Roger Bailey answered the door in his bathrobe. His face was unshaved and pale, made even paler by the boyish splash of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Cardozo said.
“Vince.” Bailey looked at him with a puzzled frown. “I already heard about Britta.”
Which made it a little easier for Cardozo. “I just dropped by to say how sorry I am.”
“I know. Thanks.” Bailey stepped away from the door. He had the slow movements of a man feeling his way through a fog. “Come on in.”
Daylight slatted through the living room Levolors, dappling the sofa. A coffee cup sat on the TV like a robin that had strayed in through the window.
Bailey took the cup into the kitchen. Cardozo followed and glanced around at copper pots too gleaming ever to have been used. Spices and cooking staples were racked in bright lettered jars that he had a feeling no one had ever opened. A stale smell of lemon-scented something floated in the air.
Bailey fixed two cups of coffee. His actions were dazed and mechanical. Crockery rattled. Coffee spilled. He brought an open package of Oreos from the counter and pushed it across the table. “Have some breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever.”
“No, thanks.” Cardozo patted his stomach. “Gotta watch the old waistline.”
Bailey hung a cigarette inside his lower lip and struck a kitchen match. He was watching Cardozo, waiting for him to get to the point.
“Roger … at a time like this, I hate to bother you with questions, and if you’d rather postpone it—”
Bailey blew out a perfect smoke ring. “You have a job to do.”
“Did Britta ever mention having a French friend or acquaintance? Someone she called Mademoiselle?”
“Mademoiselle? Not that I can recall.”
“It was the last thing she wrote in her notebook. Maybe it was someone she met in the line of duty? Or a friend’s nickname? Or someone who did her hair?”
“She went to the same haircutter I do. Unless Britta knew something I don’t, he’s a signore, not a mademoiselle.”
“Writing Mademoiselle and no name suggests it was someone she’d met before.”
“She never mentioned any mademoiselles to me.” Bailey pulled at the cord of his bathrobe. “You know how it is when you’re both cops, working different shifts. There’s not much time to talk.”
“She was carrying a newspaper photograph in her wallet.” Cardozo took out the clipping. “Know anything about it?”
Bailey nodded. “I saw her clip this out.”
“When?”
“Tuesday night. I came home after my shift, she had old magazines and articles spread out on the sofa. Said she was looking for a decent photograph of Mickey Williams. That was the last time I saw her alive.”
Silence caved in.
“Any idea why she wanted a photo of Williams?”
“Said she might have to identify him.” Bailey pushed a strand of dark hair back behind his ear. “You know Britta. She was like this kitchen. Always prepared.”
“Identify him where? In a lineup? In court?”
“She didn’t say. I didn’t ask. Britta and me, we didn’t talk a whole lot.” Bailey stared down at the table. “Look—you’re going to find out and I’d rather you found out from me. We hadn’t been getting along for almost a year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Cardozo’s tone was low and sympathetic. “What was the trouble?”
“Nothing spectacular, no fights, no scenes—just in our own quiet way disagreeing more and more. Which is why there are two television sets. We weren’t home together often, but when we were, she liked cop shows; I can’t stand them. Sounds petty, but so’s marriage.”
Shock makes some people quiet. Others it makes chatty. Roger Bailey was one of the chatty ones. He seemed to have forgotten, or didn’t care, that the spouse is always the first suspect in a homicide.
“Little things add up. In our case they were starting to add up to zero.” He ground out a half-smoked cigarette in his saucer. “In fact, as soon as we could think of a way to break the news to her parents, we were planning to divorce.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“She was the one who came out and said it.”
“Did she give you a reason—besides cop shows?”
“Said she needed space to find herself. To tell the truth, I think she met somebody.” He said it in the sort of voice a man uses to say it’s seventy-two degrees outside.
“What makes you think that?”
“Some of her phone calls. Some of her excuses.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“No idea. She’d developed a secretive side. And frankly it was a relief. Roommates don’t argue as much as lovers.”
“So you’d become roommates?”
Bailey nodded. “Long time. More coffee?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Roger, what shift were you working yesterday?”
“Four to midnight.”
“And what did you do after your shift?”
“Showered, changed, and came straight home. Vince, I hate to make your work harder, but I’m telling you up front, I didn’t kill her.”
“I know you didn’t. Any sign that she came home during the day?”
Bailey shook his head. “She didn’t come back yesterday. I can tell because I left a note on the refrigerator. It’s still there.”
In the windowless green-walled interview room, Corey Lyle watched as Dotson Elihu played the restored section of the police videotape.
“My father had great sympathy for Mickey Williams.” Jack Briar was a flickering green-edged shadow, his voice a tinny monotone. “Dad loaned Mickey his apartment during a cruise. When he returned unexpectedly, he discovered Mickey with an underage girl. He asked Mickey to return the key.”
Corey Lyle drew his shoulders back. His eyes narrowed, grim and green and weary. “How does any of this help us?”
