Body Work Part 7

"The client is the boss. His son is innocent. Get to work proving it," I said aloud in my sternest voice and phoned Mona Vishneski.

Mona had left her mother's as soon as she learned of her son's arrest, and was now back in Chicago. She was staying with her ex-husband in Wrigleyville, which John hadn't bothered to tell me. She agreed to meet me for a cup of tea at Lilith's, a little cafe on Southport near John's apartment, around five.

The snow had started again. Lilith's was six blocks from my apartment. With the ice and snow packed along the curbs making street parking a challenge, it was better to put my car in my building's alley garage and walk. I carried my laptop with me in a waterproof case.

It was already dark by the time I got to the cafe. The warmth and lights inside seemed feeble against the wind whipping snow pellets against the windows. I ordered a double macchiato and found a table as far from the door as possible.

While I waited for Mona, I started to download the reports LifeStory and the Monitor Project had given me on Olympia, Karen Buckley, and on Chad himself. I was especially curious about Karen, after her performance at Nadia's funeral.

The most important question-who had known whom and how-wasn't one the computer could answer reliably, although I took a stab at the question through Mys.p.a.ce and Facebook. Olympia had a Facebook page, but you had to have her permission to see any details, such as her cyberfriends. Chad had a Mys.p.a.ce page, but none of the women were among his "friends." I couldn't find Karen Buckley on any of the social networks.

Fis.h.i.+ng around to see where Karen's and Nadia's lives might have intersected, I checked to see if they had gone to art school together. I already had looked up Nadia's details-her training at Columbia College in the south Loop, her job at a big design firm, followed by precarious freelancing after she was laid off-but I couldn't find any information on Karen Buckley. A quick search revealed hundreds of Karen Buckleys-singers, quilters, doctors, lawyers-across the country, but only four dozen Karen Buckleys or K. Buckleys in our four-state area. About six of those seemed to match the Body Artist's race and age. None of them had a findable history as an artist.

Unlike most artists, who are at pains to tell you where they've trained, where they've held shows, what museums own their work, Karen's history wasn't just sketchy, it was missing altogether. She didn't list her education or her shows on the [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com website. She didn't offer any personal information at all.

I needed her Social Security number, but I couldn't find a home address for her, let alone a credit history that might yield information on her background. I went back to [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com. If you had to pay her for her work, she must have a bank account or a credit card somewhere, but she took payment only through PayPal, which meant she could be collecting the money under another name, maybe even in another state.

I sat back in my chair. Here was a woman who was aggressive in exposing herself before audiences and yet she'd left no trail in our hyper-doc.u.mented age. I could imagine a fear of stalkers might require total anonymity in her life these days, but it was strange that someone so purposefully self-exposing left no public trace of her private life.

I transferred addresses for the handful of K. Buckleys who might be the Body Artist. I could do old-fas.h.i.+oned legwork, see if any of them had a home studio, but I wasn't expecting to find her.

I was so lost in thought, and files, that I didn't notice Mona Vishneski until she appeared at my table and hesitantly said my name.

"Ms. Vishneski!" I sprang to my feet.

She was a lost-looking woman around my age, her clothes hanging on her, as if worry over her son had made her lose a dress size overnight. Close up, I could see how rough her skin was; she didn't seem to have washed her face or combed her hair since Chad's arrest. She took off her gloves and then looked at them puzzled, trying to figure out what they were. She was carrying a scuffed leather handbag, big enough to hold a computer and a change of clothes. She finally stuck her gloves into one of its side pockets.

"John told me he hired you to clear Chad's name. I used to work with detectives back when I was managing a building for Mercurio. We'd hire them to find out where people had skipped off to without paying their rent, but I don't remember we ever hired you."

I agreed that I'd never worked for Mercurio. Companies that size tend to use big agencies, not solo ops like me.

"But, Ms. Vishneski, your husband-ex-husband-hired me to find out what happened Friday night at Club Gouge. You both need to understand, however painful it is to think about, that the evidence points to your son having shot Nadia Guaman."

"If you think he's guilty, then I don't think we should be working with you." Her eyes were bright with emotion.

I kept my voice level. "I'm committed to approaching this situation with an open mind. But I can't ignore evidence, and the evidence is that the murder weapon was found next to Chad. Another thing: I was present myself for two extremely angry encounters between your son and Nadia Guaman. I plan to look into their relations.h.i.+p, to see what lay behind his rage. But if you'd be more comfortable working with one of the detectives you used to know at Mercurio, I can respect that. If Mr. Vishneski agrees, then we'll void the contract he signed yesterday and return his retainer. I would ask you to pay the fee my lawyer is charging for providing the court order we needed to move Chad from the prison hospital to Beth Israel."

