“Go ahead,” Eve prompted.
“It’s not important, not relevant. I remember I felt bad for her, sitting there, crying, looking so tired and defeated. I guess I said something like it to Frisco, and he told me to toughen up. In more colorful la nguage.”
MacMasters smiled, very faintly. “He could be a hard-ass. We stood by, and when she finished, she asked for a court-appointed.”
“You went to see the man going by Patterson.”
“She wouldn’t talk until she’d talked to the lawyer, and it was late, middle of the night by then, so we didn’t think we’d get a go with her until morning. And we figured she’d contacted this guy, the one listed as her husband, as her kid’s father.”
“Contacting him so he’d have time to get rid of or conceal anything in criminating.”
“Had to be,” MacMasters agreed. “What the hell did the guy think she was doing all night? Playing bridge? So while she was in the tank, we went over to her residence. You could see, ten seconds in you could see he was wrong. He was wrong, Patterson. But the apartment was clean. No illegals, no evidence of fraud. Child services took the kid, and we took him in for questioning.”
“That night?” Eve prompted.
“Yeah. Frisco and I both wanted to get him in the box, push him. But he played it innocent, and he never came off that. He claimed to believe she worked nights at some dive off Broad. He was sweating,” MacMasters added as he looked back. “I can still see the sweat rolling down his face, like the tears had with hers. Maybe if we’d had more time to work him. But her lawyer told us to get the APA, her client wanted to deal.”
He took a breath, working it out in his head. “We figured she was going to roll on the husband, implicate him to deal down. We pulled off him, went in to talk to her. She confessed.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Her lawyer wasn’t happy, you could see that. The APA hadn’t even gotten there yet, but she insisted she wanted to get it done. Claimed an addiction to Exotica, and that it had caused her to prostitute. Took the full rap. Claimed she bought the cloner on the black market. She wouldn’t flip on Patterson. We pushed there, and when the APA got into it, he offered her a better deal if she pulled the husband in. But she wouldn’t. They dealt her eighteen months, and he walked. They gave him back the kid.
“Frisco used to say, ‘Sometimes slime slides.’ This was one of those times.”
“Was she afraid of him?”
“Hell, no.” MacMasters let out a half-laugh. “She loved him. It was all over her. She loved the son of a bitch, and he knew it. He let her take the fall. More we figured, when Frisco and I talked about it, we figured during that call, when she started crying, the bastard talked her into taking the fall.”
“It fits,” Eve said quietly. “It runs true.”
“You can know something without being able to prove it, without being able to make a case.” Even now, twenty years later, the frustration flashed clearly on MacMasters’s face. “We made the case on her, we closed the case. She did the time, and she earned it, but…”
MacMasters shook his head. “It was the law, but it wasn’t right. Not through to the core of it. Patterson let her go down, alone, and he played the shocked husband, the desperate father. We did their financials, you can see here in the file. They didn’t have much more than two months’ rent in their account. Where did the thousands she’d scammed go? She said to her illegals habit and gambling, but she couldn’t tell us where she’d gambled it away. It was bullshit. They had it squirreled, but she never shook off that stand. She stuck firm that she’d spent the money, and he hadn’t been any part of it. Hadn’t known. And he comes to her sentencing with tears in his eyes, holding the little boy, with the boy crying for his mother. It was-”
He broke off, got slowly to his feet. In place of frustration, a cop’s memory of a case that hadn’t gone down quite right, came shock. “The boy. It’s the boy you think killed Deena?”
“It’s leaning that way, yes.”
“But, for God’s sake, he would do that, he would do that to an innocent girl because I once arrested his mother? Because she did less than two years?”
“Irene Schultz aka Illya Schooner was beaten, raped, and murdered by strangulation in Chicago in May of 2041.”
He slid back into the chair as if his legs dissolved. “Patterson?”
“No, he was alibied. I’ll have the full file later this morning, and will reach out to the primary on the investigation, but he looks clear on it.”
“How could he blame me? How could he blame me for that, and kill my child?”
“I don’t have the answer for you. Captain, did Pauley-Patterson-did he threaten you in any way?”
“No, just the opposite. He cooperated fully on the surface. Played the ‘there must be some mistake, please can I see my wife.’ He never asked for a lawyer. When I pushed the illegals, the cloner in his face, he put on the shock, the disbelief, then the shame. He played it like a symphony.”
“You said it was the middle of the night when you pulled him in. But she didn’t try to stall, try to get her PD to push for a bail hearing?”
“No. We stalled some, let them stew and caught a couple hours of sleep in the crib. The APA wasn’t coming in until morning anyway. It didn’t make any difference in her statement. I felt for her. Goddamn it, goddamn it, I felt for her. She protected him, and he let her. I felt for her, and that little boy. The little boy crying for her. Now my daughter’s dead.”
Sometimes, Eve thought, having the answers didn’t ease the pain. Even as she went down to her office to search for more answers, she felt the weight of that on the back of her neck.
She found the Chicago file in her incoming, and sat down to read it through. She’d given it a first pass when Lieutenant Pulliti contacted her via ’link.
“I appreciate you reaching out, Lieutenant.”
“Happy to. Just because I took my thirty a couple years ago doesn’t mean I’m sailing on Lake Michigan. Cap said this was about an old homicide. Illya Schooner.”
“That’s right.” He’d retired young, Eve thought. He couldn’t have been more than sixty-five, with a full head of dark hair, clear brown eyes. Either the job hadn’t put the years on his face, or he’d spent a chunk of his pension getting face treatments.
“Rape-murder,” she said. “Vic was female, mid-twenties.”
“I remember,” he interrupted. “I was working the South Side back then. It was rough, hadn’t come back far from the Urbans. Scary time.”
“I bet.”
“They’d worked her pretty good. Cap said he sent you the file.”