Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  She pointed her gun right between his eyes. “Drop it right now and put your hands up.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I said drop it.”

  He still didn’t move. Nor did he raise the gun.

  “I’m not going to ask you again. If you don’t drop the gun, I’m going to shoot you.”

  “Go ahead,” he said quietly.

  Then she felt the gun in her own back and heard a familiar voice. “I think you’re the one who needs to drop the gun.”

  She didn’t trust her ears. She turned to see the second face, and in the split second she took her eyes off Jancek, he moved beside her and twisted her arm until she had to release the Glock. Jancek guided her to the floor next to Drew, picked up a spool of white twine, and said, “Put your hands together, Detective. I’m afraid there’s no choice.”

  She stared at his crooked face. Too much was happening. She wanted to freeze time and put everything together in her mind. She watched him take out a pocketknife and cut a long piece of twine. She said, “This isn’t going to work. You can’t really believe that if you kill us, you’ll get away with anything. You’ll never even get out of this building.”

  Jancek tied her wrists without looking at her. Then he pushed a rag into her mouth as if he were feeding her an olive. The gesture was tentative, almost apologetic. But the rag was dry and coarse on her tongue, and the cloth went so far back in her throat that she was gagging. She tried to bring all the seemingly unconnected facts together in her mind and explain how they added up to this, but she couldn’t. She looked at Drew. She had no doubt that the terror on the actress’s face was the real thing. The babysitter was visibly trembling. Then she turned to Martin, who seemed to be stoically calculating how to react to the situation, but what could she possibly do with her wrists bound behind her? Next to Martin was Drew’s daughter. The little girl’s eyes were filled with tears, and her arms and knees were trembling. Were all five of them going to become cast members in the killer’s reenactment of the passion? Would every one of them bleed out here on Drew’s elegant rugs? Would tomorrow’s Post eulogize them with a darkly clever headline composed by the Post headline SWAT team? What would that headline be? Where was Muñoz to help her brainstorm that headline?

  Jancek had tied her wrists in front of her, and the twine was wrapped so tightly that her hands were now tingling and her skin was turning pale. Soon her hands would be bloodless the way Sofia Reyes’s must have been at the end. She would feel the pinpricks of numbness in her fingertips, and then she would feel nothing. She stared into Chip Dressler’s eyes. He was holding a single-action Colt, but she knew now that he wasn’t going to squeeze off any rounds that would alarm the sleeping neighbors and send help their way. He didn’t have to. She imagined that he was enjoying the fact that the tables had turned so dramatically since Haggerty had interrogated him hours ago. She wanted to ask him if his six-million-dollar sale was really worth all this, but she could hardly breathe let alone speak, and what did it matter? The only question that mattered now was who would be the first victim?

  Jancek held the large pocketknife with which he had cut the twine. Codella closed her eyes the way she had closed them in the hospital each time they’d wheeled her into an operating room and inserted a long hollow needle between her bones to inject chemo drugs into her spinal fluid.

  Dressler pointed to Martin. “Her,” he said. “Do it now.”

  Jancek looked straight at Martin. So she would be first, Codella thought. Of course it would be her. She was the witness, after all, the witness who had seen nothing.

  Jancek took an uncertain step in Martin’s direction. He kept looking from Martin to Dressler and back again. If only she could speak. If only she could engage him in conversation. If only she had let Haggerty come with her. She groaned through the rag and the tape holding the rag in place. She sounded like a wild animal, she thought, as Jancek advanced toward Martin. He covered her short hair with one large hand. He was going to pull her chin up and expose her neck for the blade, she thought, and she had to get to her feet and try to stop it. Dressler’s gun rotated toward her as she repositioned her legs, and as she froze in place, she saw movement out the corner of her eyes. Dana Drew had struggled to her feet. She launched herself into Jancek knocking him to the ground. Dressler’s gun fired, and she went down right on top of Jancek.

