The Fall (7 page)

“Why they be hearing about me?”

She wanted to tell him to get real—there was no possibility that he didn’t understand what she was saying—but that was the kind of response that made him lose his temper. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him to take it out on her. Not that he had ever really mistreated her—he’d only hit her once before, when she’d asked for it. But she was afraid and knew she had to take care with what came out of her mouth, because he could go off at any time, without warning. She took a deep calming breath. “Because,” she said, “it’s no secret in the house about you and me. Even the girls not working with us . . .”

“They better not be talking.”

“What I’m saying is we want to get out in front on that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can tell ’em, get the word out, don’t nobody be talking. We all just hang in there and say nothing, and pretty soon it all blows over and we get back in business.”

“You’re saying for now we close up shop? That ain’t happening, girl. It does, what do we do for scratch?”

“Couple of weeks is all, I’m thinking. We’d get by.”

“You’d get by, maybe. Me? What am I supposed to live on?”

“You get by, darlin’. What I’m sayin’ is the main thing, we don’t want no police thinking we had troubles with Anlya. They start thinking that . . .” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t be good. They start lookin’ at you, they see maybe you got a reason, you already on strike one . . .”

“So they ask, we tell ’em we was together the whole night.”

“Which, you know, we weren’t. What if that comes out?”

“How’s it do that?”

She shrugged. “All I’m sayin’ is layin’ low awhile can’t hurt. We don’t even want ’em lookin’ this way. You know we don’t.”

“So what
about the girls? If they go out on they own, they never come back to me, then what?”

“That won’t happen. I see to that. Plus, you take care of them, and they know it.” She reached over and put her hand over his. “It’s just better nobody’s lookin’.”

•  •  •

A
FTER
D
EVIN
J
UHLE
had gotten the call from Dismas Hardy at the Shamrock and located Eric Waverly, he’d told his inspector to report back to him that night if it turned out that the new witness had anything important to say. Or even not so important. Foolish though it might seem, Juhle wanted to make sure that this investigation, wherever it led, was going to proceed with a greater than usual sense of urgency.

Whatever that meant.

As if there weren’t always a sense of urgency about trying to identify and apprehend a suspect in a murder case. But Juhle wanted something he could point out in his defense if the criticism came up. No,
when
the criticism came up. He and his inspectors would be working around the clock if need be.

So when he finished the interview with Greg Treadway, Waverly called Juhle, as instructed. He did have something provocative to report. He hadn’t been positive until he’d gotten back to his car and dug out the framed photograph of the guy on the beach from Anlya’s room, but after he’d checked it, he was certain. “G.,” the man who’d signed his picture with the inscription “All my love,” was Greg Treadway. So there was undoubtedly a personal relationship between him and the victim.

When Waverly arrived at the lieutenant’s house, his partner was already down in Juhle’s finished basement, a comfortable low-ceilinged room with a pool table, a television, sagging shelves of paperback books, a coffee table, a leather couch, and upholstered chairs that had seen better days. Earlier, Juhle had tried to contact both partners, but Yamashiro hadn’t been reachable on his cell phone—it turned out that one of his daughters was in the school play. But now here he was.

Urgent, indeed.

Connie Juhle made sure the men were happy with their coffees, and after she closed the door behind her, Waverly started right in. “I don’t know if there’s too much real information to analyze. Okay, he knew the
woman, but he never pretended he didn’t. I didn’t pick up any sense that the guy—Treadway—was hiding anything. If anything, he seemed like he really had just found out about it. In shock, almost. And he called us, remember? He came forward on his own.”

“And yet,” Yamashiro spoke up, “Devin says he was accompanied by his lawyer.”

“
A
lawyer, but not his lawyer. She told me they’d just met, but I got the impression maybe she wouldn’t mind being his girlfriend. Dismas Hardy’s daughter.”

“Nevertheless,” Juhle said, “a lawyer. He calls us and we show up and he’s next to a lawyer.”

“I was there, guys,” Waverly said. “I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

Juhle nodded. “Good enough. We’ll try not to rush to judgment. Maybe you want to play the tape?”

