Her reference to Chandonne’s attack on me is jarring. Even though Berger is simply doing her job, I am offended by her blunt objectivity. I am also put off by her evasiveness. I resent that she decides what we will discuss and when and for how long. I can’t help it. I am human. I want her to show at least a hint of compassion toward me and what I have endured. “Someone called the morgue this morning and identified himself as Benton Wesley.” I drop that one on her. “You heard from Rocky Marino Caggiano yet? What’s he up to?” Anger and fear sharpen my voice.
“We won’t hear from him for a while,” she says as if she knows. “Not his style. But it sure wouldn’t surprise me if he’s up to his old tricks. Harassment. Hurting. Terrorizing. Going for the sensitive spots as a warning, if nothing else. My guess is you’ll have no direct contact with him or even catch a whiff of him until closer to the trial. If you ever see him at all. He’s like that, the son of a bitch. Behind the scenes all the way.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment. She is waiting for me to lower the gate. “My opinion or speculation, all right,” I finally say. “That’s what you want? Fine.”
“That’s what I want. You’d make a pretty good second seat.” A reference to a second D.A. who would be her co-counsel, her partner during a trial. Either she has just paid me a compliment or she is being ironical.
“Diane Bray had a friend who came over quite often.” I take my first step out of bounds. I begin deducing. “Detective Anderson. She was obsessed with Bray. Bray seriously teased her, so it appears. I think it’s possible Chandonne watched Bray and gathered intelligence. He observed Anderson come and go. On the night of the murder, he waited until Anderson left Bray’s house”I stare out at it”and immediately went up to it, unscrewed the porch light, then knocked on the door. Bray assumed it was Anderson returning to resume their argument or make up or whatever.”
“Because they’d been fighting. They fought a lot,” Berger carries along the narrative.
“By all appearances, it was a tempestuous relationship.” I keep heading deeper into restricted airspace. I am not supposed to enter this part of an investigation, but I keep going. “Anderson had stormed off and come back in the past,” I add.
“You sat in on the interview with Anderson after the body was found.” Berger knows this. Someone has told her. Marino, probably.
“Yes, I did.”
“And the story of what happened that night while Anderson was eating pizza and drinking beer at Bray’s house?”
“They got into an argumentthis is according to Anderson. So Anderson left angry and soon after there is a knock on the door. The same pattern of knocking that Anderson always did. He imitated the way she knocked just as he imitated the police when he came to my house.”
“Show me.” Berger looks at me.
I knock on the console between the front seats. Three times, hard.
“This is how Anderson always knocked on the door? She didn’t use the doorbell?” Berger asks.
“You’ve been around cops enough to know that they hardly ever ring doorbells. They’re used to neighborhoods where doorbells don’t work, if they exist.”
“Interesting that Anderson didn’t come back,” she observes. “What if she had? Do you think Chandonne somehow knew she wasn’t going to come back that night?”
“I’ve wondered that, too.”
“Maybe just something he sensed about her demeanor when she left? Or maybe he was so out of control he couldn’t stop,” Berger ponders. “Or maybe his lust was stronger than his fear that he might be interrupted.”
“He may have observed one other important thing,” I say. “Anderson didn’t have a key to Bray’s house. Bray always let her in.”
“Yes, but the door wasn’t locked when Anderson came back the next morning and found the body, right?”
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t locked when he was inside attacking Bray. He hung out a closed sign and locked the convenience store while he was killing Kim Luong.”