Cold Shoulder Page 8

  By the time Rooney returned to his office there had been another call in connection with the Hastings homicide. This time the caller was anonymous and refused repeated requests to divulge her name. She did, however, give a detailed description of the man she thought was driving the car belonging to the deceased: around 180 pounds; possibly about five feet ten, though she wasn’t sure; blue eyes; rimless gold-framed, pink-toned glasses; straight nose; thick-lipped mouth; wearing a linen jacket and shirt. She described a bite wound in his neck that would be visible above shirt-collar level, close to his jugular. It would be deeply inflamed as the teeth had broken the skin and drawn blood. Furthermore, the man was in possession of a claw hammer, which he kept in the glove compartment.

  Rooney looked at the duty sergeant’s notes. “She said all this over the fucking phone?”

  “Yes, Captain. Then she hung up.”

  “So, you or whoever took the call got a trace on it? Shouldn’t’ve taken more’n a second with all this newfangled equipment.”

  The call had not been traced, partly because it was felt to be a “joke” call, and it had also come through to the wrong department. Rooney plodded back into his office. He waved the anonymous statement at his lieutenant, Josh Bean. His blond crew cut and preppy tortoiseshell glasses, his neatly pressed uniform and smooth, mild manner were qualities Rooney couldn’t come to terms with. Bean was the new breed, the educated desk-chained college graduate, one who had never smoked anything and was always complaining about having to be a passive smoker. Bean, in other words, was a needle in Rooney’s side. Now he let it rip at the overneat lieutenant.

  “You fuckin’ read this? Whoever she is she wants him caught—she’s even described the weapon. What’s odd, though, is that the only thing she seems unsure of is the guy’s exact height. Everything else—clothes, hair, glasses, mouth, even his weight—she gives it all. But not her name! And the stupid sons of bitches didn’t trace the call, that’s what’s wrong with this place, too many bastards in too many different departments and no one making connections.”

  Bean took a look at the statement. She hadn’t given the car’s license plate number, he mused, as Rooney deposited his overweight frame into his precious old leather swivel chair behind his desk.

  “I bet that Summers woman was right,” Rooney said, thinking out loud. “She was a whore, that’s why she doesn’t know how tall the guy is. Maybe he never got out of the vehicle, just picked her up on the sidewalk …”

  Bean cautiously nodded agreement. Rooney always unnerved him, gave him the impression he loathed having to work alongside him, so he was always a little tentative. “Unless both the Summerses and this caller got the wrong guy. Maybe he just drives a blue sedan.”

  Rooney leaned on his elbows and gave a doleful look at the pristine Bean. “Possibly, but it’s the hammer, a claw hammer. If you read Forensic on the type of weapon used to kill Norman Hastings, they say: ‘A blunt-edged hammer-type head, one inch in diameter, with a claw section one and a quarter inches long.’ ” He sifted through his files until he found the Forensic photographs of the dead man, closeups of the blows inflicted to his skull, cheeks, and chin. If the anonymous caller was telling the truth, they were looking for a killer with a big bite taken out of his neck.

  Rooney looked at Bean and grinned. “This shouldn’t take long then, should it? We got Dracula out there now—but at least we can check all Hastings’s associates. No bite, we’ll eliminate them.”

  Lieutenant Bean frowned, unsure if Rooney was joking. Suddenly he barked at Bean to get cracking.

  “I thought you were kidding, for chrissakes!”

  Rooney picked at his bulbous nose. “Fuck off. We got to take that call seriously, it’s too detailed not to. Go on, move it! And, by the way, the shoe we got could also be the whore’s. The Summerses sort of thought she had only one shoe on, but they weren’t certain.”

  “Right. I’ll take the shoe with me—get everyone to try it on, maybe find the owner.” Bean was joking but Rooney looked about as amused as the Summerses had been by his Cinderella crack. He kept on working, flipping through the file, yawning. Something was nagging at him—the description? Was it too pat? Some kind of hoax? But the fact that they had found bloodstains in the glove compartment where the anonymous caller claimed the man kept the hammer was just too close a coincidence. Rooney guessed the caller was the woman the Summers couple witnessed leaving the car, and that Mrs. Summers had been correct. She probably was a whore, but he kept his thoughts to himself; he wasn’t going to give the starched college kid a hint, let him get it for himself.

  Rooney stared from his office window at the elaborate Plaza Mall. No witness had come forward to say they had seen the man who left the sedan there, no one had seen some guy with a bite out of his neck, and the Plaza was a busy mall with a lot of exits and a hell of a lot of people using the arcade and the parking facilities. Granted, the sedan had not been parked on ground level but on the upper story, which was never as full. It was only because night security became suspicious that they were contacted, and that was not until hours later. Rooney sniffed; would the same man have used one mall to attack this possible woman witness and then driven to a second mall, all the time with a body in the trunk? He sighed; he’d had a lot stranger cases—bodies dumped in a lot of places, but for him, a shopping mall was a first.