Mona Vishneski s.h.i.+fted her weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable at being put on the spot.

"Do you want to think about it overnight?" I suggested.

"Oh, I guess we should go ahead, if we're going to do anything at all." Her shoulders sagged again as the anger went out of her. "John said you've done criminal work and that you come highly recommended. It's not that I'm not grateful for you getting a real hospital and good doctors for Chad. Just don't expect me to agree that my son shot a woman, when I know he never could have."

Clients who blow hot and cold, they're always the most annoying to work with. One day they want evidence at any cost, the next, they don't think you're up to the job. Maybe a smart detective would have voided the contract just to keep from being squeezed between a divorced couple. Instead, I bought Mona Vishneski a drink-ginseng peppermint tea-and ordered another macchiato for myself.

"Tell me about Chad's guns," I said when we were finally both sitting. "John says you wouldn't let him keep them in your apartment, but he did, anyway, didn't he?"

For a moment, her anger spurted up again, but then she made a little fluttery gesture like a b.u.t.terfly settling down. "I didn't like it, but where else could he keep them? He had two, which I hated, even though everyone in construction carries, even John. But you look at guns and you think of death. I asked Chad how he could stand having a gun anywhere near him after all the death he'd seen in Iraq, and he'd just say, 'No one's ever going to sneak up on me again.' Like the way suicide attackers and them sneak up on our troops in Iraq. Chad lost so many buddies there. It was just a miracle he didn't get killed himself that time his whole unit died around him." Like her ex-husband, she p.r.o.nounced the country I I-raq.

"I used to go to ma.s.s every week, thanking G.o.d for sparing me what so many other mothers had to bear, their sons dead or missing arms and legs. But watching how Chad's been since he got home-and now this-maybe I'm not so lucky. Maybe we'd all be better off if he had lost his legs instead of his mind."

"Mona!" a voice said. "How can you talk like that?"

It was John Vishneski. Mona and I had been so intent on each other that we hadn't noticed him come into the cafe.

"John!" Mona cried. "I told you I wanted to see this detective of yours for myself."

John gave the smile that seemed to crack his cheeks. I looked away, it was so painful to watch.

"I got too lonely sitting around the hospital," he said, "looking at Chad hooked up to all those machines. That Dr. Herschel, she's something, isn't she? The way she made those county so-and-sos stand up and salute, it's the one good thing I've seen this week. Mona, you want more tea? Do I order at the counter?"

"The Glock," I said to Mona while John was ordering drinks. "Was that one of Chad's guns?"

"How should I know? I told you, I hate them, I don't know one from another. You should ask those Army friends of his. They probably know."

"Ask his Army buddies what?" John Vishneski said, pulling up a chair. "About his guns? Chad didn't own-"

"John, what's the point in lying?" Mona asked. "When it's you who used to take him to target practice?"

"It's not a crime, is it, to teach your own son how to handle a gun?" Vishneski cried.

"You know the Glock is his, and you can't bring yourself to acknowledge it," I said in a flat voice.

Vishneski reached for his cigarettes, as he seemed to do any time he didn't want to talk about something. Studying the pack, not me, he said, "Not know, not for sure. Before he s.h.i.+pped out, he had two, a Beretta and a Smith and Wesson. I kept them while he was overseas, but when he came home and I saw how . . . how . . . well, how he was, I worried he might hurt himself, so I told him there'd been a break-in, someone had stole those guns out of my place. But I'm pretty sure he went down to Indiana, picked up something down there. You can, you know-no one even wants to see your driver's license. So maybe he does own a Baby Glock, how do I know?"

The hair at the nape of my neck p.r.i.c.kled. "Mr. Vishneski, everything you're saying makes Chad sound unstable. Why do you think he didn't kill Nadia Guaman?"

Vishneski sucked in a breath as if it were a lungful of smoke. "s.h.i.+t, Ms. Warshawski-sorry, ladies-you have to know Chad. He might have put a bullet through his own self to put an end to his nightmares, but he wouldn't go out killing some girl in an alley. Or anywhere else. He just wouldn't. He wasn't that kind of boy."

Mona nodded vigorously: Chad wasn't that kind of boy.

None of us spoke. I listened to the espresso machine hiss and to the snow sting the window. The bad weather, the awful economy, they had already pushed my spirits low without adding an unstable Iraq vet to the mix. I wanted to get up and walk away, but the Vishneskis were both looking at me as if I were all that tethered them to the planet.

"Okay," I finally summoned the energy to speak. "Chad's friends that he hung around with since getting home, how do I get in touch with them? Mr. Vishneski said there's one called Marty, another one named Tim something."

"Tim Radke," Mona said. "Marty, I don't know what his last name is. Probably they're on the speed dial on Chad's phone."

