No Show of Remorse by David J. Walker Read Free Book Online

spotted anyone tailing Stefanie, and the chance of there being more than one person on me was pretty slim. Even Yogi had disappeared.
    I peeled the foil wrappings from a ground beef taco and a vegetarian quesadilla, pulled the tops off two little containers of salsa, and slipped a straw through the plastic lid of a cup of root beer. Stefanie had an easier time of it. She added a tablet of sweetener and was ready to sip her supper—decaf coffee.
    â€œI guess you’ll eat when you get home, huh?” I said.
    â€œMaybe some popcorn.” She glanced around the room, then looked down at her cup. “I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t called you last night.”
    â€œUh-huh.” I poured salsa over the taco filling. “I’ve been wishing the same thing.” I bit into the taco. Not bad. Not very Mexican-tasting, but not bad. “What I’m wishing now is that you’d tell me some things you haven’t told me yet.”
    She made a point of stirring her coffee—which she’d already done once, quite thoroughly—and arranged her paper napkin at just the right angle to the edge of the table. “What things?”
    â€œFor instance, you told me your daughter was staying with her father on the night you overheard Justice Flanagan talking to your boss. I checked with the court clerk’s office. Why don’t I find any divorce action involving a Stefanie Randle in the last ten years?”
    â€œYou don’t even know whether I’m divorced or not.”
    â€œYou just called him your ‘ex-husband.’ In my trade we call that a clue.”
    â€œWhy would you check? Why would it make any difference?”
    â€œJust fishing,” I said. “It’s what I do. And maybe it doesn’t make any difference.”
    â€œActually, it does, or it might, but I had no idea there was any connection. That is, I…”
    â€œJust slow down and tell me.”
    â€œI was divorced two years ago. The divorce case was in our married name, which I no longer use.” She rotated her cup on the table. “He was a Chicago police officer. I mean, he still is, but he’s not my husband anymore. He…” She stared off over my shoulder for a moment. “In law school I got involved in a crime victims advocacy program and started meeting lots of police officers. They were so … I don’t know … exciting or something. Richard was one of them and before I knew it we were married.”
    â€œAnd it didn’t work.”
    â€œI tried, you know, but I couldn’t adjust to … to the whole cop thing. The dark humor, the cynicism, the negativity, the—”
    â€œThere are lots and lots of good cops.” I almost said some of my best friends are cops, but caught myself.
    â€œI didn’t say he wasn’t a good cop.”
    â€œThat’s true. And what I meant was that if your husband’s ‘a self-centered, mean-tempered man, with the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old,’ it’s not necessarily because he’s a cop.”
    â€œHe’s my ex-husband.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?” I’d finished the taco and was working on the quesadilla.
    â€œKilgallon.” She sighed. “Richard Kilgallon.”
    â€œJesus.” I set down my plastic fork. “You said you’d read the police reports about my case.”
    â€œYesterday, for the first time.” She shook her head. “Look, before that it never occurred to me that there was the slightest connection between Richard and … between my ex-husband and you.”
    â€œHe was Sal Coletta’s partner, for God’s sake. He was there the night Arthur Frankel and the Coletta brothers got shot.”
    â€œI know that now.”
    â€œHow could you have let Woolford assign my case to you? You must have heard about the shooting, about the cops leaning on me to tell what my client had told