Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (29 page)

“When was the last time he checked in with you?”

“I didn’t log him into my PalmPilot. What difference does it make?”

“These are my floors, Amy,” Mason said, pointing to the glowing buttons. “I get to use them any way I want. When was the last time you talked to Carl Zimmerman?”

“Last week. I don’t remember the day, the time, or what we talked about.”

“The conversation I want to know about is one that I think you’d remember. It was about Jack Cullan’s files.”

“That’s a conversation I would have remembered, and I don’t. You’ve got three floors left. Make them count.”

“Where were you last Thursday night between six and ten o’clock?”

“Probably eating rubber chicken at a civic award dinner with the mayor, or home wishing I was.”

“Did Zimmerman call you that night?”

The elevator stopped at the first floor, the doors opened, and they stepped out into the lobby. Amy steadied herself with one hand against a pillar, gulping cleaner air. They could see the snow tumbling from the sky like feathers from a billion ruptured pillows.

“My God!” Amy said. “This is going to be the rush hour from hell.” Turning to Mason, she asked, “Do you have any idea how many complaints we will get by noon tomorrow that somebody’s street hasn’t been plowed?” Mason shook his head. “Everyone but the mayor will call. His street always gets plowed.” She touched her forehead with the back of her hand, wiping away sweat she must have imagined. “I’m sorry, Lou. What did you ask me?”

Mason smiled. He’d questioned too many witnesses too many times to be pushed off track.

“Did Carl Zimmerman call you last Thursday night?”

Amy drew on her reserves of exasperation. “Yes, no, maybe. I don’t remember. Should I?”

“That depends on whether Zimmerman needs an alibi for Shirley Parker’s murder.”

Amy studied Mason as she tied her scarf around her neck, cinching it securely under her chin, pulled her coat back on, and took her time carefully buttoning each button. She cocked her head to one side in a thoughtful pose and clasped her hands together.

“No,” she said at last. “I’m quite certain I didn’t talk to Detective Zimmerman at all that night.”

Mason took seriously Patrick Ortiz’s announcement that he was a suspect in the arson at Pendergast’s office and in the murder of Shirley Parker. While the jailhouse bureaucrats processed Blues’s release on bail, he spent the rest of the morning waiting for the police department’s records clerk to make him a copy of the investigative reports on both crimes. He pushed her limited tolerance for defense lawyers when he asked for two sets of the reports as well as another set of the reports on the Cullan murder, knowing that Blues would want his own set.

Shortly after one o’clock, Blues emerged from the jail wearing the same clothes as the day he had been arrested. The suit he’d worn for his preliminary hearing was crammed into a grocery bag. Mason embraced him, Blues balking, more comfortable with a fist tap.

“Do I want to know how you pulled this off?” Blues asked.

“No. You hungry?”

“Is a bluebird blue? My tribal ancestors ate better on the reservation than I ate in that jail.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’m buying lunch.”

The snow already had covered the streets and sidewalks, obliterating where one began and the other stopped. The only clues were the cars stacked bumper-to-bumper on every street, many of them stuck on the sheet of ice that lay beneath the snow, tires spinning in a futile effort to get traction. Other drivers had made the mistake of trying to go around those cars, only to slide into someone else attempting the same maneuver. The result was automotive gridlock accompanied by blaring horns, screaming commuters, and ecstatic tow-truck drivers.

Blues pointed to a bar a block west of the courthouse. “Let’s try Rossi’s. He never closes.”

Rossi’s Bar & Grill lived off of the traffic from city hall, the county courthouse, and police headquarters. Judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats provided the lunch traffic. Cops owned the place after hours. DeWayne Rossi was a retired deputy sheriff who heard everything, repeated nothing, and spent his days and nights parked on a stool behind the cash register chewing cigars. Rossi tipped the scales at more than three hundred pounds, limiting his exercise to making change for a twenty. Regular patrons had a secret pool picking the date he would stroke out. Rossi liked the action enough to have placed his own bet.

