The Assailant (11 page)

“Yeah. You know where to find him, don't you?”

“I think so.”

Hastings shrugged. “It's your county. I'd just be riding along.”

“Right,” Escobar said, smiling.

•

They went in Escobar's Ford. A white slickback, no lights on top, but all the police-car goodies inside. This included a keyboard computer extending from the dashboard, standard on most county-police vehicles. Escobar would pull things up on the screen and make calls from his cell phone, and still drive all the while. Hastings sat in the passenger seat. Within a few minutes of communicating
with the screen and dispatch on the radio, Detective Escobar decided that Roland Gent was likely to be at a certain address in North County.

Hastings said, “You think we'll need backup?”

“You don't know Roland, do you?”

“No.”

“He's a shitbird. I remember when I used to do code enforcement, we ran into him then. That was a couple of years ago.”

“Code enforcement?”

“Yeah. Metro do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, to shut down crackhouses. You go into a crackhouse, it's hard to prove a criminal case of intent to distribute. Nobody knows anything. Lot of these guys, they're living in grandma's house. She comes from a different generation. A better one. Now, grandpa's dead and buried, and grandma has all these grandkids and great-grandkids, teenagers without jobs or education, and they're all living in the house. Not just them, but their friends.” Escobar shrugged. It was a common dilemma. He said, “Violent, fucked up, trouble. Grandma, there's not much she can do about it. She can't control them. The neighbors, they want these places shut down. So, code enforcement teams up with county police and we'd go in and say,
Ma'am, you've got about a dozen beds or mattresses in your basement
.
That's too many people. A violation of county ordinance
. We threaten to shut down the house.”

“Condemn it,” Hastings said.

“Yeah, but it never goes that far. Once grandma gets notice of the violation, she moves the turds out. In fact, she's
relieved
we're doing it.”

“Right,” Hastings said.

“ 'Cause now she can blame the police for pushing them out. She can tell 'em,
Look, it's not my fault
.
It's the police
. And then they move out and she's relieved and the neighbors are relieved. It's a very effective program.”

“And the guys go set up a crackhouse somewhere else.”

Escobar shrugged again. “Yeah. Probably. But not in that neighborhood. You ever work narcotics?”

“No.”

“It's a people-moving business. You're not going to end the war on drugs, you just need to
move
it. And people want it moved, George. They want it away from them. And it's not just the white communities that feel that way.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Anyway,” Escobar said, “I remember we went to one house, and we were just talking to the owner and there's really not any conflict about it. She lets us in to examine the home and everything's going fine, and then we come out and there were about a dozen people on the front lawn. Oh, shit. What the fuck is this about? And there's Roland Gent at the front of the pack. He's in front of his boys now, and he wants to show off. Jack off. He was pointing to us, saying, ‘What's your name? What's your badge number?' That sort of shit. And we told him he needed to step away.”

“Did he?”

“Oh yeah. He was just a big mouth.”

“Anything bad happen?”

“No. We faced him and the rest of them backed off.”

“Did you call for backup?”

“No,” Escobar said. “We probably should have, though.”

•

Escobar called for a backup this time, and it got there at about the same time they did. Two uniformed county deputies in a radio car. Escobar introduced them to the homicide detective from St. Louis metro. They agreed that the uniformed patrol officers would do a perimeter search of the front and back of the premises but remain outside for the time being.

The house was a one-story ranch style with a two-car garage. One of the patrol officers came from the backyard and gave the detectives a signal, and Escobar knocked on the front door.

A girl of an uncertain age opened it. Maybe fourteen, but no more than seventeen.

“Yeah?”

Escobar said, “County police, miss. We're here to see Roland.”

“He ain't here.”

“No?” Escobar said. He stepped forward. “Can I see?” He made it sound like a question.

The girl stepped back and opened the door. And then they were in.

