A Winsome Murder (17 page)

“Sex trade?” Coose asked. “Baratov comes up clean on that end. His girls are all volunteers.”

“Word on the street,” Willie said, “is that Fenyana was trafficked. She was brought over from—I don't know, something Baltic. I forget the name of the place.”

“Whatever,” Mangan said. “What do you have on her?”

“She was a kid when they took her. She paid her way out though. Almost never happens, but she did. Then she freelanced awhile, doing the same thing, you know, the computer escort thing, till it got dicey. She got beat up a few times. Two trips to Cook County. Decided she needed protection, and that's how she got hooked up with Baratov.”

“If Fenyana had protection from Baratov,” Coose asked, “why is she on the run?”

Nobody answered.

“All right, what about her apartment?”

“We got the warrant,” Palmer said. “You're good to go.”

“And where's Eagan?” Mangan asked. “He find anything on the tapes from the Nite Cap?”

“I don't know.” Willie checked a few more notes. “What else? … Mara Davies's boyfriend comes up clean. He never left the bar. Plenty of witnesses. She never came back from having a cigarette, so he and her friends went looking for her. They were together all night. That's all I got.”

“All right.” Mangan said. “See what Eagan's doing with those tapes.”

“I'm starving,” Coose said.

“We'll eat after we search this apartment.”

“Why don't we eat first?”

“Why don't you—” Mangan was too tired to argue. “Fine,” he said, “where do you want to go?”

T
he narrow hallway, barely lit, was littered with food wrappers, plastic pop bottles, beer cans, and the occasional hypodermic needle. The moist walls, moss green and peeling, were streaked brown with slim rivulets of rust.

“Police!” Coose yelled, banging on the door. “Open up!”

Nothing.

“Police!” Coose said, banging again. “We have a warrant! Open up!”

Mangan motioned to the landlord, a crusty gnome of a man who'd been bitching and moaning since they'd arrived.

“You see?” he said, brandishing his key. “You think I'm lying? I told you, didn't I? I said she's not here. Nobody believes me when I—”

“All right, all right,” Mangan said. “Just open it up.”

The man kept mumbling as he unlocked the apartment door. “If she's not coming back, I want her stuff out.”

Mangan turned to a uniformed officer with him. “Would you mind getting this asshole out of here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?” the landlord said to Mangan. “What did I do?”

“Please, sir,” the officer said, “just step away.”

Mangan and Coose entered the apartment carefully. It was empty. They holstered their weapons and moved about the room. A small apartment, one bedroom, the kitchen an extension of the living room. Mangan had expected it to be dark and filthy inside, but to his surprise it was clean and white. Mostly white, actually. The woodwork, ceiling and walls, all painted the same color.

Mangan took a quick glance around and followed Coose into the bedroom. Coose searched the closet, which was mostly empty except for a few blouses on hangers. The walls were bare but for a large mirror across from the end of the bed and a red picture frame on another wall, framing nothing, just a frame. The bed, small and blue pillowed, a nightstand next to it, its drawer empty, a snow globe on top of it. Mangan leaned in and took a closer look at the globe. A winter scene: snowman, penguin.

“Two different sizes of clothes,” Coose said from the closet. He rummaged around the floor. “Shoes too.” He held up a small black combat boot in one hand, and a much larger-sized high-heeled shoe in the other. “Ellison girl was small, right?”

“Yes,” Mangan said.

They searched the rest of the room, which looked as if it had been ransacked already, and found nothing of great interest. “She got out in a hurry,” Mangan said, opening the dresser drawers, empty mostly except for what he assumed were Deborah Ellison's clothes. A shoebox filled with assorted condoms was on top of the dresser.

The living room was spare: a couch and coffee table, a small TV, and one shelf on the wall. On the shelf was a butterfly figurine, a scented candle, and a matryoshka—one of those wooden Russian dolls that have smaller and smaller dolls inside the biggest one. Two ashtrays on the coffee table were stuffed full with cigarette butts.

