Black and Blue

by David Rosenfelt

  He was stunned to find out through news reports that Gero was dead, and yet he had not heard a word about Phelan or anyone else. This was by design; the conspirators had said that they would not be in communication at all, so as to reduce and hopefully eliminate the chance of detection.

  Still, just the idea of Gero’s death had a major impact on him. Not so much because they went back a long time together, though Gero was as close as anyone to being what Scanlon would call a buddy. No, the reason he was so struck by Gero’s death was that none of the conspirators were supposed to die. They were all destined to live long, very wealthy lives.

  Other people were supposed to be the only ones who died.

  Scanlon had one job to do, and one job only: To make sure that the operation ended in a blaze of glory—or, more accurately, a burst of glory. He knew the plan was foolproof provided he was not detected in advance, which meant the next four days would be spent right where he was.

  Once that mission was accomplished, he could disappear and start collecting more money than he ever imagined. All of that was prearranged and foolproof, but it all depended on him.

  He would succeed; there was no doubt about that. But the waiting would be torture.

  The phone ringing in the silent room was jarring. Scanlon actually jumped, a sign that his nerves were on edge.

  The voice on the other end did not mention Gero. The message was short and to the point, and it implicitly reflected the fact that Gero was no longer available.

  Scanlon had another job to do.

  His responsibilities had expanded.

  We have absolutely no evidence against Scanlon, circumstantial or otherwise.

  At the moment there is nothing to tie him to whatever crime conspiracy Phelan and Gero were involved in. Should we be able to find him, all we could do would be to question him, listen to his denials, and send him on his way.

  But even though prosecutors and grand juries, by law, cannot weigh gut feelings, we’ve got plenty of those. Nate and I both have strong cop instincts that Scanlon is deeply involved in this.

  They were the closest of buddies in the army, often operating at least marginally outside the law. That in itself is not incriminating; a close high school buddy of mine is currently serving time for running a financial Ponzi scheme, but I wouldn’t know Ponzi if I ran into him in a supermarket.

  The fact that Scanlon has recently disappeared, or at least run out on his apartment, is suspicious as well. It was more or less timed to the outbreak of murders; Scanlon could have played a role in them, or he could just have been escaping the increasing pressure.

  But even the location of that apartment is curious. Here was a guy born in Arkansas, who served in various overseas locations, who winds up settling in Lodi, New Jersey, despite having no job, family, or other ties that we can locate.

  I have nothing against Lodi; it’s a fine place. But in the absence of any apparent benign reason, why move there? It’s not South Beach, or Vegas, or Palm Springs. Nobody buys a time-share in Lodi, New Jersey. So why take an apartment there, only to bail out weeks later?

  I also found it significant that Wynn described Scanlon as basically uninterested in the specifics of the apartment itself, other than wanting it to be located in the back of the complex. It sounds like somebody who wanted to hide, possibly biding his time, without being noticed.

  Hovering over all of this is motive. What seemed to be random, deranged killings over ridiculously small grudges, real or perceived, has morphed into something bigger.

  Phelan could have crossed over into an unbalanced state in which he committed heinous acts in what was basically a fit of pique. But to have brought Gero along, and maybe Scanlon, just doesn’t make logical sense. And the more people that are involved, the less sense it makes.

  Criminal motives almost always come down to either sex, power, or money, not necessarily in that order, and sometimes a combination of two or all three. Yet none of them seem to apply here. There is no indication whatsoever of any sexual motives; the victims do not seem to have any relationship of any meaningful kind with their killers, and they certainly were not molested.

  There could be a power motive, if you consider the feeling of power involved in controlling life and death. But again, the apparent involvement of three people weighs against that, and for all we know there could be more than three.

  That leaves money. But there’s no indication yet that the killers have profited from their actions. We’ve talked to the families of the victims, and there’s been no mention of any outsiders invading the estates and laying claim to the money. Additionally, while Brookings and Randowsky were probably well-off financially, the other victims included a retired school teacher, a bellman, a gas station attendant, and a librarian. Possibly they had money independent of their work, we can find that out, but as a group they were not exactly Fortune 500 CEOs.

  “Could it somehow be insurance?” I say it out loud without really meaning to, and Nate hears me.

  “Could what be insurance?” he asks—a perfectly reasonable question.

  “Could they be taking insurance policies out on these people, and then cashing in when they’ve killed them?”

  I don’t wait for an answer because Nate has no more way of knowing than I do. Instead I call Jessie and ask her to come in.

  When she does, I say, “You said that Helen Mizell left three insurance policies. Two were for her kids, and one small one for some woman that you hadn’t found.”

  She nods. “Right. Marcia Carnow.”

  “Have you found her?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll check with Roger; I think I assigned it to him. But we’ve had other priorities, and this didn’t seem terribly important.”

  “It might be,” I say, and then explain my theory. Actually, calling it a “theory” is probably giving it too much credit.

  “The policy was for fifty thousand dollars,” she points out. “Assuming they somehow got the money from this Marcia Carnow, or if Marcia Carnow were a coconspirator, at that pace it would still take a long time to get rich.”

