Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split (9 page)

“Mrs. Wisnewski,” Rivers began, apologetic, “your husband seems pretty incoherent. Has he been drinking tonight?”

Pearl gasped. “No! He has Alzheimer’s. But I thought it would be good for him to get out tonight. He’d talked about the track for weeks.”

“Has he ever been violent before?” Rivers asked.

“Mel’s never been violent,” Truman said, interrupting. “He’d cross the street to avoid an argument.”

“My husband would never hurt someone,” Pearl agreed.

Rivers shrugged. “The Figueroa girl’s throat was slashed. Mr. Wisnewski was holding a knife when that kid found him. Blood all over him, kept apologizing, calling the girl Pearl.”

Pearl gasped. “That’s me. He thought it was me. He gets confused, that’s all.”

“Mel didn’t do it,” Truman insisted. “He’s seventy-six years old, for Christ’s sake, Detective. He’s no killer.”

The door to the homicide office opened then and an older black man stepped out. His eyes sagged at the corners, and he was thin to the point of emaciation. The man nodded at Pearl and Truman, handed a piece of paper to Rivers. “A fax from the Allegheny County Police Department.”

The two men stepped away from Truman and Pearl and held a brief, whispered conversation.

“Thanks,” Rivers said, scanning the paper. The man went back inside the homicide office.

Rivers looked up, frowning. “Mrs. Wisnewski, at the end of the hallway down there, there’s a break room. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in there. It’s not the worst coffee in the world. Why don’t you go get yourself a cup, try to calm down a little? In a few minutes we may be able to let you talk to your husband.”

Pearl nodded mutely and walked away.

Now it was just Truman and Rivers. Truman looked down at the younger man’s shoes. Cowboy boots, hand- tooled, it looked like.

“Detective Rivers,” he said. “What don’t you want to talk about in front of Pearl?”

Rivers handed Truman the fax. “Your pal Mel has a record back up in Pittsburgh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Truman snapped. “You must have the wrong Wisnewski, that’s all.”

“No mistake,” Rivers said. “We used his Social Security number. He was charged with aggravated assault back in 1951.”

“Does it say he was convicted? Huh?” Truman demanded.

“No,” Rivers said slowly. “Captain Boykin there talked with somebody up in Pittsburgh. The old case report says Mr. Wisnewski was picketing outside a steel mill. Some nonunion laborers tried to cross the picket line. Your buddy and three other men beat him nearly to death. When the guy got out of the hospital, he was too scared to testify.”

“So Mel was a hothead back a long time ago,” Truman said. “Lots of people were. It was a mill town. Things got out of hand. This is different. Besides, Mel isn’t himself. He wouldn’t kill anybody.”

Rivers’s gaze found Pearl, walking slowly toward them, sipping from a Styrofoam cup. “How’d Mrs. Wisnewski get that shiner? The old man give her a belt?”

Truman’s lips tightened. “She walked into a door. That’s all.”

While Rivers took Pearl inside to talk to Mel, Truman went to get a cup of coffee. There was a little carton of cream sitting in a bowl of half-melted ice on the tray by the coffeepot and real sugar. “Look at this,” Truman said to himself. It was a far cry from the inky sludge he’d guzzled back in the days when he’d covered the cop shop.

When he got back to the homicide office, Howie Seabold was sitting on a folding chair somebody had brought. He stood up when he saw Truman.

The two shook hands. “Pearl’s inside with Mel,” he told Howie Jr. Then he told him everything he knew about the night’s events.

“Alzheimer’s disease,” Howie said, making notes on a yellow legal pad. “We should be able to get them to cut Mel loose tonight, if he’s really as bad off as you say. I’ve never met this Detective Rivers. But I do know Jimmy Boykin, the captain. He’s not a bad guy. And one of my former classmates is an assistant in the district attorney’s office. Jean Reilly. I’ll call her first thing in the morning.”

The door to the homicide office swung open again and Rivers brought Pearl Wisnewski out. She was crying again, her lips pressed tight, tears streaming down her face. She shook her head when she saw Truman, unable to speak. He introduced Howie to Pearl and then to Rivers.

