Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  Codella walked to the podium and waited for the first clip to play on the flat-screens on either side of the room. “We know from the autopsy results that Hector Sanchez was murdered between the hours of five and seven PM At 5:27 PM, the individual you see here in a red baseball cap turned onto his block. We believe him to be a male Caucasian, approximately five foot eleven. His image was captured again just after six PM when he left the victim’s street.”

  She motioned for the next clip. As it played, she said, “This individual turned onto Sanchez’s block at 5:54 PM He appears to be wearing a dark overcoat. We believe him to be a dark-skinned Hispanic or African American man, and it may be that his presence is coincidental, but we would like to identify and speak with him.”

  As the third clip began, she said, “The camera also recorded a potential witness inside the Wash and Wear Laundromat at the corner of Frederick Douglass and 112th Street. This individual entered the laundromat before three thirty and remained there until almost eight PM We don’t have enough visual information to determine the ethnicity, age, or gender of this potential witness, but we are asking this person or anyone who was in the Wash and Wear Laundromat on Monday afternoon and may have seen this person to come forward.”

  The clip ended, and Hanson joined her at the podium. “Let me add to what Detective Codella has said. We urge the public to come forward with any information about these persons of interest. We also ask that anyone possessing still or video images of this area taken Monday evening share those images with us. I’ll take your questions now.”

  “What about Reyes’s apartment? Is there footage there, too?”

  “The camera nearest her building has not turned up potential suspects.”

  “Could the murderer be responsible for the damage to the camera?”

  “There is no evidence to suggest that.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward with these images sooner?”

  “We’ve only just completed our analysis.” Hanson pointed to another hand.

  “Are you saying this is the only evidence you have at the moment?”

  Hanson deferred to Codella. “No,” she said, “that’s not at all what we’re saying.”

  “Then what other evidence do you have?”

  “We’re not going to share details of the ongoing investigation.”

  “You said that at the last press conference. Either you have something or you don’t.”

  Codella looked at her watch. What did she really have? she thought as the questions continued to land at her feet and test her mind’s ability to pass and dribble faster than it had for a year, and she was relieved when she was finally back in her car and speeding up the FDR Drive. Months had passed since she had felt every synapse fire in concert with one purpose only: to collect the fragments of truth and connect them before a trail grew cold and a killer escaped detection permanently.

  During her treatment, she had tried to stay sharp by focusing on little mysteries to solve in the hospital. Was her roommate an attorney or a librarian? What was her diagnosis? Could answers be ascertained through deduction using clues the roommate gave during phone calls, in the television programming she preferred, by the visitors she entertained, through hints her doctors dropped during bedside visits? Data were plentiful: test results reported by overly loud interns, a new drug introduced by the night nurse, temperature readings, questions about pain level, sleeping patterns, swelling and inflammation. There was no privacy in a hospital room. You could gather abundant facts and details about your neighbor, but the copious information led to no satisfying conclusions. All you ever discovered was that this roommate had just been diagnosed, that one was nearing the end of treatment, and that the next one was going to need a stem cell transplant. The knowledge only added to her own hopelessness, and in the end, her brain couldn’t even focus on the details for long anyway with so many toxic chemicals coursing through her system. Now her brain felt sharp, but was it sharp enough?

  Chapter 44

  Haggerty dialed her cell from memory.

  “Codella.” Her voice sounded brittle and hard through the wireless connection.

  He wanted to say her name. Claire. He wanted to say, Don’t worry. You’ll solve this. But she wouldn’t want his reassurance, as much as she might need it. Instead, he said, “Guess who the savior was Skyping with at five twenty-three on Monday evening?”

  Codella’s voice snapped to attention. “He was on Skype?”

  “Yeah. With none other than Reyes.”

  “Jesus! How the hell did you figure that out?”

  “It wasn’t hard. The Skype icon’s on his desktop so I clicked. His computer remembers his passwords. He wasn’t a very careful guy. I checked his contacts and his call log.”

  He waited. He could hear her brain chew the data. “His neighbor was in his apartment a little after five that day,” she said. “His computer was still in its case near the door at that point, and he was dressed in his jeans and a T-shirt. It was right after Drew left his apartment, because he’d climbed into the jeans to walk her to the door. He must have grabbed the computer out of the bag the minute the neighbor left and put it on the ottoman where it was on Tuesday morning. That means he must have been wearing his T-shirt and jeans when he Skyped—I can’t see him tearing back down to boxers to video chat with a sixty-year-old literacy consultant—which suggests that he was dressed when his murderer arrived.”

  “So his murderer probably undressed him,” agreed Haggerty. “The way I see it, his killer must have knocked on the door while he and Reyes were Skyping. In which case, Sofia Reyes might have seen or heard his murderer.”