  I nod. “I know. But let’s track this woman down and talk to her. And let’s find out if these other victims carried suspicious life insurance policies. Maybe we’ll get a hit.”

  She nods. “Worth trying. We’ll get right on it.”

  Sergeant Tony Arguello calls and says, “Doug, you might want to get down here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Scanlon’s apartment. There’s something you should see.”

  I don’t bother asking what it is; I’ve learned that someone like Arguello will not waste my time, so I just head down there knowing it’s important. Nate has a mountain of paperwork to go through, so he stays behind with my promise to call him if needed.

  When I arrive at the complex I go in through the back, which is where Scanlon had wanted his apartment. I see Arguello’s van and another cop car; they’ve been stationed here to guard the place until we are finished with it.

  I go inside and see Tony and one of his people in the small kitchen, sitting at what looks like a bridge table, but which is the only table in the room. When we were here, I assumed that was where Scanlon had eaten his meals. Based on all the gear that Tony is using to examine the table, I’ve got a feeling he’s not having a pizza.

  Tony looks up and sees me come in, waving me over.

  “What’ve you got?” I ask.

  He points to a microscope on the table. “Take a look.”

  I do so, and still have no idea what he’s talking about. “Tony, all I see is an enlarged piece of table.”

  “Okay, it doesn’t matter. I’ve tested it, and it’s positive for RDX. We’ll do more definitive tests back at the lab, but I think it will show the same thing. We rarely get false positives for RDX.”

  “What is RDX?”

  “It’s a chemical used to make explosives. It’s used in combination with other chemicals that help to insure its stability, but it�
��s extraordinarily powerful.”

  “How powerful?” I ask.

  “You ever see those videos where they bring down old stadiums or huge buildings? That’s RDX.”

  “Shit,” is my one-word answer, and I take out my phone and call Nate. When he answers, I say, “Take a look at the army records on Scanlon we got from Lieutenant Anderson.”

  A few moments later, Nate says, “Got ’em. What do you want to know?”

  “Somewhere on there it should say his specialty. Do you see it?”

  “Hold on.” I wait for at least two or three minutes until he finally comes back on the line.

  “Here it is,” he says. “Specialty is munitions.”

  “Damn.” Major Taggart had said that the unit would have been willing to trade a munitions specialist like Phelan only if they were covered—meaning they already had another such specialist. They did: Scanlon.

  I inform Tony that we are going to have to alert the FBI to this new information. I’m sure they will bring in homeland security, but we will continue to work independent of them.

  Rod Scanlon wanted an apartment in the back of the complex and didn’t care how livable and comfortable it was because he was using it as a bomb factory.

  The phone rings at six o’clock in the morning.

  That’s rarely a good time for a phone to ring, but in some cases it could be okay. If it rings in an all-night diner, or a dairy farm, there might be no problem. When it’s a homicide detective’s home phone, it’s downright ominous.

  I force myself to pick up the phone and it’s the desk sergeant. “There’s been a shooting,” he says. “In Ridgewood.”

  “Who got shot?”

  “Actually, no one. They missed.”

  “Good. Sergeant, I’m a homicide detective, not an attempted-homicide detective. Call someone else and then throw away this number.”

  “It appears to be related to your case,” he says. “Bradley had me call you.”

  “Did you speak to Nate?”

  “Done. He’s going out to the scene.”

  The sergeant gives me the details. The intended victim is Evan Meyer, Phelan’s ex-boss at the trucking company. He was apparently leaving his house at five thirty to go to his office; I remember he had mentioned to me that he always gets to work by six.

  The potential killer may have known this routine, because he tried a drive-by shooting when Meyer left the house and was heading for his car.

  Meyer is not going to make it into work this morning; he’s at his house, and Nate and I are heading there as well.

  Nate is in the kitchen with Meyer when I arrive. Cops are outside guarding the scene, and forensics is working in the driveway. As soon as I walk in, Meyer recognizes me and says, “It’s you; I should have known. Who took a shot at me?”

  “Maybe you can tell me that,” I say, and then I look at Nate. He shrugs and says, “I just got here. We can hear the story together.”

  “First of all, Mr. Meyer, are you okay? Are you injured?”

  “No, the son of a bitch missed me.”

  “Please tell us what happened, starting at the beginning, and include every detail you can remember.”

  “That won’t take long,” he says. “I walked out my front door to my car, which was parked in the driveway. As I was doing it, I saw a car about three houses down. It started moving even though I didn’t hear it start up, so it had to have been running.

  “It just seemed strange. It was going west, which means he should have been on the other side of the street, but he wasn’t. He was on my side. He had his left hand up, like he was concealing his face. Then I saw him raise his other arm, and there was something in his hand.

  “I was in the army, you know? So I had this feeling … I dove to the ground, and as I did, I heard the shot. I don’t know what it hit, maybe the garage, but I crawled under the car. I was able to see the street from there, and he was gone. Son of a bitch is a real profile in courage.”

  “Did you get a look at him?” Nate asks.

  “Not a great one. I doubt I could identify him.”

