Naked Justice Page 4

  Or a slap across the face. Flesh against flesh.

  There were several more exchanges he couldn’t understand. Then: “Don’t drag the children into this!”

  “I don’t have any choice!”

  There was another noise, loud enough to make Harvey flinch. A great, crashing noise—Harvey couldn’t even think of anything that would make a noise like that. Dishes? Furniture? Or worse?

  Harvey strolled into his living room. Well, what would his excuse be this time? Perhaps a shard of Anasazi pottery? Or perhaps a toilet that needed attention? Either would do.

  He’d give them a little cool-down time before he went over and interjected himself into the situation. He really wasn’t the nosy neighbor type, not some sitcom cliché, sneaking up to windows and holding a glass against the wall. He didn’t like to butt into other people’s business. But back where he came from (Dill City, Oklahoma, to be exact—population 632), people cared about each other, and tried to be there for each other, and didn’t get nervous about walking in and offering help when folks were needing it.

  Here in the big city (Tulsa, Oklahoma, to be exact—population 503,000) he had learned to be more circumspect. He’d moved out here twelve years before, after his grandmother passed on and left him this great house in a ritzy neighborhood. In that time, he’d found that folks got a little nervous when you started asking personal questions. Back in Dill City, doors were never locked and people expected to be visited. No one thought twice about dropping in unannounced on a neighbor. Here, seemed like neighbors never called on each other unless they had made an appointment days in advance and had some super-special reason. So he had learned to have reasons.

  Harvey had moved to Tulsa after he got out of college (University of Oklahoma, to be exact—Class of ’85). Harvey wanted to be an actor, but to tide himself over until fame and fortune called, he took a job at the world-famous Gilcrease Museum of Western Art. Twelve years later, he was an assistant curator, which was as high as he cared to rise on the totem pole. Why would he want to be curator? That was just a fund-raising position. Harvey didn’t want to have lunch at Southern Hills. He wanted to play with the toys.

  And Gilcrease had the best toys. Western art, yes—Remingtons and Carys and Morans, sculptures and paintings. But what Harvey really loved were the artifacts. Artifacts of the Old West, artifacts of Native American cultures. Great stuff. The museum’s holdings were so vast they couldn’t all be displayed at once. The artifacts in deep storage had to be maintained. Harvey took care of that. He loved working with the goods, and it gave him a legitimate excuse to take some of them home occasionally, just for a day or two. Which in turn gave him a great excuse to take them over to the Barretts. Show-and-tell for grown-ups.

  “Hey, Wally, look at this great kachina doll!” he’d say as he strolled in through the kitchen door. Actually, he wasn’t sure the mayor cared a bit about kachina dolls. He wasn’t sure he much cared for being called Wally, either. Didn’t matter. It got Harvey through the door, where he could keep an eye on things. That mattered.

  And if museum curios couldn’t do the trick, there was always home repair. One ruse he could count on—there was always something in the Barrett home that needed to be fixed. Back in Dill City, he had learned how to take care of most home emergencies himself, including the plumbing, because there was usually no one else to do it. These were useful skills, and skills that Wally had never managed to acquire, thus leading to another easy entrance into the Barrett home.

  “Harvey!” he remembered Caroline saying not too long ago, when he delivered himself to their kitchen, “what brings you over here?”

  “Well, the kids were tellin’ me there was a leak in the …” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, the …”

  “The shower?”

  “That’s right. The shower.”

  “You mean the shower drain.”

  “Right, that’s what I meant. Well, I brought my tools.”

  “So I see.”

  “I’ll just get to work. So how’s everything going?”

  Worked like a charm. Let him stay vigilant, maybe prevent a few knockdown-drag-outs, and maybe make Caroline’s life a little easier. Which was important.

  The truth was, Harvey harbored a secret, one he admitted only to himself. Sure, he cared about the kids, and he worried when their parents fought like cocks in the henhouse. But that was only half the story.

  Truth was, Harvey was in love with Caroline Barrett.

  It was nothing tawdry or unseemly or disgusting. He didn’t lust after her from afar or take pictures of her to bed or anything. He just loved her, that was all.