  “And that’s our link,” she said, and all hardness suddenly drained from her voice. She was with him in the moment, like old times, like nothing bad had ever happened between them.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “How long was that call?”

  “Twelve minutes.”

  “So he was still alive at five thirty-five. And assuming the killer knocked on his door while he was Skyping, Sanchez might have told Reyes to hang on. He might have gone to the door and let his killer in without the killer knowing he was being watched by another set of eyes. The killer must have waited for him to end that call. And that means Sanchez wasn’t reading the parent blog that we saw open on his laptop Monday morning. The killer opened that blog site.”

  “There’s something else,” said Haggerty. “That photo of Sanchez and Drew. I know how it got on his computer. It was e-mailed to him last week.”

  “By whom?”

  “That I can’t say. Whoever sent it used an account with bogus contact info.”

  “Was there a message?”

  “Yes, and it’s a little enigmatic.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “It’s four lines. Four questions. Like a riddle.” He read the message slowly.

  “Savior or secret sinner? Proud principal or proud playmate? Exemplary or unacceptable? iAchieve or Apptitude?” He paused. “What do you make of it?”

  She was silent for a moment. “It’s a threat.”

  “A threat?”

  “The words Savior or sinner are posing a challenge,” she explained. “They’re asking him does he want to stay the ‘Savior of PS 777’ in people’s eyes, or does he want his sin—his affair with Drew—to be exposed? Proud Principal or proud playmate is a reference to his Proud Families at PS 777 campaign. Right now he gets to be the proud principal, but if the photo is leaked, his whole campaign looks like a joke. He looks like a sleazebag.”

  “What about Exemplary or unacceptable?”

  “That’s a reference to the scoring scale he’s been using to rate his teachers. Exemplary is the top rating on the scale. Apparently, no teachers got that grade, no matter how hard they worked. Most teachers got his lowest ranking—unacceptable. I think whoever wrote this was saying, Change your grades or we’ll change your image.”

  Haggerty stared at the message in his hand. “So the last l
ine is telling him to get behind iAchieve?”

  “Exactly. And what’s curious to me is that he got this warning a week ago, but he didn’t change his behavior at all. He went to that principal’s meeting and publically challenged Dressler about iAchieve. He fired Bosco, berated Thomas, and left school early to be the ‘secret sinner.’ He was either stupid or supremely confident that he could deny the truth behind the photo.”

  “So what now?” asked Haggerty.

  “We keep looking beneath the lies. I need to pay another visit to Barton.”

  He opened his mouth to say, “I’ll come with you,” but she had already clicked off, and he was right where he’d been before, on the sideline, trying to get back in her game.

  Chapter 45

  Codella got to the District 124 office just after noon. “Detective, please have a seat.” Barton greeted her hospitably enough, but her slightly brittle tone and tight smile suggested she was anything but glad to see her. “I am so saddened by Sofia’s death. I remember her from our teaching days. She was always a powerhouse. A lovely person. A dedicated educator. I hope you find whoever’s responsible for this and lock them up for life.”

  “We’ll find whoever it is.” Codella took the proffered seat. “I have a few more questions for you.”

  “Of course.” Barton sat behind her desk.

  “Why did you hire Hector Sanchez? Why him and not someone more tried and true?”

  “The honest answer?”

  “What other kind would I want?”

  “I couldn’t get anyone else to step in,” Barton acknowledged matter-of-factly.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you have to understand, a principal’s reputation is based on his or her students’ test scores. The scores at PS 777 have been low for some time. Any established principal taking that job is gambling with his career. The only principal who’d jump at that position would be a brand new candidate with no record to ruin.”

  “Based on my conversations, some teachers loved Sanchez but many more disliked him intensely. How did parents feel about him?”

  “They adored him.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t you love someone who puts your family photos on a bus stop and gives you donuts and free English lessons every week? He should have been a politician, not a school bureaucrat.”

  “How did he feel about iAchieve?”

  Barton frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Did he like the program?”

  “Teachers like programs, Detective. Principals just care about whether they’re effective or not.”

  “Did Sanchez think iAchieve would be an effective program?”

  “No, but his belief was based on prejudice rather than careful analysis.”

  “How so?”

  “He didn’t really study the data. He jumped to a conclusion. As I said yesterday, he was a new principal. He wanted to run his own show. For him, the world began and ended with PS 777, and he didn’t want anything imposed on his little world—even something with the potential to be game changing. Hector didn’t have an open mind. That was his weakness as a school leader. I had to fight him on that. I have to think about more than just PS 777.”

  “What exactly did he say about iAchieve at the principals’ meeting on Monday?”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but he posed some questions about the validity of the research behind it—the length of the studies and whether they were conducted by an independent research firm.”

  “And were they?”

