A Clean Kill awm-9

by Leslie Glass

  "Was I useful?"

  "Very useful. Where are you- going? Do you want a ride? I'll take you anywhere between here and Midtown North."

  Lily laughed. It was almost a straight line west. "No, thanks," she said. "And good luck."

  April nodded. She needed it.

  Forty-five

  Woody was right on time, waiting double-parked outside when April emerged from the restaurant at five past eight. The wind had picked up in the last half hour, and sleeting rain pounded the pavement.

  "Morning, Boss. Was that Lily Eng?" Woody said as she scrambled into the car.

  "Yes."

  He knew better than to ask what they were meeting about. "The shop?"

  "Yes. How are you doing, Woody?" She knew he hated to be left out.

  "Me? I'm fine. It's quiet," he told her, as if crime was all that really mattered to him. He pulled the car out, angling across First Avenue through the traffic to make the turn west onto Fifty-seventh Street. For once, he did it without hitting the siren, and for that, she was grateful. At the red light on First Avenue they watched pedestrians fight the gusting rain as they crossed the street. The sky had darkened almost to night. As Mike would say. "Esta feo, feo." It was ugly weather. Woody whistled through his teeth.

  "Turn up the box," she said anxiously. If something happened this morning, she didn't want to be the last to know.

  For a few minutes only static blew in. Then the dispatcher's voice came on with business as usual. Woody stopped whistling before April told him to, and she was thankful for that, as well. The slightest positive thing helped on a bad day. She was feeling bloated and queasy from another of Skinny Dragon Mother's sticky breakfasts and the diner's rusty-nail tea. She hadn't drunk very much of it, only enough to know it wasn't going to be a health aid. "Anything new?" she asked after a pause.

  "Looked like Charlie worked all night, and he's wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Maybe he didn't go home. I didn't see the sergeant," Woody reported.

  "Anything else?"

  "Barry was hinting around. He wants in."

  Barry Queue was their former intelligence officer, the one who was so secretive and didn't try to make friends.

  "What did you tell him?" It could be that Queue was someone's spy and she had to watch out for him. Or else he was coming around. She hoped it was the latter. She preferred team players.

  "Didn't say nothing, just that I'd let you know."

  "Thanks for the heads-up." She had more questions about a few other people but not the energy to pursue them right then. It occurred to her that as Iriarte had done before her and every other boss did, she was always gathering information on the whereabouts, activities, and personal habits of the people who worked for her. Part of it was simply chain of command. To run an efficient unit and

  avoid surprises, one had to know what was going on. The question was, where did the job stop and controlling begin? And that was her question about the Anderson woman, too.

  She'd been deeply troubled by what Lily had told her. It appeared that Jo Ellen Anderson was more than just intrusive with the girls she placed; she also meddled in the lives of her customers. She went into their houses and watered their plants. That was unusual, and particularly troubling because it gave her access to their private spaces. What else did she do there? And who else could have used those keys? April's thoughts raced ahead. Even more interesting was the fact that Jo Ellen lived in a town house on Fiftieth Street, two blocks from Maddy and even closer to Alison. She had gray hair. April's mind wandered back to the photos Woody had taken at the two houses. A gray-haired woman who fit Jo Ellen's description hadn't been in any of them, but she wondered if the woman had been questioned by anybody else during the canvass of neighbors, and the name just hadn't popped up yet.

  "Are you okay, boss?" Woody asked.

  "Yeah, fine," she said. But she didn't feel fine at' all. She'd lost her cookies only once before on account of something her mother had fed her. A few years ago when Lieutenant Bernardino had been in the car, she'd had to get out and barf on the street. The horrible feeling of that lost face still haunted her. She'd vowed never to do

  that

  again no matter how bad she felt.

  "You sure you're all right?" Woody demanded.

  "I said I was fine. Why are you bugging me?"

  "You're groaning."

