“Sounds like you remember her too,” Lonergan said.
“I saw her.”
“At the bar,” Lonergan said. “Her being nineteen.”
“No law against pouring the kid a pop. Look, I get it. I’ve got grandkids. I can guarantee you she didn’t get served here. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Right,” Lonergan said. “You got footage of last night or not?”
Pike keyed up the playback on the security footage and then slid her chair back for the cops to gather in to get a better look.
Hoping not to see Keith Ainsley anywhere, Foster watched the screen as smoky images of the front of the house ran past, starting at around four the previous day. The camera faced the door, focusing on the south side of the bar and a few tables, mostly those closer to the window. There was Valentine working the bar, paying particular attention to the female clientele. The bar was crowded, everyone appearing to be in a good mood.
“Busy for a Sunday,” Pike offered, “thanks to the march. That meant dollars for us and every other place around here. Poor kid. How was she killed?”
Foster shook her head. “Sorry. Can’t discuss that.”
“The news said mugging,” Pike said. “We get a lot of that down here. Tourists mostly. They forget where they are and put their guards down. They call the police, of course, but it’s not like you people bust a sweat looking for anybody. But every incident impacts us, you know? People don’t feel safe, they don’t come out. They don’t come out, we don’t make money. We don’t make money, I end up living in a box under a bridge, and I don’t get to help my grandkids get to college. See how it goes? Last year, some idiot tossed a brick through my car window. Cops wouldn’t even come out to take the report.”
Lonergan turned from the screen to stare at Pike. “You file a complaint?”
“Get real. We both know what happens with complaints. The old File Thirteen, am I right? I feel sick about the kid, though. She was all smiles yesterday; now she’s dead. Sucks. This area gets its fair share of drunken idiots who end up floating face down in the river. Not from here, though. I got no problem cutting people off. But like I said, she never got served an ounce in here.”
Lonergan’s eyes narrowed. “File Thirteen. You ex-military?”
Pike nodded, then gave him a sly grin. “You see me, I see you. Jarhead, right? Most humorless bunch of jokers I ever met. Me? Army. Fifteen years. So when I say I run a tight team, I run a tight fucking team.”
Lonergan looked at Pike as though she’d passed a test, then turned back to the screen, his eyes focused on the footage as Pike forwarded the playback up to 6:00 p.m., when Valentine had put her in the bar.
Foster pointed at the screen. “There’s Birch. At the bar. Pink backpack.”
The young woman was alive, laughing, talking, a bottle of Diet Coke in her hand, a gang of revelers crowded around her. She had no idea that her life would soon be cut short. “There’s Valentine. Busy, like he said.” He was wearing the fedora, tilted, and appeared to be in the swing of things, pouring drinks, engaging with patrons, leaning across the bar to flirt with a middle-aged woman in a tight black dress.
“Valentine always flirt while he’s working?” Foster asked.
“He fancies himself a Casanova type,” Pike said. “He’s a popular guy with a certain kind of gal.”
Lonergan grumbled, “The kind being married but pretendin’ they aren’t?”
Pike chuckled. “You got it. The ones looking for a one-off. But he’ll take the young and stupid ones, too, if he can move fast enough to catch one of them.”
“And you let him get away with that?” Lonergan asked.
Pike shrugged. “Flirting’s not a crime, and what he, or whoever, does once he clocks out is their business, not mine.”
Foster watched Valentine work his magic, first with Black Dress, but then he moved down the bar and chatted with Peggy Birch. He slid her the bottle of pop, then leaned on the bar, smiling, flirting, fiddling with his tie. “He said he was here until closing; is that right?”
“He was. We had to shoo a couple out the door at cutoff time. Then he cashed out. Why?”
“He take any long breaks?” Lonergan asked, following Foster’s lead.
Pike harrumphed. “And miss one single hottie? No way. Maybe to take a quick leak or something, but that bar is his seat of power. He leaves it for nothing. I hope you’re not thinking Giles had something to do with this.” She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes wide. “Because I’m telling you, he’s not your guy. He’s hot air. He’s cotton candy. I’m not saying he couldn’t kill anybody—anybody could—but I’m telling you he’s not the kind of guy who could pull it off. He’d melt like an ice cube in the sun. He sure as hell wouldn’t be out there now minding that bar cool as anything.”
The footage advanced to the moment Birch walked out of the door behind a handful of others. Through the windows, it was clear that the group went left while Birch went right toward the stairs leading up to Michigan Avenue. Not together. So where had Peggy gone after that?
“Is this the only angle your cameras capture?” Foster asked. “What about the back of the restaurant or the tables outside of this tight arc? The ones against the east wall.”
“We got that, too, but you asked for the bar.”
Foster turned to face her. “I’d like everything. Would you mind making a copy? We’ll take it all with us.”
Pike rolled her chair forward. “You got it. Give me a couple minutes.” Foster and Lonergan stepped back to let her work. After a time, the woman stood and handed Foster a copy of the footage on a thumb drive. “Here it is.”
Foster took the drive, slipped it into her bag. “Thanks.”
She and Lonergan wove back through the restaurant, past the bar, and out the front door. Foster stood there for a moment as Lonergan said something she didn’t tune in to, watching the city do what it did: breathe, move, live. People rushed by. Sirens blared. Cars honked, and the brakes squeaked and hissed on the buses. She glanced across the river at “the spot.” The skyscrapers didn’t care, and neither did the river, but she did. She needed to know why, who. Had Peggy Birch’s fate been sealed here at Teddy’s? Foster glanced back and spied through the window the wolfish Valentine standing at the bar watching them. He’d noticed Birch enough to say when she’d walked into the bar and when she’d left. What else did he know?
CHAPTER 16
It was nearly 7:00 p.m. when Foster walked into her house, put her bag down, unclipped her holster from her belt, and plunked it on a side table. She’d made it through her first day back, and she’d done okay, sort of. Muscle memory, wasn’t it? Like riding a bike or falling off a log. And after a long, frustrating day, it felt now like she’d never been away for even a second.
Back at the office, she and Lonergan had rerun the footage from Teddy’s frame by frame for two hours, watching again as Peggy came in and commanded attention at the bar, watching as Valentine served her a Coke and hovered more than he should have. She’d paid special attention also to Teddy’s front window to see if anyone stood outside looking in at Peggy, but there was no one. They hadn’t yet started on the alternate angles, but they were both beat—her eyes were gritty from the strain of squinting at tiny images on a tiny screen. There was nothing else they could do tonight. Tomorrow, after the autopsy, they’d try again.