Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
The bar’s exterior is neon lit, bright as a fairground ride—a deceiving illumination given that, when Elsie and Patti push through the door, the light inside is so low that it takes a while for their eyes to adjust.
Patti knew where the detectives drank their whiskey. She’d accrued this knowledge while working with hard drinkers at the Times who often ended their evenings propped up against sticky bars, cajoling off-duty officers into revealing their leads.
Elsie assesses the room. There are green glass lamps hanging low on chains from the ceiling. Out-of-the-way booths are cushioned with battered mustard-colored leather. Men in loose ties take bleary shots at a pool table.
There’s a song on the jukebox, something Elsie thinks she has heard on the radio before—a man’s voice quavering with false emotion—but she doesn’t follow popular music. The air is thick with smoke and burned grease from the kitchen.
“Do you see them?”
Patti scans the booths. Men recline, shoulders claiming the backs of seats, arms stretched wide, French fries decorating silver platters. Patti lifts her chin, and Elsie sees two gray-haired men hunched over a table, deep in conversation.
“What are we going to say?” Elsie feels slightly alarmed that they haven’t rehearsed their roles, haven’t worked out how they are going to play this.
She and Patti know the grisly details of the killings.
They also know the police received a note purportedly from the killer, scrawled on a Lucky Charms box.
Cornwell had gifted the details to Paul Hunter, quid pro quo for running a story about an awards ceremony Cornwell was being honored at.
Elsie had overheard the phone conversation while she was filing papers in Hunter’s office.
And now she and Patti have nailed down a suspect.
But she’s not quite sure how they’re going to approach this conversation.
Patti doesn’t seem fazed. “We’ve got the evidence right here.” She taps her bag. “We don’t need lines.”
Patti leads the way, snaking past waitresses carrying shrimp and burgers aloft, waists nipped in, hair done nice, just how their customers like it.
Patti draws attention as she moves, with that wild hair, that lackadaisical way; there’s something masculine and intoxicating about her.
Eventually they reach the back table, and Elsie realizes the detectives are hunched over not because they’re conversing but because they are busy dissecting limbs.
A lobster gawps with beady black eyes from the table, its shell being slowly disassembled with silver crackers.
Bottles of beer stand together at the officers’ elbows, condensation dripping from the glass.
Patti heaves an audible sigh and tilts her head, waiting.
“Two more,” one of them barks without sparing her and Elsie a glance.
“We’re not here to serve you beer, Roger,” Patti deadpans.
The man glances up and his eyebrows rise in recognition. He has the type of weathered, handsome face you might expect to see on a poster for a Western movie. His harsh blue eyes make his hair look argent.
“We’re here to find out why you’re not doing your job.” Patti flashes a sarcastic smile, then slides next to him in the booth.
The officer opposite spits a triangle of orange lobster shell into his palm. That must be Detective Bale, making the guy with the icicle eyes Detective Roger Greaves.
“Bale,” Greaves murmurs reluctantly, “this is Patti Fowler from the Times.”
“I’m at the Signal now, actually.” Patti gestures at Elsie to take a seat. “This is my colleague Elsie Moss. We just wanted to ask you gentlemen a couple of questions.
“Nah.” Bale bunches a napkin and tosses it at the tabletop. “We’re not talking to the press tonight.”
“Are you planning on talking to the press at all about the recent murders in the area?” Patti asks.
“Look, let me stop you there.” Bale holds up a large palm. “If you’re trying to scoop us on the Berryview girl, we’re not playing this game again.”
Elsie frowns. Berryview? None of the murders so far have taken place in Berryview.
“Because this is how it goes, okay?” He cocks his head in a way that men do only when they’re talking to women they feel are beneath them. “Girl goes missing, people call the cops—not some reporter.”
“Berryview,” Patti repeats, not missing a beat. “Nice area. What are you going to do to make sure people are safe there?”
Elsie is astonished by the woman’s bravado, how she doesn’t worry that she shouldn’t say these things to men, let alone men in uniform. It’s kind of infectious.
“Just leave it to us, okay?” Bale draws his fingers down his mustache, eyes Patti, then Elsie, takes a swig of his beer.
“Will you be calling a conference before you arrest Sean Wilson?” Elsie finds herself asking, emboldened by Patti’s confidence. It makes her head feel dizzy.
She clocks the detectives sharing a glance.
“I’m sure you’ll appreciate we’re not obliged to share details of open cases with members of the public,” Greaves answers calmly. “That includes the press.”
“You are planning on arresting Sean Wilson, though.” Patti says it as a statement.
Greaves looks at her for a second too long and Elsie realizes, with a sting of surprise, that they don’t know about Sean Wilson. She reaches into her bag and pulls out the two facsimile copies of the photographs. She pushes the lobster plate to the side, lays the sheets flat on the table.
The detectives study the images. Elsie searches for a change in their expressions, a widening of the eyes, a softening of muscles, but they are not giving anything away.
