Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  “Got it. I’ll tell him.”

  “And call me if something shows up on that camera.”

  He hung up, clicked Play, and continued to watch pedestrians and cars stream in and out of view. Portino returned with his coffee ten minutes later, and Muñoz gave him Codella’s message, eyes on the screen the whole time. A woman walking five or six dogs—he couldn’t be sure because of the focus issue—turned onto 112th Street, and he noted the time. An adult with a small child turned onto the street from the south side of Frederick Douglass, and he noted that too.

  As the video minutes elapsed, the sky darkened. Streetlights went on. Twilight turned to night in the short span of thirty sped-up minutes. The blurry shadow in the laundromat window did not move. He still had not seen anyone who could be Hector Sanchez. Was that because the principal had not come home yet? Was it because Sanchez had taken a cab or walked home from the other end of his block, out of this camera’s range?

  The man who entered the camera’s purview at 5:27 PM wore a light-colored parka and a red baseball cap with the visor low. He walked briskly past the laundromat. Muñoz clicked Pause as the figure turned west onto 112th Street. He noted the time on his legal pad. Was it just a man who lived on the block? Was it someone on his way to Morningside Park? Muñoz felt an inner jolt of energy he knew didn’t come from caffeine. The grainy images no longer felt like footprints from the past. They seemed to unfold in real time, and Muñoz felt a sense of urgency, as if he could still stop a crime in progress.

  At 5:35, the man who moved into view on the west side of Frederick Douglass wore a dark coat that blended with the night. He turned onto 112th Street. Muñoz rewound and paused as the figure’s face looked briefly toward the camera. He pressed his eyes closer to the screen. The face was almost indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness. “Detective Portino, take a look at this guy. What do you think?”

  Portino lumbered over.

  “Is he black?” asked Muñoz.

  “Maybe. Or dark-skinned Hispanic. Zoom in a little.”

  Muñoz enlarged the image and they debated. “I’d say dark skinned, but I sure couldn’t swear to it,” concluded Portino.

  Muñoz made another meticulous notation on his pad. His eyes were tired. He stretched his arms. He stood and went to the men’s room. He circled past Reilly’s office and saw him on the phone. He wondered if he should call Codella now or wait and watch the scene play out. He went back to his desk and continued watching.

  At three minutes past six, the figure in the light-colored parka and red baseball cap reappeared from the direction of Sanchez’s building. “Hey!” called out Muñoz. “This could be our guy.” He paused the video.

  Portino stepped over. The face stared in the direction of the camera, but with the lens out of focus and his visor pulled low, his features remained a mystery. Muñoz and Portino stared at the frozen blob of the man midstride as he approached the side window of the laundromat.

  Then Muñoz again played the video. The man continued to walk. He came to the laundromat window and turned to look in. Muñoz paused it. “He’s looking at the guy inside. I think they’re looking at each other. That guy has been there since three twenty. What the fuck has he been doing in there?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this. No jury’s gonna convict anyone based on these crap images.”

  “Still, one of these guys could be the killer.”

  Muñoz watched two more sped-up hours before the figure in the laundromat emerged, crossed 112th Street, and headed south on Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Then he pushed his chair out, stood, stretched, and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.

  Chapter 27

  Dana Drew’s faded T-shirt advertised the 2008 Broadway revival of Hair. Her feet were bare, her hair was tousled, and she was wearing no makeup. Codella had stood next to her share of actors at the Zabar’s bread counter and the Citarella checkout line, and most of them were so ordinary off camera that you’d look right past them if you weren’t paying attention, but Drew managed to appear conspicuously beautiful without any effort.

  The actress invited her into a spacious entrance hall where signed Broadway playbills decorated the walls. Codella looked beyond this entryway toward sun-flooded windows that confirmed the spectacular Hudson River view she’d imagined when she’d stood at the door yesterday and looked over Jane Martin’s shoulder.

