What the Fly Saw

by Frankie Y. Bailey

  “Where did he go?” McCabe asked.

  “Mexico City. He tagged me from there last Saturday.”

  “We need a name on this friend of yours,” Baxter said.

  Dakota shrugged. “No skin off my nose. He’s gone. You have to get him back before you can mess with him.”

  She gave them the name. They asked what she had been doing on the night that Kevin Novak was murdered. She said she had been at home with her cat. And a friend who had kept her company during the blizzard. She gave them that friend’s name, too.

  McCabe and Baxter watched through the window as she went back inside and smiled at the salon manager. Whatever she said about two detectives turning up wanting to speak to her, the manager seemed satisfied. Mary Ann headed back to the client who was waiting for her facial.

  Baxter had his ORB out. “We’d better pass on this info.”

  McCabe added, “And make it clear Dakota cooperated with our homicide investigation.”

  “Sure,” Baxter said. “She’ll get a gold star for that from the guys in Vice.”

  * * *

  Back at the station house, McCabe paused outside Lt. Dole’s office door. “Be there in a minute,” she said to Baxter. “I’m just going to give the lou a quick update about the biker girl and her friend, the drug dealer.”

  “Okay,” Baxter said. “I’ll start getting what we have up on the wall.”

  “Lou, have a minute?” McCabe asked.

  Dole waved her in. “Find the biker girl?”

  “Yes, sir. Turns out she may have really spooked Kevin Novak. She told him her ex was a drug dealer.”

  McCabe filled him in.

  “But you don’t see the drug dealer as the killer?”

  “No, sir. Not if he really did leave right after Vice raided the space zombies’ nest. Sir, there’s something else about that. About the girl who had cholera. I think I saw her that evening. She was with a group of zombies. I saw her fall. I thought she was high.”

  As Dole listened, she told him about seeing the line of space zombies out in the storm, following their Pied Piper toward the Plaza.

  “Why are you telling me this, McCabe?”

  “Why am I—” McCabe stared at him. “Sir, I didn’t … If I had gone after her, she might still be alive.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Dole asked. “Super cop? Do you have psychic powers? How were you supposed to know the girl was sick?”

  “I didn’t know, but—”

  “You don’t need this now, McCabe. You don’t need grieving parents wanting to know why you didn’t save their pretty little white middle-class daughter. What you need to do is solve the case you’re working on, like you solved the serial killer case. You need to focus on your job so that when the commander and I get called into the chief’s office and your name comes up we can remind the people around the table that you’re one of the best detectives in the unit. We need to be able to say that because Howard Miller keeps bringing up your name, and the powers that be aren’t thrilled with the attention that one of our cops is getting. So right now, McCabe, you need to keep a low profile. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” McCabe stood up. “Baxter and I are going to go over what we have.”

  “Do that.”

  * * *

  Baxter greeted her with some news. “Got the word back from Vice. They have confirmation a passenger by the name of Dakota’s drug-dealing friend left town on Saturday morning. That rules him out as a suspect in Kevin Novak’s death.”

  “So we’ve got Kevin shot with a compound bow by person unknown,” McCabe said, turning to the crime-scene images on the board.

  “He either let this person in and took him or her down to the basement,” Baxter said, “or this person wandered on in after Kev forgot to lock the outer door.”

  “Kevin is standing by the target when this person picks up his bow and shoots him with it. But there was an arrow lodged in the target. That would suggest Kevin had been doing target practice.”

  “He’s at the target when he’s shot. If someone came in uninvited, came down the stairs quietly, he might have been caught by surprise.”

  “Or if this was someone he knew, Kevin might have been talking to him as he was going on with his target practice. He shoots the arrow, goes to retrieve it from the target, and the killer picks up another arrow, puts it in the bow, and shoots him.”

  Baxter said, “If you’re having an argument with someone, do you walk away from them and leave a deadly weapon within reach?”

  “So if Kevin knew this person was there, he didn’t feel he was in danger.” McCabe glanced again at the crime-scene images. “He didn’t know this person was angry enough or afraid enough to kill him.”

  “This person shoots him with the arrow. But he’s not dead,” Baxter said. “So why doesn’t the killer finish the job? Why leave him alive?”

  “Alive but with no way of getting help unless he could get up the stairs. If the killer took Kevin’s ORB—”

  “But that’s no guarantee,” Baxter said. “If you want someone dead, you kill him. You don’t leave him alive, hoping he’ll bleed out before someone can find him.”

  “Or if you’re pretty sure no help is coming, then walking away with the victim’s only means of communication and leaving him to die slowly may satisfy your need to make him suffer.”

  “Assuming nobody comes before he dies. How did the killer know Kevin’s embalmer wasn’t coming in for his night shift?”

  “If this was someone Kevin knew, he might have mentioned he was there alone for the night.”

  Baxter leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. “Okay, round two. Who can we eliminate as a suspect?”

  “Francesca Reeves has an alibi. Unless she hired someone to do it, I think we can take her off the table.”

  “And unless an eighty-five-year-old woman was out running around in the streets after a blizzard, we can eliminate Olive.”

