“Can we ask some questions?”
“Of course.” She nodded. Her head sported close-cropped, jet-black hair with dyed orange highlights. It reminded Diaz of a Cincinnati Bengals helmet. Amazing the things people found attractive.
“Is there a more private place?” O’Shea asked.
“I don’t have a separate office. We can go to the lounge.”
She led them in silence. When the door closed, she said, “What’s this about? What’s Sallye done?”
“What makes you sure she did anything, Nurse Burnes?”
She hesitated.
“Ma’am,” Diaz said, “we’re here to investigate a series of murders by bombing. I met with Nurse Ritchie last week and, to be honest, she seemed kind of odd. Nothing you say is likely to surprise us.”
Burnes blinked. “I’m sorry. I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I can’t imagine her bombing anyone.”
“What can you imagine?”
“You met with her in person last week?”
“Yeah, a few days ago.”
“Then you know what she looked like.”
“You mean the bruises. How common is that?”
“Every few months it seems, and getting worse. I’ve tried referring her for counseling but she wouldn’t hear of it. I thought, when you mentioned—well, I thought maybe she’d had enough.”
“Done violence to whoever’s beating her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who that is?”
“It’s a little embarrassing. I’ve eavesdropped some on her. Out of concern, you understand. I’ve heard the name Warren now and then.”
“That’s a last name?”
She shook her head. “First.”
“You think he’s the boyfriend?”
“I’m sure he is.”
“She told us she fell down the subway stairs in New York.”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose. If so, she’s quite prone to accidents. A few months before it was a fender bender and she blamed the steering wheel. Before that, I think she claimed to have fallen off her bicycle.”
“Have you known her to behave inappropriately with any of the patients?”
“How do you mean?”
“Sexually.”
“Not at all. Why would you ask that?”
“Has she spoken to you at all about this man, Warren?”
“Not really. She’s a bit of a loner, doesn’t socialize much with any of us. Just does her job—quite well, I should add—and goes home.”
“Is that where we’d find her now, do you think?”
“Oh, no. She’s off to New York.”
O’Shea perked up. “New York? Wasn’t she just there? How often does she go?”
“Every month or so, usually. But she told me this time that she had to run back for something. That’s another reason…when you said…I suspected—”
“You said she kept to herself. Why’d she tell you now?”
“I require all my staff to let me know if they’re leaving town, just in case we have a national emergency. Since nine-eleven. You know, procedure.”
“Procedure,” Diaz echoed without irony.
But Burnes took it as something of an accusation. “We’re dealing with people’s lives here, Detective.”
“So are we,” said O’Shea with a polite smile. “When did she leave town?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon.”
MANIS BOUGHT THE LOCAL NEWSPAPERS from a deli in downtown Brooklyn and leafed through them on the F Train. He never used the Internet to search for evidence of his handiwork. It left footprints that he knew he couldn’t erase.
Two of three papers contained small stories about the removal of a bomb from a homeless shelter in St. Euphrosyne Church. Neither article mentioned Lewis Salinowsky by name or that the bomb was a prosthetic leg. Both said police would not speculate on any connection to the veteran bombings. There were no casualties, which meant for sure that Salinowsky had escaped.
By the time Manis entered the apartment his blood was boiling. He walked in on Sallye watching Glee on television. She was sitting on the couch with her back to him, quietly singing along. He dropped the papers on the table and went over and boxed her ears. She collapsed into a defensive posture, covering her head, and he went around and punched her hard in the face. It felt good—the first time he’d ever hit her unconnected to a sexual act. He took it as a sign of his own recovery, but now he had more than that to deal with.
“Why?” she said, crying on the floor.
“Lover boy Lewis got away. What happened? You tipped him off?”
She was bleeding heavily, all over the couch as she tried to pull herself up. “Not on the furniture, bitch!” He punched her in the side of the head and she fell to the floor, crying for him to stop. It was also the first time he’d hit her when she didn’t rebound with a shit-eating grin. He liked that. She didn’t control this situation. For the first time since Germany, he thought, she wasn’t leading him around by his dick. Now he saw it all in a new light. She’d never lose her attachment to those men. And Manis, for his part, suddenly no longer felt the same attraction to her. Now he only had to take care of business.
He walked to the bathroom and returned with a bath towel, threw it at her, said, “Get up and quit your whining. Isn’t this what you always wanted, taking pain for others?” Yes, he understood. Finally, he understood everything. She was punishing herself for that first time with the man he’d once been. It settled in his mind with great clarity.
She didn’t answer him, just sat on the floor with her head tilted back over the cushions, pressing the towel into her mouth and nose.
“Tell me how long you’ve been in touch with Lewis,” he said.
She lifted the bloody towel from her face long enough to say to the ceiling, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lewis Salinowsky? The one you always said was your best lay ever? You saved his life for another day.”
“Saved it how?”
He rushed her, fist in the air. “Don’t play stupid with me! You know what’s going on!”
She covered up but he didn’t hit her, reminding himself that he had total control now.
“You better start talking. You going to claim you didn’t know?”
