Sherri didn’t move back when Lisa leaned forward; instead, she leaned closer. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
Lisa shrugged. “There’s not much to tell, Detective. We had an affair. We went to dinner, to movies, to plays, and we slept together. All pretty standard stuff.”
If she meant to put Sherri off with her candor it wasn’t working. “Wasn’t he a little old for you?” Sherri was trying to bust her, but so far she seemed to be telling the truth, and Sherri trusted her truth meter, a built-in one that had worked all of her life.
Lisa looked at Frankie, then at Lou, smiled at each of them, then focused on Sherri. “Have you ever slept with anyone you shouldn’t have, Detective? If not, you’ve lived a pretty dull life.”
It took all the willpower Sherri had not to jump across the table and smack Lisa. “Not for two years straight, no. Did it have anything to do with his money?”
Lisa didn’t answer, just sat back and looked at her hands, folded in her lap. The runner bringing the coffee provided an interruption. It also gave Lisa something to do with her hands, which she wrapped around the Styrofoam cup as if it were a life jacket. “I’d be lying if I said the money didn’t matter. It mattered a lot. Ben’s company, and his money, came at a time when I desperately needed both.”
Sherri stared for a long time, analyzing the vibes she was getting. She wanted to hang this girl, but the problem was she felt that was the truth too. “When was the last time you saw him?” This would be the answer to trip her.
“Saw him? As in had sex with him? Or saw him as in physically seeing him with my eyes? There’s a difference.”
“I know the difference, Ms. Jackson. Why don’t you answer both?”
Lisa sipped her coffee. “The last time we made love, if you could call it that, was almost two years ago, but I had lunch with him last week, and I saw him two or three times a week on the way up to work in the elevator.”
Sherri was disappointed, hoping to catch her in a lie. “Why did you have lunch last week?”
“He called me and said he wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
Lisa thought for a moment. “That’s the funny thing. He never said. We ate, chatted about some good times we had, and he talked about how he and his wife were going to try to get back together.” She seemed to be searching for memories. “Then he thanked me for meeting him and said goodbye. The next thing I heard, he was dead.”
Sherri was getting pissed; she couldn’t nail this little snot on anything. “So tell me, Ms. Jackson, did you have affairs with anyone else in this building?”
“No,” she said, but she said it too quickly, and without the same conviction as her other answers.
I got her now, Sherri thought.
“No? You never had affairs with anyone else in this building?”
Lisa hesitated, then lowered her head, tears welling in her eyes. “My husband was in the army in Afghanistan.” She pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her eye. “He was killed, and after that, for a while—too long a while—I had a few flings. Most of them were just one or two nights.”
“Who with?”
“I don’t know.” Once again she cast a sorrowful glance to Frankie and Lou.
“Who?”
“I can’t remember.”
Sherri pressed hard. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t remember the men you had sex with?”
Lisa jumped up from her seat, sending Sherri back. “There were a lot of them, okay? A lot!” She sat back down. Crying now. “I don’t feel good about it. I’m embarrassed, but that’s behind me. I don’t do that stuff anymore.”
The sobbing got worse and she ran out of tissues.
Lou handed her his handkerchief as Lisa cried like a grieving widow.
Finally Sherri gave up. “All right, Ms. Jackson, that will be all for now. If we have any other questions, we’ll call.”
“Thank you,” Lisa said, and shook Sherri’s hand. Then she took Frankie’s hand, but she held his a lot longer, and squeezed it tighter. She did the same to Lou, but not quite so passionately. “Call me if you need anything else,” Lisa said, and walked toward her office.
***
Lisa Jackson breathed deeply as she walked down the hall. She had been torn between telling the detectives the truth—that she was being held captive by her lunatic husband—or steering them off course. At the last minute she opted for “off course,” and felt she’d handled it well. Detective Miller didn’t like her, but Donovan was the one who was watching her for lies. Lisa had done her best with him; if he was like most men—and after seeing him she felt sure he was—he stopped thinking soon after he met her. Stopped thinking of anything productive that is, and focused only on how to get in her pants. Lisa sighed. Now all she had to do was figure out how to kill Tom and save her mother.
CHAPTER 32
Puzzles and Prayers
Brooklyn, New York
It took twenty minutes to get back to the station, Frankie arriving just before Sherri and Lou. She climbed the steps, staying behind Lou all the way to the second floor. “You want anything to drink, Mazzetti?”
“Water.”
“I’ll get it. Tell Donovan I’m getting him a coffee.” Sherri returned a minute later, shaking her head as she sat at her desk, next to Lou. “Jackson’s lying. I don’t know about what yet, but something.”
“I don’t think she had anything to do with it,” Lou said.
Sherri pulled out her desk drawer, took out a tablet and pen, poised to write. “Is that your dick talking? Because I thought that little bitch did nothing but lie. I can’t point to anything specific, but she lied.” Sherri turned to Frankie. “And you, I’m ashamed of you. That girl did everything but reach over and unzip you, and you ate it up.”
“You’ve got to admit, Miller, she was cute.”
“Cute? Since when does cute have anything to do with an investigation? She—”
Lou and Frankie laughed loud enough to draw Morreau from his office and Carol from her post.
