Chuck and Mike knew the question was aimed at them. Chuck took
charge.
'We got everything we were asking for. Nothing on the credit cards
other than corroboration for what the wits have been telling us. We
got charges at Nordstrom on Saturday for the clothes she was wearing
and the stuff the sister found in the shopping bag. Then Sunday we've
got the lunch at the Pasta Company. We checked the bills for the last
twelve months, and nothing's jumping out. Same with the bank
records.
'The vies cell phone gets a little more interesting. The general
pattern is slow: a few calls to the house, office voice mail, that sort
of thing. Very few incoming calls. The last two calls were one Sunday
afternoon to the Pasta Company and one Saturday afternoon to her house.
I figured I'd let one of you guys check that one out with the family,
since you're the contacts.'
I saw Johnson jot it down in his notebook. 'That it?' he asked.
Chuck and Mike exchanged glances. 'My partner here has been saving the
best for last,' Mike said. 'We get a break in the pattern about three
months ago. Suddenly our victim starts using all those minutes she's
prepaid for, and it's almost all calls back and forth between her phone
and one belonging to Metro Council member Terrence James Caffrey.'
T. J. Caffrey was a well-known liberal lawmaker. He had previously
been a member of the county legislature but recently ran for and won a
seat on the Metro Council, whose sole purpose was to enforce Oregon's
unique restrictions against urban sprawl. In the 1970s, the
legislature essentially drew a big circle around the Portland area's
existing development and established that line as a boundary between
urban and rural land. Since then, as the region's population had
grown, the urban center had exploded with new development. The result
was a much denser metropolitan area, but the open space beyond it had
remained just that. Only the Metro Council had the authority to redraw
the line that separated urban from rural.
Johnson reached his hands toward Calabrese like he wanted to squeeze
his cheeks and kiss the top of his head. 'Now that is what I'm talking
about. Feels like we're swimming through maple syrup and suddenly
something breaks. Too many phone calls to a married man; it might boil
down to old-fashioned lust after all.'
'That fits in with something I got this afternoon,' I said. I told
them about my visit from Tara. T. J. Caffrey s own marriage would
explain why Clarissa thought that leaving Townsend wouldn't be enough
to make her happy.
The guys were predictably ticked.
'Happens in every case, don't it?' Calabrese spoke for them all.
'These people don't tell us what they know; then they bitch and moan
when we can't find the bad guy fast enough.'
Before I had a chance to voice Tara's reservations, Johnson was back on
track. 'It's all right. Now we got some pieces coming together. I've
got something that might fit in with the Caffrey angle too, but let's
hold off on that for now. You got anything else?'
'Only a one-minute phone call on Friday to the Multnomah County
District Attorney's Office. We figured Kincaid could track down the
details.'
'I've already got them. Jessica Walters paid me a visit this morning.'
I explained to them that Jessica had been in trial last week, only made
the connection today between the voice mail and our case, and had no
idea why our victim had been calling her.
'Raises some interesting questions, doesn't it?' Walker asked. 'We've
got an assertive, good-looking woman calling Nail 'em to the Wall
Walters. Maybe she was a closet muncher and got involved in something
over her head.'
Walker was a good man, so I tried to write off his deduction' as
generational. As for his choice of words, it was nothing I hadn't
heard before in the DA's office.
'Seems unlikely. I talked to Jessica about it today, and Clarissa
Easterbrook's name meant nothing to her until Monday.'
Johnson jumped in. 'Right now, it's just a phone call; nothing we can
do with it. Mike and Chuck gave us Councilman T. J. Caffrey to follow
up on; Kincaid got us Melvin Jackson to talk to. And Jack and I have a
couple guys we're going to be picking up when we break. Can you run it
down for them, Jack? My voice is toast.'
Jack Walker flipped through various computer printouts as he spoke. 'We
cross-referenced prior sex arrests with address records from the
surrounding area. Based on that, we got twenty-seven guys within a
couple of miles.'
If the public had any clue what was walking around out there with the
rest of us, they'd lose any remaining faith in the criminal justice
system's sentencing priorities.
'But that includes any sex offense,' Walker explained, 'even the wienie
wavers and step dads Of the twenty-seven, we've got a couple who are
