by BV Lawson
“Nah, I think the train and I have developed something of a relationship. When my beastie was in the shop last fall, and I started ‘train-ing,’ I found I liked it. Beats the hell out of I-95 parking lots. And at afternoon rush, I guarantee you it’d be a parking lot.”
Sarg stretched out his legs. “When you called earlier and told me about Maura saying Jerold had a gun, I dug around. He bought a gun in Fairfax. Went through the national background check system a couple years ago.”
Drayco pointed the car toward the Beltway and eventually into Forestville, Maryland. “At least, Maura wasn’t lying about one thing. But the gun disappeared from Jerold’s condo at some point. And if the killer took it, why not use it on Jerold instead of a knife? Just because it’s quieter?”
“Maybe the killer didn’t know how to use a gun. Or has a gun-o-phobia.”
“Hoplophobia.”
“There’s a name for it?”
“There’s a name for every phobia, near as I can tell. Even phobophobia.”
“What’s that?”
“A fear of phobias.” Drayco envied Sarg stretching his legs. One day he was going to have to get a bigger car. “Were you able to get copies of the police records I wanted?”
Sarg tapped the black briefcase he’d brought with him. “In here. Haven’t had time to look at them yet.”
“I’m not surprised. I know how busy you are. I am surprised Onweller is supportive.”
“You kidding? The dear director owes both of us big time. Especially after he pulled that warrant arrest stunt last fall, and you showed him up for being an ass and protecting a killer, even if innocently. Still think he’s expecting you to come back to the Bureau.”
Drayco shook his head. “That career ship has long since sailed.”
“Sure would be nice to have you back.”
Drayco gave Sarg a quick glance. “Thought you were considering leaving, yourself?”
“Haven’t ruled it out. Guess I like this,” Sarg pointed at the road, “much, much better. Action that doesn’t involve using a pencil sharpener.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Wood splinters can be pretty dangerous.”
Sarg punched him in the arm. “Anyway, junior, tell me more about this Rocky Quentin fellow, Rena’s father. Ex-cop, right?”
“He just got out on parole after forty-five years.”
“That’s a long time. Don’t see how he could have ties to Jerold’s case.”
“When Rena told me her father had killed her mother, I didn’t think much about it since it was years ago. But then Ashley mentioned he was out of jail. I did a little research about him and his case and discovered he was paroled a year ago. A day before Ophelia Zamorra was murdered outside the bank.”
“Do tell. The M.O.’s the same?”
“In one important way. Rena’s mother, Lilian, was pushed down a flight of stairs, and Ophelia was hit on the head with a baseball bat. But they both had cards crammed down their throats. It was a credit card in Lilian’s case and the debit card with Ophelia.”
“But why would he kill Ophelia?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Using the GPS, Drayco wove his car in and out of Prince Georges County through a labyrinth of neighborhood streets. They finally pulled up to a single story home the size of a cargo container, with mildewed siding that was once white. The fence around the yard was more a suggestion, with several links missing. A forlorn-looking plastic reindeer sat in one corner, and a netless basketball hoop perched on a leaning pole threatening to fall into the street.
Sarg mumbled under his breath, “This is the kind of place even a foot of snow can’t gussy up.”
They picked their way around several empty trash cans and rang the doorbell. A man with a white beard and three thin strands of comb-over white hair greeted them with “What do you want?”
Sarg flashed his FBI badge. “Just a few questions, sir.”
Rocky Quentin’s eyes widened, and he looked like he was ready to slam the door in their faces. But after a moment of paralysis, he opened the door and let them in. “Look, I’m clean. I hardly ever go out, just ask the neighbors.”
“This goes back a lot further than that, sir. It’s about your wife, Lilian.”
Quentin eased himself onto a sofa with purple stains that looked like Rorschach tests. He shook his head. “That was decades ago. And I did my time.”
“We’re aware of that, sir.”
“Then why the hell are you here now?”
Drayco sat across from the man to get a better look at the man’s face. “Can you tell us a little more about what happened that day?”
