Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (15 page)

I
stared at him blankly. Whoever killed Deirdre had wiped my disk clean.

Nothing
on it could possibly be of interest to anyone else. I hadn’t done any
incriminating work lately. Unless it was connected with Lamia’s problems and
whoever killed Deirdre was taking no chances. ...

“My
floppies?” I finally asked Terry. “Anything I’ve done lately would be on them.”

“No
floppies in your office.”

I
took a deep breath, hoping to steady my gyrating wits. Of course, I back up my
current files every time I use the machine. Then I slip the floppy in my
pocket. With the state the Pulteney was in I was more scrupulous than I might
have been ordinarily. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember what I’d done
last night. Had I made a copy? Had I taken it with me or not? My anxiety to be
shed of Deirdre was great enough I might have left without it.

“Well,
Vic? Shall I get a warrant for your home? Or did you mail it to Dr.

Herschel
or your lawyer?”

I had
never heard Finchley speak with such contempt. A fireball of anger swept
through me. I jammed my hands into my jeans pockets to keep from leaping over
the table to punch him. No one ever got anywhere hitting a cop.

“Try
it, Detective. Try it and see how much cooperation you ever get from me again.”
I was shaking so with fury that my voice came out in a harsh tremolo.

On my
way out I kicked a chair over and slammed the door shut. I walked the mile to
the Pulteney churning between Finchley’s unspeakable attitude and the loss of
my files. Income taxes were due in eleven days, I suddenly remembered.

How
could I possibly reconstruct my accounts for the past year from the chaos in my
office?

As I
crossed Monroe Street my anger passed, leaving me prey to a dull sinking, of
stomach and spirits. My affair with Conrad already had bristles to it. A major
fight with Terry Finchley would turn it into an actual porcupine.

I
hoped Terry would get my machine back to me Monday—electronic equipment has a
strange tendency to evaporate in the evidence room. I snorted derisively: good
thing I’d hung on to Gabriella’s old Olivetti when I went electronic. I’d taken
it to my apartment, not wanting to discard one of my mother’s few tangible
legacies.

I
walked into the Pulteney with my chin out, ready to take on any cops who might
be on duty. After sweeping through the building in search of Tamar they’d
apparently decided not to post a guard. The only trace of their presence was a
McDonald’s bag one of them had stuffed in a corner of the lobby. They’d
padlocked the stairwells when they left, but I had my keys. I walked up to four
and broke the police seal on my office door.

Senatorial
Privilege

In my
shock at finding Deirdre I hadn’t noticed the condition of my office. Now,
after a rough going-over by the forensic team, it was impossible to know how
much of the chaos the murderer caused, and what the police had added to it. Of
course, no one had cleaned up Deirdre’s blood. Great clotted clumps of it stuck
out on the desk and on my chair, and the mark of my hand when I’d fainted was
still visible in the congealed remnants of her brain.

Papers
seemed to lie everywhere. Someone had gone through ten years’ worth of records
with a winnowing hand, tossing the chaff so that it landed on chairs, the
floor, even the window ledge. And on top of it all lay the thick dust of
fingerprint powder. My servants and protectors, mine and Deirdre Messenger’s,
had sprinkled even my Nell Blaine poster.

I
gave a convulsive sob. “Ti calmi,” I said aloud, using my mother’s voice to
push back an emotional storm. I took on Gabriella’s fierce eyes and surveyed
the wreckage. I might not have much time: I didn’t know if the police would be returning.

Anyway,
some atavistic fear made me want to run from the room where the newly slain had
lain. The skin behind my ears tickled, as if Deirdre’s ghost were breathing
there. I scratched my ears and tiptoed to the far side of my desk.

Reaching
across the filthy surface I rummaged in the drawer where I store my floppies.
Finchley was right: they had vanished. I opened the other drawers in a futile
hope that I might have misplaced them, but found nothing. Even my box of
unformatted disks had disappeared.

