The dog sent up a wail of pain, and the man yelled, “Shut up!” In a softer voice, he said, “And I see you standin’ there, eyes real wide. Scared. Lookin’ right at me. . . . I started that day with a clockwork plan, and it all went to shit in half a minute. . . . I don’t know why she died.”
“She died to save me. She’s still trying to—
“Naw, they don’t come back, kid. Ghosts. They’re not like you think. They’re more like echoes of people.”
“You heard the bells in the sky. I know you did.”
“You were awake for that? I thought you was out of it. For a while there, I thought you was dead. . . . Okay, the jingle bells—that wasn’t her. Out here in the country, sound can travel a long way.”
“From the sky?”
“She’s gone, kid. She won’t never come back.” Cigarette Man got up from the mattress. His steps were slow to cross the floor. The door closed on the man and the dog. Outside the laundry room, the pit bull whimpered and thumped to the floor, breathing ragged as if it had run a fast mile.
Jonah lay back on the mattress, falling in love with his own game of ghost. The jingle bells had sold him on it, and now he whispered, “Aunt Angie?”
The boy waited for a sign from her.
He waited so patiently.
—
DETECTIVE MALLORY was nowhere to be found, and all her calls were going to voice mail. Rather than wait any longer, District Attorney Ambrose decided that the commander of Special Crimes should do the interview. Rank should speak to rank—and not one, but three of Andrew Polk’s lawyers.
Jack Coffey entered the interrogation room, mindful that the mayor was a control freak. He followed Charles Butler’s advice to ignore the man—a sure way to piss him off and off-balance him. The lieutenant spoke to the first attorney in the string, the youngest one who seemed least at home in a police station. “We pulled the erased information from your client’s cell phone.”
The lawyer, just a tad apprehensive, turned to his client.
Coffey shot a glance at the mayor. He could translate Polk’s smile as Nice try, but no way. True, there was nothing incriminating on the phone taken from the mayor’s pocket. In a show of clarifying things for the least experienced lawyer, the lieutenant leaned toward this young man to say, “I’m talking about the other cell phone, the one with Jonah Quill’s proof of life.” This was only a bluff, but, “That bookends nicely with proof of death.” And those last three words were made hideously clear as he laid down a photograph of the bloody organ and what was written on its plastic wrapping. “That heart was cut out of a murdered child, Jonah Quill. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
All three attorneys were taken by surprise, even the eldest one at the end of the table. Coffey enlightened them. “The mayor was keeping it in his safe. Maybe a sick souvenir. Who knows?”
The two younger lawyers must be new hires, virgins in murder and mutilation. Their faces were that pale shade that preceded projectile vomit. But the old man at the table, Arty Shay, was famous for being able to stomach every damn kind of carnage, and so he was beloved by criminals uptown and down. Shay was not inclined to fold early, if ever, and he said, “About that phone. We’ll need to see evidence of the—”
“You don’t get zip,” said the lieutenant. “Not till your client’s been charged and arraigned for conspiracy kidnap and murder.”
The other two lawyers acted as alter egos for the mayor, getting antsy on his behalf. Andrew Polk only sat back and enjoyed the performance. He must know that they would never find a second phone or any other tangible evidence against him. Jack Coffey’s second thought was that the mayor was just not in touch with reality.
Either way, no sense of fear.
“Charge my client, Jack. Or cut him loose,” said Arty Shay.
Very ballsy. Bluff called. Game over? No, not with one charge left on the table. “Okay, Arty, let’s start with the appetizer—obstruction of justice. You’re welcome to a witness statement for the kid’s heart.” Jack Coffey pushed the photograph of the disembodied heart in the lawyer’s direction. “You can keep that if you like. I got my own copy for the judge at his arraignment. Hell with pictures, I can bring in the damn heart. We gave your guy first shot—as a courtesy, but now we’re done.”
