A Simple Act of Violence (19 page)

It was only later - an hour, perhaps two - that Natasha Joyce felt a sense of disquiet and unease. Insidious, almost intangible, it was not what had been said, not what she’d been asked, but the way it had been asked.

The Police Department Administrations Unit receptionist had returned with a white woman - smartly dressed, late forties, her manner sympathetic, understanding. She’d shown Natasha to a private office. Natasha followed her, asked no questions, and once inside the plain and undecorated room they sat in silence for a moment. Natasha felt she was being observed, examined, and then the woman laid a thin manila file on the desk, a number of sheets of lined paper, a pen.

‘My name is Frances Gray,’ the woman said. ‘I work for the Washington Police Department’s public liaison office. Our function here is to act as a bridge between the public and the people who manage police affairs.’ Ms Gray smiled. ‘Do you have any questions before we start?’

‘Start what?’ Natasha asked.

‘The interview.’

‘Interview?’

‘About your request this morning.’

‘You’re dealing with that now?’

Frances Gray nodded. ‘I am.’

Natasha leaned back, folded her arms across her chest. ‘Well, I do have one question Ms Gray—’

‘Call me Frances. This isn’t a formal interview.’

‘Frances? Okay, if that’s what you want. So . . . so my question is this. How come I all of a sudden get a private office and a person like you when all I’ve made is one phone call?’

‘Standard procedure in such a case, Ms Joyce.’

‘You’re telling me this is standard procedure for anyone who asks a question about someone who died?’

‘No, of course not . . . not for anyone who inquires about a regular death—’ Frances Gray caught herself, laughed a little stiffly. ‘That sounds so cold, so unsympathetic,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to sound so unfeeling, but the death of your fiancé—’

‘I didn’t tell you he was my fiancé,’ Natasha interjected.

‘No, you didn’t, but you did mention it to one of the staff at the public records office when you called them yesterday.’

‘I did?’ Natasha asked.

Frances smiled. ‘Yes . . . you called that office yesterday, and apparently they told you that all records were archived after five years, and that you should perhaps try here.’

‘You have that conversation on record?’

‘Yes, we do. We like to consider ourselves efficient when it comes to dealing with important requests.’

Natasha shook her head. ‘This don’t make sense, Frances . . . this sure as shit don’t make no sense to me.’

Frances frowned, tilted her head to one side. ‘Doesn’t make sense? What doesn’t make sense, Natasha?’

‘That you people would go to all this trouble over someone like Darryl. I mean, for God’s sake, he might have been the father of my girl, but he wasn’t anyone important. Hell, he was nothing more than a two-bit bullshit thief and a heroin addict.’

Frances was silent for quite some time, and then she shook her head slowly. ‘You were not told anything, were you?’ she asked quietly.

‘Told what?’ Natasha asked. ‘About what?’

‘About Darryl King . . . about what happened when he died?’

‘Jesus, there can’t be that much to know can there? He got himself shot. Some cop found him, that’s what I heard. I wanted to see if the cop was still around so I could ask him what happened.’

Frances was nodding slowly. ‘Okay . . . okay Natasha. And could I ask you why, after all these years, you wanted to find out what happened?’

‘For my daughter,’ Natasha said. ‘I have a nine-year-old daughter. Name is Chloe. I started to figure I should know something about what happened. Wanted to find out if there was anything more than what I heard. She’s getting older, she’s gonna start asking questions, and one time she’s gonna ask about who he was and what happened to him, and to tell you the truth . . .’ Natasha paused and smiled. ‘Tell you the truth, Frances, I ain’t such a good liar when it comes to kids, you know?’

Frances’ expression said everything that needed to be said; she seemed to understand exactly what Natasha was talking about. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said. ‘You tell me what you know about what happened back then, and then I’ll tell you everything else, okay?’

Natasha sighed deeply. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. When she looked up Frances was waiting patiently, ready to hear everything Natasha had to say.

