The Cruelest Cut (29 page)

“Jack, you'd better hear this,” Liddell said, tugging on Jack's sleeve.

Jack said good-bye to the coroner and closed his cell phone.

“What's up?”

“Earl got a call from one of the station people that was off work. She called Earl to tell him that she saw Maddy going into Duffy's Tavern this morning,” Liddell said.

“Duffy's?” Jack knew that other than locals, the only people that went there started out with bad directions. “He bringing her in?”

“She volunteered to come to the station. Be here in about ten minutes. Name is Letty Breeden.”

True to her word, Letty Breeden came through the back doors of the station in exactly ten minutes. She was young, blond, pretty, all legs and boobs. Kooky, who was now on guard duty at the back door, looked embarrassed when Letty caught him checking her out.

“Ahh, to be young again,” Liddell murmured.

“You're married. Get your mind back in your pants, Bigfoot,” Jack replied.

“I was talking about Kooky. He's about her age.”

“Ms. Breeden,” Jack said, getting her attention. She excused herself from the chatty rookie and walked toward the two detectives. Jack was disappointed to see that her initial allure was ruined by her way of walking. She stomped forward, like a superthin model on a fashion runway, with a lurching, leg-pumping motion that looked neither attractive nor graceful.

She came to rest in front of them like a locomotive that has had the emergency brakes applied and smiled at them in what she obviously thought was a seductive manner. “You're Jack Murphy,” she said, her eyes growing wide.

Liddell stifled a laugh and said, “Yep, that's him. In the flesh. But don't you think he looks bigger on television?”

Letty ignored Liddell and moved close to Jack. “I've heard a lot about you around here. You've killed a bunch of people,” she added, to Jack's irritation. He took a disliking to this leggy transport system for a pair of plastic boobs.

“He's a legend in his own mind,” Liddell said, seeing Jack's discomfort in talking about things he would rather put behind him. “Why don't we sit over here and you can tell us everything you know?” Liddell showed her to an empty desk, and Jack reluctantly followed. He wanted to hear what she knew, but he hoped she would keep to the point.

During the interview with Letty, whom Liddell later renamed “Leggy,” she said she had been visiting a friend on the south side when she drove past Duffy's Tavern and saw Maddy Brooks turn into the back lot. She was curious, knowing that Maddy was so stuck up she wouldn't be caught dead in a place like that. And so she had turned down the alley and watched Maddy to see if she was really going into the tavern. She saw Maddy take a small tape recorder from her handbag, do something with it, and then put it in her pocket and enter the back door of the tavern.

Letty said, “I sat there a couple of minutes, you know, wondering if I should go in and let her know that I'd seen her.” She had a lopsided grin on her face like a mean kid. “I wanted to bring her down a peg or two, the snooty bitch. But just as I was getting outta my car, another car pulled into the lot next to Maddy's and parked. I recognized it right away as a cop car. I've seen that guy before, but I can't remember his name.” She described the man she saw get out of the police car and go into the back door of Duffy's. “Of course, all of this happened yesterday morning, so I didn't think it was important.”

Jack and Liddell got her contact information and advised her they might want her to look at some pictures. She left the station, lurching in that strange Frankenstein walk, smug in the belief that she was now a key witness in something, or at least important in some way.

“You know who she was describing?” Liddell said. It wasn't a question.

“We need to talk to the captain,” Jack said, and took out his cell phone.

 

Franklin spent several minutes calming an angry Bill Goldberg and had just left the television station when he received the cell phone call from Jack.

“Go ahead, Jack,” Franklin said, and turned onto Tree Top Lane heading south from the station.

“Are you close?” Jack asked. The seriousness of his voice made Franklin pull into a nearby drive and begin turning around to go back.

“I can be there in less than a minute. What's up?” Franklin said.

“Meet us at the back door,” Jack said.

Liddell and Jack walked toward the back of the station when they were stopped by Earl Chapman, the detective who had found Letty Breeden.

“Hey, guys. Let me give you some other tidbits.” He looked at his notes and said, “One of them”—he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the mass of employees hustling about—“saw Maddy in her office yesterday morning about ten o'clock.” He flipped the page, “Another one saw Maddy come flying out of her office like her ass was on fire and head out to the parking lot. That was shortly after ten yesterday.”

Liddell looked at Jack. “It was about ten minutes after that when Letty saw Maddy,” he said.

Earl was smiling tightly. “You know who she's describing, don't you?” he asked them.

Jack put a finger to his lips, and said, “We don't want that getting out, Earl.”

“Kind of figured that,” Earl said. He closed his notebook, then, as if remembering something, opened it again and said, “Also, I chatted Lois Hensley up a little. I knew her husband, Thatcher Hensley, Sr., before he was the mayor here. Knew her son, too, before he got into the mayor's position.” Earl was in his late fifties, but well preserved, with a mind like a steel trap. He had become a police officer back in the days when “who you knew” was more important than “what you knew.” But he was no dummy.

