by Adam Mitzner
We kiss on the lips.
“New song?” he asks.
“Just something I’m playing with.”
“I like it.”
“Yeah . . . I don’t know.”
He waits for me to explain, to elaborate about the song’s meaning perhaps, but I don’t intend to divulge more. In the song, the narrator is not sure whether love can save her. My lyrics are not so opaque, and he surely heard enough to realize that the narrator is me.
Still, he’s not one to press. Especially not tonight, after I’ve lost a loved one.
“How are you holding up?”
“Barely,” I say. “Maybe not even that well. I saw my father after you. He lost the Garkov motion in limine.”
“The what?”
“The motion about whether the prosecution can introduce the Red Square evidence. I told him he’d lose it, and he did. Afterward, we went to Cipriani.”
I’m reasonably certain that Gabriel has never heard of Cipriani. If he has, I’m even more sure he’s not impressed.
“Did you tell him about Lauren?”
“Yeah. He gets it. I mean, as much as anyone can. He’s the only person who really understands what I went through in losing Charlotte. Still, I don’t think he can fully grasp what it’s like to lose a second person so soon after, but . . . it’s hard to hold that against him.”
A sad smile comes to Gabriel’s lips. “I hope you don’t hold it against me that I don’t have the first clue as to how awful this really is for you.”
“You know. You know because you know me.”
“Thanks for thinking that. I just wish . . . I don’t know, that I could be of more help, I guess.”
I can’t imagine a partner being more there for me than Gabriel has been these past six months. Of all the things in my world that I question, that I’m lucky to have him is not one of them.
“The only way you could possibly be more support is if you told me you found Donald Chesterman and he was holding the gun he used to kill Lauren.”
“No such luck, I’m afraid.”
“What do you have so far?”
“Unfortunately, not a whole helluva lot. We’re checking the surveillance footage around their apartment and on the way to the park. There are no cameras in the park, so that’s a dead end. We’re also going to do a deep dive into Lauren’s finances, e-mails, that kind of thing.”
“Good luck with that,” I say. “You know when Richard Trofino buries a body, it stays buried.”
“I know. The odds of finding anything linking him to the murder are not good. She was dead for hours before the police got to him. More than enough time for him to rid himself of gunshot residue and ditch the murder weapon.”
“You have a time of death?” I ask, noting that it’s new information to me that hours elapsed between Lauren’s murder and the police telling Richard she was dead.
“Yeah, one twenty-seven a.m.”
“Well, that’s rather precise.”
“Shot Spotter doesn’t lie.”
I’m less than a year removed from the DA’s office, but technology moves on. I have no idea what “Shot Spotter” is. Slightly embarrassed, I ask.
“It’s this new pilot program. A technology, really. Little microphones are placed throughout the city. The way it works is that these microphones have sensors that somehow ignore ambient noise, but when there’s a loud boom—like a gunshot—the information is immediately transmitted to the Shot Spotter manufacturer in California. They review it . . . I don’t know what kind of review they do, but their algorithms have some way of determining that it’s a gunshot, not a car backfire or whatever, and triangulate the location. There’s also a time stamp. It’s like DNA—infallible.”
“And what does this infallible technology say?”
“That Lauren was shot at one twenty-seven a.m., right where her body was found.”
“Wow. A brave new world of law enforcement.”
“New toys, same crimes. Just because we know the when doesn’t put us that much closer to the who or even the why. It could be that someone lured her out to her death, or it could be a random crime. Maybe she couldn’t sleep, went for a walk, and it’s a wrong place wrong time kind of thing.”
I nod, but Gabriel knows as well as I do that there’s no way the head of Special Vics was gunned down in a random act of violence. This crime was about someone wanting to murder Lauren Wright.
“Oh, and the murder weapon is a Glock 19,” he says.
“So, a cop gun.”
In New York City, cops are given a choice of three service weapons. The vast majority of police, including Gabriel, go with the Glock 19. The primary reason is that it’s the cheapest, and cops have to pay for them out of their own funds. It’s also the smallest, which appeals to the women on the force, but also to many of the men, because most cops carry their weapons when they’re off duty, and the Glock 19 is most easily concealed.
“Yeah, but I’m not aware of any cop having an issue with Lauren. I think it points to Richard.”
He’s saying that Lauren got the gun from a friendly cop, and Richard used it to kill her.
“I don’t think so. Lauren was always very by the book,” I say.
“I’ve known plenty of ADAs who wouldn’t jaywalk and still asked me for a piece, just so they could sleep well at night without going through the rigmarole of getting a permit. In Lauren’s case, it might not just have been to expedite the process. Maybe there’s something in Richard’s background that would have denied them a permit. Or, more likely, he balked at providing years of his tax returns.”
Even though the media is full of stories about how anyone can get a firearm with virtually no effort, in New York City it’s a time-consuming process, and does actually include disclosure of financial records, including years of tax returns. Gabriel’s theory makes a lot of sense. I’m certain Richard Trofino would never let anyone see his tax returns.
