Deadly Dreams (28 page)

Emmons was lounging on the chair at the table in a studiedly casual pose. He spoke as soon as they opened the door. “You McGuire?” At Nate’s nod, he said, “I heard you was looking for me.” He spared only a quick appraising glance for Risa before returning his attention to Nate.

“Thanks for coming in.” When he and Risa were seated, he said, “I wanted to talk to you about your whereabouts on May seventeenth.”

The other man studied him. “What you think I did?”

“I have a witness that places you and another man in Wakeshead Park that morning.”

“Naw, I wasn’t there. I don’t like parks. And I don’t like mornings.” He included Risa in his grin. “I sleep all day. Like one of them vampires.”

“The photos of you and your friend were picked from a photo array,” Nate lied without compunction. He’d promised Crowley he’d avoid making Juicy think the other man had given him up. And then vowed to Morales he’d tread lightly so as to not screw up Vice’s plans for the dealer. “The woman seemed pretty certain.”

“There’s all sorts of research out there now saying how eyewitness accounts can’t be trusted. That’s how my last conviction got overturned. Witnesses said one thing at the trial,’nother at the appeal. Maybe you showed her only photos of me to pick from.” He leaned back, hooked an arm over the back of the chair. “I’m a chameleon. The kinda guy looks one way one time, ’nother way the next. That’s probably how your witness got it wrong. I wasn’t there.”

“The park was the scene of a homicide a few hours earlier,” Risa interjected. The nerves he’d noticed earlier appeared under control. “We need to question everyone who was seen in the vicinity. Did you see anyone while you were there?”

“Sweet thing, I wasn’t there.” He slapped his palm lightly on the table in emphasis. “I’d like to help. Be a John Q. Citizen and all, but you don’t want me to lie, do you?”

“No, but something tells me I won’t be able to stop it, either.”

His teeth flashed. “That wounds me deeply. I came here of my own free will to help out the trusted men in blue, and alls I get is mistrust?” His eyes watchful he asked, “How ’bout that other guy? The one supposed to be there with me? What he got to say?”

“He’s been uncooperative.”

At Nate’s words, Juicy seemed to relax. “There you go, then. He probably wasn’t there neither. People gets things wrong all the time. Your witness just must have been seeing things.”

After several more minutes of getting nowhere, Nate gave up. The man wasn’t going to come clean about his whereabouts, and there was no way to press the issue without telling him Crowley had given him up. Since that wasn’t an option, there was nothing to do but to kick him loose.

“All right you can go.”

Juicy remained sitting, looking from one of them to the other. “That’s all you got? Seems like a waste to leave already after coming all the ways down here.”

“You have something else to say?”

Although it was Nate’s question, the other man addressed Risa with his answer. “Heard you was asking questions about Tory’s, a bar used to be in my neighborhood.”

“That’s right. Did you know of it?”

“I remember it. I was just a kid but I ran the streets ’bout every night. Used to be a nice place. I remember Tory, too. She had a kid my age. Skinny little blond kid. Nose always running. But sometimes he’d slip out of the place if it was busy and no one was looking to make sure he was in bed. Then me and him would hang out. We was just kids.”

“Do you know Tory’s last name?” Risa asked.

He lifted a shoulder without interest. “Never cared. And never saw her or the kid again after the place burnt down. Played in the building a lot after that, though. Took the city forever to tear it down.” He gave a grim smile and leaned forward. “Heard the building was haunted because someone got caught in that fire. Burned right along with the bar. Never got out of the upstairs apartment. If I died like that, I’d haunt a building, too.”

Seeming to have said all he was going to, he got up and ambled to the door. Went through it. The officer on the other side of it fell into step beside him to escort him out.

“Interesting,” Risa murmured.

“But hardly surprising.” The chair scraped as Nate rose and stretched. “Guys like him deny everything. And I couldn’t use the only leverage I had that might have gotten to the truth so the whole meeting was a bust.”

She rose, fell into step beside him as they left the room and headed back to his office. “I think he told the truth about one thing.”

When he cocked a brow at her, she continued, “He’s a chameleon. Just like he said. He dropped the street vernacular when he was telling us about the fire, did you notice that?”

“And that tells us what, exactly?”

“It tells us that he’s adept at fitting in wherever he needs to.”

An hour later found them both on their cells. Nate finished first and waited impatiently for Risa to do the same. When she did, she had a page full of notes and an expression of satisfaction. “Okay, I’ll still need to get more background from the newspapers archives, but the clerk in the property office gave me a place to start. Tory Marie Baltes had owed the business in question. She’d bought it five years earlier. Paid her taxes on time. No problem on file until the building burnt. Technically she still owned the structure. Insurance should have paid off, if the owner carried it. But it was listed as abandoned and eventually the city took it over.”

