"She was such a pretty child, a pretty little girl."
"She was."
"She surely was." Mrs. Bott smiled happily with Mrs. Greenwood, the two of them forgetting for a minute how it would all turn out, and Vicki let them be, left them to slip into a reverie of what might have been, what could have been, thinking of pretty babies in ruffled socks with shiny patent shoes. Vicki wished for one minute that she could replace the scenes from the medical examiner with those frilly, happy, pastel images. Women like these shouldn't have to see sights like that. Vicki felt terrible she'd brought up the drug thing and raised questions about Jackson's memory.
"I am so sorry for your loss," Vicki said, and Mrs. Bott seemed resigned, and overwhelmingly sad.
"Thank you very much. You know, I told her, if she comes to the city, things happen. Things like this."
And it made Vicki sad, too, that she couldn't deny it. Even in her hometown.
In time, she packed Mrs. Bott and Mrs. Greenwood into a Yellow cab bound for the bus station. She offered to buy them an airplane ticket, but they wouldn't hear of it, and she had to promise if she ever went to north Florida she'd stop in for pecan cookies. She stayed on the corner in the cold, waving to them as the cab drove off, already formulating her next step.
She hadn't learned enough about Shay Jackson, and there was someone else who might know more. Cars and SEPTA buses rumbled down the cobblestone patches of Spruce Street, spewing chalky exhaust into the frigid air, and Vicki looked for another cab. She wouldn't be doing police work, exactly. It was more like an errand.
She wasn't suspended from errands, was she?
TEN
The sun burned cold in the cold clear sky, but Vicki stayed warm by keeping up, stride for stride, with Jim Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh was tall, thin, and superbly tailored in a gray wool coat he'd undoubtedly bought with his signing bonus. Former AUSAs earned $150,000 to start when they joined the big Philly law firms, so they upgraded their wardrobes, bought a car with excessive horsepower, and demoted the Jetta to "station car." Vicki experienced paycheck envy. Working for Justice paid one-third of that amount, which proved there was no justice.
"I need to ask you about one of your old cases," she said, hurrying alongside Cavanaugh down the busy sidewalk. His tie flew to the side, catching a bracing breeze as they strode down the street. He'd been too busy to meet with her in his office, but she'd insisted, so he'd agreed to let her walk him to his deposition. "The defendant's named Reheema Bristow, indicted for a straw purchase. You had the case just before you left our office."
"A straw case?" Cavanaugh wore hip rimless glasses, and his dark bangs flipped up as he barreled along. Businessmen in topcoats, workers in down jackets, and well-dressed women streamed past them on the sidewalk, laughing and talking, going back to work after lunch. "I picked up a straw case? I thought I was cooler than that."
"Two guns purchased, a CI named Shayla Jackson?" "No clue." "You spoke with Jackson on the phone?" "Don't remember that." "You must have met her at the grand jury." "Name doesn't ring a bell. What did she look like?" Vicki flashed on the scene of Jackson strafed with gunfire, then shifted to the photos on the mirror. "A pretty girl, black, nice smile." "That's everybody." Great. "Think about it. The case had a knockout for a defendant. Reheema Bristow. Tall, black, lovely face, killer body. Looks like a model."
"Oh, yeah." Cavanaugh smiled, and breath puffed from his mouth. "Now I remember the case. Who could forget Reheema? She was slammin'. Re-hee-ma."
"Yes, Reheema. You held a proffer conference with her, your memo in the file says so. I have it, if it helps."
"Let's see," Cavanaugh said, and Vicki juggled her handbag to slip the memo out of her briefcase and hold it in front of him while they walked. A kid plugged into a white iPod looked over as Cavanaugh glanced at the memo. "Yes, okay, I remember."
"It says her lawyer, Melendez, was there and also your case agent, Partino." "Yeah, they were." "You remember Melendez? Court-appointed, short, a little blocky?" "Oh, yeah. Nice guy." Unless he's suing you. "And Partino. Where's he, these days? Why didn't he stay with ATF?" "He was a reservist and got called up. Still in Iraq, I think." "So I can't talk to him." "No." Vicki refused to be discouraged. "Last night, my case agent was killed when he and I went out to see Jackson. Jackson was murdered, too, and she was pregnant."
"The CI, I read that online," Cavanaugh said, and to his credit, he winced. "I didn't realize it was that case until now. Reheema. So what do you want from me?"
"I'm trying to find out what happened."
"Don't they have police for that?"
Best not to dwell. "Okay, let's talk about Shayla Jackson."
"The CI? What about her?"
"First off, her grand jury transcript wasn't in the file, and the slip shows you ordered it. You know where it went?"
"Guilty. I admit it, I wasn't into filing. Maybe it got misfiled. I love having somebody to do my filing." Cavanaugh grinned. "I have my own secretary now. Well, the guy I share her with is always out of town. It rocks."
"Jackson called you and volunteered to testify, your memo said."
"Right."
"So she called you out of the blue? It's weird."
"But not unheard of."
"I know, but usually there's a reason." Vicki didn't get it. The girlfriend of a drug dealer, calling the U.S. Attorney's Office to snitch? It didn't make sense but she couldn't tell Cavanaugh about the cocaine. "Do you know why she did that?"
"No."
Vicki checked the date of the memo, flapping as they walked. Eight months ago. Shayla would have just found out she was pregnant, if she knew that early. "Did she mention that she was pregnant at the time?"
"No."
"Did she look pregnant then? She wouldn't have been far along."
"I don't know if she was pregnant. She mighta been a little heavy, but that's typical. Gold jewelry, tipped fingernails. You know. Ghetto fabulous."
Vicki got over her jealousy of his salary and began disliking him on the merits. "Okay, so Jackson came in and testified before the grand jury that Reheema resold the guns?"
"Yes."
"How did Jackson know that Reheema had resold the guns?"
"As I remember, the defendant told her she resold them."
Vicki's ears pricked up. "Bristow admitted it to her?"
"Yep."
"So they knew each other?"
"I think that's what she said. They were best friends."
Vicki didn't get it. She'd asked Reheema this morning if she knew Jackson, and it didn't seem like the name had even registered. And that was consistent with what Mrs. Bott had said, too. "Who told you that?"
"What?" Cavanaugh was distracted, exchanging waves with a man he knew.
"Who said that they were best friends?"
"The CI."
"Jackson?"
"Yes."
"Did Jackson ever call Reheema Mar, or a name like Mar?" Vicki flashed on Mrs. Bott. Actually, she was having separation anxiety.
"How the hell do you get Mar from Reheema?" Cavanaugh screwed up his nose.
"Did she?"
"I don't know. Christ."
"Did Jackson mention a Mar?"
"No."
Vicki felt confounded. "You sure Jackson said Bristow was her friend?"
"Best friend, she said."
"How did they become best friends? Don't say you don't know."
"I don't."
They barreled down the street, and Vicki shook her head. "It couldn't be from the neighborhood. Jackson lived in the near Northeast, and from the file, Reheema's apartment was in West Philly."
"If you say so." "Did Jackson have a job?" "No idea." "And it couldn't be from work, even though Reheema worked two jobs." Vicki was remembering from Reheema's case file and she suspected that Jackson's temp job was history, no matter what Mrs. Bott had thought. Jackson was more likely the well-kept girlfriend of a coke dealer, not a woman who worked. But for some reason, when she got pregnant, she had dimed on Bristow and decided to change her life. "Did Jackson ever mention a Jamal Browning?"