A Clean Kill (15 page)

"Then you shouldn't stay there," Lynn said. "You shouldn't do everything Jo Ellen tells you to."

"Jo Ellen has always been good to me," Remy said firmly,

"I don't know about that, but I'm scared."

Remy tried to think of something reassuring to say. Since she was the one who looked like a killer because she'd slept with her boss, she thought she was the one who could use some comfort. None, however, was forthcoming. Lynn wasn't going to be any help. "I have to go," Remy said suddenly. One of the boys had spilled his drink. "I'll call you later."

Nineteen

T
here was no private women's room for high-ranking female officers at Midtown North, or at any other Manhattan precinct for that matter. Police stations were all built long before there were female sergeants, lieutenants, captains, and chiefs, before female officers went out on patrol. There were bathrooms for the public and for female uniformed officers, but ranking officers did not like to use them. In the days when April had worked very unpleasant crime scenes, chased bad guys, and routinely got her clothes ripped up and smelly, she'd kept a change of clothes in her locker and made do with the facilities. Now she dressed at home in Westchester and didn't worry much about how she looked at work.

Mike, however, had his own bathroom and everything he needed to keep himself in tip-top sartorial condition. She remembered that at the end of the day as she headed to the East Side in her own car. She would check in with Fish and then reapply her makeup in Mike's bathroom. She looked forward to the private moments. Dealing with Fish, on the other hand, would be a delicate balancing act.

Mike's precinct building was smaller than Mid-town North's. April had worked on cases in the building in the past but had made a point of staying away from it ever since Mike had taken command there. She knew the CO's office was on the first floor around the corner from the front desk, but she didn't go there right away. Instead she clipped on her ID as she entered the building, then climbed the stairs to the detective unit to face the music with Fish. About twenty-five people were gathered in the room already crowded with desks. She was not surprised to find her husband, no longer in uniform, sitting in on the briefing. He gestured to her as she came in.

"You all know Lieutenant Woo," he said, leaving off his own name, then—seeing it on her ID—adding it back on. "Sanchez. Glad you could make it."

She nodded, not letting on that no one had invited her.

Minnow raised his hand in greeting. "Lieutenant," he said.

She recognized most of the faces. "Hi”

"Ted, go on," Minnow said.

Ted Bell was a skinny guy with a freckled face and a shock of red hair. He returned to referencing the time charts—reviewing what they knew and had mapped out the victim's last twenty-four hours. He finished and turned to April.

"Lieutenant, do you have anything to add?"

She hadn't expected to address the whole team and cleared her throat, wishing for a cup of tea. She started with the time line. "Seven forty-five a.m. Remy Banks and Wayne Wilson left to take the kids to play school. Mrs. Wilson called her friend Alison and Jo Ellen Anderson, her employment agency contact. Alison didn't take her call. Mrs. Wilson did speak with Jo Ellen, though. Have you contacted her yet?"

Minnow shook his head and made a note.

"Okay. Eight a.m. Derek Meke, her trainer, arrived. Derek said she'd been upset about something that had occurred at breakfast, and had fired Remy. According to him, they had a normal session and he left her at nine. He stopped for a Snapple on the corner at nine-oh-five. His partner at his gym places him in the studio on Fifty-sixth Street at nine twenty. I spoke with Remy Banks several times this morning. She said she got the boys dressed and fed them their breakfast. Mrs. Wilson came in as they were finishing. There was an argument. Then Remy accompanied their father as he drove the boys to play school, while Madeleine Wilson stayed home to have a gym session with her trainer."

April paused, looked over at Fish, who nodded for her to continue.

"After dropping the kids off, Remy visited Soleil with Mr. Wilson to see a new oven and walked home from there. When she returned to the house, she heard the shower running and went immediately into the gym, looking for Mrs. Wilson. No one answered, and after a few minutes she looked in and saw the body. The faucets are just inside the door. She didn't have to go in to turn them off. She did not go into the shower, just dialed 911. The call came in at nine forty-five. We think she didn't enter the shower itself because the floor outside it was dry. It was dry when I saw it, too. Apparently no one went in until CSI arrived. You let her off the hook—where is Remy now?"

"She's at the Plaza with the two little boys," Ted said.

April raised her eyebrows. "And Wayne?"

"He's with them."

"Hmm. What about Derek?"

Ed Minnow smiled, acknowledging that April had gotten to the trainer first. "He gave us the same story he gave you. Mrs. Wilson fired Remy and told her to get out by noon. He seemed pretty shaken up by the death. He cried. We've been monitoring him.- He went home, and hasn't moved since. What's your take on him?"

April had been standing outside the crush of people with their hips parked on the corners of desks. Minnow jabbed a big guy out of a chair and pushed it over for her. She sat down.

"They had a close relationship. He was her guru. Gave her vitamins and massages." She ducked her head, lifting her shoulder at the same time to indicate her suspicions about the nature of the massage. A few laughs echoed around the room. Who got massages? Not them. April went on.

"He has a little club of women he caters to in this way. One of his clients was Mrs. Wilson's best friend. Oh, by the way, everyone called her Maddy. Her friend, Alison Perkins, liveSat the same address two blocks away from the Wilson house. I talked to her at length this afternoon."

"Alison . . . ?" Pens poised above pads.

"Perkins. Spelled the usual way," April said.

Ted added the name to the chart.

"You'll add your reports to the file," Minnow said officiously.

"Of course," April said. "Now, getting back to

Derek for a moment. He would be the obvious one, given the time frame. Mike, you pointed out earlier that if.he and Maddy had a falling-out at the beginning of the session, he would have plenty of time to kill her and clean up before Remy got back. Remy had orders never to disturb Maddy until Derek was gone, and she didn't knock on the door until around nine forty-five."