The lieutenant turned to the youngest lawyer. “If you don’t know the drill, when we got two perps, we give them a chance to roll on each other. First one to rat, that’s our winner. House rules.” And now he faced the mayor. “You saw Dwayne Brox when you came in, right? Sitting at a desk . . . writing out his statement. Hey, you had to wonder why the guy smiled at you. So, as far as a deal goes, it’s his turn now. Oh, and the feds asked for a crack at him, too.” He wanted to put his fist through the mayor’s maddening grin.
At least Arty Shay seemed rattled, a small victory. And Shay’s young associates took a cue from their boss’s startled face, running over one another’s words to say that they would need some privacy for a conversation with the client.
—
ALL THE PLAYERS had changed. Dwayne Brox was seated at the table with his own attorney when Riker walked into the interrogation room and announced that “Anna Karenina’s a whore.”
That might be harsh.
A phone number found on Brox’s laptop had connected police to an escort service, but call girls were one up from whores in a prostitute’s pecking order. And the lady’s professional moniker, Kitty Kat, was not to be found in any Russian novel. So Bug Boy had created an alias for an alias for a woman whose real name was Su Ling, a recent arrival from Hong Kong.
“We had a talk with Kitty.” It had been a short chat under threat of deportation. “She says you got a tiny weener, kid. Skinny, too. Her escort service has you down as Needle Dick on their client list, and that explains a lot.”
Well, finally—an expression that was not smug. Dwayne Brox was leaning into it, angry and showing it.
The attorney rested one hand on his client’s arm, a subtle warning not to react to the provocation of a dick shot, and now the lawyer favored Riker with an imperious glare. “Detective, I think we can dispense with remarks like that.”
“Okay, Counselor, let’s move on to The Brothers Karamazov.” He smiled. “Yeah, you heard me right. Your client knows ’em all on a first name basis. He’s got their phone numbers on his laptop. Just dumb luck we got a cop who’s read everything by Dostoyevsky. One of the Karamazovs—Dmitri, I think—his number connects to what might be the last phone booth in America.” Riker turned to Brox. “It’s inside your bookie’s favorite bar. Dmitri’s real name is Bernie Mars. He’s old-school. Doesn’t wanna know from cell phones. Bernie says you don’t know squat about sports, and you bet like a little girl. Pansy, that’s what he calls you.”
“Detective,” said the attorney. “I warned you about deprecating remarks.”
Yeah, like that ever worked. “Time to do a deal, Counselor. I got three more Karamazov brothers. You don’t wanna wait till we finish tracking their numbers. We might find the hit man before your client pleads out.”
That was a lie. Detective Sanger had already checked out the remaining book characters, Aloysha, Ivan and their bastard brother Pavel. Two of the cell phones had pings in areas of heavy drug traffic, and he figured them for dealers. For the third number, Sanger had gotten lucky with a call history.
Detectives Janos and Washington were on the way to visit a cell-phone owner, who had so generously left a name and street address on the tape of a 9-1-1 call—when a frantic woman had begged the operator to send an ambulance for her asthmatic daughter.
—
THE DETECTIVES from Special Crimes drove along a forested road in the neighboring state of Connecticut. Widely spaced mailboxes were the only indications that there were houses nestled deep in this expensive acreage. They found the mailbox they wanted, but they could go no farther. An officer in
uniform was stringing yellow crime-scene tape from tree to tree on either side of the driveway. The two New Yorkers sat in their unmarked car and watched a medical examiner’s team hoist a zippered body bag into a meat wagon.
Janos threw up his hands. Oh, shot in the dark—maybe they had arrived too late to question their suspected hit man, Gail Rawly.
“Well, that sucks,” said Washington, indicating that he was not up for an interstate jurisdictional war over that corpse.
When they stepped out of their car, they had the full attention of the officer guarding the driveway. He examined their badges and ID cards very carefully—he was that young. “I can’t let you in.” So apologetic, he nodded toward the foot of the driveway. “The detectives are back there with the Crime Scene Unit.”