  “Jesus Christ!” Dressler swore.

  Drew’s daughter stared at her mother’s still body and let out a muffled wail.

  Martin sidled closer to the girl.

  Jancek extricated himself from the body and looked down at the blood on his shirt. Codella had to do something. It might well be futile, like Drew’s effort, but she had to try. She reached out her feet and kicked Jancek hard in the shin. He howled and turned toward her, and she raised her bound wrists and delivered an uppercut with her fists before Dressler got there and struck the side of her head with the gun. The last thing she heard before she blacked out was another gunshot.

  When she came to, Haggerty was pushing the handcuffed custodian out of the room. Muñoz had cuffed Dressler, and he was lying facedown on the carpet the same way Black Eyes had lain on the sidewalk at the Jackie Robinson Village two days ago. She heard the voices of uniforms and paramedics entering the apartment. The static screeches from their radios echoed inside her head. Finally, Haggerty knelt beside her. “Can you sit up?”

  She held out her hand and let him lift her. The high whine in her ears made all the other sounds feel faraway. Her brain was throbbing.

  “I’ll get a paramedic over here.”

  “I don’t need them. How is Drew?”

  Haggerty gave her a look that told her everything.

  “The daughter?”

  “She’s okay. In the other room with Martin and the babysitter. Your head is bleeding.”

  “It hurts like hell, but I’m all right.”

  He took her face in his hands. “You’re sure? Who am I?”

  “The asshole who didn’t come see me in the hospital.”

  Friday

  Chapter 58

  “Where is Zoe?”

  “She’s with a social worker. She’s just down the hall. She’s safe. Her grandparents have been called.”

  “I want to see her. She needs to be with someone she knows.”

  “You can, in just a few moments.”

  “She needs me now.”

  “Very soon, Ms. Martin. Jane. Can I call you Jane? I need a statement first. It’s very important. I need to hear what happened up there. You’re the only other set of eyes and ears I have. You saw much more than I did. I need you to tell us everything you remember.”

  Martin’s words came in fits and starts, some coherent, some not. “I— This is— How can this have happened? I got a message.”

  “You got a message?”

  “A text.”

  “When?”

  “Eleven. A little after.”

  “You weren’t suspicious getting a call so late?”

  Codella shook her head. “It’s when Dana would have gotten home from the theater.” Then she pressed her eyelids together as if she were in excruciating pain, and Codella realized that she was in fact in a kind of excruciating pain, but she needed the woman to think right now, to stay with her.

  “Jane,” she said. “I need you to focus. What did the text message say?”

  “I have it.” She patted her jacket pockets but couldn’t find the phone, and this made her even more distressed.

  “Never mind. Just tell me.”

  “I need to talk to you. That’s all it said. Please come. I need to talk to you. It made me—” She stopped.

  “Hope.” Codella finished the sentence for her. “It made you hope. I know. Which is what they intended it to do, I’m sure. So you would come. They came for you. They came to kill you. She must have told them you didn’t live there anymore. They used her phone to lure you there.”

  “I went straight over to see her.”
<
br />   “What time was it when you got there?”

  “Eleven fifteen, I think. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and went into the vestibule. The lights were all on. I called out to Dana, but she didn’t answer. I walked back to the living room, and there they were.”

  “Who?”

  “The two men. The janitor and the other man. Dressler.”

  “Had you ever seen them before?”

  “The janitor, yes. The other man, no.”

  “Tell me what happened. Describe everything you remember.” She felt desperate to have this interview over. The sooner she heard Martin’s account, the sooner she could get Jancek and Dressler into the interview rooms, and that’s what she wanted to do. She didn’t have patience for Martin’s shock and confusion and grief, although she realized she was expecting an awful lot from the woman. “Go on,” she prodded.

  “They came up on either side of me and grabbed my arms.”

  “Were they carrying weapons? Guns? Knives?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you try to get away?”