 

Miller stood for a long while looking at Catherine Sheridan’s front room.

In daylight the complete absence of character was clearly visible. There were no flowers, no ornaments, no pictures on the walls. He and Roth had been through the kitchen and found the basics - cutlery, pans, a skillet, a wok. There were the usual cleaning products and cloths, a box with brown and black shoe cream preparations, an applicator, a buffer. There was no pizza wheel, no chopsticks, no pot plants, no spice rack or yolk separator. They went through the cupboards and drawers. They found everything one would need in a kitchen sufficient to cater to the most simple and pedestrian of tastes, but what they did not find - at least from Miller’s perspective - was anything personal.

He stood silently surveying the accoutrements and utensils spread across the counter-top.

‘It’s not right,’ he told Roth. ‘Something about this place is just not right.’

‘How long was she here?’ Roth asked.

‘According to the file, three, three and a half years, something like that.’

Roth looked toward the window, seemed distracted for a moment. ‘You know what this reminds me of?’ he eventually said. ‘Reminds me of a film I saw one time . . . guy was found dead in Central Park, fully clothed, shoes, suit, tie, shirt, the whole works, even had on an overcoat, but every label had been removed. I mean everything that would give some kind of indication of where he might have come from, where he lived . . . everything was removed. No wallet, no pocketbook, no keys, no driver’s license, even no labels inside his jacket.’

‘Like someone’s cleaned the place,’ Miller said. ‘Like someone went through this place and took away everything that would tell us who she was.’

‘Did you see any of the other places?’ Roth asked.

Miller shook his head. ‘You?’

‘I only saw the Rayner woman. That was back in July. I visited the scene once. It was nighttime. I didn’t see a great deal. I could have gone back there the next day but I didn’t. Couple of uniforms went over there with the forensics people, that was all.’

‘This hasn’t really become something until now, has it?’

‘Something?’ Roth asked. ‘Like how d’you mean something? ’

‘First one, Margaret Mosley . . . that was just a murder. I say just a murder, but it was an isolated incident. Looks like a sex crime. Shit happens, you know? Second one, the one you saw, that was a coincidence, right? Like the old saying, first time is happenstance, second time coincidence, third time you have a conspiracy. So the third one comes along, Barbara Lee, and now we have a pattern. Fourth one and we’re right in serial territory. This is how it reads to the suits in the mayor’s office. Now we’ve got something to worry about. Now word gets around, people forget about the elections, they remember that there was something there at the back of their minds. They start writing letters to the Post, the press is all over the place wanting to know what we’re doing about this murder epidemic.’

‘And this one is the important one, isn’t it,’ Roth said, more a statement than a question.

‘This one’s different,’ Miller replied. He walked to the table and sat down facing his partner. ‘Way I feel . . . God, I don’t know what I feel. I feel like it isn’t the same. There’s something about it that feels like a copycat, but it can’t be - unless someone within the department did it, you know? Anyway, regardless of who might or might not have done this, there’s something different about it. I don’t just mean the pizza guy, the fact that our guy killed her and then called someone over here to find her. Besides that, there’s something about the way this feels that tells me . . .’ Miller shook his head. ‘Fuck Al, I don’t know. The pizza thing and this Joyce woman, and the case number on Darryl King being the same as the phone number, you know? The news clipping under the mattress . . . maybe that’s something, maybe it isn’t.’

‘Did have a thought,’ Roth said. ‘That it could be a copycat not because the guy had access to any files or records or anything, but because he knows the original killer.’

‘What? Like there’s two of them?’

‘It’s just another explanation for the similarity.’

‘Hell, that’s even more horrifying than if he’s a cop or something.’

‘Okay, so now we need something that tells us who she was. Right now she’s no-one. Right now her social security number belongs to someone named Isabella Cordillera, and as far as we can tell there is no-one alive named Isabella Cordillera.’

‘Which language is that?’ Miller asked.

Roth shook his head. ‘Spanish, Portuguese maybe?’

