Conchita began to shake. The children saw the change in their mother and they looked frightened.
"Martin was also shot. He's dead."
Conchita bent at the waist as if she had been punched in the stomach. She started to sob. Her shoulders shook. The children's eyes widened. They huddled together. Dennis stood up and walked over to the shaking woman. He knelt beside her chair.
"Mrs. Jablonski," he began in a soft and sympathetic voice. Before he could say another word, Conchita Jablonski spun in her chair and slapped him across the face. Dennis was off balance. He fell onto the floor awkwardly, almost in slow motion, into a sitting position, more stunned than hurt.
"You bastards!" Conchita shrieked. "You killed my Marty!"
Anthony raced to her chair and restrained Mrs. Jablonski.
"He was robbing a house, Mrs. Jablonski. He murdered a woman's husband. He would have killed her, too, if she hadn't shot him."
Conchita heard only parts of what Anthony said as she strained against him. Dennis struggled to his feet and helped subdue the distraught woman. She collapsed, sobbing, her head in her hands.
"Please, Mrs. Jablonski," Dennis implored. "Your kids are scared. They need you."
She fought for control, gulping air. The two children raced over to her and buried themselves in her skirt. She talked quietly to them, submerging her own grief. The detectives waited while she calmed them. Dennis brought her a glass of water, but she would not take it.
"Are you gonna be okay?" Dennis asked.
"What do you care?" the woman shot back angrily. "You cops never cared about me or Marty before. All you wanna do is lock him up."
Anthony saw no reason to argue with Mrs. Jablonski. He held out the search warrant. "This is a court order that gives us the right to search your apartment. Detective Dennis will sit with you while I conduct the search."
Mrs. Jablonski suddenly looked frightened. Anthony wondered why, but he did not ask. If there was something hidden in the tiny apartment, it would be easy to find. He decided to start in the bedroom that the adults used. He could hear Detective Dennis talking soothingly to Mrs. Jablonski as he tossed the covers off the small bed where the Jablonskis slept. He knelt down and looked under it but saw nothing.
There was men's and women's clothing in the cheap wooden chest of drawers but nothing else. When he was through with it, Anthony opened the door of the closet. Dirty men's clothes lay crumpled on the floor, but there was nothing under them. Anthony peered up at a shelf that was just above his head. He pulled over a wooden chair that swayed slightly when he climbed up on it. Toward the back of the shelf was a shoe box. Inside were stacks of currency bound by rubber bands. Many stacks. The top bills were hundreds, fifties and twenties. Anthony stepped down from the chair and carried the shoe box into the living room.
"I've read Marty's file/' Anthony told her. "It says that you're on welfare and Marty was having trouble getting steady work. There's a lot of money in here. Where did it come from? Drugs? Was Marty selling drugs?"
"I ain't saying anything to you. You cops are all the same. I knew I shouldina let you in my house."
"Listen, Conchita, I'm not gonna mess around with you," Anthony said harshly. "Your husband killed a very important man. Now, all of a sudden, you're rolling in dough. You tell me where Marty got that money or I'll arrest you as an accessory to murder. What do you think happens to your kids if you're in jail?"
Conchita Jablonski wrapped her arms around her children and looked at Anthony with a combination of fear and loathing. He felt like a first-class heel, but Anthony did not let her know it.
"It's up to you, Conchita. You want your kids in foster care, keep playing games."
The fight went out of Mrs. Jablonski. "I don't know where Marty got the money," she answered in a small voice. "He just got it."
"He never said from who?"
"Just that it was from some guy."
"Did he tell you what this guy looked like?"
"No."
"Marty didn't say what this guy wanted him to do for this money?" Dennis asked.
"When he was doin' something bad he wouldn't tell me what it was because he didn't want me or the kids involved, but I knew it was no good." She shook her head and started to cry. "I tol' him to give back the money, but he said it was for me and the kids. He felt real bad how we lived and how he couldn't get no job because of his record. He wanted to do something for us. And now he's dead."
"I'm going to have to take this with me," Anthony said. "I'll give you a receipt."
"You can't take that money," she sobbed. "I got the kids. How I gonna feed them?"
"That's blood money, Mrs. Jablonski," Dennis told her. "Your husband may have been paid to kill someone for that money. You seem like a good woman. You take real good care of your kids and your home. You don't want that money. You know that money will only bring you grief."
Anthony and Dennis spent twenty more minutes with Conchita Jablonski, but it soon became clear that she did not know anything more about the money, the man who had given it to her dead husband or the reason he had been given it. While Dennis finished searching the apartment, Anthony counted the cash in the shoe box and gave Mrs. Jablonski a receipt for $9,800. The detective figured that the actual amount Jablonski had been given was $10,000. The bills were secured by rubber bands in five-hundred-dollar bundles. Anthony had discovered a solitary rubber band under three hundred dollars in loose bills.
"I don't like this," Dennis said when they were driving back to the Justice Center.
"I don't either. I didn't see anything in Jablonski's file about drugs. From what his wife says, he didn't score the money in a burglary. Some guy gave it to him because he wanted Jablonski to do something. Why would Jablonski run out in the middle of one of the worst storms in Oregon history to burglarize an estate with the security system Hoyt had if that wasn't the job he was paid to do?"
"Yeah, Lou, that's what I was thinking. Only, robbery might not have been the motive. What if Jablonski was paid to hit Lamar Hoyt?"
"That's one possibility, but there's another."
Leroy Dennis carried the shoe box full of money to the evidence room while Anthony made the call. James Allen answered the phone and Anthony asked to speak to Senator Crease.
"I'm afraid she's resting, Detective. She does not wish to be disturbed."
"I can appreciate that, Mr. Allen, but this is an urgent police matter and I have to talk to her."
Two minutes later, Ellen Crease picked up the phone.
"I'm glad I got you," Anthony said. "I wasn't sure you'd be staying at your house."
"I'm using the guest room tonight," Crease said. She sounded exhausted. "Tomorrow is the funeral. Then I'm going out to eastern Oregon to campaign."
"Oh," Anthony said, surprised that she was going back on the campaign trail so soon after her husband's murder.
Crease could hear the note of censure in Anthony's tone.
"Look, Lou, everything I see in this house reminds me of Lamar. If I don't get out of here and keep busy, I'll go crazy."
"I understand."
"Did you call just to see how I'm doing?"
"That and one other thing. A few hours ago, we identified Martin Jablonski as the man who broke into your house. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No. Should it?"
"Probably not. He was a real bad guy. Multiple arrests and convictions. Home burglaries accompanied by assaults. We thought we had ourselves a simple solution to what happened at your house. Then we discovered almost ten thousand dollars in cash in a shoe box in Jablonski's closet. His wife says someone gave it to him, but he wouldn't tell her why. We think Jablonski may have been paid to break into your estate."
"But why . . . ?" Crease started, stopping when the obvious answer occurred to her. "Lamar? You think this Jablonski was paid to kill Lamar?"