A Simple Act of Violence (45 page)

Robey smiled. ‘I have no intention of leaving the city, detective.’ He gathered up his overcoat, his briefcase, and without another word he left the diner. Miller watched as he set off in the direction of Mount Vernon College.

Moments later Metz and Oliver joined Miller and Roth in the diner.

‘Professor John Robey,’ Miller said. ‘Lecturer at Mount Vernon College. Lives locally, up on New Jersey and Q Street. Doesn’t know Catherine Sheridan. Says he cannot remember having his photograph taken with her. Does lecture tours, visits university campuses, that sort of thing. Says that such a photograph could have been taken without him necessarily knowing everyone present. Says he’s never heard of Natasha Joyce or Darryl King. Ostensibly cooperative, but didn’t give me anything.’

‘And on Saturday when the Sheridan woman was murdered? ’ Roth asked.

‘Professor Robey was watching someone train at the Brentwood Park Ice Rink between two and five.’

‘How does he explain the fact that there were three pictures of him with her?’

‘I didn’t ask him that, I don’t want to show him everything we’ve got,’ Miller explained. ‘I need to check his alibi. If he was at the ice rink then we simply need to question him about the pictures. If he wasn’t there, or if his alibi cannot be corroborated, then we’ll have enough to get a warrant to search his house perhaps, see if there’s something that links him to Sheridan. Right now, the way this thing is going, I want to make sure that we keep as much as we can to ourselves. If he thinks we’ve got nothing more than one picture to connect him to Sheridan, then he won’t be so guarded.’

‘You think it was wise to let him walk?’ Oliver asked.

‘We have nothing to hold him for. We get one shot at this,’ Miller said. ‘We arrest him for what? There’s nothing here but three pictures. He says he doesn’t remember her. He says he doesn’t know Natasha Joyce or Darryl King. We need to get something on him, maybe catch him in a lie. Then we’re in a position to act.’

‘So we’re going to Brentwood Park,’ Roth said.

Miller turned to Oliver. ‘You guys wait here for Riehl and Littman, then go back to the Second and get them to write up whatever they got from the dean at the college. Wait for me to call you on where we go next, okay?’

Miller and Roth stayed in the window booth. Audrey reappeared, brought them coffee, asked Miller if everything was okay.

‘As can be,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your help. You did a very important thing.’

Audrey hesitated for a moment. ‘Is he the guy? He seemed like he was waiting for someone, and I’m really worried . . .’

‘We’re gonna find out if he’s someone to be worried about long before he comes back, okay?’

‘You promise me that?’

‘I promise, yes. You go on like nothing happened. It’s gonna be fine.’

‘I’m trusting you people on this one. I helped you out, and I don’t want some crazy motherfucker figuring out that I set him up.’

‘Audrey. Seriously. It’s okay. Right now he’s just a lecturer at the college. He hasn’t done anything that we know of.’

She laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s fine. It’s absolutely fine. We’re going to make sure whatever happens doesn’t come within five blocks of here, alright?’

‘Alright. Thank you.’ She smiled at Miller, at Roth, and then she went back behind the counter and started preparing for the lunch traffic.

‘So?’ Roth asked.

‘There’s something with this one,’ Miller said. ‘The complete lack of surprise. Like he knew this was coming and he was ready for it.’

‘Shit, Robert, that counts for nothing. Lassiter’s gonna tear his fucking hair out. I don’t think you should have let him go.’

‘What would you have me do? Arrest him? For what? What the hell has he done?’

‘You could have pressed him further about the pictures. It wasn’t just one picture, it was three. One picture yes, okay, fair enough . . . someone could have one picture taken of them with some stranger and not know it. But three?’

‘I know what I’m doing, Al. You have to trust me, I know what I’m doing.’

‘Would help if I knew what the hell you were doing, Robert. Lassiter comes to me and asks why we let the guy walk. Why did we let this character walk? What am I telling him?’

‘Tell him to speak to me.’

Al Roth said nothing for a while. He drank his coffee. He seemed to be unwinding himself for a moment, calming himself down, trying to gather his thoughts together and come to terms with what had happened. ‘So what’s his name?’ he asked eventually.

‘Robey,’ Miller replied. ‘John Robey.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

Miller frowned, shook his head. ‘No, why?’

