The Cold Moon (45 page)

Duncan nodded. "I wondered if you'd check for that."

Rhyme asked, "And the fingernail?"

Duncan held up his ring finger. The end of the nail was missing. He himself had torn it off. He added, "And I'm sure Vincent told you about a young man I supposedly killed near the church. I never touched him. The blood on the box cutter and on some newspaper in the trash nearby — if it's still there — is mine."

"How did that happen?" Rhyme asked.

"It was an awkward moment. Vincent thought the kid saw his knife. So I had to pretend that I killed him. Otherwise Vincent might suspect me. I followed him around the corner, then ducked into an alley, cut my own arm with the knife and smeared some of my own blood on the box cutter." He showed a recent wound on his forearm. "You can do a DNA test."

"Oh, don't worry. We will... " Another thought. "And the carjacking — you never killed anybody to steal the Buick, did you?" They'd had no reports either of missing students in Chelsea or of drivers murdered during the commission of a carjacking anywhere in the city.

Lon Sellitto was compelled to chime in again with, "What the hell's going on?"

"He's not a serial killer," Rhyme said. "He's not any kind of killer. He set this whole thing up to make it look like he was."

Sellitto asked, "No wife killed in an accident?"

"Never been married."

"How'd you figure it out?" Pulaski asked Rhyme.

"Because of something Lon said."

"Me?"

"For one thing, you mentioned his name, Duncan."

"So? We knew it."

"Exactly. Because Vincent Reynolds told us. But Mr. Duncan is someone who wears gloves twenty-four/seven so he won't leave prints. He's way too careful to give his name to a person like Vincent — unless he didn't care if we found out who he was.

"Then you said it was lucky he didn't kill the recent victims and Amelia. Pissed me off at first, hearing that. But I got to thinking about it. You were right.
We
didn't really save any victims at all. The florist? Joanne? I figured out he was targeting her, sure, but she's the one who called nine-one-one after she heard a noise in the workshop — a noise he probably made intentionally."

"That's right," Duncan agreed. "And I left a spool of wire on the floor to warn her that somebody'd broken in."

Sachs said, "Lucy, the soldier in Greenwich Village — we got an anonymous phone call from a witness about a break-in. But it wasn't a witness at all, right? It was you making that call."

"I told Vincent that somebody in the street called nine-one-one. But, no, I called from a pay phone and reported myself."

Rhyme nodded at the office building behind them. "And here — the fire extinguisher was a dud, I assume."

"Harmless. I poured a little alcohol on the outside but it's filled with water."

Sellitto was on the phone, calling the Sixth Precinct, the NYPD Bomb Squad headquarters. A moment later he hung up. "Tap water."

"Just like the gun you gave Baker, the one he was going to use to kill Sachs here." Rhyme glanced at the dismantled .32. "I just checked it out — the firing pin's been broken off."

Duncan said to Sachs, "I plugged the barrel too. You can check. And I knew he couldn't use his own gun to shoot you because that would tie him to your death."

"Okay," Sellitto barked. "That's it. Somebody, talk to me."

Rhyme shrugged. "All I can do is get us to this station, Lon. It's up to Mr. Duncan to complete the train ride. I suspect he's planned to enlighten us all along. Which is why he was enjoying the show from the grandstand across the street."

Duncan nodded and said to Rhyme, "You hit it on the head, Detective Rhyme."

"I'm decommissioned," the criminalist corrected.

"The whole point of what I've done is what just happened — and, yes, I was enjoying it very much: watching that son of a bitch Dennis Baker get arrested and dragged off to jail."

"Keep going."

Duncan's face grew still. "A year ago I came here on business — I own a company that does lease financing of industrial equipment. I was working with a friend — my best friend. He saved my life when we were in the army twenty years ago. We were working all day drafting documents then went back to our hotels to clean up before dinner. But he never showed. I found out he'd been shot to death. The police said it was a mugging. But something didn't seem right. I mean, how often do muggers shoot their victims point-blank in the forehead — twice?"

"Oh, shooting fatalities during the commission of robberies are extremely rare, according to recent..." Pulaski's voice trailed off, under Rhyme's cool glance.