“Let us enlighten you.” Patti grabs a bottle and takes a swig of beer, wipes her lips with the back of her hand. It’s so brazen that Elsie has to stifle a laugh. “This is Diane Howard Murray.” She taps one image. “You already know that, I sincerely hope.”
Bale lets out a hostile snort.
“Notice the logo on her apron, there. That’s the cleaning company she worked for when she wasn’t modeling.”
“That cleaning company is owned by Sean Wilson,” Elsie continues, placing her palm briefly on the other image.
It’s a candid shot, taken on the street, of a man with thin hair to his shoulders, climbing out of a utility van—the van that Elsie saw parked around the corner from Cheryl Herrera’s vigil.
“This is him. He employs over sixty people and cleans all around the local area.”
“Commercial work, mainly.” Patti takes over again. “Office buildings, restaurants. But they also do college sports stadiums, athletics tracks, that sort of thing, cleaning up after game days and races.”
The men are trying their hardest not to look confused. It’s not working. Elsie can tell, with a flash of gratification, that she and Patti have them intrigued.
“Sean Wilson is often on-site for these events, overseeing his cleaning staff. Those events include race days at Central College’s athletics track, where Cheryl Herrera trained and competed.”
The men sit back in their seats. Bale raises his chin and scratches his neck.
Elsie bristles. They think it’s not enough, that it could be just a coincidence. But she knows it’s not a coincidence.
“He was at Cheryl’s vigil,” she urges. “I saw him. He was standing there, just watching.”
Greaves leans forward as if he’s about to ask a question, then appears to change his mind, picks up the Sean Wilson photo instead, studies it.
Over his shoulder, Elsie notices someone entering the bar—battered leather jacket, unkempt hair.
A stab of recognition scythes in. It’s Robert Heston.
That chancer must have followed her and Patti here from the office.
She looks away. They can’t risk having him come over.
He’d tell Hunter what she’s been digging into; she’d lose her job.
“What if he’d been watching Cheryl at these events for a while?” She needs to make her case quickly. “What if he specifically targeted her, just as he targeted Diane, a young girl—beautiful, promising? Surely this is at least enough to make an arrest?”
Bale takes a cocktail stick and begins picking his teeth. “It’s circumstantial.” He pulls the stick out, inspects it. “It’s not enough for an arrest.”
Elsie feels her shoulders sag. Across the bar, Heston is ordering a drink, scanning the room, eyes darting.
“But we’ll look into it,” Greaves reassures them, more evenly.
“My gut’s saying coincidence.” Bale twirls the stick in his fingers. “The MO is too different. The victims…” He tilts his head this way and that.
“If he killed Cheryl and Diane, he could have killed Emily Roswell, too.” Elsie needs them to see. It’s so clear that the cases are linked. Why won’t they see?
“All right, stop.” Bale fixes her eye, but she won’t be deterred.
“You’re failing women, you know, by not taking these links seriously.” She has no choice but to push it. “It’s the same guy.”
Bale’s whole demeanor changes then, as if a frost constricts the muscles in his shoulders. He leaps up, slams a palm on the table. “We decide if there’s a link. Us.” He looks crazed. “We don’t need some hack to tell us what to do.”
Elsie looks past him, terrified that the raised voice will draw attention. But Heston hasn’t noticed Bale’s outburst. Heston stands, leaves his untouched drink at the bar and crosses the room toward the pay phone, then picks up the receiver and pushes a coin into the slot.
“All right, Bale.” Greaves reaches across the table, attempts to pull his partner back down into his seat.
“If you ladies go any further with this line of inquiry,” Bale warns, “if you continue to interfere in an active police investigation, I will personally see to it that you never publish a single word again.” Spittle has collected in the corners of his mouth.
Elsie looks to Patti, unsure of how to proceed, but her face is motionless. She always remains so calm. Eventually she turns slightly, indicating to Elsie that it’s time for them to leave, and they both stand.
Bale watches them, his eyes charged, as they slide out of the booth. Elsie scans the bar as she moves. There’s no sign of Heston. His drink is still on the counter, full to the brim, and the exit door is slowly swinging shut.
“Hey,” Greaves calls out to them as they leave, and they both turn. “You want a story. Why aren’t you looking into Cornwell?”
Elsie’s brows knit together. “Cornwell?”
“Maybe you might want to take a look at this surveillance op he’s running.” Greaves holds her gaze.
“On the Kings?”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you might want to take a look at, I don’t know, who’s making the audio equipment for that op. But”—he takes a sip of his beer—“just a thought.”
Cornwell. Why would Roger Greaves give them a story about the chief of police, his boss?
She knows some officers feed stories to the press, but it’s usually to stroke their own egos or to appeal to the public for help with an investigation.
This she hasn’t come across before. Despite herself, she feels a dim beat of respect for Greaves for having the mettle to speak out against authority.
She’s heard plenty of stories about Cornwell; she knows he’s not exactly a saint.
“Order us a couple more on your way out, won’t you, ladies?” Bale waggles his bottle in the air. Patti raises her middle finger defiantly as they depart.