What the Fly Saw

by Frankie Y. Bailey

  “She says she and your husband had the same father,” Baxter said. “She says she’s his half sister.”

  “That’s impossible. Why is she making up a story like that? Kevin was an orphan.”

  “Luanne says he was sent to an orphanage when his mother died of cancer. Her father hired a private investigator who located Kevin. But as a married man with other children, her father decided to leave Kevin in the orphanage.”

  “How could he do that? How could he do that to his own child? If he was that kind of man, then Kevin was better off not knowing him.” Her gaze fastened on McCabe again. “If this woman is telling the truth, if she knew she was Kevin’s sister, why didn’t she tell him?”

  “She had only that brief encounter with him at Olive Cooper’s celebration of life. She said she was waiting for the right time.”

  “And then he was dead,” Baxter said. “And now someone has tried to poison—presumably kill—your husband’s half sister.”

  McCabe gestured toward the chair Novak had begun to lean against. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Novak straightened. “What else do you have to tell me?”

  “The pie Luanne ate was left on her front steps,” McCabe said. “We spoke to one of her neighbors, who told us she had seen the pie dropped off by a young man whom she thought was making a delivery. But there was no company name or logo on the car he was driving. She described it as ‘an old heap.’ And the young man—whom she described as ‘a kid’—was wearing a baseball cap and a red jacket, not a uniform.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  McCabe said, “We’d like to ask Scott if he knows anything about the pie Luanne received.”

  “If he knows anything about it? What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I said, Mrs. Novak. The description we have of the young man who delivered the pie could fit Scott.”

  “Scott doesn’t have a car.”

  “He might have borrowed a friend’s car,” McCabe said. “It’s possible that he’ll know nothing about this. But we do need to speak to him.”

  “My son experienced a psychotic episode after taking drugs. He tried to cut his own throat. And you want to question him—to accuse him—of trying to kill someone he barely knows? I can’t believe you people!”

  “Mrs. Novak, we know how difficult this must be for you and for Scott. We understand that. But we have a job to do. If you are concerned that Scott isn’t sufficiently recovered to be able to talk to us, then we can postpone this until his doctor gives permission. But we are going to talk to him.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Novak brushed past them and into the hall.

  “Mrs. Novak. Wait. We need to talk about this.”

  “I’m calling my lawyer. You aren’t getting near my son.” Novak opened the door of her son’s room. “Stay away from my family.”

  “Mom?” a groggy voice said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart, it’s all right.”

  Sarah Novak stepped inside the room and closed the door.

  Baxter said, “Too bad if we have to arrest the kid to question him.”

  McCabe nodded. “That’s up to his mother. I hope she’ll change her mind. In the meantime, we’d better let the lieutenant know we may have to do this the hard way.” Ignoring the NO ORBS sign, McCabe took out her ORB. She hoped Sarah Novak had her ear pressed to the door. “And I think we should pay Reverend Wyatt another visit.”

  * * *

  When they were shown into his office at the church, Wyatt turned from the window and came forward to greet them. “Please come in and sit down.”

  A decidedly muted greeting, McCabe thought. “Thank you for seeing us again, Reverend Wyatt.”

  “Are you here about Scott?”

  “Why do you ask?” Baxter said.

  “I just spoke to Sarah. She told me a garbled story about Luanne Woodward, the medium, being Kevin’s half sister, and that you suspected Scott of trying to kill her—Luanne Woodward—with a poisoned pie left on her front step. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale.”

  McCabe said, “Not quite. But it is rather a twisted tale, isn’t it? We were hoping you might help us to understand what was going on with Kevin Novak before he died.”

  “I’ve already told you I can’t talk about that.”

  “But several things have happened since our last conversation, Reverend Wyatt. Both Luanne and Scott are in the hospital. Luanne was poisoned. Scott popped some pills he got from a friend and tried to slash his own throat.”

