The Weeping Buddha

by Heather Dune Macadam

  Detective Marders was at his desk but did not sound pleased to hear from his nemesis so early in the morning. “What do you want?”

  “Haven’t had your second cup of coffee yet?” Loch asked brusquely.

  “I’m too busy for coffee, what’s your excuse?”

  “I was going to share some information with you, but maybe you don’t need it.”

  “You hindering our investigation now, Brennen?”

  “You hindering ours, Marders?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “I hear trouble follows you wherever you go, and your reputation has preceded you.Just because you can sniff out a corpse like a damn bloodhound doesn’t mean you’re on your own turf now.”

  “Doesn’t take a bloodhound to smell a corpse, Marders, just a good cop.” Loch loved busting balls and this conversation was giving him more of a kick than his last cup of coffee. “It also doesn’t mean that the crime I’m investigating and the one you’re investigating aren’t connected. Let’s be candid, Marders. If we don’t wrap this up quick the Feds are coming in to do it for us—this murderer has crossed county lines.”

  “And I’m thinking your dead girl is the murderer and the case is closed.”

  “I didn’t think you were that dumb.”

  “Cut the crap. We don’t have any bodies that prove she didn’t do it. That’s how it plays for me—sounds like she snapped, offed her business partner, offed her husband, offed herself.”

  “That chicken scratch on his chest …” Loch dangled the bait to see if Marders would bite.

  “What about it?” Marders didn’t sound interested or appreciative enough to warrant handing over the information so easily.

  “It means something. See you at the autopsy.” Loch hung up.

  Devon arrived at One Police Plaza at seven-ten and was upstairs and in Detective Freesia’s office by seven-fifteen. Freesia looked up from her desk and acknowledged Devon with a brief nod. “I left the file at that desk. Coffee’s over there. Make yourself at home.”

  Devon had questions, though, and sat down at the senior detective’s desk. “You gotta second?” Freesia half nodded. “I’m curious, did Beka tell you why she wanted to see Todd’s file?”

  “She asked if it were possible. I told her no, and that was that.”

  “How’d she get up here?”

  “She didn’t. She called from the front desk. No one gets upstairs unless they’re escorted, or, like you, on the force.”

  “And that was what day last week?”

  “I already told you.” Freesia wasn’t interested in playing any games.

  “That’s right, Tuesday.” Devon walked over to the desk and opened the folder. She still wasn’t sure what she was looking for and flipped through the pages of the case file until something caught her eye—a news clipping. In the photo Todd seemed surprisingly young, untainted by the world and its problems, yet there he was with Beka’s leg by his ear. On the outskirts of the picture Gabe, Edilio, and Devon were looking on. She read the article and realized it was more about Beka’s seduction of the innocent Yale Divinity student than anything else. Thanks to Godwyn’s photographs, the press had grabbed the story and run with it. There hadn’t been any dirt to drag out on Todd, only Beka. Times hadn’t changed much; Beka was still the one the press dogged.

  Devon turned past the news articles to start with Josh’s interview.She tried to remember what Josh was like back in the ’80s before he was a self-assured doctor, back when he was only a self-assured intern. She wondered if he had fidgeted in the chair, or if he had been suave enough to disguise his discomfort.

  Zambini: So, the last time you saw Todd was?

  Shapiro: Dancing with Beka at our party. He and she were, you know, cutting the rug.

  Freesia: A bit of a local celebrity, isn’t she?

  Shapiro: More than local, but yeah. Anyway, Todd seemed to get dizzy. You know, he was a little green when he took off downstairs.

  Zamibni: And that’s the last time you saw him? For the record, Mr. Shapiro just nodded. We’re recording, Mr. Shapiro, if you could please state Yes or No for the transcript.

  Shapiro: Yes.

  Zambini: Were there any drugs at your party?

  Shapiro: No way. I’m pre-med. I wouldn’t allow drugs where I live, you know?

  What a crock that was, Devon thought to herself.

  Zambini: Was Todd drinking heavily?

