Lou looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t say that. All we’re doin’ is messin’ around in people’s private lives.” He looked at Mary. “I think you should think about withdrawin’ from this case, Mare. It’s out of control, and Rosato pays the bills around here.”
“We can’t file withdrawal papers today anyway. Court closed a long time ago.” Mary checked her watch. Seven o’clock. “Hey, it’s about the time the murder was committed. It’s the best time to visit a crime scene.”
“The crime scene? You hate crime scenes!” Judy said, but Mary grabbed her coat and bag.
“That was the old me. The new me loves crime scenes.” She slipped back into her coat, which still felt cold, and looked at Judy with hope. Their eyes locked, and Judy surrendered first in their game of emotional chicken.
“Tell you what, Mare,” she said. “I’ll go with you on this, but just for tonight. If we find nothing, we’re out. We withdraw tomorrow and refer the case.”
Mary considered it, then nodded. “Deal. Let’s go. If I have one night, I’m using it.”
Lou didn’t budge. “Hold on there, ladies. What about Bennie?”
Mary headed for the conference room door. “You don’t have to come, Lou. We’ll understand. Won’t we, Jude?”
“Of course.” Judy got her puffy white coat from a chair. “Stay here. Show common sense, unlike me. I could get fired twice by the same person.” Judy looked at Mary. “One thing. We have to go home and walk Bear. Remember, I’m dog-sitting.”
“Bennie’s dog?” Mary headed for the conference room door. “Okay. She might not fire us if we show the dog a good time.”
Judy snorted. “Oh she’ll fire us, all right. She just won’t kill us.”
“Sure she will,” Lou said, and reached for his wind-breaker.
31
It had taken all day for Jack to be transferred and processed into county jail with a busload of other inmates; he’d been showered, shaved, sprayed prophylactically with lice treatment, and issued laundered and steam-pressed blues. By nightfall he found himself in a plastic bucket chair against the back wall of the TV room of Housing Unit C. A caged television blared from its wall mount in the corner and thirty-odd inmates ignored Access Hollywood, clogging a space that was smaller than most living rooms. The room was in constant motion, the noise deafening, and the air rank with body odor.
The inmates were large, muscular, pockmarked, and pierced. They had long hair, dreads, and Willie Nelson braids; one bald inmate had tattooed his skull with bright flames. Another huge inmate, a wiry blond ponytail snaking down his broad back, looked like a deranged Norse god. Jack didn’t break eye contact when it was made by the inmates or the guards. He knew he was a novelty here; his photo was splashed across the tabloid on the bolted-down table, and the inmate who had piled mashed potatoes on his dinner plate that night had stopped serving to shake his hand.
“Why?” Jack had asked, astonished.
“I never met no millionaire before,” the inmate had answered.
He had been thwarted in reaching Trevor. There was an “approved list” for calls from county jail, which contained only the inmate’s attorney and one contact in the immediate family. He mulled over calling Mary and coming clean with his doubts about Trevor, but he couldn’t sacrifice Paige. A commercial for Listerine came on TV, and in time Jack realized that his thoughts had stopped with Mary, which both worried and comforted him.
At the same time.
32
THE DEVIL’S INN, read the boxy white sign. It was illuminated from within and lightweight enough to be blown around by the wind, which set its old-fashioned drawing of the devil, wiry and red with a spiked tail and trident, whipping back and forth. The Devil’s Inn was like every other run-down tavern that dotted Philadelphia’s street corners, concentrated in the working-class residential neighborhoods, and Brinkley had been a cop long enough to disapprove not only of the bars but of the liquor billboards that popped up around them like mushrooms. That he disapproved didn’t stop him from hanging in The Devil’s Inn, sipping the whiskey they advertised on every block.
