Random Victim (13 page)

“Sí.”

“She says that he fired her right after Miriam disappeared,” Leal said.

“Almost like he knew his wife wasn’t just missing,” Hart said. “More like she was gone for good.”

“Sure enough.”

“You know, Sarge, this is sounding more and more like we figured, and not like,” Hart dropped her voice in an attempt to mimic
Brice’s raspy voice, “a random victim killing.”

Leal grinned. Back in the car she asked him what their next move should be.

“We’ve got to pressure Walker,” he said. “We can’t pull him in just yet, but maybe we should follow him. See what his quirks
really are. Then if we find something, we can use that as a lever in an interrogation.”

“Interrogation?” Hart said. “This guy’s a lawyer as well as a CEO, isn’t he? What makes you think he’ll talk?”

“Yeah, well his experience is as a pissant corporate lawyer, not a criminal one,” Leal said. “Maybe he does have some street
smarts. It’d be nice to catch him buying some dope or something.”

“It sure would.”

“But one thing’s certain. To clear this one we’re probably going to need a confession, or something pretty damn close to it.”
He sighed and pulled away from the curb. “You check our messages today?”

“No,” Hart said, sorting through her purse for her cellular phone. She punched in the numbers and the codes to release the
voice mail. After listening she pressed another key and turned to him. “Guess what?”

He glanced at her.

“Miriam Walker’s father called,” she said. “He wants to talk to us.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Everybody Hates Mondays

Leal kept remembering the image of the old man as he and Hart drove in to work the following Monday. With the wisps of white
hair, the oxygen tubes hooked under his nose, Miriam’s father had looked virtually played out. He was at the end of it, Leal
figured, and was searching for some hope that his daughter’s killer would be found. He blamed himself for his daughter’s death.

“I was the one who encouraged her to marry Martin,” the old man had said. “It seemed a good move for her, career-wise and
financially, but,” he paused to gather a few breaths, “I never thought about her long-term adjustment or happiness.”

Their interview with him had yielded little. Only that Miriam hadn’t been close with her father in the past several years.
The old man’s pleading look had prompted Leal to make a premature promise as they left. “We’ll get the people responsible
for your daughter’s death, sir. You have my word on it.”

Now he found himself wishing he hadn’t said that. Just what I need, he thought. More pressure to solve a cold case. He turned
to Hart as they walked up the steps toward the office.

“You type up all our summaries of the interviews?” he asked.

She nodded. “Sure did, Sarge.”

Leal grabbed the door and pulled it open, debating whether or not he should tell her to call him Frank. But that will come,
he thought, if this partnership works out. Inside they were met by a group of trainees getting a tour of the facility on their
first day at the academy. Looking at all the eager young faces brought back more memories for Leal.

“God, I hate Mondays,” he said. “You can’t even move around this damn place.”

“Everybody hates Mondays,” Hart said, dodging the group by going along the wall. She tugged at his sleeve. “But it’s sort
of like Wednesday for us, remember?”

Inside the office Ryan was standing at his desk with one foot on the seat of his chair. His right elbow rested on his thigh
as he read a copy of the
Sun-Times
. He smiled at them, pointing to Hart’s in-box where an eleven-by-fourteen manila envelope denoting interdepartmental mail
lay. “You got some goodies, babe.”

She opened it and flashed several large photos of Martin and Miriam Walker at Leal.

“I ordered some duplicates made of our file photo of Miriam last week,” she said. “Thought it might be useful to get Martin’s
driver’s license digital, too.”

Leal nodded approvingly.

“You look ready to go,” Leal said, turning to Ryan.

“Not hardly. That fucking Smith’s late again.” Ryan rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “But get a load of this.” He tapped
the newspaper. “This dog-ass in New York went into the ER with a real problem. Seems he shot up his dick with cocaine to improve
his performance with the ladies.” Ryan flashed a rakish grin under his bushy mustache. “And it worked. Sort of. He had a hard-on
for three fucking days, but found that he couldn’t take a piss. It’s called…” he looked down at the paper, “Priapism.
Can you imagine that? A hard-on for three days?”

“Not like little Ryan, who rises and falls on demand, huh?” Leal said. He wondered how Hart was reacting to this.

Ryan smirked. “Well, they catheterized him and it deflated. The only problem was his johnson turned gangrene and fell off.”

“I love a story with a happy ending,” Hart said.

“It says here,” Ryan continued, patting the paper again, “that injecting cocaine into the penis to enhance sexual performance
is a commonly held, but false, belief. In the ghetto, no doubt.”