“Anyway,” Earl continued, keeping his voice low, “she said she saw Maddy kind of sneaking into her office about eleven o'clock this morning and something about the way she was acting made Lois curious. She went back to Maddy's office and listened at the door for a minute. She thought she heard someone in there with her and so she opened the door and peeked in. Maddy was bent over a tape recorder listening to a tape, and Lois said she recognized one of the voices on the tape.” Earl stopped talking and looked at Jack and Liddell, as if to say,
Guess who it was?

“Okay,” Liddell said. “I can't stand the suspense.”

Earl leaned in close and told them.

Lois sat in a chair by Bill Goldberg. Goldberg sat at his desk. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her wrinkled features carried a look of importance. Across the large office, Jack, Liddell, and Franklin sat in visitors' chairs. There was a feel of electricity in the room, the kind of feeling Jack always associated with major breakthroughs in cases. It was like the thunder you could hear in the distance and the smell of dampness that preceded a storm.

“This time we're going to get all the information,” Franklin was saying. The station manager, Bill Goldberg, had protested the intrusion on his time and was threatening legal action when the men had entered his office and told him to call Lois Hensley to meet with them. His protestations were quickly overcome when Franklin reminded Goldberg that he, Goldberg, had tried to hide evidence in a missing-person case, and that the evidence may possibly relate to the series of murders. Goldberg had relented, but now sat rigid, staring at the floor in front of the detectives as if there were an answer stenciled into the carpeting that would relieve him of the presence of these damned policemen.

“Mr. Goldberg, I apologize for talking so roughly to you earlier,” Jack said, and was glad that for once, Liddell didn't make some silly remark, like “not me,” or “me too.” Then he turned his attention to Lois Hensley, and she smiled.

“Mrs. Hensley, you've been a great help so far, and we just have a few more questions.”

“I'll be more than glad to help, Detective Murphy,” she said, obviously delighted at the attention she was receiving.

“Now, Mrs. Hensley,” Jack began, “you told Detective Chapman that you heard voices in Maddy's office and you thought you recognized one of them. Is that correct?”

She drew herself up and said, “Well, I believe I would know my own son's voice.”

Bill Goldberg shot her a startled look. He didn't know what they were talking about, and he didn't like not knowing everything that went on in his station. He was about to say something when Captain Franklin held a hand up to silence him.

Jack smiled at Lois and moved a chair close to her and sat. “Was it just one voice that you heard?”

Lois stared at Jack. “No, there were two voices. One was familiar, but I didn't hear much of the conversation, you see. I opened the door to check on Maddy, and saw she was writing something down on a notepad. The tape recorder was on her desk, but it was turned off.”

“What did Ms. Brooks do, or say, when you came into her office?” Jack asked.

“She was concentrating so hard on what she was writing that she didn't see me. When she saw me she jumped a little and then hid her notes. You know how these newspeople are. Everything is a big secret.” Lois looked chagrined, and said, “I know you think I was snooping, but I wasn't.” She said this while looking directly at Bill Goldberg. He had as much as accused her of being a gossip before, and she wasn't a gossip. She couldn't stand gossips.

“So what did you hear?” Jack asked soothingly.

Lois looked at her lap and crossed and recrossed her feet before answering.

“Lois?” Jack said, and when she looked up he gave her his most charming smile.

“Oh, all right,” she said, and looked worriedly at Bill Goldberg. “But I'll only talk to Detective Murphy.”

Goldberg's face grew red. “I'll be damned if I'm leaving my own office. This has gone on long enough.”

“We can step out back,” Lois said to Jack, and got up. She stopped at the door and turned to Goldberg. “This wasn't always your office, Bill,” she said.

Jack hid a smile as he followed the feisty old woman from the office, but he was also quite curious about what she had to say that she couldn't say in front of the others.

 

Once outside, Lois seemed to come alive. Jack watched her take a deep breath as she looked to the west, where the sun was just beginning to settle on the horizon in a riot of crimsons and wispy whites. Jack guessed she was probably in her late sixties, but she looked much older. Her mouth was drawn and wrinkled from years of tanning or smoking or both. She would have been pretty once, but the years had not been kind to her, and her manner of speaking belied the bully just beneath the exterior of civility.

“I'm going to tell you something that I probably shouldn't,” she began. “But I know quite a few policemen, and all of them seem to respect you.”

Jack felt his face getting red. Somehow he had never thought about what anyone else thought of him, or even cared much for that matter. He didn't know how to respond.

She looked concerned, and then said, “I don't want my son hurt, but I think someone may be blackmailing him.”

