Time Release (12 page)

He had no idea what to expect. Sandra Corbett lost it after her husband split in 1986, that much he knew. She already was losing it when he first interviewed her at their house during the initial investigation. Once he read the incident reports from all the domestic calls to the house, he knew why. Then, a couple months later when he tried to talk to her at Borman, she was worthless. What an unforgettable fucking scene. She smoked as they talked. Actually, she smoked while he talked, since she spent the whole time staring like a zombie at Borman's sticky gray floor. Downing watched the cigarette burn slowly toward the soft flesh between her index and middle fingers, and then keep burning until it broke the blisters from her last cigarette. Then it went out. She never even flinched.

Never said a word, either. But besides Sonny, she was the only other person still alive who was in the Jancey Street house in 1986, the only other person who might have seen Ron Corbett pull it off. It was worth a shot. He heard she'd come around in the last couple years, even loosened up enough to hang occasionally at Tramp's, Ridgeville's only real meet-and-mate bar. He hadn't talked to the regulars there to see if she'd ever talked about Ron. Maybe he should. But he took her going out again as a sign that she'd finally figured out what a shitbag her husband was. Maybe she'd talk now.

Before he knocked, he took in the view from the second-floor balcony. Lakeview Pointe Estates. Christ. He held his shield up to the window when the curtains parted a crack, then counted at least three pieces of heavy hardware as she unfastened the dead bolts.

“Mrs. Corbett?”

She opened the door until the chain lock caught, then peeked out. This was not a healthy person. She was as pretty as he remembered, slender even in that getup, but obviously not all there. He'd caught her by surprise on a Saturday morning, but who wears a heavy peacoat and a wool-knit watch cap indoors?

“I remember you,” she said, looking away.

“Detective Downing of the Pittsburgh Police Department, Mrs. Corbett.” He poked one of his business cards through the opening, and she took it. “May I come in?”

“I can't … no. It's not a good day. What's your name again?” She wouldn't look him in the eye.

“Grady Downing, Mrs. Corbett. We met back in 1986, and we talked once in 1987 when you were in the hospital over there.”

She unfastened the chain and disappeared into the apartment. Downing gently pushed through and into a wall of warm air. Where'd she go? He followed the Looney Tunes theme song into another room, where she was sitting on a folding metal chair in front of a small TV. This didn't look promising. Even if she told him the whole story, he tried to imagine her in front of a grand jury or on a courtroom witness stand. He couldn't. If she was as nuts as she seemed, no prosecutor would dare.

“I don't much like cats,” she said, gesturing toward the small screen. Tweety was setting a trap using a vacuum cleaner and a rope. “That Sylvester, he's always trying to eat him.”

Downing groped for a suitable response. Or did it matter? “I'm not a cat person either,” he said. “Always had dogs.”

She turned and faced him for the first time. “We had dogs once,” she said. “What kind?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Your dog. What kind?”

“Basset hound. A sad thing with a swayback and epilepsy and kidney problems. Only three years old and he's already half blind. But a pleasant sort if you can stand the smell.”

“What's his name?” she said.

“Rodney King.”

“I've heard of him,” she said. She stood up and walked toward the kitchen. Downing followed, watching as she bent toward a low shelf of the refrigerator. Bonkers or not, peacoat or not, she had a great butt.

“You want an apple? I have some apples,” she said. “If I don't eat on time I get the diabetes.”

“No, but thanks.”

“Good oranges, too. Can I get you one?”

“No thanks.”

Her eyes wandered for a moment and settled, apparently, on the kitchen sink faucet. “Grapefruit?”

“No,” he said, then reconsidered. “What kind?”

“The red kind,” she said. “They're so good this year.”

A woman after his heart. Texas Ruby Reds.

“Best year I can remember,” he said. “Sweet as sugar, but no thanks. Just had one in the car on the way over. I probably eat a half-dozen a day when the winter crop comes in. I'd like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Corbett, if you don't mind.”

