A photo of a naked woman, securely taped to the molding of the door frame by several pieces of clear tape. It seemed to Barton to be a photo cut from a magazine. At first glance, the woman was flawless. Annoyingly so. Above that was another photo. The same woman, from behind, looking over her shoulder. Above that was yet another photo, this one showing two naked women, a blonde and a brunette, tall, stunning, standing face-to-face and embracing, their breasts pressed together. The brunette was holding the blonde’s face with both hands, tenderly, while the blonde was pressing her hands on the brunette’s lower back, tugging her close. They were seconds from a kiss, their mouths open, their eyes shut, their heads tilted.
Barton and Miller stared at the photos for a moment. Finally, Barton said, “What the hell’s that all about, I wonder.”
“I don’t know,” Miller said.
He looked down at the doorknob, inserted the needle of the pick gun into the lock, opening the door with same ease with which he had opened the street door below. He and Barton then slipped inside, were, just like that, standing in Abby’s kitchen. Barton instantly felt a rush upon crossing the threshold, part fear, yes, but something else, too, something more. Her heart was pounding, she could hear it like wind in her ears, a reaction that caught her a little by surprise. She was also caught by the sense of power—no, not power, more like invincibility—there was in moving unseen like they were, in entering someone’s place without anyone knowing it, passing through obstacles as though they were nothing. Was this part of the draw of being a criminal? she wondered. Was this sense of being a ghost, of nothing there to hold you back, at the root of the psychology of the criminal mind? If so, it wasn’t a fact she remembered learning back in the academy, nor was it something she had picked up in her ten years as a cop. Of course, there was the chance that this wasn’t something criminals thought about at all, was rather something that only mattered to her because of all the doors—doors of every possible kind—that had been closed to her, both when she was a cop and now that she wasn’t.
Whatever the case, she felt a rush from her groin to the top of her head, a tingling along her arms and down through her legs. It was good to know, she thought, that there was at least something in this world that could punch through the pleasant cloud that was her Lexapro, bring the edges of her dulled nerves to something that was close to life.
There were no lights on in the apartment, but no real need of any because of the glow of the brightly lit village spilling in through the row of tall windows in the room beyond the kitchen. Miller nonetheless produced a small flashlight from his raincoat pocket, switched it on. He went through the apartment quickly while Barton waited in the kitchen. She had half-expected to find this place ransacked, but it was in perfect order. Abby had apparently become a very neat person. Back when she lived with Miller, at the house his parents had left him and then in the apartment by the train station, she had been as casual about being tidy as Barton was. While Miller explored the other rooms, Barton concentrated on the kitchen. The apartment, though small, was clearly upscale, she could tell that just from the kitchen. Hardwood floors, white walls, stainless-steel appliances. Above a small island in the center of the kitchen was a large skylight, its glass frosted white. Another light source, even at night, even whitened like it was. Miller appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the front room long enough to tell Barton that the place was empty, to look through the kitchen while he checked out the remaining rooms. Barton began to search through drawers, looking for mail—bills, credit card statements, letters, anything. She opened every drawer there was but found nothing. She even checked the garbage under the sink, but the basket was empty.
When she had exhausted all possibilities, she wandered into the front room. It was a living room, nicely furnished, as clean as the kitchen, with a fully appointed entertainment center. Big TV, stereo, everything. No sign of Miller there, so Barton entered a small hallway, walking past the bathroom, lit by another skylight, and into the only other room, the bedroom. It was small and dark but cozy. A cave for sleeping and making love. Barton couldn’t help but wonder if Roffman had ever been here. How long after she had called it off had he come across Abby? That is, in fact, if they were really together at all.
Standing by the bed, Miller was holding a phone in one hand, his unlit flashlight in the other. The phone was corded, Barton could see that, the kind with the caller ID display built into the cradle and not the handset.
“Tommy?”
He looked at her. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not really.” He reached down to the table beside the bed, switched on a small Tiffany lamp. The shade was apples and pears and cherries made of stained glass and thin bars of lead. “The only thing in the caller ID were two calls from the cottage. Mine, and then one a few hours before it.”
“No outgoing calls?”
“No. If she made any, they were cleared out.”
“What about an answering machine?”
“None. She probably used this phone only for emergencies.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s corded, not cordless. So if the power goes out and cell phone towers go down, she still has a working line.”
“That sounds more like the way you think.”
“It’s where she got it. Plus, a corded phone isn’t as easy to eavesdrop on as a cordless.”
Barton thought about that for a moment, then said, “Is that the only phone?”
“It looks like it.”
“I didn’t find any mail or anything in the kitchen.”
Miller said nothing, didn’t move.
Barton looked around the room. The bed, the nightstand, a bureau. Walls as bare as the walls in Barton’s own place. A faint smell of rosewater, and the kind of stillness that is found when the occupant of a dwelling isn’t at home.
