Broken Grace (14 page)

Hackett nodded.

Tears filled her eyes. “Oh my God. That asshole.”

“What?”

“Hooking up with my dirtbag of a boss, Dave, that’s what. I was mortified when I woke up in his apartment on Saturday. He acted like we’d had this passionate night, but I didn’t remember anything.” Her face flushed red. She slammed her hand against the table. “That fucker must have drugged me.”

“So you’re telling us that Dave drugged you on Friday night?” Hackett said, trying to hide his excitement about a potential new development.

“Well, I can’t prove it, now can I? I mean, this was almost two weeks ago. But I can’t remember shit from that night. Dave hosted a party after work on Friday at his place. Lots of people from the restaurant, a few of his other friends, the usual. I didn’t do shots. I didn’t smoke any of his weed. Nothing crazy. I even remembered thinking I’d head home at one point. But I woke up in Dave’s bed, naked. I was horrified.”

“Did you ever leave your drink unattended?”

She was fighting back the tears that began to fall. “Well, sure. I mean, of course I did.”

Hackett took notes while Bishop kept going.

“Do you remember anything specific about Dave? How he was acting that night? Anything unusual?”

She sat back and wiped her eyes, mascara now trailing down her face. “He seemed kinda depressed at work—quiet, preoccupied. I pressed him to go out with us. Then he offered to host at his place.”

“Do you know what he was upset about?” Hackett asked.

“He didn’t say, but it was Grace. We all knew he had a big crush on her. You could tell by the way he talked to her, the way he watched her. She always got the best stations during her shifts. And she’d just gotten engaged. I thought he could use a drink. Fucking dirtbag.”

Bishop and Hackett left Preston and went back into the hall. Bishop turned to him. “What do you think?”

“I believe her.”

“And if she’s telling the truth, then it sounds like Jacks is obsessed with Grace,” Bishop said. “She gets engaged. He kills boyfriend?”

“Maybe he drugged Preston so she’d be his alibi,” Hackett said.

“Don’t jump there yet. Maybe Jacks would do anything for Grace, like disposing of the murder weapon for her.”

“Disposing of it behind his own apartment is stupid.”

“Well, he’s not the brightest bulb.” Bishop smiled. They walked back toward the room where Jacks was being held. “Let Preston go,” Bishop said. “We’ll give her boss a ride later.”

When Hackett joined Bishop in the other interrogation room, Jacks was pacing, his voice raised. “You have it all wrong. I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

“Sit down, Dave,” Bishop said.

Jacks postured for a moment as though he might walk out, but then he sat. Hackett sat across from him, while Bishop remained standing. “Here’s the thing. We know you’re in love with Grace. We know you were upset on Friday about her engagement. So from our point of view, either you killed Cahill or you’re helping Grace because she killed him. Unless you want to go down for this all alone, you should probably start talking.”

Hackett winced. He wished he’d been able to do this interview alone—had he done nothing but give Bishop further ammunition against Grace?

Jacks finally sat up straight. “You’re crazy. Yes, I care about Grace. That’s no secret. But I was not so nuts that I’d kill a guy. I’m not a psycho.”

Hackett piped up. “And yet you drug women to get them into bed.”

Jacks ignored him. “I was upset because I didn’t think it would happen. Last I knew, he’d gambled away the ring. Fucking asshole. What kind of guy gambles away an engagement ring? He didn’t deserve her.”

Hackett’s pulse picked up. “What are you talking about? I thought you didn’t know Cahill?”

“I didn’t. But he joined a poker game I was in a few days before he died.”

“So you did know him.”

“No. I’d never seen him there before. I realized it was him as the night went on.”

Bishop pulled out a chair. “Tell us about the poker game.”

“It’s a high-stakes game. Up in Bridgman. Sometimes the pot gets into the thousands.”

“Where is this?”

“Back room of a car repair shop.”

“And when was this?”

“It’s a Tuesday night game, so I guess that would have been the Tuesday before he died.”

Bishop waved a hand. “Go on.”

“I know the guy who runs the game, Tom, but usually the players are strangers. I don’t go all the time. Can’t afford it. But I was there and Cahill and this other guy came together. I’d seen the other one before.”