She closed the refrigerator and rinsed an apple in the sink, which looked like it held every dish in the place, all dirty.

Downing cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you keep in touch with Mr. Corbett.”

She set the apple on the counter and opened a nearly empty silverware drawer. The knife she chose was better suited for an infantry charge, a black-handled job with a blade a foot long and a point like a bayonet. Downing tensed, pure instinct, but then relaxed as she quartered the apple and dropped the knife into the sink. It clattered onto the crusty dishes. She found her only clean saucer in a cupboard crowded with medicine bottles, then arranged the apple slices on it with elaborate care, like the pattern was her way of communicating with her home planet.

“My husband ran off,” she said. “Dr. Root says he was sick. I don't think he was sick. He didn't look sick. But Dr. Root says he shouldn't have hurt me and the boys. Sometimes I miss him, though. Sometimes he was nice. Funny, you know? You like Gatorade? I have Gatorade. Both kinds, the red and green. I like the red.”

She carried the plate to the small kitchen table, sat down, and started to eat with an exaggerated politeness Downing found odd, especially since she was eating the core, seeds and all.

“He never calls?” he said. “You haven't kept in touch at all?”

She chewed slowly, deliberately, then swallowed. “He ran off,” she said.

Not far, Downing thought; Outcrop couldn't be more than thirty miles from here. But she probably wasn't lying. Sonny told him once that he'd got a birthday card from his dad when he was about fourteen, but that was it. Ron Corbett wasn't the sentimental type.

“Mrs. Corbett, I know this is a personal question, but we're still interested in why your husband left so suddenly way back when.”

Downing watched her nibble off the end of an apple quarter, oblivious to the stem. She chewed the woody thing for a long time. He couldn't be sure she was crying, but her eyes got wet and even more vacant.

“Mrs. Corbett?”

“He just ran off,” she said. “He didn't like us. The boys either. Too bad, too. He was a funny man.”

Funny? Downing tried to fit the word to the croaking scumbag with the shotgun.

“Know what?” she said. “He had a nickname for everybody on our street. The Inspector. Odd Todd. Miss Clairol. There was this nun from the church he called Sister Teresa Lambada. Oh, he made us laugh sometimes.”

“I had no idea,” Downing said.

“That was fun, laughing.”

Downing watched her work on the apple stem for a long time. “Mrs. Corbett, do you remember if anything happened that day, or that week, when he left? Was there something you or the boys said that set him off, or did he say anything when he left?”

“The dog died,” she said.

“That day?”

“No. My husband left a few weeks after. But he didn't like Trooper much anyway, so that's not why. I remember the boys were so sad. They cried. About Trooper, I mean. Not about their dad. Maybe they were sad about him leaving, too.”

Her gaze drifted back across the room to the refrigerator door handle. “You know Sonny, don't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I know you do. He comes here sometimes.”

“A very nice young man.”

She looked away again. “I had two boys. David died.”

“I know he did. I'm sorry.”

“You have boys?'

“One girl, but she's off on her own now. Grow up fast, don't they?”

“Some don't grow up at all,” she said. She bit into another apple quarter and chewed until it was gone. Downing felt like a shit.

“Mrs. Corbett, we're still looking into a series of killings that happened back in 1986, right around the time your husband left. Do you remember when we talked about that before?”

“Terrible thing,” she said. “All those people.”

“Do you remember how it happened? With the poison in the headache capsules?”

“We were so scared.”

“Everybody was. It was a scary time because product tampering is so hard to control. Now there's a couple of cases down in Greene County that are a lot like it, and that's got everybody scared again. Because we never caught anybody.”

She shook her head. “Terrible.”

“Thing is, Mrs. Corbett, the latest killing was in Waynesburg, just a few miles down the road from where your husband's been living since 1986. And the first time around, if you'll recall, the poison was sold at stores that were all within a couple miles of your house down on Jancey Street.”