Chad's phone was still at her apartment. When the cops rushed him to the hospital Sat.u.r.day morning, they'd left everything behind-phone, wallet-everything but his Army dog tags and his field jacket. He'd been wearing those.

"That's why I went to stay at John's," Mona said. "It got me down too much, all his stuff, and then the police, they broke down the door when they came to get him. Why did they have to do that? And it's me that has to pay to repair it. The city sure won't! I should have been here instead of in Arizona. My ma, she's got nurses around her, she only made me come down so she could run me around. I should have been here taking care of Chad. Shouldn't have expected that John would know how to keep him out of trouble."

"Mona!" Vishneski expostulated.

I interrupted before they could get into the kind of argument that probably led to their divorce all those years ago: she said, he didn't do, back and forth. We agreed, all three of us, to go to her apartment, where I could collect the phone and study Chad's habitat to see if he'd left any clues about his life that could prove his innocence.

We gathered up our things and walked out into the storm. The wind drove fine snow between my m.u.f.fler and my sweater, and seemed to be scouring my face down to the bone. By the time we'd reached John's Honda, a block from Lilith's, even he was panting. Mona sat in front, staring at the snow. I dozed in the backseat while John crept the two miles to her apartment.

12.

Shooting Up.

Mona lived in an old building that had probably been rather grand when it went up in the 1920s. Back then, each of the six floors held only two apartments, those big ten-room jobs with a cubicle behind the kitchen for the maid. In the nineties, some developer had gutted the place, converting grandeur into shoe boxes.

The elevator itself was a small box, barely big enough to hold the three of us. Husband and wife-ex-husband, ex-wife-moved together unconsciously as we rode to the fourth floor.

When we got off, Mona's apartment was obvious at once: wooden slats were nailed across the hole left by the cops and a padlock had been screwed into the wall to keep the door shut. The sight was ugly and shocking. Mona's hand shook as she burrowed in her giant bag for her keys. John silently accepted the scarf, the book, the billfold, the wad of tissues she pulled out as she hunted.

I had that p.r.i.c.kly feeling that makes you think someone is watching you. When I turned to look, I didn't see anyone, but down the hall there was a soft thud as a door was quickly shut. Some neighbor cared that we were here. I wondered if it was the woman who'd been screaming on television that she'd sue the condo board, that Mona Vishneski ought to be thrown out.

At last, Mona located her key ring, a plait of twisted metal, as laden with keys as a medieval jailer's. It seemed to take her forever to go through them as she muttered, "No, that's Ma's storage locker . . . Oh, I think that's Chad's bike lock." I resisted the desire to push her aside and work my picks into the lock.

When she finally had her door open and had stretched an arm around the corner for a light switch, I peered over her shoulder into the long rectangle that made up her living s.p.a.ce. It had probably been an attractive shoe box a week ago, before the police tracked mud and salt across the newly sanded wooden floors and the area rugs that dotted them. One wall was lined with blond built-in shelves and cupboards.

Craning my head, still staying near the front door, I saw a stereo and a flat-screen TV. Mona didn't have many books, but the shelves around the TV held pottery and treen, those small wooden objects whose original purpose always baffles me. The pieces were unexpected, and I looked at Mona again. What other unexpected depths might lie beneath that flat surface?

The kitchen stood at the far end, separated from the main room only by a kind of work island or maybe peninsula, since it was attached to the wall at one end.

Mona and John started into the room, but I put out an arm to hold them back.

"What all have you handled in here since you came home?"

Mona was startled. "I don't know! How can I remember? The phone. I called an emergency service to put up the board and the padlock, like you saw just now, a place I used to use when I was at Mercurio. They remembered me and came right away, and while I was waiting, I'm sure I had a gla.s.s of water.

"I went into the bathroom. It was such a mess in there, Chad probably hadn't even washed the tub while I was gone. I wondered if he'd taken his toothbrush." She gave a hiccup which was half sob. "I stood looking at the sink and shaking my head over his messy ways like he wasn't in a coma. They don't know if he'll recover, but you think these things automatically after twenty-five years: have you washed your hands, have you brushed your teeth."

John put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

"I cleaned the sink. It . . . I don't know, cleaning . . . When I'm upset, I clean."

When I'm upset, I add to the landfill in my apartment. And then I'm more upset because the apartment is squalid. I wondered if there were drugs that could turn you into a neat freak.

"Then I went to my closet; I needed to get some sweaters. It wasn't this cold in Phoenix, of course, and I knew I'd freeze to death at John's, he doesn't pay for heat, and-"

"Do you have to go through every detail of every sweet minute of your life?" John asked, his moment of empathy pa.s.sing.

"Okay, okay," I said. "You touched everything."

"Is that bad?"

