Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  She drew a line between the names Hector Sanchez and Dana Drew. She turned to Muñoz, and he flashed the photo of Sanchez and Drew on the front steps of Sanchez’s building.

  The image provoked suggestive whispers around the table, and Codella recalled the CSU guys’ comments at the Sanchez crime scene. She was hot in Time’s Up! She’s a lesbian. Yeah, a really hot lesbian. She met the eyes of the gathered officers. “Enjoy your fantasies, gentlemen—and lady—but please keep them to yourselves. Let’s remember that two people are dead. Our newest victim, Sofia Reyes, was a sixty-year-old mother, a career educator, and the killer beat her so brutally that her cheekbones were fractured. He cut her throat so deeply, it’s unlikely she would have survived even with immediate medical attention.”

  She paused, watching the grins melt off the faces out of embarrassment more than sincere compassion. She continued, “If her killer is the same man who killed Sanchez—and the murders are undoubtedly connected—then he acted far more violently in his second crime. Why? Was he desperate? Does he feel violent aggression toward women? Is he sending a message to someone? These are the questions I need you to be thinking about. And let me be very clear about something. Nothing you’ve heard or seen in this room leaves this room. The press and the general public will not hear or see these details. They will not find out how the victims died, and they will not know that Drew had a sexual relationship with Sanchez. The only way they’ll find that out is if you disclose confidential information, and if you do and I find out that you’ve done so, you can kiss your future good-bye.”

  The room grew quiet. “Yesterday I confronted Drew with the photo Detective Haggerty found. She admitted they’d been meeting secretly for months. Sanchez never went to Vondra Williams’s apartment on Monday afternoon when he left the school at three twenty. In fact, he went straight home to meet Dana Drew. She was at his apartment from three thirty to five o’clock. She claims her driver picked her up in front of the building at five and that no one saw her leave.”

  “And we believe her?” asked Portino.

  “She gave a formal statement at seven AM this morning. I’m inclined to think she’s telling the truth,” Codella said, “although we’ll need to speak with her driver for confirmation. Supposedly she attended a performance at Town Hall that night. If that’s true, then she didn’t have time to kill Sanchez and cross the park to take care of Sofia Reyes too. Not to mention the fact that she’s only about five foot two.”

  “She could have an accomplice,” pointed out Haggerty. “She could have paid someone.”

  “That’s true,” conceded Codella. “She could certainly afford to. So she’s still on our list of potential suspects.”

  “Who else is a possible suspect?” Frank Nichols asked.

  Codella turned to the whiteboard and wrote another name. Margery Barton. “The district administrator lied about her whereabouts on Monday afternoon. We know she’s determined for her district to adopt the technology program iAchieve from McFlieger-Walsh. We also know Sanchez opposed that adoption vigorously. He and Sofia Reyes were developing their own technology tools with a little company called Apptitude. And at the district principal’s meeting on Monday, Sanchez voiced his objections to iAchieve. Margery Barton had a clear motive for wanting Sanchez and Reyes out of the picture.”

  Next, she wrote the words McFlieger-Walsh. “The publisher of iAchieve is part of Hemisphere Media Holdings. They’ve been trying to spin off McFlieger-Walsh for a year now, but there are no takers. The company has a tarnished reputation to repair—they engaged in unethical sales tactics—and there are millions of dollars on the line for them.”

  Then she jotted the name Chip Dressler below McFlieger-Walsh. “Dressler is the senior vice president of sales for McFlieger-Walsh, and he is personally overseeing the New York iAchieve campaign. He gave a presentation on Monday morning to the principals in Margery Barton’s district. That’s where Sanchez publicly questioned the integrity of the program. I think we have to consider the possibility that Dressler could be involved.”

  “Working alone, with Barton, or with McFlieger-Walsh.” Haggerty completed her thought.

  “Right.” Beneath Barton’s name Codella wrote the name Jane Martin. “Martin claims she drove to her studio in Red Hook on Monday night, but she couldn’t produce any names to verify that alibi. When I saw Drew on Tuesday night at the theater, she had a deep bruise on her bicep. When I spoke to her yesterday, she admitted that Martin put it there. Martin, it seems, is the classic jealous partner. She accused Drew of breaking off their relationship because she was in love with Sanchez. She got a little angry, held onto her arm a little too tightly.”