  “I screamed. Jancek cupped his hand over my mouth, and Dressler tied my arms behind my back. He was holding the rope. He wound it very tightly. Then they dragged me into Zoe’s room where Dana and Zoe and Shaffo, our sitter, were already tied up.”

  “Did they speak to you?”

  “No. And they gagged me before I could speak to them.”

  “Which man gagged you?”

  “Dressler.”

  “And then?”

  “Then they left the room for a long time. It felt like a long time, anyway. It probably wasn’t, and we just sat there looking at each other, and I tried to sort things out in my mind. I remembered our conversation earlier in the day, and I figured they were there for me, to kill me, because they must have thought I’d seen them that night while I was in the laundromat, and all I could think was that Dana and Zoe and Shaffo were going to die because of me, and I just wanted to have that gag out of my mouth for five seconds so I could tell her one last time that I loved her, that I forgave her.”

  Codella didn’t interrupt. It was only right to let her have this moment. Finally, she said, “Dana did some very self-serving things, Jane, but her last act was selfless. And that’s worth a lot. That’s what you need to hold on to.”

  Martin nodded gratefully.

  “Where did they go when they left the room?”

  “To the living room, I think. We could hear their voices. They were arguing, I think.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Their tone. But I couldn’t hear any of the words. Then the janitor came back into the room—this time with the gun—and stood there just staring at us for another five minutes until you arrived.”

  “Can you think of anything else I should know? Anything at all, however insignificant it seems?”

  Codella shook her head. “I feel like I’m in a nightmare. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  “Someone may be crazy,” said Codella. “But I assure you, it isn’t you.” Then she stood and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Haggerty and Muñoz came out of the adjoining room where they had been watching and listening. She told Muñoz, “Take Martin to see the daughter. Then get Jancek in room A and Dressler in room B.” She turned to Haggerty. “You’ve got Dressler. I’ll take Jancek. Let’s see what stories they spin.”

  Chapter 59

  Jancek’s metal folding chair was jammed into the far corner of the interview room next to the one-way glass where he kept eyeing his reflection. Could he feel the stares of Portino, Muñoz, Reilly, and McGowan behind the glass? she wondered. Could he sense Dressler less than ten feet away, in interview room B? His expression was blank. His long-sleeved arms dangled like gangly lynched corpses from each side of his tree-trunk shoulders. Only his eyes moved. They followed her from the door to her chair on the other side of the table. They watched her sit and cross her hands on the table. They watched her lean forward, open her mouth, press the recorder, and announce the date and time of the interview. “Let’s start at the beginning, Mr. Jancek. Let’s start with the photographs.”

  His eyes squinted. “Photograph?” he said with no emotion. “What photograph?”

  “The one you took of Hector Sanchez and Dana Drew.”

  She had caught him off guard, she could tell. He had not expected her to start here. His eyebrows furrowed. “How do you know I took a photo of them? What proof do you have?”

  She sat back in her chair and smiled. “It’s three AM, Mr. Jancek. I’m tired, and I have a splitting headache from the butt of your coconspirator’s gun. I’m in here to do you a favor. Down at central booking, they’re not so nice to criminals who tie up cops and kill A-list movie stars. Do you want to talk to me or not?”

  “I didn’t kill her. Dressler did.”

  “And you were right there with him. And I’m telling you now, they won’t be in a hurry to set your bail. With your sheet, you’re likely to sit in a cell for weeks or months until a grand jury convenes, your court date is set, and your court-appointed lawyer throws together a flimsy defense while the prosecutor rounds up so many witnesses—including me, of course—that it’ll make your head spin. There won’t be any plea bargaining, I can assure you. I’m trying to offer you an easier path here, but if you’re not interested, it’s all the same to me.” She pushed out her chair. “Shall I have them take you back to your cell?”

  Then Jancek came back to life. “I’m not a monster. He was the monster.” He pounded a fist onto the table. “Sanchez. Not me.”