  “I know what’s happened, Detective.” Wyatt pushed up horn-rimmed glasses that McCabe hadn’t seen him wear before and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been examining my own conscience about whether I’m to blame for any or all of this.”

  McCabe let the silence hang there for a moment, giving Baxter a small shake of her head before he could speak.

  Wyatt adjusted his glasses. “Excuse me,” he said. He got up and went over to his desk. He picked up a black leather-bound Bible and opened it to what seemed to be a familiar page.

  McCabe and Baxter waited. In the distance, they could hear the voices of a group crossing the courtyard.

  Wyatt closed his Bible and put it down on his desk. “You have to understand. This is an incredibly difficult situation because it involves not only Kevin but also Bob Reeves.”

  McCabe said, “What are we talking about, Reverend Wyatt?”

  “I need to ask your discretion. If it turns out there’s no need to make public what I’m about to tell you—”

  “Then we will do our best to keep it from going public.”

  “Your best?” Wyatt smiled. “I suppose that’s as much of a guarantee of discretion as I’m going to get.”

  “I’m afraid so. Sometimes the decision is taken out of our hands.”

  Wyatt nodded. “I have no choice in this. I was trying to protect Kevin’s family and Bob’s wife, Francesca. But if you are focusing your investigation in the wrong direction and people are being harmed because I am remaining silent…”

  McCabe said, “Then it’s time for you to tell us what you know.”

  “Yes.” Wyatt sighed. He came back over and sat down across from them. “Before his death, Bob Reeves confided a secret to Kevin, his best friend. He asked Kevin to make sure his wife—Bob’s wife, Francesca—didn’t find out. He didn’t want her to be hurt. After some soul searching, Kevin confided the secret to me. He was concerned that what Bob had told him might become known and that if it did, the reputation of the church … he was concerned about the damage that might be done if the media learned what Bob had told him.”

  “What did Bob tell him?” Baxter asked.

  Wyatt took off his glasses and held them dangling between his thumb and index finger. “Bob gave Kevin a key with a coded password. The key and password gave Kevin admittance to a club of which Bob was a member.”

  “What kind of club?” McCabe asked.

  “An adults-only club on the Web.”

  “Adults only,” Baxter said. “As in sex club?”

  “Yes, that kind of club. The members of the club have avatar identities who—from what Kevin told me—engage in social activities and have intimate encounters.”

  McCabe said, “Are these encounters restricted to their avatars? Or do the club members also meet in the real world?”

  “They only meet in cyberspace,” Wyatt said. “That was how Bob rationalized it to Kevin. That if only the avatars were having these encounters, then it had nothing to do with real-world relationships. The members of the club were only indulging harmless fantasies. Like going to an amusement park.”

  Baxter said, “So why was Bob concerned about his wife finding out he was visiting this amusement park?”

  “As I said, he thought she would be hurt. There is the age difference between them, and she might have thought he was dissatisfied with that aspect of their marriage. At any rate, when he realized he would be going into surgery, B
ob told Kevin all this and gave him the key. He asked Kevin to resign his membership in the club and delete his account if he didn’t pull through.”

  “So what was the problem?” Baxter asked. “All Kevin had to do was delete the account and that would have been the end of it.”

  “Bob was using an alias,” Wyatt explained, “but if someone had wanted to find out who the members of the club were … Kevin wondered if other members of the church might be involved in the club.”

  McCabe said, “Why did Kevin wonder about that, Reverend Wyatt?”

  “Bob’s closest friendships were with Kevin and several other members of the congregation.”

  “As far as Kevin knew,” Baxter said. “But there might have been a few friendships Kevin didn’t know about. Bob was a lawyer—”

  “A lawyer who specialized in estate planning. His clients were often elderly.”

  “Which doesn’t mean they didn’t know how to have fun,” Baxter said. “Maybe one of his clients brought Bob into the club.”

