Bury the Lead

15



MARCUS CLARK IS the most frightening human being I have ever seen. His body appears made of iron; if he should break a bone, I believe the doctor would weld it together. His bald head is so cleanly shaven I can see my cowering, wimpy, skin-and-bones, pasty-white reflection in it. But even more intimidating than his appearance is his manner, his presence. He rarely talks, and moves slowly and deliberately, yet he projects pure menace.

The notable exception to this is when he is with Laurie. When he sees her, his face lights up, or at least softens, and he sometimes even speaks in sentences upwards of three words. I have an involuntary tendency to hide behind her when he is in the room.

He’s come to my office this morning to get his assignment. Marcus is a private investigator who was very helpful taking over when Laurie was under house arrest and unable to aid in her own defense. His techniques, while I don’t really want to know the particulars, are extraordinarily effective in developing information.

Laurie, Kevin, and I are going to investigate the local murders, but I have a feeling that the murder of Daniel’s wife could factor into this case at some point. That is what I want Marcus to look into. It will mean his spending a great deal of time in Cleveland. I could send Laurie instead, but Marcus’s absence will have significantly less effect on my sex life.

“He killed his wife?” Marcus asks me.

“No, he’s our client. Our clients don’t kill people. They’re accused of it, but we brilliantly prove that they’re innocent.”

“You want me to find out who killed her?”

I nod. “In a perfect world, yes. But I’ll settle for whatever you can learn.”

“When?”

“As soon as you can. Edna’s gotten you an open plane ticket, and we’ll make a hotel reservation for you.”

“No spa,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t stay at hotels with spas. And it’s gotta be near a Taco Bell.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

“Ice machine.”

I look at Laurie, but she looks away. I’m going to have to deal with these travel issues on my own. “Right,” I say, pretending to make notes on a legal pad. “No spa . . . Taco Bell . . . ice machine . . . you want regular cubes or the kind with those holes in them?”

I’m taking a risk poking fun at Marcus, but he lets me off the hook by ignoring me. He grunts that he can leave immediately, so I hand him over to Edna to make the travel reservations.

Kevin goes off to meet the husband of Betty Simonson, the grandmother who was the killer’s second victim. I’ve assigned myself to check Nancy Dempsey, the first victim, but I’m at least temporarily unable to get in touch with her husband, so I decide to join Laurie in investigating the third murder, that of the street hooker. Linda Padilla, by far the most prominent of the victims, will be the last one we look into, and we’ll all focus on that.

The vacant lot where the third victim’s body was found is a scary place, even though it’s only eight o’clock in the evening, five hours before the estimated time of death, one A.M. It’s in an industrial area of Passaic, which obviously has two distinct shifts of workers. The day shifters are those who carry a lunch pail and work in the factories; the night shifters carry condoms and work on their backs.

It’s the night shift that has come on when we arrive, which is just as well, since the victim was a member of that group. The police reports say that her colleagues knew her only as Rosalie, though no one knows if that’s her real name. They have been unable to further identify her, but have guessed her age to be twenty.

We walk over to an area where there are three Dumpsters, behind which Rosalie’s naked body was found. It is a filthy area, and I see at least three rats scurry off when we arrive. I never knew Rosalie, and never will, but I know that she died too young and with far too little dignity.

Laurie makes the same comment she made in Eastside Park, at the site Linda Padilla was found. “She wasn’t murdered here.”

My response is every bit as insightful as it was then. “How can you tell?” I ask, though I know from my research that she is right. Rosalie was murdered in her own apartment; and the place was vandalized in the process.

“It wouldn’t make sense; it’s easy to get a hooker alone,” she says. “You just have to hire her. Then she takes you to a place she has, and if you want to kill her, that’s where you do it. With no one around. She would never have taken him back here; she’d have a room somewhere nearby.”

We walk toward the curb, which serves as a sort of showroom for the young women. Some are just teenagers, and at least three-quarters of them are African-American, though Rosalie was white. Right now they are participating in the economic mating ritual, talking to men who pull up in cars and signal to them.

“Must be asking for directions,” I say.

Laurie doesn’t respond. Hooker jokes are not really her thing. Compassion and human dignity are her things.

We walk over toward two ladies, waiting by the curb for customers to pull up. One is dressed in a gaudy red dress, the other opted for gaudy green.

“Hi” is my clever opening.

They look at me blankly. If they are feeling sexual desire for me, they’re concealing it well. “Cops?” Gaudy Red asks.

“Used to be,” Laurie says. “Not anymore. Now I’m private.”

“So what about him?” Gaudy Red asks, jerking her thumb toward me.

“He’s a lawyer.”

Gaudy Green snorts, and the two street hookers share a small laugh, undoubtedly mocking my profession. Then Gaudy Red asks, “So what do you want?”