It’s only been a little more than twelve hours since Lauren’s body was discovered, but the first twenty-four hours are critical in any investigation. If the first day doesn’t point in the definite direction of a suspect, the odds of ultimately apprehending the killer become exponentially greater.
Which is why I’m hoping with all my might that Lauren procured a cop gun and then her husband used it to murder her. At least that way, there’s some evidence pointing to the person who killed her.
PART TWO
16.
ELLA BRODEN
Lauren Wright is laid to rest on a sunny, bitterly cold Monday morning. The cemetery is on Long Island, more than an hour outside of Manhattan. The grounds are expansive, tombstones as far as the eye can see. It snowed the night before. Nothing major, just enough to dust the landscape white.
Gabriel is wearing his dress blues. I’ve never seen him in uniform, and if it weren’t for the circumstances, I would have commented that I’d like to see him dressed like that more often. As good as he looks, I can tell he’s uncomfortable. He’s tugging at the collar like it’s choking him.
Among the four hundred or so mourners, a sizable percentage are cops. They form a veritable sea of blue. Henry Lucian, Gabriel’s captain, is near the front of the chapel. Gabriel tells me that the shorter man with the mustache standing beside Lucian is Chief of Detectives John Calimano, his boss’s boss. I recognize from television the African American man who completes the triumvirate—Calhoun Johnson, the New York City Police Commissioner.
Directly across the room, similar higher-ups from the District Attorney’s office congregate. Drake McKenney centers their group. He’s studying what appear to be index cards. His deputy Larry Kassak goes on tiptoe to whisper something in McKenney’s ear, while Dana Goodwin looks on as if she’s bored.
I know it’s a petty thought, but I’m hoping that Dana doesn’t deliver a eulogy. I’ll understand if Richard asked McKenney to say something. He’s a public figure, after all. But I’ll feel aggrieved if Dana, rather than I, was tasked wi
th extolling Lauren’s virtues as a boss and a mentor.
I strain my neck looking around for Richard the way you rubberneck to see a car accident on the shoulder of the road. I don’t see him anywhere. Then I remember that at Charlotte’s funeral, my father and I waited in a side room until right before the service began. No doubt that’s where Richard is holing up now.
A few moments later, Lauren’s body is wheeled into the well of the chapel. The casket is closed—I suspect because her wounds were too gruesome for the mortician to make her presentable. That’s probably also the reason there was no prior public viewing either. Richard walks beside her coffin, a minister across the box from him, a Mutt-and-Jeff juxtaposition. The minister, white haired and bespectacled, has a tall and thin elegance about him; the widower’s head doesn’t rise much above the casket. He’s looking just as Richard Trofino usually does—like he’s itching for a fight.
When they reach the front of the chapel, Richard finds his seat in the first row. The minister takes the three steps up onto the stage and situates himself behind the lectern.
I didn’t know Lauren to be a religious person. In fact, I would have been surprised if she attended church at all. Still, I think she would have liked this setting, with its formality. Charlotte’s funeral was much more of a bohemian affair, befitting her life. Lauren was a public servant in a relatively high office, so the pomp strikes me as appropriate.
The service begins with the minister welcoming everyone. I’m not looking at him, though. My eyes are fixed on the coffin. I can’t help but wonder what Lauren is wearing, imagining her the way she looked in court in one of her smart blue suits. Of course, it’s far more likely that Richard selected an outfit for her to wear for all eternity that was more in keeping with his wife’s life outside the office.
I lose myself in more macabre thoughts. How much her body has already decayed. Whether it’s cold to the touch like a piece of defrosting meat.
I don’t focus again until I see Drake McKenney walking up to the stage. Once he’s in place, he removes from his breast pocket the same three-by-five index cards I saw him fingering earlier and lays them down on the lectern.
“One of the great honors in being the District Attorney for New York County is that you meet the finest lawyers in this city,” he begins. “That, by definition, means you meet the finest lawyers in this country. And among this elite group, the best of the best, Lauren Wright stood out. It was not only her intellect, which was second to none. Nor her judgment, which I relied on time after time. It was her compassion that made her so special. Above all else, Lauren Wright was a woman who dedicated her life to speaking for the weakest members of our society—abused women, children, the elderly—those who, in our office, are called special victims.”
McKenney goes on like this for five minutes. It’s a good speech, but it’s still a speech rather than thoughtful remembrances of a friend.
After McKenney, Lauren’s sister, Leslie, speaks very briefly. Less than a minute. She’s obviously not accustomed to addressing a crowd. I met Leslie once when she visited Lauren at the office, maybe a year into my deputyship. I don’t recall at the time noting how much Lauren resembled her sister, but it’s eerie―both of them possessing a striking contrast of soft smiles and intense eyes framed by a curtain of reddish-blonde curls.
Richard’s eulogy is the last. The stories he tells describe a happy marriage, much closer to what I always imagined Lauren’s home life to be than what I observed firsthand at dinner the night she was killed. Or what I’ve imagined since, as I’ve become more and more certain that he murdered his wife.