  Lorraine had the worst headache she had ever known. No hangover had been this painful. She was dizzy if she stood up, if she moved she felt sick—she had vomited the first time she sat up. Thanks to the antibiotics and the aspirin, however, the splitting pain behind her eyes eased a fraction. She had made the phone call then, while Rosie was out getting ice from the grocery store. She had been brief intentionally, as she didn’t want a trace made—it showed how long she had been out of the force that she didn’t know they could make an immediate check if required; she was lucky they had not taken her call seriously. She was back in bed when Rosie returned.

  The torn old sheet crammed with ice was soothing, but there was no way she could get up and go to the AA meeting. Rosie was uneasy about leaving her alone, but needed to go to the meeting herself. Lorraine just wanted to be left alone. Her whole body ached, but the pain across her eyes was torture, so bad she couldn’t even think of a drink, let alone getting up to pour one. All she wanted was for the pain to go away.

  She remained in Rosie’s bed for more than a week. It was now May 28—eleven days since her injury. All Lorraine could think about was getting herself fit enough to leave; she still had to be helped to the toilet, for even that small amount of movement exhausted her. She found any noise unbearable—no TV, no radio. She could eat, though, and Rosie waited on her hand and foot. She enjoyed being needed; it occupied her mind and, like Lorraine, she was hardly giving a thought to booze.

  Two more weeks went by. Jake dropped by a few times to see how Lorraine was coming along, and like Rosie, he was getting quite fond of her. Sick as she was, she didn’t complain and often made him laugh. Her pain was obvious, however, and more than once he told Rosie that if Lorraine’s condition did not improve she should be taken to the hospital.

  Finally, in mid-June, a month after the attack, the headache subsided and Lorraine was able for the first time to walk around the apartment by herself. That afternoon, Jake took out her stitches. The wound had healed well, but he was doubtful about his prowess as a hairdresser. Lorraine had almost a crew cut at the back of her head and crown while the front was long and jagged. It gave her a boyish look, and she made them laugh when she tied a ribbon around the front strands to keep them from flopping in her eyes. She read a lot, magazines at first, because even flicking through the newspapers gave her a headache, but gradually she began to plow her way through Rosie’s spartan collection of bodice-ripping blockbusters.

  She kept the money stashed beneath the mattress. Sometimes she had qualms of guilt when Rosie paid for everything, but didn’t know how she could hand out money if Rosie believed she was broke. A
fraid of being questioned too closely about its source, she decided against mentioning it. And Jake made no reference to it either.

  Finally she saw a way around it. Late one afternoon, when Rosie returned home from work, Lorraine presented her with fifty dollars. “You can be proud of me, Rosie. I went over to my friend, then to a pawnbroker’s. Here, this is for you. I sold off my things.”

  Rosie looked at the money and then back to Lorraine.

  “So who’s the friend?”

  Lorraine lied, and she was very good at it, looking directly at Rosie. “She’s a girl called Sonja, a drunk, even offered me a drink. I don’t want to see her again, just like you said, Rosie, stay away from old friends, they’ll drag you down.”

  Rosie nodded, satisfied. She had no idea that Lorraine had never left the apartment, but she did remark that it was time they discussed the sleeping arrangements. She assured Lorraine she didn’t want her to leave, it was just that Rosie needed a good night’s sleep in her own bed. That night, Lorraine moved back onto the sofa. The weather had become very warm and with no air-conditioning in the small apartment apart from a dilapidated box stuck on the window ledge, the heat built up from the day and seemed to Lorraine to get even hotter at night.

  Two months had passed since Lorraine had last touched alcohol, and more than four weeks since the attack. Curled up on the uncomfortable sofa, she began to plan what she should do next. On the positive side, she was sober. She had no craving yet; would it develop as she regained her strength?

  Money she did have, more than three hundred dollars. It seemed like a fortune, but she knew it wouldn’t last long. She wanted to move on, but the question was: where to? And what would she do? Two more days and it became obvious, not just to Rosie but to herself, that she could no longer hide out in the small apartment. Rosie was already hinting that the fifty dollars had been swallowed up in groceries.

  Lorraine felt incapable of making major plans for her future; it was the immediate that occupied her. Marooned in the apartment she watched a lot of TV and could follow the murder inquiry. The news showed an artist’s impression of the woman seen in the blue sedan, which she found almost amusing; it bore no resemblance to herself, and Lorraine felt no guilt in not making further contact. The police were making inquiries to all the cab companies, trying to ascertain if anyone answering the blond woman’s description had hired a cab that afternoon. They had drawn a blank at all the hospital emergency rooms. It seemed no one apart from the Summerses had seen either the woman or the deceased’s blue sedan on the day of his murder at either of the shopping malls. Lorraine’s phone call was becoming more and more important to the investigation.

  Jake, now a frequent visitor, was disturbed by her inertia. In an attempt to motivate her, he suggested that, if she was interested, his dentist friend could do something for her teeth. They needed treatment badly, and the missing tooth didn’t help her looks. If she could find thirty dollars or so, he said, she could get it capped.

