The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  “We’re not going to try,” I said.

  Gone was Lori’s sharp, New York City chic look. She wore a jacket more suitable for hiking in the hills of Berkeley, California. (Not that I’d ever done that in thirty years of living there.) Her face was drawn and pale, and she seemed on the edge of tears.

  “Nice that you have friends on the NYPD, Matt,” Rose said.

  I had to concentrate to remind myself that Rose was referring to Matt’s helping keep Lori out of jail. She couldn’t have known about my own foray into the life of crime.

  “A lot of things contributed to Lori’s not being charged,” Matt said. “She has no record, of course. It was clear that she wasn’t heading up the scam herself, she never approached the mark, and the kickback she received from Amber wasn’t completely out of bounds.”

  I wondered what “out of bounds” meant in terms of blackmail. Something like petty larceny versus grand larceny? If I ever thought the law was black and white, my tenure with the Revere Police Department had taught me otherwise, and my experience with the NYPD was even more variegated. All of which had worked to my advantage.

  Rose tried to foist food on all of us, especially Lori. She’d brought trail mix, bagels, potato chips, brownies, and bottles of water from a deli right off the hotel lobby. Her hostess skills had never been more challenged, I thought, not even during the years she made valiant attempts to help me serve guests in style in my ill-equipped mortuary-apartment kitchen.

  “All I can say is, I fell for it,” Lori said, her voice cracking. “Easy money. No one gets hurt. All the slogans you hear on TV dramas. You never see yourself being that stupid, but just like in those scripts, you can always rationalize. I needed to upgrade my equipment, my rent was being raised, I wanted to try some new packaging for distribution, go international, and on and on.”

  Lori paused to take a raisin from the trail mix Rose had poured into a hotel glass. I’d already shared a brownie and a bagel with Matt.

  Lori went on, relaxing a little as she unburdened herself. “Amber was very persuasive. She convinced me that as long as I wasn’t using the money to take a cruise to Bermuda—although that’s exactly what she had in mind for herself—it was okay. I don’t think she even saw that what she was doing was a crime.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Rose, plucking a single cashew from the glass. “Why is blackmail a crime anyway? I mean, gossiping, or just telling a secret you found out, isn’t illegal, unless, you know, it’s government secrets you’re selling to the Russians.” I noted that Rose was a little behind in her designation of the current evil empire. “Asking someone for money isn’t illegal, either, so why is it illegal when you put the two together?”

  It was hard to tell if Rose really believed this or if she was trying to make Lori feel better, but I’d also given some thought to victimless crimes. Strictly speaking, nobody involved in them was an unwilling participant. Blackmail, insider trading, prostitution—all seemed matters of individual choice, and harmless for society as a whole, compared to violent crimes. So what was the point of criminalizing something like blackmail? To protect us from being exploited? People take advantage of each other in many ways all the time without the law intervening.

  “If the reverse were to happen—if someone were to offer to pay me to keep his secret—that wouldn’t be a crime, either,” I said.

  “I read that eliminating most victimless crimes would double the available jail space and greatly reduce the load on the judicial system,” Rose said.

  “The law’s the law,” said the lawman among us. As flexible as Matt was, sometimes his training and long career in the administration of justice came to the fore. “And until it changes, we follow it.”

  So much for shades of gray.

  He spoke matter-of-factly, so only those who knew him well would hear the uncharacteristic stiffness in his voice. No one dared bring up civil disobedience and other ways of changing the law. Since Matt had gotten two of us out of legal jams in the last twenty-four hours, I supposed he deserved a little respect.

  I wondered if the ADA who decided not to charge Lori with blackmail had given as much consideration to the long-standing ethical debate as we did. I hoped so.

  “I’m not arguing here, Matt,” Rose said. “But what if Lori claimed the money was a generous Christmas present from Amber? Or a contribution to her production company?”

