Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  “Where did you find this?”

  “In his trashcan.”

  “Print me out a copy.”

  She continued to stare at the screen and felt her stomach tighten. She heard Christine Donohue’s gravelly voice in her head for the second time today. Don’t you know about actors and their loose boundaries? They’re all borderline and narcissistic. They sleep with anyone. The words were a harsh reminder that rumors, like stereotypes, often had a perverse way of encapsulating granules of truth. She heard Dana Drew’s voice insisting, If I window-shop at all, it isn’t at the men’s store, Detective. Could there now be any question about Drew’s veracity—or lack of it?

  Haggerty looked at her. “I guess she might not be a full-fledged lesbian after all. I’m thinking we put her in the bisexual category. How about you?” He smiled.

  Codella didn’t respond. What could she say? That Drew was an actor and actors were supposed to make you believe things that weren’t true? The simple, undeniable fact was that she had seen all the obvious signs of Drew’s duplicity, and she had allowed herself to misinterpret them. She had allowed herself to be duped by a soft tone, green eyes, tears, and a bruise on a bicep.

  She stared at Haggerty for several seconds. Finally, she whispered, “Thanks.”

  He smiled and handed her the printout.

  “I’ll be back,” she said.

  Then she turned, raced down the steps, took a side exit to the parking area behind the precinct house, and got in her car.

  When she entered the Riverside Drive address, she flashed her shield, growled at the doorman, “Don’t even think about announcing me!” and rode the elevator like a caged panther ready to pounce on its prey. When Drew opened the door, she held up the photograph. “You lied to me.”

  Drew studied the image. “Who took that?”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “He’d had it several days. I take it he didn’t tell you about it.”

  She didn’t answer the question. “Whoever took this could be his killer,” she said.

  “Or maybe you’re his killer.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Detective.”

  “You were with him Monday afternoon, weren’t you?” Codella accused. “You’re the reason he left the school at three thirty. He didn’t visit any student. He came home to pay you a visit, didn’t he?”

  Drew glanced over her shoulder. “I’d rather not discuss this now. My housekeeper is here.”

  “Didn’t he?” Codella repeated belligerently.

  “Yes,” Drew acquiesced. “Yes, all right. But please, lower your voice.”

  Codella moved a few inches closer. “I’m not the kind of person who gets angry easily. I have a slow fuse, but when it burns down, you don’t want to be around me. And right now, I’m reaching the end of my fuse. You played me this afternoon, and I don’t like to be played. I’m not happy about it, Miss Drew, and I’m thinking it might be time for you to see the inside of an interview room.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  Now Codella gave her own self-satisfied smile. “Yes, and it’s no empty threat, I assure you. You want to end up on Page Six tomorrow?”

  Those words seemed to cut deep. “I’d rather not,” she answered quietly.

  “Then start talking, and don’t leave anything out. When did you get to his apartment?”

  “We’d planned to meet at three thirty. I got there first. I let myself in.”

  “So you had a key to the admiral’s club. You were a frequent flyer.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “You got right into his bed?”

  Drew’s silence was answer enough.

  “When did he join you?”

  “Three forty or so. He was held up by the incident with that boy.”

  “That boy? I thought you cared about those kids. That boy has a name. John Chambers.” Codella leaned on the doorframe and looked past Drew’s shoulder, remembering the plush couch and the river view she had enjoyed earlier in the day. “Then what happened? He joined you in the bedroom? He took off the suit and hung the jacket on a hanger? He laid the pants over the chair? Is that what he did?”

  She nodded.

  “And after you did whatever you call what you were doing, you left?”

  She nodded again.

  “When?”

  “Just before five.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I phoned my driver. He was waiting a block away. He swung around for me at the prearranged time.”

  “Did Sanchez get dressed before you left?”

  “He put on some jeans. He walked me to the door.” Her eyes now filled with tears.

  Codella shook her head dismissively. “You kept those tears out of your eyes for a whole half hour in your dressing room last night while you pretended to flirt with me, so don’t play your pity game now. If he’d meant something to you, really meant something, you would have come clean on your own, you would have wanted to find his killer no matter what the personal cost, and the fact that you didn’t only begs the question, what else are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anything else.” Drew pushed strands of blond hair behind her ear. “And I did care about him. I could hardly concentrate during the performance last night. I know what it looks like to you. I know, but I only did what millions of other people do every day. I can’t help it if people hold me to some unrealistic higher standard just because I’m a Broadway actress.”

  “Some people hold you to a lower one just because you’re a Broadway actress.” She thought of Donohue.

  “Well, then at least I didn’t disappoint them. Look, I’m human. No, I wasn’t in love with Hector, but I cared about him. He was gentle and funny, and I was lonely. Of course I lied. You would have, too, if you were in my shoes. You’ve never been drawn and quartered by the media.”

  “Maybe not,” Codella acknowledged, “but we all get drawn and quartered by someone.” She thought of McGowan and what he was likely to say to her at tomorrow’s briefing.

  “If people knew about Hector and me, they’d assume I only helped the school for one reason, and that isn’t true.”

  “But protecting your reputation meant more to you than finding his killer.”

