She tipped her seat back and closed her eyes. I was aching to talk to Cheryl and dump some of the day’s misery on her, but I didn’t want an audience, so I curled up against the door in the back and drifted off to sleep. The rest of the trip was blessedly silent.
I got home at ten p.m. and called Cheryl as soon as I got in the door.
“Hello,” she said, her voice groggy with sleep.
“Damn, did I wake you up?”
“S’okay…I know you had a tough day…how ya doin’?” she mumbled.
“I’d be a lot better if I were in bed with you.”
“Good idea…bad timing…hostage negotiators’ conference…Rochester…have to be…LaGuardia…five in the morning,” she said, fighting to stay awake.
I’d forgotten all about it.
“Back Saturday…love you.” She hung up.
“Love you too,” I said, too late for her to hear.
No girlfriend, I thought. A perfect ending to a perfectly rotten day.
I reheated some leftover Thai food, opened a cold beer, turned on the TV, and sat down to watch The Shawshank Redemption for the umpteenth time.
I think I’ve figured out why it’s my favorite movie. My job forces me to see the world in black and white. Cops versus crooks. Good guys versus bad guys. But in Shawshank, I root for the prisoners. I hate the warden. The lines are blurrier, and sometimes I take comfort in blurry.
The nap I took in the car threw off my sleep rhythm, and I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed until three a.m. I slept through the alarm and didn’t get to the office till eight thirty.
“Glad you showed up,” Kylie said. “I was afraid you’d miss all the fun.”
“What’s going on?”
“Good news, bad news, and worse news,” she said.
“I usually start with the worst, but I desperately need some good news.”
“The lab ran ballistics on the bullet that killed Veronica Gibbs. It definitely came from the rifle that’s covered with Dodd’s prints.”
“So Brooklyn Homicide gets credit for closing our high-profile murder,” I said. “How is that good news?”
“They’re celebrating with a steak dinner at Peter Luger’s. They called to invite us.” She grinned.
“Screw them. What’s the bad news?”
“Dr. Paris called. Our star witness spiked a fever last night and will not be available to talk to us today or tomorrow. Saturday is a maybe. No guarantees.”
“Great. Let’s call Chief Doyle and tell him he can count on at least two more days of zero progress.”
“I don’t think the chief will be taking any of our phone calls,” she said, picking up a copy of the New York Post from her desk and handing it to me.
There on the front page was a picture of Chief of Detectives Harlan Doyle taken at yesterday’s press conference. It must have been snapped just as a reporter threw him a tough question, because Doyle’s lips were pursed and his eyes were squinting. Clearly he was straining to come up with a good answer.
The headline above the photo read: “Top Cop at NYPD Clueless in Erin Kidnapping.”
“I’ll spare you the pain of reading the article. It’s a heartwarming saga about how the plucky little media star overpowered her abductor and did ‘what the elite NYPD Red Squad couldn’t.’ Save her own ass.”
I sat there, stunned. “When I went to bed last night, I thought I’d hit a low point in my career,” I said. “Turns out I was wrong. There is something worse than looking bad to your boss.”
I stared at the picture of Doyle caught like a deer in the headlights. “And that’s making him look bad to the rest of the world.”
CHAPTER 56
Thursday and Friday passed without us making any real headway on our two biggest cases. Saturday was our day off, but we were ready to go to work if we could talk to Erin. I didn’t want to risk another rejection from Dr. Paris, so I called Jamie.
“She’s getting out in a few hours,” he said, more excited than I had ever heard him. “We’re going home.”
“When can we talk to her?”
“Definitely not today. She’ll be exhausted from the press conference.”
“Jamie, please,” I said. “She really should talk to the police before she talks to the press.”
“You try telling that to Anna Brockway,” he said. “You have no idea what’s been going on since Erin escaped. The offers are pouring in. Everybody wants a piece of her.”
“Including the NYPD,” I said. “Jamie, your wife murdered Bobby Dodd. The Orange County district attorney will classify it as a homicide.”
“It was self-defense.”
“You know that. We know that. But our job is to get a detailed statement from Erin so the DA can close this out as justifiable.”
“Okay, okay, gotcha. And I know she really wants to talk to you. She appreciates all you…” He groped for the right words. “You know…all you and Kylie tried to do. How about tomorrow morning at eleven? My apartment.”
“We’ll be there,” I said.
That afternoon Cheryl flew back from Rochester. As soon as she came through the front door, I wrapped my arms around her. “God, I’m glad you’re back,” I said.
“I know. You sounded so bummed over the phone that I decided to come straight from the airport. Let’s talk.”
Talking was not what I had in mind. True, I had called her half a dozen times while she was out of town, but now that she was back, I needed a girlfriend more than I needed talk therapy.
“I’m feeling better now,” I said, pulling her closer. “We can talk later.”
She backed off. My intentions were transparent, and Cheryl was a professional on a mission—a trained psychologist making a house call. Romance was off the table until she helped me resolve my issues.
I sat down on the sofa. She remained standing. I looked up and gave her my best happy-to-see-you smile. “Go ahead, Dr. Robinson.”