“Not a problem,” said Janos. There was no chance that those locals would give them anything useful. “You might be just the guy we need. I bet you were the first responder. Am I right?”
The rookie policeman’s smile confirmed this. Janos could also depend on the fact that the hometown detectives had treated this youngster like he was unfit for anything beyond handmaid’s duties. “Officer, if you got the time, we need some help on this case we’re working back in New York.”
Right again. The kid responded well to simple respect.
According to Officer Sacco, Gail Rawly was the victim of vehicular homicide. “In his own driveway.” And this cop had other inside information as well, the only perk of being invisible to “those pricks in charge,” when the grownups were talking. “They got a suspect. Mrs. Rawly had her bags all packed. The little girl’s, too. So, she was planning to leave her husband, right? The detectives figure there was a fight, and that’s why she ran Mr. Rawly down in the driveway. Then, I guess he was still breathing . . . because she backed over him and parked the car with one wheel sitting on his chest. That’s how I found him—under the wife’s car.”
At Janos’s request, the uniformed officer used his cell phone to call the local detectives at the other end of the driveway—to tell them that two New York cops had information on their victim. Always best to turn up with gifts when visiting another jurisdiction.
Officer Sacco put away his phone and pulled one end of the crime-scene tape free. As Janos and Washington walked up the driveway, they passed CSIs who were dusting a car’s steering wheel for prints. Playing nice with this crew, the detectives held up their badges, and they were careful in giving wide berth to the blood pool on the ground. Up ahead, a man with a suit and badge stood outside the front door to the house.
This local cop was wary, unhappy to see the foreigners from out of state, and now he introduced himself as one of the detectives who owned this homicide. “We already know the guy’s an insurance investigator.”
“Of course you do,” said Janos. “And I’m sure you know Mr. Rawly’s credit card was used to book three plane tickets north of here. We figure the guy paid cash for the real destination. Is that how you see it, too?” No, he could tell this was news to the hometown cop. “So you knew the whole family was planning to blow town . . . not just the wife and kid.” He leaned around the detective to see suitcases stacked in the foyer. “I’m guessing when you checked those bags, you found Gail Rawly’s clothes in the mix?”
No, again. What had these fools been doing with their time?
“We got more on your vic,” said Washington.
The man from Connecticut stepped to one side, and the New York detectives pulled on latex gloves to make a cursory walk-through. They avoided the bedroom with its door ajar to show them the child-size furniture and pink walls of a little girl’s room. An older female was also in there. They could hear her crying.
On their return to the front room, Washington handed over three passports pulled from a duffel bag found in the den. “Forgeries. Brand-new names for the whole family. So you gotta know Rawly’s not your average insurance investigator. We figure him for a hit man. He must’ve known we were close to nailing him, but he didn’t plan to leave the wife behind. That tells me they got along pretty well. We don’t like Mrs. Rawly for this murder.”
The younger Connecticut man took a hands-on-hips stance that said, in sandbox lingo, Oh, yeah? And his partner said, “Well, if she didn’t do it—who hit the hit man?” And his smirk told them that he expected no snappy answer for that one. Evidently, these two liked their own theory of the crime, holes and all, and they were sticking with it.
—
TWO HOURS LATER, Janos and Washington sat in their lieutenant’s office, making a full report. They had gotten as far as the driveway murder when Jack Coffey said, “So our hit man’s dead.”
“No,” said Janos. “You didn’t get our message?”
“Yeah, I got the gist of it.” Lonahan had taken that call and relayed the bare-bones information that the Connecticut suspect was dead. The lieutenant had yet to read the more detailed account. “It’s been a busy day.” A bitch of a day. So much time had been lost to being reamed out by an irate district attorney.
“We figure Gail Rawly for the middleman.” When Washington was done with the details of their walk-through, he said, “On our way outta there, we talked to the CSIs working on the car. They pulled fingerprints and matched ’em up with the wife’s. Hers were the only ones on the steering wheel. . . . Mrs. Rawly really loves her car.”
