I promised to call him if I was going to be a minute later than seven-thirty. When I’d hung up, I frowned at the phone. Something had clicked at the back of my mind when I answered Morrell’s call. Before I could ferret around for it, the phone rang again.
It was Conrad, wanting to know if Morrell would have ditched Marcena’s computer to keep the cops from looking at it. “He says his place was busted, but how can I know he’s telling the truth? I sent my detective up just in case, but anyone can throw their papers around.”
I burst out laughing, which miffed Conrad. “Morrell just asked me the very same question about you. Now at least I know you’re both telling the truth.”
Conrad laughed reluctantly, but added what Morrell and I had already been discussing, that someone thought Marcena’s notes mattered. Which meant Morrell shouldn’t hang out alone anywhere because whoever had come into his place after the computer might think Marcena had confided in him.
A shiver ran through my body. When we’d finished, I called Morrell again and told him if he was home alone, to put on a chain bolt. “And look out where you park; don’t come into your condo through the alley for a while, okay?”
“I’m not going to start living in fear, V. I. It’s mentally exhausting. I’ll take sensible precautions, but I’m not going to find a concrete bunker to hide in.”
“Morrell, I saw Marcena and Bron. Whoever attacked them has a very ugly imagination, and a disposition to match. Don’t be an idiot!”
“Oh, Christ, Vic, don’t you go telling me not to be an idiot when you’re down there on the South Side where it all happened. If you’re attacked again-”
He broke off, unwilling to complete the sentence. We both hung up without saying anything else.
32 Time to Nail the Pastor to the Cross
The construction crew had made good progress on the four little houses where the pastor was working. One seemed finished, while the second, where I’d found Andrés two weeks ago, now had a bright red front door. The remaining two were still skeletons of poured concrete with a few boards outlining their ultimate shape.
As I’d driven across the South Side, I’d kept worrying about the break-in at Morrell’s. I’d tried to imagine what Marcena knew that someone wanted to keep quiet. I had warned Morrell to use caution in case her assailants came after him, but someplace between Torrence, where I’d turned north, and Eighty-ninth, which led me east to the construction area, I’d realized that people might think I knew Marcena’s secrets also. After all, both of us were sleeping at Morrell’s, and I’d introduced her to Bron. I saw again her swollen, bleeding body, and started looking nervously in my rearview mirror every few seconds. My gold Mustang would be very easy to track.
When I got to the jobsite, I drove on without slowing and parked two blocks away. The deserted streets would make tailing hard if someone was tailing me. By the time I got to the little houses, I was confident I was alone.
I put on my hard hat and walked through the red door without knocking. The familiar sounds of saws, hammers, and shouted Spanish echoed around the empty rooms. Drywall was complete in the entryway, but the stairwell was still naked. I asked the first man I saw for Andrés; he jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
I went down a minute hall and found Andrés in what was going to be the kitchen. He was trying to work wires through a large section of flex pipe, shouting in Spanish through an opening in the floor to a man feeding wiring in from below. He didn’t look up when I came into the room.
I waited until he was finished wrestling before I spoke. “Pastor Andrés, we need to talk.”
“You came to Sunday’s service, Miss Detective. Have you come here today to make a commitment to Jesus? I am happy to stop for such an event.”
I squatted next to him on the raw floorboards. “Bron Czernin was killed late Monday night.”
“I am always sad at the needless death of one of God’s children.” Andrés’s voice was calm, but his eyes were wary. “Especially when he has died without turning to Jesus.”
“I don’t think his priest will deny him a Christian burial.”
“A Catholic burial,” Pastor Andrés corrected me. “Not a Christian one: Bron Czernin died in the company of the woman who had been driving a wedge into his marriage.”
“Bron was a passive bystander, by-layer, maybe I should say, while Ms. Love drove her wedge into his marriage?”
He frowned. “He was responsible, too, of course, but a woman has greater-”
“Powerlessness, usually,” I cut in, “although I grant probably not in this particular instance. But speaking of powerless women, let’s talk about Josie Dorrado. She disappeared Monday night, I think with Billy the Kid, Billy Bysen. Where are they?”
“I don’t know. And if I did, I do not understand why you are interested.”
“Because Rose asked me to find her. And, since you know Bron died in a pit lying next to Marcena Love, you must know that Ms. Love was in Billy’s car when it plowed into the undergirders of the Skyway. I’d like to know where Billy and Josie were when that happened.”
All the time I was speaking, he was shaking his head. “I do not know. Billy came to me on Sunday night, pleading with me to take him in again. He had gone to stay with Rose but now thought that was unsafe, for him or for Rose, I was not sure, but he wanted me to shelter Josie as well as himself. I said I could not, that his father’s detectives would look for him at my home first. They have already been to see me twice, and when I look out my window at night I see a car in the street now, always. I also pointed out that he and Josie must be married, anyway, before I will give them a bed together.”
“I don’t know a state in the union where it’s legal to get married that young,” I said sharply. “Fortunately. Where did you send him?”
“If you are going to judge what you have no business judging, we cannot have this conversation.”
I could feel hot spots in my eyes. I swallowed my anger as best I could: arguing with Andrés over morality would not get me any of the information I needed.
“Was the car watching your house Sunday night when he came to plead with you?”
He thought about it. “I don’t think so. I first became aware only on Monday, when I went home for lunch. But if they were there Sunday night and looking for Billy, they would take him then, and you say he was with Josie on Monday.”
“So where did you suggest he go?” I said.
“I suggested he go home to his family and take Josie with him, so that they can see her for themselves, instead of judging her by rumors. But he would not go.”
“That’s the real question,” I said. “What is going on with him that he won’t go home? He told me he had questions about his family, and that you were the only person he trusted. What happened to make him so untrusting of his family?”
“Any confidences he made to me were to me alone, not to share with any other person. Which includes you, Miss Detective.”
“But the problem is connected to his work at the warehouse, isn’t it?”
“That is always possible, since he was working there.”
“And to Fly the Flag.”
That was a random guess, but Andrés looked nervously over his shoulder. The man he’d been handling pipe with was watching him with a worried expression.
“I will not be tricked into disclosing confidences. What do you know about Fly the Flag?”
“Frank Zamar had just signed a big contract to deliver sheets and towels to By-Smart, not long before his plant burned down. That sounds like good news, not the desperation that would make a man blow up his own plant with himself inside it. So someone was annoyed with him.”