The Death Of Blue Mountain Cat Part 6

"They were divorced when I was ten. It was better after they split." He seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as Caleb, who didn't express the skepticism he felt. David continued. "They fought all the time-always about his drinking. He blamed it on her, because she wouldn't move to the Navajo reservation. She used to tell him, 'Listen, if you wanted to live on the reservation, you should have married some girl from there who never heard of indoor plumbing and higher education.' She'd be a real shrew sometimes."

"How did your father react?"

"He'd just say, 'b.i.t.c.h,' and have another drink."

"How do you feel about your Navajo heritage?"

"I don't know. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject."

"What, for instance?"

On the video screen, David grinned as his enthusiasm for the subject overcame the facade of cool he'd habitually maintained. "Oh, the usual-Campbell and Zolbrod. And everything Hillerman ever wrote."

Caleb had known who Campbell and Hillerman were, of course. He'd subsequently made a point to look up Zolbrod, author of Dine Bahane, the definitive English translation of the Navajo creation myth. He'd understood David's wanting to reclaim his father's heritage, but David had encountered major obstacles.

The first was his parents.

Like Jews, who are born to Jewish mothers, Navajo children are born into their mother's clan. As a non-Navajo, David's mother had none. And when Harlan Bisti followed his people's tradition and moved to the territory of his wife's family, he'd severed his connection to the Dine and to the land that gave his existence meaning. He'd lost his soul. Drinking himself to death, years later, had been a formality.

David's other and greatest problem had been himself. The rage that he'd repressed as a child, and his shame and contempt for a drunk father, were rekindled by a newborn interest in what that father lost. His anger explained the viciousness of his satire, but he hadn't been able to acknowledge rage. Like all bereaved, who sublimate their anger in their grief, he'd projected his rage outward.

"We can go into this further next week," Caleb's voice said, finally. "In the meantime, I'd like you to think about what's changed in your life since your creativity began to suffer. We'll start with that next time."

"That's it? You're not going to tell me why I can't work when I do get the time?"

"How long has this problem been occurring?"

"A couple months."

"Then why do you a.s.sume it can be fixed in fifty minutes?"

He hadn't had an answer. Caleb stopped the tape.

David came to therapy because he was blocked as an artist. It had been a simple matter to help remove the block, but that's as far as he would go. Perhaps, like Virginia Woolf, he'd feared losing his gift if he rid himself of his neuroses. More likely, as was true with most personality disorders, he'd seen no reason to change himself.

His death was as melodramatic as he'd tried to make his life appear and, in retrospect, there was a certain inevitability to the tragedy. But it was a Greek play rewritten for TV.

Caleb rewound the tape and put it in a desk drawer. He turned off the equipment, relocked the safe, and took his empty coffee mug out into the reception room. Before he crossed to the washroom to rinse the mug, he told Mrs. Sleighton, "That was excellent coffee."

Sixteen.

David Bisti's mother lived on the eighth floor of one of the huge, impersonal, upper-middle-cla.s.s buildings on Sheridan Road, east of Uptown. Thinnes and Oster got the super to let them in. After questioning him about the woman and her friends and visitors, they had him go up with them to her apartment. He knocked on the door and stood in front of the peephole until the door opened. He said, "Miz Bisti, these detectives have to talk to you," then he left.

Anne Bisti was Caucasian, about five eight, 140 pounds, blond haired and gray eyed. She said, "Something happened to David! I've worked ERs. I know cops on the mission when I see them. How serious is it?"

"I'm sorry," Thinnes said. "He's dead."

He watched carefully as he waited for her to respond. She was completely still for the moment it took the information to sink in, then she paled as what might have been a s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed through her and she very carefully took hold of the doorjamb.

"How?"

"He was stabbed to death."

He wasn't sure if she heard. She was completely still. Finally, she said, "By whom?"

"We don't know yet. We'd like to-"

"I don't know who'd kill him. Please come back tomorrow."

"We need-"

"I can't give you any help right now. Tomorrow." She backed into the room and closed the door as if they were already gone.

Oster said, "What the h.e.l.l?"

Thinnes had seen it before. "Don't judge her feelings by that," he said. He turned away from the door. "We'd better ask one of her friends to keep an eye on her."

"You're gonna let her get away with this? This is homicide, for Chrissake."

"Her son died," Thinnes said quietly. "We'll come back."

Seventeen.

Thinnes turned in his preliminary reports and had just poured his fourth cup of coffee-since midnight-when Ferris hailed him.

"Hey, Thinnes, you lucked out. Custer's rematch didn't make the morning papers."

Thinnes walked over to look at the Sun-Times Ferris had spread out on the table. He flipped it closed and pointed to the headline: CARDINAL CHARGED WITH s.e.x ABUSE. "He seems to have saved our a.s.ses. G.o.d bless him."

Oster, seated at the other end of the table, demanded, "Ferris, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here at this hour?"

Thinnes was surprised. Oster usually ignored Ferris's bulls.h.i.+t.

"OT," Ferris said.

"Like h.e.l.l. You switched s.h.i.+fts with someone. Evanger finally ask you to do some work?"

