A Simple Act of Violence (30 page)

Corner of A Street NE and Sixth. Bitter wind whipping down the sidewalk, almost knocked Miller off his feet as he came out of the driver’s side door and started across the sidewalk. Roth hurried after him, the two of them up the steps and through the double doors at the top.

Miller went to the desk first, smiled at the immaculately dressed man seated behind it; produced his pocketbook, showed his badge, smiled again when the man looked down his nose and raised his eyebrows.

‘Yesterday morning,’ Miller said. ‘A young woman named Natasha Joyce came and made an enquiry here. Understand she was seen by a woman named Frances Gray.’

The man nodded.

‘I wondered if we could speak to Ms Gray.’

The man turned to his computer keyboard, the flat-screen monitor ahead of him. ‘Yesterday?’ he echoed. He tapped on the keyboard. ‘Gray with an “a” or an “e”?’

‘An A,’ Miller said.

The man tapped on the keyboard some more. He paused, scanned data, paused again, smiled and shook his head. ‘Noone here of that name,’ he said. ‘Tried Frances with a “e” and an “i”, also Gray with an “a” and an “e”. We don’t have anyone employed within the unit by the name of Frances Gray.’

‘Perhaps she was from another agency?’ Miller suggested.

The man shook his head. ‘If she was she wouldn’t have been seeing anyone here. I don’t have any record of anyone named Natasha Joyce coming here, and I can assure you that even if there has been some error in our records and she did attend these offices, then she was not seen by anyone named Frances Gray. Perhaps this young lady made a mistake with the name?’

‘You have a record of all interviews that were held here yesterday?’ Miller asked.

‘For what it’s worth, yes,’ the man replied. He pivoted the screen so Miller could see it. ‘Twelve forty-five, a meeting in Office 13. An appeal against disallowance of continued disability pension. Three-thirty, a meeting in Office 8, and that was for the collection of some documents relating to an ongoing firearms tribunal. That’s all we had here yesterday.’ The man smiled. ‘Tuesdays are generally pretty quiet for us.’

‘And you’re sure there’s nothing else?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Who was on this desk yesterday?’ Roth asked.

‘I was.’

Roth took out his notebook. ‘And your name is?’

‘Lester Jackson.’

Roth made a note of it.

Miller stepped a little closer to the desk. He tried his best to look authoritative without appearing condescending. ‘Mr Jackson,’ he said. ‘A simple question which I kind of know the answer to, but do you consider there might be any possibility in the world that you have forgotten this woman coming here?’

Lester Jackson started to smile in a surprised fashion. He opened his mouth to speak but Miller was there first.

‘Things happen,’ he said. ‘I know how it is . . . I interview someone one day, and then something else happens, and I’m sure that the interview was not yesterday but the day before, and—’

Jackson raised his hand. ‘Everyone that comes into this building is logged in and out,’ he said quietly. ‘Every interview that takes place is registered on the computer system without fail. I would be very lax indeed if I did not ensure—’

Miller stopped him. ‘I can assure you, Mr Jackson, that there is not the slightest consideration that there was a failure to abide by department protocol, it’s simply that we interviewed this woman yesterday and she said she’d been to this building, to this very department, and she was interviewed by a woman named Frances Gray who represented herself as an official of the Police Department Administrations Unit.’

Jackson shook his head. ‘It can’t possibly have been that way,’ he said patiently. ‘Believe me, detective, if a young woman named Natasha Joyce came here yesterday I would be able to confirm that she did in fact come, and if there was a member of our staff named Frances Gray then she would be right here on the system. As it is, neither Natasha Joyce’s appearance nor this alleged interview have been recorded, and I think the only thing to do is go back and talk to this young lady and see if she hasn’t made a mistake—’

‘Can’t do that,’ Miller said.

Jackson frowned.

‘Got herself murdered, you see? That’s why we’re here. She got herself murdered, and as far as we can tell this was one of the last places she went to, and if the information we have is correct and she did in fact come here then that also means that you must have been one of the very last people she saw.’

‘You can’t possibly be suggesting—’

Miller smiled patiently. ‘I’m not suggesting anything, Mr Jackson. I just find it very hard to believe that the young lady was so very specific about where she went and who she spoke to, and now we find ourselves in a situation where these two things appear not to have happened at all.’

‘I don’t know what to say, detective. I wish there was something I could do to help you.’

Miller smiled. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Jackson, very helpful indeed.’ Miller turned, nodded at Roth, and they walked away toward the exit without speaking.

Once outside, the wind battering them as they made their way to the car, Miller looked at Roth and raised his eyebrows.

‘He’s lying,’ Roth said.

‘No doubt about it,’ Miller replied.

‘The question is why.’

‘The Fourth,’ Miller said. ‘Next we go to the Fourth?’

