Aquarium

by Steven Henry

  Webb shot Vic a text message while Erin drove. “They’re in the interrogation room,” he reported. “He’s been shuffling Stone around, dodging the lawyers, but he can’t stall much longer.” He extracted the drive from its bag, plugged it into her onboard computer, and spent the next few minutes looking through video files.

  “Anything good, sir?” she asked.

  “If you’re planning on operating an illegal porn site, then yeah,” he said. “Sergeant Brown ought to love this. Looks like the footage is sorted by floor. Okay, yeah. We want folder five, subfolder three, the clip stamped with the date of the crime. I’ll just spot-check it… oh, this is excellent, O’Reilly.”

  Erin turned the corner and cruised up to the Eightball. She spun the wheel and laid rubber on the entrance ramp to the parking garage. “Here we are, sir.”

  “You go on in, O’Reilly. I’ll grab our suspect and follow.”

  “Don’t you want to be the one to nail Stone, sir?”

  He smiled thinly and handed her the thumb drive. “This is your collar, O’Reilly. Besides, I’m too old to run up flights of stairs. I’ll get started booking this guy.”

  “Copy that, sir.” Erin realized Webb was giving her a simultaneous compliment and reward. He was saying he trusted her to bring the case home, and he knew she wanted to be the one to do it.

  It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway up the stairs that he might also be insulating himself against political blowback for busting the son of a powerful figure.

  “That’s why I’m never going to make Captain,” she muttered to Rolf. “I don’t play the game well enough.”

  Rolf, easily loping up the stairs beside her, wagged his tail enthusiastically. He liked games.

  She didn’t go directly to the interrogation room, in spite her hurry; she needed a computer for the thumb drive. They had a laptop up in Major Crimes, just in case a portable machine was ever needed. She scooped it up and glanced at Rolf.

  “Sitz,” she told him. “Bleib.”

  Those weren’t his favorite commands, but he was good at them. Rolf sat and stayed, despite his confusion at being benched in the middle of all this excitement. Erin left him there and hurried back downstairs.

  She found Vic in Interrogation Room One, together with Stone and a pair of men in suits too expensive to be anything but lawyers, or maybe mob bosses. Vic’s face was red and he looked irritated.

  “Detective,” one of the lawyers was saying, “I understand your position, and you’re only doing your job. But you’re putting your department in a very serious position from a liability perspective. Now, if you had any real evidence—”

  “Speak of the devil,” Vic said, flashing Erin a look of mingled exasperation and relief. “Gentlemen, this is my colleague, Detective O’Reilly.”

  “Gentlemen,” Erin repeated, reflecting on how Vic managed to make the word sound like an insult.

  “Yes, you would be the officer in charge of abducting our client across state lines without a warrant,” the other lawyer said. “Our client has been telling us all about you.”

  “In that case, he’ll have told you I don’t give up,” Erin said, sliding into the chair next to Vic. She flipped open the laptop and turned it on.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” the first lawyer said. “You may have some personal liability as well as that pertaining to your department. I hope you’re enjoying your temporary position of power, Detective. This may be your last day with the NYPD.”

  Erin let his words slide off her. She’d heard worse threats from more dangerous people. She was busy plugging in the thumb drive and opening the correct file. Vic, looking over her shoulder, saw what she was doing. When the top-down image of Room 503 appeared on screen, a slow, nasty smile spread over his face.

  “Detective, are you even listening to me?” the lawyer demanded.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting this interview,” she said. “But I have something you and your client need to see. Before we get to that, just so I’m clear, does your client still claim he has no knowledge of the death of Sarah Devers, AKA Crystal Winters?”

  “That is correct,” the second lawyer said. “And whatever bluff you’re planning, whatever fabricated evidence you may produce, I assure you, Detective, I’m not impressed.”

  In answer, Erin flipped the computer around to show the screen to the men on the other side of the table. Looking Stone straight in the eye, she started the video running.