  “Whoever introduced Bob to the club,” McCabe said, “Kevin was concerned that other members of the church might be involved. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Wyatt said. “When he told me about it, so was I. I know now it was a mistake. But I agreed to Kevin’s plan to use Bob’s access to the club to see if there was any other connection to the church.”

  “So for the past few months, Kevin Novak had been a member of a Web sex club using his friend Bob’s avatar?”

  “No, not for the past few months. Only for a few weeks. Then I became concerned that it wasn’t appropriate to expose Kevin to … I asked him to delete the account.”

  “And he agreed to do that?” McCabe asked.

  “Yes. He said he hadn’t found anything. That it was time to do what Bob had asked him to do.”

  “But you’re concerned that during the time he was involved in this club, something might have happened that led to his death?”

  “Yes. What if someone realized he was an impostor? What if he was killed because someone was afraid he would expose the club members?”

  “Reverend Wyatt,” McCabe said, “as long as they’re adults only, Web sex clubs are legal.”

  “I know they’re legal,” Wyatt said. “But maybe there was someone in this club who wanted to keep his or her identity a secret?”

  “That’s possible,” McCabe said. “Did Kevin say anything to suggest he was concerned that someone in the club suspected he was an imposter?”

  “No. I’ve just been worried about it since he was killed.”

  “But the reason you suggested to Kevin that he end his investigation of the club was because you were concerned about his psychological well-being.”

  Wyatt put his glasses back on. “He seemed distracted and preoccupied. When I asked if something was bothering him, he said he was busy at work.”

  “When we talked before, you suggested he might be experiencing some depression as he worked through his therapy with Dr. Burdett.”

  “Yes, and I did think his therapy would be easier if he could focus on himself and his family without the distraction of—”

  “Romping, naked avatars in a sex club?” Baxter asked.

  “I’m sure Kevin did not take part in romps, Detective Baxter. He said it wasn’t required. That some of the avatars simply drank and danced. Or gambled.”

  Before Baxter could comment on that, McCabe said, “Reverend Wyatt, are you sure that you’re the only one who knew what Kevin was doing? That he didn’t tell Dr. Burdett or his wife?”

  “I’m positive he wouldn’t have told Sarah. And I asked him not to tell Jonathan.”

  “Why did you ask him not to tell Dr. Burdett?” Baxter asked.

  “Because, even though Jonathan would never reveal a confidence from someone he was counseling, this was a private matter between Bob and his wife. It was enough that Kevin and I had become privy to that aspect of their marriage.”

  “So you were being chivalrous,” Baxter said. “Protecting Francesca Reeves from the embarrassment of having anyone else know what you would never tell her.”

  Wyatt flushed. “I know it sounds silly to you, Detective. But after we became aware of Bob’s secret life, Kevin and I had enough difficulty looking Francesca in the eye. There was no reason to place Jonathan in that same awkward position.”

  * * *

  They picked up Chinese takeout on the way back to the station house.

  “I’m going to run this up to Delgardo,” McCabe said, holding up the container with the piece of white paper they’d found in Luanne’s backyard. “Tell the lou I’ll be right there.”

  They were going to do a working lunch in Lt. Dole’s office while they filled him in on what Reverend Wyatt had told them.

  By the time McCabe got back downstairs, Baxter and the lieutenant had their plates full and were talking basketball. She filled her own plate while they were debating players and took the opportunity to make a few notes in her ORB. She looked up when they both fell silent. “Did I miss something?”

  “Are you trying to tell us we should be focusing on the matter at hand?” Dole asked.

  “No, sir. I assumed you’d both get back to that when you were done.”

  Dole cleared his throat. “Getting to why we’re here.”

  “Yes, sir, as I mentioned when I tagged you, Reverend Wyatt gave us a new lead.”

  “Something that doesn’t involve the Novak kid?”

  “That’s not clear. It could. But there’s also the possibility Kevin Novak got in over his head while he was playing undercover cop. No pun intended.”

  “No pun about what?”

  “A sex club,” McCabe said.