  “Know a laid-off dentist, too, do you, Jake?”

  Jake laughed, but she was right—his friend was AA and only just starting to rebuild his practice.

  For days after her first appointment, Lorraine was in agony. But the end result was two front teeth capped, all her cavities filled, her gums cleaned, and the rest of her teeth bleached. Her mouth was swollen and sore, but the exercise had been a success. She used the lie about selling off her belongings again, and paid the thirty dollars. She now had only to give a doleful look to Rosie, “Sonja, went to see Sonja. She’s a really bad lush but I didn’t have a drink.” She also gave Rosie another twenty, adding that now she had nothing more to sell or pawn.

  With what she told Rosie was the last of her money, Lorraine went to the local hair salon to have her hair streaked, cut, and blow-dried. Jake’s pitiful attempt at styling had limited her choice—the back was so short where the scar was still visible—but the salon did a reasonable job, making the back and sides even shorter and the front into long bangs, which accentuated her cheekbones, while the highlights gave color to her lusterless hair. She was by no means transformed into a beauty: her nose was crooked from where it must have been broken, and the white jagged scar on the left side of her face remained. Nevertheless, a new, more confident Lorraine was emerging.

  Rosie was astonished and full of admiration as Lorraine presented herself, and Jake was equally complimentary in a backhanded way. He had whistled, then said, “Honey, you must have been a looker!”

  Rosie became a little envious. Nothing she could do to her frizzy mop would ever change her looks—and it rankled that Lorraine could afford an expensive haircut yet not pay a cent toward the rent. Money was short, and Rosie’s salary plus her benefits was hardly enough to keep herself, much less two.

  It also irritated Rosie that although she went to AA regularly, Lorraine made excuses to stay in the apartment and read. Eventually she had to make it clear that she was not a charity, and it was time Lorraine got off her ass.

  But Lorraine was scared to leave the safety of the apartment. Even Jake’s presence was comforting. He was always so dependable and calming. She still made no mention of her hidden stash: it was her only security and it meant that she could, if she wanted, go on a whopper of a binge. The idea of drinking remained an avenue of escape for her, but she no longer woke up with booze on her mind. Far from it: some days she relished the simple pleasure of waking up and knowing where she was. But then that was quickly replaced by fear—fear of being let loose and alone.

  Lorraine never hinted at her inner turmoil. To Rosie and Jake she appeared confident and composed. She was meticulously clean, often taking two or three showers a day, scrubbing her body until it felt raw. She examined her teeth and gazed at her face in the mirror, studied her scars, as if she were trying to find out who she was, and where she had been the past six years.

  She drank bottled water all day and ate so well that her skin took on a freshness and her fingernails grew. She sat for hours polishing and filing them, totally preoccupied with herself. She never did any housework, looking on as Rosie changed sheets and went alone to the laundry. Not once did Lorraine cook or do dishes; she ate whatever Rosie banged down in front of her, and ignored the heavy hints about outstaying her welcome.

  Finally, Rosie turned to Jake. She wanted him to ask Lorraine to leave.

  “I thought you liked her?” he mused.

  “I did, I do, but she just takes from me, Jake. And I’m not just talking about money. She uses all my hot water, all my things, and now she doesn’t even talk to me, never says thank you, just sits looking at herself, cleaning herself. Sometimes she reminds me of my goddamned cat. She’s got to leave, she’s driving me nuts!”

  Jake came by when he knew Rosie was out. He tapped on the screen door and let himself in. Lorraine was sitting by the window, reading. She looked up, acknowledged him, then returned to her book. “We got to have a little chat,” Jake said, sitting on the sofa. Lorraine didn’t look up. He crossed his fat legs. “I know you’re maybe scared of leaving here, you feel safe, feel like you’re getting back to some kind of normality. But it’s an unreal normality, Lorraine. This is Rosie’s home, and she’s broke—caring for you and herself …”

  Lorraine snapped the book shut. “Okay. I’ll leave.”

  “You don’t have to do that, but you got to get a job, put some money into the housekeeping, help out around the place. Then, when you’ve found your feet, maybe you can get a place of your own.”

  Lorraine stared at her manicured fingers and looked out of the window. “I don’t know about that …” She turned to him. Her eyes were washed-out blue, wide apart, without expression. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “It’s been a long time since I worked, Jake. You know—with sane people …” She half smiled. “Maybe I’m not ready to take on any responsibility. I’m kind of living day to day, but I hear what you’re saying, and I’ll leave.”

  “Where will you go?” Jake asked.


  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll make out. What do you care?”

  “I care a lot—especially after all that dental work you got done! Hate to see you go and start the rot again, because if you walk out of here with no purpose you’ll be back on skid row before you know it.”

  She sighed; she felt tired and it hurt to think. She ran a finger along the scar at the back of her head. “Skid row. That where we met?”

  Jake bristled. “Listen, honey, I was a drunk but I never ended up on no skid row, I never sunk that far down.”