Suspect, p.29
Suspect, page 29
“Literally,” I repeat. “Okay, so what’s the answer?”
“She talks to you.”
“The woman who didn’t want to talk to me two months ago?”
“Well, first of all, I told her that it would be for her protection. And second of all, you guys kind of passed the test.”
“Explain.”
“You never revealed where you got the PI’s reports you sprung on Walter on cross. Cornish always believed that Paulette had never seen that stuff. To prevent Walt from going postal on her for having him followed, Paulette’s lawyer told Walter’s attorney that he’d hired the PI and wanted to keep the affidavits counsel to counsel, so he could spare Paulette.”
I’m not following. “Well, how did Walt think we dug up the reports?”
“According to what their son told Paulette, Walter stiffed his own divorce lawyer on most of his fee, so Walter figured this attorney was a pal of Rik’s and got even by handing off the file to you guys, under the table.”
Cops think lawyers are scumbags and will always act like scumbags. I think that’s what they mean by ‘prisoner of your own misconceptions.’
“Okay. So I talk to Paulette.”
“And then you talk to me. But you won’t give me her name or any identifiers; she’s just another source of yours. She’s behind the CI wall.”
This, to say the least, is rather artificial, but it will keep Tonya from having to cough up Paulette’s name to the FBI, who might be less concerned about protecting her from Walter. It will all probably come to nothing anyway, given the crazy suspicions Tonya says Paulette always has about her ex.
About six p.m. that night, I am standing near the entrance of City Market with a shopping cart in which I’ve placed a few cans of dog food, when a tiny lady with short hair and a nose that’s completely red at the tip gently nudges her own cart next to mine.
“You recognized me?” I ask quietly, and she laughs out loud. One advantage of having a nail through your nose. We walk side by side down the aisles. This is the same place where the Chief and Wanda DeGrassi played the supermarket version of demolition derby.
When Paulette turns back from her first stop, a shelf with eighteen different varieties of Cheerios, she says to me, casually, “Here, you can borrow this bag. Just give it back when you can.” She plops a reusable red cloth bag in my basket. I can see the edge of another bag made of green plastic inside, but for obvious reasons, I act oblivious.
Paulette is about five feet tall, and if you were being unkind, you’d say she’s mousy, but she has really good energy—bright eyes and a generous smile. She’s in a shirtwaist dress of pastel plaids and ballet slippers. I always start out with a favorable impression of short women who don’t go for six-inch heels.
“So my son, Rudy,” she says, “my baby, he’s a senior in high school. And he still spends Wednesday nights with his dad, and every other weekend. And Walter’s an okay dad. Even I’ll admit that.
“So our agreement is Walter brings Rudy back Thursday mornings in time for me to drive him to school on my way to work. And Rudy, he’s a kid—”
“Wait,” I say. “What day are we talking about?”
As Tonya thought, Paulette’s referring to the Thursday Blanco’s body was discovered—the morning after Dr. Potter figures Frito died.
Paulette goes on with her story. “We drive half a block and Rudy says he forgot his calculus book. There’s time, so I circle back and—this is weird—Walter’s still there. He’s got the lid to my garbage can open. Rudy runs back inside for the book, and I say, ‘Walt, whatcha doin?’ ‘Just had some trash in the car. You ain’t gonna charge me, are you?’ Ha ha ha. He yucks it up. He thinks he can lie to everybody, but I lived with this guy too long. I just stare him down until he leaves. I can see from the way he’s looking back and forth to the garbage can that he’s thinking of taking whatever he dropped in there with him, but it’s Walt, and that would mean he was giving in to me.
“He drives off, and as soon as he’s gone, I get out of my car and look in the trash and there’s that green plastic bag that’s in your cart now. I was just throwing it in the trunk when Rudy came back, and I’m like, ‘Doesn’t your dad have garbage service at that building?’ And Rudy is like—” She grabs my arm and stops her cart. “Nobody hears about any of this, right?”
