Cold Comfort (19 page)

Gilbert scanned the list quickly. And suddenly, solving Cheryl Latham’s murder took on an even greater urgency. Lombardo’s name was right at the top. He glanced at Carol. She was staring at Joe with motherly commiseration. Lombardo walked to the window, raised his elbow against the frame, and looked out at the police courtyard below, where there was another strange statue, a policewoman laying bricks with a mason’s trowel. Lombardo was wrapped in lethal silence.

“Don’t worry, Joe,” he said. “I’ll take it to Ling personally if I have to.” The phone rang. “We’ll have to work round the clock on this Latham case. If we get a collar by the end of the week, I’ll have something to take to Ling.”

He lifted the phone. “Homicide, Detective Gilbert,” he said.

The voice on the other end of the line asked for Joe.

“It’s for you,” he said, handing the phone to Lombardo.

Lombardo pressed the receiver to his ear. “Lombardo here,” he said.

Carol stepped forward and lifted the list from Gilbert’s desk. “I think I better get rid of this before Marsh walks by,” she said.

“Thanks, Carol.”

She gave Gilbert a conspiratorial nod and left.

He looked up at Joe. The murderous look had disappeared from the young detective’s eyes, and if his brow hadn’t yet lifted, he at least had the beginnings of a grin on his face.

“Molto grazie, signore,”
he said to the obviously Italian person on the other end of the line.
“Lei è molto gentile.”

He put the receiver down.

“Who was that?” said Gilbert.

Lombardo’s grin was getting broader. “The clerk from the legislative carpool,” he said. “He checked the records for the eighteenth.” Lombardo jangled his keys in his pocket. “The only person who took out a Crown Victoria on the night of the eighteenth was Jane Ireland.”

Gilbert met Matchett for lunch that day in a small Indian Restaurant, the Raj-Shala, on Baldwin street, just behind Mount Sinai Hospital. They loaded their plates with biryani, bindi bhaji, raita, and chicken tandoori at the all-you-can-eat buffet, ordered a couple of Heinekens, and found a secluded booth at the back in the smoking section under a small brass statue of Shiva. The place was crowded with nurses and doctors. The walls were papered with red velveteen wallpaper, and sitar music filtered from small speakers up in the corner.

“I can tell by the look in your eyes that this isn’t a friendly get-together,” said Matchett.

Gilbert lifted a chapati and broke it in half. “Here comes our Nan bread,” he said. “They really make it…some of the other places, they use too much oil. But here they…”

The waiter made a space on the table, put the plate of Nan bread down, looked inquiringly at their Heinekens, saw that both were full, filled up their water glasses, and retreated to the kitchen.

“More about Cheryl,” said Matchett. “Am I right?”

A disingenuous grin came to Gilbert’s face. “Would you mind?”

“As long as you’re not here to cuff me.”

Gilbert laughed. “Would I buy you lunch only to cuff you? I’m not that generous.”

“Look, if it’s about my gun, I’ve reported it. A Detective Spauls is looking into it. Do you know him?”

“Graham? Sure I know him. He’s a good man. If anyone can find your gun, he can.” Gilbert leaned forward and took a sip of his beer. “No, I just…” A waiter walked by with a tray of milk sweets. “I’m not sure you’re going to like this line of enquiry.”

“I just want to get to the bottom of this, Barry. I hate this. Being a suspect. I just want my name cleared.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk about Jane, if you don’t mind.”

“Jane?” he said. “Jane Ireland?”

Gilbert nodded. “I mean if you’d rather…we’re just looking… you said she took it hard when you and Cheryl…you know…”

His old partner glanced up at the statue of Shiva, his eyes suddenly apprehensive, and he rubbed his hands together, as if they’d grown cold. Then he turned to Gilbert and he looked like he was on the brink of saying something but at the last moment decided against it.

“Obviously you have something that implicates Jane, or you wouldn’t be…” He lifted his hand to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, squinting. “Jane’s a kind, gracious, thoughtful…I really don’t think…and, yes, she took it hard, but I don’t think she snapped. I don’t think she took it to the extreme you’re suggesting.”

