A Measure of Blood (6 page)

Monday

NADAL IS AWAKENED BY THE PHONE.
He rolls over, confused, ignoring the phone and then it stops. Suddenly he remembers yesterday and he comes fully awake. His heart pounds unmercifully.

He's worried the ringing phone has bothered the others. His roommates—there are three of them—are Korean. He's money in the bank for them—his room is not a room, just a space meant to be storage or something. The bed barely fits. His choice though because he likes to be alone. He's not on the lease. He's their spending money.

They sleep in one bedroom while he has this other (very tiny) room to himself.

The phone begins ringing again. This time he answers. It's his mother.

“Dal?”

“What?”

“I thought you weren't there. I thought you didn't make it.”

“I was
sleeping
.”

“I'm so sorry. It's just that I've been up.”

“Doing what?”

“Worrying about you. Watching TV.”

Does she know? It's as if she knows.

“Watching the news. There was a terrible murder in Pittsburgh. A nice woman in a good neighborhood. Just like that. Home on a Sunday and somebody comes in and kills her. It gives me the shivers. Are you still there?”

“I'm here.” He waits.

“Just a woman with a young son. Same name as ours. It was very upsetting to hear about.”

“Well, Mom, I have to go to work. Good thing you got me up. I don't want to lose my job.”

“No, no. Don't lose your job.”

When classes begin later this week, he will have only one and that one meets once a week. His mother thinks he's in graduate school, which is what he told her because she worships the whole university-intellect-learning thing. But he has only one class—to test him for provisional admission to the graduate program in computer science. He told his mother another lie—that he has an assistantship, when it's just a plain old job in the computer lab, answering desperate people's questions about what is wrong with their computers.

He knows a good bit, but not as much as some of the other computer consultants do. He has one very good answer for many inquiries. “Have you shut it down and restarted?”

He tiptoes to the bathroom and turns on the shower. He wishes his mother hadn't jarred him to consciousness. It's better to be asleep. Awake, he has to worry if anyone saw him leaving the building and going to his car. And if someone did, if that person saw the license plate … His heart won't quiet down.

The water always begins slow and lukewarm. His roommates buy soap and shampoo as cheaply as possible—large generic containers of the things needed to clean themselves. They never touch his Tone soap or his hair conditioner even though Shin talks about special personal products that he loved in Seoul, things he intends to afford in the future.

Seung, Shin, and Gab-do are not thieving sorts. They never hesitate to put their share in, or to show receipts, but for his own peace of mind, Nadal checks his money every time he goes into his room. No, nothing is ever missing.

The three roommates stick together of course—it's their chance to speak their language—plus they've had the place together since last year, so they know one another. Nadal's only been here since last May when he got his one course approved and snagged the job. Then he saw Maggie and his son, and at first he believed he would be able to visit them, eventually move in.

He listens through the splashing water for his roommates. No, not awake yet.

They are good enough guys to room with, but it's a business arrangement mainly. Right—what does he have in common with them? They cook. Rice and this. Rice and that. Other things. They always offer. He eats his frozen packets of burritos, his cans of beans. One night they wanted to go to a club on the South Side and asked him to go with them. He supposed they wanted to pick up American women and wanted his help. But when they got there, Seung told them all it was important from his experience not to look too eager. “Correct?” he asked Nadal.

“That's what I hear,” Nadal said.

“It's the same in Seoul. Clubs, the same everywhere.”

Nadal didn't like clubs and it galled him to spend so much money on a drink. Shin told him, “Always to drink slow, not spend too much.”

The water finally comes hot. He scrubs himself.

His car. He must get rid of it. Step one.

As soon as he's dressed, he sits down to breakfast. He is aware now of early snufflings from the next room as he stirs milk into his cereal, generic corn flakes. Each month he will plunk down two hundred dollars cash for the rent and fifty dollars for groceries and supplies. That's the deal. The Koreans take care of the rest. Seung is the money manager. He buys chicken and cans of soup or beans for Nadal—Nate is how they know him here. He never even told them his last name—Brown.

Brown
. How this whole thing started.

The supplies under the sink are pretty good—bleach and soap and glass cleaner and baking soda. His roommates are clean, anyway. His mother would surely approve of them for that. When they're not around, he will scrub the car. Again and again. Three times.

After breakfast, he forces himself to open his laptop and search for the news.

There it is.

Margaret Brown, 49, a single mother of a seven-year-old boy, was stabbed to death in her apartment on Morrowfield Avenue after noon on Sunday following an altercation with an unnamed man. Neighbors did not hear the disturbance but the child alerted them to the incident. Neighbors then discovered his mother, dead of her wounds. Police are investigating.

Ms. Brown was a well-liked teacher of art in the elementary schools. Employed by the ART-FIRST program, she was hired to give private tutoring to students who showed promise as painters. She had a studio and was a painter herself.

Commander Richard Christie of the Pittsburgh Police Homicide Division said it was early in the investigation. Police are working on the identity of the man reported to be arguing with Ms. Brown. The man allegedly believed himself to be the father of her son. Anyone with information about this person is asked to come forward.

Allegedly. Believed.

OOPALE AND HER
MOTHER
make him eat cereal and toast. They sit and murmur at him until he makes the food go down. “The detective is coming for you. He will take care of you today.”

“Can I go home now?”

“No, it isn't allowed yet.”

“Why?”

“Because there's an investigation. Nothing can be touched.”

Yes, he's seen that on TV. He could go to Jade's house or Grady's house. They could play something anyway.

“Is there anything you want? Anything I can get you?” Oopale asks.

“No.”

The two women look at each other. They clearly don't know what to say to him. After a while, Mrs. P smiles with a sad face and puts on the TV.

