Body Of Truth

by Deirdre Savoy

  He motioned to Mrs. Nuñez to sit in one of the chairs while Mari sat across the table from her. He hung back, leaning his shoulder against the refrigerator. He and Mari had worked together long enough that they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, knew who worked better with what sort of people. Mari had an affinity to women, particularly older women. She was their daughter, their friend, their confidant.

  There was something in most people, guilt probably, that made them want to confess their sins. All they needed was a sympathetic ear and the absence of an attorney telling them it was in their best interest to shut up.

  Put Mari in a room with a woman and she’d know everything from her shoe size to her kindergarten teacher’s name before she came out.

  Mari folded her hands on the table. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Nuñez.”

  “Please, call me Rosa.” Her gaze darted from Mari to him and back. “Are you the detectives working on Miss Amanda’s case?”

  “Yes. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your employer, Ms. Pierce. How long did you work for her?”

  “About six years. Ever since she moved into the new apartment. I used to live there, too, until last year. I got married again and, well, I had to move out.”

  “How was she to work for? Was she friendly or more distant? Was she easy going?”

  “Oh, no. She is very strict,” Rosa said with a note of pride in her voice. “Miss Amanda wants everything just so. Everything spotless. She made me vacuum that whole place every day.”

  “On Friday when she went out, did she tell you where she was going?”

  “No. Miss Amanda never told me anything like that. She was very private with me. She seemed excited, though, like she got sometimes when . . .”

  Rosa’s words trailed off, and Jonathan could imagine the rest.... When she discovered some particularly dirty bit of information on someone else.

  “Do you know if Ms. Pierce was seeing anyone? Did she have a boyfriend?”

  Rosa shook her head. “There used to be this one, but not for a long time. Maybe two year. The only one I see sometimes is the agent. I make rice and beans for him.”

  “As far as you know, was there anyone bothering Ms. Pierce, threatening her?”

  “Only the usual crazy people. People who don’t like what she wrote. I would see her mail at home sometimes.”

  “What time were you expecting her back on Friday?”

  “About six the latest. That’s when I usually go on Friday. She pay me and then I leave.”

  “Has she ever been late before?”

  “Not if she didn’t call. That’s why I worry. I wait a while, then I call my husband. He says you have to wait to report someone missing, so I waited.” Rosa’s eyes misted over. “Who could have done this to Miss Amanda? She’s a hard lady to work for and I know some people don’t like what she writes in her books.” Rosa shook her head.

  Since neither he nor Mari had an answer for that, neither of them commented on it. Jonathan straightened and took a step forward. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Nuñez. If we need to speak to you again, can we reach you at the same number?”

  Rising to her feet, she nodded. “I hope you find who did this.”

  “I promise you, we will.”

  Rosa nodded again and allowed Mari to escort her from the room. When they were gone, Jonathan poured himself a cup of coffee. How palatable it would be depended on who’d brewed it, which was anybody’s guess. A couple of the guys could make a decent pot, but Mari brewed it like it was Spanish coffee, dark, strong and intended to be sweetened with milk. He added his usual splash of cream and sipped. He grimaced as it went down. Mud.

  Mari reappeared in the doorway. “Let me ask you this. When did maids start carrying Coach handbags and wearing Roché scarves? Looks like I picked the wrong line of work—again.”

  Jonathan shrugged. He’d heard of the handbag company, but women’s clothing, the type expected to be seen in public, was out of his field of expertise. “Expensive?” he asked.

  “Exclusive.” Mari came up beside him and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Each one signed by the creator himself, supposedly. Roche makes them out of his own special blend of raw and processed silk. Try six hundred dollars a pop—and that’s the bottom of the line.”

  “So you think the very proper Ms. Nuñez has been helping herself to her boss’ finery?”

  Mari shrugged. “Maybe Pierce gave them to her. Passing your castoffs to the help is as American as cheating on your taxes.” As she spoke she walked toward the table and sat in the chair Rosa Nuñez had occupied. She sipped from her cup. “Hey, not bad.”

  Jonathan said nothing to that. They had bigger things to worry about than the gastronomical merits of stationhouse coffee. “So, other than the fact that Rosa Nuñez might have been ripping off her employer, we don’t find out anything new.”

  “Did you really expect to?”

  “No.” But learning something, anything, couldn’t have hurt, considering Shea wanted it done yesterday. Mentally, he went over the leads they intended to follow that day: interviews with Pierce’s agent, her editor, her assistant, not to mention sifting through some more of her files, getting a look at her computer if the techs were done with it and requisitioning the LUDs for her home and cell phones. Light stuff.

  “There you are.”

  Jonathan focused on the uniformed officer standing in the doorway. He held a single sheet of paper Jonathan recognized as the one they used to take down information on the hotlines. “Have you got something?”

  “I’m downstairs working the tip line. Mostly Amanda sightings. I saw Amanda on the corner of this and that. Amanda and Elvis were at Yankee Stadium. Whatever. The lieu said to give the unlikelies to Russell and Martinez to run down.”

