Find Me (9 page)

“She’s gonna be fine, boss, just fine.”

Gonna
be? Oh,
shit!

Was Riker in the dark or did he know what she was up to right now? Hardly expecting a straight answer, Coffey approached the problem sideways. “So you see a lot of your partner these days?”

“Well, boss, it’s funny you should ask. I’m on my way to see her right now.”

“No, Riker, I don’t t hink so. You’re just late for work. Mallory’s a thousand miles away in southwest Illinois.”

“Okay, you got me. I lied.”
A surprised Riker negotiated the Illinois traffic. As he listened, he learned that even the police commissioner had a fix on Mallory’s location, and now his lieutenant was ordering him to take a plane to Chicago and do damage control. “Yeah, right, boss. I’ll get there as fast as I can… No, no problem. I can do the travel vouchers when I get back.” The Mercedes glided onto the exit ramp that would land him close to a Chicago gas station.

His lieutenant was still talking, and Riker only listened, never interrupting, as if this might be the first time he had heard the story of Gerald C. Linden’s d isembodied right hand. More details were added to what little Kronewald had already told him. According to Jack Coffey, civilians, a battalion of them, were on the road in downstate Illinois, all hunting for their missing children. Though this did not appear to work well with the Chicago murder of a grown man, Riker suspected that Mallory had tied them together. The late-breaking news was a turf war between Chicago Homicide and the FBI.

“They wanna snatch a body from Kronewald?… Okay, but I’m gonna need Charles Butler on this one.” Riker made a right turn as he listened to his lieutenant’s arguments against hiring an outsider: the strain on the budget and the overkill factor of using a psychologist with more than one Ph.D.; plus, Jack Coffey knew for a fact that Charles Butler flew only first class.

“I think I can get him to kick in the airfare.” Riker pulled up in front of the gas station where Mallory had used her credit card last night. And now he lost the threads to what his lieutenant was saying. The detective was focused on a tired soul in the greasy clothes of a mechanic. The man was unlocking a metal gate that protected the door of a garage bay. This was the way a workingman should look at the end of a shift, not at the beginning. And what kind of gas station blew off the commuter traffic to open this late in the day?

On the cell phone, Jack Coffey was saying that the Chicago Police Department was crawling with shrinks, and one of them would be just as useful-and free of charge to NYPD.

“Just a few problems,” said Riker. “One-department shrinks always suck, and two-Mallory knows that. The kid won’t w o rk with ’em. But she likes Charles Butler, and her old man liked him, too… No, I think Commissioner Beale’s gonna go for it.” He knew it would take a few minutes for his lieutenant to appreciate this scheme, but it was going to happen. The boss knew Charles Butler as a man who could keep his mouth shut if Mallory proved unfit for duty-and she was. Sending in his own psychologist would keep the Illinois shrinks at a safe distance from one very messed-up young cop.

“Boss? Think it over. Get back to me, okay?” Riker folded his cell phone into his pocket as he watched the mechanic raise the garage door to expose a large party of men inside. Their ties were undone, and suit jackets were slung over their arms as they shook hands all around. And now the suits came outside, wincing and blinking into the sunlight. Riker could see tools racked on the back wall, but no oil stains on the cement, just the debris of liquor bottles, cigarette and cigar butts, what any cop might expect to find after a marathon crap game. This was not a gas station, not a repair shop- it was a damn casino.

Oh, this was going to be way too easy.

Riker left the car at the curb and stood in the small parking lot in front of the open garage. Hands in his pockets, like he had all the time in the world, he watched the gamblers, and they watched him. Everything about Riker said
cop.
Though his nature was laid-back, his stance had the easy confidence of a man who carried a gun everywhere he went. He never even had to show the badge. The gamblers scattered in all directions. The only one with nowhere to go was their host in the greasy coveralls.

