The Dead Caller from Chicago (15 page)

I recognized the woman's voice.

Robinson jumped up and hurried out of his office to meet her.

“You've got to stay on top of those bastards…” The woman's voice dropped away. Robinson must have told her someone was in his office.

A minute later, the outer door opened and closed again, and Robinson came back, carrying a topcoat. “I need to leave.”

“J. J. Derbil?” I asked, getting up.

“Smart as hell, or at least thinks she is. She's ten times more dangerous than her fool brother.”

I stopped us at the hall door to throw down a wild card. “I hear there are problems with that new McMansion.”

His face went pale. “We're not used to new construction, is all.” He led me through the empty office to open the outer door. “I think you can forget Snark Evans. Besides…”

“Besides?” I asked, stepping into the hall.

“Now that Tebbins is gone, I don't know who's left besides me who would even know about him,” he said, “except…”

“Leo,” I said, walking toward the stairs.

 

Twenty-three

Robinson beat it down the hall ahead of me. I went into the zoning office, smiling.

An attractive blond woman, a bit younger than me, turned from some papers on the visitors' side of the counter.

Her hands were trembling. “May I help you?” she asked.

I recognized the voice. Again.

“J. J. Derbil?” I asked. “Elvis's sister?”

“I tell people we've got different genes, Elvis and me,” she said squeezing one of the papers in front of her. Apparently I'd not completely masked my surprise.

“You must have gone to private schools, away from Rivertown.”

“Finishing up at Harvard, undergrad and MBA. What do you want?”

“I want to talk about a building.”

She took a deep breath. The trembling had stopped. “Dek Elstrom?”

“Yes.”

“Make an appointment,” she said, moving around the counter to her office.

“I'm curious about that big house that's going—”

That was as far as I got. She went in her office and slammed the door.

Bingo, bango, bongo; I'd mentioned the new house to Tebbins, Robinson, and now J. J. Derbil. Each time, I'd set a head to bobbling.

I went up the stairs and out into a world that felt even more tense, tired, and unsure. The temperature was around freezing, not quite above, not quite below. The sky was gray and vague and dribbling big flakes of snow mixed with tight drops of rain. Three men were dead—Tebbins, Arnie Pine, and the guy Leo shot—people were jittering about a house, and nobody seemed sure of anything.

I drove to Leo's block, hoping for good news of the flowing concrete variety. For an instant, I saw it. The wood forms had been lowered into the hole and set up on top of the footings, ready to make the basement walls. A floor could come then, to cover the man I'd buried under too little gravel.

Except there was a crowd. A hundred people milled about in the snow and the dirt and the muck that wasn't quite either. Some of them belonged there, construction men in thick jeans and canvas coats and high rubber boots who should have been down in the hole, readying the foundation for a pour, instead of standing around, spitting and smoking and stomping their feet to keep warm.

It was the others that dried my throat. Women in sensible long dark wool, housewives from the neighborhood, had been drawn from their houses and now stood talking in tight clusters, shifting uneasily.

They were all looking at the same thing. Two Rivertown lieutenants in tan trench coats, their gin-joint complexions reddened even further by the cold, were stretching yellow police tape across the front steps of the vacant bungalow.

I drove down to Leo's, parked, and reached behind the passenger's seat for my peacoat. Pulling it out, I saw faint smears of blood and mud on the dark wool that I hadn't gotten out earlier. I stuffed it back behind the seat, pulled up the collar of my blazer, and walked back to the crowd. I told myself I looked normal, mildly curious, and not at all like someone who'd buried a body less than fifty feet from the cops pulling the yellow tape.

Jenny was on the sidewalk, talking to a woman. Robinson was there as well, twenty feet behind her, talking to a man in a dress coat and a hard hat.

Jenny noticed me coming up. She shot a quizzical look at my blazer. I shrugged like it was a balmy day in May. She said something to the woman and came over.

“Where's your peacoat? You'll catch your death.”

