One possibility stands out. “He decided he wanted more money, maybe so his sister could go to Barbara’s school. He thought he knew a way to get it, but something went wrong.”
“Yes! That’s what I think, too!” She crosses her arms over her breasts and cups her elbows, a self-comforting gesture Hodges has seen often. “I wish Tina had seen what was in that notebook, though. The Moleskine notebook.”
“Is that a hunch, or are you following some chain of logic I don’t see?”
“I’d like to know why he was so anxious for her not to see it, that’s all.” Having successfully evaded Hodges’s question, she heads for the door. “I’m going to build a computer search on robberies between 2001 and 2009. I know it’s a longshot, but it’s a place to start. What are you going to do?”
“Go home. Think this over. Tomorrow I’m repo’ing cars and looking for a bail-jumper named Dejohn Frasier, who is almost certainly staying with his stepmom or ex-wife. Also, I’ll watch the Indians and possibly go to a movie.”
Holly lights up. “Can I go to the movies with you?”
“If you like.”
“Can I pick?”
“Only if you promise not to drag me to some idiotic romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston.”
“Jennifer Aniston is a very fine actress and a badly underrated comedienne. Did you know she was in the original Leprechaun movie, back in 1993?”
“Holly, you’re a font of information, but you’re dodging the issue here. Promise me no rom-com, or I go on my own.”
“I’m sure we can find something mutually agreeable,” Holly says, not quite meeting his eyes. “Will Tina’s brother be all right? You don’t think he’d really try to kill himself, do you?”
“Not based on his actions. He put himself way out on a limb for his family. Guys like that, ones with empathy, usually aren’t suicidal. Holly, does it seem strange to you that the little girl figured out Peter was behind the money, and their parents don’t seem to have a clue?”
The light in Holly’s eyes goes out, and for a moment she looks very much like the Holly of old, the one who spent most of her adolescence in her room, the kind of neurotic isolate the Japanese call hikikomori.
“Parents can be very stupid,” she says, and goes out.
Well, Hodges thinks, yours certainly were, I think we can agree on that.
He goes to the window, clasps his hands behind his back, and stares out at lower Marlborough, where the afternoon rush hour traffic is building. He wonders if Holly has considered the second plausible source of the boy’s anxiety: that the mokes who hid the money have come back and found it gone.
And have somehow found out who took it.
22
Statewide Motorcycle & Small Engine Repair isn’t statewide or even citywide; it’s a ramshackle zoning mistake made of rusty corrugated metal on the South Side, a stone’s throw from the minor league stadium where the Groundhogs play. Out front there’s a line of cycles for sale under plastic pennants fluttering lackadaisically from a sagging length of cable. Most of the bikes look pretty sketchy to Morris. A fat guy in a leather vest is sitting against the side of the building, swabbing road rash with a handful of Kleenex. He looks up at Morris and says nothing. Morris says nothing right back. He had to walk here from Edgemont Avenue, over a mile in the hot morning sun, because the buses only come out this far when the Hogs are playing.
He goes into the garage and there’s Charlie Roberson, sitting on a grease-smeared car seat in front of a half-disassembled Harley. He doesn’t see Morris at first; he’s holding the Harley’s battery up and studying it. Morris, meanwhile, studies him. Roberson is still a muscular fireplug of a man, although he has to be over seventy, bald on top with a graying fringe. He’s wearing a cut-off tee, and Morris can read a fading prison tattoo on one of his biceps: WHITE POWER 4EVER.
One of my success stories, Morris thinks, and smiles.
Roberson was doing life in Waynesville for bludgeoning a rich old lady to death on Wieland Avenue in Branson Park. She supposedly woke up and caught him creeping her house. He also raped her, possibly before the bludgeoning, perhaps after, as she lay dying on the floor of her upstairs hall. The case was a slam-dunk. Roberson had been seen in the area on several occasions leading up to the robbery, he had been photographed by the security camera outside the rich old lady’s gate a day prior to the breakin, he had discussed the possibility of creeping that particular crib and robbing that particular lady with several of his lowlife friends (all given ample reason to testify by the prosecution, having legal woes of their own), and he had a long record of robbery and assault. Jury said guilty; judge said life without parole; Roberson swapped motorcycle repair for stitching bluejeans and varnishing furniture.
“I done plenty, but I didn’t do that,” he told Morris time and time again. “I woulda, I had the fuckin security code, but someone else beat me to the punch. I know who it was, too, because there was only one guy I told those numbers to. He was one of the ones who fuckin testified against me, and if I ever get out of here, that man is gonna die. Trust me.”
Morris neither believed nor disbelieved him—his first two years in the Ville had shown him that it was filled with men claiming to be as innocent as morning dew—but when Charlie asked him to write Barry Scheck, Morris was willing. It was what he did, his real job.
Turned out the robber-bludgeoner-rapist had left semen in the old lady’s underpants, the underpants were still in one of the city’s cavernous evidence rooms, and the lawyer the Innocence Project sent out to investigate Charlie Roberson’s case found them. DNA testing unavailable at the time of Charlie’s conviction showed the jizz wasn’t his. The lawyer hired an investigator to track down several of the prosecution’s witnesses. One of them, dying of liver cancer, not only recanted his testimony but copped to the crime, perhaps in hopes that doing so would earn him a pass through the pearly gates.
“Hey, Charlie,” Morris says. “Guess who.”
Roberson turns, squints, gets to his feet. “Morrie? Is that Morrie Bellamy?”
“In the flesh.”
“Well, I’ll be fucked.”
Probably not, Morris thinks, but when Roberson puts the battery down on the seat of the Harley and comes forward with his arms outstretched, Morris submits to the obligatory back-pounding bro-hug. Even gives it back to the best of his ability. The amount of muscle beneath Roberson’s filthy tee-shirt is mildly alarming.
Roberson pulls back, showing his few remaining teeth in a grin. “Jesus Christ! Parole?”
“Parole.”
“Old lady took her foot off your neck?”
“She did.”
“God-dam, that’s great! Come on in the office and have a drink! I got bourbon.”
Morris shakes his head. “Thanks, but booze doesn’t agree with my system. Also, the man might come around anytime and ask me to drop a urine. I called in sick at work this morning, that’s risky enough.”
“Who’s your PO?”
“McFarland.”
“Big buck nigger, isn’t he?”