She didn’t smile back. “Fair warning, Zach. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
She was serious. I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach.
“Let’s start with the most troubling thing you said to me on the phone,” she said. “‘I made the wrong decision and got a woman killed.’ Do you really believe that?”
“I believe if we had released Dodd’s picture—even internally—there’s a good chance he might not have been able to shoot Veronica Gibbs.”
“A good chance. So what is that? Ninety percent? No, wait…he was a sniper-trained combat Marine. How about fifty-fifty?”
I shrugged. “Whatever. She would have had some kind of chance.”
“Or…” Cheryl let the word hang there for a few seconds. “She could have had a one hundred percent chance of not getting shot. All she had to do was not go.”
“She wasn’t the type to put her life on hold. It was an important show.”
“I’m sure it was. But then something more important happened. Her daughter-in-law was kidnapped. Her son wanted to pay the ransom, but he couldn’t. Veronica Gibbs was a smart businesswoman. She knew that she was the only one that stood in the way of Jamie getting the money. She had to at least think that she might be a target. But she decided she’d be damned if she publicly admitted that this kidnapping had anything to do with her. She’s the one who made the wrong call, Zach. So stop blaming yourself for her death. You did not put Veronica Gibbs in harm’s way.”
“You know we offered her police protection,” I said. “She flat-out turned us down. We didn’t want Jamie to go out in public either, but we couldn’t stop him.”
“Zach, the best police department in the world can’t protect people from themselves.”
The words struck a familiar chord. “I knew that,” I said. “But sometimes I forget. Thanks. That helps.” I stood up.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’m not done.”
I sat.
“Zach, I see unhappy cops every day. Sometimes they’re depressed because they can’t crack a case
they’re desperate to solve. Or because a case they thought they’d nailed got thrown out of court on a technicality and some lowlife who should be doing serious prison time is walking around free. And sometimes it’s not about the casework. They’re ready to quit because someone who is better at politics than they are got a promotion, and they didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said, not exactly sure where she was going with this.
“It’s not easy being a cop. It can be a frustrating, thankless job. But you’ve had a damn good run. You were still in your early thirties when you got promoted to detective first grade. Then you were drafted for Red. You and Kylie have become the go-to cops for the most prestigious unit in the department, and you’ve closed every big case they’ve ever assigned you.”
“True.”
“And that’s your problem,” she said.
“What’s my problem?”
“You’re spoiled.”
I did a double take. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve been riding the wave so long, you forgot what it’s like to crash and burn. I can’t tell you if you made the right call or the wrong one, but after hearing thousands of sob stories from cops of every rank, race, and responsibility, I can tell you this: Shit happens. Don’t wallow in it.”
I laughed. “Shit happens? Don’t wallow in it? They taught you that in shrink school?”
“Actually, my father taught it to me when I was a little girl, only he used more kid-friendly words.”
“Lay them on me.”
She sat down next to me on the sofa, put her hand on my cheek, and whispered softly in my ear, “Suck it up, buttercup.”
I pulled her close. “You’re a good psychologist,” I said, “but I really miss my girlfriend.”
“In that case,” she said, lying back and pulling me on top of her, “this session is over.”
CHAPTER 57
By Sunday morning, hordes of fans and paparazzi had flocked to Ninety-Fifth Street and Riverside Drive in hopes of getting a firsthand look at the most Googled, most talked-about, most sought-after celebrity on the planet.
NYPD had cordoned off the area in front of Jamie’s building and corralled the crowd behind makeshift barriers on Riverside.
Kylie and I arrived just before eleven. In addition to the doorman, two of Declan McMaster’s security team were stationed in the lobby. They recognized us but still checked our IDs.
We took the elevator upstairs. McMaster let us in. “Did you see the crowd out there?” he said. “They loved her before this, but now it’s out of control.”
“She shanked her kidnapper,” Kylie said. “That’s cult-hero status.”
“Meanwhile the poor woman is freaked. She can’t shake the fact that she snuffed out a man’s life. I have to warn you, she’s not herself, so when you question her—”
“Declan,” Kylie said, “we question victims all the time. We don’t expect someone who’s been kidnapped, raped, and living in fear for her life to be herself. All she’s got to do is give us some straightforward, honest answers.”
“Relax. I’m just offering you some insight here. It’s not like I’m telling you how to do your job,” he said, having just tried to tell us how to do our job. He led us to the living room, where Erin and Jamie were sitting on the sofa.
She was wearing gray sweatpants and a black I LOVE NY T-shirt. There was a bandage wrapped around her left forearm. “Hello again,” she said. “Can Jamie stay while we do this?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“What do you want to know?” she asked as soon as Jamie and McMaster had left the room.
“Whatever you remember. Start with the abduction.”
She shook her head. “I slept through the abduction. One minute I was making a video for my fans, and the next thing I knew I was in this house I’d never seen before, and he was there.”
“You knew him,” Kylie said. It was a statement, not a question.
“He’s been stalking me forever. My bodyguards carry his picture. Three different judges have signed orders of protection against him. So, yeah…I knew Bobby Dodd.”
