by Blake Banner
Dehan shook her head. “There’s nothing there.”
I nodded. “There is, we just can’t see it yet.”
She frowned at me and I walked across the scrubby grass and onto the pier. Dehan, Mendez and Wagner followed close behind. I reached the end and looked down. It wasn’t visible at first. Dehan stared uncomprehending at the expanse of gray mire and shallow streams of water that trickled through it.
I turned to Wagner and said, “Call it in, Linda. We need a meat wagon, the ME, and a Crime Scene team. Tell them where the body is, they’ll need planks or something to get out there. And tell them they’re on the clock. The tide will be coming in again.” She was frowning at me. I pointed to a narrow, shallow stream near the foot of the pier, which was draining slowly out into the river. “He’s there, in the water. Call it in.”
She called dispatch. Dehan was leaning on the rail, squinting at the stream. “I wouldn’t have seen him if you hadn’t pointed him out. I would have assumed he’d dumped his phone.” She looked up at me. “You knew what to look for. You were expecting it.”
“I knew there were no barges up here. What your tech said made no sense. The Harlem is a tidal strait. The fact that the signal was emerging slowly suggested the phone had been submerged, and the tide was going out. Water will block the signal unless it is very shallow.”
“Elementary…”
“But there’s one thing that isn’t so elementary. Even the most water resistant of phones won’t last much more than half an hour underwater. If his is still working, it means it’s in some kind of watertight container. Which is kind of odd.”
“Why the hell…!”
I shook my head and grinned. “Not why, Little Grasshopper, what. What would make him, or his killer, wrap his phone in plastic before either he was thrown, or he jumped, into the river?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes! OK! You’re right! It works. The only reason would be to ensure that it was found in working order.”
“And the only purpose for that would be if it contains information the suicide, or the killer, wants us to have.”
“Just when I thought I had it figured.”
I leaned my elbows next to hers and shuddered as the cold crept up my arms. “You never know,” I said. “It might confirm your theory.”
There was a touch of resentment in her face. “My theory? It’s not our theory?”
I took a deep breath and looked down at the hand that was slowly becoming more visible as the water drained out of the channel. “I don’t know, Dehan. I just don’t know. There is still something missing. We need to establish whether he was murdered or committed suicide. If he committed suicide, that will tend to confirm your theory. It also suggests a reason for keeping the phone dry, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does… What?”
I laughed. “A millennial suicide note.”
“Wow, and you’re the dinosaur.”
“Don’t knock the dinosaurs, kid. We survived almost two hundred million years. How long have you puny humans been around?”
She observed me with hooded eyes and pointed to the path that ran through the park. “Here comes the puny Medical Examiner, and the puny Crime Scene team is close behind him.”
They worked fast and laid a path of wooden planking out to where the body was half covered in silt and muddy water. The scene itself had little to tell them. What little evidence there may have been had been washed away by the tide. The body was recovered, bagged and brought ashore, then laid on a gurney. As we approached, Frank unzipped the bag to expose the face. It was bloated and a gray-blue color, but it was easily recognizable.
“That’s Am Nielsen.”
Frank looked at me curiously. “Am?” I nodded. He zipped up the bag and said, “Am is now Was. Which proves just how relative time is.”
Dehan asked him, “Can you tell us anything?”
“Not really, Carmen. On the face of it, there don’t appear to be any bullet wounds or stab wounds. Bruising is hard to establish until I have washed him off. He looks as though he has drowned, but until I get him on the table, I can’t say for sure.”
“Has your wife divorced you yet, Frank?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “All of them. Why?”
“So you have time to work on him tonight, right?”
“What do you see in her, Stone? She has no soul.”
“That’s an advantage in a woman, Frank. The soul of Woman was created below. You should know that. Can you? He was a witness in the Robles case. ADA Costas Varufakis has a personal interest.”
The body was loaded in and the ambulance pulled away. Frank pulled off his gloves. “Varufakis? Seriously? If you were called Varufakis, wouldn’t you change your name? I would.”
He climbed in his car and slammed the door. Then the window slid down and he leaned out. “Drop by this evening on your way home. I might have made a start by then.”
We watched him drive away through the park. When he was gone from view, Dehan said, “I’ve been avoiding making any comment about the ADA’s name since we first took the case.”
I heard a shout behind me and saw Joe approaching from where his guys were working on the pier.
“Stone, I was going to phone you, then the call came in and I thought I’d see you here.”
“What you got, Joe?”
“First of all, the phone. You were right. He had it sealed in a watertight bag in his jacket. Go figure. We’ve kept the bag for printing. Here it is…” He fished it out of the pocket of his white spaceman suit, contained in an evidence bag. “…in another plastic bag. I figured you’d want to look at the contents. If you want the guys at the lab to have a look, send it back to me.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Now, I was going to call you, you asked me to find whose saliva was on the glasses, back at the original crime scene.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
He gave a small laugh and shook his head. “Odd, but nobody’s was. Not on her glass, and not on his.”