A black man of about thirty was sitting on a couch in the next
room. He was in the glare of a big-screen television. There was another girl sitting next to him. When she saw the policemen, she got off the couch and moved to the kitchen.

Roland Gent sighed. “Man,” he said. “Ain't you got no respect for privacy?”

“Sorry, Roland,” Escobar said. “We've got some bad news for you.”

He gave them his penitentiary stare. “What?”

“One of your girls was killed last night.”

“Who?”

“Adele Sayers.”

After a moment, he said, “Estelle?”

“Yeah.”

“You shitting me?”

“No. She's dead, Roland.” Escobar's expression hardened then. “Why don't you stand up.”

Roland Gent did so. And Hastings thought it was funny, the policeman's reaction. Escobar didn't think much of Roland Gent, but he wanted the man to show respect for a lady.

Roland said, “What happened?”

“Don't you know?”

“Man, I didn't—you know I didn't.”

“You didn't what?”

“I didn't kill her. I don't—I didn't . . . What happened? Where is she?”

Escobar said, “Where were you last night? Where have you been?”

“I was out. I mean
out.”

“Where?”

“At a club. North Side. Man, you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, I haven't even seen Estelle in, like, two months. I swear.”

“Yeah?”

“She wanted to go her own way. And that was fine with me.”

“Fine with you? You let your ladies quit on you?”

“Man, they want to go, they go.”

Escobar said, “We think she was killed by someone she knew.”

“That may be so. But it ain't me. I hear she joined some Internet service. I mean, she's working on her own, for all I know.”

“What is it?”

“Huh?”

“The Internet service,” Escobar said. “What's the name?”

“I don't know.”

Escobar sighed. “Roland, I think you're lying.”

Roland Gent frowned, shifted his body, and said, “You arresting me, or what? I'm thinking you're not. Not because I didn't do nothing, which I didn't, but because you know you don't have enough to hang it on me.”

Escobar said, “What if I told you we found your prints inside her car?”

Roland Gent smiled. “I'd say you're blowing smoke up my ass. And now I know it.” He seemed to feel better now, like a card-player who's just seen his opponent's tell. Roland said, “She drive a Camaro or TransAm, right? Right? I know because I remember when she got it. And I know I've never been in it. What's the game here, huh? Dead white girl and you want to hang it on a black man, right? Put it on the television so people feel better? Times change, huh. Can't beat a nigger into confessing a crime he didn't commit, so you try to con him instead.”

“Oh, shit,” Escobar said. Like,
Here we go
.

And Roland Gent said, “You know Mr. Jeffrey Coyle, don't you? My lawyer? Because I'm nice, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll call him and see if he thinks it's a good idea for us to sit down and talk to you. He says it is, I'll do it. At his office. Not yours. Until then, Detective, I got nothing left to say to you.”

•

They left while Roland was dialing his lawyer's number. He had had something of a victory over them and they knew it. To hang around and negotiate a meeting time with Jeffrey Coyle on Roland's telephone would have cost them too much face, and they knew that, too.

In the car, Escobar said, “Do you know Jeff Coyle?”

“I know who he is, but I never had a case against him.”

“I have. He cross-examined me on a drug case. He cut me up
pretty good. Thing about him is, he's a pretty nice guy. Doesn't get mean when he questions you, but when he's finished, he's made you look like an idiot. Those are the worst ones.”

“Will he agree to meet with us?”

“He might. I've done it before with him,” Escobar said. “He'll agree to an interview if he's got a guy who he thinks is clean.”

“Maybe,” Hastings said. “And maybe he just wants to point you down a different path. A wrong one.”

“Yeah, maybe. But Coyle's not stupid. He knows that can get you arrested by itself. You know, like Martha Stewart. Remember that case last year, with the school principal jacking off in the hall?”

“Oh, yeah. Mayer?”

“Yeah. Robert Mayer. A high-school principal.”

“He wasn't Coyle's client, though.”

