Missing Persons (26 page)

I stood up. What was up with him? “Is this about the fight you had with Frank?”

“Are you accusing me of something?” Neal stood up too and moved his six-foot, three-inch frame close to me. “I played basketball with him the day he died, if you’re looking for another suspect.”

“What was the fight about, Neal?”

“You. I told him to man up and go back to his wife and stop parading his girlfriend around town. He took her to a restaurant down the street from his dad’s office. It was embarrassing.”

“That was, what, three weeks before he died?”

“I guess so.”

“So if he was anxious to come back to me, why did he take Vera to a restaurant where he could have run into his father?”

“Kate, I’ve never understood why Frank did the things he did any better than you have.”

“And there’s something else. Did you know just days before he died he signed a lease for an art space?”

“I don’t know anything about that. He told me he was going to start teaching at the community center. I told you about that.”

“He must have lied to you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Then what did he say when you gave him that advice outside the restaurant?”

Neal turned white. “I don’t know, Kate. Sometimes people make stupid decisions and they don’t know how to turn back. Sometimes they need a friend to stop them before it gets out of control.”

“Is that what you tried to do?”

“It’s what I’m trying to do now.”

His voice was getting angrier, and he was moving closer. I could feel my heart beating, my muscles tense. Though I’d known Neal since I was a junior in high school I was suddenly aware of how rarely we’d been alone together. I walked to the front door and opened it, relieved to see two of my neighbors chatting on the street.

“Thanks for the advice, Neal.”

“That’s exactly what Frank said. And obviously he didn’t take it.”

Neal slammed the screen door behind him and headed for his car at practically a run.

T
he next morning Detective Rosenthal called. She wanted a favor.

“We often tape funerals when we’re looking to see who comes, how people behave,” she said. “It can make people nervous, the police taping them, even though we try to be discreet. I was thinking if you taped the funeral tomorrow, people would assume it was for the show and wouldn’t think twice about it.”

“Could we use the footage on the air?”

“I talked to Linda Moretti, and she was fine with it, so I suppose so. I just want to look at it too.”

“It’s okay with me,” I said.

It wasn’t really up to me to let the police look at the footage since I didn’t actually own it. The network and Ripper Productions owned it. But I figured (and I was right) that Mike would be so excited to get an all-access pass to Theresa’s funeral that he’d happily make dubs for the police. And more importantly, it was another line for the press release on how the show had helped the investigation.

The only problem was that it would make the three days of shooting a little tricky. No one wanted to be interviewed on the day of the funeral, so all the re-interviews would have to be crammed into the other two shoot days Mike had allowed. The only way to make that happen was to cut down on travel and setup time. And that meant finding a central location and having the interview subjects come to me.

I spent several hours hunting down an inexpensive conference room in the Loop, which would work well for Gray, Julia, and Wyatt. I could only book it for Thursday, which meant I had a day between the funeral and the interviews, For Linda and possibly Jason I found a small restaurant in Bridgeport that only opened for dinner. We could use the place Friday for a hundred bucks as long as we were out before five.

Then I went shopping for a new funeral outfit. I didn’t really want to use the dress I wore for Frank’s, which was all black and very widowy. I wanted something that would be practical enough to keep up with Andres and conservative enough to be appropriate for the occasion, but not all black since I wasn’t really one of the mourners. It’s a complicated thing to dress for the funeral of a woman whose death you are exploiting for ratings. I was just hoping that Victor put the same thought into it that I was.

 

 

Turned out I needn’t have worried. Victor showed up in a dark navy suit with a white shirt and a gray tie. His hair was a normal brown, his nose ring had been removed, and even the tattoo that crept up the side of his neck seemed muted. Andres looked equally dapper in a charcoal suit and red tie.

“We clean up nice,” I said.

“Are you going to be able to work in those?” Andres pointed to my shoes, dark gray pumps with three-inch heels that peeked out from my gray trousers. I’d found a black silk tank with a matching silk cardigan on sale, and I was feeling pretty for the first time in a while.

“No idea,” I admitted as I looked down at my shoes. I normally dressed in practical flats or gym shoes. “I just thought they were cute.”

“Now that we’re all dressed up, what’s the plan?” Andres asked.

“We hang back, shoot people as they go into the church, and shoot the funeral mass from the back. Then we go to the graveside ceremony. Obviously we want to focus on our interview subjects and Theresa’s family, but we’re here by the grace of Detective Rosenthal, so we have to shoot every face we can. That means sweeps of the crowd and anything that seems odd or out of place.”

“Sounds easy. Unless you know something I don’t.”

“Not me. But someone coming today might.”

 

 

We had been the first to arrive so we set up the camera a discreet distance from the Catholic church where the funeral mass would be held, but with a good view of the front door. Victor and I flanked Andres, as we had at the coffee shop. Within twenty minutes, people started to gather on the steps of the old church, hugging and offering comfort. It was a large crowd; probably much of the Bridgeport neighborhood had come to say good-bye. It was full of young faces who must have been friends of Theresa, but I didn’t recognize any of them.

After a few minutes of shooting, I saw Detective Rosenthal in a dark-blue pantsuit talking with several men I assumed to be detectives. While two of the men stayed outside the church, Rosenthal and another man went inside.

I looked around. There were two uniformed officers a fair distance back, but they seemed to be more in charge of crowd control than looking for murder suspects. As the time for the funeral got closer, more and more people arrived and it was getting harder to find the people I knew in the growing crowd.

Then I spotted Julia and David. I watched them walk over to an older couple, greeting them warmly. Julia’s parents, maybe. They were both touching Julia, who seemed inconsolable and only interested in leaning into her husband. David was looking around, seeing, I assumed, who else was there. When he spotted us, I thought he mouthed something but I couldn’t tell what it was. I just hoped Andres had caught it on tape.