Dehan pointed a woolen finger at me. “Ha! That is not as surprising as you might think!”
Joe laughed. “Really? Why’s that?”
“He was a wine snob. Only Spanish wine from Ribera del Duero or La Rioja was good enough for him. This wine was, let me see if I can remember…” I drew breath and she snapped, “Don’t! It was Bogle Vineyards, 2016, and he probably refused to drink it. Simple.” She thought about it for a second. “And you know what? That small, final act of arrogance might just have been the small straw that finally broke the camel’s back and made her shoot him!”
Joe sighed. “People have been shot for lesser things. Anyway, I’ll get back to my guys, but I don’t think we’ll find anything here.”
“Tire tracks,” I said, “would be useful.”
He gave me the thumbs up and went back toward the pier. Dehan and I started walking back toward the car. I gave Dehan the keys, pulled on my latex gloves and started looking at the phone. I spoke as we walked.
“The password has been disabled. The intention was clearly for the phone to be found and scrutinized.”
“Has it got Telegram?”
I smiled at her. “No, and I am just looking through his Whatsapp and his text messages, they have all been deleted. So has his address book. There is absolutely nothing on the phone…”
We had arrived at the car and she screwed up her face as she unlocked it. “So it was just a beacon to lead us to his body?”
I climbed in the passenger side. She got in behind the wheel, adjusted the seat and started the engine. As she pulled away, I said, “No. There is one document, in Docs. It’s addressed to me.”
I read in silence for a while. Dehan glanced at me a couple of times and I started reading aloud.
“It says: Hey, Detective Stone, dude, you know I have always been straight with you. I know I bin—spelled B-I-N—I know I bin a bit of a clown, but the words I said have always been true words. Like I told you be
fore, my daddy was a man of God who always eschewed violence, and sought the path of peace and dialogue. When I came to New York, he warned me and told me to mind I walked the straight path of righteousness. But I have strayed from that path into evil and wicked ways. I know there is no forgiveness for me, and the only thing that lies ahead is damnation and punishment, for I have committed the worst of sins, and I have taken a human life.
“I have decided tonight to add one more sin to those I have committed already, and take my own life. I know the Lord considers suicide almost as bad as murder, for it is for Him to decide who lives and who dies, and for us to live in humble, Christian resignation of the trials which He sees fit to visit upon us, but I figure I may as well be hung for lamb as for mutton.
“You will think that the way I am writing is strange, considering how you have heard me speak, but I may tell you that this is my true voice, the way I was raised, and not one of the fake voices which I have adopted along the way. I speak to you now in truth, and not in falsehood, as I have before.
“I cannot delay the moment any longer. I must go and meet my Maker, and face whatever judgment He sees fit to pass on me. It is time to confess. I have committed murder, Detective Stone. I killed Dr. Robles. I shot him. My reason was a simple one. Though we had agreed to work as partners and develop the Robles-Americano electric motor, he stole my research and my ideas and then tried to cut me out. So I worked out a plan. I asked Agnes if she would reason with him on my behalf. She was always so sweet. She said she would, even though she knew it meant he’d lay into her—verbally, not physically.
“I suggested I could come to her house and she should invite him over on some pretext. He wouldn’t know I was there until he arrived. Then, between us, we could try and persuade him to reconsider his decision. I told her she could pressure him from a moral stance, appealing to his better nature, and I would cajole him with hints at a possible legal action against him.
“But they were just excuses. I had no intention of trying to persuade him to do anything. I took my Sig along with me, and when he was sitting comfortably in his chair, enjoying his wine, I shot him. I am afraid I went crazy. I didn’t even aim, Detective Stone. I just filled him full of lead, cowboy style.
“Poor, sweet Agnes was terrified. I hated having to do it, because I was fond of Agnes, but I had to strangle her where she sat in her chair. She is now at the bottom of the East River. I only hope the good Lord took mercy on her and she is now at peace at last. I took Jose’s keys and went to his house, where I retrieved the work we had done together, and which rightfully belonged to me. Then I set the scene, so it would look like Agnes had killed Jose in a jealous rage because of his affair with Alicia. It would then just be up to me to graduate with a good degree, and launch the Americano electric motor on my own.
“That was my plan. But when you confronted me at college the other day, I knew I had no way out and it was just a matter of time before you realized what had really happened. Hats off to you. You are not an easy man to fool.
“My time is up. Do you believe in reincarnation, Detective Stone? I do. Better luck next time. Yours, most sincerely, Americano Nielsen.”
I flipped back to the beginning. Dehan drove in absolute silence. I read it through again twice. Then I put the phone back in the evidence bag, sealed it and put it in my pocket.
Eventually we pulled into Fteley Avenue and Dehan parked outside the main entrance to the station. She killed the engine, the windshield wipers died and we sat for a while, she staring at the steering wheel while I stared unseeing at the trees in front of us, and made a movie in my head of everything that had happened from beginning to end.