“You and I will discuss whatever I’m going to say to Tonya. And I’ll only say what you decide. Just like I told you on the phone.”
“Okay, okay.” She nods and moves ahead. “Rudy says his dad has been kind of running deviant code, as he puts it, since the night before. Rudy was in his room studying late Wednesday night when Walt put his head in and said he had to go out for work. Which happens. He’s a building manager and, you know, nothing breaks at the right time. But Rudy says his dad’s got like a doctor’s bag with him, which is odd, cause this guy, he doesn’t even like doctors. And then Rudy says his dad doesn’t come back until after Rudy’s alarm goes off for school. And Walt’s grouchy as hell at breakfast. You know, ‘Eat your fucking Pop-Tart, I didn’t get any sleep.’”
“Did Rudy say Walter had that bag that ended up in your trash with him when they left for your place?”
“Rudy had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about trash pickup at Walter’s. But can you believe this? The bastard is throwing his syringes in my trash? I don’t know what he’s shooting, but can you imagine that? He wants to get rid of it, and he remembers my garbage gets collected first thing Thursday a.m. So I don’t know if it’s a police matter or not, but if he’s some kind of drug addict now, I don’t want him within fifty miles of my kids. Some of those guys in Narcotics, the Ritz especially, they liked that stuff. Walter always claimed he’d never go near it. But Ritz is a bad influence, right?”
The timing fits, if I’m doing the math correctly.
“I don’t want to look now, obviously,” I say, “but what’s in that bag exactly?”
“You’ll see. A couple used syringes and a pair of those rubberized plastic gloves. I don’t know anything about this stuff, but maybe the gloves can be stretched out so he could use them to tie off? Isn’t that what they call it when they try to get their veins to pop out?”
That doesn’t sound like a good guess to me, but what I say is, “I assume it’s okay if I get this to Tonya?”
“And no one knows it came from me, I mean not on paper.”
“Exactly. We’ll let them analyze it, and then Tonya will get back to me and I’ll get to you.”
I part from her then, since the less time we spend together in public the better. If anybody asks, we met through Tonya and were just saying hello. But before I wave goodbye, she says, “You should come with Tonya one week to St. Stephen’s. You might like it more than you think.”
She’s a nice person, she means this kindly, and it’s important to her, so I just say, “You can never tell.”
I get in the Cadillac and look in the bag, and the air goes out of my tires. What she called ‘syringes’ look like EpiPens, each a white cylinder with the needle inside inserted via a green plunger on the other end. There’s a brand name printed on the pens, and I turn them carefully through the bag until I can read it. After I google, it’s clear that Paulette has unraveled Walter Cornish’s deep, dark secret—he has become an insulin-dependent diabetic.
Dead end again.
31. The FBI Interrogation of Walter Cornish
The FBI interrogation of Walter Cornish takes place on August 1 in the Bureau offices down at Federal Square in DuSable on Monday afternoon, one week after my meeting with Paulette. The Chief and Rik and I get to see the video that night.
Moses Appleton informed Rik about four p.m. today that both he and Jonetta Dunphy, the local prosecutor, have determined that the Chief is no longer a person of interest in connection with Blanco’s death. Therefore, Moses suggested Lucy watch the video to determine on her own what further role she should have in the Blanco investigation, although he hinted pretty clearly that she should have none. I was invited because I’m the one who produced the insulin pens and, given Walter’s responses, might have further info to get or give via my informant (Paulette). Rik is here, too, mostly out of FOMO (fear of missing out), but he also has a legitimate reason to be present, since the Chief may need legal advice before deciding whether she should resume supervision of her department’s share of the investigation.
This viewing takes place in a conference room in the FBI field office in Greenwood County, which is a little storefront that could be the site of an insurance agency. Rik didn’t want us showing up together in Center City, where reporters might take it to mean that the Chief was under further suspicion. With us are the heads of the investigation for the two law-enforcement agencies that have been cooperating with pretty good success, Tonya from the Highland Isle PD and Don Ingram from the Bureau. Don is an uber-quiet Black dude who I met before on one of Pops’s cases. He’s super competent and looks like a former jock, like many Bureau agents, but he’s a little like Koob in that he seems to rehearse anything he says several times in his head before letting go of the words. Tonya likes him a lot and says he’s on the FBI fast track. He will become the ASAC—Assistant Special Agent in Charge—in the FBI field office in Philadelphia next year.
