by Jason Pinter
“But therein lies the major loose end,” Serrano said. “Right now we don’t have enough to pin Wright’s actual murder on any of these people. The fraud and conspiracy, yes. But that’s it right now.”
George sat back, trying to mask the disappointment on his face.
“You said Wickersham cracked,” George said. “And these people aren’t the Mafia. There’s no omertà. Once they know what kind of prison terms they’re looking at, they’ll be tripping over each other to cut a deal.”
“That may be so,” Serrano said, “but right now we haven’t charged anybody with homicide. Chester Barnes knows this. Which means he knows we don’t have enough on Drummond and likely not enough on Magursky or Wickersham. And even though she’s likely guilty of half a dozen various felonies, Caroline Drummond was out of the country when Constance Wright was killed.”
“These jokers all know that they’re on the hook for conspiracy to commit murder charges—or at the very least accessory after the fact,” George said. “If we haven’t charged them on those counts yet, Chester Barnes might convince them to keep their mouths shut to try and prevent murder charges. So it’s on you two to make this stick.”
“How so?” Serrano said.
“Wright’s killer came from the Drummond, Wickersham, or Magursky camps. Not to mention Christopher Robles trying to kill that Marin woman, and then his degenerate friends tried to finish the job. My take? Constance Wright got wind of the conspiracy to ruin her. That’s why she called Drummond and Wickersham, to let them know she was onto them and was going to go after the money. Which gives Wickersham and both Nicholas Drummond and his wife motive to shut her up.”
Tally nodded, but it was clear she wasn’t sold.
“Here’s one consideration,” George said. “The Marin woman. Strikes me as a little more than a coincidence that she’s been at the center of so many of these incidents. Maybe she’s involved. Maybe not. But something tells me it’s a little more than criminal rubbernecking.”
“I’ve considered that, sir,” Tally said. Serrano shot Tally a look.
“Chester Barnes will be talking to District Attorney Katz imminently, if he hasn’t already. If we can’t charge Drummond or one of the others with Wright’s death before Barnes cuts a deal, we’re going to eat shit from the media for letting the killer slide. I see a circus of dirtbags in our jail for ruining Constance Wright’s life and Rachel Marin circling like a vulture on roadkill. Constance Wright was a good woman. It’s our duty to make sure these scumbags pay the price for Constance; otherwise we’re going to get eaten alive by the media. Am I clear?”
Serrano and Tally both nodded.
“Now go get them,” he said. The detectives left.
“What do you think?” Serrano said once they were out of earshot of the lieutenant’s office.
“Part of me thinks he’s right. That if this group of assholes was willing to go so far as to bury Constance Wright that of course they’d go a step further. And if you work backward on the time frame, it matches up. Wright somehow gets wind of the conspiracy. Contacts her ex-husband and the patsy who helped set her up. They then send Caroline Drummond to Europe to get her away from everything, give her plausible deniability.”
Serrano nodded.
“But . . . ,” Tally said.
“But if Wright found out about the setup, why call Drummond and Wickersham before going to the cops? Why give them a chance to get to her?”
“She might not have had enough proof to come to us,” Tally said.
“So she calls them just to scare them? Let them know she’s onto them? Constance Wright was a smart woman. She knew how to play the game. She wouldn’t have contacted either of them unless she had evidence of something.”
“What if,” Tally said, “and this is a big if. What if Drummond was the father?”
“Of Wright’s unborn child? I don’t see it.”
“Hear me out,” Tally said. “There’s always a spark between exes. I know you and your ex went at it a few times after the divorce.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Please,” Tally said. “You came into the station wearing her perfume every Wednesday morning for six months.”
Serrano pled guilty through silence.
“And I know the first few months I was with Claire, I was terrified she’d go back to her ex-husband. So Wright and Drummond relapse. She gets knocked up. Isabelle finds out. Probably because Drummond told her, because he’s a doofus.”
