Simple (10 page)

“See all them buttons,” Boreski pointed. In one corner a guard sat behind a large station with a computerized console that had a thousand buttons. “Colonel could pick you and push a button and kill you if he wanted, just like that. Gas your cell.”

He nodded. They laughed. It almost seemed true.

No need for batons or guns.

When he sat on his cot, not ready to lie down, his stomach in knots, he tried to think about Cassie Price. What was her life about, the parts he didn't know? When she came home Thursday, day before yesterday, she had been drinking. Even if he hadn't guessed about the drink, she didn't hide it. She said, “Oh, Cal, I'd better get something to eat.” She was not even quite to the porch when she turned around to look at the alley. Was she looking at the gray car going by? Was this the person who hurt her in love?

He can't remember exactly everything she said. Why can't he remember that part? Did he black out later in the middle of the night? Did he hurt her? If he did, he deserves to die in hell, anything they do to him, he deserves it. If he could reverse time, he would choose to die rather than hurt her. The battle in his mind makes him leap up, move around in a tiny circle, trying to remember something about the middle of the night, anything. He hears a voice on the speaker system but pays no attention until there's the sound of his door opening. The same officer is there. “I'm the escort. You hear me? Visitor. You're going to the interview room. Move it. Christ, these idiots.”

*   *   *

POTOCKI WAS RELIEVED
he hadn't been put on computer today and would be out among people, working with Colleen. So, out for the afternoon, they did one of the things they did best—grabbed a lunch to eat in the car before they talked to the people of Parkview, Child, Swinburne, and Dawson streets. The lunch they grabbed was from the Original, the O, a place that had once long ago been a tiny hot dog shop known for its “dirty hot dogs”—you didn't want to think about them, you simply wanted to enjoy—but was now a huge place, expanded so many times that the signs now advertised everything from pizza to cheese steaks to veal parm sandwiches.

Potocki knew that Colleen Greer, in what she referred to as her youth, had eaten the veal parm sandwiches, but now she made hex signs with her fingers when he asked if she was going to order one. She counted off what was wrong with them: oily veal, tons of cheese, thick white bun, a mound of fries so dense it must have come from ten potatoes and could easily feed ten people.

After parking illegally, they went into the hot, already crowded place. The clientele always consisted of a few students and many people who either already knew or would soon know the jail system—long greasy hair, track marks, the whole ball of wax. “Why did we want this?” she asked Potocki.

“Fast, I think. And a memory of when we were young and could handle it.”

They each ordered a single hot dog with lots of stuff on, skipped the fries, and promised each other not to do it again soon.

They ate in the car on the way to
lower
lower Oakland.

“Together or split?” Potocki asked. He was driving today.

“Let's see how we do together. If we run out of time, split.”

This conversation, like most they had, carried a subtext of being about their personal relationship, but, as usual, they only heard the impact once the words were out of their mouths. They had agreed to pause, to examine their relationship as they worked together, to
decide
if they wanted to see each other intimately, and
if
so, to announce it to Christie, who would insist they split up as partners.

This was a hard decision in that they really liked being partners. They had a blast working together. The big problem was, they were also attracted to each other. For Potocki, it was a decision already made. He wanted her in his bed. Or to be in her bed. He wanted to wake up and have breakfast with her, to snuggle on a couch in front of a TV at night, to go out to a romantic dinner with candles and expensive good food, to go on vacations. Even though it meant giving up the days together.

She was deciding.

She looked great today. She always stood and sat tall, as if stretching herself. Good posture was half of attractiveness, and she knew it. Once they watched some sort of award show together on TV and she pointed out how many women sank their chests in and rounded their shoulders, as if ashamed they had breasts even though their clothes hardly covered them. She pointed out how many men led with a paunch or a forward-thrusting head. She said, “Look at Cary Grant in his movies. The way he stood. The way he wore his clothes. Plumb line from the tip of his head to the heels of his feet.”

In the car, she opened her notes to use as a plate beneath her.

The area they were supposed to canvass consisted of similar small, modest brick houses with cement front porches, tiny front lawns, and awnings (mostly aluminum, some cloth); inside they all had living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens on the first floor, and two or three bedrooms on the second, everything sized by builders during the twenties and thirties—small squares, not at all spacious. The backyards would also be scaled to this modest idea of home ownership.

“God, I love a hot dog,” Colleen said. “You know what I read? Even Marcella Hazan loves a good hot dog. Can you believe it? So much for gourmet cooking, huh?”

He finished his own with a flourish of crumpled napkin. “About done?”

“Um, yeah.”

“'Cause here we are.”

They consulted the list.

Cal Hathaway had worked for three families on Dawson and also for the Orthodox church there. Four households on Parkview. One on Swinburne. Two on Child Street.

They started with Dawson. These four jobs had all been painting work—outside windows and doors, mostly, some porch railings, in one case the porch cement; the other Dawson job was the inside walls in the basement social hall of the church. The first place the detectives visited had three screaming children and a woman who looked like she wanted to bag it and leave town. She said, “Yeah, he painted our stuff. I can't get over letting a killer near my kids.” She appeared to stop to reconsider this. “I don't want to be a broken record. You hear it all the time: ‘He didn't seem the type.' Well, he didn't. So that just shows how you don't know.”

“Did you know the victim?” Colleen asked her.

“Not at all.”

“You know anything about the accused?” Potocki had chosen his words carefully.

“Just he told me he was partially deaf. I thought he was retarded when he didn't hear me, but he wasn't.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Twenty-five years.”

The detectives moved on to a second house. There was nobody home.

They went to a third. Husband and wife were both home and eager to talk about Cal. “Painted. He did real good,” the wife said. “And he was cheap.”

