Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (27 page)

Along with Ron and Yoshi, most of
the task force members were present, judging from the fact
that all the desks were filled. People stood about in
small groups, talking quietly while waiting for Josh Bannister to
show. Based on the number of officers present on a
Saturday night, they must have been pretty excited to get
hold of Bannister. They looked like a group of people
who were eager for good news.

Ron introduced Toni and
me around to those detectives we hadn’t already met
.

“Nice job on uncovering Bannister,” one woman said.

“Thanks.”

“We
’re cautiously optimistic.” She smiled and added, “First time in
weeks we’ve even had a good lead.”

I nodded
. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

After the introductions, Toni
and I stepped to the side of the room and
found a couple seats. Then, like everyone else, we waited
. The clock seemed to drag. Seven o’clock finally came
, and as if the minute hand knew it was headed
downhill with less resistance, the clock seemed to speed up
and suddenly, seven o’clock was gone. No Josh Bannister
.
Okay,
I thought, no problem.
Not everyone sets their
clocks the same way.

But then seven fifteen passed and
now people started looking around nervously, talking quietly among themselves.

At seven thirty, it was starting to look pretty much
like we’d been stood up. I mean, Bannister could
show up at any time he wanted, but then again,
he’d
been the one to
specifically
say seven o’
clock. Where was he?

Toni leaned over and whispered in
my ear. “Surprise, surprise.”

I looked at her. “Be nice.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Ten
minutes later, Ron stood up and sighed. “Folks, that’s
enough. I hate to say it, but it’s looking
like our guy’s had a change of heart. I
asked Yoshi to check around with the precincts and the
other floors in this building just in case Bannister somehow
got confused on the address, but he’s nowhere to
be found. So Yoshi and I are going to wait
around—” he looked at his watch, “—another half hour or
so, but at this point, I guess I have to
say I’m not optimistic. And there’s no sense
in the rest of you blowing your Saturday nights, either.
That said, as you know, I was able to get
approval this morning for a round-the-clock surveillance effort
for forty-eight hours—two-man teams, two-hour shifts.
That means we each get one shift per day. We’
re going to go ahead and start that tonight at
ten o’clock. You’ve all been handed schedules showing
your shifts.” He looked around the large room. “I know
we’re all disappointed, but keep this in mind: I
wouldn’t have believed it, but the guy actually showed
up at his apartment last night around this time. There’
s no saying he won’t do it again, so
be alert.” He paused. “Anybody got any questions?”

“Yeah.” A
detective in the back of the room raised his hand. “
Lieutenant, we only just found out about this guy a
few days ago, right? Even though he didn’t show
tonight, he’s still our number-one person of interest,
am I right?”

Ron nodded. “Damn right, and that’s
a good point. Listen up, folks. This guy Bannister is
involved in this case in some kind of way, and
there’s a good chance he’s not only Judie
Lawton’s killer, but Sophie Thoms’s as well. I’
m disappointed we don’t have him yet, but I
ain’t givin’ up. Starting Monday, this task force is
going to mount a full-scale effort to find this
son of a bitch. All out. I’ll be talking
to the captain and with this new lead, I’m
pretty sure he’ll have the ammunition he needs to
keep the task force intact.” He looked over at the
picture of Bannister on the whiteboard. “I don’t care
where he’s hiding, we’re going to get him.
If he’s not the killer, I’m betting he
knows who is.”

“Lieutenant?”

A heavy-set uniformed officer had
just walked into the room.

“Yeah?”

“You’re waiting on
a guy named Bannister?”

All heads turned to the officer.

“
We sure are,” Ron said, looking around. “Is he here?”

“
No, but I just got word from a uniform in
Charlie Sector, East Precinct. He called to say that they
got a hit on your BOLO. Apparently, they just had
a jumper from a building over on Thirteenth Avenue. Preliminary
ID is a WMA named Joshua Bannister. He said to
find you and let you know.”

Yoshi looked at Ron. “
Bannister lives on Thirteenth, boss.”

“Is he alive?” Ron asked
the officer.

The officer shook his head. “No. The report
is he’s sidewalk soufflé.”

C
hapter 16

IT’S ONLY
ABOUT A MILE AND
a half from SPD headquarters to
Joshua Bannister’s apartment on Thirteenth and Olive. Ron and
Yoshi flew out of the garage in their white Crown
Vic, lights flashing and sirens blaring. We’d been told
to follow close behind and that’s something I’m
good at—I had the Jeep so close behind the
police car that it looked like we were on a
tow bar.

