JM03 - Red Cat (23 page)

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Just what Tommy told you. He tracked her down, they had their talk, and that was it, the one and only time he spoke to her.”

“How did she take it?”

“The bit— the girl? Tommy said she was fucking surprised.”

“Surprised that he’d tracked her down?”

Fenn shook his head. “Surprised by the whole thing. According to him, she didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Didn’t know about the pictures or the letter, didn’t know anything about a squeeze. According to Tommy, it was all a big shock.”

“He believed her?”

Fenn shrugged. “I told him this chick could sell ice to Eskimos, but still he bought it.”

“But not you?”

“I knew her. I also know that after their talk we never heard another word about pictures or threats or sending cash. To me, that says she took the hint.”

“To the cops, it might say you killed her.”

Fenn slapped his hand on the desk. His voice was tight and loud. “Don’t you listen? I had no reason to kill her. Those pictures were no threat to me, they were just an annoyance. She was just an annoyance. Shit, if I was planning something like that, do you think I would’ve sent Tommy out looking for her that way? It wasn’t exactly a secret what he was doing.”

“Maybe things were different once you found her. Something she said, maybe, or something she did…”

“What— some kind of a crime of passion? I told you, I never even saw her. And I was out of the country when she died.” I shook my head. “You don’t believe it,” Fenn said, “here— look.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope and slid it across the desk.

I looked inside. There were fifteen pages, all copies— airline tickets and hotel receipts mostly. Rio, SДѓo Paulo, Buenos Aires, Punta del Este, then back to Rio— three weeks, just as Vickers had said. I tossed it back to him.

“These don’t mean anything. You could’ve hired it out.”

Fenn shook his head, and the grin began to reappear. “You just can’t make up your mind, can you? ‘Hired it out’ or ‘crime of passion’— which is it? Hiring somebody means planning, and if I was planning it, I wouldn’t have had Tommy out beating the bushes so loud. And flipping out means I had to be there— which you can see I wasn’t. On top of which, I had no fucking reason to do anything to this girl besides sue the hell out of her.

“For chrissakes, March, for a guy who’s supposed to be smart, you got your head squarely up your ass.”

26

Cold and fatigue sat like a yoke on my shoulders, and I leaned heavily in the elevator as it rose. It was only seven o’clock, but it felt like years since I’d left my apartment to meet Paul Darrow. I opened my door to the smell of thyme and warm bread, and to Clare at the kitchen counter, leafing through a shiny magazine. I hung my coat and poured a cranberry juice and looked in the pot that was heating on the stove. A thick stew simmered inside.

“You cooked?” I asked.

Clare smiled. “If by cooking you mean buying it, putting it in the pot, and turning on the heat— then, yes. It’s an old family recipe I picked up at the hem of Mother’s cocktail dress.” I smiled back at her, but it turned into a yawn midway.

“This’ll keep,” she said. “Why don’t you rest for a while?” Which sounded like a fine idea— a deeply brilliant idea— except that Mitchell Fenn’s wide smile lit the darkness whenever I closed my eyes, and I knew that I should call Mike Metz. As it happened, I wasn’t fifteen minutes tossing on the sofa when he called me. I carried the phone into the bedroom.

I told Mike how it went with Fenn and there was silence when I was done, and then a moment’s irritation.

“I thought you were just going to follow him,” Mike said.

“An opportunity presented itself,” I said, “and, anyway, no blood was spilled.”

“That’s comforting. Do you buy his story?”

I’d had a slow cab ride home to think about it. “Grudgingly,” I said.

“So do I. And it presents an interesting scenario— of someone using Holly’s videos for blackmail, and of Holly finding out. Those are circumstances for violence, and it’s a story the police will take seriously.”

“It suggests someone close to her— close enough to have access to her unedited work, anyway.”

“Someone like a boyfriend, for instance.”

“That’s one possibility.”

“With Coyle’s record, it’s the possibility the cops will focus on. And speaking of which, it’s time to call them— past time, really. Have you talked to David about Stephanie?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Jesus,” Mike sighed. “You have to do it, John. We need to know—”

“I know, I know— I’ll call him tonight.”