  The story had been released to the papers saying that Pierce had been found behind the pizza parlor, but not that she had been discovered in a trash can or that she’d been nude. The report said that she’d been strangled, but nothing about the beating. Only the person who’d done that to her would know those details. It was another way of sorting out the real thing from those who just wanted to be noticed.

  The officer stepped forward, extending the paper toward him. But rather than step away, the man leaned in, looking at the paper. “This one came in last night. Didn’t know if you’d seen it. A woman claims she saw Pierce coming out of a building on Highland Avenue. 4000 block. Surprise of surprises, she didn’t give her name.” As he spoke, he tapped the box in which each bit of information was taken down.

  Jonathan shifted the paper out of the other man’s reach. “Thanks. We hadn’t seen it.”

  As the guy moved off, Jonathan cast a glance at Mari, certain the other officer’s snub hadn’t been unintentional.

  She shot him a look, which showed her disgust with her fellow officers. “Please let me know when I really do turn into a piece of furniture around here. I’m sure I’ll want to have myself reupholstered.” She slogged down the remains in her cup. “Looks like they got a number on the call.” She turned the sheet to show the series of digits scrawled at the top of the page. “Somewhere in Westchester.”

  Calls to the tipline were supposed to be anonymous unless the caller wanted it that way. But the caller ID must have picked it up and someone had written it down. “Let’s give her a call.”

  They went back to their desks for Mari to make the call. She hung up almost immediately. “The voicemail came on, which unfortunately gave no clue as to who I was calling.”

  “Great.” Considering they weren’t supposed to have the number there was no point in leaving a message advertising they had it.

  “What now, Kemosabe? This is your rodeo.”

  Jonathan stood and put on his jacket. “Let’s head over to Highland Avenue.” If the caller could be believed, Pierce had to be visiting someone in that building, someone who might know what Pierce had been working on or who she’d left with. Knocking on a few doors definitely beat out h
eading down to the city, fighting midday traffic to speak to her agent and editor. Considering that they were scheduled to end up down there later for the commissioner’s press conference, they might as well start in the Bronx and work their way down. Mari sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  Jonathan chuckled. While they were out, he’d have someone run down a number for their mystery caller, just in case they needed to speak to her after all.

  Five

  The building at 4093 Highland Avenue was, like most other buildings in the neighborhood, a pre-war elevator building in serious need of repair. Despite the deadbolt, the front door opened without the need of a key. With the aid of four officers from the 44th, Jonathan and Mari intended to knock on each door and ask the resident if they’d seen Amanda Pierce that day.

  Truthfully, he didn’t hold out much hope of anyone volunteering any information. Not only would they run up against the usual brick wall, but whoever Pierce saw that day might be caught up in whatever it was that made someone want to kill her. Unless they’d been living under a rock and missed the news coverage, any person seeking the police’s protection would have come forward already. To Jonathan’s mind that meant that whoever Pierce had seen wanted to stay hidden.

  Then again, their mystery caller could have gotten the address wrong or had made up the story seeking a few minutes’ attention. There was only one way to find out.

  Each pair took two floors, he and Mari claiming the bottom two. It was his turn to do the talking, Mari’s to take down any pertinent information. The first two doors they knocked on yielded no response. That was the trouble with a daytime canvass—half the people weren’t home. He slipped a card under each door asking the occupant to call the precinct and moved on.

  He knocked on the next door. “Police Department.”

  When the door opened, Jonathan had to shift his focus downward. An old man in a wheelchair stared back at him, a belligerent expression hardening his features. “What y’all want?”

  Jonathan held up the picture of Pierce that the department was using for identification. “Have you seen this woman in this building?”

  The old man took the picture in his weathered, nut-brown hands and studied it. “That’s the woman that’s been on the TV.” He looked up at Jonathan. “What about her?”

  “We have reports of her being in this building on Friday morning. Did you see her?”

  The old man’s expression soured. “Now, what would a gal like that be doing up here?” He handed back the picture. “Look, my program is on.” The man wheeled himself back and shut the door.

  That first interview set the tone for all the others. No one claimed to have seen Amanda Pierce and no one was pleased to have their morning interrupted by the police.

  “Well, that was productive,” Mari said as they stepped out of the building into the oppressive midday sun.

  The other four officers had already left, grumbling about wasting their time. Jonathan couldn’t blame them, since he felt the same way, like he was chasing his own tail. Hopefully their trip down to the city wouldn’t be equally unrewarding.

  Pierce’s editor had already gone to lunch when they called, but her agent, James Burke, welcomed them into his office in lower Manhattan.

  Once they were all seated in his office, he said, “This is such a shame about Amanda. I was away for the weekend and just heard about her death this morning. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  “How long have you known Ms. Pierce?”

  “Oh, a good fifteen years, I think. We met back when she was working for the Times. Amanda started out as a quote unquote serious journalist, but every editor she had complained she couldn’t stick to a hard news format if her life depended on it. She wrote every story as if it were a feature for the New Yorker. I suggested she work on a book, a format where her talent for embellishment would be an asset.”

  Burke shifted in his chair. “Her first book was about Eleanor Roosevelt, not a celebrity at all. She kind of fell into that and it was a lucky thing she did.”

