Easy Innocence (2 page)

Wait. What was happening? The bucket wasn’t a ball.
Stop striking the bucket. The princess will get hurt!
Already she was swaying from side to side. But the bat kept pounding the metal.
Swing and a miss. Strike one
. The princess fell to her knees, still clutching the bucket.
Ashes, ashes, they all fall down
. The princess was down for the count.
Ten, nine, eight
. One more swing connected with the bucket with a loud clannngggg. The princess dropped to the ground.

Home run. The home team won! Where are the bells? The whistles? The scoreboard lit up like the Fourth of July? A trickle of red seeped under the rim of the bucket onto the ground.

Suddenly it was quiet. Even the crickets stifled their song. He stared at the princess. She wasn’t moving.
Oh God, it was good
. He was good. His pants were stained. He was wet. Sticky. So was the princess.
Have to mop up. Clean us both. Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet. Cleaning her curds and whey.

Her sweet, milky neck. The soft, golden hair. Streaked with red now. Did he do this? He was going to be her salvation. The leaves on the trees shivered. He did too.

The Louisville Slugger. It lay close to the princess. He had wanted to play Little League. Shortstop, he thought.
Stop short.
But he didn’t make the team. His father was angry. He remembered that day, too. It hurt. He stood up and raised the bat to his shoulders.
Swing and a miss. Strike two.

Screams pierced the silence of the woods. The ladies in waiting were back. Their hands flew to their mouths. Their eyes grew wide with horror.
You are too late
, he wanted to call out.
You could not save your Princess
.

He dropped the bat and knelt down next to her body. He touched the bloody rim of the bucket. He wiped his hands on his shirt. The silence of the woods pressed in. He would have cried, if only he knew how.

THAT TWO-TIMING
bitch,” he spat. “She’s going to pay. Big time.”

Georgia Davis tried to ignore the man’s venom, but the more he talked, the more vicious he grew. A potential client, he’d met her at Starbucks and immediately started to rant about his wife. Georgia listened, hoping she could remain dispassionate. “When did you first suspect she was seeing someone?”

“About six months ago.”

“You waited a long time to act on it.”

“I thought maybe she was telling the truth about the Goddammed class. Then I called the school, and they had no fucking record of her registration.” His face grew so crimson, his body so rigid she was afraid he might explode. “She’s a whore. A Goddamned cheating whore. After all I’ve done for her. She was nothing before she married me.” He bunched his hands into fists. “A fucking nobody!”

Georgia sipped her coffee. The guy had come in as a referral from a PI she hardly knew. The dick worked in the western suburbs, but the client lived on the North Shore, and he thought Georgia would be better suited to the case. She’d gratefully snapped it up, but now she wasn’t so sure. Did the PI know what an asshole this guy was? Maybe she should have grilled him more before she jumped.

Except the guy was paying good money. He hadn’t blinked when she gave him her per diem, payable up front, and he agreed to a bonus if she came up with the goods.

“Let me look into it, Mr. Colley.” She put down her coffee. “If it’s true, you’ll have your proof.”

“What, pictures? Videotape? Or other crap?”

“Something like that.”

“It’s gonna have to hold up in court.”

“It will.”

He eyed her skeptically. “Lamont says you’re new to this game.”

Georgia looked him in the eye. “I was a cop for ten years.”

“Where?”

“Up here. On the North Shore.”

“You spent your days tracking down lost bicycles and cats?”

And covered a lot of domestics, she thought. “Among other things.”

“This job—well—it’s not like handing out speeding tickets on Happ Road. How do I know you can handle it?”

She leveled another look at him. “You don’t.” She paused. “But if you have any doubts, you’re free to find someone else.” She lifted her bag off the back of the chair, and hiked it up on her shoulder. “Thanks for the coffee.” She stood up and turned around.

“Hold on.” Colley raised his hand. “I’ll write out a check.”

***

Something was off, Georgia realized the next night.

The woman threw her arms around her boyfriend, her face so full of joy and abandon it lit up the motel parking lot. As she pressed against him, he tipped up her chin and kissed her eyes, her nose, her throat. Then he tenderly brushed the side of her cheek. She winced. He wrapped his arms around her, and the two of them clung together, as if they might melt into each other through sheer will. The man fished a key out of his pocket and opened the door to the room. The woman followed him in.