Carol stood a few feet away, hands positioned on her hips as if she were a teacher ready to dish out a scolding. “What did you guys do to her?”
Frankie managed to bring his laughter under control. “Just an old interview gag. We needed to get her going.”
Sherri looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You mean…”
Lou nodded. “We knew she was lying, but it helps if you let them think they fooled you.”
Sherri looked at Lou, then Frankie. “You rotten sons of bitches. That wasn’t right.”
“Rookie jokes are over,” Frankie said. “I’m sorry, it’s just that—”
Morreau came up behind Frankie. “Rookie jokes better be over, Donovan, because you need this rookie. You and Mazzetti don’t have shit. Maybe you better let her call the shots.”
“You got it, Lieu.”
“What have you got on the hand? Anything yet?”
“We’re waiting on Kate to call. Her first take on it was that it’s at least several days old, probably more.”
“We’re guessing it could be the hand of the first vic,” Sherri said. “Remember, it was missing hands and feet, and…”
Morreau cringed and his hand instinctively went to his crotch. “Yeah, I remember. All right, push Kate on this one. We need something before the papers go nuts.” Morreau left to go to his office and Frankie put his arm around Miller.
“Sorry about the stunt we pulled. It was all in fun.”
“I’m glad it was a stunt. I was beginning to think I was hooked up with a couple of horny old men.”
“You are,” hollered Carol from the other room. “Don’t let them fool you on that one.”
Frankie pulled a chair up next to Sherri and Lou. “All right, let’s go over what we’ve got. And by the way, Miller, for the record, I know she was lying. It was all over her face. We couldn’t let her know we were on to her, though.”
“Yeah, and Frankie called in someone to follow
her home tonight.”
“What for? We have her address.”
“We want to see if she stops anywhere, talks to anyone, does anything different after we saw her. Maybe we’ll scare something out of her.”
“Okay, good,” Sherri said. “Let’s get back to what we’ve got.”
Frankie took a notepad from his pocket and flipped the page. “From what you guys told me, and from what we saw today, we got a guy, or guys—”
“Or guy and girl,” Lou added.
“Okay, or guy and girl, who kill people and then carve ‘mea culpa’ into the body.”
“He carved up the first one, too. Don’t forget that. So why not the second?”
Lou sipped his water. “First one was killed and brought to an apartment house. Second one killed in his office building in the middle of the day.” His cell phone rang.
“Mazzetti.”
He listened for a second then handed it to Frankie. “Kate.”
“You got anything for us?” he asked Kate.
“I can assure you that hand is at least a week old.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it matches the rest of the body on the first victim.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll call you later.”
Frankie handed the phone to Lou. “Hand was from the first vic.”
“So why did he wait until now to send it to us?” Sherri asked.
“What was it he said in the note?” Lou asked.
Frankie flipped a page on his notepad. “‘This one belongs on the fifth floor. One more piece to the puzzle.’”
Sherri wrinkled her brow. “What does that mean, ‘one more piece to the puzzle?’”
Frankie drained the coffee from his cup. “I’m assuming the fifth floor is a reference to the same building. Did we get any results yet on the canvas?”
Lou leaned toward the hall. “Hey, Carol, can you—”
“Already on it,” Carol shouted back.
Mazzetti looked at Frankie and Sherri, whispering. “Does she listen to everything we say?”
“Everything,” Carol said.
“So we assume that this is the same building and it’s on the fifth floor.” Sherri stood and paced. “If that’s the case, why? Is it coincidence? Does he have something against the owners of the building? What’s the connection?”
“Lisa must have something to do with it?” Lou said.
“Or she’s next,” Frankie added. “She is on the fourth floor.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sherri said. “I didn’t think of that.”
Frankie stood. “I’m getting more coffee. You want any?”
“I’ll take some,” Sherri said. “Little bit—”
“I know, no sugar and a little cream.”
“Damn, Frankie, you’re good. Keep it up and you might make a good waitress.”
“You know, that’s the first time you called me Frankie.”
“Keep getting me coffee, and I’ll call you anything you want.”
“Lou, how about you?” Frankie asked.
“I’m cutting back,” Lou said. “Get me another water, though.”
When Frankie returned he handed the water to Lou and the coffee to Sherri. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m of the mind we need to focus on the religious aspect.”
“You mean the mea culpas?” Sherri asked.
“Got to be. Everything else could be coincidence or explained some other way, but not the killer carving that into the bodies.”
“So let’s look at that,” Lou said. “We’ve got mea culpa on the hand, which we now know is the first vic, and mea culpa, mea culpa carved onto the second vic’s ass.”
Sherri wrote a note on her tablet. “Why, though?”
Frankie thought about it. “Guy has got to be Catholic to even know that term. Possibly an altar boy.”
“Or a priest,” Lou said.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah. Suppose this is some fuckin’ priest who did something really wrong. Wouldn’t that justify a mea culpa?”
“Or two?” Sherri said.
Frankie nodded. “When we identify the first vic, we’ll see if they went to the same church? Or if not, if the churches they did go to had any of the same priests.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “I didn’t even ask, Lou, but was the first guy Catholic? The first one we found, not the first one that was killed.”