It was his favorite bar, in West Philly, on the corner and down the block from where he had grown up. He didn’t go to Liberties, the bar in Fairmount where all the detectives went. He hated a bar like in Cheers, that TV bar where everybody knows your name. He went to The Devil’s Inn because nobody knew his name there and he liked it that way. That was its only attraction for him, because it certainly wasn’t a nice joint. It was small and dim, and smelled like dust and dirt. Stale cigarette smoke clung to the cocktail napkins and grit lay on the tile floor. The mirror behind the bar was too greasy to reflect anything, dust coated the few bottles of top-shelf, and a garland of dull tinsel festooned the cash register. It was leftover from Christmas, five years ago. Brinkley doubted it would ever come down.
He hunched over his shot and squinted down the knotty bar at the other patrons. Aging black men, they all looked like him without a tie, and no one acknowledged him. He guessed they didn’t like Cheers either, and none of them were his old neighbors. Those were long gone, surrendering what used to be a decent black neighborhood to gangbangers, pipers, and crack whores, emptying his old block. Sheets of plywood covered the windows that used to have sheer curtains and Venetian blinds; the city boarded up vacant rowhouses to keep trouble out, but the cops knew it only hid the bad guys. Brinkley’s childhood home didn’t even have plywood over the windows; the place lay as exposed to the elements as a nude woman. He didn’t drive by the house when he came to The Devil’s Inn. He always took the other way around.
He sipped his booze and cupped his shot glass, which leeched the warmth from his palm and then returned the favor. Brinkley’s hand never left his glass the times he came drinking at The Devil’s Inn and he wondered what that was about. He was in deep shit if all he had in the world to hold on to was a shot glass. He downed the last of his drink and when he looked up Kovich was sitting on the barstool next to him. “Boo,” Kovich said. “I’m Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
Brinkley didn’t know what to say, it was so unexpected. He had never brought Kovich here, never even mentioned it to him. But there he was, with no coat on. Brinkley could smell the cold night on him.
Kovich looked around the bar, layered with a visible haze of cigarette smoke. “Is this a bad dream?”
Brinkley smiled crookedly. “How’d you know I was here?”
“I followed you.”
“For real?”
“Only twice.”
“Stalker.” Brinkley smiled again. It was the whiskey that let him.
“How else am I gonna find out stuff I need to know? You don’t tell me squat.” Kovich waved to the old bartender, who had his back turned, and called for a Miller Lite. Brinkley didn’t tell him it would be a long wait. “I checked it out when you started getting cranky. I figured it was trouble between you and Sheree.”
“How?”
“I’m a detective, remember? I detected.” Kovich gestured again to the bartender, who was washing a glass in the grimy sink. “Hey, buddy, a Miller Lite for me and another shot for my lawyer.” The bartender didn’t turn around, and Kovich’s heavy lips curled into an unhappy line. “What is this, Denny’s? I’m too white to get a drink?”
“He’s hard of hearing.” Brinkley leaned over. “James!” he fairly shouted, and the bartender turned. “A Miller and another!”
“Lite!” Kovich added, loudly. When he looked over, Brinkley was staring at him. “Portion size is key.”
Brinkley laughed as the bartender came over with a sweating bottle and pilsner glass for Kovich and poured him another shot. Both detectives took a first sip.
Kovich cleared his throat. “So you’re thinkin’ the boyfriend is trying to hide something, the way he signs the logbooks. Right?”
Brinkley nodded. He was relieved Kovich didn’t start talking about Sheree.
“That meant to follow up, we had to find out his real name. So while Goofus
cries in his beer, Gallant gets busy.” Kovich leaned down, picked up a paper grocery bag, and pulled out a stack of girls’ clothes catalogs. He slapped them on the bar and spread them out like a winning deck of cards. There were easily ten, marked with yellow Post-its. “My kid saves these to bankrupt me.” He flipped open the top catalog and inside was a photo of Paige Newlin. She wore a floppy hat with a fake daisy on it. “Recognize our girl?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“So I call up the catalog company and ask about the girl but I can’t get anybody who knows her. They give me the name of the photographer they use in Philly and I call him up. David Something, his name is. He don’t know much about her and he only dealt with the mother on the phone, but he says the boyfriend stopped by the shoot. He remembers the boyfriend’s name in a flash, he says because it’s an unusual name, but I say it’s because he’s queer as my dick is long.”
Brinkley straightened on the barstool. “So what’s his name?”