“Hold on!” I yelled to Toni. Tires squealing,
we made a sharp left on James, another left on
Broadway, flew across Madison, hung a sharp right on Pike,
and two blocks later we were at Thirteenth before we
could even catch our breaths. A quick left and another
two blocks north, and we pulled up and parked alongside
the curb. The entire trip took less than three minutes.

Four silver-blue SPD patrol cars were already on the
scene along with a yellow paramedic van and a white
CSI unit van, both double-parked in the street. Red
and blue flashing lights bounced wildly off the nearby buildings,
creating eerie reflections on the puddles in the street. The
normal nighttime sounds of the neighborhood were masked by the
engine noise from those vehicles left running and by the
faint rhythmic clicking sounds of the flashing strobe lights on
the cruisers as they alternated red-blue-red-blue. The
SPD dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackled to life over a
half-dozen portable radios simultaneously; then, with a sharp static
click, dropped out again when she finished. In the background,
distant sirens could be heard, all seeming to be converging
on the scene from every direction.

Several uniformed officers were
already working to push back the crowd of curious onlookers
who’d gathered to see what had happened, and who
it had happened to. Was it a friend? A neighbor?
Someone they knew or maybe saw every day? Wherever I’
ve been, I’ve noticed that curiosity in the face
of a tragedy seems to be a universal facet of
human nature. Whether it was a dead villager in a
remote village in Afghanistan or a dead civilian near a
military base, the curious always show up.

To the north
and the south, uniformed officers had already strung yellow
Crime
Scene—Do Not Cross
tape around the area to define
the boundaries. I scanned the area within the yellow tape
and noticed several officers on the sidewalk hunched over a
figure lying prone and motionless on the concrete in front
of Bannister’s apartment building.

Ron walked over and handed
us a couple dark blue vests that said
POLICE
in
big block letters. “Here, put these on so no one
hassles you.” We slipped them on and followed him across
the street.

As we approached the crowd on the sidewalk,
one of the officers looked up. “Lieutenant Bergstrom. Sorry to
ruin your Saturday night.”

Ron nodded. “Hey, Ryan. Good to
see you. What happened?”

“Funny damn thing,” the officer said. “
We just got briefed about the BOLO you issued for
this Bannister guy when our shift started. Now, thirty minutes
later—BAM! Here he is. Literally falls right out of
the fuckin’ sky. We recognized him because he was fresh
on our minds.”

“Well, I guess that’s good,” Ron
said. “That you guys were up to speed, that is.
Not that he fell out of the sky.”

Officer Ryan
smiled and nodded. We stepped to the side so that
we could see. Joshua Bannister was facedown on the sidewalk,
but looking toward us. His eyes were partly open, but
he was most certainly dead. A large pool of blood
had formed beneath his head. Oddly, he was barefoot. A
medical examiner wearing light blue gloves was carefully examining the
body while CSI unit personnel took photos.

Ron turned to
Officer Ryan. “You recognized him just because of his picture?”

Ryan nodded. “He looked familiar.”

The ME looked up. “Not
to mention he had his driver’s license in his
wallet.” She reached over and held up a plastic evidence
bag with the wallet inside. She’d removed the license
from the wallet so that it could be read without
removing it from the bag. “Bannister, Joshua Allen. The driver’
s license picture is the same as the picture on
your BOLO.”

Ron nodded. “Got it. So what’s the
story?”

Ryan pointed to a man being tended to by
a paramedic. “We got a witness—guy lives in the
same building. Says he’d just parked right over there
and was walking to the entry of the building when
the victim almost fell on top of him. Landed right
in front of him, right at his feet.”

Ron looked
up toward the roof, then back down at the body. “
Good thing he missed.”

“Got that right,” the ME said. “
Otherwise, we might have had two bodies here instead of
one.”

“Looks like he came off right about there, where
you were just looking,” the officer said, pointing upward. Our
eyes followed. There were no balconies or roof canopies of
any type that the body would have struck on the
way down. Also, there were no open or broken windows
in any of the units directly above the body.

After
a minute, Ron said, “Alright. Let’s make sure we
interview everybody in all the units facing the street.”

The
officer nodded. “We’re already on it. So far, none
of the residents saw or heard anything.”

Ron turned and
looked across the street. “Let’s talk to the people
across the way too. Maybe someone was looking out their
window.”

“What time did it happen?” Yoshi asked.

The officer
referred to his notebook. “Six twenty-five.” He looked up. “
The witness is pretty certain about the time. Apparently, he
was trying to get home by six thirty to catch
Geraldo on TV.”

“And he didn’t see or hear
anything before? No screams? No fighting? No yells? Nobody leaving?”

“
Nothing—nothing at all. One second he’s walking along
the sidewalk, hustling to get home. Next second, SPLAT!”