He waited for a reaction. Nothing.

“There's been other incidents, too. I'm sure you heard somebody put poison in some sample packages. Killed two people and burned a bunch of others. We don't know if it's the same person, but you can imagine how anxious we are to find out who's doing this stuff.”

“Why would somebody do that?” she asked.

“Exactly, Mrs. Corbett. Any ideas?”

“We don't watch much news here.” She smiled. “You want this last slice of apple?”

“No, but thanks.”

“I don't think I want this last piece. This wasn't a very good apple.”

This was going nowhere. “Mrs. Corbett, do you have any reason to believe your husband was involved in any of these incidents, either in 1986 or recently?”

She traced the edge of her plate with the apple slice. “I think I'll fix a grapefruit. You want a grapefruit? The man at the store told me they're from Texas. I've never been to Texas. You ever been to Texas?”

Downing reached across the table and lightly touched her hand. “Mrs. Corbett, I asked you a question about your husband. Do you have any reason to think he put the poison in those headache capsules ten years ago, or in any of the other stuff in the past few weeks?”

She pulled her hand away and shoved it into the peacoat pocket. “Why would he do that?” she said.

“That's what we're wondering, too. Did he ever say anything to you that made you think he was involved? Or did you ever see him do anything? Because if he was loading capsules in 1986, he probably would have done it at the house.”

“He's a pharmacist.”

“We know that, ma'am. But it's not something he would have done at work where somebody might see. And we found some things at your house that made us wonder if—”

“He sent money for a while,” she said.

Ron Corbett had fallen off the state unemployment dole after a year, then tried twice to claim disability. Turned down once, according to state records, but the second time was a charm. From what Downing could tell, Corbett hadn't worked since 1986. Real father-of-the-year type.

“He stopped sending it after Peebo Balkin nearly drowned,” she said.

“Peebo who?”

At the sink again, she wedged the saucer among the other plates, then swept into the other room without another word. When he heard the creak of her wooden chair, Downing moved to the cupboard for a peek. An old investigator's habit, but one he'd found worthwhile over the years—the contents of a medicine cabinet read to him like a personality profile. Hers was mostly over-the-counter stuff: cold remedies, vitamins, laxatives. The prescription stuff was predictable, especially the full bottle of lithium. If she was like this medicated, he wondered, how much more crackers would she be without it? A few expired bottles of antibiotics. A roll of Tes-Tape for checking sugar in the urine, a glucometer for testing blood sugar, a jar of hard candy for quick sugar fixes, a bottle of rubbing alcohol—a diabetic's tools for living. The chair creaked again. He closed the cupboard quietly and followed into the other room.

She was back at the TV. No sense wasting more time. Unless she had home movies of Ron loading the capsules, nothing here would be of any use.

“I'm going now, Mrs. Corbett. Thanks for taking the time.”

She pointed at the tiny TV. “Look! That little tornado, he's really that Tasmanian Devil guy.” She seemed transfixed.

“One of the great ones,” he said. “Take care, Mrs. Corbett.” She didn't move, hands in the pockets of her heavy coat, watch cap pulled down tight over her ears, eyes glued to images of cartoon mayhem. He left her there, wondering if she had always been that pathetic or if life with Ron had just taken a toll. He pulled the front door shut behind him.

The snow from the midweek storm was nearly gone. All that was left were little drifts in the building's shadow and under the cars that hadn't been moved. The road back into town would be clear, maybe even dry. But while he was inside, the clear sky had turned gray and the temperature had dropped. He buttoned his coat as he moved down the steps. Spring was a hundred years away.

“He'll just be a few more minutes, Grady,” the older one said. He could never remember her name. “Coffee?”

“Sure. Great. Freeze-dried?”

“Nope. Fresh pot,” she said, getting up.

“Oh. No thanks,” Downing said. She stared. He shrugged. “I like freeze-dried.”

