“Nothing he hasn’t said before-called her a ‘flatlander dyke,’ and said the board was pussy-whipped.” He hesitated, perhaps worried that he’d overplayed his nonchalance, and tried for a shortcut, “Well, you know.”
I smiled good-naturedly, disguising my growing anger. “Yeah-nothing new there. And I suppose Gail handed it right back to him?”
He took my reaction at face value and smiled back. “Hey-you know how it gets sometimes.”
It was a neutral enough response, but I had my suspicions. My interest in Ryan temporarily faded. “Give a woman a title and a gavel, right?”
He rose to my expectations of him. “Yeah, right.”
“So Ryan was just blowing off steam?”
“Pretty much; I mean, he was disrupting the place. They did right to call me.”
“But what he was saying didn’t amount to much-in your book?”
“Not really.” Santos stole a glance at his watch.
“Just out of curiosity, did he suggest taking her down a few pegs while you were escorting him outside?”
Santos shifted slightly in his seat, perhaps sensing something unusual in my persistence. “Don’t take this personally, Lieutenant, but he did say something about a good fuck setting her right.”
I could feel the pressure building on my temples, but I kept my voice level. “You didn’t fill out a report on it, did you?”
“Didn’t see the point,” he admitted. I turned to face him, feeling free at last to vent some of my rage.
“How about now that she got her good fuck? Were you thinking about filing a report now?”
He looked both surprised and angry that he’d been set up, predictably missing the point. “It was the local nut case shooting his mouth off, Lieutenant-it didn’t mean anything.”
I threw the door open and swung out, welcoming the fresh air on my face. I leaned back inside the car where Santos was sitting stiffly, his eyes straight ahead like an adolescent wishing all adults would vanish. “You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Yes, I do.” His voice was barely audible.
“You better hope you’re right, Al, or we’ll talk again with more company. Don’t ever pull this kind of shit again.”
My fury grew exponentially as I walked back to the office-not just at Santos, whose error had been no worse than Billy’s laxity, but as much at myself. Instead of immediately seizing Al’s information as the possible lead it was, I’d used his procedural sloppiness, and his predictable sexism, as a target for my own frustration. Knowing what Santos and his buddies would later make of this episode made me feel exposed and did nothing for the professional demeanor I was struggling to maintain.
I headed back to the squad room reluctantly, wishing I could invent some excuse that would keep me on the street, at least for the rest of the day. What had happened to Gail was just a few hours old-a fresh crime with fresh leads. Statistically, that gave it “quick to solve” potential. People’s memories would be sharp; any covering up would be either ongoing or slipshod; and the combination of Gail’s status and the SA’s political needs would allow for a no-expenses-spared, all-out investigation. That was the good news.
The downside was all inside me and had been building steam since Tony had pulled up to my place this morning. That part of me didn’t want to work around the clock, finding the man who’d turned Gail’s life upside down. It just wanted to spend time with her, helping her to rebuild her equilibrium. I could rationalize that one role fulfilled the other-I was on the case, after all, at Gail’s insistence. And I knew that giving her psychological “space” was not only sound, it was out of my hands. But none of that addressed my own emotional needs.
Nevertheless, as I reentered the Municipal Building, I began feeling slightly better-or at least more in control.
Harriet Fritter, not surprisingly, seemed to sense some of what was chewing at me. The even-tempered matriarch of an enormous gaggle of children, grandchildren, and at least one great-grandchild, she was a veteran observer of us all, and her sympathetic smile as I walked in was enough to move me up a few more notches.
“I got hold of Lou Biddle at Probation-he’s calling a special intelligence meeting at Rescue, Inc. in forty-five minutes. He thought it might be more efficient for you to brief the whole group, instead of relying on phone calls or faxes.”
The intelligence meeting was normally a monthly arrangement-a gathering of law-enforcement representatives from all the surrounding jurisdictions. It had operated discreetly for years, meeting on neutral ground, and served as an informational conduit that both cut the red tape and made for less formal relations among the participating agencies. That Lou had called them together-and in no time flat-was testimony to the support we could expect on this case. Brandt had been right about how Gail was being viewed, at least by those who wore a badge-she might as well have been my wife.
I thanked Harriet and asked her if either Sammie Martens or Willy Kunkle had reported back in from their respective sweeps of the town’s nether reaches.
Sammie’s head popped up from behind one of the soundproof panels that separated the four desks set up in the middle of the room. “I’m here.”
I went around the corner to find her climbing off her chair. Slim, dark, and almost overly intense, she was also as small as a teenage girl, with a similarly impulsive style. Over the years, I’d had to pour oil on occasionally troubled waters between her and her colleagues. Whether it was being the first and only woman to have been made detective in our department, or just a natural competitiveness that bordered on the cutthroat, her drive could make her difficult to deal with. Only Willy Kunkle, infamous in his own right, seemed totally unaffected by her.
Her expression was not encouraging. “I chased down almost every connection I have, Joe. There’s nothing stirring out there. And there’s a lot of interest-everyone knows who the victim was, and they’re all dying to be on the inside. If any of them knew, I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard about it. I’m real sorry.”
I shrugged it off. My conversations with J.P. Tyler had already braced me for bad news. The meticulousness of Gail’s attacker-the preplanning, the caution he’d taken to conceal himself-had persuaded me we wouldn’t find him hanging out in a bar, bragging about his latest score.
“I don’t think this was a spontaneous assault anyway. Did you compare notes with Willy?”
She nodded. “He didn’t find anything either. He’s getting coffee in the officers’ room, if you want to talk to him.”
The door to the hallway opened and Ron Klesczewski walked in, purposeful and obviously full of news. I turned back to Sammie. “I’d like to talk to both of you, actually. Round him up and bring him back over here, will you?”
Sammie left, and I shepherded Ron into my office cubicle, parking myself on the corner of my desk. “What’ve you got?”
“I’m setting up a command post in the extra room-bulletin boards, a dedicated phone line. Billy’s given me one guy out of each of his shifts to man it. We’ve already started classifying those neighborhood witnesses by what they saw and at what time, and Dennis is chasing down the ones he missed at their work places instead of waiting for tonight. We figured the sooner the better. With any luck, we’ll construct a chronology of the whole night and then see what sticks out.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does Tony know about this?”
Ron smiled. “He authorized it. I don’t know if it’s James Dunn or the board-or maybe both-but the chief ’s catching some serious heat on this.”
I remembered Tony’s pessimism about keeping Gail’s name under wraps, and what would probably happen once it got out. “I think he’s just preparing for the worst. You doing all right coordinating it all?”
Klesczewski nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. I like it-tips are already starting to come in. It’s interesting, separating the bullshit from the solid stuff.”
“Good. Keep at it. Run things from the command post, keep me and Brandt updated, and use the patrol division to chase down leads as you see fit. Get Dennis to help you out. If you see the need for a squad meeting before Brandt or I do, call it yourself. Before too long you’re going to be in a better position than any of us to know the overall picture, so throw your weight around a little.”