“I killed her, that’s what happened.” He rubbed his eyes. “Being an undercover cop takes a toll, you know? Went too deep, got swallowed up by the alcohol and the drugs. I loved her though. Loved my wife. We had our arguments, but show me a couple that doesn’t.”
“Rocky, the police report states you put a credit card down her throat. Why?”
“My wife always had big tastes. Wanted to be a socialite with the big house and the fancy clothes and the parties with your pinkie out and all. She maxed out all out credit cards. It was a big blur at the time, and it’s an even bigger blur now. But I guess that’s why I did it. Drunk people aren’t smart people.”
“Have you seen your daughter Rena since you were released?”
“Haven’t seen my daughter since I went to jail. Can’t blame her, I suppose. Don’t know where she is. Or whether she changed her name or got married. Or if I have grandkids. Don’t even know where she works.”
“Until recently, she worked for the Transportation Safety Administration.”
“Really? Guess she followed in my footsteps.”
Sarg had stayed standing this time and towered over the frail, older man. “Can you tell us where you were on the night of January fifteenth of last year?”
“What? Don’t know why that matters, but you can ask my probation officer. He can probably tell you if I was taking a dump or whatever since he’s practically my owner.”
“You weren’t anywhere near Falls Church, Virginia?”
“Would have been kinda hard, me with no money and no car and all.”
“And you’ve never heard the name of Ophelia Zamorra?”
He slowly sounded out the name. “Oh feel ee ya zam ora. Can’t say I have.”
“The day after you got out of jail, a woman by that name was murdered in Falls Church and a credit card was placed down her throat.”
Quentin sank back into the sofa, almost disappearing into it. “You’re not going to pin that on me. I was nowhere near there. And why in hell would I want to go right back into the slammer when I just got out?”
“Well, sir, there have been many parolees who didn’t know how to live on the outside and found ways to go right back in.”
Quentin’s laugh sounded like an out-of-tune clarinet. “Yeah, I knew a few. But not me.” He waved his hand around the house. “This ain’t no palace, but after four concrete walls, it sure looks it to me. And I can eat whatever and whenever I want. There’s no way I’d ever go back.”
Drayco noted the man’s shaking hands, the way his head kept turning, and his eyes blinking. Parkinson’s. Drayco nodded at Sarg, “I think that’s all the questions we have for you, Rocky. We appreciate your time.”
They let themselves out and headed to the car. With Drayco driving, Sarg made some calls and got the name of Rocky’s probation officer, who rang off long enough to check his files before calling Sarg back. Sarg replied, “Uh huh. Right. Thanks for the info.”
He hung up and turned to Drayco. “Rocky was not just under his probation officer’s thumb at the time of Ophelia’s murder. He was in a meeting with the officer, give or take a few minutes. Would have been impossible for him to drive to the murder site in time.”
Drayco sighed. “Kind of what I figured. But we had to check it out, just in case.”
“Kind of what you figured?”<
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Drayco glanced at the dashboard clock. “You up for a little visit to Jerold Zamorra’s old neighborhood? There’s someone I think we should meet.”
“Sure, why not? Love making new friends.”
Chapter 50
Drayco’s cellphone chimed out a Prokofiev ringtone, and the screen showed it was Benny Baskin’s number. Drayco almost didn’t answer at first. “Yeah, Benny, what you got?”
“Just giving you a chance to make some party plans tonight. Floozies, booze, whatever. We got a dismissal.”
“Of Maura’s murder charges?”
“Of your case in front of the board, dumbass. Or have you completely forgotten about that? Your record and reputation are back to Def Con 5. You can relax. Well, there’s the teensy bit about being on probation for six months. But as Carlotta Peggs told me in confidence, it was the only way to get Saul Bobeck on board. And Mayor Kozell will likely be ex-Mayor Kozell by then.”
“Oh, well, that’s good news, Benny. Thanks.”
“Your enthusiasm underwhelms. Thought you’d be thrilled. You want me to go back and tell ’em you’re really a serial killer?”