Duncan continued. "Now, the last time I saw him my friend told me something odd. He said that the night before, he'd been in a club downtown. When he came out, two policemen pulled him aside and said they'd seen him buying drugs. Which was bullshit. He didn't do drugs. I know that for a fact. He knew he was being shaken down and demanded to see a police supervisor. He was going to call somebody at headquarters and complain. But just then some people came out of the club and the police let him go. The next day he was shot and killed.

"Too much of a coincidence. I kept going back to the club and asking questions. Cost me five thousand bucks but finally I found somebody willing to tell me that Dennis Baker and some of his fellow cops ran shakedown scams in the city."

Duncan explained about a scheme of planting drugs on businessmen or their children and then dropping the charges for huge extortion payments.

"The missing drugs from the One One Eight," Pulaski said.

Sachs nodded. "Not enough to sell but enough to plant as evidence, sure."

Duncan added, "They were based out of some bar in lower Manhattan, I heard."

"The St. James?"

"That's it. They'd all meet there after their shifts at the station house were over."

Rhyme asked, "Your friend. The one who was killed. What was his name?"

Duncan gave them the name and Sellitto called Homicide. It was true. The man had been shot during an apparent mugging and no perp was ever collared.

"I used my connection I'd made at the club — paid him a lot of money — to get introduced to some people who knew Baker. I pretended I was a professional killer and offered my services. I didn't hear anything for a while. I thought he'd gotten busted or gone straight and I'd never hear from him. It was frustrating. But finally Baker called me and we met. It turns out he'd been checking me out to see if I was trustworthy. Apparently he was satisfied. He wouldn't give me too many details but said he had a business arrangement that was in jeopardy. He and another cop had taken care of some 'problems' they'd been having."

Sachs asked, "Creeley or Sarkowski? Did he mention them?"

"He didn't give me any names but it was obvious that he was talking about killing people."

Sachs shook her head, eyes troubled. "I was upset enough thinking that some of the cops from the One One Eight were taking kickbacks from mobsters. And all along
they
were the actual killers."

Rhyme glanced at her. He knew she'd be thinking of Nick Carelli. Thinking of her father too.

Duncan continued. "Then Baker said there was a new problem. He needed someone else eliminated, a woman detective. But they couldn't kill her themselves — if she died everyone'd know it was because of her investigation and they'd follow up on the case even more intensely. I came up with this idea of pretending to be a serial killer. And I made up a name — the Watchmaker."

Sellitto said, "That's why there were no hits in the watchmaker trade associations." They'd all come back negative on a Gerald Duncan.

"Right. The character was all a creation of mine. And I needed someone to feed you information and make you think there really was a psycho, so I found Vincent Reynolds. Then we started the supposed attacks. The first two I faked, when Vincent wasn't around. The others — when he was with me — I bungled them on purpose.

"I had to make sure you found the box of bullets that'd connect the Watchmaker to Baker. I was going to drop them somewhere so you'd find them. But" — Duncan gave a laugh — "as it turned out, I didn't have to. You found out about the SUV and nearly got us."

"So that's why you left the ammunition inside."

"Yep. The book too."

Another thought occurred to Rhyme. "And the officer who searched the garage said it was curious you parked out in the open, not at the doorway. That was because you had to make sure we found the Explorer."

"Exactly. And all the other supposed crimes were just leading up to this one — so you could catch Baker in the act of trying to kill her. That'd give you probable cause, I figured, to search his car and house and find evidence to put him away."

"What about the poem? 'The full Cold Moon... '"

"I wrote it myself." Duncan smiled. "I'm a better businessman than a poet. But it seemed sufficiently scary to suit my needs."

"Why'd you pick these particular people as victims?"

"I didn't. I picked the
locations
because they'd allow us to get away quickly. This last one, the woman here, was because I needed a good layout to flush out Baker."

"Revenge for your friend?" Sachs asked. "A lot of other people would just've had him killed outright."

