Away.
I stayed away for a long time. I was still gone at the time of my mother’s funeral. I remember my body standing next to the casket as it hovered over the grave. But I wasn’t looking at the casket, wasn’t paying attention to whatever it was the priest was saying. I fixed my attention on the other side of the cemetery, where a hearse led a slow procession of cars to another grave site. I watched the long black limousine and the cars behind it come to a stop. I studied the people getting out of their cars, some grim-faced, others bored. After a while, a bird’s call pulled my attention to the sky, thick with gray clouds threatening to break open and shower the land with tears. But I would not cry that day. Only Tommy and our father wept, unable to escape the grief crushing their hearts like a vice.
5
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6
Wednesday afternoon finds me on the sixth floor of the Criminal Justice Center. I’m leaving Courtroom 603 following a victory at a hearing on a prosecution motion to revoke bail for one of the firm’s many repeat clients.
“Nice win, counselor.”
I turn to see two cops standing in the hallway behind me. Detectives Tredesco and Cook. Tredesco is tall and fiftyish with thinning black hair and a potbelly sticking over his cracked leather belt. Cook is pudgy and looks to be in his midtwenties. His crew cut is blond, his face is wide and round, just like his watery blue eyes.
“Got a minute?” asks Tredesco.
I look at my watch, shrug, glance at Tredesco’s partner.
“Ed Cook,” he says, extending his hand, something Tredesco hasn’t done.
“So, how’s the Hanson investigation coming?” I ask, looking at Tredesco. “You figure out yet that you got the wrong guy?”
Tredesco laughs, sort of. “The investigation’s going well. We got a body and your client standing over it, trying to clean up the mess.”
“So what’s to talk about?”
“I’m here to give your client a chance to help himself. The DA might be willing to go easy on him, let him plead down. All he has to do is turn over the victim’s computer. The money and jewelry he can keep.”
I look from Tredesco to Cook, then back. “I’m sure you can’t wait to tell me what you’re talking about.”
“What, Hanson hasn’t told you already? He took Yamura’s laptop—the one with all her notes—when he murdered her earlier in the day. He took her money and her jewelry, too. He didn’t mention any of that?”
“Wow. That’s dynamite stuff. And if Hanson can find the laptop, he gets to cop a plea to what? Manslaughter?”
Tredesco glares at me. Shifts from one foot to the other. Tries another tack. “Look, Mick, you and I go way back. We worked some good cases together. Put away some real bad guys.”
“And some not-so-bad guys,” I interrupt. Tredesco knows who I’m talking about. The year before I left the DA’s office, I’d prosecuted Derek Blackwell, a young numbers runner Tredesco had arrested for the murder of a competitor. It was only after I’d won a conviction that someone I knew heard Tredesco bragging that he’d framed Blackwell—apparently he’d been spending time with Tredesco’s girlfriend. I confronted Tredesco about it as soon as I learned the truth. It became a bone of contention between us, and we never worked together again.
“Get your client to turn over the laptop. The DA figures it’s where Yamura kept all her info on the grand-jury investigation. If we could look at it, we could learn who her source was and press him for more names. Take down the whole ring, not just a few of them. That’s why Walker’s willing to deal.”
I smile, take a minute to think about what Tredesco has told me. “So, to summarize our conversation so far, you’ve given me evidence of at least two people other than my client with a motive to kill Jennifer Yamura. A cash-strapped nonmillionaire who robbed Yamura of her jewelry and money. And a snitch cop who betrayed the police department and desperately doesn’t want his name disclosed. Anyone else have a motive? Oh, right—all the crooked cops who haven’t been identified yet who’d love to have gotten their hands on the reporter’s computer and shut her mouth permanently at the same time.”
Tredesco’s narrow-set, fish-pale eyes turn to ice. “Just remember: I gave you a chance to help your client.”
I smile at the two detectives until they turn to walk away, but the smile’s a lie. I’m worried sick.
Back in the office, I’m at my desk when Tommy walks in. Today he’s dressed in jeans and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt which, along with his buzz cut and veal-shank arms, makes him look like a thug. He takes one of the visitors’ chairs. I wait for him to say something. He doesn’t, so I start in myself.
“Do you have anything yet? Have you spoken with the neighbors? Anyone see anything?”
“Slow down, Kemo Sabe.” Tommy’s words are lighthearted, but there’s an edge in his voice. He pauses, rubs his brow. “I’m on top of it, all right? I talked to the neighbors on both sides of Yamura’s house. One guy works in advertising. He was in New York and didn’t get home until the afternoon after the murder. So he doesn’t know anything. An elderly, gay couple lives on the other side. The one guy was asleep in the afternoon. The other one says he was watching TV, so he didn’t see or hear anything. They both went to bed around ten and were woken up after David was nabbed in the alley and all the cop cars showed up. I talked to some of the neighbors across the street, too, and the ones who were home during the day didn’t see anyone come in or out of the house all day, not that they were looking out their window. None of ’em called 911.”
Tommy pauses. While I consider what he’s told me, he reaches over to my desk, lifts one of the pictures. It’s the one of him and me and our parents at the beach. “I always liked this picture,” he says. “Except, did you ever notice how Mom and Dad and I are all looking at the camera, but you’re looking away? Like you’re somewhere else.”
It’s a loaded comment, given our history, and I choose to ignore it. “Anything else, or is that it?”
Tommy stands and replaces the picture. He casts me a hard glance, then turns and leaves. So much of our conversations consist of what we don’t say to each other.