Rossi’s had eight tables and was decorated in late-twentieth-century dark and dingy. A pair of canned spotlights washed the bar in weak light. Short lamps with green shades barely illuminated each table. A splash of daylight filtered in through dirty windows. A color TV hung from the ceiling above the bar and was permanently tuned to ESPN Classic. Rossi kept a .357 Magnum under the bar in case anyone tried to rob the place or change the channel.

There were two waitresses. Donna worked days and Savannah worked nights. They had both worked the street until they’d had too many johns and too many busts. The cops who used to arrest them now overtipped them to balance the books. A fry cook whose name no one knew hustled burgers and pork tenderloins from a tiny kitchen in the back.

“I haven’t been in here since I quit the force,” Blues said as he and Mason stamped the snow from their shoes.

“You didn’t miss the atmosphere?”

“I didn’t miss the company. I’m as welcome in a cops’ bar as a whore is in church.”

One table was occupied, as was one seat at the bar. Rossi turned away from the TV screen long enough to look at them, giving Blues an imperceptible nod that may just have been his jowls catching up with the rest of his head. Donna, a lanky, washed-out blonde with slack skin and a downturned mouth, was sitting at one of the tables reading
USA Today
and smoking a cigarette.

Mason and Blues chose a table against the wall that gave them a view out the windows. Donna materialized, setting glasses of water in front of them and laying her hand on Blues’s shoulder.

“Long time, darling. How you been?”

“No complaints that count, Donna. How’s life treating you?”

“Same way I treat it. Neither one of us gives a shit about the other. What’ll you have on this lovely day?”

“Bring us a couple of burgers and the coldest beer you’ve got in a bottle.”

Donna wandered back toward the kitchen to turn in their order. Mason unzipped the black satchel he used as a briefcase and handed Blues his copies of the reports.

“I thought you’d want your own set.”

Blues left the reports on the table. “Did Leonard Campbell find religion and decide to let me out?”

Mason shook his head.

“I know Ortiz didn’t do it on his own.”

“It wasn’t the prosecutor’s office. It was the judge.”

“Judge Carter? You’re shitting me!”

Mason shook his head again, watching the replay of Kordell Stewart’s Hail Mary miracle pass against Michigan, instead of meeting Blues head-on.

Blues asked him, “You think that game is going to end differently this time?”

Mason gave up and faced his friend. “No, sorry.”

“How much trouble are we in?”

“It depends on whether we can prove that you didn’t kill Jack Cullan and I didn’t kill Shirley Parker.”

“What about Judge Carter and my bail?”

“Small potatoes compared to capital murder.”

Mason filled Blues in on his evening out with Beth Harrell that ended with him saving Ed Fiora’s life. He described how Mickey had hacked into Fiora’s bank records and been rewarded with a beating by Tony Manzerio. He explained his theory of how Beth could have hiked to Cullan’s house, killed him, and returned to her apartment undetected. He detailed his suspicions of Carl Zimmerman and James Toland, making light of his failed surveillance of Zimmerman. He finished with a broad-brush recitation of the scam he’d run on Fiora with the bank records and the favor he’d unnecessarily cashed in to get Blues released on bail.

“You need a keeper, you know that?” Blues told him when Mason had completed his report.

“Well, at least you’re out. Now we can sort this mess out.”

Blues picked up the reports and began reading. Mason waited, hoping for the insight that a fresh look often brings. Donna returned with their burgers and beer. They ate in silence.

“Look at this,” Blues said.

He placed the initial report on Cullan’s murder in front of Mason. It was dated December 10, the day the housekeeper had discovered Cullan’s body.

“Okay, what am I looking for?”

“The report is routine. It covers all the bases, including the location from which every fingerprint was lifted.”

Mason read the index of fingerprints. “Damn! There’s no record of any fingerprints found on the desk in Mason’s office. Terrence Dawson testified at the preliminary hearing that’s where he found your fingerprint.”

“Now, look at this,” Blues said, and handed Mason a supplemental report dated December 12, the day Blues was arrested.

“Dawson went back to the scene for a second look. That’s when he found your fingerprint.”