‘That’s the name of Cary Grant’s character in To Catch A Thief.’

Miller took Robey’s business card from his pocket and handed it to Roth. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Professor John Robey, Mount Vernon College.’

‘Spelled different,’ Roth said. ‘The movie guy’s name is R-O-B-I-E, but nevertheless it’s—’

Miller waved his hand aside nonchalantly ‘It’s nothing. It’s just the guy’s name.’

‘So we go check out his alibi, and then what?’

‘Depends on whether it checks out.’

‘And if it does?’

‘We jump off that bridge when we get there.’

It was close to noon by the time they tracked down Sarah Bishop. A health club on Penn Street no more than a quarter mile from the ice rink. Lassiter had called three times. Miller had spoken to him, each time the conversation brief and perfunctory. Lassiter wanted to know if they’d found the Bishop girl. He wanted to know the same things that Roth had predicted. Why had Miller not shown Robey the three pictures? Why had he let him go? He knew the answers already, but this did not preclude his frustration.

Sarah Bishop was in the canteen at the health club. Dressed in a jogging suit, her hair tied back, Miller placed her somewhere around twenty-one or two. She was a pretty girl, dark-haired, almost Mediterranean; sort of girl who would skip the cheerleaders for the tennis team, take languages instead of social studies.

She seemed taken aback by the sudden interest of two Washington police detectives, was curious as to how they found her.

‘We spoke to someone at the ice rink,’ Miller told her. ‘They gave us your trainer’s phone number. He said you’d either be home, the library or here. We tried the library, then here. He said he wouldn’t give us your home address until we’d checked out the library and the health club.’

‘So what’s up? Is there something the matter? Has there been an accident or something?’

Miller smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that.’ He looked around at the few people who populated the canteen. They seemed to be minding their own business. ‘Can we sit down?’

‘Sure,’ Sarah Bishop said. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

Roth took a chair from another table.

‘We wanted to ask you about someone,’ Miller said. ‘I understand that you train at the Brentwood Park Ice Rink on alternate Saturdays.’

Sarah nodded. She unscrewed the cap on a bottle of mineral water and drank some.

‘Alternate Saturdays I’m over here seeing my father. He and my mom are doing the trial separation thing, you know? It’s all so much horseshit. I mean, Jesus - they’ve been together for like a hundred and fifty years, they’re not going to find anyone better than each other. They’re just being so childish about the whole thing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miller said. ‘That must be tough.’

Sarah laughed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t come from another planet, you know? We are so different, alright? I mean, come on . . . A trial separation for God’s sake. What the hell is that all about?’

‘Okay, so you train there on alternate Saturdays.’

‘I do, yes, and most weeks I do Monday and Tuesday evenings as well.’

‘And you’re on the U.S. Olympic team?’

Sarah laughed, almost choked on a mouthful of water. ‘God no, who told you that? Did Per tell you that? God no, I’m not on the Olympic team. I want to be on the Olympic team, but do you have any idea what it takes to get to that level? Jesus, man, you’ve gotta be good like you wouldn’t believe . . . and besides that, I’m getting a little too old now.’

‘Too old?’ Miller asked, somewhat incredulous.

‘I’m twenty-two,’ she said. ‘Believe me, as far as Olympic skating is concerned that’s getting a little too old. Way it’s going right now I’ll probably end up a trainer or something, but I’m still on the ice pretty much every day. You have to want it enough to let it run your entire life.’

‘I wanted to ask you about the 11th,’ Miller said. ‘Last Saturday.’

‘What about it?’

‘About who was at Brentwood while you were training.’

‘Last Saturday I wasn’t training.’

Miller frowned. ‘You weren’t training?’

‘No, not last Saturday. Last Saturday all three of us had to go to this Veterans Day thing, you know? There was a memorial service over where my mom lives, and we had to go there. My grandfather, my mom’s dad, he was killed in Vietnam when my mom was like thirteen or fourteen or something, and every year we have to go do the church thing and spend the day with my gran, and they all sit around and look at pictures of him and stuff. It’s like really sad, you know? My grandma, she’s real old now, and she never married again, and she spends all her time talking about what her husband was like and whatever. She’s kind of a little bit crazy I s’pose. You know what I mean?’