“And they decide to kill her rather than let her give birth to Drummond’s kid?”
“Think about how much money they took from her,” Tally said. “If he has to pay child support to her after all that, it’s insult to injury.”
“Isabelle Drummond doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would divorce her husband for cheating,” Serrano said. “More like the kind of woman who would kill the girl he cheated on her with.”
Tally nodded. “But still . . .”
“Why would Wright call Sam Wickersham too?”
“Yeah. Why call Sam Wickersham too?”
Serrano thought for a moment. “What if,” he said, “we’ve all been looking at this wrong? You, me, the lieutenant. We’ve always assumed the killer was part of the Albatross crew, the people who ruined Wright’s life. But what if they’re totally separate crimes?”
“Pretty elaborate crimes,” Tally said. “Trying to make her death look like a suicide—that means it was preplanned.”
Serrano said. “And if not for Rachel Marin, it might just have gone down as a suicide.”
“There you go with that Marin woman again,” Tally said. “The lieutenant and I are on the same page about her. There’s something not quite right.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I don’t trust her. She calls us right after Wright’s murder, comes to the presser, and then shows up at Drummond’s house? And Wickersham—I mean, John, you have to see this too. You and I both know the kind of people that buzz around crimes like this.”
“Don’t even go there,” Serrano said.
“Tell me you haven’t considered it.”
“Considered it and dismissed it.”
“She’s a criminal rubbernecker,” Tally said. “You’ve been around long enough to know civilians who hang around crime scenes and get involved with witnesses aren’t fully right in the head.”
“Maybe, but she’s not a killer,” Serrano said. “But her kids . . .”
“John Wayne Gacy had kids.”
“Come on, Leslie.”
“We’ve both investigated thrill-seeker killers. People who commit murder, then call the tip line. And this lawyer of hers, Jim Franklin? A civil litigation attorney negotiates a routine home purchase? I called Franklin. He claimed attorney-client privilege, refused to answer questions about Rachel Marin, and threatened to sue the department for harassment. Something’s up with this chick.”
“You won’t be able to subpoena Jim Franklin,” Serrano said. “Marin isn’t being investigated for any current criminal acts. You can’t prosecute based on curiosity or theories, and if we push harder, we open ourselves up to a harassment charge.”
“But you know there’s a reason Rachel Marin used this guy Franklin for her home purchase,” Tally said. “There’s something she doesn’t want to get out. Something she wants to keep hidden. How much you want to bet there’s a crime in her past that would connect her to this?”
“I know there’s more to Rachel Marin than she lets on,” Serrano said. “Knew it from the moment she left that message about Constance Wright’s death.”
“See?” Tally said. “You know I’m not totally out of my mind on this.”
He shook his head. But for someone who wanted to keep her past in the shadows, Rachel Marin was not doing a particularly good job of staying hidden in the present. It felt like she wanted to step into the light but was holding back. At this point, Serrano didn’t know what Rachel’s i
ntentions were. And Tally was making him worry he’d made a terrible mistake confiding in her. Something had happened that had tilted the Marin family on its axis. Those children had experienced trauma. And Serrano knew better than anyone that trauma often begot trauma. People who’d experienced evil often committed evil. Was it enough to push Rachel to do something terrible?
Sometimes the most terrifying crimes were the ones with no meaning. No warning. No motive.
“All right,” Serrano said. “We look at Rachel Marin. But if it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, we move on. Those kids have been through enough.”
“Works for me,” Tally said. “Let’s go see Aleksy Bacik at Irongate Properties. He put together the Marin home purchase with Jim Franklin. He knows something.”
“He won’t show us the closing documents unless we have a warrant,” Serrano said. “And no way we’re getting one without an actual crime or probable cause.”
“I don’t need a warrant,” Tally said as she led Serrano to the car. “I’ll simply tell Mr. Bacik that someone might leak to the press that he was meeting with the police, and he can watch as his client list dries up faster than a puddle in the desert. He’ll talk.”
