Bob lived in the entrance of the Canal Street subway station. His tweed coat was worn and faded by time and rough living, and his face was scruffy with the gray-brown stubble of God’s unshaven. He wore three pairs of fluorescent fuzzy balls on his head to improve his reception with the outer limits of the Big Apple, or perhaps he really was receiving messages from outer space. One thing was certain, he was the eyes, ears, and antenna of the neighborhood.
“Happy New Year, Bob.” Beka handed him the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Bourbon and smoke. Gonna be a good year.” His florescent headgear bobbed at them as he puffed on his cigar.
“Have you seen my brother run past here?” Sam knelt down to speak to the man. It was a technique he had learned when working with children—always go to their level to maintain eye contact.
Bob looked as if he was trying hard to think. “Seen some aliens.” He took a swig as his brain skipped a groove. “Seen a few of them. They’re all over this fuckin’ city.”
“We invited a few to our party,” Alex encouraged him.
“Damn nice, earthlings. You damn nice.” He mumbled into the mouth of the bottle so that it hummed. “I seen one with curly hair.”
“What was that, Bob?” Sam tried to get him to focus on something besides the bottle in his hand.
“Curly red hair.”
“Did he stop here?”
“Happy New Year!” He blew his party favor at them again.
Devon leaned down and looked at the noisemaker. “That’s the same kind you guys gave out at the party.”
“A quarter apiece at Chung’s,” Maddie affirmed.
“Todd would give his away. He’s like that,” Sam said hopefully. “Which way did he go, Bob?”
Bob pointed toward the sky.
Sam, despite having a masters degree in psychology, forgot all he had learned in school about dealing with mental illness and retorted angrily, “Bob, this is serious!”
Devon touched Sam’s elbow and shook her head. “Bob?” Her voice was calm and soothing. “What did he do before he went up?”
“Flapped his arms.” His antennae nodded affirmatively in the January wind, but his moment of clarity had dissipated like a puff of cigar smoke into the air.
Sam patted the old man on the shoulder. “Thanks anyway, Bob.”
They continued scouring everything from the Bowery west, covering the areas between Houston and Canal, Soho and Little Italy. It was almost five-thirty in the morning but they were still laughing. They had been laughing all night.
Beka found an open door swinging in the wind. “Todd?” She leaned inside and shouted. She screamed. Her voice dug into their ears as her body seemed to hang over an abyss of blackness.
Sam lunged for her arm. She still had one hand on the doorknob but Sam only had hold of the edge of the building. “Help me!” he yelled.
Devon raced forward and reached over the precipice for Beka’s belt, as Josh grabbed Sam’s waist. A gust of wind pushed at the door and it swayed away, tugging Beka inside. Only Devon and Sam anchored her between empty space and solid ground. Teetering like a rock on a precipice, they held their breath. The wind shifted back, and they quickly hauled Beka away from the edge of the elevator shaft and to the safety of the street.
It was a hoax no longer. In utter silence they stood and stared into the building. Vapors rose from their mouths. Beka laughed nervously. “Good thing I have such good balance.”
“Oh my god, Beka!” Maddie sniveled. “You could’ve died!”
Sam hugged Devon tightly. Josh squeezed Beka; Alex leaned against Godwyn. Katiti watched them all. No one could stop shaking. It wasn’t just the cold that was creeping under their skin—there were so many things that could happen on the streets of New York. So many places where someone could slip and fall—disappear.
Beka reached for the bottle in Josh’s hands and slugged it down, then handed it to Devon. Devon had never needed a drink so badly.
“Todd! Where are you?” Beka shouted against gusts from the Hudson River that seemed to rip the words from her throat. “This isn’t funny anymore!”
Their good cheer faded as the once-friendly streets grew ominous without his answering mirth. Nonchalance dissolved with the predawn drop in temperature as their quest for the lost Yale divinity student became desperate.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tis their duty to trample on all human feelings …
The fiends, who will one day requite them in Variety of torturing!
