Dead by Wednesday
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* * *
ROBERT WRENCHED THE man’s arm behind his back, put pressure on the back of his knees with a well-placed foot, and in seconds, had him facedown on the tile floor.
He looked around the room. “My name is Detective Robert Hanson. I’m a police officer with the Chicago Police Department. I need all of you to remain calm and to stay in your seats. I repeat, remain calm and stay in your seats.”
He turned to look at Carmen. She was standing up. Her mouth was open and she looked shell-shocked. There was hot chocolate on her blouse, and some had splashed on her face and hair. He tightened his grip on Sage’s arm, pulling it just a little higher. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
She nodded and turned to look at the girl who had also stood up. “Alexa?” She wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulder.
“I told you,” the young girl said, her tone soft. She was looking at her dad.
There was a disgusting combination of hot chocolate, coffee and water pooling on the table. The uneven slate floor was causing a small trickle to drip off the side.
A helpful server walked by and offered Carmen a towel. Robert shook his head. “Leave it,” he said. He wanted pictures.
Robert leaned close to the man’s ear. He spoke quietly. “If you didn’t hear it the first time, my name is Detective Robert Hanson, with the Chicago Police Department. I’m going to let you get up, Mr. Sage. But if you make one wrong move toward your daughter, Ms. Jimenez, me or anybody else in this room, you’re going to be in even bigger trouble than you are now. Do you understand?”
He waited until the big man nodded. Then he loosened his grip and let the man get to his knees. He kicked a chair toward him. “Sit there,” he ordered.
The man did as he was instructed. His face was red and his eyes were wild, but he didn’t try anything. He did not look at Alexa or Carmen.
Robert moved behind him. Quietly but distinctly, he read him his Miranda rights.
The man let him finish and then immediately said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
He’d had his arms up, coming toward Carmen, and if Robert hadn’t been there to stop him, Carmen’s injuries would have been far worse than some splashes with a hot drink. It was taking everything he had not to punch the son of a bitch.
“You caused hot liquid to land on Ms. Jimenez. That’s battery, Mr. Sage. And by virtue of your size, your proximity and your aggressive posture, I’m adding criminal threatening to the list of charges.”
Frank Sage said nothing. Then he looked at his daughter. “I didn’t mean to upset the table. I caught it with my legs. And I wouldn’t have hurt her. I was...surprised. You surprised me. This wasn’t the way it should have happened. Not with some stranger here.”
Alexa stared at her hands.
Carmen stepped forward. “No closer,” Robert said.
She nodded and sat down. “I believe Mr. Sage when he says that he didn’t purposefully lift the table. And I’m sure we did catch him by surprise this morning with some very difficult news. If Mr. Sage feels that he can now have a reasonable conversation, I think we should forget the last five minutes and move forward. Alexa has a lot of decisions she needs to make and she needs her father’s help.” She motioned for Alexa to take her seat again.
No, Robert wanted to yell. In his head, he could still see Sage lunging over the table, his big hands ready to wring Carmen’s neck.
“Please,” Carmen said, looking at him. “Robert?”
Damn. Like he was going to be able to deny her anything. He squatted next to Frank Sage. “You’re lucky. She’s a nice person. I’m not that nice, in case you were wondering.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Sage. “Take this, as a little reminder that I’m going to be watching you.”
He stepped back and watched while Carmen used the towel to sop up enough of the liquid to keep more from hitting the floor. Then, the three of them conversed for a few minutes. She talked and Alexa and Sage listened. Then it was Alexa’s turn. Sage said very little. After a few minutes, Carmen stood up. She extended a hand to Sage. He hesitated, then extended his own arm, giving her hand a quick shake. Then he left without a backward glance at the two women.
Alexa stood up next, hugged Carmen, said something that made Carmen smile and then left. Carmen finally looked at him.
She was sitting at a dirty table, a large splotch of brown liquid on her pink shirt, with more on her face and in her hair, and he’d never seen anyone more beautiful.
He moved over to the table. “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.
