A Winsome Murder (18 page)

“You butcher them yourself ? The deer?”

“How can I help you, Detective? You said you had some questions.”

“Yes, I do.” Mangan walked from behind the desk and sat in a chair opposite Faber. “You know, I've always liked the outdoors, hunting, fishing, but being a city kid I never got out much—from the city, I mean. I watched nature things on TV, though. I still do.”

“Detective, I don't mean to be rude, but—”

“Oh, sorry. You're busy. I'll get out of here in a minute.”

Faber smiled. “That's okay.”

“Thank you,” Mangan said, taking out the photos of Deborah Ellison and Michele Schaefer. He placed them on the desk.

Faber's Midwest smile went the way of the glaciers. After a chilly moment, he asked, “Where did you get these?”

“Did you know these women were in a relationship?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Did you know that Officer Schaefer had a relationship with the murder victim?”

“Yes.” Faber picked up the picture. “Where was this taken?”

“Chicago.”

He placed it back on the desk and pushed it toward Mangan. “Schaefer's a good cop.”

“I'm not asking that, but I'd like to know why you didn't share this information?”

“I didn't find it pertinent.”

“There's that word again—what is this? Of course it's pertinent.”

“To
my
investigation, yes. I didn't think you needed to know. We followed up on it.”

“Who did?
You
did? You've got you and Schaefer here. Is she investigating herself ?”

“We have three other officers, and the City of Madison is helping out. We've asked all the questions we need to ask her, and I'm satisfied that she—”

“Have you ruled her out as a suspect?”

“She never was a suspect.”

“Everyone's a suspect till they're not.”

“Well then, she's not.”

“So you've exhausted every line of questioning with her? You've—”

“Don't tell me how to do my job, sir. This—”

“I'm not trying to—”

“I am speaking, sir!” Faber yelled, slamming his hand on the desk and standing. His face flushed instantly red. “This ain't Mayberry and I'm no goddamned Barney Fife! I've got enough things going on out here without you poking your nose in business that's no concern of yours, stirring things up that don't need stirring. And I'd appreciate it if
you'd keep your patronizing leading questions for all your educated city suspects, and let me do my job!” He sat again. Calmer now. “I will help you when I can, if it doesn't compromise my investigation. And if that's not enough for you, well, you can just march yourself on out of here.”

The door to Faber's office opened and a gangly young cop poked his head in.

“Is everything—sorry to interrupt—is everything all right, sir?”

“Yes, Dan. Thank you. Everything's fine.”

The officer backed out and closed the door. He lingered a moment, looking confused, and then walked away.

Faber stared at Mangan. “I do not appreciate your manner, Detective.”

Mangan let the silence sit a minute.

“I apologize,” he said. “You're right, bad habit of mine. I can be antagonistic, I know. I don't make a lot of friends that way, but I do learn things. Inadvertently. Like, what don't you want me
stirring
up around here? Was Schaefer's relationship with the murder victim a secret in this town?”

“What?”

“Is it a secret that Officer Schaefer is gay?”

“Schaefer? What are you talking about? She's not gay.”

Mangan pointed to the photo again. “That's a gay club in Chicago, the Wicked Cherry. Schaefer has her arm around—”

“I believe you're starting to see lesbians everywhere, Detective.” He tossed the photo back to Mangan. “A woman can have her arm around another woman, doesn't means she's gay.”

“That isn't the issue. The issue is an undisclosed relationship with a murder victim.”

“It wasn't undisclosed.” Faber opened a bottom drawer in his desk and searched through it. “I've known Michele Schaefer since she was a kid. She went to school with my daughter. I know her father. I worked with him twenty years on the force before he retired. Believe me, I questioned Michele thoroughly as soon as we started this investigation.” He pulled a large file from the drawer and dropped it on the desk. “That's her statement. She used to give Debbie rides to Chicago whenever she and her boyfriend were heading out that way. That's all. They found her hitchhiking once out on the highway, and so she started giving her rides. They'd drop her off wherever she wanted to go and sometimes
bring her back home. Schaefer knew Debbie was gay—well, the whole town knew it, and most of them made that poor girl's life hell. You don't come out in a small town like this. You do, they'll make your life miserable. It ain't fair and I don't agree with it, but it's the way things are here, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Schaefer was a friend, a good friend, trying to help out a kid that was pretty damn lost.” He tapped the thick file. “It's all in there.”