From under the couch, Coose pulled a Junior Scrabble board, a Chicago White Pages, and a photo album. The album was a large binder, the cover of which looked as if someone had hand colored it blue with crayons. Across it, in large black letters was written “Deb's Mems.” Coose tossed the album on the coffee table.

Mangan sat and opened it.

On the inside cover, written in a wobbly cursive: “This is the property of Deborah Anne Ellison of Winsome Bay, Wisconsin. If found please return.” There were no photographs on the first page. On the second page were a series of photos of the two young women: Fenyana, long haired, dark and tall, and Deborah Ellison, alabaster skinned and slight. In one photo Deborah wore a black T-shirt, the fabric sliced through in places so that you saw mostly skin through it and a lacy bra. Mangan could make out tattoos starting about midthigh, just visible beneath her short black skirt. She looked happy in the picture, smiling ridiculously, as if she'd just said or done something outrageous. Fenyana was at her side, smiling too, not quite as wildly. The next page had similar photos of them around the Chicago area in bars, night spots, restaurants, down by Navy Pier.

The next page had only one photo on it, a five-by-seven of Deborah with another young girl. They couldn't have been more than sixteen, seventeen, Mangan thought. The photograph had been torn into pieces and taped back together. This was a different Deborah, calm and clear eyed, looking much the way any Midwest high school girl might look, wearing what appeared to be some kind of a sports uniform. The other girl wore one too. They were posing for the picture in a gymnasium, in front of a volleyball net, their arms flopped over each other's shoulders goofily, smiling. Under the photo, handwritten in blue ink, was “M. B. & D. E. 4-Ever.”

“The Becker girl,” Mangan said to Coose. “Melissa Becker. Wesley Faber told us about her. The girl Deborah Ellison had a relationship with.”

Coose nodded and Mangan turned the page. There was an envelope with a few more photos in it. They were of Deborah and a different woman. One photo was of the backs of the two of them, the woman quite a bit taller than Deborah. It was night. They were outside on a street, facing a bar, and they were both pointing to a neon sign that read the Wicked Cherry. Mangan knew the place, a gay dance club over on West Belmont. Two years ago Internal Affairs had set up an operation there and nailed three dirty cops who were on the payroll. It had been a hot spot for dealing meth and heroin. The city had cracked down on the club after a rash of heroin deaths from bad batches of the stuff.

Another photo was of Deborah Ellison and the same woman leaning against a building. Their arms around each other. From what Mangan could see the woman was attractive. She had shoulder-length blond hair and was tall. He couldn't see her face very well, but something about her looked familiar. He fanned out the photos till he found one where he could see the woman more clearly.

“Holy shit,” he said, picking up the picture. “That's Michele Schaefer.” He handed it to Coose. “It's Schaefer, the cop from Winsome Bay.”

Coose was silent.

Mangan studied the photo a little longer. “You think they were a couple?” he asked.

“If they were, why didn't she tell us? Why wouldn't she offer that up?”

“And what's she doing at the Wicked Cherry? Not a smart place for a cop to be.”

“Why, you think she's dirty?”

“Anyone can be dirty.” Mangan looked through some of the other photos. “You think Schaefer knew about this other woman, Fenyana? Were Ellison and Schaefer just a onetime thing? A couple of small-town girls out in the city for a night. Or did they have a relationship? They break up, and then Deborah Ellison moves in with this Fenyana girl?”

“Where you going with this? Jealous cop murders ex-girlfriend?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“It would work for the Ellison murder, maybe, but what about the others?”

“I don't know. People snap.”

“Schaefer didn't strike me as a psychopath.”

“They never do.” Mangan put the photo of Schaefer and Ellison in his jacket pocket. “We need to have us a little talk with Ms. Schaefer. Looks like we're heading back to Wisconsin.” He flipped the photo album closed. “Let's finish up here and get going. I'll get the kitchen, you take the bathroom.”

“Why do I get the bathroom?”

“What's the difference?”

“I'll take the kitchen.”