  “That’s not true either. I just didn’t want my motives to be misinterpreted. I care more for those kids than most of the people charged with educating them. Let’s be honest, public education in this city is a disaster. No one in the Department of Education goes home and frets about the children of PS 777. You think those children ever cross Bernie Lipsie’s mind?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Lipsie’s never even seen those kids. You think Margery Barton loses sleep over them? To her they’re just raw scores in a stanine. And the teachers? They’re like equity actors who’ve been playing the same swing roles for fifteen years. They’re practically robots. They had a good thing going. They didn’t have to think at all. But then this powerhouse comes in and says, ‘Hey, we’re supposed to be educating these kids. We’re supposed to be preparing them for more than a life on food stamps. We’re not just babysitters. We’ve got standards to uphold.’ They hated him for that. They would have done almost anything to get rid of him. They couldn’t stand the fact that he was actually making a difference. Remember, to some of these kids, PS 777 is their only lifeline. Hector wanted to save those kids. Haven’t you ever wanted to save someone?”

  Codella forced herself to ignore that question. She wasn’t going to go where that question led. “You say you left around five. Think carefully. Who did you see as you left the building?”

  “No one,” Drew said.

  “What about outside? Was anyone standing on the street? Did you see anyone parked in a car?”

  The actress shook her head. “I ducked into my car as fast as I could. I didn’t want to be seen.”

  “I’m going to need a formal statement from you.”

  “But—”

 
; Codella held up her hand to signal the uselessness of Drew’s protests. “If you get to the 171st tomorrow morning at seven AM, you might be able to avoid too many eyes. Text me. I’ll meet you there.” Then she turned to go. As she got off the elevator, she saw the missed calls from Muñoz, Haggerty, and Manhattan North.

  Chapter 37

  Chip positioned his laminated McFlieger-Walsh nametag on the front of his left lapel and slipped the magnet behind the lapel to hold the nametag in place. He hadn’t prepped for this meeting—Margery Barton had usurped his prep time in other ways—but he’d given this same presentation to fifteen other schools in Margery’s district, so how much prep time did he really need? “Just smile a lot,” Margery had told him in September when he’d started to make the rounds. “They’ll be staring at your white teeth. They’ll be sizing you up in your Euro cut suit.” Her eyes had dropped to his belt buckle and below, and he knew exactly what she had meant. Was Margery still in his hotel room, he wondered now, or had she returned to her office to avoid another suspicious absence?

  He smiled broadly at a tall, dark-haired woman who was tentatively peeking into the room. “Are you looking for the iAchieve demonstration?” he asked. She nodded, and he said, “Come on in. I’m Chip Dressler. And you are . . . ?”

  “Anna Masoutis.” The woman smiled.

  “Anna. Great. Thanks for coming. You’ll need this.” He handed her a charged iPad and an agenda. Anna. Anna. He repeated her name in his head several times as she chose a seat in the third row of tables. No one ever chose the first row. Anna. A successful sales representative did not forget names. Anna the Greek Princess, he thought, cementing the name in his long-term memory. No. Anna of the Aegean. He would make Anna feel like his best friend by the end of the hour. He would make them all feel like his best friends.

  He turned his grin on a dour teacher with short, gray-brown hair. Teachers, he had observed throughout his career, were seldom glamorous or fashionable like Anna of the Aegean. Many of them inhabited a world of asexuality, and this one was an extreme case in point. Her glasses were utilitarian. Her sweater and pants were drab. She bordered on obese. He dialed back his charisma as he held out his hand. “I’m Chip Dressler from McFlieger-Walsh.”

  “Roz Porter,” she announced.

  “Roz, thanks so much for coming. What grade do you teach?” Roz. Roz. Roz not Rosalind.

  “Second.”

  “Well, I’m so glad you came, Roz. Here’s your iPad. You’ll need this. And our agenda. We’ll get started in just a couple of moments.” He watched her wedge her wide hips under a table.

  When all eleven participants were seated, Dressler moved to the front of the small room. “I want to thank you all for taking this time out of your afternoons to learn about iAchieve. And before we get started, I also want to take a moment to tell you how personally sorry I am, as I know all of you are, for the terrible tragedy here at PS 777.” But looking into their eyes, he could see that they felt no more grief or loss than he did. This was not a gathering of Sanchez sympathizers. He saw this as Roz not Rosalind rolled her eyes at Jenny Who Needs Jenny Craig, and six-foot Kristin Magic DeMarco cleared her throat for all to hear. He quickly changed the subject. “Let’s get started. Oh, but first, I brought snacks.” He watched the faces light up as he placed milk and dark chocolate kisses at each table.

  Chapter 38

  Sofia Reyes’s small, calloused feet were bare, and her ankles were bound. Someone had expended considerable effort to prop her into a kneeling position between an overstuffed chair and a matching ottoman. The palms of her hands were taped together, and her wrists were bound in front of her chest. Her wide-open eyes stared straight ahead in eternal surprise or panic, but they saw nothing, the clouded corneas dried out and damaged by lack of circulation. The body’s decomposition was advanced, speeded no doubt by the heat from hissing prewar radiators. Her face had been pummeled. The left side of her skull was contused, and blood had matted her dark-brown hair, stained her pajamas, and seeped copiously into the carpet beneath her. She looked like a gruesome plaster of Paris supplicant kneeling in prayer.

