Criminal (13 page)

“Consider it buying your forgiveness.”

“It’s going to take more than that.”

Evelyn counted out the dollar bills and left what seemed like a very generous tip. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

If her Saturday was like any other, Amanda would spend the day cleaning her father’s house, then cleaning her own apartment, then while away the evening with Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and Carol Burnett. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

Evelyn handed over her food. “Why don’t you come to my house? We’re having a barbecue.”

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” Amanda managed, though she didn’t think her father would approve. She was actually worried that he’d heard something. Without prompting, he’d seen fit to warn her off Evelyn Mitchell every morning this week. “Thank you for the invitation, though.”

Evelyn said, “Well, let me know. I’d love for you to meet Bill. He’s just—” Her voice took on a dreamy quality. “He’s just the best. I know you’d like him.”

Amanda nodded, unsure of what to say.

“You date much?”

“All the time,” she joked. “Men just love it when they find out you’re a cop.” They loved it as they ran screaming for the door. “I’m too busy to date right now, anyway. I’m trying to finish my degree. There’s just a lot going on.”

Evelyn obviously saw right through her. “Working around jerks like Peterson all day, you forget what a nice, normal guy is like.” She paused. “There are some good ones out there. Don’t let the Neanderthals get you down.”

“Mm-hm.” Amanda put a french fry in her mouth, then another, until Evelyn did the same.

They both ate in silence, sticking their cups on the dashboard, balancing the paper containers in their laps. For Amanda’s part, the greasy french fries and hamburger were exactly what she needed. The iced chocolate milk was as sweet as a dessert, but she ate the fried pie anyway. By the time she was through, she felt slightly nauseated again, but this time it was overindulgence rather than fear turning her stomach.

Evelyn transferred their empty containers back to the window tray. She put her hand to her stomach and groaned. “
Mamma mia
, that’s a spicy meatball.”

“I put a new bottle of Alka-Seltzer in my purse this morning.”

Evelyn waved over the carhop and ordered two cups of water. “I’m beginning to think you and I are a bad influence on each other.”

Amanda’s eyelids dipped into a lengthy blink. “This is the first time I’ve ever wanted to be in the car with Peterson so I could lay down and go to sleep.”

“You’d wake up with him on top of you.” Evelyn tugged at the back of her hair. She was silent a few seconds, then asked, “Say, why do you think Hodge sent us to Techwood?”

Not for the first time, Amanda felt the danger behind her question. It was clear that someone very high up was pulling strings. Both Evelyn and Hodge had been transferred. There was no telling what would happen to Amanda, especially if anyone found out what she’d been doing.

Evelyn prodded, “Come on, girl. I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

“Well.” Amanda tried to make herself stop there, but she continued, “The guy in the blue suit bothers me. And not just because he’s a lawyer.”

“I know what you mean,” Evelyn agreed. “He walked into the station like he owned it. He yelled at Hodge. You don’t get to do that to a cop, even if you’re white and in a fancy blue suit.”

“Hodge called him by name. That’s what he said during roll call: ‘Mr. Treadwell, we can talk in my office.’ ”

“And then they went into the office, and Treadwell started ordering him around right off the bat.”

“Evelyn, you’re missing the point. Think about what you told me before. Andrew Treadwell, Sr., has friends in high places. He had his picture in the paper with Mayor Jackson. He worked on the campaign. Why would he reach out to a lowly sergeant with no pull who’s only been in charge for less than an hour?”

She nodded. “Okay. You’re right. Keep going.”

“Treadwell-Price specializes in construction law. Andrew Senior is negotiating all those contracts for the new subway system nobody wants.”

“How’d you hear that?”

“I went down to the newspaper and looked through some of the back issues.”

“They let you do that?”

Amanda shrugged. “My dad worked on that kidnapping case last year.” An editor from the paper had been held for a million-dollar ransom. One of Duke’s last official duties was transporting the money from the C&S vault to the drop location. “I told them who I was and they let me look through the archives.”

“Your father doesn’t know you were there?”

“Of course not.” Duke would’ve been livid that Amanda hadn’t cleared it with him first. “He’d ask me what I was up to. I didn’t want to open that can of worms.”

“Phew.” Evelyn leaned her head back against the seat. “What you found out is certainly interesting. Anything else?”