Without
my computer, what did I really need to set up shop at home? Certainly not the
printer. And how could I sift my current accounting files from the wreckage on
the floor? Only my Rolodex might prove helpful. I scooped that up, along with
the phone, and took a last look. On my way out I lifted the Nell Blaine and
Gabriella’s engraving of the Uffizi from the walls.

Dumping
everything into one of my packing boxes, I moved as fast as I could down the
stairs to the lobby. I was prepared to plow through a police cordon and sprint
for freedom, but the lobby was still empty. Even so, the Furies seemed to be on
my heels. I ran all the way to the garage, the box bouncing against my abdomen,
and flung myself into the Trans Am. I needed to bathe, to wash the dirt of the
elevator shaft, the residue of Deirdre’s brains, the soul-piercing filth of
murder and pillage from my bones.

Mr.
Contreras met me in the hallway as I entered the apartment. His faded brown
eyes were bright with alarm.

“You
okay, doll? I heard the news on the radio when I was eating lunch. What
happened? Who was that lady? Why was she in your office?”

The
dogs joined us. Mitch, a hundred pounds and still growing, jumped up and
knocked me off balance. The box fell. Phone, Rolodex, and pictures crashed
around me. The glass covering the Uffizi splintered. The wood frame split and
fell away from the engraving. My father had made that frame for my mother one
Christmas, out of walnut, sanding and staining the wood to a high gloss.

Gabriella
hung it over the piano, where she could watch it while listening to
neighborhood children pick out “The Happy Farmer” or “The Flight of the Bumble
Bee.”

I
pushed the dog down with a leaden hand. My stomach twisted in pain. I wanted
nothing more than to go to bed and take refuge in the world of sleep, to find a
place where I might lie a hundred years undisturbed.

Mr.
Contreras seized my arm and impelled me into his apartment. “You sit down,
doll. You’re worn out and these animals ain’t helping none. You just rest here
in the armchair. I’m going to clean up your treasures, don’t you worry, I won’t
hurt nothing. I’ll get all that stuff tidied up and fix you some hot tea.

You
had any lunch? You want some fried eggs?”

“I
want that picture frame.” I sat on the lumpy cushion, shifting away from a
broken spring. “Be careful how you pick it up. I want to see if I can fix it.”

“Don’t
worry, doll; I see it’s valuable to you. You just shut your eyes and leave it
to me.”

Nothing
made the old man happier than to feel I needed him as caretaker. I leaned back
in the chair. It smelled of must, as any chair that hasn’t been cleaned in two
decades will, but after the traumas of the morning I was too tired to mind. The
smell even seemed soothing, like the embrace of the old man himself.

Mitch
still hadn’t fully expressed his delight at my arrival. He shoved his huge
black head into my legs. When that didn’t get a response he ran to the couch,
picked up a knotted rope, and started tossing it and growling at it, hoping to
entice me into playing tug-of-war. Peppy, his mother, barked at him once,
trying to get him to mind. Sensing my mood she sat down next to the chair and
began grooming my right hand, which dangled over the chair arm.

“It’s
okay, girl,” I told her. “Just too much going on today. But I’m telling you, if
your idiot son busted that picture frame beyond repair it’s coming straight out
of his hide. Why’d you produce such a hulking monster, huh? Why not someone
sleek and well behaved, along your own lines?”

Peppy
attacked my hand more vigorously, which I took for agreement.

“I
just can’t make sense of Deirdre’s death. Not that murder ever makes sense,
mind you, girl. But why kill her and erase my machine? If someone wanted to
kill me because of my case files, they’d have known that wasn’t me in the
office. But if someone murdered her on purpose, I mean, because of who she was,
there wasn’t any reason to wipe out my files.”

Peppy
stopped licking me. She sat back on her haunches, eyes alert. I fondled one of
her ears. Maybe it was someone who feared the progress I was making on an
investigation and came to delete my files. They surprised Deirdre in the office
and killed her to cover their tracks.

“Ludicrous,”
I told Peppy. “Even if that weren’t straight out ofCagney &

Lacey
, I haven’t been working on anything that’s upsetting people. Except for asking
questions about Century Bank, but I only started doing that yesterday.