“Go on.” Jack said.

Before he could ask a question, she said, “The tape I heard couldn't have been anything else except an attempt at blackmail. I mostly told you the truth, but I did hear a little more than I let on. I mean, Maddy was so intent on listening to that tape that I could have marched around her office naked and clashing cymbals and she wouldn't have noticed.”

“Tell me why you think it was blackmail, and what this has to do with your son,” Jack said. The first thought he had was that maybe Maddy had some dirt on the mayor, but she just didn't strike Jack as a blackmailer.

“You're not going to like it,” Lois said. “But the conversation was between my son, Thatcher, and that despicable chief of police.”

Jack was confused for a moment and wondered if she meant Marlin Pope, but then he didn't think she had ill feelings toward Pope. She did, however, hate Richard Dick. He remained quiet and let her tell the story in her own way.

She took a breath and let it out before continuing. “I saw Maddy come in the back door, looking around like she didn't want to be seen, and then she went into her office, alone, so I knew she didn't have anyone in there with her. That morning I'd found a message on the station's answering service. It was a man's voice, and he just left a telephone number for Maddy to call. Something about his voice made me think this was a personal phone call. You know, like a boyfriend or something. And before you ask, I don't remember what the number was. Anyway, I was about to knock at the door of Maddy's office to tell her that I wasn't her personal messenger girl, when I heard men's voices.” She looked at Jack, worried that he would think her a terrible snoop, but she decided to finish.

“You must promise me something first, Detective Murphy,” she said. “If I tell you what I know, you must promise not to use it against Thatcher.”

Jack thought of telling her that her son was in his early forties and didn't need his mommy to protect him, but he knew that granting her promise would not cost him anything.

“I promise,” Jack said, then added, “as long as it doesn't bear directly on one of the murders.”

Lois looked in his eyes for several seconds, and then said, “Someone must have bugged the mayor's office. The conversation I heard was between my son and Richard Dick, but they would never have said those horrible things if they thought they were being listened to.”

Although the idea of the mayor's office being bugged sounded rather paranoid, Jack waited for her to continue.

“What I heard was Dick saying to Thatcher that he didn't think they should give in to the killer's demands. But Thatcher was horrified and said that if they didn't, that the killer would kill more people in retaliation. Then that dreadful chief of yours suggested coldly that ‘he might kill more people either way.'” She hesitated, unwilling to say any more.

“Lois, what else did they say? This doesn't explain why your son would be getting blackmailed. In fact, from what you've told me it sounds harmless,” Jack said.

“In a nutshell,” Lois said, “my son made some remarks very unlike him. And they were afraid that Maddy had a copy of some note that could hurt Thatcher's career if it became public.” She had decided not to tell him about her son admitting that he had “gotten rid of Pope” and threatening to do the same thing to Dick.

Jack had listened carefully to what she said, and her eyes belied her words. She was still holding something back, but he thought he had a good idea what note she was referring to. Maddy had shown them a note that threatened to kill more people if Jack wasn't put back on the case. But Chief Dick had pretended to not know about the note until Captain Franklin mentioned it after Jack and Liddell had met with Maddy at the television station. Why would Dick keep the note from them? Was it out of some political loyalty?

Lois broke the silence and said, “The last part of the conversation I heard was about you.”

Jack looked surprised, but then it all made sense. Eddie had threatened the mayor with the same note he had sent to Maddy Brooks. Dick and the mayor had gotten into it about putting Jack back on the case.

“Your son made Chief Dick put me back on duty, didn't he?”

Lois smiled. “You're as smart as they say, Detective.”

Jack returned her smile. “Then you should also believe that I know that you are holding something back from me, and that I will eventually find out what that is. Wouldn't it be much easier to just tell me now? I promised not to do anything to hurt your son's reputation. You have to trust someone.”

That bullying look crossed her face again. It was amazing to Jack how this tiny woman could look so threatening, but then, she was power hungry, not for herself, but for her son.

“I haven't lied,” she insisted. She turned to the door, and Jack thought the conversation was over, but she stopped and said, “Wait here,” and then she went into the building.

This is getting stranger by the minute,
Jack thought. But he stayed where he was, hoping she would tell him the rest of what she knew. So far what she had to say wasn't particularly pertinent to Maddy's disappearance, or to the other murders, unless you considered Double Dick or the mayor as suspects.

Lois returned carrying a small brown mailing envelope. She held it out to Jack. “Maddy must have mailed this to herself yesterday,” Lois said.

Jack took the envelope and saw that the return address was for the television station, and the addressee was Maddy Brooks, c/o Channel Six News.

“How do you know Maddy mailed it to herself?” Jack asked.

“Because that's Maddy's handwriting,” Lois said.