“But you what?” I said.
She looked at me, reluctant to go on.
“Erin, this is important. It explains your state of mind.”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to kill him, but…I gave up hope that you would ever find me.”
She wasn’t trying to be hurtful, but the statement still felt like a stake through my heart. Another reminder that we had failed. But this time I didn’t retreat into doubt and self-pity. I remembered the words of wisdom passed on to me the night before by my psychologist/girlfriend: Suck it up, buttercup.
I stood. Kylie wanted to get out as much as I did and was on her feet a second later.
“Erin, I wish we had been able to do more for you,” I said, “but you’re a brave and resourceful woman, and we appreciate your taking the time to relive your ordeal with us. I think we have what we need, but can we give you a call if anything comes up?”
It’s our standard exit line, and people are so happy to see us leave that they always say yes.
“Of course,” she said. “Anytime.”
Kylie and I didn’t say a word till we got to the car. Then I dialed ADA Bill Harrison and put him on speaker.
“Bill, it’s Kylie and Zach,” I said. “I know it’s Sunday, but this can’t wait.”
“Go for it.”
“Harris Brockway told us that the kidnapper sent him that second proof-of-life video with a warning to air it or he’d kill Erin.”
“Right.”
“We just got a statement from Erin that Brockway negotiated a deal for the video with Dodd and wired him a million dollars to an offshore account.”
“So what you’re saying is that you can prove a network executive is a liar.”
“I’m saying he colluded with the kidnapper. What can you get him on?”
“Not much. He didn’t collude. He forked over the ransom money. There’s no law against it.”
Kylie grabbed the phone out of my hand. “But he lied to the police about an ongoing investigation,” she said. “And then he hid behind the First Amendment.”
“And the high-priced legal team at the network will say he didn’t lie. He withheld the facts because he was fearful that telling the cops any of his private conversations with the kidnapper would put Erin’s life at risk.”
“Are you telling me he can pull all that shit and just walk?” she said.
“He won’t exactly walk. If the DA decided to go after him, which I can promise you is not going to happen, the case would wind up in some misdemeanor proceeding, the judge would slap him with a small fine, Brockway would promise to be a good boy, and the records would be sealed.”
“Bill, have you met this guy?” Kylie said. “He’s a total asshole.”
“Kylie, don’t shoot the messenger, but may I remind you that being a total asshole is also not a crime. In fact, in Brockway’s business, it’s probably regarded as an asset.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “Sorry to ruin your Sunday.”
“No problem. I was just sitting here reading the Times. You didn’t ruin my Sunday.”
“Well, you ruined ours.”
She hung up, handed me the phone, and spit out those three little words I’ve heard from her many times before. “I hate lawyers.”
CHAPTER 59
Monday morning arrived dreary and drizzly. Kylie and I had a mountain of DD-5s to crank out on the Easton kidnapping, and yet I was borderline happy to be at work. I figured if we could get it done by midweek, then we could finally put the case behind us. On Friday, Cheryl and I were driving to Montauk to celebrate our one-year anniversary. I couldn’t wait.
By eleven a.m. Kylie and I had conference-called the Warwick PD and finished our report to the Orange County DA. We couldn’t make any promises to Erin, but I was confident he’d decide in her favor.
“We need coffee,” Kylie said.
I didn’t, but I followed her to the break room anyway.
“Guess where I’m going this weekend,” she said.
Somewhere special with Shane, I’ll bet. “I have no idea,” I said. “Tell me.”
“Orlando.”
“Really? Are you—”
“Jordan! MacDonald!” It was Cates. “Suit up. Sutton Place at Fifty-Eighth Street. Another ambulance robbery, only this time we don’t just have an angry governor. We’ve got a dead old lady.”
We headed for the stairs. The coffee and Kylie’s travel plans would have to wait.
Sutton Place is a small stretch of expensive real estate in the Fifties between First Avenue and the East River. Even driving the speed limit, we got to the imposing red-brick prewar building in only seven minutes.
