I stood before the plain wooden dresser, noticing that here, as everywhere else in the apartment, gentle grace notes had been added to soften the plainness of the general surroundings. The dresser was draped with a colorful cotton runner that cascaded off either side of the top, and the shade of the light, which I switched on to chase away the gathering gloom, had a bright-red paper flower pinned to it, whose scarlet aura touched the near wall like a watercolorist’s diluted paintbrush.
I pulled open one of the top half-drawers and discovered a neat row of rolled men’s socks. This is where a search started yielding a mixed emotional bag, for while bedrooms were traditionally rich in compromising landmarks, you had to paw through condom packs, underwear, weird literature, and God knows what else, some of which one inhabitant of the room had been keeping secret from the other for years.
I sifted through the gathered socks and then reached in behind them, my fingers touching something smooth and metallic. Just then, the screen door in the front room opened and banged shut.
As I pulled out a large, very expensive-looking gold watch from the back of the drawer, Rose entered the room, a quizzical expression forming on her face at the sight of me. The shiny band of the watch caught the lamplight, scattering it in tiny flecks across the ceiling.
“This yours?” I asked John.
He shook his head, looking puzzled.
Rose, at his shoulder, went white, her mouth falling open in shock. She moistened her lips and blinked. “It’s Charlie’s.”
21
Klesczewski appeared at the screen door, followed by Tyler and several other police officers, who filed past us into the apartment. Rose and John Woll sat side by side on the couch, looking as if they were being held at gunpoint. In fact, no one was paying any attention to them.
Tyler handed me the search warrant as he went by. His voice was flat to the point of rudeness. “Harrowsmith was not thrilled at the procedure.”
“You mean that the warrant was triggered by a Consent to Search?”
He nodded curtly. “He had questions I couldn’t answer.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he disappeared down the hall into the bedroom, his enormous evidence box tilting him to one side.
I looked to Klesczewski for an explanation. Tyler usually came to these scenes like a beagle to the hunt. This testy display was so rare as to be unique.
Klesczewski waited until the last of Tyler’s team had gone by. “Everyone’s heard that you and Brandt sat on the evidence against John. They’re a little pissed off you didn’t trust them, and more than a little pissed that the shit’s going to hit the fan in the papers.”
I noticed he’d severed himself from Brandt’s and my conspiracy, siding with the disgruntled lower deck as mutiny loomed on the horizon. I obviously had some major bridge-repairing to do.
That, however, would have to wait. I crossed over to the Wolls, Klesczewski in tow, and pulled an armchair around so that it was directly facing them. Ron parked himself on the corner of a sturdy coffee table, notebook in hand, slightly to one side.
I looked at Rose and tilted my head in Ron’s direction. “You two know each other, don’t you?”
She nodded silently.
“I want him to hear this conversation, since things have become more formalized with the search warrant. I also want him to read you your rights. You’re not under arrest, of course, but I have to let you know you’re under no obligation to talk to us.”
They both barely nodded. I glanced at Ron, who recited their litany of rights by heart.
I resumed speaking when he’d finished. “The State’s Attorney will probably be taking over the investigation from us, at least as far as you and John are concerned. Otherwise people could complain of a conflict of interest. You understand that?”
Rose didn’t look as though she understood anything. “You mean because of the watch?”
“Yeah. That, and other things. John was seen in an area where Charlie’s body was later discovered, John’s cigarette was found in Charlie’s grave, and his footprints were in the soil around the grave site. In addition, you’d been having an affair with Charlie, about which John was aware, and there’s a history of conflict between the three of you going back to high school, including your pregnancy. And now Charlie’s watch, presumably the one that was missing from his wrist, is found in your apartment. It’s all what they call circumstantial evidence, but it is beginning to stack up.”
This time, they both nodded without a word. I hadn’t mentioned Rose’s call to Jardine, or John’s admission that he’d known about the affair virtually from the start. Things were looking bad enough for him without rubbing them in.
“Did you know whose watch that was?” I asked John.
“No.”
“How did it get into your sock drawer?”
“I don’t know,” he answered in a dull monotone.
“You’d never seen it before?”
“No.”
“Rose, how did you know whose watch it was?”
She glanced furtively in John’s direction, two incongruously bright patches of pink rising on her cheeks. “I recognized it.”
“Very quickly. How come?”
She hesitated, touching her forehead gingerly with a fingertip, as if checking for a loose strand of hair. “I gave it to him.”
I looked at John, no longer sure he was breathing. His eyes were fixed before him, locked onto my right kneecap, his face deathly pale.
Tyler gestured to me from the hallway. I grimaced, more than a little irritated at this obvious breach of interview protocol. “Hang on a sec, will you?”
I crossed over to Tyler, unable to read his expression. Without a word, he led me down the hallway to the bathroom. There, taped to the underside of the toilet-tank lid, was a small envelope of white powder.
“Shit,” I muttered.
His voice held no satisfaction. “I thought you’d want to know.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks J.P. I appreciate it.”
I re-entered the hallway, almost colliding with James Dunn. He did not look pleased.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice was a barely subdued hiss. I glanced over his shoulder at the Wolls. John was watching us.
“Let’s take this outside,” I muttered and steered toward the front door.
We rattled down the rickety stairs and stopped around the corner, amid quite a cluster now of official-looking cars.
The State’s Attorney could barely contain his rage. “I told you, not two hours ago, that if anything additional was dug up against the Wolls, my office would take over the investigation. Am I dreaming, or does that ring a bell with you?”
“Look, I came by here to see how John was doing. I knew Katz must have contacted him; I also knew John had his problems with booze in the past. I wanted to see how he was holding up.”
Dunn was not sympathetic. “Right, and the next thing we know, he’s signing search consents and you’re ordering up warrants to tear his house apart. You think I’m an idiot, Joe? You think I don’t know you pulled a fast one on me? This is bullshit.”
I felt my face flush. “Hold it just a goddamn minute. Your request to be informed is not an order; and I followed the paperwork here.” I pulled out the consent form. “He signed this thing, and I made damned sure he knew what it meant. As soon as the watch surfaced, that was it; there was barely a word exchanged between us until the search warrant arrived to cover our butts.”
Dunn raised his hands in frustration. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. The consent form makes the fucking warrant useless. If the court throws out the first, which they almost always do, then they have to throw out the second.” He took a deep breath. “What else have your people found?”