—LORD BYRON, The Two Foscari
The LIE was almost empty of traffic so Devon and Frank soon arrived at headquarters. They unloaded the van into two temporary evidence lockers until they could reassign their collection to the appropriate labs—whenever the labs actually opened. Back in the break room, Frank turned on the TV and popped a bagel into the toaster oven. “You want half?”
“Not really,” Devon answered.
“You’ve got to eat.” He handed her a cup of coffee.
“Internationally renowned artist Gabriel Montebello was stabbed to death last night and his wife, dancer Beka Imamura, has been found dead on the scene,” the morning news anchor announced. “Detectives at the scene are calling it a possible murder/suicide. Beka Imamura danced with the International Contemporary Dance …” A clip of Beka dancing one of her more famous roles as the knife-wielding Clytemnestra was shared with the viewing public and had been artistically edited so that scenes of Beka dragging her dance partner across the stage were intercut with those of Gabriel’s body being carted away.
“Well that certainly sounds like a Greek tragedy. Any idea why she would allegedly kill her husband, Pat?” the coanchor asked.
“Not yet, but the case is under investigation by Suffolk County Homicide. Stay tuned to this station for further developments on the first murder of this year.”
Devon watched the news with a growing sense of foreboding. Hurley’s article would be out in the morning with far more depth and detail than the TV news had yet dug up, and she knew how it would play out. At least they had missed the holiday edition of the paper—that gave them one more day to give something to the press that wouldn’t reek of the PR department. But would the evidence they analyzed today prove Beka’s innocence? Or had she, like Loch suggested, snapped?
Lochwood and Gary met Jenny O’Doherty at her home in Bridgehampton. Dark circles ringed her eyes. She didn’t look as if she’d slept at all. Her face was wrought with concern and she frowned at the detectives when they flipped their badges in the morning light.
She was still in her bathrobe and Lochwood could hear a fresh pot of coffee gurgling through its filter as they stepped inside. Gary cast a surprised look at Loch. She certainly hadn’t been on her way to bed. This was a community where people rarely locked doors and a stranger was generally regarded as safe first, never dangerous. What was strange, though, was that Jenny O’Doherty seemed to be expecting them.
“We’re with Suffolk County.” Loch left out the word Homicide on purpose.
“Of course you are. Would you like some coffee?” She turned her back on the men and walked into the kitchen as if expecting them to follow her. “What did George do this time?” She reached for the phone.
“We’re not here about George …” Gary couldn’t finish his sentence because she had pressed an auto-dial button and begun speaking into the handset.
“Barbara, is Harry up? George has got himself in trouble again. I expect he’s going to need bail.” She looked at the men in her kitchen. “Cream? Sugar?” They shook their heads.
“I don’t know, let me ask.” She turned back to the detectives. “Is it a DUI?” (She pronounced it dewee.) “I suppose you took the car this time? Barbara, what am I going to do without the car?”
“We’re not in Traffic,” Gary explained, “we’re Homicide.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Lord, Barbara, he’s killed someone. I knew it was only a matter of time. I swear this time I’m going to divorce
him! I’ve had it! I spent all night waiting up for that ungrateful son of a …”
Lochwood walked over and took the phone from Mrs. O’Doherty. “Excuse us, Barbara, but this is not about George.” He looked at Gabriel Montebello’s secretary. “You can call her back later. We’re here about someone else.” He hung up the phone. “Would you like to sit down?”
She handed him his coffee and remained standing.
“Mrs. O’Doherty, I’m sorry to inform you that your employers, both of them, are dead.” This was not how Loch had wanted to tell her, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She sat down with a thud on a hard gray vinyl chair next to a matching gray-and-white plaid table—the kitchen was retro, very chic in a 1950s sort of way. “Take a moment to collect yourself, Mrs. O’Doherty. I know this has come as a blow to you, but my partner and I need to ask you a few questions and get a list of employees and their phone numbers from you.”