  “That leaves Wyatt, whose wife claims he was with her. Burdett, who claims he was at home alone enjoying his homemade stew.”

  “According to witnesses, our girl, Luanne, who claims, pending confirmation, to be Kevin’s half sister, was in Boston.”

  “And Sarah Novak says she was at home with her son. But her son says that, although his mother thought he was upstairs in his room all that time, he did sneak out to make sure his father had gone to the funeral home.” McCabe sat down at her desk. “We need to talk to Scott.”

  “We’re going to have to arrest him to get to him.”

  McCabe stared up at the water stain on the ceiling. “Maybe we could get Reverend Wyatt to intervene.”

  “I haven’t gotten the impression that Wyatt has a lot of influence with Sarah Novak.”

  “No, but she did tell him about our attempt to interview Scott. Maybe if we can get him to tell her about what Kevin was doing—”

  “You mean who he was doing. Dakota, the biker girl.”

  “Wyatt doesn’t know about her, and there’s no reason to bring her up with Sarah. We could just get him to tell her about Kevin’s attempt to investigate the club. And then we can explain we need to talk to Scott to make sure he hasn’t been holding anything back because he might have thought his father was involved with another woman.”

  “And we don’t bring up that we haven’t ruled out the possibility that Scott might not only have thought that, but done something about it?”

  “Let’s hope his mother’s too tired and too distracted by Reverend Wyatt’s revelation about Bob and the sex club to lock onto the fact that we now have a real motive for Scott.”

  “Sounds a little devious, partner,” Baxter said. “I’m shocked.”

  “If Scott was using drugs before his father was killed…” McCabe met Baxter’s gaze. “Are you saying you want to tell her he’s at the top of our list of suspects and suggest she get him a lawyer?”

  “Not me. If the kid did it, I’m all for getting him any way we
can.”

  “Great. That’s all I need to hear to convince me that involving a minister and a mother in getting to a suspect isn’t the least bit unethical.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better, you can run it by the lou.” Baxter had his ORB in his hand. “I’ll make sure Scott’s still at the hospital. They might have let him out.”

  So, thought McCabe, I obviously have a habit of passing my moral dilemmas onto Lt. Dole. As long as he signs off on it, then I have no responsibility for how it turns out.

  McCabe reached for her own ORB.

  “I’m going to check in with Luanne,” she told Baxter. “See when she’s due to be released.”

  “While you have her, ask her about her creepy photo album.”

  40

  “Scott was released this morning. His mother took him home,” Baxter said. “What did Luanne say about the album?”

  “That she saw a photo of Bonnie Parker posing with her foot on the running board of a car. And then she saw a photo of the bullet-riddled car that Bonnie and Clyde were killed in. That got her thinking about people who had died in their cars. She started collecting pre-mortem photographs.” McCabe paused. “Luanne said that when she and Kevin were chatting on their folklore discussion node, she mentioned her hobby. He was fascinated and she sent him digital copies of a few of the photos. He suggested she think of doing a book on the topic.”

  Baxter grinned. “And if the reading public is as fascinated as we were, she’ll have herself a bestseller.”

  “Yeah, but Kevin won’t be around to see his name in the acknowledgments.” McCabe reached for her Elvis mug. “And now that we’ve satisfied our curiosity, I’m going to call Reverend Wyatt and see if he’ll give us a little help getting Sarah Novak to let us see Scott.”

  On the monitor of McCabe’s ORB, Wyatt looked pale. “I might have prevented this,” he said. “If Scott believed that his father was being unfaithful to his mother, that would explain why he was so upset, why he took drugs.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I might have prevented this if I had known, if I had explained to Sarah.” He sighed. “Yes, of course, we need to speak to both of them and clear this up.”

  McCabe closed her ORB and looked over at Baxter, who had been listening.

  He grinned. “Well done, partner.”

  “Let’s get moving,” McCabe said.

  * * *

  Reverend Wyatt got them past Sarah Novak’s front door. He explained that there was something he needed to talk to Sarah and Scott about, something that might help. The detectives, he said, were there because they also had information.

  What information the detectives had, he didn’t specify. Just as well, McCabe thought.

  “Is Megan at school?” McCabe asked.

  “We agreed it was time she went back,” Novak said.

  “Is Scott upstairs?”

  “Yes, and we are not going to go up there until I hear what it is the three of you have to say.”

  Reverend Wyatt looked unhappy that Novak was grouping him with the police detectives she was barely tolerating in her home. He held out his hand to her. “There is something important I need to tell you. Something for which I need to take responsibility.”

  Sarah sat down on the sofa. Reverend Wyatt sat down beside her. McCabe and Baxter took the adjacent armchairs.

  Reverend Wyatt said, “This is something that I was reluctant to tell you, Sarah. But it has been on my conscience. And the detectives have convinced me that you and Scott should know. You see, Scott may have gotten the wrong idea about what his father was doing.” Wyatt cleared his throat. “He may have believed Kevin was being unfaithful to you.”

  Novak was silent for a long moment. “Wasn’t he?” she said.

  Wyatt looked shocked. “Sarah, no … Kevin loved you. He loved you and his children more than anything in this world.”