“Lauren and I communicated on a level that was all our own,” he says at one point. “I remember once, fairly recently, in fact, we were at a friend’s house playing a game called Apples to Apples. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but it’s a card game. The way it works is that a leader for each round pulls a card that’s descriptive. For example, it might say ‘awe-inspiring.’ Everyone then plays a card from their hand that they think the leader will select as best matching that description. For ‘awe-inspiring,’ someone might play a card that says ‘Sistine Chapel.’ Another player might throw down a card that says ‘Michael Phelps.’ And someone else might play a card they think is funny, like ‘my pants.’ The leader selects the one that appeals most. So there’s no correct answer. The point of the game is to play the card you think the leader will choose. If your card is chosen, you get a point.
“Anyway, on this particular round, Lauren was the leader. The descriptor word was selfish. We all throw in our cards, and I announce that I’m definitely going to win. Our fellow players dispute this, thinking that they’ve played the card Lauren will select. The first card that Lauren turns over says ‘my daughter,’ and Lauren chuckles. The next one says ‘Kim Kardashian,’ and this time everyone laughs. The third card reads ‘millennials,’ and there are nods of approval. When she turns over the last card, Lauren breaks out laughing. Not a little guffaw either, but like she’s never seen anything so funny in her entire life. She can’t even read the card, she’s laughing so hard.
“One of the other players reads it for her. ‘Lobster,’ he says. He looks completely confused. Then he says, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t get it. The clue was selfish, right?’ The others also seemingly don’t understand. But Lauren finally stops laughing long enough to say, ‘That was Richard’s! I know it was Richard’s!’ Then another of our friends says something like, ‘Does someone want to let the rest of us in on the joke?’ And that’s when Lauren yelled out, ‘Don’t you get it? Lobsters are shellfish.’
“My point in sharing this story is that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lauren would get the pun instantly, and she’d know just as quickly that I was the only one who would have played that card. That’s the kind of connection we had.”
Richard smiles at the memory, looking a bit too happy to be there.
The graveside ceremony vividly reminds me of the day we laid Charlotte to rest. The coffin balancing on the bands over the grave, the ritualistic lowering of it into the ground, the tossing of fresh dirt on top of the casket until the wooden box vanishes.
I’m crying with the first shovelful. I don’t know if I would have reacted the same way if it hadn’t been for Charlotte, but I think that about a lot of things—maybe everything—in the aftermath of my sister’s murder. I’m not the same person now as I was before. Gabriel pulls me to him, and I muffle my sobs against his chest.
The minister concludes the service by saying that he took considerable time to select an appropriate final passage. He then announces that he will read from 1 Corinthians:
And when this which is corruptible
Clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal
clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
As we’re making our way back to the parking lot, while I’m still thinking through the meaning of the closing phrase—the power of sin is the law—Dana Goodwin catches up to us. Beside her is a man who I presume to be her husband, based on the fact that he’s holding her hand.
We all stop near the funeral office, where the earlier service occurred.
“This is my husband, Stuart,” Dana says. “Stuart, meet Gabriel Velasquez and Ella Broden.”
“The famous Ella Broden,” Stuart replies.
Amid the sea of cops and Richard Trofino’s construction cronies, Stuart’s less-masculine variation of the male species stands out like a sore thumb. He has a slight build and a fair complexion bordering on pasty: the kind of guy who would play an accountant in the movies. Then again, looks can so often be deceiving in such matters. Gabriel could probably kill Stuart with his bare hands without bre
aking a sweat, but I also assume that Gabriel’s a more nurturing partner solely because I’ve never met any man who is Gabriel’s equal in that regard.
“I talk about you too much, apparently,” Dana says. “But it’s not my fault. Lauren went on about you all the time.” Dana offers a shallow laugh. “Sometimes it made me mad.”
I smile at her attempt at humor. I’m certain Dana never felt the least bit threatened by me. She exudes pure confidence.
Her phone rings, but she doesn’t move to answer it. It takes Stuart saying, “I think that’s your purse ringing, honey.”
She startles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was me. I lost my phone and I haven’t had the chance to program my old ringtone into the new one yet, so I still don’t recognize the ring.”
After she answers, she tells Gabriel that it’s the office. We all wait as she says “uh-huh” a few times. Then, “This is good work. Check to see if there’s any connection between Detective Papamichael and Lauren. Maybe they worked on a case or something.”
As she’s putting the phone back in the purse, Dana looks about, most likely to make sure that no one can hear what she’s about to impart. Apparently, she views spouses as within the investigation umbrella because she says, “That was O’Dell. They found the gun. In the sewer a block away from Lauren’s home. It was registered to a Detective Gregory Papamichael—and he died two years ago.”
“Papamichael . . .” says Gabriel. “I remember him. Over at the one-six, I think. Does the name mean anything to either of you?” He looks between Dana and me. “Any connection to Lauren?”
“I’ve heard the name before,” I say. “An old-timer. But I don’t remember if he ever worked any of my cases or had any overlap with Lauren.”
Dana’s brow is furrowed. “You know, I think Lauren did mention him. It’s an odd name and it kind of sticks. I’m trying to remember the context, but I’m pretty sure his name came up between us.”
