Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (10 page)

Dr. Sanders’s icy smile, however, wasn’t all that soothing—her lipstick was dark red and the effect was that of a cut in her face.

“We can talk,” Dr. Sanders said, as she placed the affidavit on her desk ever so perfectly. Neatness issues.

I kept my tone pleasantly businesslike. “As Marcy Addwatter’s psychologist, you met with her monthly, I understand.”

Her eyes went to mine but somehow didn’t meet them. “Yes.”

“How would you characterize her condition?”

She could rock in her chair and she did, a little. “Under medication? Stable.”

“Are there...
degrees
of stability?”

Half a smile flicked, tiny annoyance registering. “Ms. Tree, Mrs. Addwatter is severely schizophrenic. It’s a small miracle she’s done as well as she has.”

“But she
has
done well?”

“Very well.” The smallest of sighs. “And that may be the problem.”

“How so?”

Her shrug was barely perceptible. “Patients who think they’re doing fine sometimes take it upon themselves to go off their meds.”

I nodded. “If, for whatever reason, Marcy Addwatter were off her medication...and if she learned her husband had started cheating again...could that add up to, well...murder?”

She stopped rocking. “Possibly.”

“Did you prescribe her medication?”

“Through referral, yes.”

I gestured with an open hand, tried to keep my tone non-confrontational. “With patients who’ve been doing very well...particularly those who’ve been stable for years...don’t mental health practitioners sometimes take such patients
off
their medication? And substitute placebos?”

She tried to brush that off with her cut of a smile, but her eyes were tight behind the sleek gray-rimmed glasses. “That’s called a ‘drug holiday,’ and Mrs. Addwatter, as events have shown, would hardly be a candidate.”

“We know that in retrospect.” I leaned forward, and when I spoke I tried to keep the threat out of my voice though it could hardly escape my words. “Dr. Sanders, if you recommended a drug holiday for Marcy Addwatter, we need to know it.”

The gray eyes opened wider, then settled back into a self-controlled chilly gaze. “If that were true—and it isn’t—that could be a serious case of malpractice.”

I shook my head. “I can assure you, Dr. Sanders, that if you innocently sent your patient on a drug holiday, that information would be regarded by her legal representatives in the most friendly way. It would aid immeasurably in Mrs. Addwatter’s defense. Any considerations of malpractice would be off the table.”

She listened to all of that with strained patience, and her smile was typically frigid as she said, “I can assure you that I would be the first to step forward to help Marcy, if my misjudgment had unintentionally aided and abetted this murder.”

I raised an eyebrow, and the ante. “
Murders.
Two people were killed, her husband and a prostitute.”

Her elbows were on the desk now, perfectly parallel; she tented her fingertips.

She tilted her head in a manner that told me this interview was over. “Ms. Tree, is there anything else? You’re past the five minutes you requested, and I’m sure you’ll understand that I have a busy schedule.”

“I do understand, Doctor.” I gave her the finger that points like a gun. “What
you
need to understand is that your patient
was
on a drug holiday, whether you prescribed it or not.”

Her laugh was as chilly as her smile. “That’s absurd.”

I got to my feet. “What if I told you Marcy Addwatter’s medication was analyzed and found to be sugar pills?”

“Why, I’d say you were—”

I did my best to give her a smile every bit as cold as the ones she’d dished out to me. “Crazy?”

Chic Steele and I were at Mike Ditka’s again, without Rafe Valer as a chaperone this time, in a leatherette booth just two down from where we’d sat on our previous visit. We were having coffee and working on one crème brûlée with two spoons.

For well past the end of the business day, my tanned, blue-eyed, blond dinner companion looked depressingly fresh in his dark blue sportjacket, lighter blue Oxford shirt and striped chocolate tie. My maroon pinstripe one-button jacket with matching cuffed pants, and the silk blouse with cami, had looked pretty sharp to me this morning; I wondered if my outfit was looking as drag-assy by now as I felt.

“And why aren’t you hitting Lt. Valer up for this information?” he was asking me. “Isn’t this Event Planner
his
case? Or should I say, obsession?”

I swallowed my creamy bite. “Rafe’s a little frazzled, at the moment, frankly.”

