call Hammonds.”
27
Another twilight was spun through with red-and-blue light bars from a line of squad cars. Another visit by the M.E.’s black Suburban. Another body bag.
I leaned up against the driver’s door of Diaz’s SUV while Richards talked on a cell phone inside, filling her boss in on the details. I was thinking about crisp new hundred-dollar bills, doubting that they were going to find any in this house. The detectives were playing their theme: A former psych patient goes wacko for some reason, tracks down the shrink that treated him in jail and robs and kills him.
“Uh, yeah. We’ve got a mug shot from the jail and a physical description, sir,” Richards was saying into the phone.
Diaz had turned on the overhead light in his truck and was looking through the jail and arrest reports on Eddie Baines. He handed a sheet to her.
“We’ve got a black male, thirty-seven years of age, approximately five-foot-ten and 250 pounds. Brown hair, uh…no eye color here. Some scars on his forearms, possibly knife wounds it says here, sir. No marks or tattoos.
“Yes, sir. I believe we’ve already got the BOLO out, sir,” she said, passing the sheet back to Diaz.
I was staring down the darkened street, seeing something big and thick and menacing in the back of my head.
“Uh, no, sir, I don’t believe so.” She turned to Diaz. “Anything in there about a vehicle?”
“Uh, nada,” he said, reading through the arrest report. “Looks like he was stopped by patrol on foot while he was pushing some kind of shopping cart. Like a junk man or something.”
I reached in through Diaz’s window and plucked the sheet out of his hand.
“Yo, Freeman,” he snapped.
“What?” Richards said.
I read the line about the shopping cart, the description.
“He’s our guy,” I said, as much to myself as to them. “That’s him.”
The detectives were watching me.
“Um, yes, sir. Yes, Freeman, sir,” Richards was saying into the phone.
An hour later we were in Hammonds’s office, on the sixth floor of the sheriff’s administration building. Richards had taken up a spot leaning against a bookshelf. Diaz took the most comfortable chair off to one side, leaving me with the chair directly in front of Hammonds’s desk.
“All right, Freeman. Let’s get past the fact that you didn’t reveal information that you had. That investigative flaw is not surprising, but bolsters my assessment of your lack of professionalism. So convince me of this theory of yours.”
He was up tight against his side of the desk, his palms flat together, his tie cinched up and the sleeves of his dress shirt showing an ironed crease.
I told him of the paper trail on Marshack, the confirmation that the doctor had collected the finder’s fees on the South Florida viatical policies. I told him about McCane and his tailing of Marshack to the northwest side liquor store and the detail about the new hundred-dollar bills, the same kind found in Marshack’s glove box.
Hammonds peaked his fingers, touching the tips on his chin. Without him asking a question, I elected to go on.
“I made some contacts in the zone and they picked up the word from one of your local drug dealers that a man fitting the description of Eddie Baines had been paying for heroin with new hundred-dollar bills.”
“So we’ve got a psychotic with a heroin addiction walking around in Three Zone. He may or may not have been getting money for his habit from his jail psychiatrist. He may or may not have killed that psychiatrist. He also may or may not have killed his mother and left her in her closet to rot,” Hammonds said, turning to Richards. “You have any reason to believe this guy has any connection with the rapes and killings you’re supposed to be working, detective?”
“Location. Opportunity. Knowledge of the streets. And now, the possible propensity to violence,” she said.
Hammonds let that sit for a moment.
“I ask you the same question, Mr. Freeman.”
“If Marshack was paying this guy with hundred-dollar bills to get high, what was he getting in return for his money?” I said. “And if he was collecting a finder’s fee on viaticals, was he lining up Baines as his hit man?”
Hammonds shook his head.
“Those aren’t reasons, Freeman, they’re questions,” he said. “But since you have built these so-called contacts in the zone, it’s my suggestion that you ride with Detective Richards and see if we might be able to find this junk man.
“And Detective Diaz. I want you to get with a computer tech and