“Thanks. And thanks for taking care of Ms. Wilson,” I said, before turning to the dead man’s daughter. “I’m so sorry for your loss. And for the fact that you had to see your father this way.”
Angela Wilson nodded, blowing her nose at the same time as she tried to get her emotions under control.
I had a habit of running my fingers through my hair, sort of subconsciously, so that I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. Coop thought it was a nervous reaction, that it made witnesses think I was working my first homicide or something. I didn’t know how to stop doing it, since most of the time I didn’t know that I was. But now Angela Wilson was watching the top of my head instead of making eye contact.
“Tea, Detective?” the neighbor asked. “Or something stronger?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing, thank you.”
“Then I’ll excuse myself, Detective. It’s Angela you want to see.”
The women hugged each other and the older one left the room. I pulled up a small armchair across the table from Angela and started to talk. I asked her how she was feeling now, and whether she’d taken any pills or had anything to drink. Neither, she told me.
Her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was puffy and tear streaked. I riffed for a while about how difficult her work must be, the fact that the sergeant had told me she was an only child, and my big lie to her that someday the image that had been created tonight-the sight of her father’s head blown to bits in his own bed, the crimson fluid spattered around him-would fade to a distant memory. That would stay with her as long as she lived.
“May I ask you some questions, Angela?”
“Certainly, Detective. I’ll do my best to answer.” She was wringing a handkerchief with both hands.
“Mike. Please call me Mike,” I said, with a glance at my watch. It was after midnight. “Did you work yesterday?”
“I did. Yes, I did.”
Her shift was twelve hours, from eight A.M. to eight P.M., caring for a woman in her late nineties-who was in good health, she said, though too frail to manage at home by herself.
“Had you planned to visit your father after work?”
“No. I hadn’t expected to do it. I was going to meet a friend of mine for a late supper, around ten o’clock, at a restaurant just two blocks from here.”
“The friend, may I ask his name?”
“A woman. We went to high school together. We have dinner once a month. She’s a nurse at Columbia Presbyterian.”
“Sorry to interrupt you,” I said, after she spelled the friend’s name for me.
“It’s okay,” Angela said, sniffling into her handkerchief. “I called my father, probably around four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“On his landline, or does he have a cell?”
“No landline anymore. He’s got a cell phone.”
“What’s the number?” I hadn’t seen one anywhere in the apartment. I texted Lee to look for it immediately and when Angela gave me the number I texted the lieutenant to have TARU-the Technical Assistance Response Unit-start tracking it.
“Anyway, I hadn’t seen him in almost a week. I called to ask if he needed anything, but he didn’t answer.”
“What about Keesh? Wouldn’t she get what he needed?”
“Keesh doesn’t live here. Least not most of the time. And the reason it was so good for me to come by is that my father said that she was out of town for the week.”
“Out of town?” Not the three words I wanted to hear about my suspect.
“Don’t get that worried look on your face, Mike,” Angela said. She was focused again on the top of my head. I must have had my hand in my hair. “She never goes far.”
“Where to?”
“I didn’t want to burst my father’s bubble. Keesh would just move in with somebody else who fancied her, brief as that might be. Somebody with a fatter wallet than my daddy.”
“Didn’t he know that?” I asked. “Wasn’t there a chance that he’d run into her on the street?”
“Daddy? I’ve got to back you up so you understand him. He only went two places when he left home-the community center and the liquor store. If Keesh stayed clear of both of those, she might as well be on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, ’cause Daddy wouldn’t see her.”
“But-?”
“I know. You’re going to ask me about food. Doesn’t he-didn’t he-have to eat?” Angela said without my prompting. “Yeah. Cans of soup, and mac and cheese for the microwave. Wash it all down with Rémy and my father had everything he needed. With Keesh? That’s all he got. Which is why I liked to check up on him. I’d go home when I got off work and pick up some homemade food to bring him.”
“And you did?” I asked.
“Yeah. I made meat loaf the night before-two of them-and some black-eyed peas. Called Daddy again around nine o’clock to say I was on my way. I was gonna heat it up for him, sit and talk for a while-” Angela said, choking up and covering her mouth with the handkerchief.
I waited while she composed herself.
“I called mostly to make sure that Keesh hadn’t come home a couple of days earlier than Daddy expected. Hadn’t come back to him, dragging her sorry tail between her legs.”
“Did he-?”
“No. No, he still didn’t answer. Went right to voice mail.”
“Did that worry you?”
“Not really. My father’s healthy as a horse. Excuse me. My father was perfectly healthy. When he didn’t answer it usually meant the TV was on and he couldn’t hear the phone ring. I put the food in a shopping bag and started over here.”
“But Keesh,” I said. “What if she had showed up?”
“Daddy would have called me. Right as rain. Two of us couldn’t be in the same room,” Angela said, dabbing at her puffy eyelids.
“What’s your beef with Keesh, Angela?”
She lowered both hands to her lap and looked at me like I was crazy. “You kidding me or what?”
“I just walked into this story tonight. Blank slate. Help me here.”
Angela’s expression turned to ice. “You need a guide dog for this, Detective? You always so slow on the pickup?”
“Maybe so.”
“My daddy was carrying on with a ho. Plain and simple,” Angela Wilson said, spitting each word out with equal emphasis. “Takeesha Falls is a full-on ho.”
“I’m-”
“She don’t care who she rubs up against, as long as there’s a cash bonus for her lovin’, using that word really loosely.”
“I’m confused a bit. I thought your father was a churchgoing man.”
“Church?” she said, waving the hand with the handkerchief over her shoulder. “Last time Daddy went to church was for my mother’s funeral, fifteen years ago.”
“Stay with me, Angela. This is helpful. All I know-all I was told by my boss-was that your father was a good man, a really decent guy, and that he worked-”
“Daddy hasn’t worked in five years, Detective,” she said, her annoyance temporarily displacing her emotion. “Lost his job driving a livery cab with a few too many arrests for being intox’d behind the wheel. And that was a good thing, getting him off the road.”
“Okay, but the information we had was that he worked at the church, for Reverend Shipley.”
“Ha!” Angela Wilson’s laugh split the quiet of the small space like a roll of thunder. “Don’t make me sick, Detective. That man don’t have no church. Some of you white boys are as dumb as you look. You, too, Detective? What church would that be?”
She stared at the top of my head while I tried to answer her.
“Well, he’s a preacher, isn’t he?”
“Without any brick-and-mortar place to preach. The man started life as a backup dancer for Little Richard, Detective. Put a collar on and made himself a minister, and nobody calls his bluff on that, ever. All he does is run some bullshit-excuse me, please, but I’m rather agitated-some bullshit organization that keeps his fat old face in the newspapers. Wants you to think he robs from the rich to give to the poor, when all he does is stuff his own pockets with his take.”