And I did, right after I got off the phone with Mike. I had no idea of what to say to him, and I was relieved when his recorded voice came on. I thought about just hanging up, but ultimately I left a message. Call me.

I came out of the bedroom as Clare was setting a bowl of stew and a loaf of peasant bread on the table. She carried her own bowl over and sat.

“You didn’t seem to be doing much resting,” she said. I shook my head and tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the stew. “I won’t ask about your day at the office,” she said. “’Cause then you’d have to kill me, and you’re too tired now.”

I smiled. “So thoughtful. How did it go with your lawyer?”

“No surprises,” Clare said. “The pre-nup spells it all out, and according to Jay no one’s arguing anything. It’s a matter of filings and court calendars now.”

I nodded. “And afterward?”

A little smile crossed Clare’s face. “Afterward what?”

“Do you have…”

“Plans?” Clare asked. I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about going back to gallery work,” she said, “or maybe something else. I’m in no rush. And as far as housing goes…I figured I’d just move in here.” I stopped chewing for half a second— not even that long— but it was long enough for Clare to have her fun.

Her smile was wicked and her cheeks turned pink. “Never a camera when you need one.”

I shook my head. “And I called you thoughtful,” I muttered, which made her laugh more.

Later, I stretched out next to her in bed, my head against her hip. Clare was sitting up, reading, and her fingers traced my hairline. My eyes were heavy doors.

“I don’t mind your staying,” I said as they were closing.

“I know,” she whispered.

* * *

I was blind and deaf, and Clare shook me awake for the telephone. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and looked at the clock, and didn’t believe that it was seven a.m. I read the caller ID.

“Shit,” I sighed. It was David, and I still had no idea what to say. As it turned out, he did the talking.

The voice on the line was nothing I’d heard from him before: trembling, fragile, and utterly lost. “The police are downstairs, Johnny. They want to come up.”

27

Pitt Street runs through the heart of the Lower East Side, several miles south of where my brother lives, and usually a world away— though not that Tuesday morning. That morning, David’s world had collapsed to the size of the narrow, windowless room where we sat and waited and watched a clock tick to ten. The Seventh Precinct station house is a new building, but the beige walls around us seemed a hundred years old, and the thick air older still. We were on one side of a metal table, Mike and I, and David in between. He was silent and motionless, and he had the blasted look of a man who’s recently survived a terrible storm. Except the storm was just beginning, and survival was very much an open question.

In David’s apartment, the dance had been all cordiality and caution, everyone polite and all the threats implicit. The two detectives sent to fetch him, Russo and Conlon, were large and tired-looking and almost bored with the proceedings. They’d been happy to wait until Mike and I arrived before talking to David, and they’d never uttered the word “arrest” or “suspect,” never even hinted at them. They kept their explanations of why they’d come vague— something about help with an investigation, a Jane Doe they’d been trying to identify for over a week— and they acted as if a summons to a police station was an unremarkable thing, a bureaucratic nuisance no more important than an expired dog license.

It was only when Mike tested the waters of resistance, suggesting that David appear tomorrow instead, that they’d stirred. And then, without a word spoken— with only glances, furrowed brows, small coughs, and the shifting of feet— David’s situation was plain. We’ve come, so early in the morning, for you. And so we went.

In the station house, the politesse thinned further, and in the way cops do— in the way that I used to do— they made us wait. Because waiting works. Worry turns into paranoid fantasy and a case of the sweats, stomach cramps turn into an urgent need to crap, and pretty soon out bursts full-blown terror. It was working on David— I could see it in the pallor and in the moist sheen on his forehead, and I could hear it in the rumblings of his gut— and nothing Mike or I said seemed to help. I wasn’t sure how much was even getting through.

Mike squeezed David’s shoulder and smiled, relaxed, imperturbable, and entirely confident. “We’re going home soon,” he said. I was hoping he was right when the door opened and a new cast of characters walked in. There were three of them, a man and two women.

The detectives were Leo McCue and Tina Vines, and they made an odd couple. McCue was about fifty and medium height, with a jutting belly and sagging smudges beneath his spaniel eyes. His mustache, like his hair, was bulky and mostly gray, and his fingers were thick and ragged-nailed. Vines was thirty, tall and precise and with the concave cheeks and restless look of an exercise junkie. Her blond hair was cut short, and her blue eyes were quick and unconvinced of anything. She wore her sleeves rolled, and there was a lot of muscle definition in her forearms.