  “Sure, that’s how a lot of blackmail money is buried—donations, contributions of one kind or another—but that ploy doesn’t work forever. Eventually the truth comes out, usually when someone gets hurt. Like this. In this case, we’re pretty sure that once the forensic accountants have a chance to go over Amber’s books in detail, they’ll find her victims.” He swiveled his head back and forth between Rose and me. “We still call them victims, if that’s okay with you.”

  Rose and I both nudged him. One advantage to the small room: Everyone’s elbows were within reach of everyone else’s.

  Lori had been quiet while we debated legal philosophy. I figured she was still processing everything—her own apartment’s being the scene of Amber’s murder, behavior she was ashamed of, needing her uncle to intercede with the NYPD, and ultimately not being charged with a crime.

  “You told them everything, right, honey?” Matt asked, taking Lori’s hand.

  “Yes, I swear, Uncle Matt. They already knew I was home the morning Amber was killed and that I’d let her in. I’d taken the key away from her because I didn’t want her to have free access to my place once I moved in. I lied because I was afraid—”

  Matt nodded and interrupted, making his voice more soothing with each response. “I know. They didn’t find the key to your place anywhere among Amber’s effects at the scene, so they figured that out. Well, once your friends corroborate the time you joined them at breakfast, that part will be over.”

  I hoped it would be that easy.

  “I never knew exactly who was being blackmailed, except sometimes Amber showed me photos.” Lori shuddered and zipped her jacket higher, until I thought her chin and tiny mouth would be swallowed up. “But I told the cops exactly how many times I’d profited, how Amber got her marks, everything.” Matt patted her hand. Good girl. “I . . . I did it three times.”

  Shades of confession at St. Anthony’s Church. I lied three times, we would say to old Father Benedetto. Or I cheated once on my spelling test. A few prayers—or rosaries for the big sins, like impure thoughts—seemed to cover everything. I almost joked, Say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys and make a good act of contrition, but I didn’t want to risk offending Rose.

  “I got five thousand dollars each time,” Lori continued. “I didn’t even spend the last two payments. There was a cash payment still in my desk drawer, and one time Amber wrote a check. I guess that’s how they knew something was up.”

  “Eventually they would have gone through your records anyway,” Matt said. “Once they saw your name in Amber’s accounts, even just for rent money, they’d have come around to examine your books, see what your recent purchases have been.”

  “I thought blackmail was a cash-only transaction,” I said.

  “Not if you want to be able to spend the money freely,” Matt said. “It would take too long to use up that many hundred-dollar bills getting your groceries for cash at the Stop & Shop.”

  “But you can deposit up to ten thousand dollars in cash legally.”

  “Not week after week. It’s a flag. Unless you have an obvious source of where it’s coming from, which Amber didn’t.”

  “I see. It’s not as if she was operating a hot dog stand.”

  “Did you want a hot dog?” Rose asked. “There’s a wagon on the corner.”

  Lori sniffled. “Amber even had lawyers on her payroll,” she said, still on her track of telling all.

  “Lawyers?” I asked, my voice catching.

  “Yeah, she’d get referrals, like, if a couple was breaking up, Amber would find out through
one of Tina’s lawyers—Amber said Tina knew nothing about this, though—and then if one of them was rich, she’d try to get something on them.”

  From Tina to lawyers who worked with Tina to Amber to blackmail. I tried to stop the links my mind was constructing. It felt like the times I’d be checking one thing on the Internet and it would take me around a whole string of sites I didn’t know were connected. I filed away the links, as if I were bookmarking them on my browser, for later reference.

  “Do you think they suspect me of killing Amber?” Lori asked her uncle.

  Matt shook his head. “If they thought that, you wouldn’t be sitting here. They’d have held you for the blackmail until they had something for the murder.”

  I saw his reasoning, but I knew the only way to clear Lori once and for all was to find Amber’s killer. I bit my lip. This was not my jurisdiction. Not that I had a jurisdiction, but since we were here anyway, guests in the city that never sleeps, I might as well do something useful.

  Eighth Avenue traffic rolled by, with the occasional emergency vehicle blaring. I wondered if the number of ambulances was thirty-nine thousand times greater in New York City than Revere, like the relative number of cops.