“I've built up a defense, living in the turret. What's going on?”

“I just got here. Any word on Leo?” she asked, by way of not answering.

“I just talked to him. I was alarmed over nothing.”

“Where was he?”

“What's the ruckus here?” I asked in as even a tone as I could manage.

“See those steps?”

“Police tape is always hard to miss.”

“Look harder.”

I did. “I see concrete steps.”

“See those little stains on the edges of them, halfway down? Rusty red?”

I saw. Now it was like they were outlined in neon, bright and red even in the gray of the day. I shook my head like I was confused.

“I see nothing.”

“Bloodstains, maybe,” she said, watching my eyes.

“I suppose, or paint.”

“That woman I was just talking to? About three o'clock this morning, her husband came out to go to work. He thought he heard something coming from the new construction. He dismissed it as being the wind; no one's out in this neighborhood that time of morning. He drove to work, thought nothing more of it until he got home. Then he looked across the street, and in the daylight, he could see those little rusty red stains. He crossed over for a better look. Then he called the police to tell them he'd just spotted what might be blood.”

“Rivertown cops confirmed that?”

“They don't have the expertise, as you well know. The sheriff's crime scene team is inside the bungalow now, looking for other evidence.”

“Unusual, for Rivertown cops to call in the sheriff,” I said. “They like to control everything here.”

“As I told you, everyone's nervous since Tebbins got shot.”

“As well as before,” I said. “They're thinking those stains on the steps relate to Tebbins?”

“I don't know what they're thinking.”

“One thing after another seems to shut down that construction.”

“Unexplained blood is good reason to shut everything down. Where was Leo?”

“Ill.”

“Want to know what I learned about Edwin G. Evans, of Center Bridge, Illinois?”

“Sure.”

“Where was Leo?”

“Just ill. What did you learn about Snark Evans?”

“Not a thing,” she said. “Now tell me about Leo. Head trauma?”

“What?” I said it too sharply; she'd hit too close to home.

She turned to look at the cops guarding the bloodstained steps, a small smile on her face. She'd sensed the beginnings of victory.

“How ill?” she asked, after a minute.

“They're at a relative's.”

“That's why his mother is gone, too?”

“He's her life's work.”

She sighed. “I'm going to check out those steps.”

She walked toward the house, and I followed her, hanging back. Suddenly I was desperate for a glance into the hole next door, to be sure there was no trace of the dead man's belly poking out of the gravel.

However smooth the snow had been last night, whatever the drag marks and blood smears I'd left, all of it was now obliterated. The bungalow's front yard had been stomped over by dozens of babushkas. For the first time in my years in Rivertown, I was grateful for the incompetence of its police.

I shot a quick look into the excavation. Nobody's belly showed through the gravel between the foundation forms. In fact, the stones reflected no disturbance at all, almost as though they'd been freshly raked that morning. I'd gotten lucky. Everything was ready to pour the walls and, after that, the top of the dead man's grave.

A crime scene technician came out of the bungalow holding two clear plastic bags. Inside one was a gun. Inside the other were small chunks of plaster, stained bloodred.

“Where was the gun?” Jenny shouted out.

The crime scene technician didn't even glance at her as he came down the stairs.

She nudged closer to one of the Rivertown lieutenants. He smiled. Most people did when they recognized Jennifer Gale. Males smiled the most widely.

She began questioning him. He nodded, still smiling. She pointed up the stairs. He shook his head. She touched his sleeve. He smiled more broadly.

Smoke came then, thick, black, and noxious, accompanied by the loud clatter of pistons slapping too loosely at cylinder walls. Like everyone else, I turned at the racket, but I'd already recognized the sound of Benny Fittle's ancient orange Ford Maverick. He was making his morning rounds, looking to meet his ticket quota, and had gotten blocked by the people standing in the street. Never one to be constrained by social grace, he'd begun revving his engine to frighten the people away. It worked. People hurried to the curb, convinced they were fleeing an impending hailstorm of ball bearings. Benny grinned, displaying a mouth chock full of Boston crème, and began to drive on.

