Chapter 4
What if the one that got away came back?
Unknown
One black-and-white, sirens sounding, approached from the west end of the alley. Another blocked the east. A patrol officer exited the squad car and slowly walked toward us, hand hovering over her gun holster. “Keep your hands in plain sight. Which of you reported a body?”
I stepped forward. “I made the call, Officer, but the three of us were together when we found the shop owner inside.”
“You sure the victim’s dead?”
“No pulse,” Bram confirmed. “A bullet to the head and another to the heart.”
She pulled a notebook from her shirt pocket. “That’ll do it,” she said grimly. “I’ll just take your personal information and we’ll wait for Homicide and the crime-scene team.” The policewoman’s two-way radio crackled and she gestured to us to stay put. “Opansky,” she said into the device.
That name rang a bell. The year I first met Homicide Detective Ted Wukowski, we worked on two different murder cases, from opposite sides. I ran into an Officer Opansky in the dead of night at a hardware store where my client’s parents were executed. I don’t use that term lightly. Has to be the same person, I thought. How many females named Opansky are on the MPD? And it looks like they promoted her from beat cop. Good for her.
“Okay,” Opansky said. “I’ll need your names and contact info.” She turned to me. “Ladies first.”
“Angelina Bonaparte, Officer. I remember you from the Johnson case almost three years ago.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Yeah, in the store. I frisked you. You had the nice wallet. Prada, right?” Before I could nod, she gave me a once-over. “New hair. I like it.” Then her face assumed a business-only look and she asked, “Address and phone number?”
Opansky took Bram’s information and was finishing with Bobbie when an SUV and a black sedan rolled slowly into the front parking area and stopped. From the sedan, two men emerged.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Opansky muttered, “This is gonna be awkward,” and then approached Wukowski and his partner, Joe Ignowski.
Bobbie sidled closer to me. “Breathe, girlfriend,” he said, his voice low and soothing.
Nine hundred and forty-eight days had passed since the MPD issued an ultimatum to Homicide Detective Ted Wukowski to cease all contact with me, his “Mafia-tainted” girlfriend, or face reassignment to a precinct house and constant oversight. I had slogged through those days like someone sinking in quicksand. In twelve days, Wukowski would be eligible for retirement. Then we could talk. Touch. Enjoy a meal together. Wake up in each other’s arms. In twelve days. If he still wanted me.
I’d planned our reunion in my head so many times. This was not how it was supposed to go. Not at a crime scene, where I looked scruffy and felt shell-shocked. Fate was certainly thumbing her nose at us.
Wukowski’s slow, deliberate approach gave me time to examine him. Sure, I’d seen his picture in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after he arrested the Bike Trail Killer and on several other occasions in the course of his duty, but this was real life. He looked gaunt.
I could almost read his thoughts. Then I didn’t have to.
“Angie, what the hell is going on?” he barked in an undertone.
His deep baritone voice, the voice I’d craved to hear all through the past days, was a low rumble. I once thought of him as the modern-day equivalent of Joe Friday from Dragnet, with his just-the-facts approach. But now I knew better. Wukowski breathed his work and agonized over every unsolved case. Not that he had many.
“So this isn’t going to be a slow-motion run toward each other across a field of wildflowers?” I responded.
Behind him, Iggy snorted. “Hey, Ange, this big lug can’t hug ya yet, but I can.” Wukowski’s low-key partner opened his arms and I gratefully let him pull me in. “Kind of a shock for him,” Iggy whispered into my hair. “Take it easy, okay?”
I nodded into his suit coat, stepped back, and turned to Wukowski. “Maybe you want to have someone else take this one,” I said, “unless the department is willing to release you twelve days early.”
With a shake of the head, he said, “I knew from dispatch that you’d be here. But with two detectives on vacation, one on maternity leave, and Minton getting shot last week”—he gestured to Iggy and himself—“we’re it.” He took a deep breath and added, “But that doesn’t change anything as far as the department is concerned. I wish it did, but no.” He grinned slightly, the lopsided Han Solo smile that I loved. “The lieutenant will have fits.” Then turning to Opansky, he asked, “What’s happened since you arrived on the scene?”
“I secured the persons on site and directed a couple of uniforms to secure the building.”
“What else?”
“I got the contact information for the, uh, witnesses.”
“Great. Email that to me and keep an eye on things out here. Detective Ignowski and I will take a look inside and then let the techs in. Meanwhile, escort York, Russell, and Bonaparte downtown.” With a look at us, he added, “We’ll interview each of you there, but for now, why were you here this morning?”
I thought of the panels, of the newly redecorated bedroom at my lakeside condo, of my plans for a sweet and sexy reunion with Wukowski. Ah, well. My aunt would quote Robert Burns—the best-laid plans of mice and men… and women, in my case. “I commissioned Mick Swanson, the owner of the shop, to create a series of metal wall panels.” I pointed to the carpeted hand truck, where the bubble-wrapped metal art awaited me. “Bram and Bobbie were going to help transport them. Looks like they might not be installed