“Just a little distracted. Can you be ready to spring Maura if I find the real killer?”
“Since she hasn’t been charged with anything else like corpse desecration nor fraud, easy peasy.”
“I’ll get back to you, Benny.”
Drayco hung up and turned to Sarg, still seated in the passenger’s seat of Drayco’s car as they parked under a streetlight near Jerold’s old condo. “Looks like I don’t have to worry about working sans license.”
Sarg grunted. “Oh, I don’t know, it was fun thinking of you going rogue.”
“Maybe that would be more fitting. I’ve spent my career fighting crime and turns out I come from a long line of criminals. Think that evens the score on some cosmic balance sheet?”
“At least your family is more interesting than my lineage of car salesmen.”
Drayco glanced at the list of items in Jerold’s condo that Halabi passed along, then said, “I’m still worried about that missing gun.”
“Still not seeing why that’s important.”
“Maura said Jerold sounded very tense over the phone when he called her. I think it’s possible he already had a visitor, someone who knew him, knew Jerold had a gun and where it was. Then the visitor pulled it on Jerold to force him to call Maura to come over.”
“And thus frame her for the murder.”
“Jerold told Maura something cryptic about the two of them being ‘twin guns’ heading off for a trip to Nevada. The Nevada reference could be about gambling. Add in the ‘twin guns’ part, and it might have been him using a coded message to let her know what was going on.”
Drayco flipped the papers over to a different page. “The PD’s interviews with neighbors show one man thought he saw a car that night but didn’t have a description since it was dark and raining. They blew him off because they didn’t think it was related. Might be a long shot.”
“My favorite kind of shot. After Tequila shots. Where do we find him?”
They found the neighbor-witness, Vito Armas, at an apartment in the more rundown building across the street from Jerold’s. When he answered the door, he seemed reluctant to let them in for a chat. The belt Armas wore was fighting a losing battle to keep his pants up, and his shirt looked like a skeleton’s idea of what a human would wear at a costume party.
Drayco pointed to a mobile taco truck a block down the street. “Hungry?”
The man hesitated, then followed Drayco and Sarg, and they ordered burritos with habañero salsa. When Drayco asked the female server if they had any pineapple he could add to his, she wrinkled her nose and mimicked sticking a finger down her throat, making both Armas and Sarg laugh.
Armas wolfed his burrito down in only three bites and licked his fingers. Drayco looked at his foil-wrapped meal and handed it over. Armas didn’t hesitate this time. He grabbed the offering and peeled away the foil slowly as if it contained a rare treasure.
His Spanglish was better than Drayco’s Spanglish, so Drayco asked him in English, “We know the police talked to you about the night Jerold Zamorra was murdered. But we’re not the police. We’re just trying to make sure an innocent woman doesn’t hang instead of the real sinner.”
Armas washed down the last of his burrito with a Mexican coke and nodded.
“You said you thought you saw a strange car that night but don’t remember anything about it.” At least, Armas told the police he didn’t recall anything. More likely, didn’t want to recall anything, better to stay out of trouble.
Armas nodded.
Drayco continued, “But maybe there’s something you didn’t think was important. Or some little detail that may have stood out to you.”
Armas looked at the ground, and Drayco thought he was going to refuse to talk to them. But their witness was apparently deep in thought, concentrating on what he’d seen that night. He raised his head and looked at Drayco, then Sarg. “It was oscuro—dark. From night and rain. It was light.”
Sarg blinked his eyes. “It was dark and light at the same time?”
“No, no, sky dark, rain light.”
Sarg smiled. “I see. The car was dark, too, right?”
“Si. Gris.”
“I can understand a gray car would blend in with rain at night, Mr. Armas. Where were you at the time you saw this car?”
“In my truck.” He nodded at the condo parking lot across the street. “I pulled out. The road was one lane only. This car, it blocked my way. I honked.”
“Did it move then, Mr. Armas?”