She looked down at her shirt. “Oh, yeah. This is the look I was going for.” With two fingers, she rubbed at the sticky substance on her face. “By the way,” she said, “thank you. I mean it. I know I wasn’t very gracious about you being here but you were a big help.”
He nodded. “What’s next for Alexa and her parents?”
“They’re going to tell her mom tonight. Alexa didn’t want to tell her first because she was afraid that her father would be mad at her mom, thinking that she’d been hiding information from him. This way, he’ll see how surprised his wife is by the news. Then they’ll have to start talking about next steps. Alexa is determined to have this baby and take care of it. She probably could do it by herself, but it would be a whole lot easier if she had her parents’ help.”
“And where do you come in?”
“I’ll continue to work with her throughout the remainder of the pregnancy and then after delivery, too. There are resources available to both her and her baby that I can help her with.”
“Sage didn’t look happy.”
“He’s not. Hopefully he’ll work himself into the stage of acceptance. If he can’t, then I’ll help Alexa with finding a new place to live. I’m not going to let her live with somebody who can’t get over his anger.”
“I don’t want you to ever go to their house,” he said.
She narrowed her dark brown eyes. “Detective, I’m must have heard that wrong because it sounded as if you were telling me how to do my job.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. I assume you’re going to want to go home and change.”
She nodded. “Yes, but no car. I took a cab.”
He frowned at her. “I’m not going to let you stand around in a wet shirt when it’s freezing, waiting for a cab. I’ll drive you home.”
He could tell she wanted to argue, but her shirt was probably uncomfortable enough that it changed her mind. “If it’s no trouble.”
Carmen Jimenez had been causing him trouble since the first day that he’d seen her. She’d been standing outside OCM, waiting while bomb specialists removed an explosive device that had been left on her boss’s desk. He’d taken one look and his world had changed. His sleep was disturbed, he rarely got through a day without thinking of her and his sex life had taken a turn down a dead-end road. He still dated, made himself pretend that he was having fun, but he hadn’t slept with anybody since that morning.
And she had barely given him the time of day.
If Sawyer or their boss knew that he was such a fool, Robert would never hear the end of it.
“No trouble,” he said.
* * *
ROBERT DROVE WITH an ease and competence that impressed Carmen. She’d grown up in the city and had been driving in it for years, but all the traffic still made her nervous. Raoul had been hinting that he was going to get to take driver’s education soon and that he’d need lots of practice hours. The thought of it made her ill. But she would do it. She would do anything for Raoul.
She pulled her cell phone from her purse, intending to check in with Liz. There was a missed call and a voice mail. She didn’t recognize the number.
She listened to the voice mail and felt sick. She played it again. Then let her phone drop back into her purse.
“What’s wrong?” Robert asked, checking his rearview mirror.
There was no reason to tell him. She’d been handling things on her own for a long time. She’d handle this, too.
“Carmen?” he said, his voice soft. “Was that Sage?”
She was so tired of being strong and so damn worried about Raoul. “That was Raoul’s homeroom teacher. She wanted me to know that Raoul is failing two of his classes. He rarely turns in homework and on the last essay test, over half of his answers were wrong.”
Robert nodded. “Is he a pretty good student, usually?”
“He’s always made the honor roll. Oh, my gosh, I’ve never gotten a call like this. Never dreamed I’d get one.”
“So talk to him. You’re good at that,” Robert said with an encouraging smile.
Carmen chewed on the corner of her lip. “It’s not just the grades. There’s something else going on but I have no idea what it is. He’s changing. Right in front of my eyes. He won’t talk to me. It’s as if he doesn’t even like me.”
Robert slipped the car into a parking place in front of her apartment, shut it off and turned toward her. “Look, take it from somebody who used to be a boy,” he said with a smile. “It’s tough being a freshman in high school. He likes you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
“That’s what Liz says.”
“She’s right.”
Carmen shook her head. “I know Raoul better than I know anybody. It’s been just the two of us for a long time. Our older brother, Hector, died when I was eighteen and Raoul was barely four. About a year later, our parents were killed in a car accident. I raised Raoul from that point.”
“You were really just a kid yourself. That was a big responsibility you took on.”