We started by interviewing the doorman. It was a familiar story: An ambulance races up, two EMS techs tell him they have an emergency call, a woman in distress, Edith Shotwell, apartment 7B. The doorman sends them straight up. Fifteen minutes later they come down, tell him the patient is fine, and take off.
Same MO, same pattern we’d seen before—with one exception. Witnesses in the first two robberies said one of the perps was white, the other was Hispanic. This time, according to the doorman, one was white, the other was African American.
“Light- or dark-skinned?” I asked.
“Medium,” the doorman said. “Pretty much the same color as me.”
“I hate to ask, but are you sure he was African American?”
That got a laugh. “Detective, they had their hats pulled down low when they came in, and they were wearing them paper masks when they left, but trust me—he was black. I know a brother when I see one.”
We talked to one of the first cops on the scene.
“The ambulance arrived at eight oh eight,” he said. “Doorman wrote it down in his logbook. The name on the side of the bus was Prestige Medical Transport. He clocked them out at eight twenty-two. Two hours later Mrs. Shotwell’s daughter gets here, goes upstairs, and finds the mother and her nurse zip-tied and gagged. She rips the duct tape off her mom, but the old lady is dead. The nurse is okay, just shook up. She and the daughter are waiting for you in a neighbor’s apartment, seven A. CSU just arrived. They’re up there with the DOA.”
Kylie and I took the elevator up to the seventh floor. CSU was just getting started, but we didn’t need an expert to tell us the cause of death. There were petechial hemorrhages in Mrs. Shotwell’s eyes where the blood vessels had burst, and there were traces of glue from the duct tape on her mouth. She’d suffocated.
We went across the hall to the neighbor’s apartment. The daughter introduced herself. “I’m Bethany Geller,” she said. “Those animals murdered my mother.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” I said. “I promise we will do everything we can to find them.”
“Thank you.” She rested her hand on the shoulder of a woman, about sixty, who was sitting on the sofa. “This is Paloma Hernandez. She’s been with the family for three years.”
Paloma barely looked up. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let them in.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Kylie said. “They fooled the doorman, and they fooled you. You let them in because you thought they were there to help.”
“I beg them not to put the tape on her mouth. I say she has breathing problems from the COPD. But the one, he just said, ‘She can breathe through her nose.’ Ten minutes after they left Mrs. Edith started to choke. I think maybe she aspirated on her own vomit. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, but if I wasn’t tied up, I could have helped.”
“Can you describe the two men who entered the apartment?”
“One was a white guy—he was maybe six feet tall. The other was black, a little shorter. They both have brown eyes, but the rest of their face was covered with a surgical mask.”
I didn’t bother asking her if the second perp may have been Hispanic rather than white. Ms. Hernandez knew the difference.
I turned to the daughter. “Ms. Geller, the drawers in your mother’s room were pulled out and empt
ied. It would help if we knew what they took.”
“Things. Nothing worth killing someone for.”
“I understand, but they are going to try to sell those things. The more details you can give us, the better the chance we have of finding your mother’s killers and bringing them to justice.”
“It was the jade,” Paloma volunteered.
Geller nodded. “Of course. Ever since she was a girl, my mother loved jade jewelry—green, black, red, all colors.”
“Do you think you can describe what they took and give us an approximate value?” I asked.
“I pay the insurance premium, so I can get you a list. Her favorite was a lavender jade oval set in a cluster of diamonds. That was appraised at forty thousand dollars. The entire collection was worth maybe five or six hundred thousand dollars.”
“They take the envelope with the money too,” Paloma said.
“What money?” I said.
“I leave an envelope with cash for Paloma,” Geller said. “It’s for household expenses or for when they go out on their excursions.”
“What excursions?” I asked the nurse.