  Haggerty raised his hand and spoke. “Martin’s jealousy might be a motive for killing Sanchez, but why would she go all the way across town and kill Reyes, too?”

  Codella nodded. “For that matter, why would any of these suspects bother to take out Reyes? Once Sanchez is out of the picture, she ceases to have a role at the school anyway. She was just a paid consultant.”

  Now Muñoz spoke up. “Maybe the same teachers who hated Sanchez hated her for helping him.”

  Codella turned to the whiteboard and wrote PS 777 teachers. “Detective Muñoz brings up a good point. The other potential suspects in this are the 777 teachers who hated Sanchez. And there were plenty of them. We keep hearing that teachers don’t kill, but is that true?”

  She capped the dry-erase marker and set it on the ledge below the whiteboard. “All we know is that the fibers in the two victims’ mouths matched, and it’s next to impossible for their biblical death poses to be coincidental. We need to find the link between them, a link a grand jury will buy. We’re going to turn over every stone we can today. We’re going to find the link.”

  She paused for her words to sink in. Then she looked at Fisk. “I need their phone records meticulously analyzed. When did they last speak or text? Were they involved in something that got them into danger?”

  She turned to Muñoz. “Go see the security staff at Two Penn Plaza where McFlieger-Walsh is headquartered. Be discreet. And go to Dana Drew’s garage, the Rapid Park on Ninety-Seventh Street. If Martin went to Red Hook on Monday night, she used Drew’s car. Find out if that car left the garage.”

  “Should I talk to her driver too?”

  “Yes. Make sure Drew’s story checks out.”

  She looked at Ragavan and Nichols. “Go back to the school. Interview teachers, parents, staff. Find out everything you can about Sofia Reyes. We don’t know enough about that woman. I want a profile.”

  Finally she turned to Haggerty, who had cut through Dana Drew’s lies with one quick sweep of Sanchez’s laptop. “Get back on his computer,” she said. “Tell me everything that’s happened on that machine in the last few weeks. If something else is there, find it.”

  She looked at her watch. “I’ll be back from One Police Plaza in two hours.”

  Chapter 41

  Marva Thomas retreated to her office as soon as the morning surge of students into the building had subsided. She stared at the large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee Milosz had left on her desk along with the New York Post. When she read the headline, she felt an inappropriate reaction—relief. Sofia Reyes had not callously ignored her calls for help on Tuesday. Dead bodies didn’t return calls for help.

  She sat and sipped the coffee. Milosz had added half-and-half instead of milk, and although she never allowed herself such an indulgence, she realized how much she enjoyed it. She had just begun to read the front-page story when Delia knocked on her door.

  “It’s Aaliyah Ajam, Miss Thomas. She just tripped over something in that pile,” she pointed toward the front hall, “and her knee landed on a picture frame. She got a big cut. I took her to the nurse. We gotta move that stuff. It’s not safe there. Someone’s gonna call the fire department pretty soon.”

  Marva nodded. “I’ll be right there.” Then she watched the overweight safety officer lumber out. Delia was trying to be helpfu
l, she knew, and she supposed she should be grateful, but all she felt was annoyance. Even Delia was coaching her. Even Delia doubted her judgment.

  The entire left wall of the school entrance hall was covered by children’s crayon drawings, paintings, cards, and handwritten letters to Sanchez. Piled on the buffed linoleum floor were tributes large and small: stuffed animals, dolls, flowers, books, toys, Yankees caps and jerseys, baseballs, beads, crosses, Bibles, and other mementos. Marva’s eyes fell on a letter from a first-grade student, and she quickly turned away. She didn’t want to read heartfelt messages about a man she had loathed. He had never included her in any of his grand schemes. He had wanted all possible glory to accrue to him. He was like an angry overseer, and she was just one more slave in his metaphorical cotton field.

  But now she was free of him, they all were, and as unchristian as the thought might be, she wasn’t sad that he was dead. And removing that oversized memorial mound from the hallways would give her nothing but pleasure. “Call Mr. Jancek and Mr. Rerecic,” she instructed Janisa. “Have them meet me at the front doors.”