“And how did you know it was Cahill?”

“Because when he offered up the ring, his buddy said something about gambling away ‘Grace.’ He’d been calling him ‘Mikey’ all night, so I put it together.”

“So exactly what happened?” Bishop said.

“He was up most of the night, like, three grand at one point, and then the cards started turning on him. But he didn’t want to quit. Then in the middle of a hand, the stakes got really high. He didn’t have enough money to stay in. He threw the ring on the table.”

“What happened then?”

“His buddy told him he was an idiot. They argued for a bit, but Tom examined the ring and said he’d accept it if Mike lost the hand. So he stayed in the hand and used the ring, all the while saying it was worth far more. I guess he was super confident. Maybe he thought it would intimidate. Hell, it worked for me. I folded.”

“And?”

“And they finished out the hand, and Mike turned over a straight flush with this shit-eating grin and leaned in to sweep up the pile. But then this guy George had a royal flush. And that was it. Fucker lost the ring.”

“How did Cahill react?”

“Like a douchebag. He stood up and threw some chips at George. Accused him of cheating. Mike was drunk, and the boys by the door were on him in a flash. Pinned him to the ground. You don’t mess with these guys. His friend got him outta there.”

Bishop pushed a pad of paper at Jacks with a pen. “I think you’d better write down exactly where this auto shop is.”

FIFTEEN

B
ACK IN THE TRUCK,
G
RACE STARED
at her newly ringed finger before turning the ignition. She hit the tape deck play button and pulled out of the lot. Dr. Newell was asking how frequently she suffered from insomnia and whether she could discern any pattern. Grace explained that it was pretty much all the time now. She’d fall asleep, but most nights she was awake by two or three, struggling to get back to sleep. Her mind raced with school stuff, Michael issues, or even childhood memories. When she went out with the restaurant crowd after a shift for a few drinks, she might make it till four before waking.

Grace was leaning over the steering wheel, focusing on the taped voices as traffic zoomed past her in the left lane. Dr. Newell wanted to hear more about Michael. To her, and now to Grace too, it sounded as if trouble with her boyfriend could be a source of the insomnia. Grace answered the questions, explaining that they’d been a couple since she was fifteen.

“So it’s safe to say Michael was your first love?”

“For sure.” Grace laughed. “I never paid attention to anyone else.”

She missed the turn, engrossed in her history. Finally, she pulled over.

“So you’ve never been with anyone else?”

Grace’s tone changed. “Once. I did something really stupid.” She’d cheated on Michael. A one-time thing. She’d gone out with a group after work and had too much to drink. She said she’d never been attracted to Dave, her boss, and she didn’t even remember doing it, but at work, he had reminded her of their night together. “He grinned and told me how happy he’d been that I finally gave in to it.” She was terrified Michael would find out.

Dr. Newell pressed her, wondering if on some level Grace might have wanted to end the relationship, if there was a part of her that hoped Michael would find out—perhaps it would be her ticket out. But Grace had been emphatic. “No way. First of all, Michael’s like family. He’s an idiot sometimes, but I love him. I wouldn’t want to hurt him like that. I don’t want to hurt him. I think that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

Grace could hear the strain in her voice, the sniffling, as she responded. “I think I know we shouldn’t be together anymore. But I don’t know if I could ever leave him. He’s . . .”

“What?”

“He’s all I’ve got.”

When Grace finally arrived back at the house, her head was pounding. She wanted to ignore all those pills on the counter, but the throbbing tentacles reached down the back of her neck, like they would eventually take over her entire body.

She got inside and took one pill, not sure if it was for pain or insomnia, but she didn’t want to take them all, fearing the powerful side effects. She got a wet cloth for her forehead and collapsed onto the couch, sinking into the fog, the pain.

It must have been an hour later when she woke. The sun, now higher in the sky, was her only indication that the world continued to turn. Her headache was gone and she could walk across the room without getting dizzy.

She turned on the television and found an old
Seinfeld
episode. As she watched, she laughed, anticipating the punch line of a joke. “I know this one,” she announced to the empty room, amazed by her own recall.