They dittoed all that the first woman had said.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Just three years.”

“How do you feel about living where a lot of students rent?”

“That part is hard. But we bought through the Own Oakland program. The price was unbeatable.”

“What's Own Oakland?”

“Oh. It's like a clean-up-Oakland program. Get rid of slum landlords. Have real people live in the houses. Families. People who take care of their properties.”

“I've heard of it,” Potocki said. He tried to come up with a name. “Who runs it?”

“Well, there's the real estate company we worked with. Paul Wesson Realty. They advertise they're part of Own Oakland.”

“That's it. Paul Wesson. Thanks.”

They left and consulted their lists.

“Swinburne?”

“I want to see the church first,” Colleen said. “You think anybody will be there?”

“Let's give a holler.”

It turned out to be easy. There were two women cleaning the church. The altar was as glorious as Colleen had guessed it would be, all gold and icons and stained glass. “Orthodox. See, they put that cross with the little bar at a slant, and they're very big on pictures of the saints.”

“I see that,” Potocki said. He was studying her hair, which he often did. She had one of those looks like, should it be combed or did she mean it this way? He knew her well enough to be sure it was purposeful. He'd seen her fluff up the blond tufts so they looked casual, quirky. Cheerful hair.

The cleaning women pointed the way to the church office, which could be accessed through several doorways leading to the rear of the property. They said the priest was in.

The priest was a tall, good-looking man with a beard and a bit of weight on him. He wore black pants and a black shirt and his clerical collar, but on his feet were white running shoes. He was going over something that looked like a spreadsheet and probably was.

“Detective Potocki, Detective Greer,” Potocki said. “May we have a word with you?”

“I didn't do it.” The priest smiled.

“We'll be the judges of that!”

Everybody had a nice laugh. Then they got down to business. When the priest, Father Charles Mansour, heard that it was about the murder of the law student, he sobered. “You know, the boy you arrested worked for us,” he said.

“That's why we're here. Anything you can tell us?”

“I knew so little about him. He was very likable. Very … humble.”

“Did you ever see him lose his temper?”

“No.”

“Did you ever know him to black out or have memory problems?”

“No,” he said, disheartened. “He's in jail?”

“Yes.”

“I'll make inquiry. If he doesn't have a priest, I'll visit him.”

“What's giving you the headache?” Potocki asked, pointing to the spreadsheets.

“We got roofing problems. We got flooring problems. And our parishioners don't have extra to give in a lot of cases.”

Potocki nodded sympathetically. At least the priest didn't seem to think the Lord took care of everything.

“Thanks for including me,” the priest said.

And that was that.

They learned on Swinburne and Child streets that Cal could also build a deck and replace a window sash. They examined the work. It looked good and it had continued to be cheap.

Child Street was where Cal's own house was. His next-door neighbor was a man sporting a wife-beater and suspenders.

“I didn't talk to him,” the man said proudly. “He minded his business, I minded mine.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Ten, twelve years.”

“Did you purchase through Own Oakland?”

“What's that?”

“Never mind, then. It's connected to a realty company.”

“Oh, I don't know about that.”

The man reminded Potocki of a fellow he'd seen on TV who feared anything labeled liberal. “It's all gittin' like comm'nism,” the man said. This man was his brother under the skin.

“How long did he live here?”

“I think almost two years.”

“Not so long. Police ever been to this house before last Thursday? I know last Thursday they came to search the place—ever before that?”

“Nope. We don't like that kind of thing going on.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Searching. Questions. Trouble.”

“Nobody does.”

“So fry him and let's be done with it.”

“We know you're kidding, sir,” Potocki said. “Take care now.”

Colleen poked him appreciatively as they walked away.

They walked to their fleet car, which, for this canvassing job, they kept parking and reparking.

She fluffed up her hair. Potocki smiled at the gesture. They were going to have to land on a decision soon—

Oh, they talked. They talked all the time. He knew things about her. He knew she'd had an abusive uncle who'd assaulted her and tried to rape her. He knew she had never confronted her flaky parents about the time they left her and her brother
with
the horrible uncle. The confrontation was always just around the corner. She avoided it. She knew things about him, too, how confused he'd been when his marriage crumbled.

They'd saved Parkview for last. It was where Cassie Price lived and where they hoped to get something meaty their boss would like.

They stopped in front of Cassie's house. It was a plain place, well kept, but you had to look past the police tape and the bouquets of flowers and the notes and the children's toys people had placed in front.

“A little something to take across the River Styx,” said Potocki.

“I suppose we should read the notes,” she grumbled.

“On our exit from the street? In case something new arrives?”

“Fine. I always think it seems wasteful. Give the money to a women's shelter or something. Okay, now, this Iris Mender,” Colleen said, reading her notes. “Two down from this place. It'd be that one with the crowded porch. Mender employed Cal, and she talked to the police that day. Let's see her.”

They parked and approached a modest house that looked pretty much like all the others. They knocked on the door and woke Iris Mender, who was sleeping on the sofa.

*   *   *

CHRISTIE STRUGGLED
with it—how to meddle. He was
still
officially on vacation. Coleson and McGranahan were sleeping or out in their yards or playing golf. He decided on phrasing—he would say he was cleaning up a few rough edges. He'd call a squad meeting either tomorrow or Monday. Monday was cleaner. He'd be officially back, Coleson and McGranahan would be on duty, autopsy report would be complete and forensics report begun. Still it made him nervous, working in a kind of limbo. No, he decided suddenly, tomorrow. Get it over with.

He and Dolan went to the Allegheny County Jail while Greer and Potocki talked to Cassie Price's neighbors.