The Doll Maker (31 page)

‘Please tell me we have a current address,’ Jessica said.

‘The most current there is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s in custody.’

The best news just got better. ‘
Whoa
.’ They high-fived. ‘Dinner at
home
.’

‘I haven’t gotten to the strange part.’

Nothing could dampen Jessica’s spirit. ‘I don’t care how strange it is, this is good news,’ she said. ‘Hit me with your best shot.’

‘She’s in custody in Cleveland.’

The Cleveland Police Department operated out of the Justice Center, a 26-story monolithic building located on Superior Avenue, near the heart of the city. Covering five districts, the 1500-member force was only slightly younger than the Philadelphia PD. It was established in 1890.

The flight from Philadelphia lasted just under an hour and, as the plane banked over the city, Jessica was amazed at the size of the lake. She’d been to the ocean many times, had experienced the Delaware at its widest, but this was her first Great Lake. She’d never seen anything like it from the air.

Byrne slept through the whole thing.

The special operations division of the CPD was similar to that of the Philadelphia Police Department. The units – arson, fraud, theft, narcotics, and special victims/sex crimes – were the same. The major difference was that the homicide unit of the CPD was folded into a robbery/homicide division.

In a city of roughly 500,000, the per capita ration of citizen to officer was about the same, but the land mass covered by patrol was much larger in Philly. The PPD had jurisdiction over all of Philadelphia County. The CPD worked only a small portion of Cuyahoga County.

After signing in in the lobby of the Justice Center Jessica and Byrne took the elevator up to the fifth floor.

No matter how many times Jessica visited other big city Police Departments, she was always amazed by the similarities. The same dismal walls, the same crappy elevators, the same smells – a prying blend of sweat, disinfectant, and cherry air freshener.

The man who came around the corner looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, good-looking in a beat-up city cop way. He wore a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, a navy blue striped tie, good watch.

The man saw Byrne first. At six-three, it happened to Byrne all the time.

‘Are you Detective Byrne?’ the man asked.

‘I am,’ Byrne said. ‘And it’s Kevin.’

‘Kevin it is,’ the man said. ‘Jack Paris. Welcome to Cleveland.’

‘Thanks.’

The two men shook hands. Byrne stepped to the side.

‘This is my partner,’ Byrne said. ‘Jessica Balzano.’

‘It’s a real pleasure,’ Paris said. ‘Welcome.’

Jessica shook hands with Detective Paris.

Paris gestured to the room around them. ‘As glamorous as the stories, right?’

Byrne mugged. ‘The cabbie gave us a mini-tour on the way in,’ he said. ‘I like your town.’

‘Never been?’

‘Never had the pleasure.’

‘I hope he didn’t take you to Lake County.’

‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘I asked him to give us the nickel tour. I always like to get a feel.’

‘I’m the same way,’ Paris said. ‘I haven’t been to Philly in years. We used to go to Wildwood every summer when I was a kid. We’d always stop for cannoli at this place in South Philly.’

‘Termini’s,’ Jessica said.

‘Man,’ Paris said. ‘Corbo’s on the Hill here is good, but I might have to return to your fair city.’

‘You are welcome any time.’

‘Are you staying over?’ Paris asked.

‘No,’ Byrne said. He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got a flight back in five hours or so.’

‘Then let’s get to it.’

The documents sat on a holy mess of a desk, as did a framed photograph of a pretty young woman.

‘My daughter, Melissa,’ Paris said.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Jessica said.

‘She is my light.’

‘Grandkids?’ Byrne asked.

Paris smiled. ‘Bite your tongue, brother,’ he said. ‘I mean, I want them, but just not tomorrow.’

Byrne held up both hands in surrender. ‘Couldn’t agree more.’

They took a few moments, discussing their children. Then it was time to get to the reason for the visit.

Paris tapped the documents on his desk. ‘I don’t know about the PPD, but we don’t get a lot of requests like this.’

‘Same here,’ Jessica said. ‘We saddle up with the county and the Feds now and then, but most of the bad guys who aren’t homegrown get to meet our Fugitive Squad.’

Paris read over the document in front of him.

‘Crystal Anders was picked up last Saturday on a drug charge. And by drug charge I mean trafficking. Bail was set at 100K. Judges here are feeling the heat, passing it down.’