It’s
true Eleanor Guziak was upset by my questions, but I don’t think she’d have
hired a hit that fast.” And of course it was ludicrous to think a bank officer
would want to hire a hit.

“What’s
that, doll?” Mr. Contreras bustled into the room. “Oh, you’re talking to the
dog. Now, don’t you worry about your picture frame. It’s broke at the joints,
so you can just glue it together, all but a couple of chips that came out. I
know a guy’ll fix it for you, a first-class carpenter. You say the word and
I’ll get right onto him.”

I
inspected the nicks in the dark wood. Yes, I’d let Mr. Contreras’s friend repair
it, but I knew I’d never look at it again without a sense of loss.

The
old man bustled off to the kitchen to make tea. He returned with a sweet black
cupful. While I drank it he fried up eggs and bacon. The rich greasy smell
reminded me that it had been seven hours since my breakfast, a meal that hadn’t
stayed with me.

Mr.
Contreras pulled a TV table up next to the armchair and fed me like an anxious
stork with one chick. While I drank a second cup of tea I filled in the gaps
left by the radio report, including Terry Finchley’s threat to get a warrant
for my apartment.

My
neighbor was appropriately indignant. “He’s got no call to be rude, doll, not
any reason whatsoever. ... You told Conrad yet?”

I
squeezed the older man’s hand. His normal jealousy of anyone I dated was
augmented by his revulsion at the idea of me in the arms of a black man, but he
was working hard to take our life in stride.

“I
haven’t had a minute to myself since finding Deirdre’s body. It’s time I went
upstairs and phoned him.” I waved aside my neighbor’s offer of his own phone; I
wanted to bathe. More than anything else, though, I craved some time alone. I
kissed Mr. Contreras on the cheek and left him feeding the remains of my eggs
to the dogs.

After
my bath I wrapped myself in blankets and sat cross-legged in my armchair,
staring at nothing. More and more the murders in Chicago—in America—make no
sense at all. People are shot for not driving fast enough, for smiling when
they should frown, for wearing green when they should wear yellow.

Someone
came into my office and bashed Deirdre’s head in. And I wanted it to make
sense.

As
the day dwindled into evening my living room windows turned black and reflected
me back to myself. A bedraggled caterpillar in an untidy cocoon. I switched on
the table lamp and called Conrad.

He’d
already heard about the murder from three different sources, but was waiting
for me to feel like calling him myself. “And I already heard from the Finch
that you two didn’t part friends, so don’t think you have to hide that from me,
Ms. W. How you doing?”

“I’ve
been better. Any news from Forensics? And did Terry say what happened when he
spoke to Fabian Messenger?”

“He
didn’t tell me he suspected the husband. I thought he was trying to find that
homeless woman you let hole up in the place.”

“As a
witness or a chief suspect?” I demanded.

“Whoa,
there, Vic. Don’t jump down my throat. It’s not my case and I don’t have any
opinions about it. ... I don’t suppose I could persuade you to follow the same
path.”

I
thought it over. “If Finchley talks to Fabian, really talks to him, and finds
out whether he was down at the Pulteney last night, you might. Although I won’t
promise.”

Conrad
coughed, a sign of nervousness with him.

“What
is it?” I asked.

“If I
tell you, you’re just going to start raving, and I can’t handle that right
before I go on shift.”

I
made a face and watched the window reflect it back as a distorted, streaky
grimace. “I promise that any raving I do will be confined to my private thoughts.”

“Alec
Gantner’s already been on the phone to the Finch.”

“Papa
or son?”

“The
senator himself. How distressed he was at the death in the family of such a
distinguished citizen and how he hopes the police will leave no stone unturned.
The kind of thing that gets lots of resources assigned to your case but makes
it a major nightmare. Terry’s got to find that woman, Vic. He’s not going to
railroad her, but she’s the only one who might have seen anything last night.
If you know where she is, don’t sit on her in the belief you’re protecting her
from police brutality.”