Dotson Elihu fixed his client with a lethally patient stare. “Mickey Williams is the Achilles’ heel of the People’s case. He’s already got three convictions for child molestation. They’ve been erased from the national crime stats, but the paperwork is on file in Austin, Texas. He can’t risk a fourth. With this tape, we create a reasonable suspicion that he was still molesting kids and John Briar saw him. Which gave Briar the power to put Mickey away for life. Which gave Mickey a motive to silence him. Which leaves you in the clear.”
Something had altered in Corey’s posture. He was sitting with his hands neatly clasped in his lap, chin down, eyelids lowered.
“Add to that Dan Hippolito’s autopsy on Amalia, which suggests she died a natural death, and at the very least we’ll get a hung jury—maybe even an acquittal.”
“No.” Corey shook his head. “We can’t use that tape.”
For an instant, shock took Elihu’s power to speak. “And why the hell not?”
“Because Mickey told me about those children, in confidence.”
“You knew about these kids and never mentioned it? Who are you trying to help, the prosecution?”
Corey’s eyes refused all argument. “I will not betray a sacred confidence to save my own sinful skin.”
“Core—this is me, Dot. You don’t have to playact here. You know and I know that Mickey doesn’t give a damn about you—he’s throwing you to the dogs to save himself!”
“I’m not playacting. And it so happens Mickey cares deeply about me and the Fellowship. And in his own quiet way, he’s helping me.”
There was a tiny vibration, a movement of understanding inside Elihu’s mind. “I shared my home with Mickey for two of the most horrible months of my life. I came to know his thinking and his proclivities. I don’t like the sound of his helping you, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
In the side room at Eugene’s Patio, Anne sat at the end of the jurors’ table, waiting for the waitress to bring her order.
“Excuse me.” Ben Esposito’s hand res
ted on the empty chair beside her. He was wearing a wedding ring. “Is this seat taken?” He drew the chair out and sat and stared at a battered plastic menu. Above their heads a wooden ceiling fan revolved slowly. “What’s good today?”
“I ordered health salad,” Anne said.
“You shouldn’t take nutritional crap from the food fascists. I’m going to have a cheeseburger. With bacon.”
“The Coreyites are deep into kiddy porn.” Thelma del Rio was loading spaghetti and breaded chicken cutlet onto her fork. “The government has photos.”
Anne looked up. “Where did you hear that?”
“During one of those sidebars.”
“I didn’t hear any of that. And I was sitting right next to you.”
“You should get your hearing checked.”
“Hey, Thelma, give it a break,” Ben Esposito said. “We could have a mistrial if you repeat those things.”
“Excuse me. I thought it was a free country.”
Turning toward Anne, Ben lowered his voice. “There’s one on every jury.” He said it as though they were confidants. What he wanted, Anne sensed, was to show that a jury foreman could be like Type-O blood—and get along with anyone.
“Corey was giving the kids drugs.” Now Thelma was talking to Shoshana. Poking at a plate of fruit salad, red Jell-O, and cottage cheese, Shoshana didn’t look the least bit interested or bothered.
“Can you believe it?” Thelma said. “Drugs. To break down their inhibitions.”
“Inhibitions?” Donna Scomoda said. “I’ve never met an inhibited kid in my life.”
Half the jurors had ordered big meals. By the time they had all eaten and paid, the better part of an hour was used up.
“Thelma’s inside poop gives me the jitters,” Shoshana muttered. “I wish she’d keep it to herself.”
Anne nodded. “Funny she’s the only one that overhears it.”
Two hours after lunch, Dotson Elihu was well into his cross-examination. “Is there any chance that we can look forward to your write-up of this trial in one of our national magazines?”
Jack Briar sat forward in the witness chair. His manner became confiding. “Yes, indeed. I’m writing this case up for Savoir magazine as a three-part series.”
“Then you’re being paid for your presence here?”
“By my publisher, naturally.”
“Tell us, Mr. Briar …” Elihu strolled a short distance from the witness box. “Did your magazine fee go up when your father and stepmother were murdered?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Did your magazine fee go up when your publisher learned you would testify at this trial?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Mr. Briar,” Elihu asked pleasantly, “you say your father told you he’d heard rumors of sexual activities involving cult members and children?”
“Objection.” DiAngeli sprang to her feet. “The witness made no such statement.”
“But he did indeed,” Elihu said. “On the police tape.”
Corey Lyle’s face whipped around to stare at his attorney. He shook his head two times, slowly.
“Your Honor, there is no such statement on any tape—nor has any such tape been introduced into evidence.”
“Objection sustained.” The judge glared at Elihu. “Mr. Elihu, this is cross-examination and you will question the witness accordingly. Now, I don’t want to have to remind you again.”
“Mr. Briar …” Dotson Elihu placed his hands on the railing of the witness box. “You testified that when you found your stepmother dead, you thought she was asleep. You say you shook her. How roughly did you shake her?”
“Why on earth would I shake an old woman roughly?”
“She’d cut you out of her will, hadn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t brutalize an elderly woman over a financial disagreement.”
“Do you remember the body’s original position before you shook it?”
Jack Briar was wary now. “Well, I—”
“Mr. Briar, will you please tell this court, under oath, exactly how Amalia Briar was positioned when you entered her bedroom?”
