I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head, considering the options, weighing the risks. It proved to be more than he could handle on short notice. “I refuse to answer.”
I glanced at Dunn and raised my eyebrows. He nodded slightly. I switched subjects. “In your years as a teacher, did you ever have Charlie Jardine as a student?”
Jackson let out a small laugh of surprise. “Jardine? What the hell?…” He looked around at us quizzically.
“Answer the question, please,” Dunn said quietly.
Jackson shrugged. “Sure, let’s say he attended a few of my classes. Biggest troublemaker I ever had, which is saying a lot, given the competition.”
“Memorable, was he?”
“He was a dopehead and a sex maniac, as far as I cared to determine. Halfway through the year I demanded the principal have him transferred to another class.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“It was done.”
“What about John and Rose Woll? Her name was Evans then. Ever have them in class? They would’ve been in the same grade.”
“I remember John Woll; very good student, albeit too quiet for his own good. He won a grant to attend college at the end of the year; very prestigious award. Turned it down, the idiot. I think there’s truth to what they say about education being wasted on the young. They’ve abolished the award since, of course, along with anything else having to do with education.”
Jackson was visibly gaining speed and self-confidence on this new ground, the arrogant swagger returning to his voice. “You’d think that meant he had brains, but he was no different from the others; when the time came to decide on the rest of his life, he let his cock do the thinking.”
I smiled at him, encouraging. “You’re kidding. He dumped the scholarship for a girl?”
Jackson gave me a contemptuous look. “I thought you’d been conducting an investigation on the man. Don’t you know anything about him? I shouldn’t be surprised, of course. I don’t doubt you were bending over backwards to sweep the whole thing under the rug, you and your police fraternity.”
“Who got the scholarship instead?”
“No one did. Woll didn’t back out until it was too late to assign another recipient; selfish as well as stupid.”
“Who was the girl that got him sidetracked?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Gunther, how the hell would I remember that?”
Again, Dunn’s soft voice floated down the table. “Let’s try to stay cooperative, Luman.”
But we’d lost our advantage; no longer unsure of himself, he tilted his head back slightly and stared at us in contempt. “You people don’t know what you’re after, wandering all over the map, asking me about old students. Did you really think you could tie me in with Jardine’s killing? You must be scared to death of me to try something like that.”
Brandt’s voice was tight with anger. “You shot a police officer tonight, Jackson; would’ve killed him if he hadn’t been wearing armor. Shot at Joe, too, for that matter.”
Jackson’s face reddened. “Just a minute; you never identified yourselves as police. I was defending myself, in fear for my life. I could probably sue you for reckless endangerment.”
Dunn rose and looked down at him. “That’s your privilege, certainly.”
“Good. That’s what I’ll do, then. I want to call my lawyer.”
The State’s Attorney smiled thinly. “You can call him on your own time, Luman. Right now, I’m recommending you be formally cited for attempted murder and released pending the appropriate judicial proceedings.”
Jackson looked at us, his nose wrinkled in disgust. “Fuck you, Jimmy boy. You want to get in a pissing match with me? That’s fine, but be prepared to lose a lot more than this bullshit case. And that goes for the rest of you, too.”
Dunn reached over without a word and turned off the tape recorder.
By the time I got downstairs to the tiny interrogation room tucked into a corner of the detective bureau, Fred McDermott had been waiting for over an hour. Despite the coffee that Sammie Martens had supplied him, he looked utterly beat, his face drawn, his eyes at half-mast, and his hair tousled where he’d run his fingers through it countless times.
I paused before actually entering the room and stepped inside the observation cubicle adjoining it. A one-way mirror separated the two. Sammie Martens appeared at my side, sipping from a cup.
“What do you think?” I asked her. “What’s his role in all this?”
She shrugged. “Who’s to know? Normally, you get as much evidence against a guy as we have against Fred, he ends up fitting the part. But Fred hasn’t budged from looking as innocent as the first day we focused on him, which in my book either makes him one hell of an actor, or the victim of one hell of a frame.”
“What is the evidence so far?”
“He was at Horton Place when Milly bought the farm, he was dogging Toby’s last residence just before Toby disappeared, he has no alibi for when the van almost ran you over, the bug was found in his office, he’s got a nice, fat secret savings account, and he showed up tonight at the high school.”
“And on the plus side?”
“His wife supplied him with alibis for the nights Jardine and Woll died, and he looks like my uncle, who’s a priest. Also, he’s got no record and has never displayed any obvious signs of wealth. As far as we can tell, that bank account has only received money; nothing’s ever been taken out.”
I nodded. “The chief’s still upstairs with Dunn doing paperwork. Tell him I’m going to interview Fred in the parking lot, just for safety’s sake.”
Sammie glanced up at the ceiling as if it were dripping microphones. “Kind of gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”
Fred McDermott was obviously delighted to get out of the small interrogation room. He paused on the edge of the parking lot at the back of the Municipal Building and filled his lungs with air as if we were camping by the side of a mountain lake.
It was still dark, but just barely. The first half-light of dawn was beginning to slip between dark objects and their backgrounds, bringing them into relief. I led the way to a grassy slope under some trees and sat down. McDermott joined me, awkwardly placing his hands on his chubby knees. He didn’t ask why I’d brought him out here.
“Fred, you said you got a call telling you to meet me at the high school, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” His head bobbed several times too many, a reflection of just how baffled he still was after the night’s activities.
“Did the voice sound familiar at all? Did he identify himself?”
“No, I didn’t know who it was. He just said he was calling from the police department with a message from you.”
“Did he specify the time and location?”
“Oh, yes; the middle-school entrance on the south side at midnight.”
“And you were to go inside the building?”
“That’s right; go inside and wait.”
“You didn’t ask why? It was kind of an odd request, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I was curious, but I didn’t really get a chance. He just made sure I had it right, and then he hung up. Oh, and he said it was confidential and to keep it to myself.”
“What time did he call?” I asked.
“It was late, around ten-thirty.”
I paused at that. If he was being truthful, that was right after Pierre’s bogus call to me setting up the meet. Apparently, our elaborate hoax had been a failure from the start. Our eavesdropper must have been standing around, knowing what we were up to, just waiting for the location so he could put his game plan into motion.
“Fred,” I resumed, “do you have any particular bone to pick with Luman Jackson, professionally or otherwise?”
He shook his head. “I barely know the man.”
“But you came to him complaining that we were putting pressure on you.”
He looked surprised. “Oh, no. He came to me. He said he’d heard about it someplace and wanted to know if it was true. I told him we’d talked, that it had startled me a bit, but it hadn’t particularly bothered me. I’d just figured you were doing your job.”