  "Jesus." She held on for fifteen more agonizing minutes, concentrating on the rain -outside and her prayer that no one else would get hurt today. She was out of the car before it stopped in front of the station, and went straight to the public women's room, where no one would see or hear her. In a second she was on her knees, hugging the toilet seat in the stall farthest from the door. The smell of disinfectant was strong, but not strong enough to cover that chipped old toilet's decades of use. She heaved right away, and everything came up.

  "Oh, God," she moaned. Most of the time she could overcome the quakes in her stomach. Even seeing Alison's body the day before didn't take her over the edge. But today her lifelong weakness had gotten to her. She felt like a wimp or worse, turning on cheap tea, the smell of human effluvia, and fear. It was Wednesday. She had only today and tomorrow before her scheduled cruise, and she didn't want anyone else to die. Her fear was another humiliation.

  Someone came into the bathroom. She was on her feet, flushing the second she heard the door. The unseen individual tinkled in the stall next to hers, flushed, and then left without washing her hands. April' exited gingerly, not feeling much better. She washed her face, popped an Altoids into her mouth, and groaned again at the sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was flat. Her face was pale, and for the first time in her life she looked to herself—distinctly old.

  Shocked, she blinked and looked again. Suddenly she could see what she'd be like in ten years, middle-aged and still doing what she was doing now. Time had passed without her realizing it, and now she saw her future. Suddenly she understood why people left the Department, went to the private sector, and moved on. The facilities were the least of it. The truth was, the job was a mill that ground people down. There never was time for anything, not a personal day, not a vacation, not a single luxury. She remembered what Alison had told her on Monday: maintenance was important; men liked younger women. They got restless and drifted away. Right then it was clear that she was not maintaining herself. She didn't look like Lily Eng. She wasn't patient with Woody, or Eloise, or Charlie Hagedorn. Certainly not poor old Skinny Dragon, who'd been neglected for months. She did not have time to be with her mother. Crime never went away, and the victims never stopped talking to her, no matter how long they'd been dead. She remembered what Alison had told her, and like all the other times when victims had come first in her life, she pulled herself together for them.

  "Good morning, everyone," she said a few minutes later to the four people she'd assembled in her office. "Charlie, do you have anything to tell us?"

  Hagedorn cleared his throat and glanced at Eloise. Eloise was wearing black-and-white-checked pants, a red sweater, and a Glock. Her head was a mess of blond curls. April was going to have to talk with her. Her smoky eye shadow gave her a sultry look, and her tough-guy's mouth was twisted to one side. She nodded at Charlie, and her message was definitely mixed.

  "The Anderson Agency was a private company until 2000. In 2000 the founder's daughter, Sally George Anderson,Jo Ellen's aunt, sold it to Hunter International, a much larger company. Hunter has a history of acquiring smaller agencies and over time consolidating them into their corporate structure. Their stand-alones include Harris Brown, a recruiter of business executives and support staff for overseas operations; ITEL, a company that specializes in business intelligence; and Crater Corp, which provides security personnel."

  "You said it was a quirky place. How does it fit in with Hunter's objectives?"

  "There's nothing on the Web site or anywhere else that says it's owned by Hunter. It's not clear what the deal is there. They may have acquired it fo
r the name."

  Eloise cut in. "There's a staff of only eight people. It's a small operation, very uncorporate in style. J0 Ellen may have a contract to stay for some period of years."

  "Charlie, would you find out who's in charge at Hunter International and what the deal with the Anderson Agency is? What about the aunt?"

  He made a note. "She passed away two years ago, left the house to J0 Ellen."

  "What was the relationship between them?"

  "It must have been pretty close. They lived together in the town house. The number is four twenty-five. It's right across the street from the Perkinses' house." He glanced at Eloise for some sign of approval, but she wasn't looking at him.

  "That's good work, Charlie," April said, making a few notes.

  "There's more. Since 2002, a bunch of complaints

  came in from residences where Anderson placed staff, a couple of thefts. All of them in town houses. No arrests were made."

