Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [20]
Mac stood and stretched. “Time to walk the beast.”
“Maybe we should stop calling him that in front of him,” Annabel said, following Mac to the kitchen where Rufus’s leash hung from a wooden peg on the wall.
“What? Calling him ‘the beast’?”
“Yeah. Maybe it hurts his feelings.”
Mac looked at the blue Great Dane. “Are you offended, big guy?” he asked.
Rufus replied by clamping his large mouth on Mac’s wrist and wagging his tail.
“Somehow, Annie, I think Rufus’s ego is intact enough to overcome any emotional trauma. Be back in a flash.”
They kissed, and Mac and their child disappeared through the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SO, MR. PARTRIDGE, tell us again what you claim you saw.”
Detectives Klayman and Johnson, and Sergeant Hathaway, sat with the homeless man in an austere interrogation room at First District’s headquarters building. The cops had brought Partridge two candy bars and a Coke from a snack machine in the lobby, which he consumed with gusto, complaining later that he would have preferred cheeseburgers and a Pepsi.
Now, with something in his stomach other than whiskey, and benefiting from a few hours’ sleep and cold water splashed on his face, he sat at the scarred oak table with the bearing of a decrepit, disheveled CEO.
“I saw the man kill the woman,” he said, belching and twitching. His right shoulder kept coming up in an involuntary motion, matched by rapid blinking of his right eye.
“What were you doing back there?”
“Relaxing,” he said, pleased with his answer. “No law against a man being where he wants to be and relaxing.”
“You were sleeping it off,” Hathaway said.
“Just a nap. Takin’ a nap.” As though suddenly struck with a better answer, he shifted in his chair, lowered his voice, and said, “I was working undercover.”
“Is that so?” said Johnson. “Were you there in the alley all night—working undercover?”
“All night? No. Got lots of places I go to. Was there, maybe, an hour, maybe two. Got relieved, had to give my report to the director. I’m hungry.”
Johnson asked, “What did the man who killed the woman look like?”
“You hear me? I said I’m hungry. You want to talk to me, you got to feed me.”
“What did he look like, Mr. Partridge?”
Partridge shifted in his straight-back chair and grimaced against a pain somewhere in his body. His shoulder and facial tic intensified, then seemed to subside as he decided to answer. “He was big, a big and strong kind a’ guy. Mean-lookin’, too. Russian, I think.”
“Russian?”
“A mole. You can’t trust the Russkies. Commie bastards’ll stick it to you every way.”
Johnson sighed and stood. “How big?” he asked. “As big as me?” Partridge looked up at the six-foot-three-inch Johnson.
“Bigger.”
“Uh-huh.” Johnson sat.
“How old?” Klayman asked. He wished the session were over. He hated everything about the interrogation room, its institutional look, battered furniture, heavy metal grill over the only window, but most of all the harsh light from the twin fluorescent bulbs hanging over the table.
“How would I know how old he was?” Partridge replied. “Might have been a young punk, might have been an old one. You never can tell with them.”
“Maybe he was a young punk, huh? You know, twenty maybe, something like that?”
The old drunk’s face fell into a pout. His head came forward, his scraggly beard resting on his chest. He crossed his arms defiantly, looked up, and announced, “I have nothing more to say about it.” The detectives were silent. “Is there a reward?”
“Might be,” Hathaway replied. “Think you’d recognize the guy in a lineup?”
“How much is the reward?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I don’t want to stay here anymore. They’ll be wondering where I am.”
“Need a drink, Mr. Partridge?” Johnson said.
“I want my lawyer.”
“You’ve got a lawyer?” Hathaway asked, chuckling. He motioned for Klayman and Johnson to follow him from the room. “You just sit tight, Mr. Partridge. We want to go out and—talk about the reward.”
Partridge had a contented smile on his face as his questioners went to an area separated from the interrogation room by a large, one-way window through