  I needed to get serious, to get back to my routine when I worked with (using the word “with” loosely) the RPD: make lists, connect the dots, and work out the case. The flowchart was shaping up even now in my mind. I saw two groups of likely suspects: Amber’s blackmail victims, and Lori and Amber’s documentary subjects. If there was a stray ex-boyfriend or a random killer of young women out there, he’d have to wait until my next cut.

  My next chore would be to locate the prime suspects.

  “You need to be careful, honey,” Matt said. I glanced up, happy to see that he was addressing Lori, not me.

  “Why are you saying that, Matt?” Rose asked.

  “Do you think Lori’s in danger?” I asked Matt.

  “You know, I thought of that,” Rose said. “How maybe Lori was the one they were . . . oh, no, no, never mind.”

  “It’s not out of the question,” Matt said, looking at Lori. “I don’t want to scare you, but, as I said, be careful. Let’s keep in close touch, okay? Let me know—anything out of the ordinary.”

  Lori nodded and gave him a long hug.

  I searched his face, as if I’d be able to quantify exactly how worried Matt was. Routine concerned-uncle worried? Well-thought-out worried? Homicide-cop worried? All of the above, I guessed.

  For me, I felt on-the-case worried.

  HAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lori couldn’t believe the close call with the police and the ADA. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Matt, she might be . . . well, who knew where she’d be spending the night? Probably not in her own apartment.

  She walked there now, after doing a few errands—returned a pile of movie videos, picked up her dry cleaning, and bought a quart of mocha java ice cream. The chores made her feel her life could be normal once again.

  She kept her head down against the cold wind. The temperature was uncomfortably low, the wind chill factor bringing it below zero, but the clear, dry air sparkled and seemed quite in concert with the jingle bells on every corner, either from a Salvation Army worker or a toddler’s shoes. The silver-bells thing did nothing to lift her spirits beyond simple gratitude that she wasn’t in jail.

  Her keys were ready as she rode up to her floor in the shaky old elevator. Lori crossed the narrow entryway and was inside her loft in record time. She flipped the locks on her huge metal door and slid the dead bolt over. She traced the pin all the way to the bracket and down into the notch, hooked the chain in place, and then put Uncle Matt’s cell phone number on speed dial on her landline and her cell phone.

  Until now it hadn’t hit home that she might be in danger. She’d been so anxious about her involvement in Amber’s scheme, it overshadowed the idea that she might have been the one the killer was looking for in the first place. Lori had assumed that since Amber was the one living on the edge, she’d been the target—but the murder had taken place in Lori’s loft, after all, and now she wasn’t sure.

  Lori hated the feeling that came over her now. It had begun when she was nine years old. For most of her life she’d felt vulnerable, expecting disaster at every turn. Her thirtieth birthday was a milestone, not for the usual reasons her friends celebrated the big three-oh, but because she’d reached an age denied her mother.

  Enough of that.

  She had piles of work to do—interview tapes to transcribe, videotapes and DVDs to look through, storyboarding to complete, paperwork to catch up on—but she had no energy for the tasks. From the table near the door she picked up a pile of mail. This she could handle. She leafed through the envelopes, sorting junk from bills and correspondence. She wished she could chuck her credit card bill—the one that confiscated cash was going to cover, until the cops took it. The next thing she’d do, once the ozone narrative was complete, would be to send back the new amplifier and a few other things she’d bought. She didn’t need any reminders of her transgressions. Good thing she’d put the old stuff in storage in the basement.

  One envelope caught her eye, hotel stationery. The logo, name, and address had been crudely crossed out, but she could see part of the logo and she could tell from the ZIP code it was in Lower Manhattan. There was no name or other address.

  Lori opened the envelope. The top few inches of the paper had been torn off, obviously to get rid of the letterhead. She read the handwriting:

  I urge you not to act on the material you have in your possession. It will only bring you harm. Enough people have been hurt. Do not expose this.