“I guess. It never entered my mind to do anything different. I was in college by then. We both did our homework at the kitchen table,” she said, smiling at the memory.
“Good bonding time,” Robert said.
She nodded. “I know him as well as I know myself. That’s how I know that there’s something else going on here. I just have to figure it out before it’s too late.” She swallowed hard. “Hector was shot by a rival gang member. He had just turned twenty.” She closed her eyes for just a second, then opened them and looked at him. “I can’t lose another brother. I just can’t.”
“You lost a great deal in a short period of time. Yet you went on, made a good life for yourself and your brother. It could not have been easy.”
He seemed so sincere in his praise. She hadn’t told him to impress him. She’d just wanted him to understand.
“I’ll figure something out,” she said, trying to change the subject.
“I could talk to him,” Robert said.
It was a nice offer but it wouldn’t work. “He doesn’t know you. He’s not going to trust you.”
Robert shrugged. “Okay. So I get to know him. Invite me over for dinner tonight. I’ll pick something up on my way—maybe Chinese?”
“That’s impossible,” she blurted out.
“Okay. No Chinese. Italian? Although we just had pizza,” Robert said.
He was deliberately misunderstanding her. “I’m sure you have better things to do than have dinner with a paranoid twenty-nine-year-old and a snarling teenage boy.” When Liz had first started dating Sawyer, she’d confided that Robert was a bit of playboy.
“You’re not paranoid, and unless he’s rabid, I can take a little snarling from a fifteen-year-old.”
“I don’t know why you’d want to do this,” Carmen said, shaking her head.
“Come on. It’s my version of community service,” he said easily. “You’re not going to deny me the opportunity for that, are you?”
Chapter Four
From Carmen’s apartment, Robert drove directly back to the police station. When he got there, he saw that Alderman Franconi was in Lieutenant Fischer’s office. The door was closed, but the blinds were open just enough that Robert and every other person in the squad room understood that Alderman Franconi wasn’t happy.
He made eye contact with Sawyer, who was sipping on a cup of coffee and eating some kind of pastry. He had a newspaper spread out on his desk. The headline said it all. Police Frustrated with Lack of Progress.
Frustrated? Oh, yeah.
As was the alderman, who spent another three minutes in the lieutenant’s face before turning and leaving. When he walked through the squad room, he didn’t look at or talk to anyone. Once he was out of the room, all heads turned toward the lieutenant’s office. The man was standing in the door, not looking any worse for wear. It would take more than a frustrated alderman to rattle him.
“Well,” Lieutenant Fischer said, his tone dry. “As you may have gathered, Alderman Franconi wants us to find the killer and string him up at Daley Plaza. Or we’ll all be looking for new work.”
Nobody reacted to the last line. It was this particular alderman’s style to threaten jobs. He did it when the crowd control at the summer festivals didn’t go well. He was certainly going to do it now. The alderman was a jerk about most things. He did have a dead nephew, however, so everybody was more inclined to cut him some slack.
Robert didn’t have to have family to understand family. It had just been his mom and him, with a progression of husbands and live-ins over the years. His mom had been married five times, no, make that six. He sometimes forgot number four. That one had lasted less than six months. One had continued on for five years but Robert was convinced that was because the man was an over-the-road trucker and gone most of the time. That was actually the one guy he’d liked.
The weird thing was, his mother wasn’t a bad person. People generally liked her. She was the life of the party. Had a good sense of humor, knew how to tell a joke. She drank too much, perhaps. But she was a pleasant drunk, not a mean one. She mostly made bad choices. Because she couldn’t stand being without a man, couldn’t stand being alone. And so whatever loser came along got credit for having testosterone, and was immediately a viable prospect.
Robert had been three when his biological dad had been killed in a car accident. His mother, who had been a beautiful woman with her blond hair and green eyes, had remarried within the year, although Robert didn’t even remember that guy.
Now, if he felt inclined to ever look back, which he did not, the only way he could keep the parade straight in his head was to go to the pictures that his mother had stuffed in a shoe box. Every year, on his birthday, she’d taken a picture. And the man of the hour had always been in one of the shots.