“Classic
FTF,” Yoshi said. Ron nodded.

Toni leaned over and whispered, “
What’s ‘FTF’?”

“Cop slang for jumper,” I whispered back. “
Stands for ‘Failed to Fly.’”

“Failed to . . . that’s disgusting,”
she said, staring at Bannister’s body.

Ron spoke to
two of the task force detectives and assigned them the
job of interviewing the witness. “Let’s make sure he
tells us everything he knows and that he’s not
hiding anything.”

“We’re on it. But he’s probably
clean if he was just walking up.”

“Most likely. And
so far, you haven’t found anything else?”

The officer
shook his head. “No, sir. We have no signs that
there was any sort of altercation or that he was
pushed. CSI unit’s already here. They’re upstairs now.
They might know something else by now.”

Ron thought for
a second, then he turned to the ME. “You see
anything on the body that looks suspicious?”

She shook her
head. “Not so far. Nothing that jumps out.”

“Very funny,”
Ron said.

She chuckled. “Old joke. Let me just say
that based on a very early first impression, I don’
t see anything that looks like the guy’s been
in a fight.” She shined a bright flashlight on his
neck, then on his wrists. “No ligature marks, nothing like
that. ’Course it’s kind of hard to tell because
of the massive impact trauma injuries when he hit the
sidewalk here. If he had some kind of head injury,
it’d be pretty hard to distinguish from the trauma
of the fall. But I’ll know more when I
get him to the morgue.”

Ron nodded. “Thanks.” He took
a last look around. “Alright, guys, let’s go upstairs
and check out his apartment.”

Bannister’s apartment was on
the top floor of the five-story walk-up. “What’
d I tell you,” Yoshi said, breathing hard as we
stepped off the fourth flight of stairs. “No friggin’ elevator;
unit on the top floor.” We paused outside the door
to Bannister’s apartment where we each slipped on pairs
of blue rubber gloves and booties. Safely attired, we walked
past the uniformed officer guarding the door and went inside.
Three detectives from the CSI unit were inside, gathering evidence.

“
Hey, Barry,” Ron said to a studious-looking man with
a clipboard. “What have you got?”

The lead CSI detective,
a thin man in his late forties, looked up and,
seeing Ron, smiled. “Hi, Ron. Good to see you.” He
turned and looked around the apartment quickly before refocusing on
Ron. “Not much here—at least not so far, anyway.
I’ve got two people up on the roof. That’
s where he went off. But inside here? Nothing.”

“No
struggle?”

“Nope. Nothing apparent. Place is clean. Matter of fact,
judging by the age of the stuff in the refrigerator,
I’d say it hasn’t even been lived in
for a while.”

Ron nodded. “Yeah—that’s consistent with
what we’re thinking. We don’t think he’s
been staying here.”

“And I hear the guy was a
murder suspect?”

Ron nodded. “Yeah. His girlfriend was strangled this
past Monday, and we’re thinking he might have had
something to do with it. In fact, there’s a
reasonable chance he might have been involved with the Sophie
Thoms murder a few months back too.”

“No shit? Guess
that would explain why your task force is here in
full force,” Barry said.

“Exactly. Funny thing is, I talked
to this guy Bannister last night. He was supposed to
come to the station for questioning an hour ago. We
were all over at the office waiting—had nearly our
whole crew there.” Ron looked around the apartment. “Looks like
he decided to come here first. Obviously, he never showed
up downtown. Now we know why.”

“Sorry about that.”

Ron
shrugged. “Shit happens—especially on this case. But do me
a favor and be especially alert for anything that looks
suspicious, anything that might tie this guy to either of
those other murders.”

“You say his girlfriend was strangled?”

Ron
nodded. “Yeah.”

“And Sophie Thoms was strangled too, as I
recall.”

“That’s right.”

Barry looked at him. “So you
might be interested in this rope we found, then?” He
reached down and picked up a clear plastic evidence bag
with a coil of thin, gray rope inside.

Ron’s
eyes widened. “Hell yeah, we would.” He held the bag
up and studied the rope. “Have a look at this.”
He passed it to Yoshi.

Yoshi held the bag up,
and we all stared at the rope. “That looks like
the exact same type of rope that we found on
Judie Lawton,” Yoshi said.

“Sure does,” Ron said.

Yoshi handed
me the bag, and I was immediately struck by how
light the rope was. “Damn—this stuff doesn’t weigh
anything, does it?”

“It’s pretty light, and I’ll
bet it’s way strong too,” Barry said. “It’s
not a natural fiber; it’s some kind of synthetic.
We’ll get it in the lab and figure out
what it is. Might be useful to you.”