Another roar. Laughter? Shouting? Downing had no idea why he'd been summoned. He wished he had a better handle on the man he was about to see. Patrick B. Kiger came to the city from Memphis, where as chief he was known as a savvy cop within the department, and as a brutish Neanderthal with the press. What killed him there, Downing heard, was his appetite for publicity and his sarcastic overuse of the word “alleged” during bust announcements. “Mr. Bowling became our prime suspect because he allegedly can be seen on a videotape bringing the alleged fire extinguisher down onto the skull of the alleged victim, Mr. Phong…”

The sort of stuff cops loved, the sort of stuff that made newspaper editors and ACLU lawyers swallow their tongues.

Kiger's looks didn't help. At 5-foot-8 and pushing 200, he was a gritty hamburger of a man with a Beelzebub beard that followed his jawline to his chin, where it arced into an evil goatee. A smile led to a squint, which led to the general impression that Pittsburgh's new police chief was capable of eating his young.

With the unexpected rise in Pittsburgh's gang and drug hostilities, Kiger seemed the perfect choice. His first week on the job, he had laid out his style during roll-call meetings at each precinct: You got a problem, come to me. Be prepared to lose every argument, but I'll listen and look you in the eye before I throw your sorry butt out of my office. Forget that community-based policing crap that's turning good cops all over the country into school crossing guards and parking-squabble umpires. My cops are good guys with guns. Convictions count, arrests don't. You want my attention? Work your ass off, plain and simple. Don't fuck up.

Downing wiped his palms on his pants, shifting Ron Corbett's file from one knee to the other.

The door suddenly swung out like there'd been an explosion. Kiger plowed through, full speed, followed by J. D. Dagnolo, the district attorney. Papers clenched between his teeth, Dagnolo was wrestling his open briefcase as he walked.

He was probably the most powerful man in the city. Knew so much about so many people that a lot of cops called him J. Edgar instead of J. D. But never to his face. Scrambling in Kiger's wake, he seemed more like the spineless toady he was. Kiger peeled off into the copy room halfway down the hall without a word. Dagnolo pulled the papers out of his mouth. “So long, chief!” he said, the words bouncing off Kiger's back. Downing tried hard not to snicker as the DA passed, then nodded and said, “J. D.”

“Grady.” Dagnolo kept walking, past the secretaries, through the glass doors, toward the elevators.

First words in years. What did Dagnolo say the last time they'd talked? “You just fucked up the biggest homicide case in the city's history, Grady. Where you going now? Disneyland?” Took three uniforms to pull him off the son of a bitch, or so Downing heard later.

“Get that a-hole's fax from Washington, Jude?” Kiger drawled from the copy room. His Tennessee accent oozed through the office.

“On your desk.”

Jude. That's the name. Jude the Prude.

“You expect me to find it there?” Kiger said, rounding the corner from the copy room. As the chief lumbered toward him, Downing realized Kiger was much shorter than he remembered. But wide. All solid shoulders and belly, a beer keg with legs. And probably under more pressure.

Downing stood. “Got a message you wanted to see me, chief,” he said, extending a hand. Kiger's grip was noncommittal.

“Who are you again?”

“Grady Downing,” the Prude said before he could answer. “Homicide. The letter from Musca, Hickton?”

A flicker of recognition. “Right,” Kiger said. “Primenyl.”

What letter?

Kiger's office was about as organized as a tossed salad. Books stacked on chairs. Family pictures still in boxes. The only thing on his desk not issued by the city supply clerk was a round, brown needlepoint pillow. The word “Bullshit” was stitched on it in white thread, block letters.

“Mail call,” the chief said, collapsing into his leather desk chair. He handed a photocopy across the desk, then picked up the pillow, cocked it behind his head, and waited.