  Shapiro: We’d all had a few, it was New Year’s.

  Freesia: You know, Josh, I don’t know one party nowadays that doesn’t have pot on the fire escape, poppers on the dance floor, and toot in the bathroom. You telling me that with all your medical expertise you didn’t see as much as a joint at your party?

  Shapiro: There was probably some pot …

  Zambini: And?

  Shapiro: That’s about it. We had punch with a little extra punch in it, champagne, firecrackers, and cigars, but nothing illegal.

  Freesia: Thanks for being frank with us. Tell me, is there another entrance to your building?

  Devon could almost hear the acerbic tone in Freesia’s voice—Freesia must have known he was lying to them.

  Shapiro: Just the door on Canal Street.

  Why had he evaded that question? Semantically, he’d answered truthfully, but why hadn’t Josh told the detectives about the passage over the rooftops?

  In the column of the transcript, someone, probably Freesia, had made notations: “Check out other possible entrances to the loft.1/5/84.” A later notation, dated 1/8/84, stated: “No other entrance could be found.”

  Devon flipped to Alexandra Parnel and found that the Reverend Brown, about whom Maddie had spoken at dim sum, had also sat in on Alexandra’s interview. He had alienated Alexandra much quicker than he had Maddie, and his first mistake was to ask her if she was Christian. Alex didn’t look Jewish but she was, and she made it quite clear that she didn’t appreciate his line of questioning.

  “None of your damn business,” Alexandra had replied. Devon checked the date and time at the top of the page as well. It was a few hours after Maddie Fong’s altercation with the man of the cloth. The likelihood that Maddie had called Alex after her interview explained Alex’s flippant answer, although generally Alex didn’t need much prompting.

  From Detective Freesia’s notes in the margin, Alex was the first loftmate to cry over Todd’s loss or to show any emotion. But the rest of the interview seemed unremarkable. Alex told them about the elevator shaft, the party, the crowd; she denied that there were any drugs, just like they all had … Devon flipped back and forth a few times to make sure it wasn’t there. But on the second read she was quite sure Alex had avoided telling the detectives that she had recorded the entire party. She wondered if Alex would really call L.A. and have her assistant get the videotape out of storage. Devon hoped so; she wouldn’t like to have to take a warrant out on Alex, but she would if she had to.

  Devon had almost finished reading the entire case file. She just had Maddie’s interview to go, and skipping the preliminary information the detectives had to gather, it only took her a few seconds to read the two brief pages of text.

  Fong: I drank a lot of punch that night.

  Freesia: We understand a lot of people did.

  Fong: Yeah, but … I don’t know.

  Freesia: Come on, what don’t you know?

  Fong: Anything. I don’t remember anything that happened.

  Zambini: You were there, right?

  Fong: Yeah, I was there, but it’s all a blank. I’m listening to everybody talk about what happened and can sort of put it together from that, but I don’t know if I actually remember anything myself. You know?

  Freesia: Not really.

  Zambini: Ms. Fong, it sounds like you’re saying that you were in a blackout.

  Fong: Oh god. I hope not. That sounds so serious.

  Freesia: But is that what you’re saying?

  Fong: No, I just don’t remember anything. That’s a
ll.

  Zambini: What is the last thing you remember?

  Fong: Waking up next to Godwyn. I don’t even remember if we did it or not.

  Freesia: Godwyn? Godwyn? He’s not on our list.

  Fong: He used to live in the loft like I did, on a couch.

  Freesia: Are there a lot of people living there who sleep on the couch?

  Fong: Sure. Last month we had three people from Iceland staying there as well as God and me. We’re a generic crowd.

  Zambini: We have more people living in this place than a homeless shelter.

  Fong: It’s like a shelter for artists! God—that’s what we call Godwyn for short—moved into Gabriel Montebello’s building just after Christmas. He got a great deal. Pays two hundred a month for the fourth floor, and caretakes the place when Gabe is out of town.

  Zambini: I take it Godwyn was at the party?

  Fong: Yeah, God was at the party.

  Rev. Brown: I object to that phrase.