Mallory stared out
the window on the diner’s parking lot, where State Tr ooper Hoffman sat on the fender of his car. He cradled a collection of cigarette butts and sundry trash that had probably blown in from the road during the night. Apparently his crime-scene training had been incomplete. Everything picked up off the ground had gone into a single garbage sack instead of separate evidence bags with helpful notes to say where he had found each object. What he had was next to useless, but at least he had collected his finds before the caravan’s arrival. They were indeed a neat crowd. They had cleaned up after themselves, and evidence might have been lost if Hoffman had not gotten to it first.

An hour had passed since her last phone call to Chicago, but she had not yet given this trooper the news that, up north, a war was being waged in Copland-and that the FBI was en route to this diner with a plan to take his garbage bag away from him.

Back in Chicago, Detective Kronewald was fighting to hold onto his case, and he had made it clear to Mallory that he was counting on her.

In her mind, the debt that NYPD owed to the Chicago detective had been paid in full.

She looked up to the ceiling, listening to the sound of aircraft hovering over the diner. Outside, the whirling rotors of the helicopter were creating a windstorm in the parking lot, and the garbage bag was blown from the trooper’s arms. He ran across the lot, chasing his precious evidence and his hat. Mallory looked up to see the FBI marking on the descending helicopter, surprised that any field agent would direct a landing so close to the green Ford. Why would they dust up a crime scene for a grand entrance to impress a lone state trooper? This told her that the war over the Chicago corpse was not yet won.

Detective Riker held out
the wallet at the arm’s length of a man too vain to wear reading glasses in public. He handed it back to the garage mechanic, who was now identified as a former Chicago policeman with thirty-five years on the Job. All the leverage of illicit gambling was gone. Retired or not, there was etiquette to be observed, good manners learned at police cotillion: No cop wanted to know that another one was breaking the law.

Any conversation between them would be a waltz around the giant turd; you could smell it but never speak its name.

The two men had yet to exchange a single word when Riker said, “The pretty blonde with the green eyes and the silver Beetle-you filled up her gas tank.”

“Last night,” said the mechanic, who was even more economical with words. He pointed west. “She went thataway toward Adams and Michigan.”

Riker smiled. Cowboy directions, such as
thataway
, so seldom included cross streets. “So she
told
you where she was going?” Not likely. He watched the older man retreat to the garage and return with two cold cans of beer.

Ah, Chicago hospitality.

The mechanic popped the tab on his beer can, then took a long draught and wiped his face with the least greasy sleeve. “She didn’t s ay much, but cops don’t s how up to dish out information, do they? And her car had New York plates. So how big
is
this case?”

“What made you think she wasn’t just passing through?”

“I asked her if she turned out for the murder on Michigan and Adams. That’s when she said there was something peculiar about the body.” He tapped his head, then frowned. “Or maybe she asked me about it.”

“She pumped you for information?”

“Nope. The girl never said another word-like she didn’t c are. But I saw the police scanner in her car. Same frequency as mine. Now, I don’t s hoot craps myself. I leave that to my customers. So, all night long, I listened to the cop chatter on the air. When your friend Mallory mentioned the body, I figured she just wanted to know how much that rookie cop spilled out over the radio before they shut him down.”

“And how much did this kid spill?”

“A lot. He was the first cop on the scene, and, like I said, he sounded young. Had to be a rookie. I know he was scared shitless when he saw what was laid out on that road. You could hear it in his voice. Stupid kid. Instead of just calling in a code-well, I guess there isn’t a code to cover a thing like that-he was babbling about the crime scene. Didn’t get real specific about the damage to the man-some carving on the face was all I heard- two lines and a circle. Something like that. I was pretty wasted last night. Anyway, the corpse was a full-grown man, fresh kill, but this rookie on the radio went
on
and
on
about the little bones.”

“Little bones,” said Riker.

“Baby bones,” said the mechanic. “That’s what the rookie called them.”

Mallory kept her seat
by the window, preferring to watch the action from a comfortable distance. Outside in the parking lot, the state trooper was facing off against a federal agent, the only man in a suit and tie. The pilot of the helicopter had wisely remained inside the aircraft. A small gallery of FBI civilian employees watched from the sidelines; these four men wore jackets identifying them as crime-scene technicians.

