A Winsome Murder (8 page)

Jillian stopped writing. She saved her work and closed her laptop and placed it on the seat beside her. The Winsome sky to the east had turned a lilac purple now. She watched it for a time, still hoping to experience something, she didn't know what, just something: an act of coincidence, an image, a feeling. But nothing happened. She looked around her, up and down the yet to be inhabited streets, croplands to either side, driveways leading to nowhere, waiting for homes to be attached to them. A large black hawk glided across the road and into the field to her right, and Jillian thought for a moment that it was an omen of some kind. It
wasn't; she could feel it right away, it didn't mean anything. It was just a bird in a field.

She took out a pack of cigarettes she'd hidden in her purse and smoked. She wrote down a few notes. Checked the time. She had to be getting home soon. She gave Mara a call and left a message on her voice mail.

“It's me again. Where are you? I've been calling you for two days. Look, I got some really great stuff. I want to tell you about it. So call me, okay? Even if it's late. Love ya. Bye.”

D
etective Mangan tracked down the Wisconsin murder victim that Kevin Lachlan had told him about: Deborah Ellison. He called the officer in charge of the investigation, Wesley Faber, the police chief in Winsome Bay. Mangan explained to Faber about the severed hand that had been found in Chicago, then queried him as to the condition of the Wisconsin victim's body, the details of which had not yet been released to the public.

Faber told him that Deborah Ellison was missing her left hand.

“Well,” Mangan said, “guess I can stop looking for a body.”

“I'm afraid that's right, sir,” Chief Faber said. “We have her here.”

Mangan spoke with Faber for a while. He was pleasant enough on the phone, but Mangan could sense that he was a bit overwhelmed by the case, and understandably so. This was his first murder investigation and he'd known the victim and her family.

“I'll send you everything I've got,” Mangan told him. “Our forensic reports should be coming in soon, and I'll get them up to you. We'll keep following up on things here. If I find anything, I'll contact you.”

“Thank you” Faber said. “I'll fax what we've got to your medical examiner. You have his number handy?”

Mangan gave him Rhys's fax number and wished him luck.

Why the severed hand of a murder victim from Wisconsin had been dropped off at Kevin Lachlan's apartment in Chicago was still a mystery to Mangan, but at least he had a corpse now, or rather Wesley Faber had one. It would be Faber's investigation now and off Mangan's plate, which was just fine with him. He had more than his share of open cases to keep him busy. He wondered, though, why he'd misread the case. The feelings had been so strong when he'd heard the words,
And who
has cut those pretty fingers off ?
That usually meant he was in for the long haul. But then again, occasionally his instincts were wrong.

Mangan completed the paperwork, filed it, and finished out the day reviewing his next case: the killing of a Sally-Boy Hicks, a heroin dealer in K-Town shot twice in the back of the head and tossed off a fifteen-story building. Redundant, Mangan thought, but obviously somebody was trying to make a point. After work he stopped off at the Melrose Diner and got dinner to go, eating most of it on the drive home. He headed up Lake Shore Drive, hitting the usual traffic, and continued north to Rogers Park.

The four-story townhouse where Mangan lived, built in 1920, still had a vintage charm to it, a phrase most often used to camouflage the more dilapidated shitholes in Chicago, but this building was actually in pretty good shape. He'd moved there not long after his wife died and had lived on the fourth floor, apartment 421, for three years now.

He pulled into his absurdly expensive parking space around back and grabbed what was left of his dinner. Built onto the rear side of the building was a tall zigzagging run of wooden stairs leading nearly to the roof. The stairs opened out onto landings off the back of each apartment's kitchen entrance. Pretty much everyone used these stairs as the main entrance to the building since the parking was out back. Mangan made his way up the wooden stairway—his exercise for the day—keyed open his back door, and walked into the kitchen. Quiet and dark. He kept his thick window curtains closed during the day. A room at the front of the apartment had a bay window that jutted out slightly from the building. If he stood at just the right angle, Mangan could spy a little piece of Lake Michigan at the far end of the street.

