I gave a shark smile. “I’m her attorney. We’re going to confer in private.”
“I need a lawyer, too!” The large woman next to Bernie surged to her feet, hands on hips. “Why does the white girl get a lawyer and I don’t?”
One of the male detainees staggered over. “You can be my lawyer anytime, sugar.”
“It’s been a long time since I got an acquittal,” I said. “Best find someone with a better track record.”
“Sweet thing like you can’t blind talk a jury?” the man scoffed.
The woman was more belligerent. “Little white girl gets a lawyer and I don’t? What does that say about justice in America?”
“Probably everything,” I agreed.
I started to hand out cards when a female officer jogged over. “What’s going on—oh. You. And your troublemaking niece.”
“Sergeant Pizzello. Yes, it’s me. What happened here and what does it have to do with Bernadine Fouchard? Who is my goddaughter, not my niece.”
The sergeant frowned at us. “We’re still sorting that out. Ernestine,” she added, turning to the angry woman. “I know this lawyer. You’d be better off with the public defender, but even if you weren’t, you’re not facing any charges. We’re only getting statements and then you’ll be free to go. Unless, of course, someone saw you bending over the victim and removing his wallet or his phone.”
Ernestine and the drunk man retreated, both muttering phrases like “bitches with too much power.”
“We’ll start with your client, sugar.” Pizzello flashed her own shark smile. The strobes turned her teeth a ghastly purple-gray. “Or is she your niece?”
“Goddaughter. But she’s my client all the same. Are the dead man’s wallet and phone missing?”
Pizzello nodded but looked at Bernie. “Bernadine Fouchard, this is the second time you’ve been involved in an incident in this park. It had better be the last, because even if your lawyer is the hottest investigator in town—meaning, even if she’s better than me, which I doubt—nothing is going to keep your little behind out of my holding cell. So you tell me, and your lawyer-like godmother, what the sweet fuck you were doing here tonight.”
Bernie looked at me. “They searched me in a nasty way. Even my breasts.”
“You what?” I shouted at Pizzello.
She bit her lip but said stolidly, “The victim’s phone and wallet were gone. We searched everyone. Plus, girlfriend is covered in blood.”
That much was true: Bernie had blood on her T-shirt, and she’d wiped her hands on her jeans. I ignored that to protest Pizzello’s strip search. “Out here in the parking lot? Where God and every leering passerby could see you? Even the South Side’s sorriest addict has a right to privacy. I’m going to mention this. Not to the Police Review Board, but to the TV reporters who are hovering around the entrance like crows searching for carrion.”
She didn’t respond, but at least she didn’t try to bluster.
I pulled Bernie away. “Talk directly into my ear. She’s probably recording you. What were you doing here?”
Her voice trembled, but she had good nerves. Standing on tiptoe, she whispered that Leo wanted her to go with him to the park at night. They were supposed to have dinner at the African Fusion café on Forty-seventh and then walk over together. When an hour passed without him showing or answering her texts, Bernie decided to look for him in the park. When she got there, though, the parking lot was full of the drunks; people were even shooting up.
“It was dégoû—disgusting. I went back to the sidewalk. Runners and people with dogs, they were all going back and forth, it felt safer. Then one of the drunks came out of the bushes over there—” She pointed up the track, toward the railway embankment. “He was yelling and I didn’t pay attention at first but then all these other people started coming out of the park and the drunks in the lot started yelling, too, about a dead man.”
Her fingers dug into my forearm as she tried to steady herself.
“What did you do?”
“I was scared it was Leo,” she murmured. “I—I went to look.”
I told her she could repeat the story to Pizzello.
“You went and looked at him?” The sergeant was incredulous. “What made you do that? Did you want to make sure he was really dead?”
“I didn’t know why Leo stood me up,” Bernie said in a small voice. “And then I thought, if he was dead that would explain it.”
Pizzello rolled her eyes. “It would, indeed. Really, what made you go look at the body?”
“She told you,” I snapped. “Maybe you’d have run as fast as you could to the nearest intersection and hailed an Uber to drive you home, but the Fouchards are made of strong mettle. Steel on ice. They don’t shy away from their fears. You know how to reach me, which means if you want to talk to her again you call me.”
I put an arm around Bernie’s shoulders and steered her past the officers and civilians. Pizzello said to our backs, “The phone, Ms. Steel-on-ice? Do you have his phone?”
“You know I don’t. You know it wasn’t inside my bra and panties.” Bernie’s voice trembled, but she held her ground. “You have my phone, though, and I want it back.”
“Let’s have it,” I said to Pizzello. “I’m getting her out of here and getting her home.”
“We need her clothes, fingerprints, DNA,” Pizzello said. “She admits to handling the vic—let’s see whose blood—”
“How long has your team been here? And this is just occurring to you? I’m taking her to a doctor. If you want to send a tech along to collect her clothes, go for it.”
Pizzello scowled. Neither of us was on very solid legal ground here, but she had the added disadvantage of being in a public setting. She finally summoned a crime scene tech from the area where Leo had been found. Bernie and I went into the CST van.
Bernie gave the guy her blood-stained clothes; I put the knit top I’d been wearing over her. Since I’m four inches taller, it covered her down to her hips. I helped myself to a paper gown from a shelf in the van and wrapped a second one around Bernie. She was shivering, and paper wouldn’t keep her warm, but it was the best I could do.
The tech took scrapings from Bernie’s fingernails, did a DNA swab, and inspected her head and arms for bruising. I stood over him like the avenging angel, making sure every item was sealed in an evidence bag and properly labeled.
I videoed him as he filled the bags and labeled them, put all the clips into Dropbox, and mailed them to my own attorney.
“I’ve been doing this job for five years. I don’t need you leaning over me while I work,” the man snapped.
“Probably not,” I agreed. “I just want to make sure that if the day comes when we’re all standing in front of a judge, we agree on the number of bags you tagged and what was in them. And I want Ms. Fouchard’s phone. I assume by now you’ve inspected the SIM card.”
“I don’t have the phone,” the tech said.
I texted Sergeant Pizzello, who called me to say that the phones had been taken to the Edgewater district for analysis.