  “I want to believe that,” Novak said.

  Wyatt took her hand in both of his. “Listen to me. What Kevin was doing was on my behalf and for his church.”

  He told her about the key Bob Reeves had left to Kevin and Kevin’s efforts to find out if other members of the church were involved in the cybersex club. “I should never have encouraged him, Sarah. I knew he was still depressed about Bob’s death and certainly his disillusionment when Bob revealed his double life. I should have told Kevin to destroy the key code and get on with his counseling sessions with Jonathan.”

  “Does Francesca know?” Novak asked.

  “No,” McCabe said. “She wondered about Kevin’s attitude toward her—why he was avoiding her since her husband’s death. But, no, she doesn’t know about the cybersex club.” McCabe paused. “What we wondered was if Scott might have seen or heard something that led him to believe his father was involved with other women.”

  “What they’re thinking, Sarah,” Reverend Wyatt said, “is that might explain how Scott is reacting to his father’s death.”

  “You mean, taking drugs and trying to kill himself?” Novak said. “Yes, I suppose believing his father had betrayed his family before being murdered might have been enough to drive him to that.”

  “Mrs. Novak,” McCabe said. “Scott confided something to Detective Baxter and me about the night that his father died. He was concerned that you would be upset if you knew this.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That he left the house that night. That he followed his father to the funeral home. He wanted to make sure that was where your husband was going.”

  Novak’s hands clenched in her lap. “Scott went to the funeral home?”

  “He told us that he went there, saw the lights on, and knew his father was inside. Then he hurried home before you realized he had sneaked out. He didn’t tell us that he was worried his father might be meeting another woman. But now that we know about your husband’s investigation of the cyber club, it is reasonable to assume that Scott may have seen or heard something that made him—”

  “Made him think his father might be cheating on his mother,” Novak said.

  “May we speak to Scott, Mrs. Novak? We’d like to ask him what he knew about his father’s investigation of the club. He might have heard or seen something that could help us in our own investigation. Especially since your husband’s ORB is still missing.”

  Novak glanced from her minister to the two detectives. “You know, Detective McCabe, I really don’t think so. You’ve just told me that my son was at the scene of the crime on the night that his father was killed. You’ve also suggested Scott may have thought he had good reason to be angry at his father. I really don’t think I want you and your partner asking my son questions.”

  “Sarah,” Wyatt said. “You can’t believe that Scott has anything to hide. If he might know something that could help the detectives find the person who killed—”

  “Innocent people end up on death row, Daniel. Innocent people talk with detectives who just want to ask them a few questions, and they find themselves in prison because the detectives have a theory. That’s the way it happens.”

  “Mrs. Novak, we don’t have a theory. We want to find the truth.”

  Novak stood up. “Thank you for coming by and clearing up any misconceptions I may have had about my husband and what he was doing. But you are not going to see my son without a lawyer present.”

  McCabe said, “Mrs. Novak, you would make this easier on everyone if you would let us speak to Scott.”

  “I don’t want to make your life easier, Detective McCabe. I want to keep my children safe and help them heal. Right now, that means keeping my son away from you and your partner.”

  Baxter said, “If we have to bring your son in for questioning—”

  “I have a lawyer. I’ll let him know he may be needed.”

  Reverend Wyatt said, “Sarah, I understand your concern, but not cooperating with the police—”

  “Good-bye, Daniel. Please show the detectives out as you’re leaving.”

  She walked out of the living
room.

  By the time they reached the foyer, she was at the top of the stairs.

  “I’m afraid that might have gone better,” Wyatt said.

  “Yes,” McCabe agreed.

  Sarah Novak was the kind of mother you’d want on your side, McCabe thought. But did her determination to keep them from questioning her son mean she thought he might have killed his father?

  “I think we’d better go,” Wyatt said.

  He opened the front door and a woman gasped. McCabe looked around Wyatt and saw Luanne standing there.

  41

  “Oh, my goodness,” Luanne said. “You’re all here.”

  “What are you doing here, Ms. Woodward?” Wyatt asked. “This is not a time when this family would welcome an intrusive visit from someone they barely know. And after what I understand happened at the séance you staged—”

  “Reverend, if you’ll stop talking, I’ll tell you why I’m here. My nephew sent me a tag asking me to come.”

  “Your nephew? Why would Scott want to see you? And this nonsense about Kevin being your half brother—”

  “I’ll show you the DNA test when I get it back. Move yourself out of my way, Reverend, before I forget you’re a man of the cloth.”

  “Reverend Wyatt,” McCabe said. “If Scott did reach out to Luanne, I think we should let her in.”

  “I’m sure Sarah couldn’t have known about this.”

  “Out of my way,” Woodward said. She gave him a little shove and sailed past him.

  “Wait!” Reverend Wyatt shouted.

  “Scott!” Woodward called out. “Scott, honey, it’s Luanne.”

  “They’re upstairs,” Baxter said.

  “Did Scott say his mother told him that you’re his aunt?” McCabe asked.

  “He didn’t say anything about it in his tag. He just said he needed to see me.” Woodward moved closer to the stairs. “Scott, it’s Luanne. Do you want me to come up there?”