  Who wouldn’t? Caroline was a gorgeous woman, one of the most natural beauties God ever saw fit to put on the face of this earth. Tall, thin, well-dressed, with high cheekbones and long legs that went from here to forever. She was a knockout’s knockout. Why she’d want to get hitched up to some old jock-turned-politico he couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t resist the limelight, he supposed, such as it was. What could you say about a culture that made millionaires out of football players and paid museum curators twenty-two thousand a year?

  It wasn’t so much the fighting that worried him. All couples quarrel, though most didn’t do it as often, or as mean, as those two. But he had noticed that in the last six months or so, Caroline had occasionally taken to wearing sunglasses when she went outside, and the sun just wasn’t that bright. One afternoon when he caught her out in the garden, she had a bruise on her cheek so discolored no amount of makeup could hide it. She told him some lame story about bumping into the shelves in the attic.

  That worried him.

  One afternoon not too long ago, he’d been at the neighborhood block party and the Barretts were there too, and there was some jerk who had just moved into the area and had drunk too much for his own good who was hanging around Caroline, smirking and winking and drooling and touching her arm and generally trying to cozy up in a none-too-subtle way. Wally saw what was going on, marched over, stepped between them (cutting the jerk off), and just stared at her. He didn’t say a word; he just stared. But man, his was a stare that could chill Death himself. It had given Harvey shivers all up and down his spine.

  That worried him.

  Harvey watched television for a while, but found he couldn’t concentrate on it. There was something odd about this business today, though Harvey couldn’t quite put his finger on what. He pushed off the sofa and returned to the kitchen. He stood by the window for a while, but didn’t hear a peep. That was it—that was what was odd. Earlier he’d heard such a terrific hullabaloo, and now he heard nothing. How long ago was it he heard the big noise? An hour? But now he heard nothing. Less than nothing, actually. It was absolutely silent over there. Deathly silent.

  That should be good, shouldn’t it? That should mean the fight was over. So why was his skin crawling?

  Harvey put the empty beer bottle in the trash and strolled out onto his front lawn. It was no different. No sign of activity at the house next door, or anywhere else, for that matter. He should’ve been relieved by that. This was supposed to be a nice, upper-class neighborhood, but lately, he’d noticed people he didn’t much like the looks of. Not that he sat around all night peering out the windows or anything, but still. Occasionally there were vagrants. The last several nights he’d seen what he called the Odd Couple: some grungy-looking man wearing fatigues and a young girl—mid to late teens, he’d guess—wearing a tank top and big hoop earrings and a blue headband. They walked up and down the street, real casually, looking the neighborhood over. Or casing it, he suspected. Let those druggies in and you might as well move out.

  The eerie silence was shattered by a piercing, howling noise. What the hell? He eased across the lawn toward the Barretts’ house. Suddenly, as if in answer to his question, Harvey saw Wallace Barrett race out the front door.

  “Wally!” Harvey shouted.

  Barrett didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to hear, as far as Harvey could tell, ev
en though they were less than twenty-five feet apart. Barrett was running at top speed, flexing those leg muscles that made him the best rushing quarterback OU had ever seen. His shirt seemed to be torn, and there was something bright smeared across one side of his face.

  “Wally!”

  No use. Barrett leaped into his Porsche parked on the curb—had that been there before?—and slid into the driver’s seat. In a few seconds the car was powered up and Barrett was halfway down the street.

  Now that was very odd, Harvey thought. Odd, and worrisome.

  I need to get in that house, he told himself. I need to know … what? He wasn’t sure. But the short hairs on the back of his neck told him something unusual was happening. Or had happened.

  It was so quiet over there.

  The window on the side of the Barrett home was still open. Maybe if he just sidled up to it casually …

  No. What would he say, after all, if they saw him? He didn’t have his tools and he didn’t have a kachina doll. The place was probably a mess. The kids were probably upset. It would just be an embarrassment to everyone.

  Well, he told himself, the police were supposed to handle this sort of thing, weren’t they? So let them. He could call in a domestic disturbance anonymously. The cops had to answer, even if they didn’t think there was anything to it; he’d read about that in the paper. They could check on Caroline and the kids, and no one need know he had called them in.