  McCabe gave the lieutenant a summary of their conversation with Wyatt.

  “So the question,” Baxter said, “is whether someone figured out a new player had entered the club, a player who was pretending to be one of the regulars.”

  “And if someone did figure that out,” McCabe said, “was this person—or maybe persons—concerned enough about this intruder’s presence to try to find out who he was?”

  “And if this person or persons was able to find out who Kevin was,” Baxter said, “did they track him back to the real world and kill him?”

  “That seems like an over-the-top response to someone crashing the party,” Dole said.

  “Yes, sir,” McCabe replied. “Unless this person or persons needed to keep their involvement in the club a secret and feared that Kevin was some kind of twenty-first-century Comstock agent out to stamp out sin and wickedness. In that case, they might have thought he and/or the church he belonged to planned some kind of exposé about the goings-on of the club.”

  “Killing your vic wouldn’t ensure the exposé—if there was going to be one—wouldn’t go forward. For all they knew, he might have been making regular reports to his minister or whoever had put him up to going undercover.”

  McCabe nodded. “That’s the glitch in our theory. Even if someone did realize Kevin had assumed his friend Bob’s avatar identity, if they had thought about it, they would have realized killing him might not solve the problem.”

  “Unless they never connected him back to the church,” Baxter said. He speared a chunk of chicken with his plastic fork. “Suppose Kevin told Wyatt that he was going to close down the account, but didn’t. Suppose he not only kept visiting the club, but began to enjoy himself. What if he decided to meet up with someone he had met in the club in the real world?”

  “And hooked up with a psycho?” Dole said.

  “That night in the funeral home?” McCabe asked.

  “Kinky enough for a sex club hookup, right? But our vic ends up dead.”

  “Before we start looking for Novak’s hookup,” Dole said, “let’s consider the obvious. We’ve got a guy, who for whatever reason, was hanging out in a sex club. The guy had a wife. How do you feel about the wife as a suspect?”

  McCabe said, “This would give her a motive, sir.
But if we can believe what Scott told us, his mother was at home when he left for the funeral home.”

  “But he didn’t say she was there when he got back,” Baxter said. “He said he wanted to get back before she realized he was gone.”

  Dole said, “Are you suggesting she went out after he did and they both ended up at the funeral home?”

  Baxter said, “Assuming Scott went there at all. What if the story he told us was intended to provide his mother with an alibi. That would explain why she didn’t want us to talk to him, because she was afraid he would slip up and admit he hadn’t gone to the funeral home that night.”

  McCabe shook her head. “Okay, this is getting really twisted. That would mean that she knew what he had told us about going to the funeral home. He asked us not to tell her.”

  “Even more clever. He completely distracted us.”

  “Really clever for a seventeen-year-old kid.”

  Baxter speared another piece of chicken with his fork. “Just playing ‘what if,’ partner. I thought you liked that game.”

  McCabe gazed back at him, caught off balance by the ripple of tension.

  “What about the other wife?” Dole asked. “Francesca. Any reason she might have gone after Bob’s best friend if she found out about the sex club?”

  “I don’t see her for that, Lou,” McCabe said. “She seems sophisticated enough to take learning her husband was a member of a virtual reality sex club—or even had real-life encounters—in her stride. And I’m not sure what her motive would be for killing Kevin, even if she had found out about Bob.”

  “Okay,” Dole said, reaching for his coffee mug. “What about this psychiatrist or family counselor, Burdett? The minister says he told your vic not to tell him.”

  “Which doesn’t mean Kev didn’t confide,” Baxter said.

  McCabe swallowed her bite of egg roll. “I agree with Mike, sir,” she said. “If Kevin was trying to work through his guilt about Bob’s death, I would think discovering Bob had been involved in a sex club would have been something Kevin would have found hard not to confide to his therapist.”

  “The reverend did say the reason he told Kev to get out of the club was because he thought being involved might be interfering with his therapy with Burdett.”