Gray came with his wife, an icy blonde I recognized immediately from the photograph in his office. He hugged Julia and the other couple and then spoke to David, who turned and pointed directly at us. Gray didn’t seem surprised. He just nodded and seemed to be explaining the situation to David and the others. When he was done, he gestured toward the door of the church and the group moved inside.

After another few minutes of only seeing people I didn’t recognize, I saw Wyatt, who seemed to be alone. He walked through the crowd and into the church without speaking to anyone. Given his description of his relationship with Theresa, it’s possible he only knew a few of her friends.

Ten more minutes passed. The crowd had moved inside and only a handful of people were still outside the church. I saw Gray, Wyatt, and David reemerge and stand on the steps talking with a priest and two other men. Finally, a hearse pulled up in front of the church followed by a long black limousine.

Linda and Tom emerged from the limo and stood waiting by the hearse. They looked tired and vacant. I knew the feeling all too well. I felt intrusive for continuing to shoot, but it was what Mike wanted and what Rosenthal wanted, so I stood there and let Andres continue to roll tape.

The funeral director opened the doors of the hearse and began to slowly pull the casket out. Gray, Wyatt, Tom, David, and the two other men stepped forward to be Theresa’s pallbearers. At the sight of her daughter’s coffin, Linda collapsed.

“S
top tape,” I said to Andres.

“You sure?”

“Detective Rosenthal doesn’t need this. And if Mike has this, he’ll use it.”

Victor gave me a look that said, “Isn’t that the point?” but Andres put the camera down. Tom and Gray helped Linda over to a bench outside the church, where she sat sobbing for several minutes. The priest sat with her, offering whatever comfort you can in a situation like this, but it was obvious it meant nothing to Linda.

Andres let the camera rest on the hood of the van. “Where’s Jason?”

“Is he here? I didn’t see him arrive.”

“Didn’t you call him?”

“No.” I looked over at Andres. “I’m not that much of a monster.”

“Sorry. I just figured since you called him the day of the search . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence so it hung there. He just figured that I would place a good shot over my humanity, that’s what he didn’t say. Normally, of course, he was right but then I’d never had to attend the funeral of one of my stories.

“I am a little surprised Jason didn’t just show up anyway,” Victor threw in. “He seems the kind of guy who would want to pay his last respects.”

“And get his ass kicked again?” Andres shook his head. “Not coming here today is the first thing that guy’s done that makes any sense to me.”

I saw Linda get up and walk back toward the hearse. She was still crying but she was holding tight to Wyatt’s arm. Tom walked next to her but she seemed not to notice him.

“It’s okay now,” I said.

Andres began shooting again, got the casket as it came out of the hearse and as the six men accompanied it inside. Once they’d all gone in, we moved quickly to the back of the church for the mass.

While the words and songs were remarkably similar to Frank’s funeral, the mood in the church was very different. With Frank we had all been in shock, but with Theresa this was, at least for some, an inevitable outcome. They had mourned her slowly, over more than a year. They were exhausted from mourning. I could feel a sad relief from some of them, but only some of them. Tom glared at everyone and everything, even his sister’s casket. David pivoted toward us, scowling. Even Gray, who I could only see from the side, looked tense and irritated.

When the mass ended, we quickly darted outside and found a space at a respectful distance and waited for the mourners. As Andres got tape of every person who exited the church, Detective Rosenthal walked over.

“So far, so good,” she said. “I was a little worried.”

“Jason.”

“Jason, Tom, Linda. There’s a lot of emotion here today.”

“Any leads?” I asked. “Off the record?”

She took a deep breath and seemed about to say something. I walked her away from the camera, and from the camera mic, which would have picked up our conversation. The sound wouldn’t be great, which is why I’d never use it in an interview, but it would be there. And Mike might not be as picky about sound quality as I was.

Rosenthal looked around before speaking. “I heard something about a dead bird being found on your front porch.”

I turned red. “From who?”

“Another detective.”

“Podeski?”

She nodded. “He called me to get my take on it.”

“There were some concerns about my husband’s death.” I was looking for an explanation that was simple and fast, though I was pretty sure she had already had the long version from Podeski.

“He told me what was going on. I’m so sorry, Kate, I had no idea.”

“In case you’re wondering, I didn’t kill my husband.” I figured it was better to just say it.

She waved me off. “Of course not. That’s just Podeski playing all angles. And that’s not what he wanted to talk to me about anyway. He called because he wanted to know if someone from this case could be threatening you.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s got a reputation for being very dogged. Which is a good thing for a homicide investigator, but I can see how he might get on people’s nerves.”

“You know him?”

She nodded. “I worked in major case with him briefly when I was just starting in that department. He’s really a good guy. I know he doesn’t have the best manners in the world, but he’s got a good heart.”

“What did you tell him?”

“To be honest I didn’t have much to tell him. As far as I know there’s no reason for any of these people to go after you. You’re just filming a television show, not looking to solve the case, right?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to, and believe me I don’t,” I assured her. “I leave that sort of thing to you guys.”

She seemed relieved. “Well, just be careful. And if anyone does strike you as acting strange . . .”

“They all strike me that way.”

She laughed. “Well, dangerous strange. Let me know.” She stopped and seemed to consider something. “You’re re-interviewing everyone.”

“Everyone we can.”

“If I gave you a few questions to ask, would you ask them?”

“You can’t ask questions?”

“I will. It’s just that you might get more interesting answers.”

“Sure,” I said. “Speaking of questions, you haven’t answered my question about any leads in the case.”

“It’s an open investigation.”

“Detective, play fair. If you want to use me to conduct a police interview, that’s fine. I just want to know why I’m asking.”