Downing took one of the straight-back wooden chairs on the other side of the desk and opened the envelope. He unfolded it and read the letterhead: Musca, Hickton & Cook. The letter was signed by an attorney, Cheryl M. Musca, addressed to Patrick B. Kiger, Pittsburgh's Chief of Police. It began: “We are the law firm retained by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to represent the interests of outpatients currently under the care of Borman State Hospital. This letter carries our concern about the recent interrogation of Sandra Preston Corbett, a patient of Dr. Douglas L. Root, by your detective, Grady Downing.”

Downing looked up.

“Read the whole thing,” Kiger said.

He scanned the two-page letter. Downing had entered her home without an invitation. His intrusion caused her great personal distress. He was insensitive to Mrs. Corbett's condition and ignorant of the preferred techniques for dealing with individuals who suffer depression and dissociation. A photocopy of a newspaper clipping was stapled to the letter's last page, and Downing felt his gut clench when he recognized the headline. It was part of the
Press's
recent Primenyl retrospective, and it quoted unnamed department sources and FBI officials who blamed the inves­tigation's failure on “sloppy police work” and “inexplicable errors of judgment” by investigators. The story also noted, without comment, that “veteran detective Grady T. Downing was in charge of the original investigation.”

“Before we get to that,” Kiger said, “you mind telling me why it was too inconvenient for you to let me know you were reopening the biggest fucking homicide case ever?”

Downing felt sick. “It's preliminary work. I mentioned it to DeLillo, and he didn't have a problem with it.”

The pillow hit Downing in the forehead, crushing the wave of hair he'd combed into place ten minutes before. Kiger leaned forward. His forearms looked like legs of lamb.

“Bullshit?” Downing said. He shoved his hair back with his hand.

“You told Lieutenant DeLillo you were checking to see if the Greene County case was relevant. You didn't tell him you'd be reinterviewing possible witnesses to the 1986 killings. I like your initiative. Your methods suck.”

Downing kept quiet. There was an agenda here. Kiger pushed away from his desk and retrieved the pillow from the floor. He carefully picked off a dustball and returned to his chair, again cocking the pillow behind his head.

“Mind filling me in?” Kiger said.

“From the beginning?”

The chief shook his head. “I read the goddamned file. Tell me what's not in there.”

Downing took a deep breath. “Apparent homicide in Greene County a few weeks back. Female, thirty-nine. Looks like product tampering. Lab reports indicate hydrogen cyanide, the liquid form. The methods were different, but it was all there. Same attention to detail. Same weird silence afterward. No notes. No barroom bragging. Just did the deed and gone. Same with the more recent cases.”

“I watch the news,” Kiger said. “Tell me what I don't know.”

Downing tried not to squirm. “With the yogurt and the Squeezie Pop, local cops found sealed pinholes, probably from a syringe. We're not sure yet on the free-sample stuff.”

“What makes you think it's related to Primenyl? That investigation went belly-up five years ago.”

Did Kiger notice him cringe?

“The Greene County cases happened in a rural area, maybe ten thousand people in a twenty-mile radius. One of them's a guy named Corbett. Ron Corbett. Name ring a bell?”

Kiger leaned forward, tight grin, a remember-what-I'm-about-to-tell-you look. “I've read the file.” The chief picked up a thin, plastic-bound report that had been at a far corner of his desk. Downing recognized the cover as standard FBI, suspected what it was. This was no spur-of-the-moment meeting. This guy was loaded for bear.

“Wait a minute, detective,” Kiger said, flipping it open. “Corbett's not the name the feds fingered in … What was it?” He checked the report's date. “In 1988. Some guy named Griffin the drug company fired about the time the killing started. Confessed to the whole thing in a suicide note in early '88, then bit the pipe, right?”

Downing tried to wring the anger from his voice before he replied. “Got nine more written confessions in my Primenyl files, sir, but I'm not much for fairy tales.”

“So you're not buying it?”

“It's a crock. The bureau spent close to two million bucks on Primenyl, swept in here like God's own avengers and got nothing. Griffin gave them the perfect out, and I think they took it. He had motive. He confessed. He's black. And, best of all, he's dead. Made a perfect little bookend, didn't he?”