He stopped suddenly, this time of his own accord. Leaving his engine running, he got out with his pad of tickets and walked up to the crime scene technician, who was closing his trunk lid on the evidence he'd collected. Benny assumed his official stand-up writing position, squinting at the crime scene technician's rear license plate. A conversation between them began, or rather half of one did. The technician was doing all the talking. Benny simply shook his head, kept chewing, and kept writing. The technician got angrier. He pointed to the county sheriff's seal on the door of his car.

Benny was well known for maintaining his focus. He kept shaking his head, chewing, and writing.

One of the Rivertown lieutenants guarding the police tape had noticed and came over to put his arm on Benny's shoulder. Benny shook his head and wrote on.

The lieutenant smiled at the furious crime scene technician. No matter, he seemed to be signaling.

Benny left the lieutenant and went to place the ticket under the windshield wiper of the county car. The crime scene tech's fists were clenched, but his feet were not. He started toward Benny. The lieutenant stepped in front to block him until Benny had gotten back in his Maverick, sent up a loud cloud, and driven away. The lieutenant took the ticket from the windshield, put it in his pocket, and walked the evidence technician back to the vacant bungalow. Once again, things would be fixed in Rivertown.

Fear began prickling along my scalp. I hadn't considered that Benny would be writing tickets on the side streets.

Jenny came back. “Those two evidence bags? Nine-millimeter automatic. Serial numbers ground off. And three bullets, with blood spatter, embedded in plaster.”

The slugs would be found to match Leo's gun, if I didn't get rid of it. Certainly they'd be tied to the dead man's blood DNA, if it were on file.

Benny turned at the corner past Leo's house. “And no corpse,” I said.

“Why would you say that?”

I'd said it because I'd been stupid, talking to myself out loud. My mind was elsewhere, riding in a smoking orange Maverick.

“I just assumed the blood on the stairs means the wounded man left the house,” I said.

She laughed. “I suppose that's a fine assumption, but I do believe there's something else on your mind. Want to know what else is on mine?”

“Sure.”

“Let's suppose someone was driving down the street, a good three hours before the man from the house across the street came out to go to work. Let's also suppose that the person driving down the street was a reporter, someone who prided herself on having an acute sense of observation.”

I turned to watch the lieutenants guarding the front steps, because it seemed the safest place to park my eyes.

“Let's also suppose that this reporter saw someone on the sidewalk suddenly bend down to tie his shoe,” she went on.

“Sounds newsworthy, someone tightening loose laces.”

“Ultimately, I'll find out, you know.”

I told her I had to get back to the turret. She said that was fine.

As I walked down the block to the Jeep, trying to not break into a run, I was sure she was reading my mind through the back of my head.

 

Twenty-four

Benny was sure to ticket the dead man's car.

Rivertown had funny parking restrictions. There was no side-street parking, anywhere, between the hours of 9:00
A.M.
and 4:00
P.M.
, unless exempted by a special residents-only, hundred-dollar parking permit. The lizards passed off the fee grab by saying it would prevent nonlocal commuters from leaving their cars on the side streets, in order to dodge the exorbitant parking-lot fee at the train station. Residents knew better. It was a way of sucking more money into city hall. Still, so it went. Every year, residents had to shell out a hundred dollars just to leave their cars parked in front of their houses during the day.

It was bare windshields Benny Fittle was looking to ticket that morning, cars that displayed no street parking permits. That would include the dead man's automobile, since he must have parked nearby. Which was a problem, because later, maybe not for a day or two or even a week, someone from the sheriff's department would think to instruct the Rivertown coppers to keep their eyes open for an abandoned vehicle, especially if the blood DNA they'd recovered from the bungalow hadn't turned up the dead man's identity. The Rivertown cops would search through their unpaid parking tickets for any car sitting abandoned on a local street, and from that trace the name of its owner, who would be found to have disappeared. Alarms would go off.