‘I read her sheet on the way in,’ Jessica said. ‘I didn’t see any violence.’

Paris nodded.

‘So she was here last Saturday?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What time was she arrested?’

‘She was picked up at 30th and Chester at 11:45 p.m. Part of a long – and I mean long – sting operation. We pulled in sixteen people that night, all of some weight.’

The time frame didn’t rule Crystal Anders out of anything. Jessica now knew that Cleveland was just under an hour from Philly. Crystal Anders didn’t look like a frequent flier, but stranger things have happened.

‘Did she cop to the drugs?’ Byrne asked.

Paris shook his head. ‘It wasn’t my interview, but I read the notes.’

‘Let me guess,’ Byrne said. ‘She was just getting a ride.’

Paris laughed. ‘Something like that.’

‘Think she may have been muling the weight from Philly?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘We checked her for a sheet on NCIC,’ Byrne said. The National Crime Information Center was a national database of criminal justice information. It offered a wide array of data helping police apprehend suspects, locate missing persons, and recover stolen property. ‘We didn’t find any Philly connection.’

‘Neither did we,’ Paris said. ‘She was born in Weirton, West Virginia.’

‘But she lives here now?’

‘Crystal is kind of hard to pin down in that regard. She certainly doesn’t own a home. She hasn’t had a driver’s license in almost ten years.’

‘Did you check with TSA?’

Paris nodded. ‘We did. If she flew, she did it with a false ID.’

They agreed that Detective Paris would handle the beginning part of the interview.

Crystal Anders was a woman who had surely at one time been considered pretty. The scourge that was methamphetamine had slowly eroded her face, her teeth, her body, her life. Jessica was a little surprised at how small she was. Maybe it was all the meth. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, even though her sheet said 5'3'/120.

There was a thick keloid scar on the right side of her neck, a deep crimson in color, that stood out in stark relief to her ashen skin.

They met in a small interview room on the fifth floor. By comparison to the equivalent in Philadelphia, the room was downright spacious – perhaps one hundred square feet – and had somehow managed to camouflage that monkey house smell.

Crystal Anders wore a bright orange jumpsuit. And despite her emaciated appearance, she was shackled to the table. Jessica understood the play. More than one cop had backed off on this, only to sorely underestimate the speed and strength of a seemingly harmless or defeated suspect.

‘Crystal, my name is Detective Paris,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Byrne and Detective Balzano.’

Paris sat at the table, across from Crystal. Jessica and Byrne sat slightly behind him. The door was closed.

The woman looked up for a split second, divided her attention between the three of them, then looked down again. Jessica could see that she’d been in a very similar situation to this many times. She could also see that the woman was in withdrawal.

‘What we’d like to talk about is—’

‘Y’all need to talk to D’Shawn,’ Crystal said. ‘I told t’others. Talk to D’Shawn. Not me.’

Paris sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers. He gave the moment some heft. ‘D’Shawn?’

The woman nodded, chewed on one of her dirty nails. She remained silent.

‘You mean D’Shawn Thomas?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do nothin.’ Talk to D’Shawn. All that was his. I told t’others. I was just getting a ride.’

‘All
what
was his?’

‘Them drugs. I don’t mess with all that.’

Paris opened the folder in front of him, slid out a rap sheet, slid it to his right so Jessica and Byrne could see it.

Jessica saw that D’Shawn Dixon Thomas was a piece of work. Thirty-nine years old, incarcerated about thirty percent of that – gun charges, ag assaults, forgery, extortion. Suspect in a cop killing. Real citizen.

‘Now, see, Crystal, I would
love
to talk to D’Shawn,’ Paris said. ‘He killed a police officer a few years back so, trust me on this, everybody in this
building
would love to talk to him. We just don’t know where he is. Can you help us with that?’

‘He never kilt nobody.’

‘Where is D’Shawn right now, Crystal?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then I can’t talk to him, can I?’

No response.

‘We’ll come back to D’Shawn,’ Paris said. ‘Right now he’s only one of your problems.’

She looked up again, this time chancing a slightly longer glance at Paris. She didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.

‘I’d like to go back to last weekend,’ Paris said. ‘Let’s start with last Friday night.’

‘What about it?’

