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by Jason Bennett
Chapter 5
“Come on in, Ozzie,” Donovan Pagliocci greeted me at the front door of his townhouse.
“What the fuck happened to your face? It looks like you stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson.”
“It’s a very long story. I’ll tell you later."
“I’ve been thinking, and I think I have the answer to get your mind off of Dianne.”
“I already asked that girl out, and she said yes.”
“You did?” He stopped short.
“I did. We’re going out later this week.”
“I’m proud, Ozzie. I was beginning to think you’d never get past Dianne.”
“I’m not really sure I am. I’m just. . . I don’t know. . . testing the waters?”
“Fair enough.”
“Listen, Donnie, I need to know what’s up. I need to know what you know.” I sat down on the couch and Donnie handed me a Jack and Coke.
The game had been a wash, their pitcher throwing a career game – some bum that would never even be a real prospect, I had seen him throw several times before – striking out 14 and allowing only two hits. Not even Castro or Akers could hit him. We lost 5-0, the game ending in a once-in-a-lifetime triple play in the bottom of the ninth. James Washington, leading off the inning, beat out a slow grounder for only our second hit of the game. Akers was up next, and drew a walk, so with no outs, we had two on in the bottom of the inning.
Then Silvio Castro, the hard-hitting, bulky first baseman came to the plate. He let two pitches pass, for a 1-1 count, then hit the next pitch on one hop directly to third base. The third baseman, playing him to pull anyway, took two steps forward and caught the laser-beam one-hopper while standing on the bag. He turned and fired to second, and their second baseman made the pivot, and almost knocked their first baseman off the bag with a throw that just beat the slow-running Castro to first. It was poetic. A perfectly executed 5-4-3 triple play.
After that I had quickly exited the stadium and driven directly to Donnie’s apartment. We arrived at the exact same time.
He paused for a moment.
“I don’t have much new, Ozzie,” he responded. “The only thing that came back from the lab is a straw. There was a straw on a mirror in her bedroom. The straw had a large amount of coke residue on it, and several fingerprints.”
“Whose?”
“Well, hers, of course.”
“Yeah.” I said. “That’s a given.”
“And one that matches Jake.”
“Just one?”
“Yeah, just one of Jake's.”
“Are you going to bring him in?”
Donnie stopped and thought for a moment. He looked at the floor in front of him. A plush carpet covered his living room floor. It was typical apartment-neutral color, but new and very clean. Everything in Donnie’s apartment, from his glass-top coffee table to the large mirror hanging above the white mantle, was perfectly clean and in place. I wondered to myself if it was because he was actually that meticulous, or if he just was never home to mess anything up.
“Are you going to bring him in, at least for questioning?” I repeated my question.
“I . . . yes, I am,” he balked, but came clean.
“Do you really think he did it?”
“I don’t know, Ozzie. Maybe. There’s some good circumstantial evidence, but the only physical piece I have is that fingerprint.”
I knew Donnie well enough to know that he would agonize over this. He always did. Regardless of what slime he knew Ellison was, he didn’t want to accuse the wrong person. Donnie’s interest in justice was too sincere to charge an innocent person of such a serious crime. He would tread lightly. I would nail the fuck just for hooking Olivia on coke. “I’m waiting on some more tests from the lab, but yes, I’ll probably bring him in.”
“Well let’s assume that he did it. He wouldn’t have had to break in, yes?”
“Correct. There was no forced entry.”
“That’s one against him,” I said. “And I did see the two of them together the other day. And like I told you then, they weren’t getting along.”
“That’s true, Ozzie,” Donnie refilled my glass with Irish whisky. “But that’s barely even circumstantial evidence.”
“In her room, I found this picture.” I showed him the picture of Colby and Olivia together. “Evidently they had been dating for a couple months. I talked to Colby about it today."
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He told me she had been using a lot recently. Enough even to scare him off.”
“Shit, Ozzie, we knew she was using.”
“Yeah.”
“I really need to wait a day or two.”
“Did Levin get a hold of you?”
“No, I’ve been out all day.”
“Good. If he does, please just be vague.”
“I won’t say anything until I know anything, Ozzie, you know that.”
“Good. I just don’t want Jerry dragged through the mud about this.”
I kept my eyes down.
“What happened to you, Ozzie?” He sat across the room from me, in a recliner. “Who beat you up?”
I knew I needed to tell him what happened, and what Ellison had told me.
“Last night, I went to the Pub. I knew Ellison probably would be there.”
“Oh shit, Ozzie,” Pagliocci stood up and walked over to me. “What did you do?”
“Nothing, nothing,” I said. “I didn’t say anything to him. I couldn’t. I was too pissed off. I just took a swing and he and his buddies started pounding on me.”
“So you missed him.”
“Yes, I missed.”
His dire expression cracked slightly. “They got you good then, huh?”
“Yeah. I’m not all that worried about it, though.” I finished the drink in my hand and set it on the table in front of me. “Donnie, Ellison told me that his car had been impounded the day before the murder, and that he had been in Chicago trying to get it out for two days. It sounds like he wasn’t even in town when Olivia was killed.”
Pagliocci didn’t miss a beat. “Of course he’ll say he was out of town. We’ll just have to verify that alibi, or, rather, shoot it down.”
“What if he’s not lying? What if he really was out of town?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, look at the facts.”
He stood up and poured himself another drink, then offered me one. I held out my glass, as the whisky was slowly helping the Tylenol dull the pain in the bridge of my nose. I realized I probably should visit the emergency room and have an x-ray. But that would have to be tomorrow.
“Whoever killed her did not break in. She invited, or brought him in. And whoever it was knew where to look for valuables in the house. So it was someone who had been there before. Who had been inside before – at least enough to case the place a little.”
I continued his line of thought. “So she lets him in, and they do some coke, probably. Maybe they had been out for the evening, partying. Jerry said he had come home very late and found her. Then they argue about something – could be anything. They were arguing about a jacket, I think, when I saw them at the bar.”
“And he loses it and shoots her,” Donnie finished. "Then he vandalizes the place to make it look like a robbery. And as a bonus, he gets away with some pretty valuable stuff.”
“It makes perfect sense,” I said. “If he was in town.”
“I guess I’ll know more tomorrow. I’ll get all the results I need to really look into things. The reports from the coroner will be ready late in the afternoon, and after that I’ll probably get test results back from some preliminary forensic stuff. They’re still combing the scene, but they have a few things, now.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
I walked out of the apartment feeling lower than I had felt in a long time. I decided I just needed some sleep.
Sleep. It almost sounded foreign. Was it possible that it had been less than 24 hours since I found out that my friend Olivia had been killed? And in that time, I had been beaten up, lied to a fellow reporter, and withheld evidence from a police officer to help a friend. I ran the situation around in my head. I hardly knew where to go with it.
Maybe sleep was the answer.
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