  The next minutes were five of the longest, quietest ones Erin had experienced in an interrogation room. The only sounds were the muffled whir of the laptop’s fan and the breathing of the five people seated at the table.

  “This recording was clearly illegally obtained,” the first lawyer said, after they’d finished watching Sarah Devers die on the floor of the hotel bedroom. “It’s inadmissible as evidence.”

  “That would be true,” Erin admitted, “if it had been recorded by the NYPD, who would’ve needed a warrant for this sort of surveillance. But it wasn’t. It’s evidence in another criminal case. An employee of the hotel was in the habit of recording the guests. You’re right, that’s against the law, and he has also been arrested and will face the consequences of his actions. But he is cooperating with our investigation. The NYPD got this recording completely legitimately. You are, of course, free to employ a technical consultant to verify the authenticity of the recording.” She smiled sweetly.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Stone said.

  “Mr. Stone,” the second lawyer said warningly.

  “No, Mr. Branch, I know what I’m saying,” Stone said. His face had gone very pale while he’d watched the recording, but his voice was steady and his hands didn’t tremble even a little. “It’s rather late to persist in denials. It was an accident. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “You drugged her,” Erin said, “with the intention of nonconsensual sexual intercourse.”

  “Otherwise known as rape,” Vic added.

  “She misrepresented herself,” Stone said. “She promised something she had no intention of delivering. She violated our understanding. She’s the guilty one here.”

  “What understanding was that?” Erin asked quietly.

  “I engaged her services for the night,” he said. “The whole night. With an implicit understanding of all that entails. She tried to renege on our deal.”

  “My client has no further comment,” the first lawyer said in a last effort at damage control.

  “Your client is paying your bills,” Stone snapped. “Shut up. The grownups are talking.”

  The lawyer’s mouth clamped shut, his lips pressed into a fine line. For once in Erin’s life, she felt a little empathy for a defense attorney. He was watching his case disintegrate and his client wasn’t letting him do his job.

  Apparently, Stone was so used to getting away with things, he felt that he’d become immune. Maybe he genuinely didn’t understand the gravity of what they were discussing. But mostly, Erin suspected, he wanted to justify himself. That was the trick of interrogations. A detective had to make herself into someone the perp wanted understanding from. If you could make that more important than, say, avoiding a prison sentence, you’d get your confession.

  “And you wanted what you’d paid for,” she said, ignoring the lawyers.

  “That’s how all businesses work,” Stone said.

  “What did you do with your drugs?” she asked. They hadn’t found any in his belongings when they’d arrested him.

  “I flushed the remainder down the commode. Again, I must insist, I didn’t want her to die. I did my best to save her.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Erin said. “You did everything you could, except for calling an ambulance, which might have actually kept her alive.”

  She stood up and flipped down the lid on the laptop. “Thanks for your time, counselors. Anything further you’ve got to say, you can save for the DA. It’ll be up to him what degree of murder charges to bring. And Mr. Stone?” />
  He looked up at her in silence. His face remained pale but outwardly calm.

  “A relationship isn’t a business agreement. You can back out of it anytime you want. You had no right.”

  “We’re taking your boy back to his nice comfy cell,” Vic said to the lawyers. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you can invoice him for his plea bargain.”

  Chapter 16

  Erin, Vic, and Webb regrouped in the Major Crimes office. Rolf greeted his partner with a wag and a head cock, but he stayed sitting beside her desk until she released him. He wanted her to know he’d been standing good watch over the office.

  “We got a confession, sir,” Erin announced.

  “Not that we needed it once we had that video,” Vic added. “Good stuff.”

  “I suppose,” Webb said. “We just need to put cameras everywhere and then we can all retire early.”

  “With everyone carrying Smartphones, we’re practically there already,” Erin said.

  “It’s creepy,” Vic agreed. “Speaking of creeps, how’d you manage to keep from punching that video pervert right in the balls?”