  “What is she working on now?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. She’d finished her latest contract with Pulliam Press and wanted some time off. I couldn’t blame her. She’d been turning in a book every twelve to thirteen months for the past few years. Most writers doing the same kind of work take maybe two or three times as long.”

  Burke leaned back in his chair. “I thought maybe she might have been working on a novel she didn’t want anyone to know about yet, but that’s just speculation. Her assistant might know.”

  He very well might, but to date they hadn’t been able to track the man down. “You knew her socially as well as being her agent?”

  He nodded. “We were friends. We were each other’s pity date in case we had no one else to attend functions with. She knew I had a penchant for Spanish food, so every now and then her cook would whip up something for me.” He glanced at Mari. “You must know what I mean.”

  “I’m an American girl,” Mari said, sounding like Rita Moreno in West Side Story. “I don’t eat.”

  Burke chuckled. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  “It’s my understanding not everyone was happy with either Ms. Pierce’s subjects or what she had to say about them.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. These days our celebrities are our gods. As much as people love to hear gossip, they hate to examine anyone’s character. In her writing Amanda said these people you admire are nothing but big spoiled overpaid babies that have no self-control. And you know what? She thrived on it. The more people hated her, the more books she sold, and the more money she made. She used to joke that she’d go for the title of most reviled woman in America if she thought she could wrestle the honor from Roseanne Barr. This was a few years back, of course.”

  “Was there anyone in particular who might have threatened her?”

  Burke snapped his fingers. “You know every now and again, she’d send me a particularly vicious letter, you know, just to show how far some people would go to express their displeasure. We used to joke about them, but honestly, I think some of them scared her.” Burke opened the bottom drawer to his desk. “I think I have it here.”

  After a moment, Burke pulled out a black file folder and extended it toward him. “If there’s a loony responsible for her death, you’ll probably find him in there—or at least his e-mail address.”

  Jonathan stood and took the folder. He’d gotten whatever information he could from this man. “Thanks for your time.”

  Burke rose, as did Mari. “If you need anything else.”

  He nodded, understanding Burke’s implication. Once he and Mari were on the elevator on the way down to the first floor, she said, “Don’t tell me we might have an actual lead in this freaking case.”

  “Who knows?” Jonathan opened the folder. The letter on top started with, DEAR BITCH, YOU DESERVE TO DIE, in boldface red caps. He closed the folder and checked his watch. They had more than enough time to make it down to One Police Plaza for the press conference.

  “You know Shea expects us to have worked a miracle by now to make him look good with the big boss.”

  “I know.” But covering Shea’s ass was the last thing on Jonathan’s mind. “He’ll have to settle for what we’ve got.”

  Seized by the same restlessness that had claimed her in the hospital, Dana prowled around her home, searching for something to occupy her. She’d never been much of a TV watcher and her mind wandered every time she tried to pick up a book. She’d cleaned her apartment thoroughly the week before, knowing she’d be away. Even if she’d found some household chore to do she’d have to let it slide since she was in no shape for cleaning.

  She paused at her brother’s room. Maybe she was just out of sorts at being alone, lacking anyone else to worry about. She’d called Tim to let him know what happened, that she was all right, in case some news story hit the tube. He’d offered to come back home, but she saw no reason to
cut short his vacation simply because her own had been sidelined.

  If loneliness was her only problem she’d better get used to it. Tim would be leaving for Cornell by the end of the summer. He would be home for summers and holidays, or maybe she would visit him, but the day-to-day interaction she had known was over.

  She should be happy. It seemed as if she had been waiting for this day her whole life—time to breathe, to be, without first considering the needs of someone else. Not that she begrudged either Tim’s or her mother’s demands on her, but she couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t consider her own needs last. Now it was Dana time, time for her life to really begin, and in an odd way she wasn’t ready for it. Aside from her one ruined vacation, she’d never had much time to contemplate what she wanted.

  The phone rang for maybe the fifth time that day, but she made no move to answer it. She’d let the machine pick it up, considering it was probably Joanna calling again to check up on her. When Joanna and Ray dropped her off yesterday, it had taken a great deal of convincing to get Joanna to return home. It was enough that they’d not only given her a ride but bought her enough food to sustain her a few days since due to her planned vacation there was nothing in the house.

  Dana sighed. Maybe she should take a page from her friend’s book and find some decent man, have some kids and figure out how to be happy, not just survive. Perhaps she could find some man who wasn’t looking for a second mama, who could stand on his own feet and pull his own weight. Her days of catering to anyone were over.

  From her bedroom she heard the sound of Joanna’s voice, pleading but not as urgent as if she’d gone into labor. Since she didn’t feel like talking to anyone, Joanna included, she didn’t pick up.

  Her stomach growled, reminding her she still had to do such mundane things as feed herself. She checked her watch. It was almost six o’clock. Ray and Joanna had bought her some frozen dinners that she could heat up in the microwave. She settled on the lasagna, nuked it for the required seven minutes, and brought her meal and a bottle of beer into the living room.