Part 13 (1/2)
Greave patted her on the shoulder-Officer Friendly-and Lucas turned away, hands in pockets, stepping toward the door. Nothing here.
”You ought to talk to Bob, next apartment down the hall,” Emily said. She picked up a roll of packaging tape and a box, punched it into a cube. She stripped off a length of tape, and it sounded as if she were tearing a sheet. ”He came in just before you got here.”
”Bob was a friend of Charmagne's,” Greave explained to Lucas. ”He was here the night she died.”
Lucas nodded. ”All right. I'm sorry about your mother.”
”Thanks. I hope you get those . . . those f.u.c.kers,” Emily said, her voice dropping into a hiss.
”You think she was murdered?”
”Something happened,” she said.
BOB WOOD WAS another teacher, general science at Central in St. Paul. He was thin, balding, worried.
”We'll all go, now that Charmagne's gone. The city's going to give us some moving money, but I don't know. Prices are terrible.”
”Did you hear anything that night? Anything?”
”Nope. I saw her about ten o'clock; we were taking our aluminum cans down for recycling and we came up in the elevator together. She was going off to bed right then.”
”Wasn't depressed. . . .”
”No, no, she was pretty upbeat,” Wood said. ”I'll tell you something I told the other policemen: when she closed the door, I heard the lock snap shut. You could only throw the bolt from inside, and you had to do it with a key. I know, because when she got it, she was worried about being trapped inside by a fire. But then Cherry scared her one day-just looked at her, I guess, and scared her-and she started locking the door. I was here when they beat it down. They had to take a piece of the wall with it. They painted, but you can kind of see the outline there.”
The wall showed the faint dis.h.i.+ng of a plaster patch. Lucas touched it and shook his head.
”If anything had happened in there, I would have heard it,” Wood said. ”We share a bedroom wall, and the air-conditioning had been out for a couple of days. There was no noise. It was hot and spooky-quiet. I didn't hear a thing.”
”So you think she just died?”
Wood swallowed twice, his Adam's apple bobbing. ”Jeez. I don't know. If you know Cherry, you gotta think . . . Jeez.”
IN THE STREET, Lucas and Greave watched a small girl ride down the sidewalk on a tiny bicycle, fall down, pick it up, start over, and fall down again. ”She needs somebody to run behind her,” Greave said.
Lucas grunted. ”Doesn't everybody?”
”Big philosopher, huh?”
Lucas said, ”Wood and Carter shared a wall.”
”Yes.”
”Have you looked at Wood?”
”Yeah. He thinks newspaper comics are too violent.”
”But there might be something there. What can you do with a shared wall? Stick a needle through it, pump in some gas or something?”
”Hey. Davenport. There's no toxicology,” Greave said with asperity. ”There's no f.u.c.kin' toxicology. You look up toxicology in the dictionary, and there's a picture of the old lady and it says, 'Not Her.' ”
”Yeah, yeah. . . .”
”She wasn't poisoned, ga.s.sed, stabbed, shot, strangled, beaten to death . . . what else is there?”
”How about electrocuted?” Lucas suggested.
”Hmph. How'd they do it?”
”I don't know. Hook some wires up to her bed, lead them out under a door, and when she gets in bed, zap, and then they pull the wires out.”
”Pardon me while I snicker,” Greave said.
Lucas looked back at the apartment building. ”Let me think about it some more.”
”But Cherry did it?”
”Yup.” They looked down the lawn. Cherry was at the other end, kneeling over a quiet lawn mower, fiddling, watching them. ”You can take it to the bank.”
LUCAS GLANCED AT his watch as they got back to the car: they'd been at the apartments for almost an hour. ”Connell's gonna tear me up,” he said.
”Ah, she's a bite in the a.s.s,” Greave said.
They b.u.mped into Mae Heinz in the parking ramp, getting into her car. Lucas beeped the horn, called out, ”How'd it go?”
Heinz came over. ”That woman, Officer Connell . . . she's pretty intense.”
”Yes. She is.”
”We got one of those drawings, but . . .”
”What?”
Heinz shook her head. ”I don't know whether it's my drawing or hers. The thing is, it's too specific. I can mostly remember the guy with the beard, but now we've got this whole picture, and I don't know if it's right or not. I mean, it seems right, but I'm not sure I'm really remembering it, or if it's just because we tried out so many different pictures.”
”Did you look at our picture files, the mugs . . . ?”
”No, not yet. I've got to get my kid at day care. But I'm coming back tonight. Officer Connell is going to meet me.”
CONNELL WAS WAITING in Lucas's office. ”G.o.d, where've you been?”
”Detour,” Lucas said. ”Different case.”
Connell's eyes narrowed. ”Greave, huh? Told you.” She gave Lucas a sheet of paper. ”This is him. This is the guy.”
Lucas unfolded the paper and looked at it. The face that looked back was generally square, with a dark, tight beard, small eyes, and hard, triangular nose. The hair was medium length and dark.