Молчаливая ночь [with w_cat] - страница 27

[475] He dialed the lookout van. “You recorded that call?”

[476] “Is she crazy, Mort? She can’t be talking about the Dornan kid, can she? Want us to pick her up for questioning?”

[477] “That’s just what I don’t want you to do!” Levy exploded. “She’s scared to death as it is. Sit tight until I get there.”

[478] He had to inform his superiors, starting with Jack Shore, about Cally Hunter’s call. Mort spotted Shore leaving the chief of detectives’ private office, was out of his chair and across the room in seconds. He grabbed Shore’s arm. “Come back inside.”

[479] “I told you to take a break.” Shore tried to shake off his hand. “We just heard from Logan in Detroit again. Two days ago a woman whose description matches Siddons’s girlfriend got a ride from a private car service over the border to Windsor. Logan ’s guys think that Laronde told her girlfriend about California and Mexico to throw them off her trail. The girlfriend was questioned again. This time it occurred to her to mention that she offered to buy Laronde’s fur coat because it wouldn’t be needed in Mexico. Laronde refused.”

[480] I never bought that Mexico story, Mort Levy thought. He didn’t relinquish his grip on Shore’s arm as he shoved open the chief’s door.

[481] Five minutes later, a squad car was racing up the East Side Drive to Avenue B and Tenth Street. A bitterly frustrated Jack Shore had been ordered to wait in the lookout van while Mort and the chief, Bud Folney, went upstairs to talk to Cally.

[482] Mort knew that Shore would not forgive him for insisting that he stay out of it. “Jack, when we were there earlier, I knew there was something she was holding back. You’ve scared her to death. She thinks you’d do anything to see her back behind bars. For God’s sake, can’t you look at her as a human being? She’s got a four-year-old child, her husband is dead, and she got the book thrown at her when she made the mistake of helping the brother she’d practically raised.”

[483] Now Mort turned to Folney. “I don’t know how Jimmy Siddons ties into that missing child, but I do know that Cally has been too frightened to talk. If she tells us now whatever she knows, it will be because she feels that the department… you… aren’t out to get her.”

[484] Folney nodded. He was a soft-spoken, lean man in his late forties, with a scholarly face. He had in fact spent three years as a high school teacher before realizing his passion was law enforcement. It was widely believed among the ranks that one day he’d be police commissioner. Already he was one of the most powerful men in the department.

[485] Mort Levy knew that if there was anyone who could help Cally, assuming she had in some way been forced to cover for Jimmy again, it was Folney. But the missing child-how could Siddons be involved in this?

[486] It was a question they were all frantic to ask.

[487] When the squad car pulled up behind the surveillance van, Shore made one last appeal. “If I keep my mouth shut…”

[488] Folney answered, “I suggest you start right now Jack. Get in the van.”

[489] Pete Cruise had been about to call it a day. He’d discovered where Cally Hunter lived when he tried to interview her after she was released from prison, and now he was hoping her brother would show up. But there’d been nothing to watch for hours except the on-again-off-again falling snow. Now at least it seemed to have stopped for good. The van that he knew was a police van was still parked across the street from Cally’s apartment, but probably all they were doing was monitoring her calls. The likelihood of Jimmy Siddons suddenly showing up at his sister’s house now was about the same as two strangers having matching DNA.

[490] All the hours of hanging around Hunter’s building were a waste, Pete decided. From the time he’d seen Cally come home shortly before six, and the two detectives stop in around seven, it had been a big nothing.

[491] He’d kept his powerful portable radio on the whole time he waited, switching between the police band, his station, WYME, and the WCBS news station. No word of Siddons at all. Shame about that missing kid.