Georgia frowned and stopped her digital camera. They didn’t look like a couple in the throes of a tawdry, furtive affair. They looked like a couple in love, the kind of love that makes old people smile indulgently and causes the envious to avert their eyes. The kind of love that refuses to hide, even when it should. She’d been less than fifty yards away from the motel, filming their every move, and they never bothered to check if anyone was watching.

She curled her fingers around the camera and played back the tape through the view finder. When she got to the part where the man brushed his fingers along his lover’s cheek, Georgia zoomed in. She saw a discolored spot on the woman’s skin. A bruise.

Georgia weighed her options. She
could
delete the tape. Blame it on a screwed-up camera. Being married to that asshole was punishment enough. Then again, this was her living. She couldn’t afford the luxury of scruples. The domestics, the skip traces, the occasional insurance fraud— they all added up. She panned from the motel to the rear of the woman’s white Mercedes and zoomed in on a shot of her license plate. Then she panned into the rear windshield. One of those dogs with drooping folds at its neck bobbed in the window. Brown and white markings and floppy ears. A Beagle.

Finished, she headed back to her car and put the camera back in its case. She was about to start the engine for the drive back to Evanston when she changed her mind. Sliding out of the car, she made her way to the motel room and tapped lightly on the door.

At least they’d have a day’s head start.

***

Georgia watched the steam swirl around her bathroom as she toweled off the next morning. With all the humidity, she ought to buy a fern for the window ledge. But she knew she’d never do it. She had a knack for killing things.

The phone rang in the living room. She scrambled to get it. “Davis here.”

“Georgia Davis?” It was a woman’s voice. Soft. Tentative.

“That’s right.”

The woman cleared her throat. “Hello My name is Ruth Jordan and I’m—uh—I’m calling at the suggestion of Sergeant Dan O’Malley.”

“O’Malley. How is the old—er—coot?”

The woman didn’t reply.

“Sorry, he’s a—well, sometimes, I get, well...” Georgia stopped, feeling embarrassed. “How can I help you?”

“I—I don’t quite know how to explain. I think I’m still in shock. But the Sergeant thought you might be able to help.”

O’Malley referring someone to her? That was a first. “Just start at the beginning and go slowly.”

The woman let out a breath. “Yes. Of course. Like I said, my name is Ruth Jordan. I live in Northbrook. I’m calling about my brother, Cameron. Cam, we call him.”

Wrapping the towel around her, Georgia went to her desk and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. “Go on.”

“Cam’s always been—well, how shall I say it—he’s not right in the head. Hasn’t been since—since he was a little boy.” She hesitated. “Not that he’s violent or anything. He’s just—well, they never knew quite how to diagnose him. Autistic, we’re pretty sure. But other things, too. We tried everything, of course. Sometimes he seems better for a while. It’s hard to tell. And now that our parents are gone, well, it’s just the two of us, and I—it’s hard, you know?”

Georgia tapped the pen against the pad of paper. “What’s the problem, Ms. Jordan?”

“Cam—well, Cam is in a lot of trouble.” She cleared her throat again. “He was arrested a few weeks ago, and he’s in jail. They say he killed a teenage girl.”

SHINY LINOLEUM
floors, naugahyde booths, and lots of mirrors tagged the Villager restaurant as a newly renovated diner, but a diner nonetheless. Tucked away on a side street not far from the police station, it had been serving good food at reasonable prices for twenty years. A few years ago the place had been bought by two Greek brothers and their sister, and while the menu now reflected an ethnic flavor, it was still a popular hangout for cops. O’Malley was nursing a bowl of soup. It was mid-afternoon, and the place was practically empty. O’Malley would never have met her here at rush hour, Georgia knew. It wasn’t wise for a cop and a PI to be seen together, even if the PI had once been on the force. So why had he suggested the Villager? Maybe he didn’t care. She slid into the booth across from him.

“Hey, Danny. I appreciate this.”