“I’d like to see my client now,” Howie told Rivers.

Rivers nodded. “I’ll take Mrs. Wisnewski out to the lobby. She says you have a friend there, waiting for you, someone who’ll sit with her.”

“Let me go in with you,” Truman told Howie when they were gone. “Mel’s only met you once or twice. Maybe he’ll remember me.”

Mel was sitting in front of a desk, his hands clasped in his lap, his hat on the floor beside him. His hair was white and mussed, and Truman noticed for the first time how bald his friend had gone in the past year. Mel’s lips trembled when he saw Truman.

Truman knelt down beside Mel, shook his hand. “This is Howie Seabold Jr., Mel. Remember? We played golf with Howie and big Howie last winter, down in Bradenton.”

But Mel was trembling, wringing his hands. “Pa, they made me stay after school, Pa. I got in a fight with Jacky Murphy. He started it, Pa. He called me a dirty Polack. I had to hit him, Pa. I’ll do my chores when I get home, Pa. Okay?”

Truman grasped Mel’s hand. It was cold and dry, covered with a network of tiny spots.

“It’s me, Mel. It’s me, sport. Your buddy Truman. Remember me? Truman?”

A single tear trickled down Mel’s cheek. “I’ll shovel the walk when I get home, Pa. I promise.”

Truman sighed, stood up, and turned to Howie Seabold. “I’ve never seen him like this,” he said. “This is a guy who could recite the box scores for every Pittsburgh Pirates game going back to 1939.”

“It happens,” Howie said.

Outside, in the hallway, Pearl and Jackleen were sitting, waiting. Jackleen gave Truman a questioning look. He shook his head. Not good. Pearl stood when the two men came out. “Did he tell you anything?”

“He thought I was his pa,” Truman said helplessly. “He thought he was in trouble for fighting in school.”

Pearl patted her purse. “I have his pills. They help sometimes.”

Rivers took her back inside then.

“That’s a hell of a black eye on Mrs. Wisnewski,” Howie said, keeping his tone conversational. “Do you know anything about it?”

“She told us she walked into a door,” Truman said.

“Could Mel have done it?”

“No way,” Jackleen put in.

“Maybe,” Truman admitted. “Not the old Mel, though. You know they’ve been married almost sixty years?”

“Any kids?”

Truman shook his head. “A son, Danny. He was the only child. He was in the navy. Got killed in Vietnam. They never got over it.”

Detective Rivers came out of the office, and he and Howie strolled down to the end of the hall together, chatting quietly.

“They really gonna arrest him?” Jackleen asked.

“It doesn’t look good,” Truman had to admit. “That girl’s throat was slashed. And Mel had a knife when they found him.”

“What else?” she asked.

Truman frowned. “The cops dug up some old charge against Mel. From back in the fifties. He was arrested for beating up some scabs outside the steel mill where he worked. It was a long time ago, but it still makes Mel look like some kind of a thug or something.”

“He didn’t do it,” Jackleen said stubbornly. “Not Mr. Mel.”

Howie and Rivers returned then, nodded at Truman and Jackleen, and went back in the office.

A moment later, Pearl and Howie emerged, Pearl’s face white and worn-looking. And she was crying again.

“Oh, Truman,” she said, grasping his arm. “They’re going to make him stay here. In a jail cell, Truman. Mel doesn’t know where he is. He’s all mixed up. And he’s scared. So scared.

“Mr. Seabold,” she said, turning to Howie, “why won’t they let me stay with him? Or let me take him home? We’d bring him back in the morning.”

Howie patted Pearl’s arm awkwardly. “Mrs. Wisnewski, it’s a murder investigation. First thing in the morning I’ll call the district attorney. I’ll talk to him. We’ll get Mel’s doctor back in Pittsburgh to call and tell the police about the Alzheimer’s. I don’t think they’re really going to want to go to trial. I’m sure of that. Not with a senile seventy-six-year-old.”

Pearl and Truman both winced at Howie’s choice of words.

“I’m sorry,” Howie said. “But his age and medical condition are the two strongest things he has working in his favor. You folks go home. Get some sleep. They’ll keep him in an isolation cell here. Nobody else to bother him.”