Jenny O’Doherty drank her coffee like it was a shot of scotch, then poured herself another cup. She was nodding at him as if she understood every word he said, but he knew she was merely agreeing with her own shock. In a few minutes he’d have to tell her they were dead again, and then they’d be able to get some information from her. He and Gary waited.
Lochwood took it as a good sign that she didn’t start playing hostess again. It meant the impact of what had happened was sinking in, but even he didn’t expect the question that came out of her mouth next.
“Well, if you’re here about Gabe and Beka, where the hell is George?”
As soon as the morning sit was over Hans changed out of his monk’s robes, put on his overalls, and headed for Beka’s house in his old mail truck. Maybe he had misunderstood. He thought Beka had asked if they could meet after the morning zazen, but maybe she’d meant he was supposed to come to her house. They’d done that sometimes, when she couldn’t get away.
After Beka had retired from the world of dance, she’d been on the fringe of things. She had tried to become a businesswoman of sorts and started a Pilates studio, but it didn’t seem to fit her nature. Hans had sensed an even deeper unrest in the past six months, a fidgeting of her spirit accompanied by a sadness in her eyes, as if she knew the answer to something unanswerable, but not the question. He could feel the anxiety radiating from her body when they meditated together, and couldn’t help but be concerned.
Hans’s best friend was Devon’s father, and he could remember the first time Devon came to the zendo with Beka. They had been reading Lao Tze in high school, and Evan Halsey had thought they should experience a real meditation service. They sat zazen for half an hour without a giggle, so Hans invited them back. They had started coming whenever they were out visiting Devon’s parents, and had even found a place to sit in the city. Devon’s visits eventually tapered off, but in the past three years Beka had become a more serious Zen practitioner.
His mail truck pulled up the driveway and almost directly into a bright perimeter of yellow police tape, sputtered, then coughed to a stop as a uniformed officer came down the drive.
“You got mail?” the officer asked, despite the holiday.
Hans shook his balding head. “I’m a friend. What’s happened?”
“There’s been a murder.”
Hans’s hands began to shake. “Is Beka okay?”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Hans. Where is Ms. Imamura?”
The officer made a note. “And how do you know the deceased?”
“She’s dead?”
“They’re both dead, sir.”
The Buddhist monk began to cross himself, an involuntary action that his arm muscles had learned years ago when he was a young boy. He stopped in sudden confusion. “I have to see Devon Halsey.”
“She’s left the scene, sir.”
“Devon was here?” He was speaking more to himself, rolling the thought through his mind and over his tongue.
“Can I see some ID, sir?”
“Thank you, but I know where she lives.” Hans turned the truck’s steering wheel almost a full hundred and eighty degrees and sped down the road toward Sag Harbor.
Loch and Gary finally quieted Jenny O’Doherty enough to get a few questions answered, but between the deaths of her employers and her errant husband, it was difficult to tell who she was sniffing and sobbing over.
“I haven’t seen them since Christmas Eve. Gabe gave everyone the week off.”
“Was there anything out of the ordinary going on in the household or at work?”
“Beka seemed depressed, but she was like that, and they were bickering more than usual.” She sipped her coffee and then added, “She broke a bust up in the studio—aimed it at Gabe’s head. He ducked.”
Lochwood looked at Gary and raised his eyebrows. “She must have been fairly strong to throw a plaster bust.”
“We called her mighty-mite.” She looked at them confidingly.
“She has outbursts. Gabe calls them rage attacks. I call them temper tantrums.”
Loch noticed that she had gone back to referring to them in the present tense and did not bother to correct her.
“Had Beka cut her hair recently?”
“Rapunzel? You’ve got to be kidding! It bothered her to see it come out in the hairbrush. She was like Samson about her hair. She’d die first!”