Before Don runs the tape, Tonya gives us the backstory. Walter was accosted by Don and a female agent, Linda Farro, as he was collecting rents at several of Vojczek’s east side buildings, not that far from where Blanco’s corpse was discovered. The Feebies showed Walter their credentials in their black leather wallets and frisked him immediately, taking the pistol they knew he would be carrying. He was wearing Kevlar, too, which he’d told us was his practice when extracting rent payments in that part of town.
Tonya watched the initial stop from a car across the street, where she and two other FBI agents were waiting as backup. If there is never another great moment in her life in law enforcement, Tonya says, it has all been worth it to see the look on Walter’s face when the agents showed him their creds. Apparently, his head jolted back slightly, all the bullshit and attitude falling from his expression as he raised his hands halfway up, like he was going to surrender. Tonya adds that she will always believe Walter was hearing her earlier warnings to him screaming in his head.
The agents requested Walter to come downtown. Walter asked if he had any choice, and Don, in his usual way of saying as little as possible, replied that right now they were making a request. He never stated that if Walter said no, he would be arrested, because that would have triggered Miranda warnings, but Walter seemed to take heart from hearing this was voluntary, pepping up a little and putting on his oily smile, ready to try to bullshit his way out of this.
The tape begins as Walter enters a conference room with Don. It’s a little bigger than ours at Rik’s office but far from stylish, with low gray tweedy-type swivel chairs and a table, shiny with the cheap gleam of its laminate top. Three other people soon follow Walter in, starting with Moses Appleton, the United States Attorney, who Walter would recognize from TV. Moses has brought one of his favorite assistants, Dan Feld, a tall slim intense guy with a mass of shiny black hair, more dramatic than Frito’s. He was Moses’s trial partner on Pops’s and my aunt’s last trial. Moses is kind of a square, both in terms of his manner and his build. As my Aunt Marta, his close friend, says, Moses comes from a background, growing up in the Grace Street Projects, that has left him unable to fathom paying more than $149 for a suit. He’s got a rough complexion that makes him look like he’s never fully shaved, and an old-fashioned mustache above his lip that he probably keeps because he’s afraid his wife and kids wouldn’t recognize him without it. My aunt says he has a better sense of humor in private than you would guess, but in this kind of setting he’s all business, never riled but also not wasting much energy on charm—he’s the chief federal prosecutor in a metro area of three million people, so fuck charm anyway. As soon as Walter sees him, he knows that his balls are in a vise, since the United States Attorney wouldn’t be here just because he’s heard that Cornish is an amusing guy to hang with.
Don starts the conversation, telling Walter that this meeting is being videotaped and that any statements Walter makes can be used against him. If he likes, Walter may simply listen.
Walter, being Walter, adds, “Yeah, that’s what we said. I’m just gonna listen.”
The last person to come in is Tonya, who has the injection pens, rubber gloves and green plastic bag in three thick transparent envelopes, sealed off with wide orange FBI tape that says EVIDENCE in big black letters every couple inches—pretty intimidating in itself.
As we’re watching on the TV monitor in the side room of the field office, Toy says to the Chief and me, “We knew it would throw him completely when he saw me.” Well aware of how much she hates certain kinds of guys, I realize she probably got quite a thrill out of strolling through the door.
On-screen, as soon as she’s put the evidence packets down, she says, “Walter, you know, you’re not supposed to put medical waste in the trash. There are some sanitation workers who would like to have a word with you.”
Walter has been staring at the injection pens since she placed them on the table. Without looking up, he finally says, “I knew that bitch would give me up. She’s been waiting her whole life for this. Her kids will never talk to her again.”
