While I was gathering my keys and my handbag, sticking the Smith & Wesson into my jeans, the uniformed man arrived to take me down to the lineup. I carefully locked the dead bolt behind me—some days I don’t bother with it-and ran down the stairs. Soonest started, soonest ended, or whatever it was Lady Macbeth said.
The uniformed man turned out to be a woman, Patrol Officer Mary Louise Neely. She was quiet and serious, holding herself ramrod straight in her fiercely pressed navy serge, calling me “ma’am” in a way that made me acutely aware of the twelve or more years between us. She opened the door for me with military crispness and ushered me down the walk to the waiting patrol car.
Mr. Contreras was out in front with Peppy. I wanted to make some gesture of reconciliation, but Officer Neely’s stern presence robbed me of any words. I held out a hand, but he nodded stiffly to me, calling the dog sharply as she headed down the walk behind me.
I tried asking the patrolwoman insightful questions about her work and whether the Cubs or the Sox could worsen their abysmal performance of last season. She snubbed me completely, though, keeping her stem gaze on malefactors on Lake Shore Drive, murmuring periodically into her lapel transmitter.
We covered the six miles to the Central District at a good clip. She pulled smartly into the police lot about fifteen minutes after leaving my apartment. Okay, it was Saturday, not much traffic, but it was still an impressive performance.
Neely whisked me through the labyrinth of the old building, exchanging unsmiling greetings with fellow officers, and brought me to an observation room. Bobby was there, with Sergeant McGonnigal and Detective Finchley. Neely saluted them so sharply, I thought she might keel over backward.
“Thanks, Officer.” Bobby dismissed her genially. “We’ll carry on from here.”
I found my palms sweating slightly, my heart beating a little faster. I didn’t want to see the men who’d bundled me into that blanket on Wednesday. That was why I’d fled my place last night. They had me well and truly spooked. And now I was to perform like an obedient dog under the watchful eyes of the police?
“You got names on the two you picked up?” I asked, keeping my tone cool, trying to shade it with a little arrogance.
“Yeah,” Bobby grunted. “Joe Jones and Fred Smith. They’re almost as funny to deal with as you are. And yes, we’ve requested a print check, but these things never happen as fast as you hope they will. We can make a case on the loitering in a private building and carrying concealed unregistered weapons. But you know and I know they’ll be on the street Monday unless we can back it up with attempted murder. So you’re to tell me if they’re your pals who sent you swimming on Wednesday.”
He nodded to Finchley, a black plainclothesman I’d known when he started on patrol. The detective went to a door across the room and gave orders to unseen people beyond to start the lineup.
Eyewitness identification is not the great revelation they make of it in courtroom dramas. Under stress the memory plays tricks on you—you’re sure you saw a tall black man in blue jeans and it was really a fat white man in a business suit. Stuff like that. Probably a third of my presentations as a public defender had been based on reciting remarkable instances of mistaken identity. On the other hand, stress can bum some indelible memories—a gesture, a birthmark—that come back when you see the person again. It never hurts to try.
Keeping my hands in my pockets so as to hide their tremor, I walked with Bobby to the one-way observation window. McGonnigal turned out the lights on our side and the little room beyond sprang into relief
“We’ve got two sets for you,” Bobby murmured in my ear. “You know the routine—take your time, ask for any of them to turn around or whatever.”
Six men walked in with self-conscious pugnacity. They all looked alike to me—white, burly, somewhere around forty. I tried to imagine them with black hoods, the executioner of my nightmare this morning.
“Ask them to talk,” I said abruptly. “Ask them to say ‘Just tell us the time, girlie’ and then ‘Dump her here, Troy. X marks the spot.’”
Finchley conveyed the request to the unseen officers running the show. One by one the men obediently mumbled their lines. I kept watching the second guy from the left. He had a kind of secretive smile—he knew they’d never make a serious charge stick. His eyes. Could I remember the eyes of the man who’d come up to me at the edge of the lagoon? Cold, flat, calculating his words to find my weaknesses.
But when this man spoke I didn’t recognize the voice. It was husky, with the twang of the South Side, not the emotionless tones I remembered.
I shook my head. “I think it’s the second guy from the left. But I don’t recognize the voice and I can’t be absolutely certain.”
Bobby nodded fractionally and Finchley gave orders to dismiss the lineup.
“Well?” I demanded. “Is he the one?”