Stone Cold

Chapter Thirty-Nine

When Blues was a cop, people lumped him and Rossi together. They were big men, each pushing six-five and 250, unafraid and quick with their fists and their guns. People stopped making the comparison when Blues resigned rather than face an Internal Affairs probe on a shooting that was far from righteous.

Since then, Blues had tended bar, played piano, and done unlicensed, freelance PI work, proving more than one cop to have been sloppy, stupid, or bent. Rossi didn’t like outsiders, especially Blues, showing up his brothers even if they deserved it. Blues returned the love, never passing up a chance to stick his finger in Rossi’s eye.

Rossi knew that Blues was Lou Mason’s running mate and that Mason’s aunt was Alex Stone’s lawyer. He doubted that Blues lived at Choteau Courts, and the odds were against him being there to visit a friend. But Blues could have gone there to find Gloria Temple.

Rossi hadn’t seen Blues go into the apartment complex, but there was more than one entrance and he couldn’t watch them all. Blues and the woman walked down the street away from Rossi, stopping to shake hands before the woman got into her car and drove away before he had a chance to take down her license tag. Blues continued down the street and around the corner, out of Rossi’s view.

Rossi put his car in gear and eased down the block until he could see Blues’s car around the corner. He had to decide whether to stay where he was or stick with Blues. Staking out Virginia’s apartment had gotten him nowhere, but Blues gave him another option. He waited until Blues pulled out, giving him a decent lead before following him.

Blues drove to his bar, Blues on Broadway, parking in a back alley and disappearing through the rear entrance. Rossi circled back to Broadway, parked, and went in through the front door. Blues wasn’t there.

It was late afternoon and business was slow, one man in a booth nursing a beer and nibbling at a hamburger, a bartender watching a television hung from the ceiling. From the street, Rossi had seen lights on in a room above the bar, but he didn’t see a stairway to the second floor.

He left and walked around to the rear alley and tried the back door Blues had used. It was unlocked. He stepped inside and found himself in a narrow hallway, the entrance to the kitchen on his right, a steep staircase to his left. The kitchen was empty, so he started up the stairs.

A hallway divided the second floor, two rooms on each side and another at the end. The door was open to the first room on his right. It was an office, papers scattered across a desk, a computer screen on a credenza behind it. An electric keyboard lying on the floor told him this was probably Blues’s office, but he wasn’t there.

The other doors were closed and unmarked except for the door at the end of the hall, which was open a couple of inches. The nameplate mounted on the wall next to the doorframe read Lou Mason. Lights were on inside the office, and he heard voices coming from the other side of the door. Rossi soft-stepped his way to the door, listening.

“Detective Rossi, are you going to stand out there eavesdropping or come in?” Lou Mason said.

Red faced and hating it, Rossi pushed the door open. Mason was sitting behind his desk, Blues on a sofa crowded with files stuffed in banker’s boxes and rumpled sweatpants and sweatshirts and a rugby ball. A rowing machine was pushed up against the wall opposite the sofa. A closed wooden cabinet was mounted above it. He didn’t see the overnight bag Blues had been carrying.

“Took you long enough,” Blues said.

Rossi shrugged. “Just being careful. When did you make me?”

“The night you were conceived.”

Rossi let it pass. He was there for information, not to pick a fight. “What were you doing at Choteau Courts?”

“My business, not yours,” Blues said.

They stared at each other, faces hardening, until Mason intervened.

“What can we do for you, Detective?”

“I’m looking for Gloria Temple.”

Mason spread his arms wide. “Well, as you can see, she isn’t here.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Why are you looking for her?”

“She’s a material witness.”

“In what case?” Mason asked.

“The murders of Jameer Henderson and his family.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you,” Mason said. “That’s not my case.”

“You don’t have any cases, not since you were disbarred.”

Mason smiled. “True enough. Not a case that I’m interested in. How’s that?”

“She’s also a witness in Alex Stone’s case,” Rossi said.

“And that’s a case I am interested in. But she’s on the prosecution’s witness list, not ours. Why don’t you ask Patrick Ortiz where she is?”

“Like I said, she’s a material witness in two murder cases. If you know where she is and don’t tell me, that’s obstruction of justice.”

Mason leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “In Missouri, we call it hindering prosecution, and it only applies if I prevent the apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of another for conduct constituting a crime. So are you telling us that Gloria Temple committed a crime or that she’s a material witness?”

“The man may not be able to practice law, but that doesn’t mean he don’t know the law,” Blues added.

“Like I said, she’s a witness in Alex Stone’s case. You hide her or do anything else to prevent her from testifying against your client, that’s witness tampering. You can look it up.”

Mason smiled, but there wasn’t any humor in the gesture. “See you in court, Detective.”

“Looking forward to it,” Rossi said.

He left the way he came, annoyed that he’d played that so poorly. He had hoped that the overnight bag was for Gloria Temple and that Blues was taking it to her. When she wasn’t in Mason’s office, he realized that Blues had played him, leading him to Mason’s office instead. Worse, he’d left Virginia Sprague’s apartment unwatched, giving Gloria a chance to get away if she’d been there in the first place.

Mason watched from his office window overlooking Broadway as Rossi got in his car and drove away.

“Nice work,” he said to Blues.

“Rossi made it easy.”

“What did you find out about Gloria?”

“I know she’s alive and that she’s in town. I’ll know where in a day or two.”

“Do I want to know how?”

“Relax. Only thing that got hurt was my feelings when I couldn’t get to her on my own.”

Mason’s eyes popped. “Don’t tell me you had to ask for help. That’s like a husband asking his wife for directions.”

“I’ve evolved. The job is bigger than my ego. I even went to church.”

“You got religion too?”

“Not yet. When I struck out on the street I tried Virginia Sprague. She took one look at me and wouldn’t even open the door. So I asked a pastor friend of mine if he knew someone Virginia would talk to while I listened. He put me on to Grace Canfield.”

“The same Grace Canfield who’s an investigator in the public defender’s office?”

“Same one. And she’s got a soft spot in her heart for Alex Stone. We went to see her today. I saw Rossi staking out her apartment when we left.”

“What did Virginia tell you?”

“Kyrie Chapman was her grandson. She took Gloria in when she was fifteen. Kyrie had a thing for Gloria but Gloria wasn’t interested. She said that Gloria disappeared about six months ago. She also said that two detectives came to her house looking for Gloria a few days after Kyrie was killed and she let them search her house.”

“Did they find anything interesting?”

“Yeah, an aluminum baseball bat on the floor in Gloria’s closet.”

Mason thought for a moment. “Alex said when she found the bodies of the Hendersons, the kids skulls had been crushed.”

“Aluminum bat would do that.”

“Be a hard thing for Gloria to explain,” Mason said.

“No good way to explain that, so she took off. Virginia didn’t hear from her until the other day. Gloria called her asking for money.”

“What did Virginia say?”

“She said no until Grace convinced her to call Gloria back and say yes. She told Gloria to come pick up the money but Gloria said no, she wanted Virginia to bring it to her. Said she’d call her in a day or two and tell her where and when.”

“And Virginia said she’d tell Grace?”

“She did, and Grace said she’d take Virginia to wherever it was they had to go.”

“Where’s that leave you?”

“I’m the driver.”

“Does Alex know Grace is helping you?”

Blues shook his head. “No, and Grace isn’t going to tell her. Not until she hears what Gloria has to say.”

“So her soft spot may not be so soft after all. Is that it?”

“Almost. Grace and I made a deal with Virginia in return for helping us.”

“To do what?”

“Save Gloria if she needs saving.”

“Some promises are harder to keep than others.”

“This one may be impossible,” Blues said.