“Is she the one who died in the fire?”

Risa lifted a shoulder. “Can’t tell that from property tax records. But if what Juicy told us is true—a big if—I have a hard time believing the story wouldn’t have been big news, at least for a day or two. I’ll start checking the newspaper’s archives.”

“You can do it on the way to Bonnie Christiansen’s house.” He rose, shrugged into his jacket. “I just got off the phone with her. They’ve found the picture taken of her husband with his big fish. She says there’s another man in the photo with him.”

Nate and Risa stared at the picture in the cheap plastic frame. The glass was cracked. The fish Christiansen was holding was indeed impressive, if one cared about things like that. But it was the man standing in the background, half in and half out of the picture that captured his attention.

It depicted the same person speaking in that video segment in the tape found at Christiansen’s crime scene. The one they’d called Johnny.

“The kids never did find it when they were putting the pictures together for the service,” Bonnie was saying. “I ran across it when I was hunting down an extra pen to write thank yous with. Found it stuffed in one of the desk drawers.” She nodded to a small desk tucked into the corner of the room. “I remember now, the picture had gotten knocked off the table and broke. I put it away meaning to get a new frame sometime and forgot all about it.”

“Would you mind if we took it with us?” At the woman’s alarmed look, Nate assured her, “You’ll get it back. I’d see to that.”

“I suppose that’s okay,” she said slowly. “If you’re sure I’ll get it back.”

“You have our word,” Risa said as they walked to the door. “And thank you again for calling us about this.”

She waited until they were down the steps at least before clutching at Nate’s arm urgently. “Okay, that’s one coincidence erased. The Johnny in the video and Christansen’s poker buddy are one and the same.”

“What do you want to bet that the bar the group met in to play poker was Tory’s? At least until it was destroyed by fire.”

“If that’s what they were really doing,” she added. She pulled open the door and slid into the front seat of the vehicle. Her jacket gaped as she went in search of the ends of the seat belt, and he got a better view of the weapon she was carrying. He was reminded of the nerves she’d worn when she’d first arrived at the station house today. Nerves that had gradually subsided as the day progressed.

He waited until he was buckled in the vehicle and had started it. “What do you mean ‘if ’? You don’t think they were playing poker together?”

“I don’t think poker gets you killed,” she said. “At least not the way I’ve always played it. Let’s assume that Bonnie was right when she said the group was all cops. And let’s take it a step further and assume they used to meet at Tory’s. Who was Johnny referring to when he made the racist remark to someone named Lamont? A bartender maybe?”

“If we knew, and if we could track him, maybe he could give us the answers we need. In the meantime, I’m going to see what we can do about matching the photo of Johnny to personnel records for officers on the force.”

“And hope that Johnny isn’t a
former
officer.”

He inclined his head. The idea might not lead anywhere, especially if Bonnie’s memory turned out to be faulty. But the commonality of the man named Johnny was too good to pass up. First he’d been seen in the video taken at Tory’s, in the same shot with a much younger Roland Parker. Then he’d appeared in a photo with the third victim, Patrick Christiansen. They’d been trying every way possible to find links between the victims.

The stranger called Johnny was the only real link they’d come across.

Nate was halfway across town when his cell rang again. He checked the ID screen. It was Eduardo Morales.

“Captain.” Traffic had slowed to a near stop, snarling ahead for what appeared to be miles. And it didn’t look like there was going to be a chance to turn onto a side street anytime soon. “What have you got?”

“I just took a courtesy call from the Montgomery County Sheriff. They had a call early this morning about a fire in a rural area over there.”

Startled, it took a moment for Nate to answer. Each of the crime scenes had been solidly within the city limits. He even wondered if that were part of the offender’s MO, to make it easier to ID the victims. Strike fear in the heart of others, as Risa had said.

“They find a connection to our case?” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sudden attention his words got from Risa.

“Said they found a police ID and a plastic badge, just like the three victims we found. The police commissioner has been on the phone making nice. By the time you get to the scene, hopefully he’ll have convinced the sheriff to allow us to take precedence in the case. But step carefully. We’re out of our territory, and technically you’re the guest of Sheriff Williams for the duration.”

“I understand. Any word on the identity of the victim?” A small movement caught his eye. Risa was as white as a sheet, the tension from the morning back in spades. He wondered at it, but the captain’s next words drove the concern for her to the back of his mind.

“I think you’ve met him. ID reads Detective Mark Randolph.”

Nate cast one last look at Risa. Found her expression unchanged. She’d been silent and still since he’d talked to her about Morales’s phone call. Been monosyllabic the entire ride to Montgomery County. She’d been acting strangely all day. But his frequent inquiries about what was on her mind had been rebuffed.