  Codella detected no defensiveness in Barton’s response. “Of course they were. I wasn’t about to accept McFlieger-Walsh’s own data. I insisted on a pilot in my own schools before I’d even consider the program for New York City schoolchildren.” Barton folded her exquisitely manicured hands on top of her desk. “I don’t have the habit of accepting what people tell me at face value any more than you probably do, Detective, but neither am I closed minded to the possibilities. Hector just didn’t want to acknowledge what iAchieve can do.”

  “What can it do?”

  “In a nutshell? Level the playing field for students of many backgrounds and ability levels.”

  “Level it how?”

  Barton leaned across her desk. “In my district alone, I have twenty-six thousand students, Detective. They’re from sixty different countries of origin, and fifty-five percent of them are English learners. I have fourteen thousand students who qualify for Title I funding—that’s more than half—which means that they live below the poverty line. In many cases, they have just one parent who’s either on welfare or working two or three jobs, and that parent either has no time or energy or inclination to read books with their child before bed or help with homework or go to a museum. Many of them live in public housing projects and homeless shelters. But somehow I’m supposed to educate all of them. I’m supposed to get them all to pass an annual proficiency test. And now with the Common Core Standards, I have to make the curriculum even more rigorous so they’re college and career ready by the time they graduate.” She laughed at the absurdity. “And I have to do this with a workforce of underexperienced teachers, dead wood—let’s admit it—and maverick principals like Sanchez who think they know what’s best for their schools and don’t want to look across the whole district at what the data tell us.”

  “And iAchieve is the solution?”

  “I’m not naïve, Detective. I know there’s no silver bullet. But it’s motivating individualized instruction. It’s data driven. It tells teachers exactly what each student needs. It takes the decision making out of teachers’ hands—and quite frankly, contrary to what he thought and what you may believe, sometimes that is a good thing.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Every student gets a tablet. Every student gets assignments based on his or her needs and abilities. All the instruction is aligned to the standards. The software is completely adaptive, and students can’t help but make progress over time because the program constantly provides remediation based on their mistakes. With this program, you don’t need an army of Sofia Reyeses trying to train teachers who can’t or don’t want to change their ways. And it provides a level of differentiation that goes beyond anything even the best-trained teacher can give in a classroom of thirty students with grossly different needs. This is the future, like it or not. Technology finally ensures the abolition of one-size-fits-all instruction.”

  “But does it work?” asked Codella.

  “Yes, it works. We’ve done a pilot in four schools, and the data look excellent.”

  “It must be incredibly expensive with such a major investment in hardware as well as software.”

  Barton smiled knowingly. “You never get something for nothing, do you? But in this case, I have something McFlieger-Walsh wants, too. They need a big district to take on this program. And they’ll give me significant discounts to make that happen. They know once a big urban district like New York embraces iAchieve, more big districts will follow. I have bargaining chips, and I intend to use them. It’s a win-win.”

  Codella nodded. Barton certainly made a convincing and passionate case. “How do these programs get selected?”

  “There’s an adoption committee. Teachers, administrators, parents. They all get a vote.”

  “Was anyone from PS 777 on that committee?”

  “There’s someone from every school.”

  “Was Christine Donohue one of the committee members?”

  “Yes, Chris is on the committee.”

  Codella stared at the administrator’s perfect nails, her bright gold earrings, her flawlessly highlighted hair with not a strand of gray. “Was she handpicked to spread the good news about iAchieve—and spread some rumors about Sanchez to neutralize his resistance to the program?”

  Barton frowned. “That’s a pretty serious accusation.” She sat back in her Aeron chair. “If I did what you’re suggesting, then I shouldn’t be sitting in this office. I shouldn’t be making the educational decisions for sixty thou
sand New York City schoolchildren.” Her eyes narrowed. “I want iAchieve for all the right reasons. Yes, turning failing schools into successful ones will help my career, but that’s just the incidental reward.”

  Codella had to admit that if the woman was lying, she was a convincing liar. But then, she already knew the administrator was capable of deception. Everybody in this case seemed pretty skilled in that department.

  Barton said, “Every superintendent wants committee members who will support them. Obviously I wasn’t going to knowingly choose someone without an open mind. That said, I didn’t ask Chris Donohue to be a rabble rouser.”

  “Maybe you didn’t have to ask her,” responded Codella. “Maybe you just had to let her know how much you wanted the program.”

  Annoyance spread across Barton’s face as she checked her diamond-studded watch. “Now I’m starting to think you’re on a fishing expedition, Detective. I assure you, there are no fish in this sea. My policies and my interest in iAchieve for the district are not responsible for Hector Sanchez’s death. With all due respect, you’re wasting my time with this line of questioning, and worse, you’re wasting taxpayers’ time. You should be somewhere else looking for relevant information.” She stood. “Now I do have another meeting that’s about to begin.”