Christ, thought Leal, the asshole’s more interested in that fucking story than he is in solving the damn case.

Suddenly the door opened and Smith came in smiling.

“Sorry about being late, Sarge,” he said. “Another false alarm with the baby.”

Ryan rolled his eyes again. “Well, now that we’re all present and accounted for, let’s compare notes. The boss wants a progress
report in half an hour. Hart, can you make us a pot, please.”

Leal bristled at the impropriety of the request, but remembered that he couldn’t fight her battles for her. And at least he
did say please, he thought.

Over coffee they discussed their separate efforts on the investigation. Ryan and Smith had touched bases with the Illinois
State Police Criminal Investigations Division and SSATIN, the auto-theft section.

“You should’ve seen the layout they had there,” Ryan said. “They set up their own sting operation for buying stolen cars.
Videotaped every transaction.”

“So you get anything on that angle?” Leal asked.

Ryan shook his head. “One thing that is funny. They said that parts for Caddies ain’t been much in demand this year.”

“Which makes the chances that someone murdered her for a chop shop ring kind of small,” Smith said. He’d sat passively while
Ryan had been relating their activities.

“We looked over all the files of carjackers and auto thieves who’ve been active in the South Suburbs in the last year or so,”
Ryan said, taking out his cigarettes and shaking one out of the pack. “Nothing really matches up. I guess we can spend today
digging through some more files.”

“That’s a dead end, Tom,” Leal said, realizing that the anger in his voice was more than he intended. He took a deep breath
and explained about the interviews he and Hart had done. “We got to start focusing on the husband.”

“So, you saying we should tag him?” Ryan asked, leaning forward, the smoke from his cigarette trailing up toward the ceiling.
Hart moved back away from it.

“It’d be a start,” said Leal. “We got to get some leverage on the guy.”

“All right, then,” Ryan said. “Let’s go run it by the boss. Give me your summary reports.”

Leal and Ryan spent ten minutes waiting outside Brice’s office while he finished a telephone call. Then he opened the door
and admitted them. Leal noticed that Brice looked pale and haggard, and wondered if he was getting some pressure from upstairs.
Good, Leal thought. Maybe it’ll shake his ass up so we can move on this thing. But Brice seemed unfazed by their reports.
He meticulously bit off the end of a cigar as he listened to the synopsis.

“Go run down those MOs, Ryan,” he said, twirling the cigar in the flame of his lighter. “Any robbery teams that’ve been preying
on lone females.”

“What about the husband?” Leal said.

“What about him?” Brice answered, blowing out a mouthful of smoke.

“I think we should set up a surveillance on him.”

“For what?” Brice said. “You ain’t got dick. So she was fucking around, supposedly. That don’t mean nothing.”

“It could show a motive,” Leal shot back. “He’s our best suspect. Let’s ask him to take a polygraph.”

“Those ain’t worth shit,” Brice said.

“Not in court,” Leal said. “But it’s a good investigative tool. If we pressure this fucker, he’ll crack. I just know it.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Brice’s reaction was plain.

“Look,” he said, his face reddening, “until we’ve eliminated all other possibilities, we’ll do this by the book.”

What book is that, Lieutenant? Leal thought. But he clamped his mouth shut. Brice seemed to sense the defiance anyway.

“Tell me if you got a problem with that, Leal,” he said. The veins in his thick neck were standing out against a flush of
red.

Leal glanced to Ryan, who was leaning back in his chair massaging his temples.

“Well, do you, Sergeant?” Brice said. His lips curled downward as the cigar snapped in two between his fingers. Glaring, he
stubbed it out in an ashtray, the trail of gray smoke winding upward toward the ceiling.

Leal shook his head, but then thought, what the fuck. If we’re going to solve this thing…“I just feel it’s something
we should be looking into, Lieu.” He met Brice’s stare with one of his own.

“And I feel that you’re disregarding the team approach to this investigation,” Brice said, pointing with his index finger.
Ryan started to speak, but Brice just turned to him and said, “Shut up.” He berated Leal for a few more minutes, then sat
back, exhaling a long, slow breath through flaring nostrils. “All right, this is what we’ll do. I’ll review your report summaries.
Ryan, you go over that offender’s file like I told you. Leal, you and your partner can go check with the state’s attorney.
See if we got enough to get a tap on the husband’s phone.”

Leal knew that they didn’t have nearly enough to meet the stringent applications of the law, but he nodded.