“Trevor Olanski. How’s that for a handle?” Kovich took a gulp of beer. “So I check him out. Call Morrie in juvy on a flyer and ask around.”
“What did you find out?” Brinkley said, his head clearing suddenly.
“Seems our Trevor got tagged for dealing coke, on Tuesday of last week. At Philadelphia Select, that ritzy private school in town. He goes there.”
“No shit,” Brinkley said, surprised. “Was there a complaint?”
“Don’t show up in the file. The docket they keep shows it got withdrawn the next day. Smells like strings got pulled, but the officer in charge is on vacation. I’ll find out when he gets back.”
“So we gotta talk to this kid.”
“I got an appointment with him tomorrow morning, at his parents’ in the subs. You can come with, even though you’re black.”
“Damn!” Brinkley laughed. It was great news. Maybe they were on to something, with the boyfriend. “This mean you think I’m right?”
“No fuckin’ way. I still say you’re full of it.”
“Good, then I know I’m on the right track,” Brinkley said automatically, but it wasn’t what he meant. What he meant was, I appreciate what you did for me.
Kovich put his catalogs away. “You’re welcome,” he said, after a minute, and Brinkley forced a smile.
33
Davis surveyed Jack Newlin’s spacious, well-appointed office, on the top floor of Tribe & Wright. The wall of windows displayed the entire western half of the city, twinkling at night. A cherrywood Thos. B. Moser desk and end tables flanked a patterned sofa, and Newlin had two other desks: a polished library table in front of a matching file cabinet and, against the side wall, a modern workstation with a laptop. Three desks total; Davis would have expected as much. Atop them rested silver-framed photos of Honor and Paige Newlin. It was odd seeing a photo of Honor Newlin alive and it reminded Davis of his purpose.
He wanted to know all he could about Jack Newlin. He crossed to the file cabinet and opened the top drawer, which slid out easily on costly runners. He scanned the files, neatly kept, and all of them were Buxton Foundation matters. He reached into the first accordion, pulled out a manila folder of correspondence, and flipped through it. The letters concerned the tax structure of a charitable gift to libraries worth almost a million dollars. The D.A.’s eyes would have glazed over if it hadn’t confirmed his belief that Newlin was a meticulous and patient planner. He marked the files for seizure by the uniformed cop waiting outside, with a warrant and a cooperative security guard from Tribe. He’d read the files at his office, to see the details they contained.
Davis opened the second drawer and zeroed in on the folder that said “CONFIDENTIAL — COMPENSATION.” He pulled it out and skimmed the stack of papers inside. It was a listing of the partnership draw of the firm’s lawyers from last year. They were ranked in order from the highest paid to the lowest, and he didn’t have to look far to find Newlin’s name. It was in second place, just under William Whittier’s. Newlin’s compensation was listed at $525,000 in partnership draw and a million dollars in billings bonus, from the Foundation business he’d brought to the firm.
Davis whistled softly. He had learned the information from Whittier, but it was something else seeing it in black-and-white. He flipped back through the years, fully expecting the most recent year to be the highest. But it wasn’t. The previous year, Newlin was still number two, but his draw was $575 grand and his billings bonus was higher, $1.1 mil. The prosecutor double-checked, but he had read it right. He thumbed backward in time, to the previous year’s compensation. Again, to Davis’s surprise, it was higher than the more recent year, $625 in draw, $1.3 in billing bonus. And Newlin was number one in compensation that year, not Whittier. What gives?
Davis eyeballed Whittier’s trend and that of some of the other highly ranked partners. All of them had partnership draws and billings bonuses that increased through the years. That would be the logical trend of the income of a successful lawyer; it was Davis’s own salary history, though his pay was much lower. But Newlin’s pay was going down.
Davis mulled it over. Given what Videon had told him, he suspected that Honor Newlin had been gradually decreasing the amount of work the Buxton estate was sending her husband and apparently beginning to funnel the billings to Whittier. She was costing Newlin hundreds of thousands of dollars and humiliating him in front of the entire partnership. In effect, Honor Newlin was firing her husband gradually, giving him every reason to want her dead before she cut him off completely.