  A shaky feeling came over her, a slight dizziness and a chill across her shoulders and down her spine. She sat on her couch, then jumped up when she noticed a red spot on one of the pillows. Blood! She let out a small scream. She walked toward the other end of the loft, the work end for the most part, although the lines were blurred. She took a breath and focused. From a distance she could see better: The spot was only a rose petal, one of many strewn freely throughout the flowery design of the upholstery.

  Another breath and she felt her pulse slow.

  Lori had been clutching the letter. Now she turned the hotel paper over in her hands a couple of times—no other writing, no special feel to give her an idea what it meant. What else could this be but a mistake? She was overreacting to everything. Understandable after what she’d been through the last couple of days. She tossed the letter and envelope in her wastebasket with the other junk, some of it not necessary to open, and fluffed the pillow.

  What she needed right now was company.

  Go for it, she told herself.

  Lori punched in Craig Daly’s number. We’re way past even the nineties, she thought. Nothing wrong with a girl asking a guy she liked out for dinner. It wasn’t a date, really, anyway. Just a warm body to help her through this trauma.

  Craig never needed accolades like some of the other crew she worked with. He’d never aspired to be in front of the camera, and his ego was practically nonexistent. Amazing when you thought about it, given how much power editors had over the final look of the film. The editing could make or break a production, Lori mused, waiting for Craig’s voice and his big no thank you.

  She imagined his telling her he had plans with his girlfriend, some cute young twenty-something named Melissa probably. Lori didn’t know for sure, but from some info she had on his college years she thought Craig was younger than her thirty-one years. People told her she looked no more than twenty-five, however, so maybe Craig was fooled, too.

  Or maybe he had plans with a bodybuilder named Biff, which was quite possible, since Craig was one of the few guys who’d seemed to resist Amber’s charms. Well, one way or the other, at least Lori would know soon.

  “Hey, Lori,” he said. “What do you need?”

  Caller ID, of course, but Lori was always startled when someone knew she was calling. She didn’t like the What do you need?
greeting. It emphasized the fact that they never called each other spontaneously, just to chat, but only if there was a reason, like she needed something specific. What’s new? or How’s it going? would have been better, indicating they had ongoing communication that wasn’t necessarily work related.

  God, here she was analyzing to death Craig’s four-syllable greeting, as if she were back in her high school cafeteria with her girlfriends: Buddy said, “See you later,” so do you think that means he’s going to call, or come over?

  “Just checking in,” Lori said. “Getting caught up after, you know . . .” Groan. She certainly hadn’t meant to start that way.

  “It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?” Craig said. “I still can’t believe Amber’s dead.”

  “Neither can I. The police have a lead or two.” Lori had no idea why she exaggerated. Maybe to make Craig feel better. Maybe to hasten the end of the topic.

  “Really? Yeah, they came to talk to me, too, but I couldn’t tell them very much.”

  Craig was born in Brooklyn and had the accent to prove it. “Talk” came out too-alk; “all” was oo-all, with a smooth sliding sound from the oo to the all. Lori loved it. Much more interesting than the Boston accent she’d worked hard to get rid of.

  “Actually, I . . .uh . . . got your message yesterday and . . .uh . . . I was down at the precinct for a while. I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you.” This was not how Lori had intended the conversation to go.

  “Oh, it was nothing critical,” Craig said. “I’ve got some good shots here of two welders at Blake’s and another one at Curry’s looking pretty dismal before they put their helmets on. Caught unawares by the inimitable Amber.” Craig cleared his throat. “Sorry, I’m not used to her being gone. So do you want to let in the part where the welders look disgruntled, or do you just want the welding?”

  Lori knew what Craig was asking. She pictured one way it might go: The voice-over would be about the employee complaints. Lori would say something like “Ventilation at Blake’s is poorer than at any other manufacturing plant in the triborough area, exposing employees to ozone levels that cause everything from discomfort to severe respiratory diseases.” At the same time, the picture on the screen would be the face of the gloomy welder, the implication being that the welder is despondent because he knows he’s in an unhealthy environment.