Armas shook his head. “No. It waved me on.”
“The car waved you on?” Sarg looked at Drayco out of the corner of his eye.
“The hand did. The window rolls down half the way, a hand waves me around.”
“Was there anything unusual about this hand?”
Armas shook his head again. “I see it was a woman.”
Drayco tried to hide his excitement. “How could you tell it was a woman, in the dark?”
“The headlights. The hand was in my headlights. Wearing a shiny watch. Oro and rosa. No man’s watch.”
Drayco slipped a twenty into Armas’s hand, and Drayco and Sarg headed back to their car. Sarg waited until Drayco slid into the driver’s seat and all windows and doors were closed until he asked, “Why all the excitement over the watch?”
“You remember when we first talked with Rena Quentin? She was wearing a pink-gold watch.” Drayco filled him in on his talk with Lauralee.
“Ah. Well that fills in a few more holes.”
“And in the surveillance photos Brisbane sent me, there was a recent one of Rena. If she and Jerold had parted on such awkward terms, why the meeting in person, alone?”
“Didn’t she say she went to one of Jerold’s concerts recently? Maybe she was just remorseful as she said.”
“She would have been one among a crowd there. Meeting him alone that’s another matter.” Drayco added, “Oddly, the caramels were the kicker.”
Sarg raised an eyebrow. “I’m lost.”
“By her own admission, Rena is addicted to caramels. You may recall that in Jerold’s condo, he had a display of miniature weapons and security gear we thought was a TSA in-joke.”
“If not a joke, then what?”
“That little perfect replica of a Nikon camera? It was so unusual, I looked it up. They were prizes found inside Clibo candy. Rena told me at Jerold’s funeral she used to irritate him by bringing in Clibo candy she’d fallen in love with on a visit to Japan. If they were such hard feelings between them, thanks to the sexual harassment claims, why did he keep that camera in his condo?”
Sarg nodded. “Makes sense.”
“It gets better. In the box of effects Ashley delivered to Jerold the day he was murdered, there was a big box of caramels. Yet, in the list the police made of items in his condo after his death, it was missing.
A normal thief would hardly take just candy.”
Sarg reached over into the back seat and hauled his briefcase over. He pulled out a folder with a stack of papers. “Here’s more reading material for you. Those police files. Wasn’t sure why you needed them, but the subjects make a lot more sense now.”
Drayco scanned the documents. “I suspected this after making calls to the coroners I told you about. But since the cases happened in different states and were considered accidents, they weren’t entered in any violent-crime databases. Certainly not the Bureau’s VICAP. And the police never had Rena as a suspect, so they didn’t think to track this down. Plus, the first case, Rena’s grandmother, happened forty years ago.”
Sarg peered over his left shoulder, read what Drayco underlined with his finger, then said, “Sweet Jesus.”
“I doubt it’s a coincidence.”
“Hell no. After Rena’s grandmother fell down the stairs, the coroner found a credit card stuck in her throat.”
“The theory was she had it in her hand since her purse was found near the body. When she tripped down the stairs, the card somehow got wedged there.”
Sarg gave him a skeptical look, and Drayco said, “Yeah, I know. But she was old, she had no enemies, no money, and there were no signs of assault, sexual or otherwise.”
Sarg pointed to another report. “And that one says Rena’s elderly ex-husband fell down some stairs—his wallet also conveniently located beside his body—and a credit card was found stuck in his throat. But it was after she’d divorced him, wasn’t it?”
“That was her pattern, a way to avoid suspicion. It was three years after she left her grandmother’s home that the grandmother was killed. Two years after she divorced her husband that he was killed—”
“And only one year after Ophelia and Jerold divorced. Why kill Ophelia though?”
“My guess is she thought Ophelia knew about her scheme with Jerold and was going to turn them in. Rena learned to adapt her methods to suit the occasion.”
“This doesn’t prove Rena killed Jerold.”
“The wagons are circling. I’d thought her father might be involved as a partner, but our little trip to see him ruled that out.”
