“Of course I do,” I said. “What else is new?”
“Nothing is new, Jack,” Wexler said. “Is what Big Dog says true? You want something you can’t have?”
It was a dance. Friendly patter designed to ferret out the basic nut of information without specifically asking for it and confronting it. It went with the nicknames cops used. I had danced like this many times and I was good at it. They were finesse moves. Like practicing the three-man weave in high school basketball. Keep your eyes open for the ball, watch the other two men at once. I was always the finesse player. Sean was the strength. He was football. I was basketball.
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I am back on the job again, boys.”
“Oh, here we go,” St. Louis whined. “Hold on to your hats.”
“So, what’s happening on the Lofton case?” I asked Wexler, ignoring St. Louis.
“Whoa there, Jack, are you talking to us as a reporter now?” Wexler asked.
“I’m only talking to you. And that’s right, as a reporter.”
“Then no comment on Lofton.”
“So the answer is nothing is happening.”
“I said no comment.”
“Look, I want to see what you’ve got. The case is almost three months old now. It’s going into the dead case file soon if it isn’t already there and you know it. I just want to see the file. I want to know what hooked Sean so deep.”
“You’re forgetting something. Your brother was ruled a suicide. Case closed. It doesn’t matter what hooked him about Lofton. Besides, it’s not known as fact that it had anything to do with what he did. It’s collateral at best. But we’ll never know.”
“Cut the crap. I just saw the file on Sean.” Wexler’s eyebrows raised a subliminal amount, I thought. “It’s all there. Sean was fucked up over this case. He was seeing a shrink, he was spending all of his time on it. So don’t tell me we’ll never know.”
“Look, kid, we—”
“Did you ever call Sean that?” I interrupted.
“What?”
“Kid. Did you ever call him kid?” Wexler looked confused.
“Nope.”
“Then don’t call me it, either.”
Wexler raised his arms in a hands-off manner.
“Why can’t I see the file? You’re not going anywhere with it.”
“Who says?”
“I do. You’re afraid of it, man. You saw what it did to Sean and you don’t want it to happen to you. So the case is stuck in a drawer somewhere. It’s got dust on it. I guarantee it.”
“You know, Jack, you’re seriously full of shit. And if you weren’t your brother’s brother, I’d throw you outta here on your ass. You’re getting me pissed. I don’t like being pissed.”
“Yeah? Then imagine how I’m feeling. The thing of it is, I am his brother and I think that cuts me in.”
St. Louis gave a smirking type of laugh meant to belittle me.
“Hey, Big Dog, isn’t it about time you went out and watered a fire hydrant or something?” I said.
Wexler burst out with the start of a laugh but quickly contained it. But St. Louis’s face turned red.
“Listen, you little fuck,” he said. “I’ll put you—”
“All right, boys,” Wexler intervened. “All right. Listen, Ray, why don’t you go outside and have a smoke? Let me talk to Jackie, straighten him out, and I’ll be out.”
I got out of the booth so St. Louis could slide out. He gave me the dead man’s stare as he went by. I slid back in.
“Drink up, Wex. No sense acting like there isn’t any Beam on the table.”
Wexler grinned and took a pull from his glass.
“You know, twins or not, you’re a lot like your brother. You don’t give up on things easy. And you can be a smart-ass. You get rid of that beard and the hippie hair and you could pass for him. You’d have to do something about that scar, too.”
“Look, what about the file?”
“What about it?”
“You owe it to him to let me see it.”
“I don’t follow, Jack.”
“Yes, you do. I can’t put it behind me until I’ve looked it all over. I’m just trying to understand.”
“You’re also trying to write about it.”
“Writing does for me what you got in that glass does for you. If I can write about it, I can understand it. And I can put it in the ground. That’s all I want to do.”
Wexler looked away from me and picked up the check the waitress had left. Then he downed the rest of his drink and slid out of the booth. Standing, he looked down at me and let out a heavy breath redolent of bourbon.
“Come back to the office,” he said. “I’ll give you one hour.”
He held his finger up and repeated himself in case I was confused.
“One hour.”
In the CAPs squad room I used the desk my brother had used. No one had taken it yet. Maybe it was a bad-luck desk now. Wexler was standing at a wall of file cabinets looking through an open drawer. St. Louis was nowhere to be seen, apparently choosing to have nothing to do with this. Wexler finally stepped away from the drawer with two thick files. He placed them in front of me.
“This everything?”
“Everything. You got an hour.”
“C’mon, there’s five inches of paper here,” I tried. “Let me take it home and I’ll bring it—”
“See, just like your brother. One hour, McEvoy. Set your watch, because those go back in the drawer in one hour. Make that fifty-nine minutes. You’re wasting time.”
I stopped belaboring the point and opened the top file.
Theresa Lofton had been a beautiful young woman who came to the university to study for an education degree. She wanted to be a first-grade teacher.
She was in her first year and lived in a campus dorm. She carried a full curriculum as well as working part-time in the day care center at the university’s married-housing dorm.
Lofton was believed to have been abducted on or near the campus on a Wednesday, the day after classes ended for the Christmas break. Most students had already left for the holiday. Theresa was still in Denver for two reasons. She had her job; the day care center didn’t close for the holidays until the end of the week. And there was also the problem of her car. She was waiting for a new clutch to be put into the old Beetle so she could make the drive home.
Her abduction was not reported because her roommate and all her friends had already gone home for the holidays. No one knew she was missing. When she didn’t show up for work at the day care center on Thursday morning, the manager thought she had simply gone home to Montana early, not completing the week because she wasn’t due to return to the job after the Christmas break. It would not be the first time a student pulled this kind of stunt, especially once finals were over and the holiday break beckoned. The manager made no inquiry or report to authorities.
Her body was found Friday morning in Washington Park. The investigators traced her last known movements back to noon on Wednesday when she called the mechanic from the day care center—he remembered children’s voices in the background—and he told her the car was ready. She said she would pick it up after work, first stopping at the bank. She did neither. She said good-bye to the day care center manager at noon and went out the door. She was not seen alive again. Except, of course, by her killer.