He will, Serrano thought. And it scared him to think what Mr. Bacik might say.
CHAPTER 35
The first thing Serrano noticed when they entered the offices of Irongate Properties was that they smelled like cookies. Not real cookies, though, not the kind his mother used to make fresh, loaded with more chocolate chips and walnuts than dough. This office smelled like cookies that had been sprayed with air freshener and left inside a dusty closet for a week.
Tally said, quite loudly, “Ashby police. We’re looking for a Mr. Aleksy Bacik.”
Two dozen well-coiffed Realtors stopped what they were doing, stood up, and got terrified looks in their eyes that reminded Serrano of a teenager about to take their first driving test.
Realtors were hawks. They had to be. They were competing against dozens of other firms and often their own colleagues, and even the hint of impropriety could lose them business. So when a pair of cops walked into the office unannounced, they could all see commission checks flying out the window. Tally knew this and knew it could be used as a cudgel.
Serrano saw a man rise slowly from behind a partition like a child checking to see if there was a monster under the bed. Half a dozen people pointed toward the same cubicle. Bacik raised his hand. Serrano and Tally walked over slowly. No need to make anyone think this would be quick.
Aleksy Bacik was in his early forties, with a thick head of dark-brown hair graying at the side but so unnaturally evenly that Serrano got the sense he dyed it gray on purpose to appear more mature and experienced. He was a shade under six feet, with tanned, heavily moisturized skin. Birth records showed that Bacik had emigrated from Slovakia with his family at the age of five and graduated from Loyola and currently lived on Barrister Avenue in an apartment that he had purchased four years ago for $2.2 million.
His career was on the upswing. He was making money. He was good at his job.
But this was the kicker: He had spent four years after college working real estate in Darien, Connecticut. Just two blocks from Franklin and Rosato Associates, the firm that represented Rachel Marin.
Bacik worked in a cubicle barely wide enough for Tally to lie down in. Tally took a seat. Serrano went to the adjacent cube and asked a petrified thirtyish redhead if he could borrow a chair. She nodded, just glad he didn’t want to question her. Serrano carried the chair into Bacik’s cube and took a seat next to Tally.
Bacik sat down. “How can I help you, Officers . . .”
“I’m Detective Tally; this is Detective Serrano. We spoke on the phone earlier.”
“Yes?” Bacik said, as though he’d been asked a question.
“We’re here about Jim Franklin,” she continued. “And the home you sold to Rachel Marin.”
“It was a standard home purchase,” he said, voice trembling. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Serrano looked at Tally. She laughed.
“You know,” Tally said, “anytime I’m talking to someone and they start off by saying, ‘I’m not a racist,’ well, guess what. You can bet the house that at some point during the conversation, they’re going to drop the n-word or talk about how some black guy stole his job. See what I’m saying? Nobody says ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’ unless . . .”
Tally waited.
When Bacik said nothing, she continued, “Unless they did something wrong.”
“I have an NDA,” Bacik said.
“Excuse me?” Serrano replied.
“I signed a nondisclosure agreement. I can’t talk to you.”
“You signed a nondisclosure agreement when you sold Rachel Marin her house?”
Bacik nodded.
“I’ve never heard of an NDA for a home purchase,” Serrano said, “unless it’s someone famous, like Peter Dinklage.”
Bacik looked confused.
“Peter Dinklage? Tyrion Lannister? Game of Thrones? You need to stay more current with the culture, Mr. Bacik.”
“I can argue my partner’s definition of ‘culture,’” Tally said, “but the fact is, nondisclosure agreements are between two parties regarding a civil matter. They are subject to warrants and are not protected by law.”
“Meaning your NDA will not protect you in court,” Serrano said.
“Court?” Bacik said, the color draining from his face.