She closed her eyes, determined to remember more. “Michael,” she said. Why was she thinking about him? She went to the bedroom, to that picture of the two of them together, and studied his face, touching the glass. “Michael loved
Seinfeld
!” she said suddenly, smiling. It was only a flash, but she pictured him on a couch, laughing, watching TV—
Seinfeld
. “Leather couch, yellow walls, glass coffee table,” she said. “Our place.”

She had to know. She grabbed the keys to the old truck and went to her purse, digging out the jeweler’s receipt for the address. The tape was still in the truck’s deck, and she hit play as she backed out of the drive, turning up the volume.

Dr. Newell was asking her what she meant about Michael being her only family. Grace explained that her parents had been killed, and he’d helped her get through all that. Grace let the phone map guide her while she listened intently. On the tape, she explained that it had been a break-in and they’d been killed in their bed. Dr. Newell asked how Grace had survived and if she’d been the one to find them.

“I was at a friend’s when it happened.”

“And how did you feel when they were killed?”

Her response sounded annoyed. “Well, obviously, I was upset.”

“And how old were you when it happened?”

“Seventeen.”

“Now, is it just you, or do you have siblings?”

She hesitated, and then it was almost a chuckle as she said, “It’s kind of both. I mean, it’s not just me, but it might as well be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She sounded reluctant. “You know, I get how this works,” she said. “I came to you and I’m supposed to tell you all about my life, but I really don’t like talking about all of this. It took me a long time to put all that behind me. I just need help with this insomnia.”

“Isn’t it possible it’s all related?” Dr. Newell asked.

“Can’t you just give me some meds? I mean, maybe I just need a little Ambien or something.”

“I can, but if we don’t get to what might be causing it, nothing’s going to give you long-term results.”

“I’d take a Band-Aid for now.”

The doctor pressed on. “What happened to you after your parents died? It must have been very frightening.”

“I had Michael,” she said. “We moved in together after that.”

Finally, as the session had ended, the doctor prescribed Grace the Xanax and warned her against mixing it with alcohol. She agreed to return the following week.

Grace pulled up to the address on the jeweler’s receipt. She turned off the tape and studied the house in front of her: a tiny, one-story, aluminum-framed ranch with a single door and two windows flanking its sides. Under each window was a red flower box, now topped with snow. Grace studied those boxes and thought of spring, of planting flowers, and of Michael, working in the yard. But the front door spoke of the tragedy inside: yellow police tape wrapped around the handle, blowing in the wind.

She crunched through the hardened snow to the front windows and peered through the glass at the brown leather couch, yellow walls, glass coffee table. It was real. She trekked through the frozen snow to the back, spotting a couple of broken patio chairs; a rusty grill; and, deeper into the yard, an old stone well surrounded by flowerpots filled with dead plants, frozen in their plastic tombs. She peered into the windows where she could. One was covered in a shade. “The bathroom,” she said. And then she saw the bedroom window. Her breath fogged against the glass, but she could see a bare mattress on an iron frame, a large black stain in the middle of the bed. Blood. Acid churned through her stomach; a sharp pain stabbed at her temple. She closed her eyes and held on to the siding, unsure whether her brain was trying hard to remember or forget.

“Grace?”

She turned to the breathless voice behind her.

“We gotta keep our eyes on Jacks,” Hackett said after they’d dropped him back at his apartment. “If he drugged Preston, who knows what he’s capable of.”

“Agreed, but let’s not assume too much yet.” Bishop drove north on Red Arrow. “Jacks is a creep, but we’ve still got the fact that Grace was engaged to Cahill on Friday but may have broken up with him the night before the murder. That makes her a suspect as well.”

Hackett stared down at his notes and resisted the temptation to defend Grace.
Be objective
. “So where are we going?”

“Well, since you never called that bartender, let’s get over to The Rack. He’s on now, as I recall.”

Hackett remained silent, not wanting to make excuses for ignoring orders.

“What did you learn from the phone company, by the way?”

“I told the guy that we had to have those records, but he said it would be a little bit longer. Sorry.” Bishop nodded, his trust widening the guilty trench winding through Hackett’s stomach. “I saw
An Officer and a Gentleman
last night,” he said, desperate for a topic change.