  April wondered how he carne up with that information, since complaints that were dropped didn't' enter the record, but she didn't want to get into it at the moment. She turned to Queue, whom she invited on a tryout. "Barry, I want you to go downtown and get a search warrant for the Anderson house and agency. She has the keys to her clients' houses and lives across the street from Alison Perkins. I think that's probable cause for going in for a look-see, and the DA on the case agrees with me. Charlie, you're working on Hunter. Find out what the payment was for the company and what the deal with Jo Ellen is. Also, the status of the house,if anything is owed on it. Any personal information on Jo Ellen Anderson would be useful, too."

  "You think it's her?" Gelo said.

  "She was definitely exploiting both her clients and the nannies who worked for them. Looks like what she did was work on the mothers' concerns about reliability, etc., to get the girls in trouble so that she could replace them. Motive for that— probably greed. She could also have used her access to the houses for theft You said some jewelry was stolen."

  They nodded.

  "Okay, that's it. Woody, come with me. Eloise, you're in command here. You can continue on the Spirit case for the moment. Thank you all, we'll be in touch."

  No one asked her what she was doing.

  forty-six

  Feeling personally humiliated by her boss, Eloise returned to her office to sulk. She didn't know exactly what she'd expected. But after her and Charlie's initiative on the case the day before, she didn't want to be the only member of the team left out today. She and Charlie could well turn out to have been the ones who cracked the case, and there was still a great deal of information-gathering to do on it. Returning to the work of shutting down strip clubs wasn't even a close second in importance, even though the chief of detectives had deemed it a priority on Monday. The clubs would be there tomorrow and the day after that. Time was on their side in nailing any of them. Today, two weeks from now It didn't matter when they made their move. They'd close them. For a while there would be a flap, and then they'd open again under new names. Big deal.

  The homicides were different. Alison Perkins had been in their unit the day before she'd died. She'd sat in the very office where the detectives had just met, and she'd revealed a lot. Eloise had heard her voice lamenting the loss of her friend and the difficulties of having strangers in her house, who took care of her children and took advantage of her. Knowing how people exploited each other whenever they could, Eloise felt sad for Alison and wanted to see where she had lived and died. She wanted to continue with the investigation personally and be there for the resolution. Even Barry Queue was in it now. She wondered how that had happened andfelt deeply hurt at what she took as a personal affront, even a punishment, by her boss. It reminded her of Steve, and she was overwhelmed for a moment by a feeling of crushing loss.

  Whenever unexpected emotion caught her off guard, this was what happened to her. Ever since 9/11 every stress and personal setback tended to spin her back to the catastrophes. Panicky nightmares came to her even when she was awake. She was lost in a copter inside the black cloud of collapsing buildings. People just out of reach screamed for her to rescue them, and when she couldn't, they jumped from high windows to escape the inferno. She, too, was burning alive, and the man she'd loved more than any other had left her behind for a new life in Florida. That day a dozen people she'd loved were taken from her—some instantly and some later on. Because of it, she'd lost her feeling of security and safety in her job and her city, and now any little thing could put her back there and make her question her reason for living.

  Consciously, she was thinking about Jo Ellen Anderson, how much she wanted to be the one to talk to her again, find out everything about her morning habits, instead of backing off and leaving with only half the story as she had yesterday. Charlie had given her the bug. Someone beneath her in rank had taught her that they didn't have to be in a task force to be useful. They didn't have to sit in on endless briefing meetings and listen to idiots trying to connect dots they didn't even have. She could help from the outside. She could get it there on her own and get it. done. It was a dangerous thing to be thinking.