The ADA was Rita Flores. She was small and rounded and forty, with glossy black hair cut to her shoulders, a full, pretty face, and nearly black eyes. Her suit was blue and careful, her shoes were flat, and it was easy to imagine the kindergarten art on her office wall, and the minivan in her garage— easy to cast her as the reliable car-pooler or the genial soccer mom. Which would have been a bad mistake. She introduced herself and I saw Mike’s jaw tighten.

McCue and Vines sat across from us, and Rita Flores took a chair near the door. Vines had a laptop, and she switched it on. McCue smiled and made some noises about everything being informal and thanks for coming down. No one believed a word of it. Vines tapped away at something, and Flores stared at David. McCue went on.

“The autopsy says that, besides being shot in the face, our Jane Doe was beat up pretty bad before she died— probably a few days before, maybe a little longer. And then she was in the water five days so, all in all, she was a mess.” He paused to look at us, his gaze lingering on David. Then he continued.

“We pulled prints from her apartment and matched them to Jane Doe’s. We pulled DNA too— from a hairbrush— and we’re pretty sure that’ll confirm the print match. So we know our Jane is Holly Cade.” He paused again, waiting for a question, daring us to ask. Jane Doe? Holly who?

Mike smiled affably and offered a different query. “Then you don’t need Mr. March’s help with identification?”

McCue smiled back. “Not with that, but with a few other things,” he said, and he looked at Vines.

“Can you tell us something about this?” Vines asked, and she turned the laptop screen toward us and tapped a key. The laptop whirred and a video started playing, dim, but not too dim to see. David and Holly, in the hotel room and with no digital masking. “We hoped you could confirm that that’s Holly’s pussy you’re eating.”

“Jesus Christ,” David breathed.

Mike put a hand on his arm. “Really, Ms. Flores…” he said.

From across the room, Flores raised her hands in a helpless shrug. These crazy cops. What can you do? The smile on her face was less than sympathetic.

McCue tapped a thick finger on the screen. “You see that, on her leg, near your face? To me, that looks like a happy red cat, but Tina disagrees. Maybe you can resolve it for us, Mr. March: was there a happy cat on that leg, or were you too busy to notice? And while you’re at it, maybe you can explain what your relationship with Holly was— besides the pussy-eating, I mean— and why the fuck you didn’t come forward and identify her for us?”

After which, there were theatrics. Mike was shocked and offended: “deliberately embarrassing”…“unnecessary”…“abusive”…“my client is here voluntarily.” He slapped the table. McCue and Vines played bad cop and worse cop, respectively: “no sense of responsibility”…“something to hide”…“bullshit.” They pointed and sneered, and Rita Flores said little but somehow assumed the mien of Darth Vader. Only David and I were silent— I because I had nothing to say, and David because he was, for the moment, incapable of speech. He stared at the screen and his face was paper white. I reached over and turned the laptop around, away from him. Rita Flores watched me with glittering eyes.

When Mike felt he’d defended his turf sufficiently, he cleared his throat and became all affability and reason again. “As it turned out, detectives, you preempted our call to you by just a few hours. We were waiting for Mr. March— the other Mr. March— to complete his report.”

McCue and Vines spoke together, in a torrent of disbelief, but Flores interrupted them. “By all means, counselor, I’d love to hear what you and the other Mr. March have to say.”

And Mike told the story— of David’s brief and limited relationship with Cassandra, of the phone calls and threats, of his intent to pursue legal action against her if necessary, of him hiring me and me finding Holly, and of reading in the papers about the Williamsburg Mermaid.

“My client was shocked by the news, and upset and frightened too— and the direction of your investigation would seem to bear out his fears. So we elected to wait a few days before contacting the police, and in that time to do what we could to identify other reasonable avenues that an investigation might pursue. As John’s report makes clear, there are several.”

He was good at the telling, better than good, and he made the sequence of events— the reasoning, the decisions, and the actions taken— seem entirely logical, if not inevitable. But despite Mike’s delivery, the story itself remained a tough sell. He knew it, and so did Rita Flores and the cops.