Bishop spit some chew into his empty soda can. “And? Great movie, right? What do ya think of my impression?”

“Terrible,” he said with a laugh. “And you didn’t tell me how sad it would be.”

“What do you mean? It’s got a happy ending. He gets his wings. He gets the girl. It’s all good.”

“But the blonde, Debra Winger’s friend, is so cruel, and the best friend kills himself.”

Bishop nodded with a smirk. “Well . . . blondes are bitches.” Hackett chuckled. He had to agree with that one—Olivia was a blonde.

Bishop began another anti-Christmas-gift rant and gave his best impression of Billy Bob Thornton in
Bad Santa
. Hackett feigned interest, glad to have lightened the mood but now stuck on the cruelty of some women.

Another aging biker, thinner and taller but similarly tatted, stood behind the bar when Bishop and Hackett entered The Rack. There were few customers. They introduced themselves, pulled out the photo of Cahill, and the man confirmed he’d known him.

“So we spoke to your buddy, Ed, on Monday,” Bishop said. “He said that you worked on the Wednesday before Mr. Cahill’s death. We know Mr. Cahill worked on Wednesday, so we’re wondering if you saw him in here after his shift.”

The man nodded. “Sure, he was here. Sitting over there.” He pointed to a booth in the corner.

“And this was Wednesday?”

“Had to be Wednesday. We were pretty dead. It’s always busy on Fridays and Saturdays.”

“And around what time was this?”

“Oh, I’d say sometime after six o’clock. That’s when a big load of ’em come in.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“For a bit, yeah. His buddy Wesley came and joined him a little while later.”

Hackett immediately flipped back through his notes.

Bishop beat him to the punch. “Wesley Flynn?”

“I don’t know last names. Just ‘Wesley’—one of his buddies from work. They been coming in for a couple a years, so I know a good many of ’em by name—first names, at least.”

“So they’re sitting there, having a drink. Nothing out of the ordinary?” Bishop asked.

“Well, they fought. Wesley slammed down his drink and took off.”

“Could you tell what they fought about?” Hackett asked.

“Hey, I ain’t no eavesdropper. I just know it was a fight because there were a few choice words thrown around and then, like I said, the guy stormed out. That’s all. I’m not saying he’s a murderer or anything though. These guys get a little hot now and then. Don’t mean nothin’.”

The sun was setting when they came out of the bar. Hackett was ready to burst. “Flynn lied. He said he hadn’t seen him since Sunday.”

Bishop smiled. “Yep, maybe we’re finally getting somewhere.”

Bridgman, and that auto shop Jacks had fingered as the location of the illegal poker game, was only another ten-minute drive from Berrien Springs. When they arrived, they asked for Tom and were shown to a back room, where the owner sat behind a cluttered desk with a stack of receipts and a laptop in front of him. His gray shirt was covered in oil stains, his red-and-white name patch barely legible, his face marked with grease. He stood, offering his hand to Bishop first, his fingernails embedded with oil.

“Hey, fellas, what can I do you for?” He sat back down, wiping his hands with a rag.

“We heard you got a weekly high-stakes card game going on here,” Bishop said.

The man stopped momentarily before continuing to work on his nails, his eyes never meeting theirs. “I don’t know where you’d hear that. Must have me confused with someone else.”

“Cut the shit,” Bishop said. “We’re not interested in your backroom gambling. We’re interested in a couple players who were here week before last.”

Tom stopped wiping his hands. “What do you mean?”

“Tuesday, December third. You hosted a game. Michael Cahill came here with another man. We’re investigating his death. Apparently he lost an engagement ring in the game.”

“So?”

“What’d you do with it?”

“I sold it.”

“Where did you sell it?”

“Here. His buddy came in to see me the next day. Apologized for his friend. He wanted to get the ring back for him.”

“So you gave it to him?”

“I sold it to him. That ring was worth about four grand. I have a buddy who knows these things.”

“So the friend bought it back from you for four grand?”

The man smiled. “I’m a generous guy. I cut a deal and gave it to him for three.”

“How nice of you. And what was the name of the friend you sold it to?”

“Wesley Flynn.”