Duncan said sincerely, "I'd never hurt anybody. I couldn't do that. I might bend the law a bit — I admit I committed some crimes here. But they were victimless. I didn't even steal the cars; Baker got them himself — from a police pound."

"The woman who was the first victim's supposed sister?" Sachs asked. "Who was she?"

"A friend I asked to help. I lent her a lot of money a few years ago but there was no way she could repay it. So she agreed to help me out."

"And the girl in the car with her?" Sachs asked.

"Her real daughter."

"What's the woman's name?"

A rueful smile. "I'll keep that to myself. Promised her I would. Just like the guy in the club who set me up with Baker. That was part of the deal and I'm sticking to it."

"Who else is involved in the shakedowns at the One One Eight, other than Baker?"

Duncan shook his head regretfully. "I wish I could tell you. I want them put away as much as Baker. I tried to find out. He wouldn't talk about his scheme. But I got the impression there's somebody involved other than the officers from the precinct."

"Somebody else?"

"That's right. High up."

"From Maryland or with a place there?" Sachs asked.

"I never heard him mention that. He trusted me but only up to a point. I don't think he was worried about my turning him in; it seemed like he was afraid I'd get greedy and go after the money myself. It sounded like there was a lot of it."

A dark-colored city car pulled up to the police tape and a slim, balding man in a thin overcoat climbed out. He joined Rhyme and the others. He was a senior assistant district attorney. Rhyme had testified at several of the trials the man had prosecuted. The criminalist nodded a greeting and Sellitto explained the latest developments.

The prosecutor listened to the bizarre turn the case had taken. Most of the perps he put away were stupid Tony Soprano sorts or even more stupid crackheads and punks. He seemed amused to find himself with a brilliant criminal — whose crimes, as it turned out, were not nearly as serious as it seemed. What excited him far more than a serial killer was the career-making prosecution of a deadly corruption scam in the police department.

"Any of this going through IAD?" he asked Sachs.

"No. I've been running it myself."

"Who cleared that?"

"Flaherty."

"The inspector? Running Op Div?"

"Right."

He began asking questions and jotting notes. After doing so, in precise handwriting, for five minutes he paused. "Okay, we've got B and E, criminal trespass... but no burglary."

Burglary is breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a felony, like larceny or murder. Duncan had no purpose other than trespassing.

The prosecutor continued. "Theft of human remains —"

"Borrowing. I never intended to keep the corpse," Duncan reminded him.

"Well, it's up to Westchester to decide that one. But here we've also got obstruction of justice, interference with police procedures —"

Duncan frowned. "Though you could say that since there were no murders in the first place, the police procedures weren't necessary, so interference with them is moot."

Rhyme chuckled.

The assistant district attorney, however, ignored the comment. "Possession of a firearm —"

"Barrel was plugged," Duncan countered. "It was inoperable."

"What about the stolen motor vehicles? Where'd they come from?"

Duncan explained about Baker's theft from the police impound lot in Queens. He nodded to the pile of his personal effects, which included a set of car keys. "The Buick's parked up the street. On Thirty-first. Baker got it from the same place as the SUV."

"How'd you take delivery of the cars? Anybody else involved?"

"Baker and I went together to pick them up. They were parked in a restaurant lot. Baker knew some of the people there, he said."

"You get their names?"

"No."

"What was the restaurant?"

"Some Greek diner. I don't remember the name. We took the four-ninety-five to get out there. I don't remember the exit but we were only on the freeway for about ten minutes after we got out of the Midtown Tunnel and turned left at the exit."

"North," Sellitto said. "We'll have somebody check it out. Maybe Baker's been dealing in confiscated wheels too."

The prosecutor shook his head. "I hope you understand the consequences of this. Not just the crimes — you'll have civil fines for the diversion of emergency vehicles and city employees. I'm talking tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"I have no problem with that. I checked the laws and sentencing guidelines before I started this. I decided the risk of a prison sentence was worth exposing Baker. But I wouldn't have done this if there was any chance somebody innocent would get hurt."

"You still put people at risk," Sellitto muttered. "Pulaski was attacked in the parking garage where you left the SUV. He could've been killed."