  Drew followed her eyes. “Would you like to sit, Detective?”

  “I’m fine right here. You wanted to tell me something.”

  The actress ran her fingers through her streaked blond hair. “It’s a little complicated.” She bit the side of her thumb.

  Codella recalibrated her tone. “All right, then let’s go have that seat.”

  They moved to a three-sided sectional overlooking the river. Codella waited.

  Drew finally broke the silence. “You know that Proud Families billboard of my family?”

  “The one I saw in Sanchez’s apartment? The one I see every day at the bus stop on my corner?”

  “It’s a big lie,” said Drew. “My partner Jane and I separated several months ago.”

  “Then why did I see her here when I came yesterday?”

  “She visits Zoe. She calls the babysitter, and the babysitter lets her know if it’s a good time—when I’m not around.”

  Codella remained silent, wondering where this was going.

  “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat my motive, Detective. The play was about to open. I didn’t want to deal with a public breakup. The paparazzi would have been all over that.”

  “And your partner agreed to the cover-up?”

  “I’d prefer to call it an attempt at privacy. But yes. She hoped we’d get back together. At the time, I thought we might too.”

  “But now you don’t?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re telling me this because it has something to do with Sanchez?”

  Drew nodded. “As I mentioned last night, I had a meeting with Hector and Sofia on Friday to talk about the after-school program. Jane showed up for the meeting. I wasn’t expecting her to come. She got there before me. They were all chatting when I walked in. Hector came over and gave me a hug and a kiss. I didn’t think anything about it, but when the meeting ended and Jane and I were walking away from the school, she grabbed my arm and pulled me toward her and accused me of ending our relationship because of him.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She accused me of being in love with him.”

  “Are you?”

  “I thought I answered that question last night.”

  “What did you say when she accused you?”

  “That she was being ridiculous, of course. But she didn’t let go of my arm.” Drew massaged her bicep now. “She squeezed it so hard my eyes were watering. I told her she was hurting me and then she gripped it harder. She said, ‘Good, because you’re hurting me.’” Drew pushed up her T-shirt sleeve and displayed the purplish-yellow imprints Codella had noticed in her dressing room last night.

  Codella recalled Jane Martin’s gray eyes, her broad shoulders, and her strong upper arms. “You could have filed a domestic violence report.”

  “Just imagine what the press would do with that.”

  Codella leaned closer. She felt like the hospital chaplain who used to sit by her bed and chat with her during her treatments. “Why do you want me to know all this?”

  “I don’t know.” Drew’s eyes filled up. “I don’t want to know why. I just want you to have all the facts so you can figure out if they mean anything.” She wiped her eyes.

  The tears seemed genuine, but could you ever entirely trust the emotions of an actress? “You think she could be involved in this,” Codella stated rather than asked.

  “I don’t want to think so.”

  “But you do.”

  “She looked so angry.”

  “Had she ever looked like that before?”

  Drew lowered her eyes and shrug
ged. “When I asked her to move out, she punched the wall next to my head so hard she broke a finger. She couldn’t work for six weeks. She’s a sculptor.”

  “Are the two of you married?”

  “No, but when we met two years ago, I thought she would be the one. She loved Zoe. Zoe loved her. I thought we’d be a family. But after she moved in, I began to see warning signs.”

  “What signs?”

  “Anger. Jealousy. We’d go out and people would pay more attention to me than to her, and she wasn’t able to deal with that, to trust my feelings. We’d leave and fight for the next few days until I calmed her down. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked her to move out. I didn’t want it to be over—when it was good, it was very good—but I didn’t want to apologize for who I am. I told her we should take things more slowly. I paid for her apartment. I paid for her studio in Red Hook. I went to all her shows. I hoped she’d work out her resentments, but she wasn’t working them out, and two weeks ago I told her I needed to move on and that to do that I couldn’t keep supporting her.”

  “If you’d ended things two weeks ago, then why did she come to the meeting on Friday?”