Mangan searched the bathroom. The medicine chest was pretty much cleaned out. He looked in the garbage can beneath the sink. Nothing—a few tampon wrappers, dental floss. The shower curtain, closed, was lilac colored with tropical fish on it. He smacked it open. Something was in the tub covered by a large green fabric. Shit, Mangan thought, palming his Glock and backing away out of habit. He thumbed off the safety and cautiously stepped in again. He pulled off the green cloth.

A birdcage was beneath it. In it, a small, sickly looking bird struggling to hold onto its perch, a canary or something, greenish. Parakeet? It had barely fluttered when Mangan pulled off the cover. Old rips of newspaper mixed with chalky bird shit and mincey pieces of feathers covered the bottom of the cage.

“What do you got there?” Coose asked from the doorway.

“I got a fucking bird, is what I got. It's a bird.” Mangan lifted the cage out of the tub. “What do we do with it?”

“I don't know. Give it to the landlord.”

“That asshole?”

“Then leave it.”

“Can't leave it, the thing's dying. I think it's sick.”

“Animal Control?”

“You got a number?”

“No.”

“What good are you, anyway?”

“What good are
you
? You don't have the numbers either.”

“All right, all right. We'll take it with and give it to someone. Okay?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Mangan lifted the birdcage out of the tub and carried it to the living room. Chirpless. Coose sat on the couch and spread scraps of paper over the coffee table.

“What are you doing?” Mangan asked. “C'mon, we gotta go.”

“I found some receipts,” he said, sorting through them, “in the garbage.”

“Well, don't do that now. Give 'em to Eagan or someone. Let's go”

“All right,” Coose said, gathering them up again. “I didn't know we were in a rush.”

“I don't want this thing dying on me. C'mon, let's get out of here.”

“I'm coming.”

“Take the album, I got the canary.”

H
e knew where she lived.

The next one.

He was on his way there. Driving, driving. Peaceful, for the most part, while driving. It gave him something to focus on—the steering wheel, the road—instead of always thinking on the other thing. He played with the small metal hoops that lay on the seat beside him, smooth and shiny. He put them on his fingers. They reminded him of what he needed to do.

He could see the next one's house. In his mind.

On the map, on the Internet, he'd studied it. Watched it for hours. All he'd had to do was type in her address and the computer map told him how to find her. Then he selected the little orange-man symbol in the corner of the map and dragged him over by his neck, feet flailing, and plopped him down in front of her address, and in a moment there was a picture of her house. He could see everything. Just like being there. Her lawn, the car in her driveway, the tree in front, the cyclone fence of her backyard. He could even zoom in on her front door, behind which she and her daughter and her husband were maybe having a lovely day. Or maybe they were in the backyard. Playing. Or maybe the baby was asleep, and they were on the couch, the couch that was probably right on the other side of the curtained window that the little orange man had photographed.

I'll bet they're very happy, he thought.

Have a happy day.

I am coming.

L
ooks like you keep the taxidermist pretty busy around here,” Mangan said, stepping into Wesley Faber's office. He was admiring the two mounted deer heads on the wall.

Faber, looking a bit surprised, half stood and held out his hand. “I wasn't told you were coming, Detective.”

“Just passing through,” Mangan said. “Thought I'd drop in, ask a few questions.”

“Passing through?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” Faber sat down again. “How can I help you?”

Mangan kept studying the deer heads. “My partner's across the street at the Dew Drop asking a few questions. We don't have much to go on with our case in Chicago, and, well, things keep kind of pointing back this way.” Mangan stepped behind Faber's desk, examining a series of broad-feathered tail mountings arranged on the wall. Faber swiveled around in his chair to see what he was doing.

“What are these?” Mangan asked. “Pheasant?”

“Turkey.”

“Turkey, of course, turkey. You eat them?”

“We eat everything we kill.”

“That's comforting to know.” Mangan put on his glasses and leaned in to read some of the award plaques on the wall. American Patriot Sharpshooter, Wisconsin Long Range Rifle Champion, Midwest Classic Skeet Champion, NRA Marksmanship. “Impressive,” Mangan said. “I'm glad you're on our team.” He pointed to the deer heads. “You eat them too? The deer?”

“Yes.”