Amanda hesitated again.

“Come on, darlin’. You can’t be a little pregnant.”

Amanda sighed to make her reluctance known. She had a sneaking suspicion she was just stirring up trouble. “The man who was talking to Hodge isn’t Treadwell Junior. According to the newspaper, Treadwell Senior has one child, a daughter.”

Evelyn sat up again. “Named Kitty? Or Katherine? Kate?”

“Eugenia Louise, and she’s at some girls’ school in Switzerland.”

“So, not shooting up Boy at Techwood.”

“Boy?”

“It’s what Negroes call heroin. Thank you.” The carhop was back with their water. Amanda unscrewed the cap from the bottle of Alka-Seltzer and dropped two tablets into each cup. The fizzing was a welcome sound.

Evelyn said, “So, there’s no Treadwell Junior. I wonder who the man in the blue suit was? And why Hodge thought he was Treadwell?” Evelyn smiled. “I’m sure Hodge thinks we all look alike.”

Amanda smiled, too. “Blue Suit has to be a lawyer. Maybe he’s from the firm and Hodge just assumed his name was Treadwell. But that doesn’t make sense, either. We’ve already established Andrew Treadwell wouldn’t send his minion to talk to a brand-new zone captain. He’d go straight to the mayor. The more delicate the situation, the more likely he’d be to let as few people know as possible.”

Evelyn made the obvious connection. “Which means either Blue Suit was taking initiative to help the boss or he was looking to make trouble.”

Amanda wasn’t so sure about that, but she said, “Either way, Hodge wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear. Blue Suit was angry when he left. He yelled at Hodge, then stormed out of the building.”

Evelyn circled back to her earlier theory. “Blue Suit pressured Hodge to send us out to check on Kitty Treadwell. Treadwell isn’t a common name. She has to somehow be related to Andrew Treadwell.”

“I couldn’t find a connection in the newspapers, but they don’t keep all the back issues and they’re a bear to search through.”

“Treadwell-Price is in that new office building off Forsyth Street. We could sit outside during lunch. These guys don’t brown-bag it. Blue Suit will have to come out sooner or later.”

“And then what?”

“We show him our badges and ask him some questions.”

Amanda didn’t see that working. The man would probably laugh in their faces. “What if it gets back to Hodge that you’re snooping around?”

“I don’t think he cares so long as I stay out of his office and stop asking him questions. What about your new sergeant?”

“He’s one of the old guard, but he barely knows my name.”

“Probably drunk before lunchtime,” Evelyn said. She was likely correct. Once the older sergeants got past their morning duties, you were hard-pressed to find one behind his desk. There was a reason half the force could be found napping during shift. “We can get together Monday after roll call. They don’t care what we do so long as we’re on the streets. Nessa’s okay with Peterson.”

Amanda was slightly worried about how good Vanessa was being with Peterson, but she let it slide. “Jane wasn’t the only girl living in that apartment. There were at least two others.”

“How do you get that?”

“There were three toothbrushes in the bathroom. All of them well used.”

“Jane didn’t have that many teeth.”

Amanda stared into the fizzing seltzer. Her stomach was too full to laugh at Evelyn’s jokes. “Half of me thinks I’m crazy for wasting so much time tracking down a story off a junkie prostitute.”

Evelyn sounded apologetic. “You’re not the only one who’s been wasting time.”

Amanda narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “I knew it. What’ve you been up to?”

“I talked with a friend I know at the Five. Cindy Murray. She’s a good girl. I described Jane to her. Cindy says maybe she remembers her coming in last week. Lots of girls try to pick up vouchers that don’t belong to them. They have to show two forms of ID—a license, a blood donor card, electric bill, something with their picture and address on it. If Jane is the girl Cindy was thinking of, she tried to pass herself off with someone else’s license. When Jane saw the jig was up, she went bonkers. Started screaming and making threats. Security had to throw her out into the street.”

“What happened to the license?”

“They toss ’em into a box, wait to see if anyone tries to claim them. Cindy says there’s at least a hundred licenses already. They tear them in half and throw them away at the end of every year.”

“Are the welfare rolls organized by names or by addresses?”

“Numbers, unfortunately. Too many of them have the same last name or live at the same address, so they all get assigned an individual number.”

“Social security number?”

“No such luck.”