Gilbert stared at his friend and took a deep breath. “Alvin, we’ve always been honest with each other. We’ve trusted each other. We weren’t only partners, we were friends. And still are, I hope. I know it’s been a long time, and we both might have changed, but I still think I know you well enough…and I might be getting this wrong…but something’s not…I have this feeling—”

“Barry, I don’t think Jane killed Cheryl. Didn’t you tell me the body was muscled down the stairs and out the laundry room window at the Glenarden, then across the parking lot and into the trunk of a car? Do you think a woman could do that, especially when the body was wrapped up in that carpet?”

Gilbert shrugged. “Jane can bench-press upwards of two-hundred-and-fifty pounds. She spends an hour every evening weight training. That’s what you told me.”

Matchett stared at Gilbert. He looked like a man who had just been checkmated. “I guess…”

“Alvin, you were serious with Jane, weren’t you?”

He looked to one side, his lips twisting. “Cheryl was a mistake,” he said.

“You loved Jane, you probably still do, and if Cheryl hadn’t come along you might have been back together with Jane by this time.”

“Cheryl was just something I had to go through,” said Matchett. “I got caught up in it, that’s all.”

“You were drifting away from Jane since June, living half the time at her place and the other half at yours.” Gilbert lifted his chin, studying the minutiae of Matchett’s expression. “And maybe she lived some of the time over at your place.”

“You’re right, I don’t like this line of enquiry.”

“Alvin, we know she has a key.”

Matchett’s eyes narrowed. “She hasn’t got a key.”

“You aren’t helping her by saying that. We have other evidence that implicates her, I’m not at liberty to say what, but we do. You know what it’s like, Alvin, you were a cop. This is staring me right in the face. No forced entry. She knew you had a gun. She knew where to look for that gun. I’ve already asked at your gun club. They’ve seen her up at the range.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know the first thing about guns.”

“What do you have to know? You pull the trigger. You don’t need a physics degree. Help me out, Alvin.”

Matchett looked up at the statue of Shiva. “I know what you’re doing, Barry.” He turned away from the statue and stared at Gilbert. “You’re trying to get enough probable cause for the duty judge.”

Gilbert sighed. He was still trying to protect her, and that could mean charges.

“I have probable cause already, Alvin. I can take what I have to Corning or Wolfe, or any of those guys, and I’ll have my search warrant.”

“What difference does it make whether she has a key or not?”

“Because if it turns out she does, and you’re trying to hide it from me, I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction. You see what I’m doing, Alvin? I’m trying to protect you, the same way you’re trying to protect Jane. I’m looking out for you, the same way I did on patrol. I know what you went through with the Dennison thing. I don’t want you to go through that again. But if it turns out you’re obstructing on this murder charge, you might as well say good-bye to…you know, your job and everything else.”

Matchett’s eyes drifted to a stack of ornate stainless steel serving dishes on a table behind the booth to the right. He was fighting with himself. He again rubbed the bridge of his nose, keeping his head turned, his long narrow face creasing in apprehension.

“I guess it doesn’t make any difference,” he finally said. “I know she didn’t do it.”

“Then she has a key?” asked Gilbert.

Matchett lifted his Heineken and had a long swallow, contemplating Gilbert over the rim of his glass. He put the glass down and wiped the foam from his lips with the red linen napkin.

“She has a key,” he said.

Jane Ireland wasn’t home when her landlord opened the door for Gilbert, Lombardo and the rest of the search team. The search warrant stipulated any time, day or night; so they chose Tuesday morning, two weeks to the day Cheryl was found dead.

Gilbert stood in the bedroom while Lombardo and the others methodically combed the rest of the spacious apartment. Directly across the street he saw Winston Churchill Park; to the south, a bit of the main turret of Casa Loma; to the north, St. Clair Avenue, where a red and white streetcar rumbled by. The sky was patchy with clouds, and for the first time since December the temperature had risen above the freezing mark. A robin landed in the bare maple branch outside the window, looked at Gilbert in perplexity, then dipped away toward the ravine, where the massed trees showed up grey against the snow. He shook his head. Patterns were emerging. And he didn’t feel particularly good about them. He turned from the window and looked at Jane’s dresser. A murder investigation was something you could never entirely control. There were never any tidy endings. And now he couldn’t stop the feeling that he was being manipulated. He took a glassine bag and a pair of tweezers out of his pocket, plucked a few hairs from Jane’s brush, and put them in the bag. Each step he took now seemed choreographed.