“Black?”

“That was just gravy. On top of everything else, the bureau found a bad guy who played into local prejudices. You'll understand that better after you've been here longer.”

That sounded just condescending enough to have blown it, Downing thought. But when Kiger spoke again, he said, “Tell me about Corbett.”

This was a test, Downing figured. New or not, Kiger had to know about Corbett. For a while in 1986, the bastard couldn't peek out of his front door without every newspaper photographer and TV crew on the East Coast peeing their pants. Kiger wants my take, he thought, wants to know if he can trust my analysis. Spare the venom. Just the facts. Don't raise old questions.

“Pharmacist. Very familiar with lot numbers and shelving habits. Lived close to most of the stores where bad capsules were sold. Some record of domestic violence, indications he was abused as a juvenile. FBI profilers at Quantico say he fits a profile—something called a ‘nonspecific multiple murderer.'”

“Goddamned profiles,” Kiger said, “I probably fit it, too. Anything else?”

“He was uncooperative, not hostile but closemouthed, when we talked to him in '86. But he made pretty clear he knew more than he was saying. Guilty man's bluff, I figured.”

Kiger studied him a moment. “That's it?”

Downing looked down at the file. “No. But that's all we can use. Corbett was”—he cleared his throat—“problematic.”

The pillow hit Downing square in the forehead.

“Sure you told me everything?” Kiger said.

“Everything you asked.”

Kiger shrugged and picked up the pillow again. “Good answer,” he said, collapsing back into his chair. “We'll save the hard questions for next time.”

“I'll answer now.”

Kiger ignored him. “First, this ain't my call. You got a division head, right? DeLillo knows where he needs you. But if I was him, I'd tell you to steer clear of the '86 witnesses for now. Ride herd on the boys down in Greene County, check in with whoever's working the local case, and we'll take another look down the road. Right now what you've got is damned thin. We shouldn't jump on Corbett just because a couple victims live in his neighborhood. The free-sample stuff was all over the map. Besides, the crack trade being what it is, we got plenty here to keep us busy.”

The words hit hard. Maybe there
is
no proof that Ron Corbett is killing his fellow citizens again, sir, or in 1986 for that matter. But you play this game long enough and you learn to trust whatever it is that raises the hair on your arms, learn to recognize when you're probably damned close to the truth. And the truth about Primenyl, sir, is that the killer is still out there, waiting and planning the next one, king of the goddamned western Pennsylvania hills.

Downing swallowed. “Maybe it's Corbett again, maybe it's not. Hard to say based on what we know so far. But there may be another reason—a stronger reason—to reopen the old investigation and go after Corbett again.”

“Sure you didn't get your fill of this case last time?” Kiger asked.

Their eyes locked. Downing had wondered if he was being baited. Now he was sure. Kiger hadn't just read the Primenyl case file. He'd read his personnel file, too. Shit. Time to shoot the wad. He eyed the pillow as he stepped off the ledge.

“Last time, sir, I didn't believe we had a credible witness. Now I think we might. But it'll take some work.”

Downing looked up, expecting another needlepoint fastball. Kiger hadn't moved.

“I'm listening,” he said.

Slow down. Tell him about Ron Corbett, about
all
of the evidence: the list of cyanide distributors, that Corbett knows how the capsules got into the sealed bottles. Tell him about Sonny and repressed memories, about the California case that gave him hope. Make him understand. Downing breathed deep and started to talk.

When he was finished, the chief laid the pillow down on the desk, stood up, and walked around Downing and out of sight. Downing heard the rustle of cloth on the coat rack in the corner by the door; then, sooner than he would have thought possible, he felt the chief's coffee-sour breath on his ear.

“We never had this conversation,” Kiger hissed. The door opened, then shut, and Downing was alone. The letter in his hand was shaking like a leaf.