“US law stipulates that NDAs, or nondisclosure agreements, cannot lawfully prevent people from reporting claims to law enforcement or government agencies,” Serrano said.
“So the question is,” Tally said sternly, “why did Jim Franklin require you to sign an NDA when you sold Rachel Marin her house?”
“I didn’t break any laws,” Bacik said convincingly. “I sold a house. Plain and simple. It was a routine transaction.”
“Buying a home for 800 grand in cash is not a routine transaction,” Serrano said. “How many homes in the $800,000 price range have you sold without the buyer procuring a mortgage?”
Bacik was silent.
“Wow, that many,” Tally said. “Doesn’t sound like a routine transaction.”
“Routine or not, it was a legal transaction. You have no right to come in here and bully me,” Bacik said.
“Bully you?” Tally replied with mock surprise. “Trust me, Mr. Bacik, if we were here to bully you, you’d know it. We just want to know why so much secrecy was necessary for this ‘routine’ purchase.”
“And we want to know the extent of Jim Franklin’s relationship with Rachel Marin,” Serrano added.
“He was her lawyer,” Bacik said, confident that relaying this piece of information couldn’t get him in trouble. “He handled the negotiations and reviewed the contracts for the purchase.”
“Did he draw up the NDA?” Serrano asked.
Again, Bacik was silent.
“How many properties have you sold where the buyer required an NDA?”
Again, silence.
“This is sounding less and less like a routine purchase,” Tally said again.
“Listen, Mr. Bacik,” Serrano said gently. “We have no interest in hassling you. Or messing with your livelihood. And that’s real. But we’re going to find out the truth. Whether you help us or not. And while we don’t want to harm your business, if you impede our investigation by refusing to cooperate, well then, I’m going to renege on my promise. So tell us. Point blank. Why did Jim Franklin require you to sign an NDA?”
“You’re not going to the press with this?” Bacik said. “I can’t have my name in any stories that are undesirable.”
“If it’s like you said, Mr. Bacik,” Tally replied, “if you’re on the up-and-up, your name stays as clean as a granite countertop the first day of its listing.”
“OK,” Bacik said. “Her real name isn’t Rachel Marin. That was part of the agreement. Marin is the name she used on the co
ntract, and it’s the name on the deed, but it’s not her given name. I think part of the reason she paid all cash is so there wouldn’t be any record of a bank transaction in her legal name. No mortgage, nothing on her credit.”
“What is her real name?” Tally asked.
“I don’t know,” Bacik pleaded, and they both knew he was telling the truth. “Because she didn’t need a mortgage, we didn’t have to go through all the background checks necessary when a bank gets involved. And the payment was made via certified check from Franklin and Rosato Associates, rather than the buyer. In a weird way, it was kind of like selling to a guarantor.”
“You’re saying the check came from the law firm rather than the buyer because they were protecting their client’s identity.”
“I’m not not saying that.”
“Why would they want to hide her identity?”
“I don’t know that either,” Bacik said. Again, he seemed to be telling the truth.
“You spent several years in Darien at a small real estate firm called Front Door Associates,” Serrano said.
Bacik nodded. “That’s right.” He liked this line of questioning. It seemed innocuous, and he didn’t have to lie.
“Is that where you met Jim Franklin of Franklin and Rosato?” Tally said.
Bacik cocked his head, as though unsure why that question was being asked.
“Because it’s fairly random, don’t you think—a lawyer from Darien contacting you of all people to buy a house in Ashby for an anonymous client in Connecticut? So you had to have known Jim Franklin previously. Which is why he and Rachel Marin—or whatever her name is—came to you. Jim Franklin knew you would perform an all-cash transaction, no questions asked.”
“Like I said,” Bacik replied, “I haven’t broken any laws.”
“No, but Jim Franklin and Rachel Marin might have,” Tally said sternly. “And either you work with us, and we can all be friends, or you can work against us, in which case I will make sure you’ll be selling porta potties by the end of the year.”