Excellent, for motive. Davis slapped the folder closed, marked it for seizure, and searched the third drawer, which yielded nothing significant. He stood up, brushed off his suit, and was about to leave when he glanced at the third desk, the workstation. Newlin’s laptop, he’d almost forgotten it. He went to the laptop and lifted its lid, which opened more easily than he expected. It hadn’t been latched completely, merely closed to protect the keyboard from dust. Davis had the same careful habit.
The large screen was black, saving power, and he moved the mouse to wake it up. It came to life with Newlin’s time records for the day of the murder, and Davis sat down and studied them carefully. Newlin’s day in six-minute slices, spent on matters for the Buxton Foundation. The description of the billed time was detailed and complete: prepare contracts, prepare documents for gifts to local college; revise press release with regard to computer-to-schools program; discuss joint gift to the Cancer Society.
He checked the list for telephone calls and other items. All of the calls were related to the Buxton Foundation. The only nonbillable time was for the Hiring Committee; Newlin had interviewed a law student for a summer job. The laptop wasn’t much help, but he would seize it anyway, since it was arguably within the scope of the warrant. Davis was just about to shut it down when he noticed the task bar at the bottom of the screen.
He looked closer. The computer was running another program behind a minimized window. He moved the mouse and clicked on the box. A multicolored website popped onto the screen. It was an online travel agency, confirming travel to London, England. There was a ticket on British Airways, ordered that morning and leaving next week, with no return date. He checked the names of the reservations. JACK NEWLIN. A single ticket, no wife.
“Yes!” Davis said aloud and hit a key. That was it! Why wasn’t Newlin taking his wife? Because she’d be dead, that’s why. Newlin had been planning to leave the country alone after her funeral. Davis felt like he had won a marathon. With what he had learned from Videon, it was more than sufficient evidence to convince Masterson they shouldn’t offer a deal, and after him the conviction would be a snap. The single ticket was just the sort of detail juries ate with a tablespoon. Newlin would pay for the crime he had committed.
Davis moved the mouse and clicked PRINT, just for a souvenir.
34
Mary, Judy, and Lou walked through the first floor of the Newlins’ elegant town house, taking notes on its layout for trial exhibits and trying to orient
themselves, but after a thorough search of the living room, dining room, and kitchen, they hadn’t turned up anything that would support their defense. Mary was especially troubled, and it wasn’t her usual revulsion at crime scenes. Even the blood that had soaked into the dining room rug hadn’t fazed her, because she was so preoccupied. Nothing about the scene was supplying any clues about how the murder had been committed, other than what Jack had told them. “This is not going well,” she said aloud, though Judy was drawing the layout and Lou was walking around in a professorial way, his hands linked behind his back.
“We shoulda brought the dog,” Judy said, sketching. They’d left the dog tied up out front, on orders from the uniformed cop at the door. He’d been posted to keep out the reporters, but had made a spot ruling on golden retrievers.
But Mary was barely listening. It was odd, being in Jack’s house and seeing no evidence of him. His presence was completely absent from the stone-cold living room, the overdecorated dining room, and the white kitchen that had no aroma whatsoever, a larger version of Paige’s kitchen. Whenever Mary looked into this family, she kept seeing the troubled connection between mother and daughter, with Jack off to the side. She thought of the Swann Fountain in Logan Square, where she’d lurked all afternoon; the woman, daughter, and on the other side of the fountain, the man. So what? She had psychology, but what she needed was evidence. Maybe upstairs.
She ascended the carpeted stair with Judy behind her, sketch pad in hand, and Lou taking up the rear. At the top of the stair was a small library, which she quickly assessed as being for show, so she left Judy there. The next stop down the hall was a small home office, and she knew from its chilliness that it had to be Honor’s, so she foisted it off on Lou and moved quickly down the hall to the master bedroom. The white double doors at the hall’s end were closed, and she reached them with an undeniable tingle of anticipation. She had to find something here. Jack would be dead without it. She opened the doors.
Moment of Truth Page 20