  When they arrived, she pointed to the piled-high mementoes. “This is a safety hazard. We need to move these things to a less trafficked area and clean up the broken glass.”

  “Where would you like us to take them?” asked Mr. Jancek.

  Anywhere I don’t have to see them, she thought. “A corner in the library,” she suggested. “Set it up in there.”

  He nodded and told Mr. Rerecic to bring a cart. Then he leaned toward Marva. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  She stared at his blue eyes and couldn’t deny the obvious any longer. Milosz cared for her in that way. She had recognized the fact for months, she supposed, and just hadn’t acknowledged it. What did it say about her that a custodian felt entitled to be interested in her? What did it say about her that she hadn’t—as Hector had instructed—nipped his smiles, pats, and Dunkin’ Donuts overtures in the bud as soon as they’d begun?

  He continued to smile, and if she was honest, she enjoyed his attention. No, he wasn’t conventionally attractive, but he wasn’t unattractive either. He was tall and strong, and he had a lively glint in his eyes. Most women’s husbands weren’t any more attractive than he was. What made any man and woman attractive to each other, she supposed, was the invisible alchemy of their private interactions.

  She risked a return smile, and she imagined what might happen—what she might want to happen—if they were alone. She imagined him reaching up to stroke her hair and gently touch the side of her face with his calloused fingers in a way no one ever touched her. She imagined him leaning close enough that she could inhale his cologne as he pressed her head against his chest. The fantasy set off an unexpected sensation in the pit of her stomach that traveled lower and caused a pleasant drawing sensation between her legs. She swallowed and glanced over at Delia twenty feet away, but Delia was not even looking at her.

  Marva knew she should walk away this instant, but she felt caught in the gravitational pull of the imagined human contact. She had not been made love to by a man in many years, and she had not even fantasized about a real man in almost as many. Her intermittent fantasies, alone in her bed when her mother was sleeping in the bedroom across the hall, involved handsome male actors making love to equally beautiful actresses. These were the fantasies that accompanied her occasional solo acts of sexual gratification, and these stolen interludes had represented the extent of her sex life for so long that the thought of a true, intimate encounter was as excruciating as it was compelling.

  Milosz, she realized, might actually want her in just the ways she needed to be wanted. She forced herself to turn away from him. She walked self-consciously across the hall to the office—aware that he was watching her—and paused in front of Hector’s empty office. As she stared at his vacant desk, an unwanted insight took her by surprise. She had hated Hector expressly because so many parents and children had loved him. She, too, had wanted someone to love her. And now she was ready to accept a custodian’s love, if he decided to offer more than coffee.

  Chapter 42

  When Muñoz left the McFlieger-Walsh headquarters at Two Penn Plaza, he took the subway back uptown and walked to Dana Drew’s parking garage. The weekday morning chaos of a Manhattan Rapid Park garage had ended, which meant that all the Upper West Siders who reverse commuted to Westchester or New Jersey or Connecticut had picked up their cars and made for the West Side Highway two hours ago. Only one black Lexus idled in front of the exit, and the driver was pointing to his door and berating a Hispanic attendant.

  Muñoz watched the familiar little garage drama play out. The driver insisted the scratch hadn’t been there yesterday. The garage attendant acted as if he had no idea what had happened. “Get me the manager,” the driver finally insisted.

  The attendant stepped past Muñoz and went into a little room the size of a ticket booth, and two minutes later, an older, smiling Hispanic man came over. He had shoe-polish-black hair and a meticulously groomed moustache. He stared up at the taller driver and waited.

  The driver pointed. The manager looked. The driver said, “Your guys did this.”

  The manager bent down to touch the scratch. “We can touch that up for you.”

  “I don’t want it touched up. I want it looking like it did before.”

  “We can do that.”

  “What? With spray paint?”

  It went on for several minutes before the driver got in his car and drove away without filling out any forms, knowing that he was just going to have to live with the inevitable nicks and scratches that came with parking a car in New York City.

  The manager turned to Muñoz and shrugged. Muñoz followed him back to his little office and showed his shield. “You’ve got a car in here that belongs to Dana Drew, the actress.”

  “A Volvo.” He spoke English with a thick Spanish accent.