The fed’s thinning red hair was cut short, and his scalp was even more sunburned than his face-lots of hours spent out of doors on this case. His arms were waving, sometimes pointing to the cruiser, and no doubt telling the young officer to get his ass on the road. But T r ooper Hoffman was making a stand. He had been through a hard morning of humiliation and degradation-compliments of herself-all for that damned green Ford, and he was
not
going to give it away to the FBI.

The trooper dropped his guard and turned to look at his own vehicle. The cruiser’s radio was calling him, and he ran toward it. Pulling the door open, he reached inside to press a receiver to one ear so he could listen to his communication in private.

No need for Mallory to hear the spoken words.

The trooper banged one fist on the roof of the car, and that said it all. The war between cops and feds had been lost in Chicago. Hoffman put on a stoic face, carried his garbage bag to the FBI agent and attempted a graceful surrender of evidence.

The redheaded fed, in Mallory’s o pinion, was not so graceful. He was going off on the younger man, and this was not normal FBI behavior, not after winning a major battle over turf rights.These two should be kissing and making up by now. She left the comfort of the booth to stand in the open doorway of the diner and only drew the attention of the four technicians.

The federal agent was facing the trooper and shaking his head at the sorry garbage bag that was being held out to him. It continued to hang in the air between them.

“Thank you,” said the frustrated FBI man. “Thank you for this worthless bag of crap that wouldn’t s t and up as court evidence if it had the killer’s name and address on every item. Did you sleep through
all
your classes on crime-scene protocols?”

Mallory came up behind the agent so quietly that she made the man jump when she spoke to the trooper. “Never mind him,” she said, indicating the FBI man with a dismissive wave of one hand. “Give your bag to the crime-scene techs.” Still ignoring the agent, she turned to the oldest technician, the one she had picked for the senior man on the forensics team. Pointing to the bag, she said, “That’s what the helicopter would’ve blown away-if the trooper hadn’t policed the area before you landed.” When the senior tech smiled, she said, “I thought you’d appreciate that. Yo u didn’t w ant to land in the parking lot, did you?” And now she turned to the FBI agent. “That would’ve been your idea, right?”

The fed had no response, nor did he find it necessary to ask for Mallory’s identification. Her denim jacket had been discarded on the steps of the diner, and he was looking at the cannon parked in her shoulder holster. The gun and a state trooper who was obviously under her command- this was all that was needed to make her the highest-ranking police officer on the scene.

Tr ooper Hoffman quietly made his transfer of evidence, signing the paperwork and accepting the receipt for his garbage bag. Then it was a surprise to see him hand over a thick packet of photographs taken with an instant camera. She had underestimated him. The boy had been very busy during her morning nap in the tourist cabin. And she even approved of him holding out on her.

“I shot every square inch of the lot on a grid,” said the trooper. “On the backs, you’ll find the location where I found every item in the bag.” He pointed to an area on the top photograph. “That dollar bill is mine. I put it there to give some scale for the tire track.”

Mallory smiled. Early this morning, after her first failed meeting with this trooper, she had borrowed Sally’s o ld Polaroid camera to make her own record of the tire tread on the dusty pavement before it could blow away. Her shot was clearer, but, in many ways, his was better. And the second photograph would remain in her knapsack.

“I know that tire tread was there at sunrise,” said the trooper. “That’s when the waitress opened the diner. She didn’t see any vehicles parked in that same spot before I got here. The tread mark was real close to the green Ford.”

All four of the technicians showed great interest in this picture.

And the FBI agent kept his silence.

The trooper signed receipts for the photographs, then handed the technicians another surprise, a diagram of the parking lot and every item found. Hoffman had even marked it by compass points.

The senior technician nodded his approval. “Nice job, son-especially if it goes to court. Made by the first officer on the scene.” Alongside this diagram, he held up the trooper’s best photograph and openly admired it. “Doesn’t get much better than this.”