Dead by Wednesday

If Sawyer or their boss knew that he was such a fool, Robert would never hear the end of it.

“No trouble,” he said.

* * *

ROBERT DROVE WITH an ease and competence that impressed Carmen. She’d grown up in the city and had been driving in it for years, but all the traffic still made her nervous. Raoul had been hinting that he was going to get to take driver’s education soon and that he’d need lots of practice hours. The thought of it made her ill. But she would do it. She would do anything for Raoul.

She pulled her cell phone from her purse, intending to check in with Liz. There was a missed call and a voice mail. She didn’t recognize the number.

She listened to the voice mail and felt sick. She played it again. Then let her phone drop back into her purse.

“What’s wrong?” Robert asked, checking his rearview mirror.

There was no reason to tell him. She’d been handling things on her own for a long time. She’d handle this, too.

“Carmen?” he said, his voice soft. “Was that Sage?”

She was so tired of being strong and so damn worried about Raoul. “That was Raoul’s homeroom teacher. She wanted me to know that Raoul is failing two of his classes. He rarely turns in homework and on the last essay test, over half of his answers were wrong.”

Robert nodded. “Is he a pretty good student, usually?”

“He’s always made the honor roll. Oh, my gosh, I’ve never gotten a call like this. Never dreamed I’d get one.”

“So talk to him. You’re good at that,” Robert said with an encouraging smile.

Carmen chewed on the corner of her lip. “It’s not just the grades. There’s something else going on but I have no idea what it is. He’s changing. Right in front of my eyes. He won’t talk to me. It’s as if he doesn’t even like me.”

Robert slipped the car into a parking place in front of her apartment, shut it off and turned toward her. “Look, take it from somebody who used to be a boy,” he said with a smile. “It’s tough being a freshman in high school. He likes you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

“That’s what Liz says.”

“She’s right.”

Carmen shook her head. “I know Raoul better than I know anybody. It’s been just the two of us for a long time. Our older brother, Hector, died when I was eighteen and Raoul was barely four. About a year later, our parents were killed in a car accident. I raised Raoul from that point.”

“You were really just a kid yourself. That was a big responsibility you took on.”

“I guess. It never entered my mind to do anything different. I was in college by then. We both did our homework at the kitchen table,” she said, smiling at the memory.

“Good bonding time,” Robert said.

She nodded. “I know him as well as I know myself. That’s how I know that there’s something else going on here. I just have to figure it out before it’s too late.” She swallowed hard. “Hector was shot by a rival gang member. He had just turned twenty.” She closed her eyes for just a second, then opened them and looked at him. “I can’t lose another brother. I just can’t.”

“You lost a great deal in a short period of time. Yet you went on, made a good life for yourself and your brother. It could not have been easy.”

He seemed so sincere in his praise. She hadn’t told him to impress him. She’d just wanted him to understand.

“I’ll figure something out,” she said, trying to change the subject.

“I could talk to him,” Robert said.

It was a nice offer but it wouldn’t work. “He doesn’t know you. He’s not going to trust you.”

Robert shrugged. “Okay. So I get to know him. Invite me over for dinner tonight. I’ll pick something up on my way—maybe Chinese?”

“That’s impossible,” she blurted out.

“Okay. No Chinese. Italian? Although we just had pizza,” Robert said.

He was deliberately misunderstanding her. “I’m sure you have better things to do than have dinner with a paranoid twenty-nine-year-old and a snarling teenage boy.” When Liz had first started dating Sawyer, she’d confided that Robert was a bit of playboy.

“You’re not paranoid, and unless he’s rabid, I can take a little snarling from a fifteen-year-old.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to do this,” Carmen said, shaking her head.

“Come on. It’s my version of community service,” he said easily. “You’re not going to deny me the opportunity for that, are you?”

Chapter Four

From Carmen’s apartment, Robert drove directly back to the police station. When he got there, he saw that Alderman Franconi was in Lieutenant Fischer’s office. The door was closed, but the blinds were open just enough that Robert and every other person in the squad room understood that Alderman Franconi wasn’t happy.

He made eye contact with Sawyer, who was sipping on a cup of coffee and eating some kind of pastry. He had a newspaper spread out on his desk. The headline said it all. Police Frustrated with Lack of Progress.

Frustrated? Oh, yeah.

As was the alderman, who spent another three minutes in the lieutenant’s face before turning and leaving. When he walked through the squad room, he didn’t look at or talk to anyone. Once he was out of the room, all heads turned toward the lieutenant’s office. The man was standing in the door, not looking any worse for wear. It would take more than a frustrated alderman to rattle him.

“Well,” Lieutenant Fischer said, his tone dry. “As you may have gathered, Alderman Franconi wants us to find the killer and string him up at Daley Plaza. Or we’ll all be looking for new work.”

Nobody reacted to the last line. It was this particular alderman’s style to threaten jobs. He did it when the crowd control at the summer festivals didn’t go well. He was certainly going to do it now. The alderman was a jerk about most things. He did have a dead nephew, however, so everybody was more inclined to cut him some slack.

Robert didn’t have to have family to understand family. It had just been his mom and him, with a progression of husbands and live-ins over the years. His mom had been married five times, no, make that six. He sometimes forgot number four. That one had lasted less than six months. One had continued on for five years but Robert was convinced that was because the man was an over-the-road trucker and gone most of the time. That was actually the one guy he’d liked.

The weird thing was, his mother wasn’t a bad person. People generally liked her. She was the life of the party. Had a good sense of humor, knew how to tell a joke. She drank too much, perhaps. But she was a pleasant drunk, not a mean one. She mostly made bad choices. Because she couldn’t stand being without a man, couldn’t stand being alone. And so whatever loser came along got credit for having testosterone, and was immediately a viable prospect.

Robert had been three when his biological dad had been killed in a car accident. His mother, who had been a beautiful woman with her blond hair and green eyes, had remarried within the year, although Robert didn’t even remember that guy.

Now, if he felt inclined to ever look back, which he did not, the only way he could keep the parade straight in his head was to go to the pictures that his mother had stuffed in a shoe box. Every year, on his birthday, she’d taken a picture. And the man of the hour had always been in one of the shots.

None of them had been inclined to adopt him, or maybe his mother had never wanted that. He wasn’t sure. From a very early age, before he even knew what the word meant, he’d considered them boarders in his home. There but not important. Certainly not family.

Her latest husband was retired military. He wore black shoes that always had a nice shine and he grew orchids in the small garden behind their house. His name was Norman. She called him Normie.

The man didn’t say much when Robert visited. But then again, getting a word in edgewise was a feat when his mother was revved up. As Sawyer would say, she could talk the ears off a chicken.

Robert sat down at his desk and was surprised to see two pink message slips in Tasha’s scrawling handwriting. Hardly anybody left messages anymore. They either knew him well enough to call his cell phone or they left a voice mail on his office line.

These were both personal. One from Mandy, the other from Janine. They both had his cell number.