Chic’s forehead tensed with concern. “Word around HQ is, our man in Homicide is not his normal cool-headed self.”

Having witnessed the lieutenant’s less than deft interrogation of Ron Grubb, I knew that to be true.

I shrugged and said, “Whatever’s going on with Rafe, I’d rather not put anything else on his plate right now....”

Chic dipped his spoon into the crème brûlée. “So this is on
our
plate?”

“Yeah.”

“Why is that exactly?”

“Maybe because we owe it to somebody.”

Chic swallowed his bite of the dessert and his expression darkened. “Your husband?”

“Your partner.”

“Same guy.”

“Same guy.”

When the dessert was finished, I pushed the dish aside, leaning forward to take Chic’s hand. “Dan did a quick check, and the woman I’m seeking seems to’ve changed her name.”

“And why would she do that?”

“Maybe she’s on the run from social services.”

His smirk had a hint of disgust in it, or anyway irritation. “And you think the police should do your P.I. work for you? You think that’s fair to the other taxpayers?”

My smile was angelic. I even batted my eyelashes a few times. “I’m not asking you to protect. Just to serve.”

Then I sat up a little in the booth so I could lean even closer and give him a nice little kiss on the mouth, sweet as the crème brûlée we’d just shared.

Settling back in my seat, I noticed he had his familiar half-smile going as he dabbed his face with his napkin. “You ask me,
you’re
the ‘Planner’ around here....Anyway, you sure know how to pull
my
strings.”

“First thing tomorrow?”

He tossed the wadded napkin on the table like he was throwing in the towel. “Yes, yes. I’ll look into it, and call you first thing tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” I was getting my credit card out of my purse; it was my turn. “Care to come over for a nightcap?”

“What, as my reward?”

I gave him a look that pretended to be annoyed. “Why, are you above such things, Captain?”

“You trying to bribe me, lady?”

“Think of it as a perk.”

He pretended to think it over. Then he grinned and said, “Okay.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following you, Ms. Tree,” the doctor said.
“What
woman? And what does this have to do with—”

“Hey, I’m not free-associating, Doc,” I said. “This really does connect up. Problem is, the Marcy Addwatter case was also the Mike Tree murder, and at least seven
other
‘events’ Rafe’s Planner might’ve set in motion....”

Midmorning the next day—sunny and cold in a brittle way that needed no help from the wind but got it anyway—I stood with my trenchcoat collar up and my gloves on as I knocked at the door of a house trailer. Which was the address that Chic Steele had been good enough to track down for me, on the city’s time.

Some stacked cement blocks provided two steps up to the door, but I didn’t want to stand on them, because they would put me too close to the entry—I preferred some wiggle room. So to knock, I had to reach up, and even then was hitting on the lower portion of the door.

I was, believe it or not, in the Ripley Trailer Court in Calumet Park, on the far southeast side, not far from the garbage dumps. Where the yard ended and a garbage dump began, however, was a mystery better solved by a more skilled detective—the junky dirt-and-cinder area around the trailer was strewn with trash, broken toys and bricks, overseen by a 55-gallon drum that served, half-heartedly, as a waste can.

My knock had brought no response, so I tried again, harder this time, insistent.

Finally the door above me opened halfway to reveal a blonde in her twenties with very dark roots and a filthy baby, perhaps nine months old, in her arms. The mother was not slovenly, however, and under better circumstances would have been attractive, her narrow, dark-eyed face blessed with nice features; but one glance said she was living a harder life than yours.

“Mrs. Hazen,” I began, “I’m Michael Tree, and—”

“I know who the hell you are.”

She wore low-rider jeans that revealed gothic biker wings tattooed on either side of her navel, and a red half t-shirt with a NASCAR logo. The baby wore a pungently filled diaper and its own little red NASCAR t-shirt and a bib with almost as much baby food on it as on the child’s face.

“Mrs. Hazen—”

“You’re the bitch that killed my Randy!” Shaking, but probably not with fear, she hugged her baby to her protectively. “Stick it, lady. Stick it in high, and break it off hard!”

Indignant, she retreated, and slammed the door.

Well, that had gone well.

I regrouped for a moment, and knocked again.