He turned around and studied her bedroom. Rose-colored broadloom covered the floor. A dozen kinds of vitamins crowded the top of her dresser. She had one of those beds with the big brass head-rails. A photograph, enlarged, of Jane and a few other body builders at a weight-lifting competition hung on the wall. What made a woman do that to her body? He took a closer look a Jane in her slinky bikini. Her muscles bulged, her veins stuck out, she was so tanned she could have been black, and she was slick with oil. Where was the aesthetic? He decided he liked Regina’s body, soft, a bit plump, now that she was nearing fifty, but still with that pleasing hourglass shape. Making love to Jane would be like making love to a steel girder.

He walked over to the closet and pulled open the louvered door. Power suits and silk blouses, the kind of clothes one would expect. Then a space, then a lot of Matchett’s shirts; at least he presumed they were Matchett’s. He looked to the floor of the closet. And he paused. A pair of men’s winter boots, black Sorels with laces, sat on the broadloom. Matchett’s boots, but here in Jane’s apartment. He lifted one of the boots, turned it over, and looked at the tread. A series of Greek-keys with cross-lines throughout. He knew he had a match, that this was the boot that made the print in the snow down at Cherry Beach. But why would Jane wear a pair of men’s snow boots? He lifted a pair of her half-inch heels from the shoe rack and held the boot and shoe sole to sole. The boot wasn’t that much larger. Jane had big feet, Matchett had small. And maybe she realized she was going to leave prints so wore the Sorels as a precaution. But if she was going to be that careful, wouldn’t she be careful enough to get rid of the boots afterwards?

He put the boot down and walked out to the living room. Roger Pembleton, from the Forensic Identification Unit, had lifted the pillows from the couch and was reaching down behind. He pulled out a quarter and a penny and put them on the coffee table.

“I’ve got a pair of men’s boots, size-nine Sorels, that have to be boxed in the bedroom,” he said. “Anything out here at all?”

“Nothing yet,” said Roger. “I don’t think she’s here a whole hell of a lot.”

Gilbert nodded. He looked around the living room, at the rowing machine, the treadmill, the exercise bicycle and the weights. He walked over to the bench, lay down on his back, and tried to press the barbell. He lifted it, but only with some effort.

He was lowering it to his chest a second time when Lombardo strode down the hall from a back room holding a glassine bag in front of him.

“Careful, Barry,” he said. “You’re going to burst a blood vessel.” He held up the glassine bag. “Look what Douglas found.”

A .45 caliber round in the bag. And again Gilbert paused. He pressed the barbell back toward the brace, holding his breath with effort, and sat up.

“I got to get to the gym more,” he said.

“You know what your problem is?” said Lombardo. “You’re all wire and no muscle. You’re all sticks, my friend.”

Gilbert took the bullet and had a closer look at it.

“It’s a soft-nose, isn’t it?”

“Same as Donna and Cheryl.”

Gilbert stood up and gave the bag back to Lombardo. “Why would she kill Donna?”

Lombardo shrugged. “We don’t know that she did.”

“Where did Douglas find this?” asked Gilbert, nodding toward the bag.

“Follow me and I’ll show you.”

Lombardo led him down the hall to a small room at the end. Ken Douglas was carefully going through desk drawers. A ten-year-old PC, a Club American IBM clone, sat on top of the desk. Some old five-and-a-quarter floppies sat in a rack beside it.

“We’ll take the disks. We’ll download anything she has on her hard drive,” said Gilbert. “See if we can find anything about the money.”

“I can do that,” said Lombardo. “She’s got a fresh pack up there.”

“Okay.”

“Ken, could you tell Barry where you found the .45 round.”

“Sure,” said Ken. The big man walked around the side of the desk and lifted the edge of the broadloom behind a filing cabinet. “Right here. Wedged between the edge of the carpet and the quarter-round.”

Gilbert stared at the spot. He tried to piece it together, how the bullet came to be wedged in that exact spot, behind the filing cabinet, so even if Jane were cleaning in here she probably wouldn’t see it, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible scenario.

“What’s wrong?” said Lombardo.

Gilbert shook his head. “I don’t know.” He nodded at Douglas. “Thanks, buddy.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his coat and looked at Lombardo. Douglas went back to the desk. “I’ll be interested to see if we get a match on the hair.”

“Come on, Barry, we’ve got her. You know we’re going to get a match on the bullet.”