“Read the first sentence of Dawson’s report on that inspection,” Blues instructed.

Mason read it aloud. “At the request of Detective Carl Zimmerman, this examiner returned to the scene to determine if any other identifiable fingerprints were present.”

“Zimmerman was a busy boy.”

“How could Zimmerman have planted your fingerprint?”

“It’s not as hard as it sounds. Zimmerman could have made a photocopy of a fingerprint of mine. While the photocopy was still hot, he could have put fingerprint tape down on it and lifted the print. Powdered photocopier toner can be used as fingerprint powder. Then Zimmerman went back to the scene and put the tape down wherever he wanted Dawson to find my fingerprint.”

“So where did Zimmerman get your fingerprint?”

“From my personnel file.”

“Isn’t access to those files restricted? How did Zimmerman get ahold of it?”

“Once Harry started looking at me for the murder, they would have gotten my file without any problem.”

“How can we prove your fingerprint was forged?”

“Identification points are the same on all prints from the same finger. That’s why fingerprints are so reliable. But no two prints themselves should ever be identical since there’s always a difference in position or pressure when the print is put down. If the print Dawson found is identical to the print in my personnel file, Dawson will have to admit it was forged.”

“Unless Zimmerman was smart enough to get rid of the original print from your personnel file.”

“That would have been too risky. If that set of prints turned up missing, there would be a separate investigation of everyone who touched the file. Zimmerman was banking that no one would compare the prints since they had made a new set of my prints when they booked me.”

“Which gets us back to the real question. Why would Zimmerman take the risk of framing you?”

“It fits with your theory. Zimmerman and Toland were tired of working for Cullan. They wanted to go into business for themselves, so they killed Cullan. I was a convenient fall guy. Harry already hated me. The mayor wanted a quick arrest. No one wanted Cullan’s files to be found. It should have worked.”

Mason took the final swallow from his bottle of beer. “I’m going to talk to Harry.”

“No way. He’ll cover for Zimmerman. That’s what cops do.”

“Not this time. You find Cullan’s files and I’ll talk to Harry.”

Blues grabbed Mason’s wrists with both hands. “You’re taking a hell of a risk for both of us. If Harry tips him off, Zimmerman will come after both of us. He won’t have any choice. Are you carrying that gun I gave you?”

“No, and you can’t carry one either without violating the conditions of your bail.”

“Small potatoes compared to capital murder.”

Twelfth Street had become a frozen parking lot. Cars on the intersecting streets of Oak and Locust squirmed more than they moved. No one was any closer to home than when Mason and Blues had walked into Rossi’s for lunch. The snow poured from the sky in thick, wet flakes heavy enough to reduce vision to a single block. Some drivers surrendered to the storm, abandoning their cars in the middle of the street to take refuge in city hall or the courthouse.

Mason and Blues waded through the drifting, blowing snow to Mason’s Jeep. They waited for the car to warm up and melt the ice on the windows while they considered their options.

“You giving any thought to just waiting this out?” Blues asked.

“Nope.”

“You expecting a sudden heat wave to melt this shit and clear up this traffic just so we can go home?”

“Nope. And we’re not going home. We’re going to my office. By the way, how long has Mickey Shanahan been living in his office?”

“Since the day I rented it to him.”

“Does he know that you know that?”

“I never asked him. He seems like a good kid.”

“He’s a con artist, cardsharp, and computer hacker who doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“You hired him. He must fit in. How are you going to get us out of here?”

“Don’t try this at home, boys and girls,” Mason said.

He engaged the Jeep’s four-wheel drive and rolled over the concrete stop that separated the parking lot from the sidewalk. Dodging parking meters, he stayed on the sidewalk until he was clear of the downtown traffic.

The normally fifteen-minute drive to his office took an hour as he slalomed and cursed his way around one trapped driver after another. The streets were so slick, and the ice and snow so impenetrable, that the slightest incline had become an impossible vertical ascent for any car that didn’t have four-wheel drive. Mickey was waiting for them when they made it back to Blues on Broadway.