  It was tempting just to go in now, to march in there and make sure everything was fine. That’s what he would’ve done back in Dill City.

  Hmph. And these big-city types thought they were so much more sophisticated. Sometimes he thought they didn’t know anything at all, not about the things that were really important.

  The doorknob was so close. He could just reach out … step inside …

  But he didn’t. He turned around and walked back to his house.

  If he had gone in, he would surely have been overcome by the sickly sweet smell of blood, so thick that it permeated the air in every room of the house. He would have noticed the swarming flies, drawn by the smell through the open window, circling the grisly remains. He might’ve called the police a lot sooner than he did, had he remained conscious afterward, which is doubtful.

  Things like this never happened back in Dill City.

  Chapter 5

  BEN PULLED HIS AGING ’82 Honda Accord onto the side of the street. The brakes squeaked and squealed, but they did manage to stop the car. This time, anyway. He patted the dash affectionately. Two hundred thousand miles and still ticking. What more could you ask for?

  He scooped Joey out of his car seat and carried him across the street to the boardinghouse where Ben had one of the second-story apartments. As he approached, he saw Mrs. Marmelstein out front. She was on her knees, facing away from them, puttering in her garden.

  “How are the tulips doing?” Ben asked.

  Mrs. Marmelstein brushed a straggling strand of steel-gray hair out of her face. “Well, they’re doing their best, but that late frost didn’t do them any favors. How’s my favorite boy?”

  Ben held no illusions that she might be talking about him. She pushed herself creakily to her feet, drawing herself up to her full five-feet-four height, and tweaked Joey on the nose. He batted her hand away.

  Mrs. Marmelstein leaned into his tiny face. “Are you my little pumpkey-wumpkey?”

  Joey looked off into the distance.

  Ben gave Joey a gentle shake. “Joey, say hello to Mrs. Marmelstein.”

  Joey didn’t.

  “C’mon, Joey. If you’re rude to the landlady, we could end up sleeping under the Eighth Street bridge.”

  “That’s all right.” Mrs. Marmelstein pinched Joey on the cheek. “We’re just not very sociable today, are we?”

  Or any other day, Ben thought. “Well, we’d best go on in. I expect Joni is waiting—”

  “That reminds me. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Benjamin.”

  “Really?” he said, fearing the worst. A few months before, he had taken her to a doctor’s appointment, and the man had pronounced the word they had been dreading—Alzheimer’s. Mrs. Marmelstein had always been a bit dotty, but that diagnosis had put her occasional eccentricities in an entirely new light. Sometimes, she was totally lucid. But at others … “What is it?”

  “Well …” She glanced at Joey, then back at Ben. “It’s an adult matter.”

  That piqued his curiosity. He spotted Joni, the teenager who watched Joey when he wasn’t at school and Ben couldn’t be at home. She was standing in the front vestibule of the house. He dropped Joey to the ground. “Okay, pardner. Joni will take you upstairs. I’ll be in to start dinner in just a few minutes. Okay?”

  Joey waddled up the front porch where Joni was waiting for him.

  “Okay,” Ben said after Joey was inside. “What’s this adult matter?”

  “Well …” Her voice dropped to hushed tones. “… it’s about Joni.”

  “I thought you liked Joni.”

  “I adore Joni. You know that. And goodness how she has matured since you asked her to be Joey’s nanny. But I do believe she’s been having”—Mrs. Marmelstein rocked forward on her toes and whispered—“gentleman callers.”

  Ben suppressed his grin. “You mean Booker?”

  She fidgeted with her trowel. “I mean the black gentleman, yes.”

  Ben placed his hand on her shoulder. “Booker’s okay, Mrs. Marmelstein. I have the utmost confidence in him.”

  “You don’t think he … consorts with the wrong element?”

  Well, there was that minor business of being a member of a North Side gang, but he seemed to have extricated himself from that mistake. “I think he’s fine. And he’s a great playmate for Joey. Very energetic.”

  “But that’s just it. Having him around so much …” She turned to one side and stared down at the grass. “Mind you, I don’t want to be the kind of landlady who’s always interfering in her tenants’ business.”