It was not a small apartment but one of those spaces where the square footage was three times as long as it was wide, like living in a skinny rectangle. There were two large guest rooms off a long hard-wood-floored hallway that led from the back kitchen to the front room. There were no beds or dressers in these rooms, only a single chair in each, a short stepladder, and books—hundreds of books—shelved on every wall. There were books piled on the floors against the walls and stacked in the closets. Out in the long hallway, shelves had been built, floor to ceiling along both sides. They too, were filled with books. In the living room there was a couch and a large coffee table with books strewn
on and around them and piled everywhere that there was space enough to do so. This was the other part of Mangan's world. Books. They were his Yale and Harvard. They cracked the quiet of an otherwise empty home, and he never had to feed them or take them for a walk.

Mangan ate what was left of his dinner and poured himself a gin. He headed to the front room and called his daughter.

“Hey, Katie, it's Dad.”

“Hey, what's up?” she said. “Hold on a sec. Shit. Sorry. Okay. Hi. How are you?”

“What are you, exercising or something? You sound out of breath.”

“No, just trying to get out of here. Working late tonight. What's up with you?”

“Nothing, just calling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How's the job?”

“What?”

“Work, how's it going?”

“Oh, good. Crazy, but good.”

“You still liking it there?”

“Uh-huh.”

Mangan heard something fall on the other end. “You okay?”

“Sorry. Yeah, fine. What did you say?”

“What?”

“You just asked me something.”

“Nothing. Look, I'll call later. You're busy.”

“No, no, I'm fine, Dad, really. I'm just—hold on a second. Okay, I'm good now. I'm sitting. Go ahead.”

Mangan could hear the preoccupation in her voice. When she was little and didn't want to talk to him on the phone because she was watching TV, she used to do the same thing. She sounded just the same now at twenty-nine.

Mangan lied, “Katie, honey, I forgot, I can't talk right now. I have to make a another call. It's work. Sorry.”

“Sure. That's okay, Dad. Call me later.”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“Bye.”

Mangan listened into the quiet cell phone for a moment, then flipped it closed.

He took up the copy of
Titus Andronicus
he'd started reading the night before. Most of the words that had been coming to him lately were from that play. He hadn't read it in years. He took a slow sip of his drink and started reading. The Lachlan/Ellison case was off his hands now, but he thought he'd finish
Titus
anyway.

I'll find a day to massacre them all,

And raze their faction and their family,

The cruel father and his—

His cell phone buzzed. It was Brian Rhys from forensics. The Wisconsin M.E. had faxed down the Ellison girl's fingerprints.

“Hey, Jimbo,” Rhys said. “Got a little hitch. The prints don't match. It's not Debbie Ellison's hand.”

J
illian McClay was driving home after her interview with Wesley Faber. She was less than satisfied with the results. She was almost to the interstate when she passed the Bar Nun Tavern on the edge of town. Parked in front were two pickup trucks and a police cruiser.

She checked the time.

Made a U-turn.

As Jillian opened the door to the tavern, two feed-capped heads sitting at the bar turned toward her. They lingered on her for longer than was comfortable, then went back to their drinks. The barmaid, tapping at a video poker machine, barely looked up. On the opposite side of the bar was a small back room with a pool table, a few men corralled around it in a haze of smoke. The dark carpeted floors smelled faintly of stale beer and urine. Sitting at a table near the back of the bar was officer Michele Schaefer. Jillian was sure it was her. She had seen the woman's photo on the wall of the police station while interviewing Wesley Faber. Schaefer was out of uniform and sitting with three other people. They appeared to be close in age, late twenties, maybe, early thirties, huddled around a table crowded with beer bottles, their conversation hushed.

Michele Schaefer was the officer who had identified Deborah Ellison's body.

Jillian sat at the end of the bar. She didn't want to approach Schaefer too quickly, didn't want her to shut down the way Faber had. She ordered a drink and texted her son. Might be late, make a pizza. She called Mara, but again she didn't answer. She left a long message and then lit a cigarette. The two men in feed caps stared over at her between their swallows of beer and fistfuls of popcorn, and the barmaid paid attention to no one.