“He was, actually. But not at first. Here's what happened. The principal gets caught, and the school board, superintendent—they wanted to keep a lid on it, keep it out of the papers. I mean, they had him. They had three students, two or three school-staff people, six witnesses at least, and they were solid. All that, but they wanted to downplay it. So the DA and the school district went to Principal Mayer and said,
Hey, just resign and disappear and don't ever work in a school again, and we won't file charges against you.”

“They agree to that?”

“We
thought
they did. But at that time Mayer was represented by an attorney named Garland Young, and he fucked it all up. Mayer resigns, and
after
that, Garland Young calls a press
conference, invites all the local media, and they blast the district attorney, the school board,
and
the witnesses. They said it was a conspiracy, a frame-up, all sorts of nonsense. After that, the DA had no choice but to file charges. After that, someone must have gotten to Mayer and told him his lawyer was just hurting him. Or maybe someone who was paying the lawyer—someone other than Mayer—threatened to cut off the money. So Mayer fired Garland Young and hired Jeff Coyle.”

“Coyle didn't walk him, did he?”

“No, he couldn't get him acquitted. Too much damage done by then. But I think the guy only got about six months, which was about three years less than the DA wanted hung on him. Coyle's smart. He knows when to use publicity, when not to.”

“Does that mean he'll cooperate with us?”

“He won't try to help us,” Escobar said. “But he'll cooperate with us if he thinks it'll help his client. There's a difference.”

“Right.”

They arrived back at the Thunderbird, and before Hastings could open the door, Escobar turned to him and said, “You think I fucked up back there, suggesting to Roland we had his prints in the car?”

“No. It was a bluff, and it didn't work. Shows he's not guilty. Or maybe it shows he's overconfident and he's lying. We'll know more later.”

By six o'clock that evening, Mickey Crawford had been cleared. There was no evidence that he had had any physical contact with Adele Sayers the night she was murdered. He had voluntarily submitted blood samples and had passed a series of polygraph examinations. The only stress he had shown was over the chance that his wife might learn that he had been with another woman.

As for his whereabouts on the previous Friday night, his alibi witnesses had confirmed that he had been at work until five thirty and then had had dinner and watched television with another married couple. Both men remembered what high school football game they had seen. This they had done independently.

Murph relayed this information to Hastings, and Hastings passed it on to the chief of detectives, Ronnie Wulf.

Wulf, as expected, was disappointed.

He said to Hastings, “Well, we've cleared
two
people now. And we've got no suspects.”

“No, sir,” Hastings said.

They were in Wulf's office at the downtown headquarters. It was dark outside and there was little traffic on Market Avenue. Wulf was seated behind his desk. Hastings was standing.

He said, “Murph should have his report completed tomorrow.”

Wulf sighed. “In homicide, eight out of ten times, it's someone the victim knows. Agreed?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell, George, you can sit down. This isn't the military.”

Hastings took a seat.

Wulf said, “The question is, did this guy know them?”

“I don't know. I think he did.”

“Why?”

“They're call girls. He seems to have picked them out. He seemed to have known where they were and followed them.”

“What do you think of the pimp?”

“Roland Gent? I don't think he's the guy.”

“Why not? Intuition?”

“Not so much intuition. Adele Sayers worked for him, but the first girl didn't. There was nothing in the press about the first murder—there hasn't been time for that yet—so he wouldn't have copied it. But we're not ruling him out. County's working up a meeting with him and his attorney.”

“He lawyered up on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Say you don't get anything else out of him, do we have enough for an arrest?”

“No. The techs don't have any physical evidence that he was in Adele Sayers's car. Or with her, for that matter.”

“Okay,” Wulf said. “Well, I've been in touch with the chief.
He wants to meet with us tomorrow morning at eight thirty. I don't know the details, but I suspect he's going to want to put together a task force along with county on this. It'll mean putting more detectives from metro on it, hopefully another half dozen or so, along with whatever county comes up with.”