“I don’t know.” He turned to Sherri, who was already digging in her file.
“He was,” hollered Carol.
“Fuck me,” Lou said.
“No thanks,” Carol answered, and then walked into the room. “And by the way, we have confirmation on the first vic, the one with the hand. His name was Kevin Mercer, and he worked on the fifth floor. They didn’t report him missing because he was on vacation.” She started to leave then turned back. “And yes, he was Catholic.”
Sherri whistled. “That doesn’t mean shit by itself, but tie in the Latin stuff and we might have something.”
“I don’t like it,” Frankie said, “but you’re right. We just might.”
Lou opened the bottled water Frankie brought him. “I’m going to be pissing like a wizard this afternoon.”
“Just how do wizards piss?” Sherri asked.
“I don’t know. It just sounded good to say that.”
Sherri shook her head. “Mea culpa means ‘my fault,’ right?”
“To get technical, I think in the Confiteor it is translated as ‘through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.’” Frankie stood and bowed. “Altar boy.”
“Don’t get cocky. Remember, we’re thinking of one of them as a possible suspect.”
“Screw you, Miller,” Frankie said.
Sherri paced again. “Through my fault… So this guy, whoever he is, thinks he’s done something wrong.”
“Or he’s saying the vic did something wrong, and this is the payment,” Lou said.
Carol chimed in from her desk. “Or he’s a wacko and using the recent rush on blaming the Catholics to cover his sick deeds.”
Lou looked out at Carol. “Is there another detective assigned to this case, or is that our smart-ass guard dog?”
“Eat shit, Mazzetti.”
“That’s my girl,” Frankie said.
Sherri raised her brows for about the fifth time today. “I guess it’s good I have tough skin. Looks like you need it around here.”
Frankie stared at the desktop, saying nothing.
“What’s up, Donovan? Not like you to be silent.”
He chewed on a pencil for a moment then stood. “Okay, the way I see it is this. We all agree that religion has something to do with it, but we don’t have a clue as to what, and we can’t go tracking all the priests and altar boys in the city, so we put that on the back burner.” He paced, tapping the pencil on the back of his hand. “And we all agree that Lisa Jackson has something to do with it, but we don’t have a clue as to what. She could be the killer, the killer’s accomplice, or the next victim. We can, however, track her, and fairly easily. So I say we keep our tail on her and when she shows up at the office tomorrow, we take the opportunity to search her apartment.”
“We don’t have a warrant,” Sherri said.
Lou slam dunked his water bottle into the trash. “Maybe you shouldn’t come with us, Miller.”
She looked at Frankie, then at Lou. “Bullshit. I’m in.”
“If you’re not comfortable…” Frankie said.
“I’m in,” she said.
Lou nodded to her. “Pick me up at seven.”
Frankie nodded. “I’ll see you guys at the cafe by her work. Seven thirty, maybe eight.”
As Sherri said goodbye, Carol nodded, then whispered, “You did good, girl. Don’t let them get to you.”
CHAPTER 33
Trapping the Trappers
Wilmington, Delaware
I slept very little, thinking all night about the “coincidence” of Bo
bby’s killer striking the very night Frankie and Bobby had a fight. The way I figured it, the killer had to have been at the bar. He must have been stalking Bobby, and when he saw what happened with Frankie, he decided to do it that night. It was the only thing that made sense. That still left the question of why Borelli hadn’t thought of it. He was the goddamn detective. And of course, it left the bigger question of who wanted Bobby dead.
As I dressed for work, I heard the sweet sound of Angie’s humming from the kitchen. I think she inherited that habit from Mamma Rosa. Few things in life made me happier than that. She had a way of making my day brighter just by listening to her hum. I bounced down the steps, probably with a little too much vigor. “Morning, babe,” I said, and kissed her. “How’s my favorite pregnant wife today?”
“What?” I heard from behind me, and froze. I forgot we hadn’t told Rosa, though we were planning on it tonight.
When I turned to Rosa, she was racing to embrace Angie, the both of them laughing like silly kids. “I’m going to finally get a baby sister. I can’t wait.” She then turned to hug me.
“Could be a baby brother,” I said.
She hugged me real tight. “I’m so happy for you, Dad. I know this means a lot.”
She was right about that. I almost teared up. “We were going to tell you last night, but Mike came by, so we figured we’d do it tonight. My big mouth let it slip.”
I kissed them both goodbye, and reminded Rosa not to walk alone. “Maybe we’ll get subs tonight,” I said as I headed out the door.
Joe Tomkins was in his office when I got to work. I grabbed a coffee and knocked on his door.
He looked up from the computer and waved me in. “Have a seat.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got a lot to do, Mr. Tomkins. I just wanted to tell you that we can bid that state job for Moresco—”
He jumped up. “How did you arrange that? No, never mind. I don’t want to know.” He came around the desk to shake my hand. “That’s great.”
I held up my hand. “Wait. Before you get all excited, there are a few catches.” When I said that Joe got a look on his face like I was going to ask for a bribe or something. “Johnny wanted to make it clear that this is a shot at a bid only. There’s no fix in on this.”
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