"What about the murder weapon?" Minnow interjected. It was clear he didn't like this scenario.

"Nothing on that yet," April said.

"Exactly. He didn't go in with a plan to kill her," Minnow agreed.

"It was a rage thing. Maybe he lost it," Ted said.

"No way." The Fish seemed to want to eliminate Derek.

April changed the subject. "Who's on the bank records?"

A pretty Jamaican with a head of plump braids raised her hand. "Mrs. Wilson took out eight hundred dollars from one ATM yesterday at eleven fourteen, and eight hundred from another a block away at eleven forty-five," she said in a lilting island accent. "Looks like she averages about five thousand a week in cash."

"That's a lot of walk-around money. Someone should ask her friend about that," Minnow said.

"I'll do it," April said.

"Drugs?" Mike said.

"Maybe. The ME will have to determine that." April kept her suspicions to herself.

"What about sex? Was Derek her boyfriend?" Fish asked.

"Not her boyfriend, but they had something going." Suddenly April noticed that the DA on the case was in the room. "Hi, Ben, how ya doin'?"

"Not too bad." He smiled.

He was the old guy, an associate who'd never graduated and moved on. Most DAs stayed for a few years, then moved into private practice as defense lawyers. Ben Hurd, however, had vowed to stay on as an assistant DA until he was kicked out. He was a legend, a short, nerdy, bald man, completely forgettable in the looks department, who knew every important case all the way back to New York City's dark ages. He was the historian of the office. Every new DA was treated to his long discourses on prosecuting the bad guys. When he came to the cops—which wasn't often because usually the cops came to him—he didn't say a lot. He just listened to the conversation with his head swaying from side to side, a little like a snake's. And as soon as the investigation got to a place where he was ready to go, he struck. He was a man with a reputation.

"I want to throw two more things into the pot here," April said. "First, Remy told the responding officers the shower was on when she found Maddy, and that she turned it off. This is important because of the effect the running water would have on the body and how it would affect the time frame. We need to take a careful look at that. And second, we need to know where Remy was during the hour and forty-five minutes after she left the house with Wayne and whether she could have come back forty-five minutes earlier." That was it. April didn't have anything more to add at the moment. They moved on to other reports.

Twenty

A
ll afternoon and evening the news was filled with the Wilson murder. Photos of Maddy Wilson at Fashion Week, at Restaurant Week, at social events that were immortalized in W and
Town & Country,
and all the foodie magazines, were shown everywhere. She'd been a skier and a fashion plate, a popular figure. Speculation was rife about what had gone wrong in the Camelot where she'd lived. Intermixed with the story of the murder on Beekman Place were clips of Wayne Wilson, when he'd been a celebrity chef during the first half of his career. He was the former husband of ballerina Jenny Hope, and the owner of four French bistros—an important person in the food world.

It was the story of the day, bigger on national news than strife in any war-tom country and more important—on the TV scale of importance—than suicide bombings in the Middle East, hostage situations in Africa, stock market misconduct, and the prostitution of young girls in the Far East all put together. The brick house, the roped-off street, the police vehicles clogging up the entire area. The body bag being carried out to an ambulance, CSI with their bagged and boxed evidence in hand as they hurried out to their vehicles. Images the public had come to know as well as the parade of movie stars in revealing dresses on award nights. Crime and celebrity were the candy the country craved. And here it was, if not with nationally recognizable faces, at least with people who were well-known and prominent in their city. It was a feeding frenzy and there was a lot of material to disseminate.

Mike and April got another taste of it when they left the station for dinner at eight. They were besieged by a half-dozen reporters the second they stepped outside.

"Is Mr. Wilson a suspect?"

"Was he having an affair with the nanny?"

"Is it true she was mutilated?"

"Were her nipples cut off?"

The questions flew at them, but April didn't look to see who was asking. Mike shook his head.

"Nothing more for tonight," he said, taking her arm. Several reporters followed them down the street with the questions still blasting them like enemy fire. Then suddenly, they got to the end of the block, turned the corner, and became just two people walking to dinner. Mike gave April a quick hug and she clung to him, wishing they were already home in Westchester.

"What was that shower thing all about?" he asked.

Sighing, she let the embrace slip away. Overhead the sky was still NYPD blue, the deep, deep color that set off the stars in the early evening before the light was completely gone from the earth and night closed in on the city. "Starlight, star bright," she murmured. "First star I see tonight." She didn't make her wish out loud. The whole setup bothered her. Wayne and his affairs. Maddy and hers. The babysitter who claimed she wasn't a babysitter and was probably fired that morning by the murdered woman. What was it all about? What was under the surface? Who was trying to cast the blame on whom? She didn't have her usual clarity of vision. The fog all around her was lifeless. No whispers emerged from it to tantalize her. She didn't think the killer was Remy or Derek, but she didn't know exactly why. Wayne was a big question mark.

"What are you driving at?" Mike asked.

"I don't know. Wayne is a chronic womanizer. He kept his last wife about six years. Maybe Mad-dy's number was up, and he didn't want to pay alimony again." She shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened."

"Is that what her friend suggested?"

"No, no. Alison is treading carefully with Wayne. What's your take?"

"I didn't question him,
querida.
I'm staying out of it."

She laughed softly. "Sure you are."

Mike took her hand and squeezed it. Neither of them mentioned the honeymoon four days away.
"Te quiero, mi amor,"
he said after a moment.