With Truman on one side and Jackleen on the other, Pearl walked out to the car. There was nothing left to say.

Truman drove home again. He switched on the radio. The eleven o’clock news came on and the announcer started talking about “death at the greyhound track.” Truman reached out to switch it off, but Pearl caught his hand. “No. I want to hear. I need to know what they’re saying my Mel did.”

The dead woman’s identity was being held pending notification of next of kin, the announcer said. And then he went on to announce that Derby Lane’s Big Q would have paid a record-breaking $280,000 except that nobody had cashed a winning ticket.

“Where’s the judge?” Pearl wanted to know. She glanced nervously around the courtroom at the rows of prisoners who lolled around on the benches, waiting their turn. Mel sat in the front row, slightly away from the others, who were all younger.

There was no judge’s bench, no witness box, no tables for the state and the defense. Just rows of dark polished wood benches holding prisoners, with uniformed sheriffs deputies and bailiffs stationed around the room.

“There’s a television camera,” Howie Jr. explained, pointing to the front of the courtroom. Truman quit staring at the other prisoners and looked at a plain pine podium and a metal tripod holding a camera aimed at the podium.

“The judge is in his courtroom over at the county courthouse,” Howie explained. “He’s got a television too. He can see each defendant and hear what they say, and in that television monitor up there, the defendant can see the judge and the state’s attorney.”

“It’s on TV?” Pearl cried. “Does that mean everybody back at the Fountain of Youth will know what’s going on? I’d die, I’d just die if everybody knew Mel had spent the night in jail.”

“No, no,” Howie reassured her. “It’s closed-circuit. Just the judge and us.”

It was the damnedest thing Truman had ever heard of, and he said so. “Looks like these judges could at least get off their keisters and come to court,” he said. In his day, courtrooms were solemn, well-appointed places.

“It’s supposed to save the taxpayers money,” Howie said. He looked around and frowned. “Although I’ve got to admit, I don’t like it worth a damn either.”

“What happens next?” Pearl asked, clutching her purse like a life preserver in a monsoon.

“This is an advisory hearing,” Howie said patiently. “They’ll formally advise Mel and me of the charges against him. I’ll ask that Mel be released on his own recognizance—ROR, they call it. Normally, with a homicide, the state’s attorney would oppose it. But I’ve talked to my friend Jean Reilly and told her about the circumstances, and she’s agreed that jail is not the place for Mel.”

“Did you talk to Dr. Shrader back home?” Pearl asked. “Dr. Shrader knows all about Mel’s problem. He’s the one who gave us those pills, I forget what they’re called.”

“Cognex,” Howie said. “He told me everything and faxed me the medical records, which I’ve faxed over to the state’s attorney.”

“All rise,” the bailiff intoned. But no judge entered the courtroom. Instead they saw a light glowing red on the top of the television camera.

They all stood up. Howie gathered his papers. “They’re going to hear Mel’s case first,” he said, “because of his medical condition.”

Howie stood by Mel and took him gently by the elbow, steering him to the podium in front of the camera.

The judge on the television monitor was saying something, but Truman couldn’t make it out. He was apparently asking Mel a question, but Mel, frail and confused, only looked around the room.

“Your Honor,” Howie said loudly. “My client was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s disease six months ago. In light of his incompetence, we would ask that the district attorney drop all charges and that Mr. Wisnewski be released to his wife’s custody.”

The judge said something else then that Truman couldn’t hear.

“Yes, sir,” Howie said. “Mr. Wisnewski and his wife have wintered here for the past fourteen years. Mrs. Wisnewski has agreed that she’ll make arrangements to stay in Florida for as long as the court stipulates. My client has ties to the community, and he has no record of forfeiting any bonds.”

The picture on the television was so fuzzy, Truman couldn’t make out whether the judge was a man or a woman. “Hell of a way to have a trial,” he muttered to Pearl.

Now Howie was trying to object to something. “That incident was more than forty years ago and has no relevance to the charges against my client,” he said, getting a little hot under the collar. “Mrs. Wisnewski has power of attorney and has stated that she is able to manage Mr. Wisnewski’s care and supervision,” he said.