Suddenly, Dehan took a deep breath and turned to look at me. She said, “Well, we didn’t see that coming!”
I blinked, returned from my mental movie and frowned. “Which bit?”
“That it was Am who shot Robles! I would have sworn it was Agnes. I would have sworn Dr. Meigh had her hidden somewhere. I would not in a million years have pegged Nielsen as the killer.”
“Oh no,” I said, “I knew it was Am who shot him. It had to be. What surprised me was the suicide note, and the phony cowboy speak. He was from Colorado. It should have come naturally to him.”
THIRTEEN
Her cheeks, which were already pink from the cold, flamed red. She wrenched the hat from her head and glared at me. “No!” she said. “No! No! No! You did not know. You are lying!”
I shook my head. “It had to be. Who else would have had a gun like that? He told us the first time we met him. No, it was always going to be Am Nielsen.”
I opened the car door and climbed out. She got out the other side and flakes of sleet began to settle on her head. She slammed the door. “Why didn’t you say so?”
I shrugged. “Because it wasn’t proven and I thought your theories were brilliant and worth exploring.”
I started across the road and she fell into step with me. “You thought they were brilliant? Seriously?”
“I did. The only thing you never quite nailed was how she got the gun. For that you had to come back to Am Nielsen, which left the door open. If he provided the gun, wasn’t it more logical that he shot him? He had a better potential motive than Agnes, the temperament for it, and then there was that first shot, straight to the heart. Occam’s razor, remember.”
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necesitatem.”
“That is so hot when you do that.”
“Stop it.”
“I always had trouble imagining the Agnes that had been described to us pulling a gun, even in jealousy. But I had no trouble at all visualizing Am shooting somebody. He was what you might describe as morally ambiguous.”
“You might describe him that way. I’d describe him as an asshole.”
We climbed the steps and made our way to the detectives’ room. On the way, I stopped at the desk.
“Maria, did Mohamed turn up to make a statement?”
“Sure did, lover boy. Gomez took his statement.”
I thanked her and followed Dehan. She dropped into her chair and threw her hat and her gloves on the desk. I sat, with the movie still playing in my head. She watched me a moment, chewing her lip.
“We got Mohamed’s statement.”
She continued to bite her lip a moment, then said, “So where the hell does this leave us, Stone?”
I nodded at her as though she’d said something I agreed with, then pulled over the file and looked through the photographs. When I’d finished, I pushed them over to her, took out my cell and called Joe.
“Yeah, Stone. We didn’t find anything down here. We got some partial tire tracks. We’re making casts of them now, but I don’t hold out much hope. What can I do for you?”
“My money is on a Land Rover.”
“You are such a dude. If they are, you have to buy me a bottle of scotch.”
“Listen, do me a favor, will you? Check the Sig again for partials, however small. I want to know if Am Nielsen, the guy we just pulled from the river, I want to know if he fired the gun, then wiped it and pressed Agnes’ hand onto it. I know it’s a tall order, but just see if there are any wiped partials on the gun.”
“I’ll have a look, but it won’t be anything you can take to court.”
“It’s more for my own curiosity, Joe, to confirm or deny a theory.”
“OK.”
“And I’m sending his phone over to you. He wiped everything but his suicide note. See what you can retrieve, and get me the prints off the screen. I want to know the last person who typed on it.”
“Gotcha. Hang loose.”
“Yeah, you too, Joe.”
I hung up and sent the file to the printer, which started to churn out pages. Dehan was sulking. “I need a holiday in Goa.”
I grinned. “You wanna Goa again?”
“That’s not even a joke, Stone. It’s a dinosaur joke.”
I shook my head. “No, this is a dinosaur joke. How do you ask a din
osaur to supper?”
“Oh Lord, no!”
“Tea, Rex?”
“Oh Lord, please, no.”
“Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl using the bathroom?”
“Oh good grief!”
“Because the ‘p’ is silent.”
She laughed in spite of herself and threw her hat at me. Then she became serious. “You don’t believe his note, do you?”
“That’s putting it a might strongly. But there are one or two things that still trouble me.”
“Like what?”
“Like the wine.”
“What is it with the wine? You’ve been fixating on the wine since the beginning.”
“He was a wine snob. More precisely, he was a Spanish wine snob.”
“We established that. That’s why he didn’t drink the wine.”
“Correct, but there are two inconsistencies here. One is that Agnes knew that he was a Spanish wine snob, and she would not have provided California wine. Every bottle of wine in her kitchen was Spanish.”
“So Am brought it with him, as an offering.”
“And what do you think Agnes would have said when she saw it? If he wants to ingratiate himself with Jose Robles, bringing the wrong wine is not the best way to do it, and she would have told him that.”
She made a face. “OK, that is odd.”
“But odder still is that.” I pointed at the photographs. “Look at his glass.”
She picked up the picture of Robles in his chair and squinted at it. “Son of a gun…! The glass is almost empty.”
“Look at her glass.”
“A little more, but not much.”