Jack Briar didn’t answer.
“Could she have been lying on her side?” Elihu’s tone was suddenly gentle, almost friendly. “With her face down?”
“I don’t recall exactly. I don’t think she was facedown.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Not a hundred percent, no.”
“Mr. Briar, is it not a fact that your father’s will left his entire estate to your stepmother?”
“Objection—relevance.”
Elihu wheeled. “Your Honor, I intend to show relevance.”
“Overruled. Witness may answer.”
“Yes, my father left his entire estate to his wife.”
“And is it not a fact that one week after your father’s death was discovered … you filed suit contesting his will?”
“That’s true, I contested his will.”
“On what grounds?”
“Objection.” Tess diAngeli sprang to her feet. “This line of questioning has no bearing whatsoever on any material raised in direct.”
“Overruled.”
“Mr. Briar …” Elihu returned to the defense table and picked up a sheaf of court papers. “Did you not depose under oath that your father’s marriage ceased being a marriage five years before his death, that Amalia Briar locked her bedroom door and refused him his conjugal rights?”
Tess diAngeli was on her feet again. “Your Honor, I—”
“Overruled.”
Jack Briar drew himself up. “Shortly after I introduced my father and stepmother to Corey Lyle, my father told me Amalia had decided to take a vow of celibacy. She told me the same thing.”
“Objection—hearsay!”
“Your honor.” Elihu turned, sighing. “The People cannot impeach their own witness’s sworn declaration to the New York probate court.”
“Objection overruled.”
Jack Briar continued. “The upshot was, my father and stepmother stopped having sexual relations. There was no secret about it. They told everyone.”
“Did your father say he intended to be celibate as well?”
“He never mentioned the subject to me.”
“Do you know if he was celibate after that point?”
“It was none of my business.”
“Is that a no?”
“Yes.” Jack Briar’s face colored. “That’s a no. I don’t know.”
“Then it’s conceivable that your father met with another woman—or other women?”
“Anything’s conceivable, I suppose, but he never mentioned such a relationship to me.”
At the prosecutor’s table, diAngeli scrawled on a sheet of scratch paper. Her assistant read the note and shook his head in the negative.
“To your knowledge, was your father in the habit of giving friends the key to his apartment?”
“Not to my knowledge. He certainly never gave one to me.”
Elihu gave the point a moment to register: conceivably, one or more unnamed persons had had access to the apartment. “Mr. Briar, I didn’t ask if your father gave you a key, I asked if he gave friends keys.”
Jack Briar’s face colored. “I don’t know. I honestly can’t conceive of it.”
“Ellie,” Cardozo said, “what are you working on?”
“Two homicides and a robbery.” Ellie Siegel’s fingers flew across the keyboard of her P.C. She didn’t look up.
“And twenty assorted lesser felonies. Why—what did you have in mind?”
“Would you have time to check out Roger Bailey’s movements Wednesday evening?”
“He was working the four to midnight shift.”
“I know that, but where? Who saw him?”
“I’ll bet his partner saw him.”
“Talk to his partner and make sure. Find out where he went after his shift. And
another thing—Britta asked him for a divorce. He thinks she met somebody else but he doesn’t know who. Look into that, okay?”
“Think he killed her?”
“He’s hiding something.”
“Most men are hiding something.”
“Mmm. See if you can find out what.”
SIXTEEN
Friday, September 20
Third day of trial
7:50 A.M.
IN THE DEPUTY ASSISTANT medical examiner’s office under First Avenue, Cardozo turned a page of the preliminary autopsy report on Britta Bailey. “Before the killer suffocated her, he hit her on the side of the face with a straight-edged object?”
Dan Hippolito nodded. “Which is how she lost her upper left incisor.”
“What kind of straight-edged object?”
“Possibly the open door of an automobile glove compartment. Which would fit with the synthetic carpet fibers on her clothing and the synthetic leather fibers in her mouth and nostrils. Her face was pushed into the front seat of a car and held there till she stopped breathing.”
Cardozo tried not to visualize it. Easier said than done.
“Pontiac uses that fiber,” Dan said. “So do American-assembled Hondas. And NYPD cars don’t.”
Cardozo turned to the next page of the report. He scanned for a moment in silence. “Estimated time of death, somewhere between five and seven P.M. Wednesday?”
“That’s going by the cottage cheese and the hydrochloric acid in her stomach.”
Cardozo thought back. “The ground was wet under her body—but it didn’t rain till two A.M. Thursday. So she was left in the rail yard after two. But if she was killed early Wednesday evening …”
“What bothers you about that?”
“The idea of driving around for seven hours with a corpse in the car.”
“Who says he was driving around? He could have been parked. He could have been having dinner. Watching a movie.”
“Then he’s a sociopath.”
“From what I’ve seen, it’s a possibility.”
Cardozo’s mind kept trying out connections. “Funny. John Briar was suffocated by a sociopath and Britta was the first uniform on that scene. And two years later she turns up suffocated, possibly by a sociopath.”
VC04 - Jury Double Page 13
