. “I’m sorry. I am busy.”

“We won’t take up much of your time.”

“I think we should do this later.”

“Sure, we can do this later—downtown.”

She reached out, tripped the latch and kicked
the door open. “Make it quick.”

We followed her in, once again taking up
positions as before on the sofa, with Stiles on the chair opposite.
I noticed two glasses on the coffee table, both with ice and more
than half filled with mixed drink. Condensation had collected on
the glasses, but had not yet rolled down onto the tabletop. In the
ashtray, another cigarette smoldered; it was not Stiles’ brand. I
looked around the apartment. She had closed her bedroom door. “Do
you have company?” I asked.

“Just you and your partner,” she replied.

She knew I knew. That was all I wanted to get
across to her. Carlos looked over his shoulder at the same door and
stared at it for a long time, perhaps expecting it to open. It did
not. He was still looking when I said, “Ms. Stiles, let me get
right to the point. We know about you and Sergeant Powell.”

She tried looking confused. “What do you
mean?”

“You know what I mean. We know you are seeing
Powell. It was his watch you threw at René the other day, wasn’t
it?”

“That is none of your business.”

“How long have you known Ron Powell? Did you
know him before you met René Landau?”

“I don’t see how that should matter to
you.”

“Did he introduce you to Daniel
Mochohyett?”

“Who?”

“You may know him as Chief Running Bear.”

“No. I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“But you know Superintendent Bill
DeAngelo.”

“Of course, he is the warden at Walpole.”

“Yes, but he is more than that, isn’t
he?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean he does pay the rent here, does he
not?”

“Again, that is none of your business.
Detective, if you are quite finished, I think you should—”

“I know about Maryann Gilmore.”

Her face grew flush. “I no longer go by that
name.”

“I know, not since the trial. Did you change
your name for René’s sake?”

“I did not change it. I simply resorted back
to my maiden name. I was Maryann Stephanie Stiles before I married
Edward Gilmore. After my divorce, I dropped the Maryann and went
back to Stiles. Is that against the law?”

“No, but perjury is.”

“Perjury?”

“Ms. Stiles, let me tell you what I think
went down. I think that you and Ron Powell are having an affair,
and that this affair began at least eighteen years ago. I also
think that about that time things started going badly for Powell,
as he found himself in a world of gambling debts. To get out from
under those debts, he volunteered his complicity in what should
have been a simple crime. All he had to do was do nothing at all,
just make sure he was the only police unit available when a 211 in
progress came in. Then, through supposed bad luck, he would develop
car trouble, allowing a couple of robbers to get away with six
million dollars in cold hard casino cash. Is any of this sounding
familiar?”

Stiles kicked back in her chair, crossed her
legs and leveled a narrow bead of sight upon me. “It’s sounding
fanciful, Detective.” She drew on her cigarette until it burned
down to her fingertips. Then she rolled her hand so that her palm
faced the ceiling and she flicked the ash onto the floor. “But I
enjoy a man with an active imagination. Please, continue.”

“Oh, I will,” I said, “because it gets
exciting from here. You see, it was supposed to be easy, no one was
supposed to get hurt; everyone should have gone home and counted
his blessings or his money, depending on what side of the law he
was on. But it did not go down that way, and someone did get hurt.
Someone got killed. Then a complicated mess got more complicated.
René Landau tried to slight everyone involved. He killed his
partner and hid the money. That is when Powell decided to move in.
He drove up to the lakeside hideout just as Landau was making his
escape. Now, no one knows what the two discussed, but it is fair to
say that Powell could not kill Landau because he knew he would
never learn where the money was. He also could not let him go
because he would never see him again. What was worse, if Landau got
away, Chief Running Bear would have killed Powell. So what does he
do?”

“Tell me,” said Stiles. “I am all
a-twitter.”

“It’s simple. He arrests him, takes him into
custody and hauls him downtown.”

“So he is a hero.” Stiles removed another
smoke from her pack and lit it off the last. “What is the
problem?”

“The problem is now that Landau was in the
hands of the Department of Corrections, Powell and Chief Running
Bear no longer had control over the situation. They needed a way of
monitoring Landau, a way to work him so that they might learn what
he did with the money. That is where things became even more
complicated.