Miller’s nostrils had cleared. He could sense Roth beside him. Robey had lied to them. A simple straightforward lie. He had said he was somewhere when he was not. He had reported his whereabouts at the time Catherine Sheridan was being murdered and the report was untrue.

‘You’re sure of this?’ Miller asked.

‘Sure of what? That my grandma’s crazy?’

Miller was trying to contain himself, trying not to show anything but unhurried ease. ‘No, about where you were last Saturday.’

‘Course I’m sure. It was Veterans Day, right? That was last Saturday. I spent the whole day with my mom and dad . . . they haven’t told my gran - you know, that they’re doing this separation thing? They haven’t said a word of it because she’d like, you know . . . she’d like probably have a heart attack or something, right? Anyway, we spent the whole day together. Church in the morning, and then over at my gran’s place in Manassas. We didn’t get back until after eight in the evening. I remember that because there was something I wanted to watch on the tube and it was like half finished by the time I got back home.’

‘Okay, Sarah, that’s good. Really good. We really appreciate your help with this.’

‘So what was the deal with where I was? Why was that so important?’

‘We just needed to clarify where you were, that was all.’

Sarah frowned. ‘Hey, come on. This isn’t fair. You can’t just come over here and ask me where I was last Saturday and then walk away. That can’t be right. What’s going on here? Did someone say I was somewhere or something? Am I in some sort of trouble?’

Miller shook his head. ‘No, you’re not in trouble. And no, no-one said you were somewhere. Someone said that they saw you at Brentwood, that was all.’

‘Was that John?’

Miller stopped in his tracks.

‘John Robey, right? Did he say he was at the ice rink last Saturday?’

‘Yes . . . as a matter of fact he did.’

‘And now he’s in the shit, right? Did he do something? Is that what this is all about? Did he say he was over at Brentwood, and I’ve just ruined his alibi?’

Miller tried to laugh, tried to make light of her comment. She had hit the thing square, head-on, but she couldn’t appreciate the importance of what she’d done.

‘You know John Robey?’ Miller asked.

Sarah shook her head. ‘Not as such, no. My trainer, Per Amundsen, well he used to not be my trainer, right? When I was younger there was this other guy, Patrick Sweeney. He was a great guy, a real sweetheart. Tough, you know? Like a coach should be. But he was a real great guy. He died. Per was his assistant, and then Per became my coach. Anyways, John knew Patrick Sweeney. I think they were friends from way back when. They kept in touch. John used to come down to see Patrick, and that’s how I got to know him. I say know him, but I don’t really know him properly. He comes down and sits in the back of the rink. There’s seats up there, where like family people can watch their kids while they skate, that kind of thing. Anyway, John comes down on alternate Saturdays and watches me train. He likes to see the Edith Piaf routine.’

‘Sorry?’

‘There’s a routine I do. The music we use is a song by Edith Piaf called C’est l’Amour. John says that that’s the one I should do when I go for the Olympic elimination trials in February next year.’

‘But not last Saturday.’

Sarah Bishop shook her head. ‘No, not last Saturday, and if I got him in trouble because I was his alibi and it didn’t work out . . . will you tell him sorry for me?’

‘It’s okay,’ Miller said reassuringly. ‘It’s nothing like that. You’ve been really helpful, and we really appreciate your time.’

‘So . . . is it like something bad that he might have done?’ Sarah asked.

‘I can’t say anything, Sarah, I really can’t. This is what we do. We get a question about something, we have to follow it up. Nine times out of ten it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘You know he’s a real clever guy, right? He’s a college professor and he’s written books and everything. Per told me about it. John didn’t say anything, but then John isn’t the kind of guy who would say anything like that.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well, you know . . . he’s like real quiet. He doesn’t say a great deal at the best of times, and when he does say something it’s always about you.’

Miller frowned.

‘You ever met someone like that? Like no matter how important they are you always feel like you’re the important one in the conversation. Friend of mine, she once met John Travolta. She said he was, you know, really sweet, a really nice guy, and the whole time they spoke to one another he just asked about her, and what she was doing, and how well she was getting on with her skate training and all that. Just really interested and everything. Like the whole conversation revolved around her and he was, like, nobody. Well, John Robey’s like that. I get the idea he’s a really important person, but from what he says and how he acts you’d never think it.’