“Gotta make it quick.” O’Malley picked up his spoon. His red hair, marginally flecked with gray, made him look younger than his forty-five years, but there was no trace of the eager police officer he’d been when Georgia first met him. His face now held a world-weary cast, and his expression was naturally suspicious, even in repose. They’d come onto the force around the same time, but O’Malley was promoted after a couple of years. In fact, he’d been her supervisor when she left. He was a good one, too. Never got tied up in knots over political correctness or idiotic regulations, some of which were designed to keep her a few rungs behind the men. O’Malley told her when she did good and when she screwed up.

She pretended not to notice his thickening gut and chalky complexion. Was he okay? Should she ask? They’d always been straight with each other. Still, she wasn’t on the force any more. She glanced at his soup, a steaming, thick, buttery mass with a few pieces of bacon thrown in.

She motioned to the bowl. “That your idea of healthy eating?”

“Careful, there,” he said, spooning soup into his mouth. He took his time swallowing. “I already have a food cop in my life.”

If anything was wrong with him, his wife Joyce, a strong plain-speaking woman with so much energy she could power the lights at Wrigley Field by herself, would be all over him with a list of remedies she’d discovered on the Internet.

Georgia righted her coffee cup, which had been upside down. As a waitress came over to fill it, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirrored panel on the wall. Some said she had hard features, especially when she wasn’t wearing makeup. Today, with her blond hair pulled into a butterfly clip, she looked all nose, blue eyes, and pale skin. She started to tug at her fisherman’s sweater, then stopped. She was what she was. She ran her hands down her thighs. The denim of her jeans was comforting.

“So to what do I owe the honor of this referral?”

“Don’t call it that, okay? I told her I wasn’t sure there was anything you—or anyone—could do. But she was—well—persistent.” He put his spoon down and studied her. “Hey. You doing all right?”

Georgia sipped her coffee. “I’m doing fine. There is life after the force.”

“Good.” He shook his head. “The way all that went down, it—it wasn’t right. Olson shouldn’t have... well... Shit.”

“It’s okay, Dan. I’m moving on. You should too. Gotta live for the present, you know what I mean?”

“That’s for sure.” He started to nod then caught himself. “You sound— different.” His eyes narrowed. “You doing some kind of religious stuff? Or yoga?”

Georgia laughed. “Church of life, Dan. Church of Life.”

He snorted and spooned up more soup. It left a trace of white on his mustache.

“So.” Georgia ran a finger over her lips. “Tell me about Sara Long and what she was doing in the Forest Preserve on September 17
^th
.”

He looked up. “You did your homework.”

“It’s not hard when it’s all over the papers. Seventeen years old. A junior at Newfield High School in Winnetka. Clubbed to death with a baseball bat in the Forest Preserve. Her friends find the offender kneeling over her body, holding the bat. The girls run away and call the police on their cells. Police pick him up wandering near the crime scene a few minutes later. Turns out to be one Cameron Jordan, a registered sex offender, and crazy as a loon.”

“That’s just about it.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So, it sounds pretty cut and dry. Why’d you have his sister give me a call?”

O’Malley pushed his soup bowl away from him, folded his hands on the table, and stared at Georgia. “I don’t like it.” He paused. “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Georgia hunched forward, leaning her elbows on the table. She kept her mouth shut. It was a trick she’d picked up from—she forced his image out of her mind. It didn’t matter. The technique worked.

“This one flew up to the State’s Attorney so fast you’d need wings to track it,” O’Malley said. “I never saw anything like it. Wasn’t even half an hour after they picked up the boy that we got the call. Felony Review was here like a shot. We did a show-up, and they approved murder charges right away.”

“Without a CI?”

“They claimed they didn’t need a continuing investigation. Said they had everything they needed. Two days later, they sent the package to 26
^th
and Cal, and the grand jury indicted him for first degree murder. He was arraigned in Skokie two weeks after that.”

Holy—“That is fast. Who does her family know?”

O’Malley shrugged. “Good question. Word is the State’s Attorney’s Office wants it taken care of yesterday.”

“Who’s handling the case?”

“Jeff Ramsey.”

“Don’t know him.”

“He’s First Assistant. From New York. Went to Northwestern Law. Joined the State’s Attorney’s Office four years ago. They say he’s interested in higher office.”