I slammed the car door and walked toward the back of the building. The Wolls occupied a rear apartment on the second floor, accessible by an ancient roofed staircase that clung to the exterior wall like an afterthought. I climbed it gingerly, uncertain of how much more use it could bear.
I wasn’t here by invitation. As Brandt had mentioned, John Woll had not answered his phone all afternoon, and coming around the building, I could confirm his car wasn’t parked in the drive. On the other hand, I’d remembered his wife had dropped him off on the evening I’d recognized her voice, and I thought it possible that his car might be on the blink.
The impulse that had led me here had been triggered by more than that simple deduction, however. With Katz hot on the Wolls’ connection to Jardine, he had probably tried to confront the subject of this latest political whirlwind with what he knew. If he had, I understood why John Woll was no longer answering his phone.
For some cops, the uniform and the badge offer the security and social courage they lack as civilians; it gives them comfort, much as the military does. That’s where I fit John Woll. He’d stumbled once a few years back and had made the police department his lifeline. If I was right, and Katz had gotten to him, then, guilty or not, John Woll was now in free-fall.
I reached the second-floor landing and found the front door ajar. I knocked, the door widening slightly under my hand. “John? It’s Joe Gunther.”
There was no answer, but I thought I heard a small and distant sound, like protesting bed springs. I entered the apartment.
I was standing in a living room, brightly painted, neat as a pin, sparsely and inexpensively furnished. The windows were all open, and the dying light outside still caught the colorful hues of the thin cotton curtains. It was an unexpected, comforting cocoon, buried in a building with all the warmth of a rotting, beached ship.
“John?”
Again, there was that slight shifting sound. Someone was definitely in the back of the apartment. Despite the domestic tranquility of my surroundings, a growing apprehension seeped into my bones.
I didn’t unholster my gun, there being no tangible reason to do so, but I did rest my hand on its butt as I sidled up the narrow, short hallway toward the back. I paused beside the first door on the right and peered in around the corner. It was a bathroom, fresh-smelling, cheery, and empty.
I moved to the next and last door, also on the right. John Woll, flat on his back across a double bed, lay staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. His hands were wrapped around a tall glass of amber liquid and ice cubes which rested on his stomach. I took some comfort from that; if he was still sensitive enough to want ice cubes in his drink, he couldn’t be totally blitzed-not yet, at least.
“Hullo, John.”
He sighed without speaking.
I entered the room and moved over to a worn wooden rocking chair in the corner, a poor man’s antique, which creaked ominously under my weight. “You coming on duty tonight?”
That obviously struck him as an odd opener. He turned his head to look at me. “You gotta be kidding.”
His voice was soft but clear, with no hint of an alcoholic slur. It occurred to me then that the glass was still full, its exterior heavily beaded with droplets of condensation, its ice cubes small and few in number. He’d obviously been lying there, merely considering a dive off the wagon, for quite some time.
“You can, for tonight. We’ll keep you around the office for the shift, away from the press.” I hesitated, wondering how coy I should be. Not very, I finally decided. “It’ll spare you lying around here all night, playing Russian roulette with that glass.”
He gave me a long, impenetrable look, and then extended the glass out to me. “It’s ginger ale.”
My face reddening, I nevertheless took the glass and sipped from it. It was indeed ginger ale. I handed it back, not bothering to apologize. “The way things are piling up, Brandt’s going to have to call in the state’s attorney’s office to look into the allegations against you pretty soon. Dunn read him the riot act a half hour ago.”
He let out a half snort of derision.
A moment of silence elapsed while I pondered the timing of this conversation. Brandt, Klesczewski, and I had seen the evidence damning John Woll escalate over the last two and a half days. He, presumably, had suffered a different perspective, knowing from the start he had compromising ties to the victim of a homicide, and wondering when that fact would emerge to bring an end to his world as he knew it.
I was running out of time. James Dunn’s office was poised to drive a wedge between the department and John Woll that neither party would be allowed later to breach. If we didn’t talk now, we never would.
“John, when did you first find out about Rose and Charlie Jardine?”
After a brief pause he held up four fingers.
I took a guess. “Four years?”
“Yup.” It was a whisper, almost a sigh.
From past observations, I guessed that wouldn’t have been too long after the affair’s beginning. I’d never heard of an affair yet where the third party hadn’t pegged to the truth pretty quickly; I imagined it had a lot to do with body language, literally.
“What did you do about it?”
He shrugged, almost dumping some of the ginger ale onto his already damp shirt.
I came at it from another angle, looking for an opening I could widen. “How did Katz break the news?”
“He called.”
“And what did he say?”
“He knew about Charlie and Rose.” He gave a sudden half chuckle. “He asked if I killed Charlie-out of jealousy, I suppose.”
“He’s not the only one thinking that.”
There was a long silence. Then he said, “Yeah, I guess not.”
I leaned forward quickly and plucked the glass from between his fingers. He was startled at my speed and half sat up as I put the glass on the floor beside me.
“Sit up, John,” I ordered, standing over him.
“What d’you want from me?”
“I’m trying to talk to you. Sit up.”
He shifted over to the head of the bed, his back propped against the pillows, his legs crossed. He would have looked like a kid except for the face-pale, haggard, and as worn as an old man’s.
“What did Katz tell you?”
He rubbed his forehead with his palm, jarred out of his self-pity. “He said he knew my patrol car had been parked near where Charlie was found later, that Rose and Charlie were having an affair, that I’d lied about seeing a flare over the embankment. He said the department was covering for me-that they’d known all this from the start but that they were protecting their own.”
He paused.
“Anything else?”
“He knew about my drinking. Said he knew Rose had dated both of us in high school. That the department had hired me even though they knew I was a drunk.”
“Was there more to the high-school connection, something else besides Rose that connected you and Charlie?”
He made a face. “Charlie was a loser-long hair, did dope, jerked the teachers around, not serious about anything. He was everything I hated.”
“But Rose liked him.”
“Yeah.”
In the quiet following that half moan of a response, I noticed the room had darkened and cooled with the yielding sun, if only slightly. It lent a slightly confessional feeling to the setting. I played into it by sitting back down.
“I never could understand that,” John added. “I still don’t.”
“Rose told me you only admitted knowing about the affair a couple of days ago. Why’d you sit on it for four years, John?”