Lieutenant “Zoo” Tully, for his part, returned to his northwest Detroit home with the sense that he had, indeed, accomplished one objective today: El’s final send-off in the style she would have chosen in her fondest dreams. This achievement he attributed to his lifelong study of human nature.
Without actually knowing him, Tully had figured out Koesler almost perfectly. Koesler had given up and agreed to host El’s funeral a bit too easily. That had been Tully’s only misjudgment. Reflecting on it now, he attributed Koesler’s quick surrender to a sense of guilt more profound that Tully had anticipated. He’d seen it often in clergymen, particularly in those who pastored in suburban churches. Many seemed to experience some sense of guilt when confronted with a poverty problem in the core city. There they were in the comparative comfort of the suburbs while he forced their attention to the city slums.
All in all, as far as Tully was concerned, it was not a bad trait. The evidence of this tendency to be moved by another person’s need might almost make a believer out of Tully—if that were possible. But it was not to be.
He parked in the driveway. There was a light in the kitchen. The rest of the house was dark.
It was too big, way too big now that his family was gone. His former wife, now remarried, and their five kids were living in Chicago. He visited them four or five times a year. He would have visited them more often but the situation that had caused the marital breakup still endured: He was married to his job. It came before his wife, even his children, before everything.
His wife had put up with it until she had no further endurance. It had been about as amicable a divorce as possible. He had agreed to the alimony and child support. It had been a “no-fault” divorce, but if there had been any fault needed, he was ready to admit that fault was his. He had agreed to her custody of the kids. He had no time for them while he and his wife were still together; how could he possibly have cared for them alone?
The light in the kitchen? That had to be Alice.
Their relationship was still in the trial stage.
Alice, a social worker assigned to juvenile court, was an extremely attractive woman in her early thirties. They had met only a few weeks ago over lunch at George’s Coney Island on Michigan near Livernois. It had not been love at first sight. But it had been the beginning of a fast and easy friendship.
Alice had never married. But she found it quite natural, after a few dates and a tentative compatibility, to move in with him. There had been no strings or promises, just a tacit agreement to try it.
So far so good.
“How’d it go? Did you get a church for El’s funeral?”
“Uh-huh.”
Alice was seated at the ancient kitchen table. She was wearing her blue down housecoat. The house was too large and there were too few people living in it to heat it all. So no part of the house, even the rooms that were heated, was very warm.
“Which church?” She was doing some paperwork.
“Anselm’s.” He got a bottle of beer and sat opposite her.
“Just like you figured.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Any progress?”
“Got a black car—probably a Ford—and a guy dressed in black. Picked El up just before she was killed.”
Alice looked up. “That’s something.”
“Uh-huh. Plus the cooperation of just about all the other working women. El was like a mother to some of them. A friend to the rest. I don’t think she had an enemy.”
“Except for the killer.”
“Not an enemy, I think. At least not hers. Mine.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Alice pushed her work aside and removed her glasses. “You figure she got it because she was one of your sources. Anything new on that?”
“Maybe.” Tully finished the beer and got a replacement from the refrigerator. The first had been to satisfy thirst. This one would be just for enjoyment. “Doc Moellmann is trying to figure out the words that were branded in her skin. That could be the key. Whoever did it is trying to send me some message. If I could figure it out, I’d be a helluva lot further ahead. This way it’s like working on a case where the central clue’s in a foreign language, and I don’t know the language. It’s damn frustrating.”
“Can I help?”
“Not right now. But I sure as hell will let you know when you can.” Tully lifted the lid off the cookie jar and put several brownies on a plate. He hadn’t had dinner. Not unusual. “How’d things go with you?”
“The usual. Some kids in their late teens. Adults in everything but years. They know only too well that as long as they’re juveniles we can’t hold them after their nineteenth birthday.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how they get so hard so young.”
“They teach each other. Older brothers teach younger brothers. They go to detention and learn some more tricks. One of the first lessons is that the straight life is hard. Got to go to school, got to study, got to learn. Or they can hit the streets and with street smarts they can make more before they’re twenty-one than they could make in an entire lifetime straight.”
“If they live to see twenty-one.”
“The final lesson: Life is short. It’s short whether they’re pushing, using, or just standing on the wrong corner at the wrong time.”
Alice rested her head on her folded arms. She was tired and this conversation was discouraging. “There’s this one I’ve been working with for a few months,” she murmured. “I thought there was some hope for him. Today, for the first time, he finally shed a tear. I actually saw a tear trickle down his cheek.”
“That’s good.” Tully had difficulty hearing her muffled words.
“The tear was shed because I told him they were going to waive him into adult court. He may spend the rest of his life in Jacktown.”
Tully reached out and touched her affectionately. With the other hand he lifted the bottle of beer and took another sip “Well, that’s the way it goes.” What was there to say?
Alice snapped upright. “Zoo! This is a kid I’m talking about. Just a child. And he’s going to be locked up for the rest of his life. Maybe forty, fifty years!”
“Yeah, I know. But he might just last longer in Jacktown than he would on the street. A lot longer.”
“But he’s just a kid!”
“Like you said, a kid in actual years counted. But in everything else, he’s an old man. Look in his eyes: He’s seen everything.”
“I guess you’re right.” She shook her head. “He has seen everything. Probably more than I have.”
“Look at it this way, Aclass="underline" If he went into detention, he’d be out in, what—a year or two? And the court would just be handing him over to us. He’d get some goddam gun, blow somebody away, then we’d get him. And then: Jacktown.”
“Good God, it’s depressing. Why don’t we quit?” She said it half in jest.
“Speak for yourself, Al. As for me, and just about everybody else in homicide, it’s the case; it’s the game.”
“The game?”
“Every once in a while, you get one handed to you on a platter—a platter case. A man kills his wife. There’s witnesses all over the place. The husband is guilty and feels guilty. He confesses. The case is handed to you on a silver platter. A rookie just out of the academy could close it.
“But then, you get a puzzler and you start putting the pieces together. A guy’s shoes match the tracks outside a window. The guy’s prints are lifted from the glass that held the poison. You dig and dig until you find enough reluctant witnesses who can put the guy at the scene of the crime. No one of the clues is enough all by itself. But you keep piling up one bit of circumstantial evidence after another. Pretty soon, you get enough strands of evidence to make a rope that you tie in a hangman’s noose.”