“What I’ve always wanted is to be with you.”
“You got a funny way of showing it. Why’d you pay me the surprise visit last night?”
“I told you, I wanted to see you.”
“Bullshit!” He raised a fist and she cowered again. “Wanted to see what I was doing, more like.”
“No.”
“Let me get a look at the nose.”
Before she could react he closed his fingers on her jaw like a vise and lifted her head further. “Oh,” he said, “it’s broken real good this time. Smashed. You want more?”
She shook her head. “No. Please.”
“That’s better. More respectful. Tell me what you know and what you did.”
She raised herself shakily from the floor and sat on the couch, away from the bloody side. “The police came to me and told me someone had killed those others.”
“You thought it was me?”
“I suspected.”
“Turns out I’m good for something after all.”
“I always knew that you were, Lew—” She caught herself. Freudian slip.
Manis slapped her on the cheek with an open hand. It stung his palm and she looked so shocked, so broken, so divorced from her prior character that all of a sudden he wanted to cry. A picture had sprung to his mind of Sallye as a young teenager. He sank to a chair while attempting to blink it away and recapture his composure.
“What did you tell the cops?”
“I didn’t—” she began.
“Shut up! No ate-ee-ists in da fox-oles.” She didn’t reprimand him for the accent this time. He snarled at her. “What’s a matter, fox got your tongue?”
&nb
sp; She shook her head. Blood dripped from her nose onto the floor, but most of the flow had stopped.
“So you told him,” Manis said.
“I don’t know him. He’s just, like, an idea, a distant memory that I used to turn you on. To please you, Warren.”
“You’re lying. I saw the letter.”
“I never replied to it.”
“But you carried it around. You love him. Love what you did with him, anyway. And you know what? It’s funny because he’s already ruined, a shadow of himself. If you visited him, you’d see.”
“I don’t even know where he is, never have.”
“That’s easy. He’s at St. Euphrosyne.”
“What’s that?”
“You really don’t know? It’s a church in downtown Manhattan. The loser lives sometimes in the shelter there.”
The curiosity. He saw it in her bruised black eyes. He’d chosen correctly. He said from a long distance, “I won’t kill him now, you know. It’s over between you and me.”
“Over?” Resistance flashed in her. “So you killed those others for nothing?”
“Not for nothing.” He stared into the middle space. “I had my reasons.”
“And now it doesn’t matter anymore? What a waste.” She flicked her wrist. “And what a cowardly thing to do, ambushing them from afar.”
“That’s not how it went down. You think it was easy, what I did? I looked right into their eyes, both of them, even if they didn’t know who I was. Like this.”
He seized her by the shoulders and locked their watery gaze. Then he kissed her. She opened her mouth to receive his tongue. He thought about biting her but didn’t. There was already salty blood in his mouth. Her blood. He ran it over his teeth.
There was a better way for this to end, he thought. He couldn’t leave witnesses behind.
When he let go of her she said, “You still want me.”
“Yes,” he pretended to admit, though he almost choked on the word. She was done for, but he needed her still. “Clean yourself up. I’m going out for the rest of the day. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Can I trust you here alone?”
“You think I’d steal from you, asshole?”
“Not what I meant. Stay out of the locked room. You might get hurt.”
“Where are you off to?”
Her face asked the rest of the question. It asked whether he was going this very moment to kill her precious Lewis. She’d try to stop him, if she could. He just knew it. He had a card that the shelter workers had given him the other night. As he put his coat back on, he pretended to drop that card by mistake and not notice. It fluttered to the floor behind him as he hit the door. Bait.
She had to see but she said nothing. That’s how he knew the trap was set.
DIAZ AND O’SHEA TRIED CALLING Sallye Ritchie’s cell phone number, which the head nurse had provided with some reluctance, but they couldn’t get an answer.
“We could hightail it back to New York,” Diaz said, “be there by three.”
“But we have nothing to go on. How far’s her house from here?”
“Not far.”
“I’ll call Burbette while you drive.”
They climbed in and O’Shea soon reached the Fed. It wasn’t a long conversation. He turned to Diaz.
“Says it would take days to get a trace on that phone, even if we had the warrant in hand, which of course we don’t.”
“We still got the warrant for the house. We may as well search that.”
“Boffo, Diaz. But I’m getting a bad feeling.”
They pulled up a few minutes later. Everything looked as Diaz had left it, except that Ritchie’s car was gone and a state trooper greeted them. He was young but he had the paperwork. He helped them pry the door open with a crowbar and removed his hat when he entered.
“Don’t mess it up too bad,” he said.
O’Shea looked at him. “What are we, the friggin’ mafia?”
The kid was smart enough not to answer. He stood in the corner of each room as they went through.
“This place is spotless,” O’Shea said, digging through drawers.
They found no personal phone book and few personal records, but Diaz did come upon an old photo album in the back of a closet.
“Bag it?” O’Shea asked.
“Sure,” said Diaz. “We can look through it in the car.”
“You remove anything,” the trooper said, “you got to fill out an evidence form.” He was showing off, not worth arguing with.