Finally, she said, “Tommy, it looks to me like she’s gone.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I checked the closet. An empty knapsack but no suitcase.”
“What does that mean?”
“Abby had an old leather suitcase that used to belong to her grandfather. It was one of her prized possessions. She always thought it was, I don’t know, romantic.” Miller shrugged, thought for a moment, then said, “It was what she packed her things in the night she left. Probably more valuable to her than the things she put into it.”
“Maybe she’s just gone for a while,” Barton said. She felt like she needed to offer him something. This was all she had. “I mean, a lot of stuff is still here. TV, stereo.” She glanced toward the open closet door. “Clothes. That’s a lot of stuff to leave behind.”
“She didn’t leave a single trace of herself, though. Not a single trace. No photos, no mail, no computer. Nothing that could immediately identify the person who lived here.”
“It could be she’s just a freak about her bills. She’s obviously a freak about neatness. Maybe she’s the kind of person who pays her bills the day they arrive, doesn’t like them lying around. As for photos, they can sometimes be . . . unwelcome reminders of things. I don’t have any in my place, either.”
“I don’t know, Kay. It just looks to me like the apartment of someone who very carefully bugged-out. That’s not really the act of someone away for a long weekend, is it? That’s the act of someone trying to cover her tracks.”
“Something else she learned from you?”
Miller’s only response was to shake his head. Barton didn’t know what to make of that. Was he saying he hadn’t taught that to her, or was he just caught up in the confusion, the puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out?
Or was it something else, something having to do with his standing so close to her bed.
“C’mon, Tommy,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
He took another look around the room, then switched off the bedside light. In the gloom he looked down at the bed once
more. Finally he turned and left the room. Barton followed him into the living room. He paused, glanced at the large TV, the DVD player, the DVR, the stereo equipment, and stacks of CDs and DVDs. Expensive stuff. Barton wondered how Abby made the money to buy all this. How could she afford this place, these things? She knew that Miller was probably wondering what was she doing with a onetime car thief. How could he not be?
Back out in the stairwell, just before closing the door, Miller stopped, looked again at the series of photos taped above the door. A hunch, come to him suddenly, it seemed to Barton, by the way he moved. He looked at the bottom photo, then the one above it, then the one above that. His head was tilted back so far back that he was all but facing the ceiling. His eyes were now fixed on something other than the photos.
Barton followed his line of vision to a smoke detector directly over their heads.
Before she could say anything, Miller was in motion. He told Barton to wait where she was, then returned into the apartment and came back out seconds later with one of the chairs from the kitchen. He placed it under the smoke detector, then stood on the chair, reached up and carefully removed the detector’s plastic cover. He examined it, found two holes in it, one for the indicator light, the other, it seemed, carved out of the plastic by the tip of a knife. With his flashlight held between his teeth he checked the detector’s inner workings. Next to the battery, held in place by several pieces of electrician’s tape, was a microvideocamera, the width of a dime and less than a half dozen dimes thick. Miller disconnected the camera from the nine-volt battery—the smoke detector’s battery—then removed it from the housing. He looked at it closely, then held it for Barton to see.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Miller looked at the device. Built into it was a small transmitter.
“A piece like this has a very limited range,” he said. “The receiver has to be nearby.”
Back in the apartment, Miller went straight for entertainment center in the living room, pulling out the DVR and turning it around so he could get a look at the access panel in the back. Connected to the RCA inputs, the size of a small penlight, was the receiver.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered.
He turned on the TV, then grabbed the remote from the coffee table by the couch and found the button to switch the video input to auxiliary. He then returned to the entertainment center, pressed PLAY on the DVR and held down REWIND.
On the screen, static, and then, in reverse, a bird’s-eye view of Miller removing the camera, Barton clearly visible beside him. Playing backward as it was, it appeared that he was installing it.
He turned the TV and DVR off, said quickly, “Give me a hand.” Barton helped him disconnect the power cord and connecting cables, then Miller pulled the DVR from its shelf and held it under his raincoat as he started toward the door. Back out on the landing, Miller waited as Barton returned the chair to the kitchen and pulled the door closed. Together they made their way down the two flights of stairs and out into the night. It was raining again, a cold, brittle rain, but Barton doubted Miller even noticed. When they reached his pickup they each peeled off their galoshes and tossed them into the bed again. Miller drove this time, heading for Montauk Highway; Barton sat in the passenger seat with the DVR on her lap and the microcamera in her gloved hand.