"Take it easy, Carl," Thinnes said. He gave Ferris a look, then asked Oster, "So who killed Bisti?"

"The wife," Oster said. "It's always the wife. Or husband, or boyfriend. Nine times outta ten." He gave Thinnes a "you know that" look.

"Yeah, well. I'd like something more than statistics to take to the state's attorney."

"You got her, literally, red-handed. What more do you want?"

"A motive would be nice. You know. He was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. Or she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. Or she just took out a policy that'd pay off the national debt."

"Five'll get you ten, she's got him insured up the gazunk."

Thinnes's beeper started to vibrate. He shut it off and glanced at the number before he said, "You can check it out, along with their credit and whatever." It was Evanger's home number. He wondered what Evanger wanted. "And start looking for that Indian woman," he told Oster. "Irene. Check the American Indian Center, on Wilson. Maybe they got some kind of registry. She's probably Navajo."

"What're you gonna be doin'?"

Oster wasn't arguing, Thinnes knew. He'd made it plain he'd sooner let Thinnes divide up the work.

"Thought I'd drop in on the autopsy. You're welcome to come."

"No thanks. Seen one, you seen enough. I seen enough."

Thinnes had seen enough, too, but he didn't say so.

Eighteen.

Evanger was waiting in the upper level of the McDonald's at Dearborn and Randolph, at a table by the window. Thinnes was too tired to eat by the time he got there. He bought a large coffee-his fifth of the day-and joined Evanger. The window overlooked the State Street ice rink, which wasn't open yet. No ice.

Thinnes sat across from the lieutenant. If there'd been anyone to notice, they'd have made an odd couple-a lanky, laid-back, rumpled white man, and the sharp, straight up, wideawake black. An odd salt-and-pepper team. But there was no one to notice. Two teenaged Hispanic males-employees-leaned on the tray-return/trash cabinet, shooting the breeze. A business type studied his Wall Street Journal while he slurped his coffee. A young black couple was all over each other in a back corner, staring into each other's eyes, doing who knows what under their coats.

"They stuck me on a jury!" Evanger said, with the same surprise in his voice Mob chiefs have been heard to show announcing that they've been indicted. "And this thing could last for weeks."

Nothing so far Evanger couldn't have told him over the phone. Thinnes looked at his watch.

Evanger took the hint and got to the point. "I need a favor." His face gave nothing away as his eyes made an inventory of the room.

Thinnes followed suit. No additions to the roster. No bad guys. No other cops. He stared at Evanger. The lieutenant had always had a reputation for being clean-as clean as a man could be in a place as political as Chicago-but he'd never asked Thinnes for a favor before. A favor he couldn't ask over the phone had to be something against the law or against regulations. Thinnes didn't want to hear it. He felt like he had when he'd heard the news about Magic Johnson-like he'd been sucker punched. It seemed as soon as you found someone you could look up to, you found out something about him you didn't want to know. He wondered if Evanger, too, had AIDS.

On the sidewalk below them, pedestrians crowded and b.u.mped one another. Traffic stopped for the red on Dearborn. A Streets & San truck parked illegally on the south side of Randolph, behind Thinnes's illegally parked Caprice. The truck driver took out a paper and made himself comfortable while his buddy dodged traffic, crossing to McDonald's.

Evanger removed a pile of file folders from his briefcase and put them on the table. He tapped the pile. "Old cases. I signed off on them but I didn't have time to read them. Now with this trial..."

Thinnes felt, suddenly, weak with relief.

"...Would you read them over? See if there's anything we missed?"

The chief insisted on detective supervisors reading over all the open homicide cases every six months. Evanger wasn't supposed to delegate it. Especially not to one of the d.i.c.ks.

Thinnes said, "Sure. Why not?"

"Then take them back to Records?"

Thinnes nodded.

"Thanks," Evanger said. "I owe you."

Nineteen.

The Robert J. Stein Inst.i.tute of Forensic Medicine. Office of the Medical Examiner. Better known as the morgue. Thinnes parked behind the modern white stone structure and entered by the door near the loading dock. The guy on intake duty greeted him with, "Yo, Custer. Yo' redskin's already been scalped."

He was right. The autopsy was already underway by the time Thinnes entered the room. He wondered if someone with clout had called to expedite the process or if it was just a slow day. Dr. Cutler, the pathologist, was a light-skinned black man with a neat Afro, who reminded Thinnes of Greg Gumbel without the att.i.tude. He said, "Detective," when Thinnes came in. "Your victim was killed by a single stab wound to the chest. Hit the heart. He bled to death."

"Tell me something I don't know, Doc."

"Off the record, your cutter is probably a woman or someone who's never been in a fight."

"Okay, Carnac. Tell me the question."

"How do I know?"

Thinnes waited.

"The angle of the wound suggests that, if the victim was standing-and I understand from your officer there weren't any chairs in the room-he was stabbed overhand. Like Jessica Walter did it in Play Misty for Me."

"Just one blow?"

"I thought I said that."

"You said he was killed by a single wound to the heart. You didn't say if there was any other damage."