“It’s got to be on computers, right?”

“They’re in the process of changing over from punch cards to magnetic tape,” Evelyn answered. “Cindy says it’s a mess. She’s basically working with a hammer and chisel while the boys try to figure it out. Which means even if we had access to the information, which they probably won’t give us, we’d have to do it all by hand: get the welfare roll number first, then cross-reference the number to the name, then verify the name against the address, then match both against the benefits logs that verify whether the girls have collected their vouchers in the last six months, which we could then use to compare to the names on the licenses.” Evelyn stopped for a breath. “Cindy says we’ll need a staff of fifty and about twenty years.”

“How long until the computers are up and running?”

“I don’t think it would matter.” Evelyn shrugged. “They’re computers, not magic beans. We’d still have to do most of it by hand. Assuming they’d give us access. Does your father know anyone down at the Five?”

Duke would’ve taken a blowtorch to the Five if they let him. “It wouldn’t matter. We can’t even start the whole process until we find out Kitty Treadwell’s roll number.” Amanda tried to think this through. “Jane said three women were missing: Kitty Treadwell, Lucy, and Mary.”

“I already checked missing persons in Zones Three and Four,” Evelyn provided. “No Kitty Treadwell. No Jane Delray—which I thought I’d check on while I was there. What I did find were a dozen Lucys and about a hundred Marys. They never clean out their files. Some of these girls have died of old age by now. They’ve been missing since the Depression.” She offered, “I can go to the other zones next week. Do you know Dr. Hanson?”

Amanda shook her head.

“Pete. Runs the morgue.” She saw Amanda’s expression. “No, he’s a good guy. Kind of what you’d expect from a coroner, but very nice. I know a gal works for him, Deena Coolidge. She says he lets her do things sometimes.”

“What things?”

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Not what you’re thinking. Lab things. Deena’s real into that stuff. Likes chemistry. Pete’s teaching her how to do the tests and some of the lab work on her own. She’s going to Tech at night, too.”

Amanda could guess why Dr. Hanson was letting her do these things, and it probably wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart. “Did you check the DNF?”

“The what?”

The dead Negro file. Duke had told Amanda about the running list of unsolved black homicides. Amanda offered, “I’ll check it.”

“Check what?”

She changed the subject. “Do we know if the apartment is in Kitty’s name?”

“Oh!” Evelyn seemed impressed. “That’s a very good question.” She grabbed one of the napkins off the dashboard and wrote herself a note. “I wonder if the number you get assigned for Section Eight housing is the same as the one they give you for collecting welfare vouchers? Do you know anyone at the Housing Authority?”

“Pam Canale.” Amanda checked the time. “I need to study for my class tonight, but I can call her first thing Monday.”

“You can tell me what you find out when we’re staking out Mr. Blue Suit. Also—” She scribbled something else on the napkin. “Here’s my number at home so you can let me know about tomorrow. The barbecue.”

“Thank you.” Amanda folded the napkin in two and stuck it in her purse. There was no lie she could tell Duke that could explain such a long absence. He was always calling her apartment to make sure she was home. If Amanda didn’t pick up by the second ring, he hung up and drove over.

“You know,” Evelyn began, “I read an article in the paper about this guy out West who’s been killing college students.”

“These girls aren’t college students.”

“Still, we’ve got three missing.”

“This isn’t Hollywood, Evelyn. There aren’t serial killers lurking around Atlanta.” Amanda changed the subject back to something more plausible. “I’ve been thinking about Kitty’s apartment. There were three trash bags full of clothes in the bedroom. No woman can afford that many clothes, especially if she’s living in the projects.” Amanda felt her stomach rumble. She had forgotten about the paper cup in her hand. She downed the seltzer in one swallow and suppressed the resulting belch. “There was a lot of makeup in the bathroom, too. Way too much for one girl. Even a prostitute.”

“Jane wasn’t wearing any makeup. There was no smeared mascara under her eyes. I can’t see her cleaning up with cold cream every night.”

“There was cold cream in the bathroom,” Amanda recalled, “but suffice it to say, no one was using it. There were used sanitary napkins in the trashcan, but a box of Tampax was on the shelf. So, obviously, someone was staying there who wasn’t on the game. Maybe a little sister. Maybe even Kitty Treadwell.”