When Ridl raised his hand, Reems called on him with a nod of recognition. ‘The man from the Sun-Times.’
‘Any thoughts on why Betty Jo Dean was taken from Poor Farm Road? If the objective was to get rid of an eyewitness, why not shoot her and leave her with Pribilski? Why risk driving her someplace else to kill her?’
Reems grimaced. ‘I hate to speculate, but the intent must have been rape. It’s small comfort, but they must have changed their minds after they took her.’
‘That doesn’t explain risking moving the Buick. All three could have simply piled into the perpetrators’ car.’
‘My own theory is they moved the Buick to delay the discovery of Pribilski’s body. They didn’t know they’d left a shoe on the road and a puddle of blood.’
Ridl followed up with: ‘You’re certain Betty Jo was lying along the Devil’s Backbone Road since very early Tuesday morning?’
‘It isn’t me that’s certain. It’s the coroner.’
‘He didn’t do the autopsy. You just said Doctor Farmont from right here in Grand Point did the examination.’
‘OK, it’s Doc Farmont’s who’s certain she’s been lying there the whole time. What’s your point?’
‘Hundreds of people searched that area by the Devil’s Backbone Road, beginning Tuesday. I helped search there myself, on Wednesday, and distinctly remember walking past that gnarled tree. How was she missed?’
‘If you were down there, you saw those tall weeds.’
‘Yet this morning she’s seen by a man in a truck, farther away than we were?’
‘The driver was sitting high up in his cab. He had a better view than you. And if you must know, he also mentioned smelling something bad, like a dog or something had died at that spot.’ He held up his hand in admonishment. ‘I’d appreciate you not dwelling on that. It’s a fact, and you’re entitled to report it, but decomposition’s one of those details that’s a horror to the family.’
Reems pointed to a reporter on the other side of the room.
‘Milner was first on the scene?’ Ridl shouted. ‘It made him sick?’
Reems looked back, his face darkening. ‘People get sick, damn it. Our sheriff’s got a touch of the flu. He stayed, securing the crime scene, until I got there with Mr Wiley from the funeral home.’ He checked his watch. ‘Now, let’s give other people a chance.’ He pointed to a hand raised against the opposite wall. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘Who was the man that slapped Betty Jo outside the Hacienda, last Friday night?’ It was Laurel Jessup’s voice, high and nervous.
‘Who the hell told you that?’ Reems shot back, furious.
‘Was it that man’s fetus that your Doctor Farmont aborted from her?’
‘This damned briefing is over,’ Reems yelled, striding angrily through the side door.
SIXTEEN
‘Jonah Ridl, I‘ll be damned,’ the voice called out behind him.
Ridl, jittery from Laurel Jessup’s grenades back in the courtroom, spun around. ‘Spetter,’ he said. He hadn’t seen him inside.
The Chicago Tribune’s investigative reporter, dressed also in khakis and a golf shirt, was Ridl’s counterpart at the Trib, or rather, Ridl had been Spetter’s, until Ridl parachuted into the basement anonymity of the Sun Times’s Special Features.
‘We talk about you, Jonah,’ Spetter said.
‘Bad stuff?’ Ridl said, producing what he hoped was a real smile. He shot a glance over Spetter’s shoulder, looking for Laurel.
‘Bad circumstances, Jonah. It could have been any one of us.’
It wasn’t, though. It had been only Ridl, and something he should have let go.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ Spetter said.
‘I’d better pass.’ He wanted to find Laurel.
‘I’ll buy.’
‘It isn’t that; I can afford a drink.’
‘Just a Coke, then? Your byline just disappeared, man. I’ll come back a hero if I say I ran into you.’
Ridl hesitated. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to admit he’d spent the past six months hiding in Special Features, either. Spetter, though, had been about the only one who’d checked up on him those first days after Ridl himself had become news.
Ridl pointed to the Constellation across the street. ‘It’s quiet there.’ It had a window that faced Laurel’s Dodge Dart, parked at the curb.
The place was empty. Dougie Peterson showed happy teeth when they walked in. Recognizing Ridl, perhaps. More likely, smiling at the prospect of peddling a couple of the sandwiches still curling in plastic wrap on the bar.
Spetter got a Scotch, Ridl a Dr Pepper.
‘Sandwiches?’ Dougie asked. ‘Made fresh.’
‘Expense account,’ said Spetter, a man new to Grand Point, buying two.
Ridl led them to a table with a view out the front window.
Spetter took a bite of his sandwich, then set it down fast to reach for his drink, obviously needing the moisture.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Spetter said, when he could. ‘This story here, though… waste of a day.’
Laurel was crossing the street, walking slowly as though dazed. Ridl got up and went out the door.
‘Laurel,’ he said.
Her eyes glistened and her lips were trembling. ‘I screwed up, didn’t I? Shut things down cold?’
‘I was the one who said you should ask anything, but Jesus, Laurel… How solid was that business about a man hitting her and an abortion?’
‘Like a rock, I think.’
‘Who was the father?’
‘My scoop, Jonah.’
‘One of those white-shirt businessmen in the courtroom?’ Ridl asked.
She shrugged.
‘I told you I’ll share the byline if you give me what you have. We’ll split the writing.’
Her face worked at smiling.
‘You could go back to campus this fall waving a clip from the Sun-Times,’ he added. ‘That’s big time for a journalism major. Just make sure the information’s solid.’
‘I’m on my way to do that now.’ She gave him her home phone number. ‘Call me tomorrow, after noon,’ she said, getting in her car.
‘Wasn’t that the girl who stopped the show?’ Spetter asked when Ridl came back. He’d watched through the window.
‘Journalism major, University of Illinois.’
‘God save us from the determination of the young. Think she was right about the man slapping the Dean girl, and the abortion?’
‘No idea,’ he lied.
‘I tried telling my editor that we get better murders in Chicago every single day,’ Spetter said. ‘No dice; he saw intrigue in the girl not being found for two days. But it’s a wilderness out there, lots of big weeds.’ He checked his watch. ‘I gotta go.’
‘Why don’t you take your sandwich?’ Ridl asked, offering up a smirk. ‘It’ll last for weeks.’ His own lay untouched, but then, he’d been to the Constellation before.
Spetter laughed, and left.
Ridl stayed at the table, ate the dry ham, the brittle Swiss and only those fragments of gritty rye bread that wouldn’t come off the cheese. Then he shifted in his chair to call across the empty bar. ‘Who knocked up Betty Jo Dean, Dougie?’
Dougie’s face froze, but he wasn’t looking at Ridl. A sheriff’s deputy stood in the doorway, a dark shape backlit by the sun lowering behind him.
Ridl got up. ‘Guess I’ll shove off,’ he said, moving around the cop and out the door.
He drove south, turned right at the Wren House and parked where he’d parked when he’d helped search the fields. Several people milled about the gnarled tree. He took pictures as he walked up. He’d study them when he got back to Chicago, but there was no way they’d convince him Betty Jo Dean had been laying there when that field was searched.
He stopped, shocked. The weeds surrounding the gnarled tree had been mowed.
‘Why was this cut?’ he asked a man standing nearby.