"If someone came in while Chad was asleep and planted the gun on him, it will be harder to find that someone's traces, that's all."

"So you do believe he didn't shoot that woman?" she said eagerly.

"Oh, Mona, why'd you have to go destroying evidence?" John said.

"How was I to know?" she defended herself hotly. "It's not like you were doing-"

"Please." I put my hands up traffic cop style. "Don't argue, least not on my dime. It doesn't help the investigation. And before you get too carried away blaming Mona for her gla.s.s of water, look at the mud and scratches the cops left behind. If someone else was here ahead of them, the police did a good job of wiping out all signs of them. Let me see the bedroom."

Mona took me across the big room to her bedroom. Parting the blinds, I looked out at an enclosed courtyard, big enough for a bit of garden and some tables and chairs. The skeleton of a swing set rose out of the snow.

The building had been carved up in a way that created small alcoves in the bedroom. One held a desk, where Chad had left a partly eaten chicken dinner on top of a heap of bills and papers. While I inspected the bed, I heard Mona clucking over the bills under her breath.

Chad promised to pay the phone bill and the car insurance, but here are the envelopes not even opened! And Chad's MasterCard . . . Who let him have a credit card when he didn't have any income?

"And these holes in the wall!" she cried out so loudly that John came into to the room.

We both went to look at the wall. Three ovals that cut deep into the drywall made a little triangle over the desk. The paint had come away in a lip around each hole.

"They weren't here before you left for Arizona?"

"My goodness, no. You notice a thing like that. Was he trying to put up a picture?"

"I think he was using your wall for target practice."

"Shooting at a wall? Chad? But that's just ridiculous!"

I took a letter opener from the desktop and dug around in the lath behind the drywall. I was able to recover one bullet, which I showed the Vishneskis. Both of them were shocked; Mona suggested in a feeble voice that one of Chad's friends had come home drunk with him and shot at the wall.

"It's possible, of course," I agreed, but I thought about the way Chad had behaved when I'd seen him in Club Gouge. He was angry enough, and drunk enough, to do just about anything. A disheartening thought, if I was the lead member of the defense team.

John shouted, "So what if he shot up the wall? It doesn't mean he shot that gal at the nightclub. Means he knew to take his anger out on a wall, not a person."

I smiled and patted his arm. "Right you are. I'm going to finish searching in here. You go find me some clean garbage bags for things I want to show to my forensic lab."

Vishneski left the room, relieved to get away from the empty beer cans, the moldy chicken dinner. Mona continued to hover behind me, talking worriedly under her breath.

The bed was unmade, of course. The cops had come in, guns drawn. Everyone knew Chad was big and angry, so they'd tossed the duvet aside, grabbed him as he lay there, cuffed him. Maybe it was then they realized he was unconscious, not asleep. And the Glock that had killed Nadia Guaman, where had it been? I sniffed tentatively at the pillow and detected a hint of sour vomit but not of gunpowder.

I didn't think the cops had searched the room, but, even if they had, I would bet they'd overlooked something. I started with Chad's Army duffel bag, which sat open on the far side of Mona's bed. It was like a mountain spring, with clothes spilling out into a small stream that eddied around the bed and the floor. I photographed the bag and the room with my cell phone before touching anything.

"Why are you doing this?" Mona asked. "What good does it do to see Chad's mess?"

"We'll know what it looks like today so if someone comes in and rummages, we'll be able to tell."

The chaos seemed overwhelming. I poked through the clothes Chad had dropped on the floor, not sure if it was worth taking any of them to the lab for forensic a.n.a.lysis. Most of his wardrobe seemed to be left over from his Army service-fatigues; a second, summer-weight field jacket. He had a handful of civilian T-s.h.i.+rts, including one with Bart Simpson copping an att.i.tude. I felt in the pockets of the field jacket and the jeans and found the usual detritus of modern life: ATM receipts, a stick of gum, the earpiece for his iPod. None of it seemed particularly meaningful.

My shoulders drooped as I looked around at the rest of the room. Empty beer cans littered the place; two were buried in the duvet. I photographed them in situ in situ with my cell phone, then picked them up, using a corner of a sheet to hold them. I laid them next to the pillowcase, ready to pack into a bag. with my cell phone, then picked them up, using a corner of a sheet to hold them. I laid them next to the pillowcase, ready to pack into a bag.

Mona clicked her teeth. "Chad never was really tidy, but when he got back from the war it all got worse. I knew he was drinking. You don't like to think that about your child, but if I called after six or so I could tell by his voice. We tried to get him to go to a counselor, John and me both, and he did see this lady at the VA for a bit. But then he said she was just a waste of time, and he wouldn't go back-"

"You said his phone was still here," I cut in, "but I don't see it."