“Mrs. Edith, she didn’t like to be cooped up in the apartment, and she loved riding the subway, so in the nice weather we would take the train to places like the Bronx Zoo or the Brooklyn Museum or, her favorite, Coney Island. We were just there last Sunday. She loved to sit on the boardwalk and eat an ice cream cone.”
“And how much was in the envelope?”
“Six hundred and forty-two dollars,” Paloma said. “I keep a good count. Also Mrs. Edith’s MetroCard, but that had only like twenty dollars left on it.”
“Detectives.”
I looked up. It was Benny Diaz from TARU. Kylie and I thanked Geller and Hernandez, told them we’d be in touch, and walked over to where Benny was waiting.
“The good news is that the surveillance system in this building was state-of-the-art when they installed it,” he said. “The bad news is they installed it fifteen years ago.”
“Do you have anything we can use?” I asked.
“If you’re looking for blurs and blobs, you’re in luck. But if you’re hoping for facial features, you’re going to have to ask your perps to start robbing buildings with better security cams.”
He opened his laptop and showed us half a dozen screen-grabs. The photos wouldn’t help us identify the suspects, but they definitely settled one issue. Our eyewitnesses had been right: One of the phony EMTs was white; the other was black.
“So there are at least three of them,” Kylie said. “And if the white guy from today isn’t the same one from the previous robberies, we’re up to four.”
Our dynamic duo was turning into a gang.
CHAPTER 60
They can hide their faces, but they can’t hide their wheels,” Kylie said. “If you were driving a fake ambulance to a fake emergency call, what would you do to look authentic?”
“Run the lights.”
We called the NYC Department of Transportation and had them check the traffic cameras from lower Manhattan to Harlem. Sure enough, a red-light camera had caught the ambulance blowing through the intersection at Sixty-Third Street and First Avenue.
“Can you give me the plate number?” I asked the tech. Even if it had been stolen we might be able to pick it up on license-plate readers and see where the ambulance had come from.
“Sorry,” the tech said, “but it’s unreadable. They put a reflector cover on the plate. They’re not legal, but people do it all the time.”
“Right,” I said. “If we catch them, we’ll slap them with a summons.”
“Give me your e-mail, and I’ll send you the photos,” he said. “You can’t make out the driver’s face, but the logo on the vehicle is clear as a bell. Prestige Medical Transport.”
“The name is phony,” I said, “but the pictures of the ambulance will help us pinpoint the model and year.” I thanked him and hung up.
“These guys scope out each victim in advance,” Kylie said. “They know whose apartment they’re going to hit before they get there, and so far they’ve only targeted buildings where they can avoid getting picked up by security cameras. They’re getting their insider information from somewhere.”
The question was, from where? We ran Paloma Hernandez’s name through the system, and she came up clean, just like the first two home attendants had. And each of the three had been placed by a different agency. There had to be a common denominator. We just couldn’t figure out what it was.
We stuck around while CSU combed through the apartment, but they couldn’t come up with any prints or DNA that could help us identify the two intruders. We were about to leave when Kylie stopped dead in her tracks.
“The MetroCard,” she said. “The one they stole from Mrs. Shotwell.”
“What about it?”
“Moss and Devereaux have been checking pawnshops and dozens of sites online where the perps might sell the jewelry. But these crooks are too smart for that. They must have a fence taking the pricey stuff off their hands, so good luck tracing any of Mrs. Shotwell’s jade. But there’s one thing that a fence wouldn’t be interested in, and it’s traceable: her MetroCard.”
“It’s a long shot,” I said, “but it’s a great idea.”
We called Bethany Geller and asked if she knew how her mother had paid for her MetroCard. She gave us the answer we were hoping for.
“I bought it for her. I put it on my credit card a year ago, and it refills automatically.”
“Did you cancel the auto payments yet?” I asked.
“I didn’t think of it, but I better do it now, otherwise those bastards will keep riding the subway on my credit card.”
“Don’t. Please,” I said. “Do not cancel your mother’s MetroCard.”
“Why not?”