“TWO-PRONGED TASK,”
Christie repeats at the squad meeting. “To find the murderer and to keep the boy safe.” Then he adds, “Two-pronged investigation also. Think of it as the two fathers—there is the person who stabbed her and who insisted he was the father. There is the man who supposedly fathered the child—artificial insemination, we're told, at a clinic in New York. We have to follow that up. We have Potocki going through all kinds of files. The two fathers very possibly could turn out to be one and the same, but we have to follow both avenues. Nothing so far on the clinic. Right?” He addresses Potocki. “Fill us in.”

“She might have thrown away financial records from eight years ago. People do. I haven't found them yet. I'll try her current bank if nothing comes up today. One other thing: I asked a neighbor there if there was a storage unit in the basement. He said no, but I found this key on her ring that doesn't go to anything. So I called the super this morning and it turns out there
is
a storage unit in the basement. I'll get stuff from there today.”

“Right. Good. So here we are, looking at three possibilities—One: The father is anonymous, from a clinic in New York. That's what the best friend says. If this is the case, the guy is probably not our killer. Two: The father is very present and knows he's the father. He has a secret tempestuous history with the mother who didn't share it with her best friend. Or, Three: The guy who killed Margaret Brown thinks he's the father but he isn't. That information comes via the boy and the best friend who didn't really know much beyond the fact that some guy from way back reappeared lately. What do we believe?”

“The guy was probably in her life,” says Coleson. “This is an angry killing.”

“It is.”

“Did we pick up any DNA from the guy? The knife or anything.”

“There's going to be some DNA somewhere in the evidence they collected. They got some prints. They ran the prints locally. No matches. They are running the prints more widely today. We'll see about that. We'll test any DNA we have. Anything else? Ideas? Let me hear from you.”

“Any chance,” McGranahan begins, “that the kid is like some bad seed and he did it and made the whole thing up?”

“Always a chance,” Christie says.

“Tabloid heaven,” Colleen mutters.

“Were the prints on the knife good?” Coleson asks.

“Not very. But we got some bits.”

“So do we have any notion of which prints at the apartment belong to the killer and which are those of innocent friends?”

“Not clear yet,” Christie says.

“Whew,” McGranahan says. “Not simple.”

“So it's Potocki on paperwork and the storage unit at the apartment house, the rest of you canvassing—Dolan has the assignments. And Dolan has a list of friends and acquaintances he's working through with Hurwitz and Denman. Call me with anything. I'm off to get the kid squared away.”

COLLEEN AND CHRISTIE
take one car to the apartment where Matt is staying. Colleen answers her phone on the way. It's the Giant Eagle Market District—the store where they think Maggie Brown was first accosted by the man—finally getting back to her.

“Is this the detective who wanted to know about tapes?”

“Yes.”

“We don't keep them long.”

“How long?”

“We don't have tapes over a month old.”

“Oh.” Not that she's surprised. Only disappointed. “I'll come by to see what you have anyway.”

Christie says, “Small chance it would have caught an altercation in the lot anyway.”

“Small chance, but a chance,” she says. Then they approach the apartment house on Morrowfield. “Anything new happen last night when you got Matt back here?”

“I put Matt to bed. Oopale was very kind, fed me a little meal. I asked her if she'd ever seen male visitors to the apartment. She said no. Very, very consistent reports.”

“Unfortunately.”

They take the stairs one floor up.

The mother and daughter both come to the door to show them in. They all move quickly to the kitchen table where Matt sits, dawdling over his food. Christie chooses the seat across from him. “Matt. How are you this morning?”

Matt shrugs.

“Would you show us what you did yesterday? Would you help us?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let's get up then. Let's pretend the living room over here is your apartment. You were where, again?”

“In my room. I was playing with my PlayStation.”

“Okay, let's make this chair over here be your bedroom. And then?” Christie asks calmly.

“I heard a knock on the door. I heard my mother answer the door.”

“Did you go to look at all?”

“No, I kept playing.” He breathes hard. He is not okay with this part. “She gets deliveries sometimes, stuff like that.”

“On Sunday morning, no deliveries, people are relaxing, who comes by?”

“Sunday.” He looks frightened at his mistake about deliveries. “Maybe Sasha?”

“Anybody else?”

“No, I can't think of anybody.”

“Okay. And then?”

“I was just playing. Then I heard, like, arguing.”

“That's important. What were they saying?”

“Stuff like, ‘Get out,' and ‘You can't treat me like that.' ”

“Good, good. Did they talk about you?”

“The guy said, ‘I want to see him. I want to know him.' I peeked out of my room then because I could tell it was about me. I thought finally she would tell me who my father was and I would meet him.”

“Could you see him?”

“Just from the back a little bit.”

“Did you return to your room?”

“No, because she yelled.”

“Okay. I know it's awful to have to repeat things, but tell us again what she said, okay?”

“Like, ‘Matt. Leave. Just run. Leave. Go to a neighbor.' ”

“But you couldn't see this man?”

“I was running.”

“And the little bit you saw … what did he look like?”

“Just regular.”

“Anything you can remember? Hair, how tall?”

“Dark hair. Taller than my mom but not real tall.”

“Like me?” Christie asks.

“Yeah. I think.”

“And he was wearing?”

“Blue jeans, sneakers, just a shirt.”

“What kind of shirt?”

“I don't remember.”

“That's okay.”

“She was saying to run, so I ran.”

“But you grabbed the phone. Stopped a little bit to grab it.”

“I don't think I stopped. I just grabbed it.”

“Okay. And then you used the stairs?”

“Yes.”

“When did you use the phone?”

“When I got to the bottom.”

“Inside, outside?”

“Outside.”

“Show me how you left, where you were.”