Mangan read through some of the statement.
You are deceived, for what you see is but the smallest part of humanity.
His hunch was wrong. He'd been too eager to make a connection. He looked up. “Well, I would have liked to have seen this report before.”

“Well, you might try asking next time.”

Mangan had no desire to get into a pissing contest with Faber. “Can I talk to Schaefer?”

“Sure, but she ain't here today. She's out on the farm helping her dad.”

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Not much to tell.” Faber led Mangan out of the office. They passed the young officer who had come into the room earlier. “Dan,” Faber said to him, “this is Detective Mangan, from Chicago.”

“Dan Ehrlich, sir,” the officer said, shaking Mangan's hand. “Pleased to meet you. Oh, shoot—I got, I got a message for you. Just a sec.” He ran back to his desk, rummaging through some papers. “I got it right here. The chief called, from over in Enfield.” Ehrlich found a notepad on his desk and hurriedly thumbed through it. “Here we go … uh … they didn't find any fingerprints or trace evidence in Jillian McClay's office. Didn't find a murder weapon. The carpets were clean, no impressions or staining. The gun in her office was legally registered to her father, a cop in Philadelphia. The door to door turned up nothing, and the ex-husband is arranging a flight back from Florida right now. He should get in sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks,” Mangan said.

Faber stepped in, “Thank you, Dan,” and gestured for Mangan to follow him.

Mangan jotted down some of the information Ehrlich had relayed as Faber led him out the front doors of the station and into the street.

“Right up there,” he said, showing him the way to the Schaefer farm. “Take a left and it's about ten minutes down. Can't miss it.”

“Thank you,” Mangan said, shaking Faber's hand.

“Yup.”

Mangan glanced up and down the block. “Place to eat around here?”

“Right behind you.” Faber was talking about the Dew Drop Inn, where Coose was. “Next restaurant's about thirty miles north.”

“Not a whole lot of choices around here, are there?”

“No, sir, there are not.”

M
angan grabbed the handle on the front door of the Dew Drop Inn and yanked it open. Coose was at a table talking to an older couple. Mangan nodded to him, and Coose continued talking. A few people were at the bar, some with plates of food before them, some with cans of beer, their gazes transfixed on a large TV screen hanging behind the bar.

“Hi, ya,” the bartender said to Mangan. “We met awhile back. I'm Lou.”

“Yes,” Mangan said, sitting at the bar, “I remember. Got a menu?”

“I do.” Lou grabbed one and flipped it down in front of Mangan. “Something to drink?”

“Club soda, please,” Mangan said, trying to find something on the menu that wasn't deep fried.

“Fish fry is pretty good here,” Lou said. “If you like fish.”

“I'll have a cheeseburger.”

“Fries or chips?”

“Chips.”

Mangan scanned the length of the bar. At the far end, three men were eyeing him. Late twenties, early thirties. From their dress Mangan assumed they were laborers, maybe farmers, construction. They all had beer cans and empty shot glasses in front of them.

“Hey,” Coose said, pulling up a stool next to Mangan. “How'd it go with Faber?”

“Good,” he said. “We had a misread on Schaefer. I'll tell you about it later. We're going to take a ride and talk to her. She's just down the road at her father's place. You want to eat something?”

“I already did.”

Mangan referenced the older couple Coose had been talking to. “What did you get from them?”

“Not much,” he said. “But I talked to a woman earlier.” Coose checked his notes. “Judith Meyers. She said that Deborah Ellison, before she moved away, was pretty messed up, you know, drugs, drinking, big flirt, all over the guys at the bar come closing time. This bar in particular. She wasn't very popular with the wives around town. Rumor is, she went home with a husband or two in her time. One guy in particular.”

“You got a name?”

“Leo Peterson. I guess he's big time around here—as big as you can get in a town this size. He runs a construction company. And the development where Ellison's body was found is being built by PeterSons Construction.”

The bartender put a club soda down in front of Mangan. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” Mangan said. “Hey, Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“You know Leo Peterson?”