I told her. Two minutes later Kylie and I called the NYPD Transit Bureau’s special investigations unit. We gave the detective who took the call Geller’s Visa card number and asked him to pull the usage file. Within seconds, he linked the credit card to one of the city’s millions of MetroCards.
“Can you tell us when it was last used?” I asked.
“I can tell you when and where, and if you give me a minute to scan the video, I can give you a description of the person who used it.”
A few minutes later he had an answer. “It was used a week ago Sunday at eleven fifty-three a.m. at the Fifty-First Street station by an elderly white woman. She was with a younger woman, Hispanic, probably her caretaker. They had one of those rolling portable oxygen tanks. The card was used again at two fifty-nine p.m. at the Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn.”
“Coney Island,” Kylie said. “That jibes with Paloma’s description of their last excursion.”
“Do us a favor,” I said to the Transit cop. “Can you put an alert on that MetroCard and call me or my partner as soon as you get a hit?”
“Whatever you need.”
“It’s still a long shot,” I said to Kylie after I hung up. “These guys have done everything right every step of the way. Do you think they’ll be stupid enough to use a stolen MetroCard?”
“Hey, they were stupid enough to turn a robbery into a homicide with a piece of duct tape,” she said. “Anyway, what New Yorker can resist a free ride on the subway?”
CHAPTER 61
The text popped up on my phone and Kylie’s at the same time. It was a short cryptic message written in the inimitable style of Detective Danny Corcoran.
Your dead guy is still writing checks.
It was the most promising news I’d heard in days. We knew that Bobby Dodd had spent six months in the Caribbean working as a stonemason. We figured he had amassed as much as half a million dollars in hurricane money. The question was: Where did it go? The easy answer: an offshore account. But he couldn’t have stashed it all.
Kidnapping costs money. We contacted the people who owned the house in Warwick, and they told us he’d paid them thirty thousand dollars in
cash to rent the place for a year. Then there was his food, travel, and other day-to-day expenses. Bobby needed ready cash, and that had to be someplace more convenient than a bank in Belize.
The Violent Felony Squad had been looking for any financial bread crumbs Bobby might have dropped, but they’d come up empty, and as soon as Erin was safe and Bobby was dead, they’d moved on to their next top-priority case. That left us with a skeleton crew. Danny Corcoran was the backbone of the skeleton.
He was waiting for us at the precinct, a stack of spreadsheets on his desk, a smile on his face.
“The late Mr. Dodd has sixty-eight thousand dollars in a checking account at Chase Bank,” he said.
“How’d you find it?” I asked.
“I went back to the security footage at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Two days before the wedding, he was in the building, probably to set up the live-feed cameras. He was wearing a work shirt that said BD RENTALS. That’s when the light bulb lit up. I’d been searching for personal accounts, but Bobby was smarter than that.”
“He ran the money through a corporation,” Kylie said.
Danny nodded. “It’s called BD Rentals, just like the shirt.”
“Your text said he’s still writing checks.”
“There was an electronic transfer from that account over the weekend—a thousand dollars—the same auto-disbursement that’s been going out on the fifteenth of the month since January. It went to the bank account of a lawyer in Pelham Bay.”
“That’s where Bobby was living. Who’s the lawyer?”
“His name is Dominic Bruno. He’s an old-school neighborhood lawyer who’s not afraid to dabble in new technology. He’s got a website. He’s had a storefront law office on Crosby Avenue for fifty years. He’s Italian American, bilingual, and ‘a pillar of the community’—that’s a quote.”
“Forget what it says on his website. What do you hear on the street?”
“I called the local precinct. According to the community affairs sergeant, Bruno is all that and more. The locals call him the Mayor of Crosby Avenue. He runs the St. Theresa festival every year, he’s president of the Forty-Fifth Precinct Community Council, he pays for the holiday lights along Tremont—the list goes on. Bottom line, he’s a churchgoing, straight-shooting gentleman, beloved by one and all.”
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