فصل بیستم و سوم

CHAPTER 23

Captain Osborne of Chicago Homicide had the gray, pointed face of a stone fox. Copies of the Tattler were all over the police station. One was on his desk.

He didn’t ask Crawford and Graham to sit down.

“You had nothing at all working with Lounds in the city of Chicago?”

“No, he was coming to Washington,” Crawford said. “He had a plane reservation. I’m sure you’ve checked it.” “Yeah, I got it. He left his office about onethirty yesterday. Got jumped in the garage of his building, must have been about ten of two.” “Anything in the garage?”

“His keys got kicked under his car. There’s no garage attendant - they had a radiooperated door but it came down on a couple of cars and they took it out. Nobody saw it happen. That’s getting to be the refrain today. We’re working on his car.” “Can we help you there?”

“You can have the results when I get ‘em. You haven’t said much, Graham. You had plenty to say in the paper.” “I haven’t heard much either, listening to you.”

“You pissed off, Captain?” Crawford said.

“Me? Why should I be? We run down a phone trace for you and collar a fucking news reporter. Then you’ve got no charges against him. You have got some deal with him, gets him cooked in front of this scandal sheet. Now the other papers adopt him like he was their own.

“Now we’ve got our own Tooth Fairy murder right here in Chicago. That’s great. ‘Tooth Fairy in Chicago,’ boy. Before midnight we’ll have six accidental domestic shootings, guy trying to sneak in his own house drunk, wife hears him, bang. The Tooth Fairy may like Chicago, decide to stick around, have some fun.” “We can do like this,” Crawford said. “Butt heads, get the police commissioner and the U.S. attorney all stirred up, get all the assholes stirred up, yours and mine. Or we can settle down and try to catch the bastard. This was my operation and it went to shit, I know that. You ever have that happen right here in Chicago? I don’t want to fight you, Captain. We want to catch him and go home. What do you want?” Osborne moved a couple of items on his desk, a penholder, a picture of a foxfaced child in band uniform. He leaned back in his chair, pursed his lips and blew out some air.

“Right now I want some coffee. You guys want some?”

“I’d like some,” Crawford said.

“So would I,” Graham said.

Osborne passed around the Styrofoam cups. He pointed to some chairs.

“The Tooth Fairy had to have a van or a panel truck to move Lounds around in that wheelchair,” Graham said.

Osborne nodded. “The license plate Lounds saw was stolen off a TV repair truck in Oak Park. He took a commercial plate, so he was getting it for a truck or a van. He replaced the plate on the TV truck with another stolen plate so it wouldn’t be noticed so fast. Very sly, this boy. One thing we do know - he got the plate off the TV truck sometime after eightthirty yesterday morning. The TV repair guy bought gas first thing yesterday and he used a credit card. The attendant copied the correct license number on the slip, so the plate was stolen after that.” “Nobody saw any kind of truck or van?” Crawford said.

“Nothing. The guard at the Tattler saw zip. He could referee wrestling he sees so little. The fire department responded first to the Tattler. They were just looking for fire. We’re canvassing the overnight workers in the Tattler neighborhood and the neighborhoods where the TV guy worked Tuesday morning. We hope somebody saw him cop the plate.” “I’d like to see the chair again,” Graham said.

“It’s in our lab. I’ll call them for you.” Osborne paused. “Lounds was a ballsy little guy, you have to give him that. Remembering the license number and spitting it out, the shape he was in. You listened to what Lounds said at the hospital?” Graham nodded.

“I don’t mean to rub this in, but I want to know if we heard it the same way. What does it sound like to you?” Graham quoted in a monotone “’Tooth Fairy. Graham set me up. The cunt knew it. Graham set ‘me up. Cunt put his hand on me in the picture like a fucking pet.”’

Osborne could not tell how Graham felt about it. He asked another question.

“He was talking about the picture of you and him in the Tattler?”

“Had to be.”

“Where would he get that idea?”

“Lounds and I had a few runins.

“But you looked friendly toward Lounds in the picture. The Tooth Fairy kills the pet first, is that it?” “That’s it.” The stone fox was pretty fast, Graham thought.

“Too bad you didn’t stake him out.”

Graham said nothing.

“Lounds was supposed to be with us by the time the Tooth Fairy saw the Tattler,” Crawford said.

“Does what he said mean anything else to you, anything we can use?”

Graham came back from somewhere and had to repeat Osborne’s question in his mind before he answered. “We know from what Lounds said that the Tooth Fairy saw the Tattler before he hit Lounds, right?” “Right.”

“If you start with the idea that the Tattler set him off, does it strike you that he set this up in a hell of a hurry? The thing came off the press Monday night, he’s in Chicago stealing license plates sometime Tuesday, probably Tuesday morning, and he’s on top of Lounds Tuesday afternoon. What does that say to you?” “That he saw it early or he didn’t have far to come,” Crawford said. “Either he saw it here in Chicago or he saw it someplace else Monday night. Bear in mind, he’d be watching for it to get the personal column.” “Either he was already here, or he came from driving distance,” Graham said. “He was on top of Lounds too fast with a big old wheelchair you couldn’t carry on a plane - it doesn’t even fold. And he didn’t fly here, steal a van, steal plates for it, and go around looking for an antique wheelchair to use. He had to have an old wheelchair - a new one wouldn’t work for what he did.” Graham was up, fiddling with the cord on the venetian blinds, staring at the brick wall across the airshaft. “He already had the wheelchair or he saw it all the time.” Osborne started to ask a question, but Crawford’s expression cautioned him to wait.

Graham was tying knots in the blind cord. His hands were not steady.

“He saw it all the time . . .” Crawford prompted.

“Umhmm,” Graham said. “You can see how . . . the idea starts with the wheelchair. From the sight and thought of the wheelchair. That’s where the idea would come from when he’s thinking what he’ll do to those fuckers. Freddy rolling down the street on fire, it must have been quite a sight.” “Do you think he watched it?”

“Maybe. He certainly saw it before he did it, when he was making up his mind what he’d do.”

Osborne watched Crawford. Crawford was solid. Osborne knew Crawford was solid, and Crawford was going along with this.

“If he had the chair, or he saw it all the time . . . we can check around the nursing homes, the VA,” Osborne said.

“It was perfect to hold Freddy still,” Graham said.

“For a long time. He was gone fifteen hours and twentyfive minutes, more or less,” Osborne said.

“If he had just wanted to snuff Freddy, he could have done that in the garage,” Graham said. “He could have burned him in his car. He wanted to talk to Freddy, or hurt him for a while.” “Either he did it in the back of the van or he took him somewhere,” Crawford said. “That length of time, I’d say he took him somewhere.” “It had to be somewhere safe. If he bundled him up good, he wouldn’t attract much notice around a nursing home, going in and out,” Osborne said.

“He’d have the racket, though,” Crawford said. “A certain amount of cleaning up to do. Assume he had the chair, and he had access to the van, and he had a safe place to take him to work on him. Does that sound like . . . home?” Osborne’s telephone rang. He growled into it.

“What? . . . No, I don’t want to talk to the Tattler . . . Well, it better not be bullshit. Put her on . . . Captain Osborne, yes . . . What time? Who answered the phone initially - at the switchboard? Take her off the switchboard, please. Tell me again what he said . . . I’ll have an officer there in five minutes.” Osborne looked at his telephone thoughtfully after he hung up.

“Lounds’s secretary got a call about five minutes ago,” he said. “She swears it was Lounds’s voice. He said something, something she didn’t get,’. . . strength of the Great Red Dragon.’ That’s what she thought he said.”