Stone Cold

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rossi found Harris in the homicide unit, feet up, a muffin in one hand, coffee in the other, and the newspaper tented in his lap. He snatched the paper, folded it, and smacked Harris on the leg.

“Hey! I wasn’t done with the crossword.”

“Forget it. You never get past the three-letter words anyway.”

“I figured you’d be over at Alex Stone’s arraignment.”

“If I want to go to the circus, I’ll wait for Barnum and Bailey.”

“They’ve got better elephants but their clowns aren’t as good.”

“That’s a fact. C’mon. We need to get going.”

“Where?” Harris asked.

“Chouteau Courts.”

“That public housing project on Independence Ave.?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. That dump’s got to be fifty years old. I thought they were going to tear it down.”

“What I heard last year. Long as they don’t do it before we get there.”

Harris stuffed the rest of his muffin in his mouth, washing it down with his coffee, and followed Rossi to the street.

“What’s the attraction?”

“A woman named Virginia Sprague lives there. She’s Kyrie Chapman’s grandmother.”

“And?”

“Gloria Temple’s last known address was at Choteau Courts,” Rossi said, filling Harris in on the rest as they got in Rossi’s car and headed east from downtown.

“So you’re thinking Gloria was living with Grandma,” Harris said.

“Worth a shot.”

“Gloria just might tie all of this together-Wilfred Donaire, Kyrie Chapman, and the Hendersons.”

“If she isn’t dead.”

“After what we think Dwayne did to Chapman and the Hendersons, my money is on dead,” Harris said.

Rossi didn’t answer, his grim face registering his agreement. Harris broke the silence a few moments later.

“So you put this stuff about Gloria Temple together last night after you called me?”

“Yeah.”

Harris shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Shit, man. You’re making me look bad. I told you I’d get on it today. Yesterday was a bitch, I was bushed, and my wife wasn’t making things any easier on me.”

Rossi flashed a forgiving grin. “Don’t sweat it. You didn’t have the background with Gloria. I did. Besides, I needed the overtime.”

“Fowler said there was no more overtime. You know what your problem is, Rossi?”

“I’m guessing you’re about to tell me.”

“Your problem is that you got no life outside the job. Well, I got a life and I’m not going to apologize to you or anybody else for being asleep at midnight.”

“Easy, easy, partner. Nobody’s got to apologize for anything. We’re working this thing together. And believe me, if I knew how to get a life, I’d be all over it.”

Mollified, Harris let out a slow breath. “What about Lena Kirk, that gal from CSI? You making any progress on that front?”

“Hard to tell. She keeps saying no, but no is starting to sound a little like maybe.”

“Might help if you give her a reason to say yes.”

“I thought I’d rely on my natural charm winning her over.”

“Why not, seeing as how that’s worked so well for you up till now.”

Rossi gave him a sideways glance. “Gonna be like this all day?”

“You’re the one that woke me up in the middle of the damn night.”

“And if I promise not to do it again?”

“Won’t help much, because I know you’ll break your promise first chance you get. Let’s just go find Gloria Temple.”

Chouteau Courts was an apartment complex at the intersection of Independence Avenue and Forest. There were 134 redbrick units with anywhere from one to five bedrooms. Isolated from much of the surrounding area, it suffered from a high crime rate and years of neglect, reason enough for the city to want to demolish it and try again.

“Which apartment is Virginia Sprague’s?” Harris asked when they got out of the car.

“Don’t know. Denny Trumbo didn’t include her address in his list of known associates.”

“What are we going to do? Start knocking on doors?”

“Nope. We’ll try the apartment listed on Gloria’s driver’s license.”

The apartment was a first-floor unit. Rossi rapped on the door, got no response, and rapped again. He waited half a minute before knocking again, this time hard enough to rattle the door.

“Hold on! Hold on! I’m coming, I’m coming,” a woman said from inside the apartment. She opened the door a couple of inches, keeping the chain on. “What do you want?”

“Virginia Sprague?” Rossi asked.

“Who wants to know?”

Rossi showed her his badge. “I’m Detective Rossi and this is Detective Harris. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t know nuthin’ about it.”

“What if it’s about Gloria Temple?”

“Oh, Lord,” she said, her voice soft and sad.

She slipped the chain off and opened the door. She was the same woman Rossi had spoken to six weeks ago. He put her in her midfifties, medium height, with caramel skin, her face freckled and her black hair streaked with gray and mussed like she’d just gotten out of bed. She was wearing a nightgown that revealed too much, large heavy breasts swaying beneath the fabric, meaty arms, and thick legs. Suddenly aware of how exposed she was, she gathered her nightgown around her.