“Real nice car,” said Janos. “The steering wheel’s mahogany, and the spokes are covered with gorgeous leather. The lady keeps them oiled so they won’t dry out.”
“Those CSIs are Mrs. Rawly’s biggest fans,” said Washington. “Cleanest car they’ve ever seen. That’s how they picked up on the smudges in the oil, smudges thick as fingers on the steering wheel’s spokes. They stuck out ’cause of the cotton fibers.”
“Gloves,” said Coffey. “Could be gardening gloves, but even so—”
Janos finished this thought for him. “Who steers a car with the spokes of a steering wheel?” The wife would not go to that trouble to preserve her own fingerprints on the wooden rim. “That’s how we know our hit man’s still alive and—”
“Hey, what gives?” Washington was facing the window on the squad room, where Dwayne Brox walked solo toward the stairwell door. “We’re kicking him loose—now? We got him tied to Gail Rawly.”
“Who might be involved. That’s not enough to hold Brox. But Riker did point out that the hit man might see him as a liability.” Jack Coffey watched the stairwell door close on their prime suspect. Good as dead—given the murder of Gail Rawly. “But the little creep didn’t seem to care.”
“What about the mayor?”
“He’s already gone.” Detective Sanger leaned in the doorway with that finish to the day’s update for Janos and Washington. “The arraignment was quick. It’s a done deal on the charge of obstruction, but Polk’s under house arrest at Gracie Mansion.”
The other two detectives looked to their lieutenant, silently asking, What? What did he just say?
“That’s the judge’s call. We can’t keep Polk in custody for a bailable offense.” Apparently, there was nothing in the criminal code to cover receiving a child’s bloody heart from the mailman. They could only slap his wrist for holding on to it, lying to Mallory and obstructing her case for an hour.
And now Jack Coffey could count on his squad taking the blame for a hit on Dwayne Brox and maybe a mayoral assassination because—that was just how this fucking day was going so far! But his demeanor was laid back when he said, “Okay, next assignment. Mallory’s not taking any calls. Find her. Drag her back. . . . Handcuffs would be a nice touch.”
—
SHE LOWERED HER EYES to stare at the open pocket watch in her hand. Time would be crucial in one special scenario, and Dr. Slope’s voice was subdued when he said, “You think Jonah Quill’s alive.”
“Not for long. My perp’s a killing machine. It’s not like a hit man enjo
ys his work. It just doesn’t bother him. Adults, kids—it’s all the same to him. . . . So why don’t we have the right heart?” Kathy was so still as she looked down at the old-fashioned timepiece, watching time get away from her.
On a note of hope, the doctor said, “Maybe Jonah escaped and took his heart with him.”
“Maybe.”
Edward Slope read defeat in her voice and the bow of her head. “If there’s anything I can do to help . . . Anything.”
She raised her face to his. He recognized that smile. And so he knew that she had already prepared a list of things that he could do for her—since he had asked, sucker that he was.
25
Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope likened it to an invasion. An hour ago, this private office had been a fortress of tranquility with a dragon of a secretary to stave off intruders. Now it was full of staff, excited crosstalk and machines, as his own people—traitors—tapped keys for computers and cell phones, hunting down data on heartless cadavers. Kathy Mallory had altered the very atmosphere to copshop air that reeked of bad coffee.
The doctor sat at his desk, which had not yet been commandeered, though she was crowding him, sitting beside him, working at a computer perched on the credenza—his computer. The door opened, and another console rolled in, piloted by one of his pathologists cum furniture movers. The young detective had also recruited his own investigators, and it troubled him that they were so quick to follow her orders, never questioning her authority.
Her own tapping stopped as her chair rolled back from the credenza. “This is a dead end.” After running the heart’s DNA through data banks, she had come up with no leads.
Blind Sight Page 29