  She glanced at her watch. It would take the lieutenant all morning and maybe longer to talk with Jo Ellen Anderson and her employees about all the issues that concerned her about the Anderson Agency and its former owner. After listening to the Alison tapes, she knew that April took her time. It would be a long dance before the music stopped. She wondered how long it would take Queue to get the search warrant. If she had it, she could get there first and be the one to search Anderson's town house. That idea grabbed hold of her and restored her mood.

  forty-seven

  By nine thirty April and Woody were in the Anderson Agency offices. It had the old-world atmosphere that Eloise had described the day before—gold paint on the moldings, French doors, heavy curtains, a vase of fresh red and yellow tulips on the table in the reception area. But instead of inspiring the confidence of old traditions, it was kind of creepy. A gray-haired woman worked the phone at an antique desk, apparently too busy to acknowledge them.

  "Lieutenant Woo Sanchez from the police department to see Miss Anderson," April said as soon as she deigned to look up.

  "She's not in yet. Is there anything I can help you with?"

  "What time does she get in?"

  The woman consulted a chunky gold clock with a cupid sitting on it. "She usually gets here around ten, ten thirty."

  "We'd like to see her assistant."

  "Certainly, please take a seat and I'll call her."

  April did not take a seat. She wandered over to the window and gazed out at pedestrians on Lexington Avenue being battered by the rain. Several

  long minutes passed before a prim young woman with a black headband and black-rimmed glasses came in. She was dressed in a navy skirt and white blouse, and wore no jewelry. April thought that with a radical makeover she could be pretty.

  "I've called Miss Anderson. She'll be here in about five minutes," she announced quickly, and turned to leave.

  "I'd like to have a word with you, please," April told her pleasantly.

  "Of course." With a wintry smile, the girl leaned forward in a half bow. "How can I help you?"

  "Let's go into your office where we can talk."

  "We're not authorized to take people into the office. I only have one chair there, and it's not private. I can offer you the parlor."

  "Is the office equipped with surveillance cam-' eras?" Woody said suddenly.

  She nodded. "How can you tell?"

  "In the parlor, too?" he asked.

  "Everywhere. We had an incident last year. The new owners put them in."

  "What kind of incident?" April jumped in.

  "I don't know. You'll have to ask Miss Anderson," she said apologetically.

  "I'd like to see the office, Miss . . . ?" April waited for a name.

  "I'm Josie. Can you wait until Miss Anderson gets here? I could lose my job if I let you in there," she sai
d nervously.

  "No, I'm sorry. We don't have much time."

  "Oh, God." She exchanged worried looks with the woman at the desk, then opened a stout wooden door that led to an old-fashioned bull pen

  where five middle-aged women sat at desks with computers, talking on the phone. They all displayed surprise at seeing visitors.

  Josie pointed at the empty chair on the far end. "That one is mine."

  "Miss Anderson's office?"

  "In there." She pointed to a closed door opposite her desk.

  April nodded. They were going to have to talk to all the women. "Let's go to the parlor," she said.

  When they got there, Woody whistled at the antiques and decorations on the wall. Josie smiled at his reaction, and her face softened. "Josie, how long have you been here?" April asked.

  "A year."

  "Do you like your job?"

  She hesitated. "I need my job," she said softly, trailing her hand along the inlay on the desk.

  "We all need our jobs. Do you get along with Miss Anderson?"

  "She's been very nice to me," Josie said guardedly.

  "I guess you feel loyal to her then."

  "Of course." She glanced at the door longingly as if she wished she were back at her desk.

  "You know that two of your clients have been murdered?"

  She nodded solemnly and looked frightened.

  "Did you know them?"

  "Only from taking phone messages. I don't deal with the clients personally. Is it okay if I sit down? I feel a little sick."

  April waved her hand at the French chairs. "Of course."

  Josie sat in the closest one and hugged her chest. April took the chair near her. "Do you know Miss Anderson's schedule?" she asked.

  Josie shook her head. "She keeps that very confidential."

  "Do you know where she is at the moment?" April asked.

  "No." Josie chewed on the inside of her mouth.

  "Does she call you to let you know when she'll be here?" April asked with a raised eyebrow. "Uh-uh."

  "Does she come in every day?" April was pulling teeth.