“Are you Virginia Sprague?”

“Yes, I am. C’mon, now, ’fore my neighbors see me standing here in my nightclothes,” she said, waving them inside. “You got me out of bed. Let me get something on.”

Rossi and Harris followed her into the living room. It was neat, orderly, and clean, the sofa and easy chair protected by plastic slipcovers. An old television sat on a stand in one corner. A painting of a generic landscape scene, the kind you’d find at a starving-artists sale, hung on one wall above a waist-high cabinet.

Virginia disappeared into the bedroom, returning a moment later wearing a robe over her nightgown.

“Did you find her? Is Gloria dead?” she asked, looking at Harris, not Rossi.

Harris and Rossi understood. She preferred to talk to a black man closer to her own age.

“No, ma’am,” Harris said. “But we’re hoping you might help us find her. Do you mind if we sit and visit, maybe in the kitchen?”

She nodded, leading them to a round table in an alcove off the narrow kitchen.

“I’m sorry for the way I look,” she said. “I work nights cleaning offices.”

“That’s all right,” Harris said. “We won’t keep you long. What made you think Gloria might be dead?”

Virginia shook her head, her face lined and weary. “That child come from trouble and she been headin’ for more her whole life. Your partner,” she said, nodding toward Rossi, “come lookin’ for Gloria a while ago. Now y’all are back and that can’t be good.”

“What’s your relationship to her?”

“She’s not my child, if that’s what you’re asking me. I took her in after her mama got kilt and her daddy went to prison. She was fifteen and a handful already.”

“I know how that is,” Harris said. “I understand that Kyrie Chapman was your grandson.”

She lowered her head. “That’s right.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Harris said.

“Everybody says so, but it don’t mean nuthin’, don’t change nuthin’. His funeral is tomorrow,” she said, sighing and wiping her eyes.

“What was the relationship between Kyrie and Gloria?”

She shook her head. “Kyrie chased after Gloria like a puppy, but she wasn’t interested in him.”

“How’d Kyrie take that?”

“He’d get real mad, but he wouldn’t give up on her, kept tellin’ me she gonna come around.”

“How mad did Kyrie get?”

“Oh, you know how boys can get. He’d say all kinda foolish things, but then he’d calm down.”

“What kind of foolish things?” Harris asked.

“How Gloria was the only one for him and she didn’t belong with nobody else. But I always tol’ him they ain’t no such thing as an only one, just only one at a time.”

“The last time Gloria was staying here, did she have a boyfriend?”

“That girl always had a boyfriend.”

“Do you know who her last boyfriend was?”

“Naw. She knew better than to bring boys into my house.”

“Ma’am,” Rossi said, “did Gloria ever mention Wilfred Donaire or Dwayne Reed to you?”

Virginia thought for a moment, closing her eyes to concentrate. “I don’t recognize those names.”

“How about Jameer Henderson?” Rossi asked.

Her eyes widened. “Ain’t he the one who got kilt the same night as my Kyrie, him and his family?”

“That’s right. Did Gloria ever mention his name to you?”

“Naw, but that’s a terrible thing what happened to that family. Terrible.”

“Yes, it is,” Harris said. “Ms. Sprague, please don’t take offense at this, but I have to ask you since we can’t find Gloria. Is it possible that Kyrie got so angry at Gloria for always turning him down that he might have harmed her?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Oh, I hope not.”

“You sound worried about that. How come?”

She let out a sigh. “Last week, Kyrie come by to see me, and he was all worked up about Gloria. He said she tol’ him once and for all, it ain’t never gonna happen between them and to leave her alone.”

“What else did Kyrie say?”

Her eyes filled and her voice broke. “He said he tol’ her if he can’t have her, ain’t no man gonna have her.”

“When was the last time you saw Gloria?”

“Been a while, a few weeks, maybe. She keep a lot of her things here, comes by sometimes to get somethin’.”

“Could we see her room?” Harris asked.

“Long as you don’t blame me for the way it look. That girl don’t take care of nuthin’ but herself.”

She led them down a narrow hall and opened the door to a cramped bedroom, clothes piled on the floor, bed unmade. Rossi stepped over and around the mess, opened the closet door, and stepped back.

“Check this out,” Rossi said to Harris, pointing to the floor of the closet.

“What is it?” Harris asked from the other side of the room.

“An aluminum baseball bat.”