The Chief agreed but told Rooney to call him, no matter what the time was, if he discovered anything else.
Rooney returned to his office where Bean was waiting. He couldn’t stop smiling; he felt he’d shown the bastards. He kicked the door closed. ‘You and me got work to do.’
Bean took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. Rooney was rummaging through his desk drawers. ‘What about Lorraine Page?’ Bean asked. ‘According to officers Hully and Maynard you were at her place. They said you were bringing her in.’
‘I left when she didn’t show — that all right with you?’
Bean’s face was quizzical. ‘You just done a hell of a lot of legwork since you left here last night, but you’ve not mentioned any of this to me — Janklow, the Thorburn family. If you’d seen those agents’ faces, talk about jaws dropping open. I was impressed. They were really pissed. They were patting each other on the back ten minutes earlier about Art Mathews. They really upped the pressure on him, you know, he was crying his eyes out. She tip you off about him?’
Rooney raised his eyebrow in mock surprise. ‘God no, that was supreme detective work on my part, lieutenant.’ Then he scowled. ‘If Mathews said he killed them, I reckon he’d have said he’d shot his mother just to get those suits off him. He was scared — I reckon he was scared shitless about being done for blackmail again. He’d have done eighteen years this time and the little prick knew it. They just wanted to make an arrest, period. I reckon they were lucky he did kill himself because if I’d got my hands on him, I might have got a different result, like negative.’
Bean sighed. ‘So why did he kill himself, then?’
‘Because maybe he knew he was in very deep and we’d have dug up something. Christ almighty, I gave them his fucking file, he was serving time when two of the victims were done. I don’t care what any of that FBI crowd want to say about copy-cat killings, those victims were all done by the same man.’
Bean sucked in his breath. ‘Or woman. That’s what Fellows threw in tonight.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No. He said that all the crap that’s written about male or female strength is hyped up out of all proportion. If a woman wanted to kill, she could have done it. He even said that was why the victims took a blow to the back of the head first — incapacitated them.’
‘Well, Fellows is looking up his own tight-assed backside. We got that witness, the one that gave us the description, right?’ He almost disclosed who she was but stopped himself Instead he leaned over the desk. ‘She described her attacker as a man, right?’
Bean jangled the change in his pocket. ‘Lorraine Page. Where does she figure in it all, then? What if they were doing it together? She was with Mathews the night Holly was murdered, he said so.’
‘I know, I know...’ He felt his stomach turn over. What if Bean was right? Could she be that much involved?
Bean sank into a chair. ‘Well, you put the cat among the pigeons. It sounded like hot shit to me.’ Rooney looked puzzled. ‘It was nice to watch you in action, Captain.’
Rooney smiled. ‘I was always one of the best. Now, why don’t you go get some sandwiches and coffee?’
Bean picked up his jacket again. ‘Gonna be a long night, is it?’
As the door closed behind him Rooney slumped in his chair. He wasn’t one of the best — he doubted if he ever had been — but she was. It was she who was hot shit and she’d proved it. He just hoped to God she was right, that she hadn’t done a runner. Did he want to crack this so badly he was going to let her risk her neck? He knew he still had the trump card that she was the witness. If he was forced into a corner he’d bring it out. He wondered how long it would be before they brought her in, then suddenly felt cold. What if Bean was right? What if she had been ducking and diving all along? What if she’d never been a witness but a killer, and the description was just to put them all off the scent? He picked up the phone and punched out her number. No answer. Where the hell was she? If she wasn’t brought in within the hour, he’d go out looking for her personally. She wasn’t the killer — that was dumb, that was crazy — but he felt a horrible nag at his gut. She was connected to Didi and Mathews; he’d told the FBI that she had been with Mathews the night Holly was murdered. He should have brought her in with him, he shouldn’t have trusted her. She might even now be in some bar drinking herself into a stupor — she’d threatened as much...
Bean came in. He’d called for a takeout to be brought in rather than schlepp out for it himself.
‘What else did Fellows say about it maybe being a woman?’
‘None of the victims had been sexually abused, there’d been no trace of semen, not even on Holly. Victims all struck from behind, just their faces mangled.’
Rooney swallowed and tapped the edge of his desk. ‘Is Lorraine Page being brought in?’
‘Changing your theory, are you?’
Rooney sniffed and waved to Bean to get out, but he hovered at the door. ‘She was an ex-cop, right? She’s capable of taking care of herself, she’s tough, I’ve heard you say it, and she’s been out hooking. She’s got a record. Maybe, just maybe, she’s also got a lot of venom in her, a hatred of women that look like her.’
Rooney hit the desk hard. ‘No. No way.’
He watched Bean walk away down the corridor. He couldn’t have lost his touch to that extent. He shut his eyes and recalled Lorraine’s face, the way her pale eyes bored into him, the scar making her face switch between vulnerable and street tough. He read through her file again: the arrests, the charges, the no-shows at court, the attacks on arresting officers, even that she had been held in a strait-jacket. Drunk and disorderly was recorded time and again. Drunk in charge of a vehicle, drunk when arrested for breaking into a liquor store — she had fought the arresting officer, bitten him, kicked him and punched him in the face. It had taken four of them to get her into the wagon. She’d been held in the cells for three days, charged with assault and spent two months in the women’s jail. If he hadn’t known her, he would have described her without hesitation as dangerous. Could she be capable of murder? His feet ached as he walked up and down, swearing alternately at Fellows — for throwing this ‘woman killer’ angle into the investigation — at Lorraine, and lastly at himself.
When Bean returned with the food, Rooney seemed distracted and had taken a bottle from one of the drawers. He took the top off his coffee, gulped a few mouthfuls and topped it up with bourbon. ‘Check that vice charge, the Janklow thing, get on that first.’ Bean didn’t say he was already working on it, he just left Rooney alone. He’d seen these dark moods often and didn’t want to be at the receiving end of one today.
Rooney closed Lorraine’s file. She had sunk lower than he could ever have imagined and he felt a certain remorse. The question uppermost in his mind was, had she sunk so low then forced herself back up just to take revenge? Should he warn all officers that she might be dangerous? He knew if he gave that out, and she resisted arrest, she might be shot.
Rooney opened the lowest drawer in his desk, took out his gun and searched for his holster. He rarely, if ever, wore it, even though he knew he should. Now he strapped it on, checked the weapon, and slipped it into place. He shrugged back into his jacket and was just about to walk out when Bean returned. ‘We got no record in any Vice section regarding Steven Janklow. This is the second time I’ve checked, so now I’ve requested they go back in Records to the time of the first murder. There’s nothing on him or the Thorburns. Nothing. Even if there had been a possible charge, we’d at least have a record or it would have been on file — that includes if charges were dropped for any reason, like string-pulling.’