  “Oh, heaven forbid,” Ben said with a straight face.

  “At the same time, I can’t help but worry that, with the two of them together in your apartment so much”—her voice dropped to the point of near inaudibility—“people will think there’s something romantic going on.”

  In fact, there had been something romantic going on for the past six months, but Ben suspected that this was not the time to bring Mrs. Marmelstein up-to-date. “You know, Joni’s parents have the apartment just next door to mine. And she and Booker are both eighteen now.”

  “I don’t care if they’re eighteen or eighty. I don’t allow any hanky-panky in my house. You know that, Benjamin!”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But I think it will be okay. And you know how I depend on Joni. I would never have been able to keep Joey without her.”

  “Well, yes …”

  “And you like having Joey around, don’t you?”

  “You know I do. He’s such a sweet little thing. Such a mind of his own.”

  “And you wouldn’t want me to lose him, would you?” Being just a tad manipulative, Ben told himself, but any port in a storm.

  “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  “Good. So let’s not bother Joni and Booker. I promise I’ll personally police the situation and ensure that nothing untoward occurs.”

  She hesitated a moment. “I suppose it might be all right then.”

  “Good. I’d better get dinner going.” He started toward the porch.

  “Oh, Benjamin, today was my baking day. I put a nice fresh fruitcake on your kitchen counter.”

  “Thanks …”

  “Don’t ear it all yourself. Give some to Joey, too. Little boys love cake.”

  “Actually, I think it’s a choking hazard.” Ben wondered if he could use the same excuse for himself.

  Chapter 6

  APPRENTICE POLICE OFFICER KEVIN Calley still held illusions that he might get home early when the squawk of the police radi
o shattered his dream.

  He snapped up the handset. “Yes?”

  “Ten-four, Kevin. This is the Box.” The Box was the name given to the daytime switchboard officer for reasons long lost to antiquity. “Gotta 986 at 1260 South Terwilliger, which I believe is on your way home. And since you are technically still on duty …”

  Calley silently swore. There went the early Friday night on the town he and Marie had planned. Boy, would she be pissed.

  He took down all the details and made a minor course correction toward Terwilliger. Not that he minded working; it was, after all, why he had become a policeman. It was just that this was the end of his first week on the job—first week out of the academy, first week driving his own patrol car. Mostly traffic work, but that was all right for now. You couldn’t expect to catch the Kindergarten Killer the first week. But he and Marie had planned a little party to celebrate the successful conclusion of his first seven days as a peace officer. They and a few friends were going out to In Cahoots, out at Seventy-first and Memorial, to down a few tall cool ones, cut a two-step, get a little rowdy, and generally have a good time. He’d signed out early—after arranging for someone else to cover for him—just so they could get a start on the evening, get there before all the good booths by the dance floor were taken.

  It was great going home to Marie these days. There was a real gleam in her eyes when he came home in the evening wearing his shiny new uniform … and she had other memorable ways of showing her pleasure as well. She was proud of her little boy in blue. It had made a great difference in their marriage. No question they’d gone through some rough patches, especially in the early days. Things were looking up, though. He used to sneer when his father told him money made the world go round, but the fact was, a steady paycheck could eliminate a hell of a lot of marital stress. After a year or so, he’d have Marie out of the trailer park and into a real honest-to-God house like she deserved.

  Why did it have to be a domestic disturbance, though? He could live with issuing a traffic ticket on his way home. A warning, if he was pressed for time. But like all cops, he hated domestic calls. They were never easy, never satisfying. If you caught a bank robber, well, great, job well done. But you got no applause from a domestic call. Sometimes it wasn’t serious, just some spouse trying to up the stakes in an ongoing fight by calling in the police. When it was serious, though, the issues were even more complicated. If you arrest a wife beater, at best you’ve spared some people some violence at the cost of breaking up the family. More often, though, the police were put in the position of trying to convince a battered woman to prosecute, which they usually wouldn’t do. Even if the police had been out several times before. It was amazing how many women would allow themselves to become punching bags—covering up, telling lies, denying reality, even when it smacked their face like a bare fist.