  “I’m a female cop,” she reminded him. “When I was working Patrol, I dealt with creepy perverts practically every day. I couldn’t punch them all.”

  “Me, too,” Vic said. “Seriously, have you checked out this ass? Everybody wanted a piece.” He turned to give her a profile view.

  “None of us want to think about that, Neshenko,” Webb said. He looked at the clock. “We’re a couple hours past end of shift. I suppose you two want to be on your way…”

  Erin and Vic looked hopefully at the door.

  “…just as soon as you fill out your DD-5s,” he finished.

  “And there’s the other shoe dropping,” Erin said. “Bureaucratic paperwork.”

  “Don’t blame the bureaucracy,” Webb said. “You’re the one who wanted to arrest everyone involved with this damned case.”

  “Yeah, are you going for some sort of departmental record?” Vic asked. He started counting on his fingers. “Let’s see, we’ve got Stone for the actual murder, Polk and Schilling both on possession and resisting arrest, Feldspar for spying on hotel patrons, Caldwell for aiding and abetting… I’m just surprised you didn’t bust the cleaning lady while you were at it.”

  “Shit,” Erin said. “We were in such a hurry, we forgot.”

  “Josefina,” Webb said, nodding.

  “Who’s Josefina?” Vic asked, utterly confused.

  “One of the cleaning ladies,” Erin explained. “She helped Caldwell move the body.”

  “So we are arresting someone else? What’re we waiting for?” Vic started for the stairs.

  “Go on,” Webb said, waving a hand. “I’ll get started on the paperwork, because I’m in a good mood. But don’t think you’re getting out of all of it. It’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

  “I guess it’s good to have things to look forward to,” Erin said as she, Vic, and Rolf jogged downstairs.

  “Yeah,” Vic said. “Like death.”

  “You look forward to death?”

  “All Russians do. Just look at the world. Being dead’s gotta be an improvement over this.”

  “Vic, is there more to Russian culture than alcohol and suicide?”

  “Is there more to Irish culture than alcohol and getting the shit kicked out of you by the British?”

  “We write some pretty good poetry.”

  “So do we.” Vic paused. “Not that I read Russian poetry in my spare time.”

  “If I was interrogating you, I’d call that a suspiciously specific denial,” Erin said.

  They got into Erin’s car, Rolf eagerly climbing in yet again, and set off once more for the InterContinental.

  “Answer me this,” Vic said after a couple of minutes. “Our girl gets killed in an upscale hotel. Not only isn’t it a secret, but practically everybody knows about it. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” Erin said. “The manager knew, the security chief knew, all of them were just pretending to help us and hoping we’d think it was some sort of crazy accident. Which I guess it was, come to think of it. But yeah, even the cleaning staff knew.”

  “And we were pretty much the only ones who didn’t,” Vic went on.

  “Right again,” she said. “Is there a point you’re getting to?”

  “It just seems like a lot of wasted effort. I mean, anybody could’ve come to us, anytime, and told the truth. Why does everybody always lie to us?”

  “Does it hurt your feelings, Vic?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.”

  “I’m serious, Erin. We could’ve closed this one in five minutes if just one person had done the right thing.”

  “They’d all done things wrong,” she said. “Telling on Stone would’ve implicated them. By your thinking, we could solve every murder if the murderer would just tell us the truth. I mean, they tend to know they killed someone.”

  “That’s true,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers. “Forget the cameras. What we need is truth serum.”

  “Sodium pentothal doesn’t really work,” she said. “It just makes people loose and talkative. It doesn’t make them tell the truth.”

  “Too bad.” He brooded on that for a moment. “On the bright side, I guess it’s job security.”

  Josefina might be long gone by now. Erin felt like an idiot. They’d been too much of a rush and she’d forgotten that last loose end. Finding an illegal immigrant in New York who didn’t want to be found was a needle-in-the-haystack kind of thing. But there was nothing to do but try to see it through.