None of them had been inclined to adopt him, or maybe his mother had never wanted that. He wasn’t sure. From a very early age, before he even knew what the word meant, he’d considered them boarders in his home. There but not important. Certainly not family.
Her latest husband was retired military. He wore black shoes that always had a nice shine and he grew orchids in the small garden behind their house. His name was Norman. She called him Normie.
The man didn’t say much when Robert visited. But then again, getting a word in edgewise was a feat when his mother was revved up. As Sawyer would say, she could talk the ears off a chicken.
Robert sat down at his desk and was surprised to see two pink message slips in Tasha’s scrawling handwriting. Hardly anybody left messages anymore. They either knew him well enough to call his cell phone or they left a voice mail on his office line.
These were both personal. One from Mandy, the other from Janine. They both had his cell number.
But then again, he hadn’t been answering any of their calls for the past couple of weeks. He looked up when a shadow crossed in front of his desk. Tasha, an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth, was buttoning her coat. Every morning at exactly ten o’clock, their department clerk went outside to smoke. It didn’t matter how hot or how cold. “Who’s the lucky one tonight?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“When in doubt,” Tasha said, “use FIFO. First in, first out. Janine gets the nod. Your phone was ringing when I got here this morning. If you ask me, she’s a bit needy.”
He folded the slips and put them under his stapler. “I’ll give them both a call later.”
Tasha frowned at him. She leaned over and laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you sick?”
“I’m fine. Busy.” Robert yanked open a file drawer so hard that it jarred the pencil holder on his desk.
Sawyer folded his paper and frowned at him. “Everything okay?” he asked. Then his expression changed. “Damn. Something happened at the coffee shop, didn’t it?” He pushed his chair back and started to stand up.
“I handled it,” Robert said, motioning for Sawyer to sit back down. “Everybody is okay, but I don’t like the dad. Frank Sage is a big guy and I think he’s used to intimidating people with his size.”
“I’ve known you for a long time, Robert, and I’ve never seen you intimidated by anything.”
Good thing Sawyer had no idea how nervous he’d been last night, when suddenly it was just him and Carmen sitting in Sawyer’s living room. He’d felt as if his tongue had grown until it was too big for his mouth. Then she’d broken the tension and everything had been fine.
Better than fine. It had been one of the nicest nights that he’d spent in a long time. And he hadn’t wanted it to end. When it had and he’d offered to follow her back to her apartment, he’d been afraid that she might have been offended.
She’d been on her own for a long time, successfully supporting her brother and herself. He understood feminism. Other than Sawyer, his two best other partners had been women. Both highly skilled and competent as hell.
And Carmen Jimenez was likely every bit as smart as they had been. But she didn’t have the same training and she sure as heck wasn’t packing a gun. A lone female, traveling at night, was a target.
It had just made sense for him to offer to follow her home. What hadn’t made sense was that for the entire drive he’d debated whether he should ask to come in. In the end, he’d decided against it. Maybe it had been the memory of her running into the bathroom to avoid dancing with him. Maybe it had been that the night had been so nice that he didn’t want to take the chance of spoiling it with a refusal.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t figured out what to do about Carmen. He’d spent months trying to forget how she’d felt in his arms but he hadn’t been able to. What the hell did that mean?
So, he’d made sure she got inside safely and he’d gone home. He’d gone to bed thinking about her, had dreamed about her, and when he’d gotten out of bed at the crack of dawn, he’d known that he was going to be waiting in that coffee shop.
Good instincts. That’s what his boss had written on his last performance appraisal. Robert liked to think that he listened to his gut. And his gut had been telling him to be there.
Those instincts had been front and center when he’d pushed for the invitation to have dinner tonight with Carmen and Raoul. And he’d been happy when she’d finally said yes, insisting that she would cook.
But for some reason, he didn’t feel inclined to share that information with Sawyer. “What’s the plan today?” Robert asked.
“More knocking on doors. Somebody saw something.”
“Maybe not. The body was found early Wednesday morning. It was below zero on Tuesday night. There probably weren’t that many people out and about after midnight, not like they would have been on a summer evening.”