  Drew shrugged. “She wasn’t giving up, I suppose. In her defense, she did call that night to apologize for what she’d done.”

  Codella wasn’t impressed. “Abusive partners usually feel apologetic, until the next time they’re angry.”

  Drew hugged herself tightly.

  “Have you seen her since?”

  “No.”

  “Your show doesn’t run on Mondays. Where were you that evening?”

  “I attended a benefit at Town Hall.”

  “Someone can verify that for you?”

  “Zoe came with me. My driver picked us up at six o’clock, and we returned at ten. We were with two friends the whole time. I can give you their numbers.”

  “Did you tell your partner where you were going?”

  “No.”

  Codella stared into the green eyes. Don’t you know about actors and their loose boundaries? Christine Donohue had said. They’re all borderline and narcissistic. She leaned forward on the couch. “Some people aren’t opposed to manipulating a police investigation,” she said, “to get revenge on a former lover.” She watched Drew’s face.

  The actress just said, “I’m not one of those people.”

  “No? Well, answer this question: Have you applied to private schools for your daughter next year?”

  Drew frowned. “That’s an odd question to ask me right now.”

  “Just answer it,” Codella snapped. Just prove you’re capable of telling the truth.

  “All right, yes!” Drew snapped back. “I’m thinking about selling out like every other privileged person. I’m not exactly proud of myself. How did you find out?”

  Codella ignored the question. “Write down your ex-partner’s address, and don’t tell anyone else what you’ve told me.”

  Drew got a pen and paper, jotted the information, and held it out without looking up. She was angry, or maybe just embarrassed to have been exposed. Well, that was her problem, Codella told herself. She should never have lied last night.

  Codella yanked the slip of paper out of Drew’s fingers and stood, making it clear she didn’t appreciate the actress’s obfuscation. In the next instant, however, her protective instincts clouded her objectivity and she sat back down. She stared into the green eyes. “If she touches you again, you call me immediately.”

  Chapter 28

  “Mrs. Burke? Imogene Burke?”

  The former PS 777 teacher opened her door three inches. She had straight blue-gray hair that hadn’t been coiffed recently. She was holding a cordless phone in one hand. Her watery eyes gleamed. “Are you here to fix my sink?”

  “No.” Haggerty held up his shield.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m a police detective, Mrs. Burke.”

  She opened the door wider, grabbed his wrist, pulled it toward her, and examined the shield closely. “Is this real?” She banged on it. “It doesn’t look real.”

  He pulled out his NYPD identification card. She studied that carefully, too.

  “We okay now?” he asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time, Mrs. Burke. May I come in? I’m here about Hector Sanchez.”

  “Who?”

  “Sanchez. Hector Sanchez. Your principal.”

  She looked irritated. “He’s not my principal.”

  “Your former principal then. Before you retired.”

  “Who said I retired?” Burke sneered contemptuously, as if he were crazy.

  “You’re Imogene Burke, right?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “The Imogene Burke from PS 777?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can I come in?”

  She stepped back and allowed him to enter a dim, narrow entry hall where boxes and shoes lined half the floor and fading family photos competed for wall space. The air surrounding her smelled like cheap perfume or potpourri masking acrid body odor. The smell got on his nerves and made him feel a generalized disgust. She reminded him of his old aunts, stern and pedantically Catholic.

  Her living room was like a three-dimensional model of lower Manhattan. Everywhere he looked were skyscrapers of old National Geographics, New Yorkers, and Smithsonians with ragged yellow edges. Some of them tilted precariously to one side like construction catastrophes waiting to happen. A narrow pathway snaked through the towers and led to a black-and-white couch where a rancid stench broke through the potpourri. Haggerty knew that smell. Once he’d answered a call at the apartment of a mentally ill woman whose whole apartment—to the horror of her neighbors—had been usurped by mice. The building exterminators had shot poison into the walls and under the floorboards, and the whole apartment had become a killing field of smelly corpses. Burke had a rotting mouse somewhere in this room.