“We want to know about Rosalie, the girl that was murdered,” Laurie says. “We’re trying to find out who killed her.”

“Did you know her?” I ask.

Gaudy Red looks at Gaudy Green, who thinks for a moment and then nods her approval. Gaudy Red says, “Over there. Sondra. She was Rosalie’s roommate.”

We thank them and walk off in the direction that they are pointing, toward another woman, close to thirty years old, standing near a parked car, working alone. Laurie introduces us to her and tells her that we want to ask her about Rosalie.

“I don’t know who killed her,” Sondra says, then looks away, as if hoping we’ll be satisfied with her answer and disappear.

“We understand that,” says Laurie. “We’re just trying to learn about her, to understand who she was. Maybe that will help us figure out why she was killed.”

Sondra looks doubtful but goes on to describe the Rosalie she knew. She does so in bland generalities: Rosalie was nice, and a lot of fun and generous, and a real good friend and roommate. She could be describing a sorority sister, except if she was, we probably wouldn’t be standing near garbage cans, dodging rats and watching johns drive up.

“Was Rosalie her real name?” I ask.

Sondra shrugs. “Beats me. I don’t know who she was before or where she came from or why. It don’t matter much, you know?”

“Can you think of any reason why she was killed?”

A flash of anger. “Yeah. Because there are weird a*sholes in this world, and she went off with one of them.”

Sondra has very little information to provide, no matter how much we prod. She thinks Rosalie came from the Midwest, though that is just a guess, and she thinks she might have run away from a family with money, because she knew all about nice clothes, even though she didn’t have any.

We show Sondra pictures of the other victims, with the faint hope she’ll recognize them as somehow being connected to Rosalie. She does not, and we’re about to conclude this interview when a car pulls up. A guy gets out and strides purposefully toward us. If central casting needed a pimp, this is who they would send for. He’s got the car, the clothes, the attitude, the whole package.

“They bothering you, Sondra?”

Sondra’s demeanor changes instantly; her fear of this man is palpable. “They ain’t bothering me, Rick. We just talking.”

Rick smiles briefly. “Oh, you just talking? I thought you supposed to be just working.”

What happens next goes by so fast that it seems surreal. Rick slaps Sondra across the face, and she falls back. Then Laurie grabs Rick and spins him around and down face-first onto the hood of his car. He screams in pain, and I see blood spurting onto the hood from the place where his intact nose used to be.

He tries to get up, but Laurie has his arm behind him in what looks like a wrestling hold. She slams his head down again, and he moans in agony. Then she actually opens her handbag and takes out a pair of handcuffs, cuffing him behind his back.

Finally, I spring into action, albeit verbal action. “Holy shit,” I say. My comment seems to have little effect on events as they are unfolding.

Sondra is crying softly, but Laurie and Rick are paying just as little attention to her as they are to me. Laurie takes out her cell phone and calls a friend on the force, asking that officers be sent down to make an arrest. Then she takes Rick’s car keys and drops them down a sewer.

Rick attempts some kind of talking noise, but his exact words are lost as they fail to navigate through the blood and smashed teeth. Laurie makes the reasonable assumption that what he was going to say was not conciliatory in nature, and smacks him hard in the back of his head.

She leans over until her mouth is maybe an inch from Rick’s ear. “I’m going to have some people check on Sondra every week, and if anything bad happens to her, anything at all—if she gets hit by lightning or catches a cold—I’m going to think it’s your fault. And compared to what will happen then, tonight will seem like a day at the beach. You understand?”

Rick mumbles something that sounds like “Miskshbelflk.” I assume that’s pimp-talk for “Yes, crazy lady, I understand real well. Please don’t smash my face again.”

The police show up and take Rick off to face assault and various other charges that they and Laurie will dream up. They don’t seem terribly concerned by his injuries, and as an officer of the court, I assure them that Rick sustained those injuries while resisting a citizen’s arrest.

After they’ve gone, Laurie turns to Sondra. “Do you want out of this?” she asks. “You can do better.”

Sondra laughs a short laugh, as if the idea is ridiculous. “Where am I gonna go?”

“That’s the easy part,” says Laurie. “The hard part is wanting to.”

“I’ll be okay,” she says.

I take out my card and hand it to her. “If you’re not, call me,” I say. “Next time I won’t be so easy on him.”

Sondra goes off, and Laurie and I head back to the car. “I didn’t know you still carry handcuffs,” I say, grinning like an idiot.

“I figured if I told you, you’d grin like an idiot.”

“You got any more of them?” I ask, since the first pair went off with Rick.

“I do, but I only use them in the pursuit of truth and justice.”

“Oh,” I say. “Damn.”