“Roger that,” O’Shea said. “Diaz, mind filling out the form while I take a last look around?”
Diaz appreciated hearing these orders as suggestions, rather than how Kahn would’ve put them. O’Shea was first grade, making him senior, but Diaz didn’t report to him, so the relationship felt different.
When he was finished with the paperwork, he climbed into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic to wait for O’Shea and began flipping through the photos. It was a white album with padded covers and gold trim. Pretty old-looking and smelled sour—cellophane. Some of the photos seeming like they went back to the Seventies. They showed Sallye as a small child, as a teenager, as an enlisted woman in uniform, frolicking on the beach in a one-piece bathing suit, posed on some steps in what looked like a prom dress. Could this be her whole life in a twenty-page album? If so, did this boyfriend, Warren, rate a picture?
“Manuel Diaz,” said the voice in Diaz’s head, “not wasting a moment, from afar seeks a mind meld with his primary suspect.”
You in there, Warren? Oh, Warren? Come out, come out, wherever you are.
He was so absorbed that he didn’t see O’Shea cross the driveway until the door opened. It startled him and he snapped shut the album. “Find anything else inside?”
“Nah,” O’Shea said. “I was just taking a dump. You?”
“I used the trunk.”
“Ha ha. I meant, did you find anything?”
A thought crossed Diaz’s mind. “You know, that MP of mine’s been fast with some stuff, but it’s taking him awhile to get together the list of people with access to C4. I asked him twice already. Maybe, now that we got a partial name, I should call and nudge him.”
O’Shea looked at his watch. “Gotta be—what—pretty late German time. He’s still working?”
“It ain’t a clock-punch situation, Brian. It’s the fucking army. If he’s awake, he’ll answer.”
“They let you sleep in the army these days?”
“Just when no one’s shooting at you.”
It took eight rings but Nunez did pick up. “I’m kind of, um, in the middle of something.” He sounded more than a little groggy.
“We got a hot situation here,” Diaz said, undeterred. “Whatever happened to that list of the C4 people?”
“C4 people?”
“The people with access to high explosives?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I’m working on that. Got a partial list.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Can it wait for the morning?”
“Negative.”
The MP hesitated. “You ain’t the boss of me.”
“Cut it out, Nunez. Can you get to it?”
“Okay. I’m off base but I can go back.”
“Terrific. If you find anyone with the first name of Warren on that list and he’s our man, you’ll get a key to the city.”
“For real? New York City?”
LEWIS SALINOWSKY’S MORNING FIX WAS wearing off already. Cheap stuff, cut thin. He sat on the bench in Columbus Park. Cardboard sign. Coffee cup with jangling change. Heavy eyelids. Same as it ever was.
Get the name of that nun again, he thought. The methadone. Couldn’t hurt. He tried to picture it, saw in his mind a window like at the check cashing store, pills in crushable paper cups pushed across the counter to him. Thank you, sister.
When his eyes regained focus, someone stood three feet in front of him. Red canvas sneakers on uneven pavement, traction sand dusting the
toes. He ran his eyes up the tight jeans to a patent-leather belt, square buckle, wide-wale turtleneck clinging to tiny breasts. She was petite all around. Her coat hung open. Narrow neck. The face, while swollen, was small-boned. It looked like someone had taken a mallet to her nose, but she smiled.
“Lewis?”
Just hearing his name from the mouth of a woman… “Who wants to know?” His lower lip trembled. Was he hallucinating?
“That is you, I’m sure. I’ve thought a lot about you all these years.”
He grabbed the sign and folded it closed across his lap. This was too much for twenty-four hours. “How did you find me?”
“The shelter. They gave me five spots where they thought you might be. This was the second.”
“So you’re real?”
“Of course I’m real.”
“You’ve changed.”
“We both have. Would you come with me?”
“Where?”
She bit her lip. “I have a safe place. Just for the night. We need to talk.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. Look at me.”
“We’ll clean you up. Just like old times. Get you out of harm’s way.”
He considered those old times, almost forgotten memories now reawakened. Something was coming alive in his pants, a part of him that he thought might never rise again.
She saw, too. She squirmed in her coat. “Oh, Lewis.”
“Not you. Let me clean up myself. I’ll meet you. Where?” He held out his Sharpie. What an instrument. The giver of life.
“If that’s how it has to be.” She wrote the address on the back of his cardboard. Crisp and clear, but not taking up too much space. She tore it off. “Don’t talk to any strangers before then and keep an eye on your leg. Can you get there in an hour? You’ll need the Five Train.”
Salinowsky nodded. She was a vision. It all flooded back to him at once, that hospital bed with the smooth brushed aluminum rails, exactly what he’d done with the pillow to protect his injured leg while she guided him behind her, how his good knee had given way and he’d nearly tumbled to the floor in ecstasy. All of it. He’d lied to O’Shea. He remembered every glorious second.
And here she was again, offering her protection, maybe her bed.
It was too good to be true. He’d bring the rest of his bundle of heroine, in case he couldn’t face what she offered him, in case it was too much, in case he needed to escape again.
A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 Page 22