“Sure.”

For most of the next hour, they finished their coffee and listened without comment. After the interview ended and Waverly had shut off the tape recorder, Juhle drew in a breath and said, “So, it wasn’t clear to me. What was Treadway’s relationship to Anlya?”

“He’s the CASA for her twin brother. So they got to know each other over the last couple of years.”

“Platonically?”

Waverly made a face. “Unknown.”

“Really?” Juhle looked over to Yamashiro. “Ken? You hear anything different?”

“When they went out, they called it a date night. They had their secret spot where they met up. He signed the picture of him ‘All my love.’ ”

“Figures of speech,” Waverly said. “He wouldn’t have used those terms if he was trying to hide anything. He was very matter-of-fact about it.”

“But the fact remains,” Juhle said, “he took this seventeen-year-old girl out for a dinner alone, just the two of them. The same one who, according to her diary, was going to tell him that she loved him. And then, as far as we know, he’s the last person to have seen her alive.”

Showing some frustration at this direction, Waverly shook his head. “Dev. That was like three hours before she went over the tunnel.”

“How do we know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I
mean, how do we know he wasn’t with her until she went over?”

“His statement is that when they finished, he left her to go shopping.”

Yamashiro asked, “He just left her in Chinatown on her own?”

“She was seventeen and wanted to go shopping. Why not?”

“Not saying it didn’t happen,” Juhle said, “but do we know what he did when he left her off?”

“He says he went home.”

Juhle prodded, “Anybody see him? Does he have a roommate?”

Waverly shook his head. “You heard everything I got, Lieutenant. He doesn’t have an alibi. Do I have to say again that this was a cooperating voluntary witness?”

“No, I got that, but I’m not sure we’re looking at what we know the same way. You want to hear my equally plausible explanation of the facts as we know them? Probably not, but here goes: We’ve got a young male in a relationship with an even younger female, taking her out on what he calls a date night. They meet at their special spot, and he takes her out to a nice sit-down dinner in Chinatown. The very second the girl’s death makes the television, he happens to be with a defense lawyer—hell, two defense lawyers.”

Waverly said, “Who let him sit in the back with me and say whatever he wanted.”

Juhle held up his hand, acknowledging the valid point: Most experienced defense attorneys were reluctant to let their clients talk much during interviews with the police. But he wasn’t finished. “Finally, for all we know, Mr. Treadway was the last person to see the victim alive. My point isn’t that I think this guy’s a slam-dunk suspect. It’s more that there are a few real reasons to think he’s simply a good citizen trying to help us out. He wouldn’t be the first guy to try that head fake. And given our time frame here, it would really piss me off if we fell for it and lost a couple of days without looking any further at Mr. Treadway. If in fact he was our guy.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Waverly said. “I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about a specific time frame. So you’re saying we’ve got one?”

“Essentially, yes,” Juhle said.

“What is it?” Yamashiro asked.

“Fast,” Juhle said.

•  •  •

A
KNOCK ON
Max’s door.

It had to be his auntie. She was the only one in the apartment with him. But he had come into his room because he didn’t think he could deal with anybody, even Juney.

How would he deal with anybody or anything ever again?

He still didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what, if anything, he was supposed to do, or feel, or think, or imagine.

Anlya was dead.

It had been only a couple of hours since they’d found out, but he didn’t feel anything like the same person he’d been up until they’d gotten the news, Sharla calling Juney in hysterics right in the middle of supper. He’d sat there, getting the gist from Juney’s side of the conversation, the meat loaf and gravy congealing on his plate, tears just flowing, then stopping, then flowing again, without any sound, with no passage of time. He didn’t know he was crying, or when he stopped, or when he started again.

He looked up. Juney had gone off somewhere. She knew him enough to let him be. Nothing she could say would make any difference, and she knew that, so said nothing.

After a block of empty time, he somehow made his way the few steps from the kitchen to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Over on his desk, there was Anlya’s school picture in the frame he’d bought for it only a few weeks ago, she wearing that big heart-warming smile. Turning the picture facedown, he crossed back over the room, turned out the light, sat on his bed, and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders.