‘We need to check it out, maybe there’s something there.’

‘So what now? You ready to go through this place with me?’

Miller rose from the chair and removed his jacket. ‘Upstairs, ’ he said. ‘We start upstairs and move down.’

Roth followed, draped his jacket over the back of the chair, started toward the stairwell.

 

‘A what?’ Natasha asked.

‘An informant,’ Frances Gray said. ‘Darryl was working with the police at the time of his death. He gave them a significant amount of very valuable information regarding the drug supply lines running through that part of the city. As a result of the investigation—’

‘He died,’ Natasha interjected.

Frances Gray nodded. ‘Yes, he did die, but he helped put a number of key suppliers in prison.’

Natasha Joyce felt tears break surface tension and roll down her cheeks. She did not know what to say. She was surprised, very much so, but in some way she was also relieved. Relieved that Darryl had tried to do something to repair the damage he’d done . . .

‘Wait up,’ she said. ‘He was busted or what?’

Frances Gray frowned, didn’t answer.

‘He was informing on these guys because the police had him on something and he was making a deal to get off of a charge?’

‘No, not according to the file we have. According to the file we have on this case it appears that he came forward voluntarily.’

‘And he died how exactly?’

‘You know he was shot?’

‘Sure, I know he was shot, but who shot him?’

Frances Gray shook her head. ‘That we don’t know. Not exactly. We know that it was one of the men inside the warehouse that was raided—’

‘He was on a warehouse raid? You’re shittin’ me! What the hell were the police doing taking some junkie informant on a warehouse raid?’

Frances Gray shook her head. ‘I am not familiar with all the specifics,’ she said. ‘All I know is that there was a police officer contact of Darryl’s who was also shot. He retired from the department, but I understand that Darryl worked with him for some time before this warehouse raid . . . I don’t know precisely and exactly what occurred. I only have a very few details regarding the actual case itself, you understand? I’d like to be able to answer all your questions, Natasha, but I’m not in a position to do so . . . not because I don’t want to, and not because the police department would have a problem with this, but because the records no longer exist—’

‘What?’

‘There was a flooding incident at the previous records facility. This was two or three years ago, and a great deal of the files that existed were damaged beyond repair. The paperwork just doesn’t exist any more, Natasha, and so I can only tell you what we know from the brief notes made by the officer after he was released from hospital.’

‘And who was that? This officer . . . who was that?’

‘His name?’ Frances Gray asked.

‘Sure his name . . . what was his name?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you that information. I can’t identify a police officer—’

‘You just said he was retired, right? If he’s retired then he ain’t a police officer no more.’

Frances Gray smiled patiently. ‘I’m sorry . . . there’s still a degree of confidentiality attached to these matters. The people that were arrested and jailed are still in jail, you see—’

‘Ah Jesus Christ, we had this the first time round. Nobody ever wants to answer a question in a straight fucking line. What the hell d’you think I’m gonna do, huh? I told you why I wanted to know what had happened. My daughter was four years old when her father was killed. All we were ever told was that he was shot. I never even identified his body. His mother went down and did that, you know? Saw her own son lying there with a bullethole in his chest. Only child she had. Lost her husband years before . . . saw her son killed as a junkie, right? You know what happened to her? I’ll tell you what happened to her . . . she died of a broken heart, old woman like that. She just gave up the will to live. Dead within six months. Now there’s just me. Me and Darryl’s daughter. And we want to know what happened, and when I ask you a simple question—’

‘Enough,’ Frances Gray said. Her voice cut Natasha dead. ‘You don’t seem to understand the position we are in—’

‘The position you are in? Don’t give me that bullshit, Ms Gray. Jesus, the position you are in. What the fuck kind of position do you think Darryl King’s mother was in? I’ll fucking tell you something right here and now. You think how that woman might have felt if you’d told her her son was assisting the police in cleaning up some drug areas of Washington. You wonder how she might have felt about her son being dead if she’d been told that?’