I was in the middle of my third try when the door whipped open, almost hitting me, and the doorway was filled not by Mrs. Hazen, but a bruiser about thirty whose impressive muscles were obvious thanks to his wife-beater t-shirt and low-slung cruddy jeans. His greasy brown hair was ponytailed back, and he had at least six days growth of beard going, whether fashion statement or sheer laziness, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

Looming over me, his expression said:
Is that a skunk I smell?

“I was hoping,” I said, slowly, politely, “to talk to Mrs. Hazen.”

He grunted a laugh. “I was hopin’ for a ten-inch dick.”

I smiled pleasantly. “Aren’t we all? You’re...?”

“Brother-in-law,” he growled.

That confused me. “You’re not...Matt...?”

“Naw,” he said, grinning greenly. “Matty’s still on Death friggin’ Row, where your old man put his innocent ass. I’m his little brother—Clint.”

And he stuck out his paw.

What the hell. I was a guest here. I accepted the “little” brother’s gesture.

But when Clint took my hand, he gripped it at the wrist and, with his other hand, which was a fist now, smacked me in the side of the face.

I didn’t go down, if for no other reason than he had hold of me, and then suddenly he let go and shoved me backward with one hard hand, with some real force, and I went stumbling backward, windmilling, my purse on its strap flying off my shoulder.

Then the bastard took advantage of his higher perch to dive right down at me.

I managed to roll to one side, and Clint belly-flopped on the ground, like a slab of meat hitting a packing plant floor, and I was getting to my feet but he’d already gotten to his, when he buried a fist in my stomach.

That doubled me over, every ounce of breath whooshing out of me, and I was bowing toward him humbly as he grinned and strutted with both fists extended, like a fighter waiting to see if the ref would count his opponent out.

Still hunkered over, side of my face bleeding, I stumbled tentatively toward him, doing my best to display my utter defeat.

“Okay, okay,” I uttered, pitifully. “You...you made your point. Come on—take it...take it easy...I’m just a girl....”

I was approaching him now, straightening up, patting the air with my palms in a peacemaking gesture.

He lowered his fists a little and stood in one place. His upper lip curled. “Then just get the fuck outa—”

I interrupted these instructions by thrusting a forearm into his throat, bone meeting Adam’s apple with a satisfyingly sickening crunch.

Clint grabbed his neck, gurgling, and I latched onto him by the back of his wife-beater with one hand, and his belt with the other, and hurled him dwarf-tossing style into the side of the drum waste can, where his head made a dinner-bell
clang
.

Then he dropped to his knees, like the garbage drum was an altar.

But I had to hand it to him. He didn’t stay down long, got right back up on his feet, straightened himself, and staggered back a few paces, badly dazed but maintaining his balance, barely.

I was watching this as I made the trip over to where my purse had landed. I picked it up, got a gloved hand into it.

Meanwhile, Clint was looking around at the buffet of potential weapons that was the trailer’s yard, and before long he found just the right brick, hefted it, and then came at me, surprisingly fast, the brick clutched in a death grip and raised high with smashing in my head its obvious intended use....

The nine millimeter came out of my purse as if of its own volition, but it was me who fired off the round that cracked the air and caught him in the left kneecap.

Clint yowled, tossed the brick limply, harmlessly, to the ground, and did a brief, horrible (but I must say fairly comic) one-legged jig before going down on his remaining good knee, clutching the bloody mess that used to facilitate walking.

“Freeze,” I said. From my purse, I got my cell out and muttered to myself, “Always get that wrong...‘freeze,’
then
shoot....Gotta work on that.” Chicago cops have had that problem for years.

The police dispatcher came on the line.

“Man’s been shot,” I said.

I answered several questions, one of which was, “Who shot him?”

“Well, I did,” I said. I thought that had been obvious, but maybe I could have been more clear.

Mrs. Hazen was in the doorway of the trailer now, baby no longer in her arms, but I could hear it crying, from within its mobile-home womb.

The woman seemed stunned, her flesh suddenly ghostly pale, except for the tattooed part. “What... what have you done to Clint?”

She jumped down and rushed over and took her whimpering, fallen brother-in-law into her arms. She cradled this other child as he groaned and moaned and cried. And gripped his bloody shot-up knee, of course, red oozing between his fingers.