“Walter!” says Tonya sharply. “A couple things. One, I don’t know who you’re referring to, but I assume you mean a woman. So you should know that it was a CI, someone who’s ex–law enforcement, who handed this stuff over to us.”
“Yeah, if that twat had nothing to do with this, then how come I’m sitting here?” Walter says. He means, how would they know the automatic syringes and gloves have any connection to him?
“We’ll get to that,” says Tonya. “But the second thing I wanted to say is that if you think your ex gave us this stuff, then threatening a federal witness in the presence of the US Attorney, an assistant US Attorney and two FBI agents—well, that would be so low-level stupid that I wouldn’t even believe it about you. But since you’re wrong about her, you may get away with that one.”
Walter absorbs all that.
“I think I want a lawyer,” he says at last.
Moses speaks up then.
“Mr. Cornish, you’re certainly entitled to a lawyer at any time. But since we all know that the lawyer you mentioned to Detective Eo, Melvin Tooley Jr., is bound hand and foot to Moritz Vojczek, you might want to wait a bit. Because once Mr. Vojczek is on alert about all of this, then your bargaining power is going to be steeply reduced.”
“I’m not turning on Ritz,” says Walter. “I didn’t do anything anyway, and even if I did, I’d never dime out the Ritz.”
“Well,” says Moses, “I’m not certain you fully appreciate your situation. Why don’t you let Detective Eo tell you a bit more.” Moses nods to Tonya.
“Walter,” she says, “let’s get straight on something to start. You know, just asking around the station, no one ever heard anything about you being diabetic. Are you a diabetic?”
“No,” he says. “And that shit’s not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He points at the pens.
“Each of these pens, Walter, was wiped with alcohol to remove any fingerprints. But the insides of the needle and the dosing cylinder, the ampoule, you couldn’t get to them, and they are positive for the presence of a drug called carfentanil. Did you ever hear of that?”
“Nope,” says Walter.
“Well, it’s like fentanyl on steroids. It’s a hundred times the strength of fentanyl and ten thousand times more potent than morphine. And you might be interested to know that Dr. Potter reanalyzed Lieutenant Blanco’s blood and urine and his hair samples, and there is a heavy presence in all those specimens of this drug, carfentanil. That’s what killed him. An overdose of carfentanil.”
“That’s bullshit, too,” says Walter. “How I hear it, the tox screen on Frito turned up nothin.”
“The standard tox screen, Walter, doesn’t include carfentanil. Which the Ritz probably knows. Fentanyl, yes. But not this compound. That’s why we had no idea for so long how Blanco died.”
“I never heard of that shit. Those pens, whatever you call them, they don’t have nothing to do with me. You already told me, they been wiped. So there are no fingerprints.”
“Well, that’s peculiar, Walter, because when we received the injection pens and the gloves, they were together in a green plastic shopping bag with a drawstring. And I guess you were careful to carry the bag by the string, but you touched it at some point, because that bag has several of your prints on it. I would bet you didn’t wipe it carefully when you dropped the syringe and gloves inside or disposed of everything together. Even a hard guy like you gets a little panicky when you kill somebody.”
Walter shakes his head like he’s still not buying it.
“Someone’s setting me up and grabbed a bag I used to put me in this. Those pens, whatever they have in them, they ain’t mine and have nothin to do with me.”
“No, I’m sure you wiped them down. And when you did it, you were wearing these gloves, because the trace amounts of an isopropyl alcohol solution on the injection pens and the gloves are chemically identical: same bittering agents, same amount of water, identical concentration—sixty-eight percent—of actual alcohol.
“And you know, Walter, you’re kind of an old-fashioned cop. Your last decade on the job, you were pretty much on cruise control and didn’t bother learning a lot of new stuff. It wouldn’t have even crossed your mind that it was a hot summer night when you killed Frito.” She stares at Walter, while she waits for him to make the connection, which he doesn’t.
“You sweat in the summer, Walter. Especially in heavy rubber gloves. And when you perspire, you leave behind your DNA.”