“Well, we have to hope somebody was taking their dog out, or maybe they made an emergency run for cigarettes. We need a witness,” Sawyer said.
They needed something. Right now, Robert would settle for some old-fashioned luck.
* * *
WHEN RAOUL UNLOCKED the apartment door, he could smell the sauce. Something else, too. Something chocolate.
“Raoul,” his sister greeted him. She pinched his cheek as he walked past. “How was band practice?”
“Okay,” Raoul said, leaning his trombone case up against the counter. “Some girl who plays the flute had a meltdown. We had to stay late to make up the time.”
“No problem. I’m running behind, too.”
“Something smells good,” he said. He started to reach for the brownie pan.
She stuck out her wooden spoon and tapped his hand. “You have to wait. It’s for dessert.”
“You never make dessert.”
She shrugged. “We’re having company.”
They never had company. Well, almost never. Sometimes Old Lady Curtiss from down the hall ate with them. She smelled like lilacs and cough medicine.
“An acquaintance I met through work,” Carmen said.
“Who?”
She turned her back to him and stirred the sauce. “His name is Robert Hanson.”
A man? The only man at OCM was Jamison, his sister’s boss. “What does he do there?”
“He’s a police officer. A detective. You might remember him from Liz and Sawyer’s wedding. He was the best man.”
“Oh, yeah. He gave a funny speech at the reception.”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Why is a cop coming for dinner?” He walked around to the other side of the stove so that he could see her face.
“Because I asked him to. He’s been helpful with a situation at work and I thought it would be nice if I fixed him dinner.” She looked at her watch, then at the clock on the wall. “Shoot. I’ve got to get dressed. He’ll be here any minute.” She thrust the spoon in his hand. “Keep stirring.”
She left the room as Raoul dropped the spoon in the sauce and watched it sink to the bottom.
* * *
ROBERT JUGGLED WINE, bread and a bouquet of fresh flowers as he walked up the apartment stairs. He stood outside the door and tried to remember that he’d probably gone to dinner at some woman’s house at least a hundred times before.
But Carmen wasn’t just some woman. She was Liz Montgomery’s best friend, for one thing. She was totally hot for another. And when she smiled, it seemed as if the world suddenly became a better place.
Damn. He should take up writing greeting cards.
He’d worried that he might be late. His mother had called just as he’d walked into the florist. He’d stepped outside the small shop and stood in the cold so that he could have some privacy. It had been a short conversation. She’d apologized for bothering him, he assured her it was no bother, and then she’d dropped what might have been a zinger if he hadn’t been waiting for the call for some time. Normie is leaving.
He’d promised to stop over the following night. That had seemed to make her happy. It was a pattern of behavior they’d perfected over the years.
He’d hung up, bought his flowers and here he was. He glanced at his watch. One minute early.
He kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of his shoe, then stepped back so that he could be seen through the peephole. He smiled and held up the loot. The door opened. A young Hispanic boy, dark and fine-boned like his sister, stood there. He was holding a fat orange cat.
“I’m Robert,” he said. “You must be Raoul.”
The boy didn’t say yes or no. He simply stepped aside and motioned him in. “Carmen’s changing her clothes.”
“No problem. Where should I put this?”
Raoul pointed to the counter. The cat squirmed in his arms and he immediately bent down and placed her gently on the floor.
Robert bent down to scratch her head but she skirted away. Okay. The cat and the kid had the same sort of attitude.
Robert watched the boy walk over to the stove, immediately noting the limp, as though his right leg might be just a bit shorter than his left.
“I hear you play the trombone.” Robert leaned against the counter.
“That’s right,” Raoul said. The kid took tongs and dug a spoon out of the sauce.
“Where do you go to school?”
“Mahoney High.”
“Really? That’s pretty far from here. How come you don’t go to a neighborhood school?”
“Because I won’t let him.”
Robert whirled around. Carmen stood in the doorway. She wore a white sweater and a black skirt. It wasn’t short, but tight enough to be very interesting. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a haphazard sort of fashion.