So the hair was a mystery—Loch made a note about it while his partner asked if she thought Beka could have killed her husband.
“Right now, I think any woman could kill her husband.” She laughed, looking at the clock and clicking her nails on the ceramic side of her coffee mug. “Do you boys leave your wives alone all night without so much as a howdy-do?”
Loch was certainly not going to volunteer any information. “Aside from your personal feelings for husbands at this moment, do you think Beka Imamura was capable of murder?”
She sighed. “Given the right circumstances, anyone is capable of murder.”
“What about other employees? Is there anyone else we should know about?” Gary asked.
“Gabe had two apprentices from Pratt working as interns in his studio. They went home for Christmas break and aren’t due back until next semester. End of January, I believe.”
“Are they local?”
“Aaron lives in Woodstock. Lucas in Delaware.”
“We’ll need their phone numbers.” She nodded absently but didn’t move.
“How was Mr. Montebello to work for?” Lochwood asked.
“Temperamental, particular, but once you know his idiosyncrasies and figure out how to work around them, he’s fine. Some of the interns have trouble dealing with his ego, but they’re young and have egos of their own. He’s the only artist I know who has a cleaning lady come in to scrub the floors and walls twice a year. She dusts every other week.”
“When was the last time she came in?”
“Just before Christmas.” She began to cry, softly. “I can’t believe they’re dead. Why? Who would do such a thing?”
“Is there someone you can think of who would want to kill them?”
“No one. I mean, Beka had a fight with Edilio last week but I don’t think it was cause for murder.”
“Who’s Edilio?” Gary asked.
“Her old dance partner. They started a Pilates studio out here a few years back.”
“Do you know what the fight was about?”
“It had nothing to do with Beka’s business, but as I was leaving Christmas Eve I heard him saying, ‘You’re not going to screw me!’ And she said, ‘I already have.’” Jenny blew her nose and looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Do you mind if I get dressed?”
“Just one more thing, ma’am. Where were you last night between eleven and one?”
“Waiting for George. We were going to Gurney’s in Montauk for dinner and their New Year’s Eve celebration. It cost five hundred dolthe lars for those reservations, but did he show up? Like we ca
n afford to throw around money like that! We’re part of the Hamptons working poor, you know. There are poor people who live out here. We were here way before the rest of ’em!” She tossed back her third cup of coffee and snorted. “I was all dressed up with nowhere to go, gentlemen. And if Gabe left Beka in the same circumstance, I think that would be called justifiable homicide.”
CHAPTER NINE
Alas, how should you?
She knows not herself,
In all her mystery.
—LORD BYRON, The Two Foscari
Except for the occasional bigwig popping his head in to see how they were doing and checking to make sure they’d been approved for overtime, Frank and Devon had been able to work uninterrupted all morning and finished logging all of the evidence by ten a.m.
“You feel like pulling some of the latents now?” Frank asked.
“I sure don’t feel like going to sleep,” Devon answered, pouring them both another cup of coffee.
“I thought I’d get started on that sword.”
“I’ll take the bottle.” She pulled the bag with the Jack Daniel’s bottle in it and wrote “10:05, 14B, latents” on the evidence “ sheet and signed her name.
Frank did the same with the sword, then looked around the room for a container that was large enough to hold it. He held up a garbage bag and compared its size with the sword. “This should work.”
“I’ll get a hanger.” She walked into the coed changing room and pulled a wire hanger off the coat rack. When she came back, Frank was standing on a chair and removing the philodendron from over the Crime Scene secretary’s desk. They constructed a makeshift tent for the sword and secured it to the plant hanger with wire. Then, just before securing the opening at the top of the tent, Frank put a few drops of superglue on the hanger and tied it shut.
Devon placed the watered-down contents from the Jack Daniel’s bottle into a petri dish, then viewed it through a magnifying glass. Little white dustlike particles clung to the sides of the vial. “Frank? What do you make of this?”
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