“And,” Brice continued, “be back here tonight at nineteen hundred. Sharp. And dress nice. The sheriff wants to go over our
case so far and the press might be here.”

Marvelous, thought Leal. This is nothing but busywork.

“In the meantime,” Brice said, “I’m gonna look up Investigator Murphy. See what he thinks of your theories. What they did
along those lines. No sense covering the same ground twice.”

Murphy, Leal thought. That fat fuck had his shot and he blew it. But he said nothing.

“Make sure the whole team makes it tonight,” Brice said. “No exceptions.”

“We got it, boss,” Ryan said, standing.

In the hallway Leal and Ryan exchanged looks.

“Man, I thought he was gonna lose it there for a minute,” Ryan said.

“Nah,” said Leal, “you gotta
have
it in order to lose it.”

“Well, he’s under a lot of pressure,” Ryan said slowly. He fumbled for his pack of cigarettes.

“Shit, man, we all are.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, squinting. “But I happen to know that he’s having some personal problems.”

Leal looked at him. Ryan shrugged.

“Brice sort of opened up to me the other day,” he said. “I guess his kid Max is causing him all kinds of grief. Has some kind
of a learning disability or something. Messed up big time in school, now he’s dropped out totally.”

Leal frowned. Sometimes it was better not to say anything. He wished he’d remembered that earlier.

“Of course,” Ryan grinned, popping the unlit cigarette between his lips, “going through life with a name like Maxwell Brice
can’t be a picnic, no matter how you cut it.”

Neither can having an asshole for an old man, Leal thought.

Back at the office, Hart and Smith reacted predictably to the change in plans.

“Damn,” Smith said. “That’s gonna throw a big wrench in my Lamaze class tonight.”

“And I was hoping to get a workout in,” Hart said.

“Hey, kids,” Ryan said, grinning and fishing out a cigarette. “I’m just the fucking messenger.” He stuck the cigarette between
his lips. “Tell you guys what. Let’s all do what we gotta do and knock off after lunch. That way we can all be back here tonight
refreshed. Sound like a plan?”

“Not a good one,” Leal said. “If we keep spinning our wheels, we’ll never get this thing solved.”

Ryan flicked his lighter and drew on the cigarette.

“Don’t I know it,” he said. “So maybe we can bring that out to the sheriff tonight. It’s his ass on the line in the election,
not ours.”

Leal could imagine who the “we” would be, if they got the chance to talk at all. Probably that asshole Brice will be the only
one saying anything, he thought He noticed Hart recoiling from the smoke and asked, “You ready?”

As they started down the hallway, Leal heard someone call to them. He turned and saw Joe Smith jogging toward them.

“Sarge,” Smith said, “I just wanted to tell you I talked to Miriam Walker’s doctor Friday.”

Leal raised his eyebrows.

“He said he wouldn’t release anything without a subpoena,” Smith continued. “Figured you should know, since you’re going to
talk to the state’s attorney.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I did it on my own time. Thought it was an angle we should check
out.”

“Good thinking, Joe. Thanks,” Leal said. He was sensing something about this man. A simmering anger just under the surface.

“So what else you want me to do?” Smith asked.

“Well,” Leal said. “Brice wants—”

“Not Brice, Sarge,” Smith said. “Or Ryan, either. You’re the one I respect.”

Leal smiled slightly.

“Look, Sarge, I know the story on Brice, and Ryan, too. And I talked to Johnny DeWayne about you. I know you’re straight.”

“Thanks, Joe,” Leal said. He thought for a minute and took out his notebook. “Tell you what. Call this person and mention
that you’re working with me on an investigation.” He wrote down the information and handed it to Smith. “She works for National
Credit. I used to use her sometimes when I was in MEG. Ask if she’ll run a credit check on Martin Walker for us. On the sly,
so we don’t get in trouble with the privacy act.”

Smith grinned and nodded.

“And see what you can find out about this Lunge Hill Corporation,” Leal said. “Maybe check the Hall of Records if you have
time.”

“Will do, Sarge. And I’ll have plenty of time. Ryan will probably be delighted to get rid of me. You know how he feels about
my kind of people.”

They watched him walk away, and Hart said, “You also know what they say about disregarding the coach’s instructions in the
huddle, right?”

“When the coach is an idiot, sometimes you have to call an audible if you want to win the game,” he said, pulling out the
car keys. “Come on.”

“Aren’t we going to walk? It’s only across the lot.”

Leal smiled. “Brice didn’t say which state’s attorney he wanted me to ask. I got somebody special in mind.”