“Right. I’m gonna try and get us a meeting with this PI, knows all the players down in Southeast.”
“Okay. Call me in the morning.”
“Bring your eyeglasses, man. Maybe I’ll let you drive some.”
Quinn nodded toward the row house, where they could both hear Greco alternately barking and crying from behind Strange’s door. “You better see to your dog.”
Strange watched Quinn’s car turn left onto Georgia as he walked up the steps to his house. Nearing the door, he noticed that a section of its window had been shattered and the jamb was splintered. The door was closed, but Strange knew he’d been burgled. The door opened without a key.
Stepping into the foyer, he found Greco lying on his belly, rubbing his eyes with his front paws. His tail was twitching at the sound and smell of Strange’s entrance, but he was crying.
“All right, boy,” said Strange softly, “let me get a look at you.”
Strange lifted the paws away from Greco’s face. His eyes were pink and nearly red at the rims. The intruders had used something, pepper spray most likely, to immobilize him.
Strange went to his second-floor bathroom and got some Murine eyedrops out of the medicine cabinet. As he passed the doorway to his office, he noticed that the room had been completely tossed. It was the only room he had seen so far that had been misarranged. He did not stop but went directly down the stairs to Greco.
Strange put drops in Greco’s eyes and then got spring water from the refrigerator and flushed his eyes further, splashing the water from a juice glass. Greco stood after a while and shook himself, then touched his nose to Strange’s calf. Strange patted the top of his head.
“You’re like that one-eyed fat man, boy,” said Strange. “You got what they call true grit.”
Strange was angry that anyone would do this to a good animal. But he was thankful that the dog was alive.
Strange went up to his office. The Granville Oliver files, including paper and audio tapes, were gone. Other files were missing as well. Some of the cases on his western CDs were broken into pieces. Everything atop his desk, except for his telephone and message machine, had been swept onto the floor.
He had duplicate files and tapes in his daytime offices. He guessed that the storefront on Buchanan had been inspected and found to be wired for security. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t beat his simple alarm system if that was what they wanted to do. But the home break-in was deliberate in that it carried a deeper meaning.
The message light blinked 2 on his machine. Strange hit the receive bar.
Devra Stokes had called. She said she wanted to talk.
The next message was from a white man: “You interviewed a Kevin Willis in Leavenworth. In your conversation, Mr. Willis talked about a pending capital case. Obstruction of justice in a capital case is the highest form of obstruction and carries the most severe penalty. Eight to ten years, medium security. The loss of your license forever. How much are you willing to lose?”
The message ended there. Strange listened to the message again and transcribed it exactly. He saved the message and checked the directory on the readout of the phone. The call following Devra’s said “No Data.” Strange phoned Raymond Ives at home and got the attorney on the line. He read the message to Ives.
“You save it?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll never be able to trace that call.”
“I know it.”
“Call the police, report the burglary, and have them come to the house. Get a record of the event.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Strange listened to Ives breathe. He was telling him that he would talk no further about the subject, not on this line. So Ives suspected that Strange’s phone was bugged.
“I’ll speak with you later,” said Strange.
“Right,” said Ives.
Strange phoned the police. He was told that some officers would be dispatched to his place in the next half hour.
He phoned Janine on his cell. If the home phones were tapped, then surely his cell calls were being monitored as well. He didn’t care. If the government was after him, FBI or whoever, there wasn’t all that much he could do. He wasn’t going to spend his time making pay-phone calls and worrying about conversations indoors. He was getting angrier by the moment. All that talk about loss of license and eight-to-ten. He didn’t take to threats. This was bullshit, was what it was. They had misjudged him, thinking he would cave to their office-toss and phone messages. And they shouldn’t have fucked with his dog.
He got Janine and gave her the facts without conjecture. She asked him if he was sitting down.
“I just watched the news, Derek. Someone found the body of Olivia Elliot in Oxon Run late this afternoon.”
“Lord,” said Strange.
“You better call Lydell,” said Janine.
“I will,” said Strange, rubbing at his face. His anxiety shifted from thoughts of himself and the government to his role in this girl’s death. And then there was Quinn and Mark Elliot, Olivia’s son. The hardest part would be telling Quinn.
“Derek, you there?”
“Yes. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. I’m waitin’ on the police.”
“I’ll save you dinner.”
“You got anything special for Greco? Some bones, maybe?”
“I’ll find something.”
“I love you, baby.”
“See you soon.”
Strange phoned his friend Lydell Blue, a lieutenant in the Fourth District, at home. He told Blue that he was calling about Olivia Elliot, the woman whose murder had made the TV news. He gave Blue Mario Durham’s name and cell phone number, and told him what Durham had paid him to do.
“That’s your man right there, I expect.”
“No address?”
“What I gave you is what I have.”
“You better come in tomorrow morning. I’ll find out who’s got the case in Homicide and have him meet us at the Gibson building. Say nine o’clock?”
“I’ll be there. I’ll bring Quinn, too.”
“All right then, Derek. Thanks for the call.”
Blue hung up on his end. Strange heard the police knocking on the door on the first floor and went down to let the two uniformed cops in. He spent some time with them, then left them to do their job. He went to the living room, sat on his mother’s old couch, and stared at the cell phone he still held in his hand. There wasn’t any way to put it off any longer. He phoned Quinn.
DEWAYNE Durham had gotten the cell message on the way back from Six Flags amusement park informing him of the deaths of Jerome Long and Allante Jones. One of his young men at the elementary school had made the call. Word of the quadruple homicide had spread quickly on the street.