  Zambini: I’m sorry, reverend.

  Freesia: Was this artist Montebello there?

  Fong: Everyone was there, but Gabe left early, about two or so.

  Zambini: Two is early?

  Fong: I’m sorry I can’t remember more. I don’t even remember Beka almost falling into that elevator shaft. It’s like we’re cursed.

  Rev. Brown: Cursed.

  Freesia: I doubt that very much, Ms. Fong. If anything does come back to you, be sure to tell us.

  Fong: Sure. I don’t know why it happened. It must have been the grain alcohol in the punch.

  Freesia: Or maybe you drank too much, period.

  Fong: No, I think it was the grain alcohol.

  Right after Maddie had admitted to not remembering anything, she told them what the tarot cards had said about Todd being in the river. No wonder the Reverend Brown went ballistic in the hallway—he must have been furious with her for being too drunk to help them with anything more concrete than psychic, whatever that meant, intuition. Devon felt angry, too, just reading the interview.

  She rubbed her eyes; they were dry and tired from the earlymorning sleuthing, and reading the transcripts had only made her feel more deeply the emptiness of the situation they had found themselves in back then. She walked down the hallway, looking for some way to get a breath of fresh air, but all the windows were sealed to prevent escape. She stopped outside of the interrogation room where they had conducted the interviews of each loftmate and close friend. This was the hall where Reverend Brown had verbally accosted Maddie, and Maddie had left with the beginning of an understanding that she had a drinking problem. She wondered if Maddie ‘the Mad Dog’ Fong had ever stopped drinking and realized she didn’t know.She didn’t know anything about these peoples’ lives now, and yet back then her life had practically revolved around theirs. It was difficult to fathom how fast a track they had been on then; they seemed to have grown up despite themselves.

  “What are you doing out here?” she heard Detective Freesia ask.

  “Just taking a break.” Devon looked out the window at yet another bleak winter day. “I don’t see Godwyn or Gabe in the file.”

  “Notebook. We interviewed them in the Mercer Street building.We only brought people who actually lived at the loft at the time in for questioning.”

  “And Gabe?”

  “Didn’t know anything. He left the party almost immediately after Todd disappeared and didn’t even recognize the photos of the kid. Dead end.”

  “You know, we went to the loft yesterday, after I met you; a kind of loft reunion at a nearby restaurant that ended up being an impromptu wake for Beka and Gabe. At the loft, Godwyn Kamani jumped from one side of the roof to the other and showed me how Beka used to get downstairs from the other building. Of course, the door was locked and he barely got across, but evidently, Beka enjoyed leaving that way quite a bit.”

  “I’ll be damned. Joey said Beka had a scam but we couldn’t figure out how she did it,” Freesia said, referring to her previous partner.

  “You sat on the loft?”

  “They were dealing top-of-the-line coke, real high-quality stuff.”

  Devon was stunned.

  Freesia flipped through her calendar impatiently. “I wondered why Shapiro lied. Something about this does not add up here. And I don’t know what it is.”

  “One of the guys in Surveillance out on the Island used to work for the Sanitation Department; he says you could dump a body in the sewer and never leave a trace.”

  “We get a number of things down there but most of them aren’t attached to much that’s identifiable. We could probably clear more than a few cases if we could match them with someone in our files.Unfortunately, people who go missing aren’t usually DNA-tested before they disappear, so we can’t do much with the bones the sewer guys find—although, sometimes they’re over a hundred years old.Occasionally we get lucky with dental impressions, and technology has certainly helped clear more cases than we used to be able to clear. But then society’s gotten more violent and volatile. We have more cases than ever.”

  “I don’t think I could stand your job.”

  “What do you do, pick up traces of blood and bodily fluids? You see stuff I’d have trouble stomaching.”

  “I doubt it. It’s all technical. Your job, that’s emotional.”

  “I guess we’re all cut out to do different things. Listen, I’m in the middle of a case meeting, so I’ll be tied up until nine. If you finish before I get back, leave the file on my desk.”