  Muñoz switched to Spanish. “¿Cuánto tiempo hace desde que salió del garaje?”

  The manager thought about it. “Dos semanas. Quizás tres.”

  “¿Estás cierto?” Muñoz asked, and the manager proceeded to explain how cars that didn’t leave the garage every day went into a long-term section on the bottom level and that in order to get a car out of long-term, the tenant had to call and ask for the car at least twelve hours in advance. “Tenemos un log.” He pointed to a tattered logbook lying on the desk behind him. “La señorita Drew no ha pedido su carro. Estoy muy cierto.”

  “¿Y la señorita Martin?” he asked.

  “Ni ella tampoco,” he said.

  Muñoz left and texted Codella with the news. The car hadn’t left the garage. If Martin had gone to Red Hook on Monday night, she hadn’t used the Volvo. Now he just had to find Dana Drew’s driver and confirm her Monday night alibi.

  Chapter 43

  Codella peeked into the pressroom packed with noisy reporters. A few minutes later, Hanson spelled out the plan. There would be no denials, no defensiveness—just the facts and a reasoned explanation of why the camera had failed at such an inauspicious time.

  “The last thing we need is someone writing an exposé on the pros and cons of NYPD surveillance technology,” said the commissioner.

  “Right,” said Hanson, “which is why we’ll dispense with the facts and move the focus back to the investigation.” He looked at McGowan and Codella. “We’ve got edited clips of the three persons of interest. Which one of you wants to walk them through?”

  Codella looked at McGowan.

  McGowan said, “This is Codella’s case. She’ll do it.”

  Hanson nodded. “Make it quick. Walk them through the key moments. Ask the public for help.”

  She nodded. And take the heat, she thought, if there’s heat to be taken.

  Hanson checked his watch and drank from his Poland Springs bottle. At 10:00 AM sharp, he approached the podium, and the clicking of cameras commenced. He raised his hands for silence. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We’re going to get started right now. I have a brief statement to make. Then we’d like to show you some surveillance footage taken near the scene of Hector Sanchez’s murder. Please save your questions until the very end of this press conference.”

  He scanned the audience nodding here and there to familiar reporters. “On Monday, between the hours of five and seven PM, Hector Sanchez, the principal of PS 777 in Upper Manhattan, was murdered in his West 112th Street apartment. On that same evening, we now know, Sofia Reyes, a literacy consultant at PS 777, was also murdered in her Upper East Side apartment. Both murders remain unsolved.”

  Hanson took a quick sip of water before he continued. “A street surveillance camera located on the corner of Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 112th Street has yielded images of three persons of interest near Hector Sanchez’s apartment between the hours of five and nine PM on Monday. We would like to share these images with you and the public in an effort to identify these individuals. However, we must also acknowledge that the resolution—the clarity—of these images is marred by the fact that the camera lens was out of focus at the time the images were recorded.”

  Hands shot up, but Hanson shook his head. “First let me say a word about the camera. It is an older fixed-image model installed in the mid-1990s. We don’t know why it failed, but there are several possible explanations. Vandalism is one of them. In the course of a year, the NYPD surveillance cameras are damaged by vandalism an average of three hundred times. Inclement weather may also have been a factor. In the past two months, the city has suffered the effects of three hurricanes that caused severe wind and flooding in the city. In Manhattan alone, there are more than five thousand public security cameras exposed to the elements twenty-four-seven, so things like this are going to happen. Even the most durable cameras do break down. The NYPD has a schedule of regular maintenance for these cameras, and this particular camera was only weeks away from regular maintenance. The timing of the failure is unfortunate, particularly to the families of the victims who deserve a speedy road to justice for their lost loved ones. It is also frustrating to the detectives who are working day and night to solve these homicides as quickly as possible. A full investigation into the causes of the failure will be conducted, a thorough review of camera maintenance procedures will take place, and the results will be shared with the media and the public.” Hanson paused again. “But right now we need to focus the public’s attention on the progress we have made and the help we need to find whoever is responsible for these crimes. As I mentioned earlier, we want to show you the surveillance footage. This footage will be available on our website as well. I’m going to turn the microphone over to Detective Claire Codella from Manhattan North Homicide, who is going to share these images with you and explain what they show.”