‘And find out if Natasha Joyce didn’t exist there as well.’

 

‘Gerrity,’ Sergeant Richard Atkins said. ‘He was on the desk yesterday from noon ’til six in the evening.’ Atkins leaned forward, picked up the phone, punched a couple of numbers and waited. The line connected. ‘Who’s that? Untermeyer? Hey there, you got Ron Gerrity up there?’ Atkins nodded. ‘Good enough. Tell him come down here . . . got a couple of suits from the Second wanna speak to him.’

Atkins replaced the receiver and indicated chairs to the right of the reception foyer. ‘Take a seat over there, he’ll be down in a moment.’

Miller and Roth sat down. Neither spoke for a minute or two, and then Roth said, ‘Something about this has to make sense.’

Miller smiled sardonically. ‘No it doesn’t.’

‘Okay, so it doesn’t have to make sense as such, but there has to be something about this that is understandable.’

‘It feels like it’s been arranged this way, you know what I mean?’ Miller paused, looked across the foyer, glanced to his left and right. He could not escape the sense of paranoia he’d felt since Natasha’s death. A sense of being watched.

A middle-aged police officer approached the reception desk, shared a few words with Atkins, and then turned and looked at Miller and Roth. He walked towards them.

‘Sergeant Gerrity,’ he said, looking at Roth. ‘You’re Miller, right?’

Roth shook the man’s hand. ‘I’m Roth, he’s Miller.’

Gerrity fetched a chair from the corner of the foyer and sat down. He looked Miller and Roth over for a moment, and there was that all-too-familiar anxiety. They were as good as IAD, perhaps the deeper end of the gene pool, but still they were some kind of trouble.

‘Woman came here yesterday,’ Miller started. ‘Black woman named Natasha Joyce.’

‘What about her?’ Gerrity asked.

Miller seemed surprised, hesitated for a moment. ‘She came here?’ he said.

Gerrity frowned. ‘You said that. Black woman named Natasha Joyce.’ He looked at Roth. ‘I got the name right?’

‘We just came from somewhere else,’ Roth said. ‘We were just told by someone that they hadn’t seen her.’

Gerrity shrugged. ‘Whatever . . . she came here yesterday, asked a coupla questions, left again. No big deal.’

‘What time was it?’ Miller asked.

Gerrity rose from the chair. ‘I’ll go see.’

Miller looked at Roth. Roth was expressionless.

Gerrity checked at the desk, came back and said, ‘She came in just after one-forty, here for about five minutes, and then she left.’

‘And what did she want to know?’ Miller asked.

‘Something about a retired police officer. Guy named McCullough.’

‘And what did you tell her?’ Miller asked.

‘Only what I’m permitted to tell anyone. They’re looking for an active officer I can give them the precinct, a phone number, if they’re on-shift or not. The retireds I can tell them which precinct they last served at, when they left the department, and that’s all. We don’t keep home addresses on the system for obvious reasons.’

‘We’re not here in any kind of investigatory capacity,’ Miller assured him. ‘This isn’t IAD, okay? We just went to the PD admin unit, the place Natasha Joyce went to before she came here. They deny all knowledge of her. Fact of the matter is that we’re relieved you can confirm that she was even here.’

‘Something happen to her?’ Gerrity asked, and then he raised his eyebrows suddenly. ‘Oh shit, she wasn’t that—’

‘Yesterday,’ Miller said. ‘Not an awful long time after she left here. Murdered in her own apartment.’

Gerrity whistled through his teeth. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘That’s just fucking unreal. God, I don’t know what else to tell you. She asked about this McCullough, I told her he was retired . . . from the Seventh, right?’

‘The Seventh, yes,’ Roth confirmed.

‘That was all she wanted to know. Asked me if we had an address, which we didn’t, and that was that.’

‘And if you had to find him?’ Miller asked.

‘I’d go back to the PD admin unit,’ Gerrity said. ‘They’re the people who deal with pension records, all that kind of stuff. How many years did he do?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Who the fuck retires four years short of a twenty-year pension?’

‘We had the same thought,’ Roth said.

‘And he has something to do with this Ribbon Killer thing?’ Gerrity asked.

‘We don’t know what part he plays in this,’ Miller said. ‘We don’t know that he plays any part at all. We just need to speak with him.’

‘As did your woman,’ Gerrity said. He hesitated for a moment, waiting perhaps for any further questions, and when he sensed there were none he rose from the chair.

Miller stood up, shook hands with the man, thanked him for his time and help.

‘No big deal,’ Gerrity said. ‘Know where I am if there’s anything else I can do.’

‘Appreciated,’ Miller said.

Gerrity out of earshot, Roth asked Miller if they were heading back to the admin unit.

‘Want to see Marilyn Hemmings first,’ he said. ‘Then back to see our friend who doesn’t remember Natasha Joyce.’