  They found a chaotic scene in the hotel lobby. CSU techs were going in and out of the manager’s office, patrons were milling around and talking excitedly, the hotel staff were trying to keep order, and uniformed officers were scattered throughout the room, either trying to help or just watching and loitering.

  Vic’s massive bulk, coupled with his badly-swollen face, cleared a path to the front desk. The detectives found the assistant manager, a pale, skinny guy. He had on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down his nose. The tag on his chest read Niemann.

  “You in charge?” Vic asked.

  “No,” Niemann said. He made an angry gesture at the crowd, then had to bring his hand up to his face to save his glasses from flying off. “Nobody’s in charge. Are you more cops?”

  “Detectives,” Erin said. They presented their gold shields.

  “Then maybe you can get this circus on the road so we can get back to business,” Niemann said. “You’ve arrested our manager. Everybody’s trying to figure out why. They’re being disorderly, which is a problem because you also arrested our head of security! Can either of you tell me what’s going on?”

  “CSU will be out of your hair as quickly as possible,” Erin said. “I apologize for any inconvenience. We just need to take care of a few things. I understand you have a Josefina on your housekeeping staff?”

  “Josefina?” Niemann pushed his glasses up his nose, where they immediately began sliding down again. “Yes. Josefina Molina. Head housekeeper. She’s been here for… I don’t know, longer than I have. Years. We’ve never had a problem with her. What could you possibly need her for?”

  “If we could just speak with her, it’d be great,” Erin said. “Is she on duty?”

  “She just came on. She works nights most of the time.”

  “Where can we find her?” Erin asked.

  “If she’s not cleaning a room, she’s probably up in the laundry.”

  “Where’s that?” Vic asked.

  “Fourth floor. But what are you going to do about this mess?”

  “Talk to the ranking officer on scene,” Erin suggested. “Thanks for your help.”

  “But which one…?” Niemann began helplessly.

  Vic and Erin were already on their way to the elevators, Rolf keeping pace. Vic hit the call button and soon th
ey were on their way up. Erin stood against the back wall of the elevator, a smile at one corner of her mouth.

  “What’s so funny?” Vic asked.

  “It’s a language thing,” she said. “I know a little German, mostly on account of Rolf.”

  “So?”

  “Our manager’s name, Niemann. Know what it means?”

  “I speak Russian, Erin. It’s got a whole different alphabet than German. Russians don’t speak German. Russians shoot Germans.”

  Rolf cocked his head and gave Vic a quizzical stare.

  “It means ‘nobody,’” Erin said. “We were talking to an actual, literal nobody.”

  “That’s a lousy name to get stuck with,” he said.

  “What’s Neshenko mean?” she asked.

  “I got no idea. I mostly figure it means me. How about you?”

  “O’Reilly? It just means ‘from Reilly.’”

  “I coulda guessed that. Where the hell is Reilly?”

  “It’s not a place. It’s a clan.”

  “Oh. So there’s a lot of you around, I guess.”

  “It’s New York City, Vic. Of course there’s a lot of Irish around. Yeah, there’s a lot of O’Reillys. A bunch still in Ireland, too. My dad told me we don’t get along with the O’Rourkes, but God only knows why.”

  “Probably something your great-great-great-whatever did to theirs, or maybe the other way round. People come to America to get away from that blood feud shit. So we gonna deport this Josefina? Send her back to whatever family shit the Molinas have going on in Mexico with the Rodriguezes or whoever?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He scowled. “I don’t like playing ICE.”

  “Neither do I. But our girl aided in covering up a murder. She committed a crime, Vic. Look, let’s just find out what she has to say. Then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  The first thing Erin noticed on entering the laundry was the thrum of washing machines. The vibrations went through the floor and right up her legs, making her teeth want to chatter. Some sort of Latin pop music was playing over the sound of the machines, but they provided a constant bass accompaniment. The air was humid, with a visible haze of steam. Rolf sniffed the air and got a snout full of fabric softener. He snorted and shook his head.