  Codella felt the force of his fist through her whole body, but she managed to keep her reaction off her face and shrug with bored conviction worthy of Dana Drew. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Believe me, I see how it was. He’d been a tyrannical bastard since he came to the school.”

  Jancek lowered his eyes and resumed a vacant stare.

  “He was a big fucking imposter,” she continued. “He played up to parents and students so they’d idolize him, isn’t that right? But most of the teachers and staff hated him just like you did. And why wouldn’t they? He graded them unforgivingly. He humiliated them publically. He barked orders disrespectfully. He was like a sadistic prison warden, wasn’t he? Benevolent to the visitors, abusive to the inmates.”

  She waited. Jancek’s eyes locked onto hers but gave no affirmation.

  “I’m right, I know it. You all felt abused,” she continued, weaving his story for him, building the justification that he would, she hoped, ultimately confess to. “And none of you could stand it anymore when he forced you to take part in that stupid farce called Proud Parents of PS 777. He couldn’t have cared less that his photo shoot dredged up a traumatic time in your past. He didn’t care if he forced you to relive the terrible abuse of your niece at the hands of Bosnian prison guards. Yes, I know about that, Mr. Jancek. Sanchez was like those prison guards. He thought he could move everyone around like pawns. You remember that day, Mr. Jancek? You remember the balloons and banners and popcorn? You remember how powerless you felt, forced to sit in that cafeteria?”

  He nodded ever so slightly.

  “And then Chris Donohue had an idea, didn’t she? She thought of a way for the inmates to overthrow the prison guard. It was pretty clever, too. You’d hold your own photo shoot. You’d use the camera to tell the truth instead of lies. You’d expose Sanchez for what he really was. And you, Mr. Jancek, you would be the photographer.”

  She paused. She waited. But Jancek said nothing. He wasn’t ready to own the story, his story. Should she stop? Should she continue to weave his tale for him? “She asked you to stake out his apartment,” she finally said, “and you declined at first—you never intended to do anything wrong or illegal, did you? But in the end, you thought, why not? In a strange way, taking those photos would be an act of public service. You’d be standing up for all the teachers and staff who’d been under his thumb since the day he arriv
ed. You’d finally teach him a lesson. You’d give everyone hope. You’d be a hero. And not only that—” She leaned forward. “Not only that, but you would finally compensate for everything you hadn’t done—hadn’t been able to do—to save your niece all those years ago.”

  Jancek’s upper lip twitched, and his eyes had a liquid sheen, but all he said was, “I never said I did it.”

  “But you did do it,” she insisted calmly and quietly. “We both know you did.” She placed her hand over his and felt it stiffen in her palm, but he didn’t pull it away. “And I don’t blame you. I get it.” And it occurred to her suddenly how ironic it was that she now had to lie in order to coax the truth out of him. “I understand why you did it. You gave him what he had coming.” She paused to let her words sink in, to let him feel the permission to confess. And then she asked, “How many days did you have to stand in front of his apartment to get that incriminating photograph of them?”

  “Three,” he whispered, and his answer was like the blindingly painful needle prick of a poorly executed lumbar puncture. He was in the story with her now. They were dancing through the tangled clues and evidence. Now she had to keep him there.

  “You gave that photo to Chris Donohue,” she declared rather than asked, “and she told Dressler about it, and that’s how this whole thing started.”

  Chapter 60

  “This afternoon, you sat in that same chair and told me you had nothing to do with Hector Sanchez’s murder. You told me—in a taped statement, let me remind you—that you went to his building, knocked on the door, and then went back to your hotel when he didn’t answer. Do you remember saying that?”

  Dressler didn’t answer.

  “Do you remember?” Haggerty repeated. “Or should I play the recording for you?”

  “I remember. Yes. I remember, all right?”

  “Then explain to me why you went to Dana Drew’s apartment tonight with Milosz Jancek. Explain to me why you tied up five innocent people and murdered one of them.”