  “What about the car?”

  “I’m good with cars; this was one of those Korean ones. A Kia.”

  “Color?”

  “Like a metallic green.”

  He’s describing Scanlon’s car. It’s not proof that Scanlon is involved, not by a long shot, but it’s certainly contributing evidence.

  “We’ll be sending someone out with some photographs for you to look at, to see if you can make an identification.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You never know,” Nate says. “It will be helpful if you try.”

  He nods. “Okay.” Then, “That wasn’t Phelan who shot at me. I would have recognized him.”

  “Can you think of any reason he would have wanted to?”

  “No. He walked out on me; I didn’t fire him. I still have his last check; he didn’t wait for it. But all he’d have to do is ask me for it, so that couldn’t be it.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might want to cause you this kind of harm?”

  “No. Definitely not, that I know of.”

  “Does the name Rod Scanlon mean anything to you?”

  He thinks for a moment. “No, not that I can recall. But I may not be thinking too clearly right now.”

  I nod. “Understood. We’ll be sending someone to show you the photographs. Will you be here this morning?”

  “Oh, yeah. Today I work from home.”

  On its face, the attempted murder of Evan Meyer seems part of an established pattern.

  It was a shooting without warning and without apparent motive of a person who has some connection to Danny Phelan. Knowing what the grudge might be is not important. If Phelan had a reason to be angry at his high school English teacher from twenty-five years ago, he certainly could hold some grievance toward his boss.

  But somehow this feels different. For one thing, the shot missed. That simply has not happened before. It could certainly be explained by a different shooter; Gero probably did the dirty work before, and with his death, someone else has stepped in.

  The leader in the clubhouse for most-likely shooter, at least at this point, is Rod Scanlon. Maybe he is just not as accurate a marksman as Gero. We already know that his specialty is munitions, not marksmanship. Also, he was shooting from a moving car, which represents a definite change in MO.

  This shooting also feels too “on the money.” Until now, the connection between Phelan and his victims, with the notable exception of his ex-wife, has seemed obscure. In some of the cases we don’t even know that link yet. But the attack on Meyer leaves no room for subtlety; who among us hasn’t wanted to take a shot at their boss at some point? Barely a day goes by that I don’t consider doing a drive-by on Captain Bradley.

  Still, we are dealing with people who until this point have not made a mistake, not even a hint of one. This attempt feels more haphazard, more seat of the pants. With careful planning Meyer could easily have been taken down, but he wasn’t. He saw them coming from a mile, or at least a few houses, away, and he was able to take evasive action without much difficulty.

  I verbalize all of this to Nate, and he surprises me with, “Maybe it was meant to fail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Meyer is in on it. Maybe he’s the damn ringleader. He was Phelan’s boss before, so maybe he still is. He was in the army, right? Maybe he was part of this group back then. They take a shot at him and deliberately miss so we think it can’t be him because they tried to kill him. But maybe they want us to think that.”

  “But we’ve never suspected Meyer,” I say.

  “They have no way of knowing that.”

  “You really believe this, Nate?”

  “Nope. Not a chance. Just talking out loud.”

  I nod. “Next time you talk out loud, try and do it when you’re alone, or maybe put a pillow over your face.”

  “Or maybe I could stuff the pillow down y
our throat,” he says. Then, “You don’t think it’s possible?”

  “I doubt it, but let’s pull Meyer’s army records just in case. At this point I think the only army records we haven’t seen are George Patton’s.”

  Captain Bradley comes in. He’s just finished giving another public update on the situation, this time adding Julie Phelan and Rod Scanlon to the list of “persons of interest” he wants the public to watch for.

  Our tip lines have already been overrun by citizens making reports of sightings, none of which have worked out. Although the truth is, we have not been able to run down all of them; there are just too many.

  Generally big media stories explode and then slowly peter out. The length of time it takes for them to run their course depends on the impact of the story, and the subsequent events that give it renewed life. In this case there has been no lessening of interest at all, and more shootings and more “persons of interest” provide it with ongoing oxygen.

  “Talk to me about Evan Meyer,” Bradley says when he enters the office. He knew about the shooting before I did. But he’s been with the commissioner all morning before the press conference and hasn’t been updated.

  Nate takes him through the events of this morning, leaving out the theory that Meyer arranged the shooting himself, to cover his guilt.

  “So what’s the assumption here?” Bradley asks when Nate is finished.

  “That Gero was the previous shooter, and now that Doc Holliday here took him out, it’s Scanlon. Scanlon just isn’t as good at it as Gero.”

  “Could it have been Phelan?” Bradley asks.

  I shake my head. “Meyer said he would have recognized Phelan.”

  Bradley nods and updates us on what he has learned from the commissioner about the FBI involvement. So far they seem to be making very little progress beyond developing psychological profiles on Danny and Julia Phelan.

  “What’s their view on Julie?” I ask.

  “They think she’s at least an accessory,” he says. “A lot of psychological horseshit, but at the end of the day they think she’s under her father’s spell. I told them about Scanlon, so I’m sure another profile is coming.”