Just outside East Hampton, passing one of the hedged-in estates that line Montauk Highway, Miller noticed that a car was suddenly behind them. He informed Barton, and as they headed westward, they each watched carefully, silently. When the road curved, Barton was able to identify the vehicle as a town car with a glossy black paint job. The car followed them for several miles, moving as fast as Miller’s pickup, not on his tail but not keeping back, either. It stayed there, made no attempt to overtake or pass. Barton started to consider the possibility that she and Miller had walked into a trap, knew that Miller was certainly thinking the same thing, but as they reached Wainscott, the town car suddenly slowed down, then made an abrupt right turn into the dark parking lot of a restaurant called Helenbach. Barton kept a close eye on the blackness behind them for at least another mile. It was only then that Barton realized she was holding her breath. She let it out and looked at Miller. He glanced at her but said nothing.
For the rest of the ride back to Southampton there was never a sign of any car behind them, let alone the black town car, not even far back in the distance when Montauk Highway became a stretch of straight and well-lit road running through Bridgehampton, and Barton could see at times up to a good half mile behind them.
They rode without speaking, the long drone of the rain interrupted every few seconds by the sweep of the windshield wipers. They sounded, to Barton’s ear, like footsteps crunching in frozen snow.
In Miller’s apartment they connected the DVR to his small TV and turned both units on, stood together and watched. The camera was obviously motion-sensitive, and there was a time-and date-stamp at the bottom of the screen. The DVR had a program that allowed the viewer to watch the most recent recording first, from start to finish, then move back in time recording by recording. Miller selected this option, started with the recording of him and Barton discovering the camera and removing it from the smoke detector. The next recording, the event prior to that one, was of him and Barton arriving. As they looked up at the photos placed above the door, even with baseball caps on, they exposed their faces to the camera.
“Clever girl,” Barton said.
Miller nodded. The recording prior to that one was time-stamped at 8:11 P.M., roughly seven hours ago. It showed a woman leaving the apartment with an old leather suitcase in her hand. She made a point of looking up at the camera, even kind of half-waved at it. She said something, but there was no audio. The woman was, of course, Abby.
“That’s a few minutes after the first call from the cottage came,” Miller said.
“Someone called her and told her to leave.”
“But they called on her landline, her emergency line.”
“What does that mean?”
Miller shrugged. “I’m not sure. A call from the cottage on her land-line could have been a signal in itself.”
“She didn’t look all that upset,” Barton noted. “She didn’t look like someone who was just told her boyfriend was dead.”
Miller said nothing. The next recording was time-stamped a little before three in the afternoon, just hours before Michaels and Romano were murdered at the canal. It showed a man leaving Abby’s apartment, his face not visible to the camera. The recording prior to that one showed him arriving, a knapsack on his shoulder. He looked up at the nude photos and smiled wryly.
“That’s Michaels,” Miller said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Barton looked at the screen closely. “He doesn’t look like a guy who knows he’s going to be dead in a few hours.”
Miller pressed the button in the DVR, skipping back to the previous recording of Michaels leaving. He studied it, then skipped to the recording of him arriving.
“Do you see that?” he said to Barton.
“He arrived with a knapsack but didn’t leave with one.”
“Exactly. It looks like the knapsack in Abby’s closet.”
“So whatever was inside it is either still somewhere in her apartment or was in Abby’s suitcase.”
“My bet is the suitcase.”
“Mine, too.”
The next recording showed Abby leaving roughly an hour before Michaels arrived. The one following that showed her arriving with two bags of groceries in her arms.
“You don’t really stock up on groceries when you know you’re going out of town, do you?” Miller said.
Barton shook her head. “No.”
He pressed PAUSE on the DVR. The screen froze just as Abby was opening her door. Miller stepped away from the TV, thinking. Barton watched him, waiting.
“I should go back to the cottage,” he said.
“What for?”
�
��In case there was a hidden camera there.”
“The place was torn apart. If there was, whoever got there before us must have found it.”
“Maybe not. They might not have known to look for it. We didn’t. If there is one and the cops find it, it’ll show the two of us walking in and walking out.”
“Are you sure you should go?”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, I need you to stay here, see what else Abby’s camera caught. And I need you to get hold of Spadaro.”
“Why?”
Miller grabbed a notepad and a pen from the shelf below his television. “I need the home number of this man.” He wrote down a name, handed the pad to Barton. She read it, then looked at Miller.
“Who is he?”
“He owns a supply shop in Riverhead, lives in the apartment above his store. It’s on Main Street. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from him over the years.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Surveillance equipment, tools of the trade.”
“Why do you need his home number?”
“Whenever a dealer sells surveillance equipment to someone, he’s required to copy down all the info from the customer’s driver’s license. Name, address, license number. It’s supposed to be kept on file along with the serial number of the equipment sold so if it ever turns up where it isn’t supposed to be the cops can trace it to its owner. If we’re lucky, the camera we found was bought from that shop. He’s the only dealer on the East End, so there is a chance it came from there.”
“Why do you want to know who bought it? I mean, Abby must have put it there. She looked right up at it when she left with the suitcase. And those photos were there, so she had to have known.”
“It’s just a hunch,” Miller said. “Will you try to reach Spadaro?”
The Water's Edge Page 20