‘Where were you that night?’

The woman shrugged, said nothing.

‘Did you stay home? Did you go out?’

‘I was home.’

‘All night?’

‘Purt near.’

‘Not sure what that means,’ Paris said.

‘I was home purt near all night.’

‘So that means that you went out.’

Another shrug.

‘What time did you leave the house, Crystal?’

The woman looked at her now bloodied, raw fingernails, as if the timeline might be located there. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe eleven, some.’

‘Was there anyone else at your house with you at that time?’

‘Gingerbelle was there.’

‘Who is Gingerbelle?’

Another shrug.

‘You don’t know who that is? Is that a person, a dog?’

‘My friend.’

‘Gingerbelle is a woman?’

Crystal looked up at Paris as if he were crazy, as if a man would be called Gingerbelle. Jessica could think of a hundred scenarios where a wisecrack would be called for. This wasn’t one of them. The woman just nodded.

‘What is Gingerbelle’s last name?’

‘Wallace or Watkins,’ she said. ‘Like that.’

Jessica thought: How many Gingerbelles could there be? She made the note.

‘Was there anyone else there Friday night?’

‘No.’

‘Okay,’ Paris continued. ‘When you left the house, did Gingerbelle go out with you?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘She had to get some formula for her baby, so we went to the Food Mart.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one up to 71st Street.’

‘Where did you go after that?’

More squirrelly moves. ‘We went to Billy’s for a spell.’

‘That’s the biker bar? The one on Payne?’

Crystal obviously knew that
he
knew that it was. She just nodded.

‘Did you score while you were there?’

‘Score?’

Paris moved on. ‘Tell me about Saturday.’

A one-shoulder shrug this time. ‘I slept late.’

‘Until what time?’

‘Noon, some.’

‘What time did you leave town?’

Because Jessica knew this question was coming, she watched the woman closely. Crystal Anders was hard to read.

‘Leave
town
?’

‘Yeah,’ Paris said. ‘What time did you go to the airport?’

The woman took a moment to glance at Jessica and Byrne, as if maybe this was a joke. Neither Jessica nor Byrne were smiling. Crystal didn’t either.

‘Airport? I didn’t go to no airport.’

Paris shuffled a few papers, leaned back, crossed his legs. ‘You know that there are records of all this now. If you took a flight to anywhere on last Saturday – or any day, for that matter – I can get that information in about thirty seconds,’ Paris said. ‘If you tell the truth about anything here today, Crystal, this would be the time.’

‘I ain’t lying.’

Paris took another moment. ‘I may not have mentioned this, but detectives Byrne and Balzano are from Philadelphia.’

Another quick glance up, then back to chewing her nails.

‘They would like to talk to you about some things that have been happening in their city.’

Byrne pulled his chair forward. ‘Crystal, once again, my name is Detective Byrne. I think you know you’re already in a lot of trouble. I’m not going to insult you by trying to sugarcoat it for you.’

After a long uncomfortable minute, when Byrne didn’t continue, Crystal was forced to look up.

‘As Detective Paris said, there have been some events in Philadelphia recently. In the course of our investigation, we’ve discovered an item that brought us here, to Cleveland.’

‘I don’t know nothin’ about it,’ she said. ‘I ain’t never been.’

‘Not only did this evidence bring us to Cleveland, Crystal, it brought us to you.’

This got her full attention.

‘To
me
?’

Byrne reached into his bag, removed a folder. From within he produced a glossy color photograph of the swan barrette found at the Nicole Solomon crime scene, the barrette bearing Crystal Anders’s fingerprint.

When he set it on the table, and pushed it toward Crystal, all three investigators watched her reaction.

When Crystal looked at the picture of the barrette, something happened to her, something Jessica had seen before, but not for a long time. It wasn’t something that was a behavior characteristic common to drug addicts, or meth addicts in particular. It was something that happened to mothers, especially those who have dark and troubled histories with their children.

When Crystal saw the barrette she imploded.

The untrained eye might not have seen it, but Jessica did, and she was certain both Kevin Byrne and Jack Paris saw it as well. It seemed to be the final step in the dismantling of a human being. There was no doubt that Crystal recognized the barrette, and her reaction told Jessica it could only have one connection, one visceral link to her life, and that link was a child.