  “Would you mind if I looked at the other kids who went missing on New Year’s?”

  Freesia glanced down the hall as if to make sure no one was listening.“No, go ahead, just promise me you’ll let me know if you find any dots to connect.”

  “You bet. Thanks for your help.” Devon stared out the window at the people hurrying down the street toward the courthouse; some heading for work, some heading for justice. Was there any real justice? Even if she found out what happened to Beka and Gabe, even if she proved that Beka didn’t kill her husband, even if she figured out what Beka was looking for in Todd’s case file, would they ever be sure what had happened to Todd Daniels? She knew the answer, even as she asked herself the question.

  Todd was, would always be, an unsolved mystery.

  She walked back down to Freesia’s office and nonchalantly pulled the eight other cases out of her vertical file, then sat down at her desk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A thousand grasses weep tears of dew;

  A single pine tree murmurs in the breeze.

  —ZEN PHRASE

  Lochwood’s beeper went off at the same time the fax began to ring, then purr. He still didn’t understand how faxes worked, and didn’t really care; the fact that some guy in Japan, a day-and-a-half away, could analyze information and get it back to them in an hour was beyond his ken. “Hey, Gary,” he said into the phone, “I’m watching it come out.”

  “How soon can you get back to me?”

  “I need Devon to ink it in, then we need to fax Japan.”

  “There’s got to be somebody closer who can interpret this.”

  “You know any Japanese people?”

  “Just that dead broad.”

  Loch almost burst out laughing. “And she couldn’t have read it if she were alive.”

  Gary chuckled at himself. “Don’t her uncles read Japanese?”

  “Great idea, let’s bother the grieving family! Besides, they’re third- or fourth-generation American, Gary. What are you, second?”

  Loch enjoyed instructing somebody else on the subject of America’s melting pot—it was usually he who got the lecture from Devon.

  Gary ignored him. “Okay. So, Frank’s in here working on the rest of the photos and our mold. It looks like something out of a sci-fimovie—one eye, part of a mouth, a nose. There are no nose holes.Evidently, when you cast someone’s face you stick straws up the nose so they can breathe.”

  “Intriguing.”
r />   “Almost. Frank thinks it could be the mold of a dummy and that’s why there’re no air holes. Problem is there’s hair in the Plasticine …” Loch started to speak but Gary interrupted. “… It’s already at the lab.”

  “Sounds like you don’t even need me there.”

  “We’ll keep you for entertainment value.”

  “Is Tox back yet?”

  “Get this, they both had lethal doses of Norflex in their systems.”

  “So why the knifework?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I bet Ferraro is the same.” Lochwood wrote “overkill” again on his notepad. “Anything else from Hematology?”

  “The blood on the sword is Gabe’s, but there’s also blood on there that’s over two hundred years old. Too cool!”

  “A little out of our jurisdiction.” There was a lightness developing in his team that felt familiar, and it made Loch feel the swift excitement of his work that sustained him more than food. He’d been afraid that this case would be nothing but pain and sorrow—some were, but even in the really terrible tragedies, they usually managed to get above the horror. It had been hard to do that this time, seeing as it was one of their own suffering a traumatic loss. Devon had come out of her stupor smack in the middle of the night, though, pulling this amazing information literally out of thin air.

  He could hear the change in Gary’s voice and knew Frank was working happily on the photos, the mold, probably without even going on the clock. Solving crimes, fighting crime, was what nourished them. Love and sex were good, too, but justice had a fix that nothing else could bring, and his team felt the same way. They liked being the good guys. There was a reason he had hung that sign in the Homicide Squad’s break room: “Our Day Begins When Yours Ends.”

  Ten minutes later Lochwood had six photos laid out on the coffee table and was comparing the marks on Gabe and Beka. He placed a piece of tracing paper over the photos and began to sketch the lines, but he wasn’t an artist. All he could make was more scribbling than sense. He’d have to wait for Devon. He called her now-charged cellphone—no answer—wished she hadn’t lost her beeper, and began to pace the room once more.