A Judgment of Whispers by Sallie Bissell Page A

well connected.
    â€œDo you know how I can get in touch with him?”
    â€œNo.”
    He gave her one of his cards. “Ma’am, we’re updating our files. I’d like to ask Adam a few questions.”
    She straightened her shoulders, as if summoning all her strength. “You’ll have to talk to our attorney, Robert Meyers. We no longer entertain questions from the police.”
    â€œYou no longer entertain questions?” Whaley stared at her, anger warming his neck. “I didn’t know you could entertain a question.”
    â€œRobert Meyers.” The woman repeated the attorney’s name as she lurched forward to close the door.
    Whaley took a step forward and stuck one of his size-thirteen brogans into the doorway. “Let me tell you how this works, ma’am. I don’t need your or your husband’s or your attorney’s permission to talk to your boy. And I can find him, probably in about ten minutes. I was just checking to see if he might be here. A courtesy call, if you will.”
    â€œRobert Meyers,” the woman repeated for the third time.
    â€œI’ll remember that name,” said Whaley. “Also this conversation, when we have your boy by the short hairs again.”
    The woman paused in her closing of the door. “What did you say?”
    â€œI mean, you cooperate with us, we go a little easier. If you don’t, we don’t. Goes to respect for the law.”
    She thought a moment, then said, “Wait—let me see if my husband … ”
    â€œSorry.” Whaley withdrew his foot from the doorway. “You had your chance. It’s too late now.”
    He turned and left her standing at the door, talking to his back as he headed to the house across the street.

    Unlike Leslie Shaw, Janet Russell recognized Whaley the moment he rang her bell. Opening the door wearing a gaudy, tie-dyed robe, she had tattoos crawling up both arms, eight rings on the fingers of both hands, and three different kinds of crosses resting between her copious breasts. If Leslie Shaw was a meek little acolyte in the First Church of Richard the First, Janet Russell was the high priestess in a faith of her own making.
    â€œDetective Whaley. How nice to see you again.” The woman’s hair was white and wiry, her eyes chips of bright blue. She put her hands together in front of her chest and said, “Peace unto you.”
    â€œPeace to you, too,” Whaley replied, uncomfortably. “Uh, we are updating our files, ma’am. I need to ask Lawrence a few question.”
    â€œWhat about?”
    â€œIt’s police business.”
    â€œThen it must be about Teresa.”
    Whaley sighed. These women weren’t stupid. They knew what was up when he knocked on their doors.
    Janet Russell shook her head. “But you’ve asked him so many questions. He always answers them, but you never believe him.” She fingered her jeweled cross. “You know, you once had Butch so scared he started wetting his pants. For years he slept at the foot of my bed, shivering like a dog.”
    â€œMurder investigations can be hard on everybody.” Whaley took a deep sniff. The house smelled of some musky herb. Not weed—he would recognize that—but something akin to it.
    â€œBut he was just a little boy.” Sighing, she walked back into her living room. It held the same kind of chaos as the Shaw house—half-filled packing boxes, Bubble Wrap, some carved decorative tree branches she was trying to fit into a too-small box. She turned to him. “May I show you something, detective?”
    â€œSure.” He followed her through a maze of boxes as she weaved her way down a long hall lined with photographs. Pictures of her, Butch, Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and a group of people in white robes gathered around a wigwam. He stopped as one figure in that photo caught his eye. A Native American with long Apache hair, a silver disk the