  Codella stared for several seconds. She noted the white nylon twine around Reyes’s wrists and ankles and the slash at her neck. “This is part two of an installation,” she announced.

  “What?” asked the cop at the door.

  “Never mind,” she said, realizing that he wouldn’t know what she was talking about, and she didn’t want him to. Sanchez was Jesus on the cross and Sofia Reyes was Mary Magdalene, the disciple who had stayed with him till the end.

  She took out her iPhone and snapped a photograph. She moved carefully around the body and snapped several more. She took a photo of the small half-filled brandy glass and the bottle of Courvoisier resting on an end table next to the chair where Reyes must have sat and sipped brandy before her death. She photographed the brass stand-up lamp that had crashed to the floor a foot in front of Reyes. Her eyes moved to a string of wooden rosary beads dangling conspicuously from the shut window blinds across from the body. Someone had jammed them through two slats with the little wooden cross hanging at the bottom. Where had the beads been before the killer arrived? On the end table? In Sofia’s lap? In her hands? Had she been in the middle of a prayer cycle when her killer had knocked on the door? Codella scanned the walls and floors, but there were no other obvious disturbances in the pleasant living room.

  “Who found the body?”

  “The daughter,” said one of the uniforms near the door.

  “What do you know about her?”

  “She’s an OB-GYN at NYU Medical Center. She’d been calling her mother since yesterday but couldn’t get her so she came over as soon as she finished a delivery.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Sergeant Peattie took her downstairs to the super’s apartment.”

  “Did she touch anything?”

  He shrugged. “She was kneeling by the body when we got here.”

  “Where’s Evidence Collection? They should be here by now.”

  “Almost here,” said the officer.

  “And the ME?”

  “On his way.”

  “Who is it? It has to be Gambarin. I don’t want anyone else. Let them know. Right now.” She turned to the other officer in the room. “No one else enters this apartment until Crime Scene arrives. I want Banks. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, but just then a burly, gray-haired detective from the 145th came through the door and said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Codella.” She held out her hand. “Manhattan North. Homicide.”

  “Colleary. What are you doing here?” He didn’t hide his anger.

  Codella said, “Can we talk in the hallway, Detective Colleary?”

  She moved through the door and stationed herself as far from the first responders as she could. Colleary reluctantly followed. “I’m listening.”

  “This murder is related to the death of Hector Sanchez, the PS 777 principal who died on Monday night.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “The victim was his literacy consultant. They worked together, and their murders have certain similarities, Detective. I’m sure you didn’t miss the interesting arrangement in there.” She eyed the door.

  “No,” he acknowledged.

  “I’ll be coordinating both investigations. When your officers do the vertical, I’d like to send over a detective from the 171st, Detective Muñoz, to give them some background. Are you good with that?”

  Codella knew how territorial precinct detectives could be—she’d been one of them, after all—but Colleary didn’t protest. “He observes chain of command in my precinct. He gives background, that’s all.”

  “Of course.”

  The detectives returned to the crime scene and Colleary huddled with his precinct cops. Codella stood and stared at the body. She had rung the woman’s brownstone buzzer on two different occasions since yesterday, she thought, and all that ti
me, Reyes had been lying here. Based on outward appearances, she had probably been killed the same night as Sanchez and perhaps by the same person. And if so, then Codella didn’t need forensics to know that Sanchez had been killed first. Banks had found no trace blood at his apartment, and there was no way Reyes’s murderer had walked out of this place without taking some blood along for the ride. She got the attention of the cop at the door. “Any sign of break-in?”

  He shook his head. “The daughter had to use her key when she got here.”

  Codella turned back to the body. So either Reyes had known her killer like Sanchez, she thought, or the killer had used a convincing pretext to make his victim open the door.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the brownstone staircase, and Banks’s crime scene team appeared. “Long time no see,” Banks said cheerfully.

  She smiled ruefully. “Get ready, boys. This is one colorful show.”

  By the time Gambarin signed in two hours later, Reyes’s body had been photographed from more angles than a supermodel during fashion week. Banks’s team had collected prints that probably weren’t the killer’s, bagged a few fibers clinging to Reyes’s pajamas, and illuminated a trail of footprints leading from the living room carpet to the parquet vestibule, into the lobby, and all the way down the stairs to the brownstone’s entrance. They were still engaged in their search, covered head to toe like CDC scientists studying deadly bacterial strains. Gambarin removed a Tyvek jumpsuit from his case. “What do we know?”

  “She was a consultant at Sanchez’s school. He’d hired her to help him turn the staff around.”

  Gambarin squinted, stretched his neck, and peered at the corpse as he pulled on his suit and booties. Then he stepped into the room and bent beside the corpse. “She has a gaping wound to the carotid. A head contusion as well.” He gazed upward, and his eyes panned left to right across the spotless ceiling before they landed on the thick puddle of blood around Reyes’s knees. The blood had dried into a dark crust like thickened lava after a volcano.