He circled me twice and gave me another plop of his neighborly love to pick up.
I laughed. And quoted Shakespeare. “Et tu, Brute?” He rolled onto his back and dangled his legs in the air. I peeled off my rubber gloves and scratched his big belly.
Chapter 9
Tuesday, March 27
It had been a week since Dale promised to look into the Delarosa murder for me. A week since that uncomfortable episode at Ike’s. Except for a few finger wiggles across the newsroom, a week since we’d had any communication at all. Half of me would have been perfectly happy to wait another week. But the other half-the half that almost always ends up winning-refused to wait another minute. I punched Dale’s extension the second he got to his desk. “Up for a little lunch today, Mr. M?”
“Why not,” he said.
So at noon we buckled ourselves into his red Taurus station wagon and drove to Speckley’s. We were still waiting for the hostess to seat us when he clutched his chest and hissed, “Shit!” I thought he was having a heart attack. But it was only his cell phone vibrating. He angrily fished his phone from the breast pocket of his sports coat and pressed it against his cheek. His eyes narrowed and darted back and forth. “Okay,” he growled into the tiny, candy bar-sized electronic wonder. “And send Weedy if he’s available.”
Weedy was Chuck Weideman, the photographer Dale always wanted with him on important crime stories. I started buttoning my coat. If Dale wanted Weedy sent somewhere, that meant Dale was going there, too. “You can drop me off on the way,” I said.
The afternoon of misery that apparently awaited me made him grin. “No time for that, Maddy.”
We got on the interstate and hurried north to Hannawa Falls, a once picturesque village now uglified beyond recognition with strip malls. Dale told me what he knew: “A man in a fifth-floor apartment apparently doesn’t want to be questioned by police. He’s got a rifle and a whole lot of bullets. He’s already shot one cop in the foot and blown out a bunch of windshields. We get to hang around until he’s arrested or dead.”
We parked at the Home Depot and trotted against the sloppy March wind toward a large block of apartment buildings. A dozen silver cars with blinking blue lights were scattered about the street and adjoining parking lots. Cops in combat wear were jogging about with huge black shields. Yellow police tape was being strung between telephone poles. Behind us a trio of EMS trucks were inching forward without their sirens. The satellite truck from TV 21 was already there. Tish Kiddle, the station’s cute-as-a-button crime reporter, was already preparing to go live.
We spotted Weedy and waved to him. He waved back and went about his business, looking for that one perfect photo that told it all.
Dale led me to a corner mailbox just a few yards from the police line. It was one of those big blue jobbies that look like a World War I battle tank. “We’ll make this our office,” he said. “We can duck and cover if bullets start flying our way.”
“That likely to happen?”
“I’ve covered enough of these SWATathons to know anything can happen any second. That’s why the cops take their good old time.” He spanked the top of the mailbox. “And why we’re going to stay close to Big Bertha here.”
No sooner had he said that, than he started walking toward a gaggle of police officers. “I thought we were going to stay close to Big Bertha?” I squeaked.
He turned and grinned. “I’ve got a story to cover. See if you can find some coffee.”
I pitied myself for a few minutes then let the wind blow me back toward the Home Depot. There was a Starbucks right across the street from it. I bought two blueberry muffins, a large coffee and tea to go. I also took the opportunity to use the ladies’ room. I am a big believer in the preemptive strike.
It was a good forty-five minutes before Dale returned to the mailbox. He took a huge gulp of his coffee. “Cold as polar bear piss. Just the way I like it.” He chewed on his muffin and told me what he’d learned: “This is going to be a good story no matter how it comes out. The shooter in the apartment is-lo and behold-a suspect in the Zuduski murder. His name is Kurt Depew. Apparently his brother Randy is a suspect, too. No evidence they’re both up there, though.”
The murder of Congresswoman Zuduski-Lowell’s baby brother had been Page One for several weeks now. There’d been no leaks of possible suspects but the police had freely discussed how high on the hog 32-year-old Paul Zuduski had lived for a guy on a congressional staffer’s salary. He had a pricey townhouse in Greenlawn and drove a $60,000 Humvee. Investigators learned he’d paid cash for both. He’d also taken a startling number of vacations to islands with palm trees.
Dale finished his muffin and started ogling mine. I preemptively gave him half. “The cops aren’t saying much,” he said, “but apparently the Depew brothers were young Paul’s business associates. And when they went to Kurt’s apartment this morning-presumably to inquire about the nature of their business with the late, rolled-up-in-a-rug congresswoman’s brother-he welcomed them with a deer rifle.”
I sipped sparingly at the last inch of my tea in my Styrofoam cup while Dale called Metro. He gave them what he had.
It sounds silly, but I could not keep my eyes off him. He was bald and jowly. His glasses were ten years out of style. But watching his brown eyes stare soberly into space while he dictated perfect sentences and paragraphs-well.
He pressed his cell phone against his chest and smiled at me. “You want someone from the newsroom to pick you up, Maddy?”
I shook my head no.
“I guess you know why I asked you to lunch.”
“Sure,” said Dale. “David Delarosa.”
We’d been hovering around Big Bertha for two hours now, watching the police hover around their cars and the EMS teams hover around their trucks, watching Tish Kiddle hover around her hairspray can. “And?”
He yawned like a hippopotamus in a Disney cartoon. “And not much, Maddy. No weapon. No suspect. No motive. The investigation just petered out.”
The investigation may have petered out. But I wasn’t going to let Dale peter out. “Was the type of weapon ever identified?”
“Just that it was something heavy-and apparently blunt.”
“Apparently blunt?”
“No major cuts. Just a faceful of small abrasions and big ugly bruises.”
Reporters ask questions for a living. But when they’re on the receiving end, they’re as aggravating as everybody else. “Something like a hammer or a baseball bat?” I asked.
He yawned again. This time with his mouth shut. “From the size and shape of the bruises, the police surmised that the surface of the weapon was rather large and possibly flat.”
I tried to think of all the large, flat things that could be used to bludgeon somebody. “Frying pan, maybe?”
“Actually that was one of the things police looked for. A big bloody frying pan.”
I could feel my face scrunching. “That’s right, there was blood. The old stories said it was splattered all over the walls and floor. Upstairs and down.”
“More of a smattering than a splattering,” Dale said, enjoying his way with words. “Delarosa’s nose was smashed to smithereens. Police figured that happened upstairs, when he was first attacked.”
“So the killer could have gotten blood on himself?”
“Bloody clothes were on the police search list.”
“None found?”
“None found.”
Dale now went on and on, quite cockily I must say, about how he’d talked the public information office at police headquarters into letting him see the Delarosa files: “I sure couldn’t tell them I was trying to link Delarosa’s murder to Gordon Sweet’s. Shit, they’d stitch a big red N for nutcase on my chest and never let me get farther than the Mr. Coffee again. So I told them the paper was thinking of doing a series on cold murder cases. Which immediately got their sperm wiggling. There’s no better PR than solving some difficult old case. Even if the media has to help. ‘Well, we’re just thinking about it,’ I said. I asked to see a sample cold case file, to see what they looked like and how we might develop a story around it. And they bit. And I suggested the Delarosa case. You should have seen me, Maddy. I was almost as devious as you.”