Shawna asked, “Do you know who did it?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know why?”
Why?
In my years as a detective, I’d come to learn that why was overrated. How plus why equals who is an old and outdated theory of police work. I learned long ago that why doesn’t matter.
“VERY LIKELY” WAS the answer the ME gave me about the knife from Shawna’s trailer. I literally ran up the steps of the station, took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevators, and burst into the Homicide squad room.
“I got her!” I yelled to Roland Park.
“Who?”
“Kayla Lightfoot’s murderer.”
My partner’s face dropped. He shared a glance with the golfers. Kincaid stepped out of his office when he heard me yell. They all just stared at me.
I held up the baggy containing the knife. “The murder weapon,” I proclaimed. “Her fucking aunt did it.”
“Why?” asked Roland.
“Why? I have no idea why. Who cares? I’ve got her drunk, hooking ass.” I bounced over to Kincaid. “Lieutenant, I want to bring the bitch in, put her in the box, and break her. She did it. She had the knife sitting right there in the sink!”
“The medical examiner called me, Detective,” Kincaid said, his voice quiet and slow. “Said she told you it was a likely match based on type of blade, but the filings didn’t necessarily match up.”
“‘Very likely’ is what she said. ‘Very.’ And the filings – there could be any number of reasons why they don’t match.”
“Like it ain’t the right blade,” Roland said.
“Detective Dandridge,” Kincaid said. “Step into my office.”
Kincaid picked up his baseball but didn’t sit down. When I closed the door, he said, “Look in that mirror.”
He had a small mirror on the back of his door. I looked.
“Yeah?”
“What do you see?”
“Lieutenant, we don’t have time for this. We gotta grab up – ”
“I see a burned-out cop. Look at your eyes. You haven’t slept in how long? You haven’t shaved since God knows when, which, by the way, is a departmental infraction.”
“I’ll sleep when I put this one down.”
“You’ll sleep today. I’m suspending you for a week.”
“What? You can’t. I’ve got the fucking murder weapon.”
“I’ll have Park and the golfers run it down. Question the aunt. If anything’s there, we’ll bring her in.”
“No, they’ll fuck it up. They don’t care about her.”
“About who?”
“Kayla!”
That was it. I put myself in the jackpot with that line. Maybe I could have talked my way out of the suspension before that.
I CALLED ROLAND Park’s cell phone every day from my house. After three days, he returned my call.
“Got some interesting news for you, sporto,” he said.
“You nailed her.”
“No. The aunt’s got a pretty solid alibi for the night of the murder. She was doing what she does best. But one of her johns, this guy who was renting the apartment to the vic, seems as though he had a little extracurricular whatnot going on with your honey. Me and Woods figure maybe he snatched one of Auntie’s steak knives from her place at some point. Sound good?”
I hung up and left my house without locking the door. I don’t know how fast I drove, but I was at Kayla’s apartment in less than twenty minutes. I passed her door and took the stairs two at a time to the landlord’s apartment.
He lives right above her.
I drew my gun and badge, and knocked. A small Hispanic man in his fifties opened the door, keeping the chain on.
“Yes?”
“Detective Dandridge, St. Louis PD. Are you the landlord of this building?”
“Sí. Yes. What’s going on?”
“May I come in, sir?”
He closed the door and removed the chain. As he opened it again, I pushed inside, bringing my weapon up into his face.
“On the floor, now!”
“What is happening?” he said.
I spun him around, pushed him down, dropped a knee in his back, and began to cuff him.
“You’re under arrest for suspicion of murder. What is your name?”
“What!”
“Name! Nombre! What is your name?”
“Edgar. Edgar Pablos. What is this? What did I do?”
I cuffed him and lifted him off the ground. Pushed him over and sat him down in a chair.
I found her jacket in his bathroom, along with some photos. Shots of Kayla, obviously on the roof of the building, sunbathing. She wasn’t nude, had a tiny bikini on, but there were close-ups of her breasts and crotch area, and there wasn’t any doubt that she had no idea the photos were being snapped.
I had bloodied Edgar Pablos’s face and was breaking his fingers when Roland Park and the golfers entered. As they yanked me off him, I heard someone screaming, “Why?” over and over.
It was me.
MY FIRING WAS official a month after the arrest of Edgar Pablos. The evidence, trace and circumstantial, was overwhelming. No doubt he killed Kayla. But my conduct, the subsequent lawsuit, and a good defense lawyer helped him go free.
There’s another hot-dog vendor at Delmar and Jefferson these days. I don’t go much anymore. Mostly I just stay at home, listening to Louis Armstrong sing about skies of blue and clouds of white. And what a wonderful world it is.
Winning by Alafair Burke
Let me tell him for you, Jenny. You stay here and rest. I’ll bring Greg in after – when he’s thought it over a bit.”
Jenny didn’t have the energy to tell her partner, Officer Wayne Harvey, that there was nothing restful about lying in a hospital bed ten minutes after the completion of a rape kit. Thirty minutes after ingesting the morning-after pill and an HIV postexposure prophylaxis. Sixty minutes since the arrest. Three hours since the rape. That was her best guess – three hours, since it started, at least.
Talking to Greg would help her stop feeling this way that she didn’t want to feel anymore. Weak. Embarrassed. Broken. She was ready to feel like herself again. Until the DA needed her testimony, she was finished with her duties as a crime victim. If she talked to Greg, she might feel more like Jenny. She would be the arresting police officer, delivering the news as gently as possible to the victim’s family. She would also be his wife.
“No, Wayne. Go on home to Marcy. Just tell the nurse to get Greg for me.”
Through the open slats of the drawn blinds in her room, she saw Greg talking to a young woman with bright-pink scrubs and a blond ponytail. She knew both this process and her husband well enough that she thought she could actually make out some of the words. Your wife is ready for visitors now, Mr. Sutton. Greg looking worried still. Asking her something. Something like What happened? Was there an accident? The nurse looking down at her hands, wishing there was a chart or a clipboard – some prop there to employ as a distraction. Your wife needs you now. There’s nothing more I can say.
Greg opened the door and closed it gently behind him.
“You okay, baby? They won’t tell me what’s going on. Something happened on the sting?”
Jenny was one of two female patrol officers under the age of thirty-five working for the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. Tonight she was the one tapped to work as a prostitution decoy at the truck stops along I-90. She loved the job but not this assignment. Half-naked in the bitter wind, the cold, dry air freezing the insides of her nostrils while an unwashed trucker eyed her over so she could negotiate an agreement of sex for money. But once the nasty part was over, it was easy. It was supposed to be easy. Drive around back, hon, and I’ll meet you there. Then the supporting officers would take him down. That’s the way it was supposed to go.