  “Look, Mrs. Burke, I just have a few questions and then I’m out of here. When did you last see Sanchez?”

  “I told you. I don’t know any Sanchez.” She waved the cordless phone in her hand.

  “Don’t play games with me, Mrs. Burke. We’re talking about murder here.”

  “Murder? I didn’t murder anyone!” she said. “What do you mean, murder?”

  “Where were you on Monday afternoon and evening?”

  “I came right home from school. I took the B to Rock Center and the F to Forest Hills. It’s what I always do.”

  “We both know that’s not true, Mrs. Burke! You haven’t been there since September. So where were you?”

  But only vacant, slightly panicked eyes answered his demand.

  “Jesus Christ!” He shook his head, suddenly comprehending the obvious. The only crime he would uncover here was the vandalism time, bad genes, or too many saturated fats had done to the old woman’s brain cells. He would certainly find no answers and make no breakthroughs to advance the Sanchez case, and his frustration got the best of him because he had come here determined to take something useful back, something Claire would want to hear, information that would change the course of the case and melt the frost between then. Dammit! He kicked his heel against the nearest magazine towers. It swayed and then slowly but decisively toppled toward the narrow pathway and crashed into Imogene Burke’s leg, cutting her off on the other side of the collapse.

  “Aaaahh!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Get out of here! Get out now or I’ll call the police!”

  Chapter 29

  It might only be November, but the inside of the car was like a bone-chilling meat locker. Codella dropped the slip of paper from Drew on the passenger seat. It was one more unconnected detail in a still sketchy patchwork of facts and suppositions. She zipped her jacket, started the engine, and turned up the heater. She’d get to Jane Martin later. Right now, she needed to hear Sofia Reyes’s perspective on things. Sofia Reyes’s name was coming up on everyone’s lips. Who was she and
what would she have to say about Sanchez and iAchieve and the teachers of PS 777?

  Codella sped across the park and pulled up to the literacy coordinator’s address on East Ninety-Third Street for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. In the light of day, the brownstone looked well maintained, though its façade paled in contrast to the elegance of those on either side of it. Rental buildings seldom looked as good as owner-occupied townhouses. She climbed the steps to the parlor level and pressed the button for 2B. There was no answer, and she pressed three more times before she called Reyes’s cell phone. After five rings, the woman’s polite, bilingual greeting came on, and Codella left an urgent message. Then she headed back to the West Side, to Helen Chambers’s address. There was always the possibility that Chambers was an angry mother with a crazy, get-even husband or brother or boyfriend capable of snapping someone’s neck. Chambers had to be eliminated as a suspect.

  The woman who answered the door was wearing rubber gloves. She had a dough-white complexion that contrasted sharply with her dark-brown hair and eyes. The hair was fine and straight, and she wore it in a pageboy with limp, slightly uneven bangs that looked self-inflicted. She had the puffy blotched skin of someone who had recently been crying. Codella displayed her shield. “Mrs. Chambers?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m investigating the death of Hector Sanchez. May I come in?”

  “It’s not exactly a good time.”

  “I’ll keep it short.”

  Chambers opened the door reluctantly, and Codella stepped into a cramped vestibule cluttered with shoes, umbrellas, and a wrought iron coat rack. She followed the woman into a small kitchen that had not been renovated in at least twenty years judging from the chipped cabinets; the dull, scuffed linoleum; and the outdated appliances. The first thing that caught her eye was the stiff beige-and-white corpse of a teddy bear hamster lying on its back with curled up feet next to the Mr. Coffee. Beside the corpse sat a cardboard container with air holes. Scratching sounds emanated from within the box. As Codella watched, Helen Chambers spread fresh cedar chips into the bottom of a just-cleaned hamster cage, opened the cardboard box, and lifted a live hamster into the cage.