When the knock came, he was lying down, the comforter pulled up over him, so he must have gotten that way somehow, but he had no memory of it.

Another knock. “Max.” She turned the knob and let in a sliver of the hallway’s light.

He heard Greg’s voice, a whisper. “It’s all right, Juney. I’ll come back later.”

Max sat up. “No,” he said, “it’s all right. Just a second.” He stood up and walked out into the hall.

Greg stood in the doorway to the kitchen, arms at his sides, his face drawn and slack. His head moved back and forth almost imperceptibly. Like Juney, Greg knew enough not to try to say anything when there was nothing to be said.

Max walked up and put his arms around his advocate. In Greg’s tight embrace, for the first time since he’d gotten the news, he let a sob escape.

A
T A LITTLE
after ten
A.M.,
Yamashiro and Waverly started where Bush Street met Grant Avenue, a couple of blocks from the murder scene, an intersection that, due to the ornate Gate of Chinatown archway over Grant, marked the more or less official southern boundary of Chinatown. At that time of the morning, business was getting into full swing, and most of the shop doors were open.

The inspectors had a picture of Anlya from her CPS file, and her school photo, which they’d gotten from Nellie Grange at the McAllister Street home. They had shown these to the workers in every place they walked into, and no one could say for sure whether the girl in the photographs, or any other black girl, had been in their shop on Wednesday night.

But when they got to the Imperial Palace, Fred Liu remembered the mixed-race couple perfectly. Fred was the maître d’ for the restaurant’s most busy time, which was the breakfast/brunch they were coming out of right now.

“Nights,” he said, “it’s just me and the chef, and I’m on tables. We’re all about the dim sum here, which is morning. Nights are cheap Chinese food for the tourists—Kung Pao shrimp, hot and sour soup, General Tso’s chicken, chop suey—and we are so slow, usually, it’s almost not worth keeping the place open. But we’re not open, we make no money at all, right?”

“You remember this couple?” Waverly asked.

“Hard to miss ’em,” Liu said. “They were about the only customers. Plus, especially at the end, they were squabbling something fierce.”

“Squabbling?” Yamashiro asked.

Liu nodded. “Fighting. Quietly, you know, intense. But you could tell.
They were not happy. At the end, she was crying, then threw down her napkin and got up so fast she knocked her chair over and left it.”

The inspectors looked at each other. “You mean left the chair on the floor?” Waverly asked.

“Yes. I came and set it back up.”

“Did she come back?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, back to the table.”

“No. The man, he paid and said he was sorry about the scene. His girlfriend was upset.”

“He called her his girlfriend?” Yamashiro asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Fred Liu looked at Waverly, squinted as though thinking hard, remembering. “Maybe he just said, ‘She was upset.’ And I said something like ‘Girlfriends,’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

“But,” Yamashiro asked, “you had the impression that they were a couple? A romantic couple?”

Liu shrugged. “Well, they were holding hands, at least before they started fighting.”

“And she never came back after she knocked over the chair?” Waverly asked.

“No.”

“For sure?”

“This time for sure. He paid the check, cash, and then left on his own.”

“Thank you,” Yamashiro said. “You’ve been a big help.” He turned and let Waverly fall in beside him. He held up his tape recorder, which, with Mr. Liu’s permission, had captured the entire interview. “Got him,” he said.

•  •  •

A
T 1:07 BY
his desk clock, the intercom buzzed on Dismas Hardy’s desk.

The only person who ever used the intercom was his secretary/receptionist, Phyllis. Hardy always purposefully paused for a second or two before he punched the “reply” button; this afternoon he asked himself for the millionth time why he even had a receptionist. Surely he could pick up his own telephone when it rang, or open his office door when a client
arrived. But the role of Phyllis and her place in the organization’s culture had been set in stone long before by David Freeman, the firm’s progenitor. That crucial role was controlling access to the managing partner, in this case Hardy, either by telephone or in person.