Lou took a slight pause. “Everybody knows Leo.”

“What do you know about him and Deborah Ellison?”

Lou took a longer pause this time. He glanced down at the three locals at the end of the bar. He looked back to Mangan. “You know, Detective, a bartender's sort of like a lawyer or a priest. There's some discretion a customer can expect when they come in here. I don't talk about things that happen in here. If I did, I wouldn't have much of a business left.”

“I understand that, Lou,” Mangan said. “You're a nice guy. I could tell right away. Unfortunately, though, unlike a priest or a lawyer, a bartender is not protected by law. And obstruction of justice in a murder investigation is a pretty serious offense. I'm not going to pull that though, I'm not here to get you in any trouble. I'm just trying to help Chief Faber out with his investigation.”

Lou nodded.

“I see you've got a surveillance camera,” Mangan said, “and it looks pretty up-to-date. I imagine it's all digitized? How many years do you keep the hard drives?”

“Hey,” someone said from behind Mangan.

In the mirrored wall behind the tiered shelves of liquor bottles Mangan saw three men standing behind him. The trio from the end of
the bar. He could also see Coose, very still. Coose always got very quiet and still at times like this.

The bartender took a half step back from the bar.

Mangan felt that thing in him rise, the tingly feeling in his gut and balls. Muscles tightened, thoughts and sight focused. He turned to the three men. Two were quite big, the third, slighter, but meaner looking. Mangan had spied a baseball bat behind the bar earlier, just to the left of the cash register, but he didn't think the bartender was that kind of a guy. In the split-second thoughts firing across his synapses, Mangan assessed that, if anything happened, the bartender would stay out of it. He also knew that this was a concealed carry state and any one of these bozos might be armed.

“Gentlemen,” Mangan said. “How can I help you?”

The scrawnier one stepped forward, “You can help us by getting the fuck out of here.”

The bartender said, “Gary, don't.”

“Shut up, Lou.” The man glared at Mangan. “You're not welcome around here.”

“I'm beginning to get that impression.”

“Gary,” Lou said, “if you don't stop, I'm going to call the chief.”

“Call the goddamned chief.”

One of the bigger men made a sudden move and Coose was between him and Mangan in a flash, his barstool knocked backward.

“Whoa, whoa,” Mangan said, raising his hands. “No need for this. You've made your point, boys. We're leaving.”

“Then go on already,” Gary said, “or we'll help you out.”

“That's okay,” Mangan said, turning to Coose. “I think we're just going to go, Coose. Okay?”

One of the bigger men said, “Coose? What kind of name is that?”

Gary chimed in, “Coose like a coon.”

Mangan said, “It's Cusumano.”

“What's that? Eye-talian?” Gary said. “Well, we don't serve wetbacks in here.”

Mangan eyed Coose to see if he was okay. He was. It took more than a few insults from an IQ-less piece of trailer trash to flip Coose.

The mangy one with the big mouth said, “This is your last chance. Get the fuck out of here.”

Mangan took a step toward him. “Now, uh … Gary, isn't it?” There was no answer. “Now, Gary, it's not illegal to curse at a police officer. It's pretty stupid, but not illegal. However, threatening an officer is a very different story. So, if I were you, I might want to be careful of whatever I was thinking of saying next. If you're capable of that, I mean—of
thinking
.”

“What, are you going to arrest me?”

“Well, yes, there's a very high probability of that. Either that, or me and my partner will go old-time on you—since you guys seem to be about fifty years behind the rest of the world out here—and throw you a good beating.” Mangan turned to Coose. “This is Frank Cusumano. He's of Italian descent, by the way, not
Eye
-talian. It also might interest you to know that the term
wetback
is a racial slur used against people of Mexican descent, originating in the 1920s when Mexican laborers crossed into the United States illegally by swimming across the Rio Grande—that's the really big river between the U.S. and Mexico. So, just to support your quite bewildering ignorance, for future reference, when insulting an Italian you might want to call him a Guido, or a guinea or a dago, a goombah or greaseball—what else, Coose?” Coose didn't say anything. Mangan continued. “Oh,
wop
. That's right. That's like the best one. Wop.”