“What happened once you woke up in the house?”
“The first thing I remember is that my arm hurt like hell, and it was a bloody mess. I had this health-tracker chip implant that he cut out while I was drugged.” She peeled back the bandage on her left forearm and showed us the wound. “He apologized, but he said he had to do it so no one would find us. I didn’t tell him that the damn thing stopped working, and it was a piece of crap. One thing I learned from my friend Ari—never volunteer any information.”
“Once you were in the house, were you locked up in your bedroom the entire time?”
“No. Sometimes we’d eat together in the kitchen. Ari trained me to look for signs of another person—a second coffee cup in the sink, a cigarette butt in the garbage—but I never saw a trace of anyone but Bobby. It made sense. Why would he need a partner? He was convinced that I wanted to be with him and that I only married Jamie so I’d have enough money to run away with him. He told me that as soon as he got the money, he was going to take me to Belize.”
“Belize?” I said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, reading the look on my face. “How was he going to get me through airport security? He wasn’t stupid. His plan was to go by car. He showed me the route on Google Maps. We’d cross the border at Brownsville, Texas, and then head back east across Mexico for a couple of days until we got to Belize. It’s insane, but he had it all planned. He said we could be happy together. Just me, him, and the baby.”
We kept asking questions, and she didn’t hesitate or hold back on anything—including the details of the constant sexual abuse she had to endure. She turned out to be an ideal witness, much smarter and a lot stronger than her public image.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said two hours into the session. “Am I going to be charged with murder?”
“Erin, our job is to get the facts,” I said. “You confessed to killing a man, so his death is classified as a homicide. But if the DA finds that your actions were justifiable, it’s a pretty good bet that there won’t be any charges.”
“I didn’t plan on killing him.”
“You put together a pretty deadly weapon.”
“It was only for self-defense.”
“Were you defending yourself when you killed him?” Kylie asked.
She shook her head.
“We need a verbal answer. Were you defending yourself when you killed him?”
“I was trained by an Israeli commando. I know how to read the signs,” she said, her voice louder, more defensive. “He was going off the deep end. I had to kill him before he killed me.”
“What do you mean, he was going off the deep end?” Kylie said.
“After Bobby made the deal with the network, he became unhinged. I think that’s why he killed Veronica.”
After Bobby made the deal with the network? It was one of those rare cop moments when you’ve tapped into a mother lode of new information and you want to jump up and scream, Eureka!
But we didn’t jump. Or scream. In fact, I don’t think either of us blinked.
CHAPTER 58
Elaborate,” Kylie said, as if we were already privy to Bobby’s deal with the network and just needed to flesh out a few details.
“Take your time, Erin,” I added. “Try to remember as much as you can.”
“I don’t think Bobby ever really wanted twenty-five million dollars,” Erin said. “He would have been happy with a lot less. But he didn’t want me to think that I was worth less. So somewhere along the way, twenty-five million became the magic number.
“The first time he talked to Jamie, it went the way Bobby expected it to. He knew Jamie would ask for proof of life. But after the second call, Bobby was furious. He couldn’t believe that Jamie had reached out to his mother, and she hadn’t even returned his phone call.
“Bobby was pissed at
Veronica. He started to get nervous that he’d never get any money. That’s when he came up with the idea to get the network to pay the ransom. He asked me who he should talk to, and I said Harris Brockway but that the best way to get to him was to call his wife, Anna, who is my manager.”
“And did he call Anna?”
“He had me make the call. God, she was so happy to hear from me, and then she put Brock on the phone, and he negotiated with Bobby.”
“Did you hear the conversation?”
“Every word. Bobby had it on speaker. He wanted five million for another video, but Brock said he could only authorize a million on his own. Anything more than that, and he’d have to ask his bosses, but he didn’t think they’d go for it. So Bobby took the deal.”
“Did Brockway pay the million?”
“Oh yeah. Otherwise Bobby wouldn’t have made the second video. He had one of those offshore banking accounts in Belize, and Brock wired him the money. Then ZTV did that horrible Erin in Exile show with that asshole psychologist who said I stole Jamie from Veronica and now that she had him back, why did she need me and the baby?
“Bobby and I watched it together. I think that’s when buyer’s remorse set in. He hated the network for only paying him a million. He said Brock was jerking him around. He didn’t want the money in small increments. He said he knew how to fix everything. He locked me up and left the house. I think that must have been when he decided to eliminate Veronica.”
“Did he tell you he was going to kill her?”
“Oh God, no. I would have tried to talk him out of it. I didn’t like her, but Jamie loved her. It’s so sad. He blames himself for her death.”
“What happened when Bobby came back to the house?”
“He told me our problems were over. He said Veronica was dead, and Jamie had plenty of money to pay the ransom. But I knew better. It could be months, maybe years before Jamie sees a dime of his inheritance, and I knew that once Bobby found that out, he would go berserk. I didn’t know if he would kill Brock or Jamie or me or all of us. That’s when I got my blade and went to the shower. I swear on my baby’s life that I didn’t want to kill him, but I…”
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