The sound of cue balls cracked occasionally from the back room.

Eventually, Schaefer glanced Jillian's way.

Jillian nodded a polite, and slightly wary, hello. She waited a few more minutes, then ventured over, making an apology to the table, and asking if Schaefer was the officer she'd seen on TV.

Her friends, all a little drunk, started to object.

Schaefer waved them quiet. “Whoa, whoa, let her talk,” she said. “What do you want?”

“I'm a writer,” Jillian said. “I'm here doing a story.”

“About what?”

“Deborah Ellison.”

The two men scraped back their chairs and stood. “Come on,” one of them said, “let's go.” He was tall and well built, with a scruff of beard and short-cropped hair. The other man, just as big and scruffier, cleared the table of empties and took them to the bar.

“Cal,” Schaefer called after him, “Cal, wait a second.”

“I said let's go.” He turned to Jillian. “Look, she's not talking to anyone, okay? Just leave us alone.”

“Aw, don't be like that,” Schaefer said. “You're not being very hospitable.” Her last word was slightly slurred.

The man called Cal appealed to the other woman at the table for help. “Jeannie?”

She got up. “Come on, Michele.” She was a tall woman, nearly as big as Cal. “We should go.”

“I got a full beer.”

“Come on,” Jeannie said, “we're helping Dad tomorrow early.”

“I'll be there. I'll be there before you.”

Jillian felt awkward in all kinds of ways, not knowing whether to stay or leave. “If this is a problem, I can—”

“No, it's all right,” Schaefer said. She looked to the two men, who were glaring at her. “Go shoot pool or something. Stop looking at me. I'll be done in a minute.”

Jillian heard Jeannie whisper to Cal, “I'll stay with her.”

The men headed to the poolroom, not happy.

Schaefer waved for Jillian to sit. “Come on. Join me.”

“Thanks.” Jillian extended her hand and sat. “I'm Jillian.”

“I'm drunk. This is my sister, Jeannie.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“That's was my brother,” Schaefer said, pointing to the poolroom, “the rude one, Calan. The other guy, the cute one, is Jeannie's husband. Bobby. She always got the nice guys. Me? Not so much.”

“I need another beer,” Jeannie said. She asked Jillian, “You want something?”

“No, thanks.”

Jeannie went to the bar.

Jillian, unsure what to say, nodded toward Schaefer's brother. “He's a big guy.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Is he the oldest?”

“No, just the bossiest. There are seven of us.”

“Seven?”

“Yup. My sister and me and five boys.”

“That's huge.”

“Not for around here.”

“I'm an only child. I can't even imagine.”

“You don't want to.”

Jeannie returned with her beer. A short awkwardness followed and then Schaefer said, “So what newspaper are you with?”

“Well, uh …” Jillian said, “actually, I'm not a reporter. I'm a freelance writer, and I'm working on an article, a series of articles, for a magazine.”

“About Deborah.”

“Yes.”

Jeannie leaned into the table. “My sister's a cop, you know. She can't talk about the case.”

“No, I know that. I'm really just researching the town, the people. It's a beautiful town.”

The two sisters both let out something that sounded like a snort. Schaefer took a long guzzle of her beer, eyeing Jillian's cigarettes. “Can I have one? I'm out.”

Jillian slid the pack across. “Sure. Help yourself.”

“You smoke too much,” Jeannie said.

“I know.”

Jillian didn't ask any real questions at first. She wanted to gain Schaefer's trust. She started out by saying that she was sorry for what had happened and went on a little bit more about how beautiful Winsome Bay was. She casually dropped that she had already talked to Wesley Faber and Dan Ehrlich, and that they'd been very helpful. Then she began asking easy questions about Schaefer's own background, her family, her career. Her brothers eventually stopped staring over at them, and from the sound of it, were involved in a pretty heated pool game. Jeannie, wary, listened closely and drank steadily.

Finally, Jillian got the nerve to ask, “So what can you tell me about Deborah?”